Lecture 3 & 4:
Splitscreen in 1950s/60s Hollywood
Malte Hagener, Marburg
Recap from yesterday:
Classical space (perspectival): ordered,
privileged, distant, safe, observable,
individual
Space of attractions: frontal, ostentative
gestures, direct address, collective
-> what is the space of the splitscreen?
2
Standard film history
“[S]plit screen experiments, although
intrinsically interesting as adventures in
image making, remained a footnote to the
history of feature film editing.”
Paul Monaco: The Sixties. 1960–1969. Berkeley, CA et al.: University of
California Press 2001. (History of the American Cinema; Volume 8): 88
3
Sex Comedies
Cycle of three films with Doris Day and Rock
Hudson (and Tony Randall):
- PILLOW TALK (US 1959, Michael Gordon)
- LOVER COME BACK (US 1961, Delbert
Mann)
- SEND ME NO FLOWERS (US 1964, Norman
Jewison)
4
Double Motivation
- Technology (party line)
- Formation of the couple (separation that
has to be healed)
5
Pillow Talk (US 1959, Michael Gordon)
6
Pillow Talk (US 1959, Michael Gordon)
7
Pillow Talk (US 1959, Michael Gordon)
8
Pillow Talk (US 1959, Michael Gordon)
9
Pillow Talk (US 1959, Michael Gordon)
10
Formal and narrative relations
“We see the split of the party line, represented as a split
screen, healed visibly towards the end of the film, as Brad
and Jan are splayed not across the split screen but an
undivided single screen. In fact, as the film progresses, the
split of the screen changes axis; it is no longer split
between Brad’s and Jan’s side, but between Brad onscreen
and Jan offscreen.”
E.L. McCallum: »Mother Talk: Maternal Masquerade and the Problem of the
Single Girl«. In: Camera Obscura, no. 42, Sept. 1999: 70-95, hier 94.
11
Off-screen
• Hors-champ / hors-cadre
• Absence/presence
• Suture
12
Lover Come Back (US 1961, Delbert Mann)
13
Down with Love (US 2003, Peyton Reed)
14
The Grass Is Greener (US 1960, Stanley Donen)
15
Opening and Closing Passages
„Typically, the opening and closing of the
film are the most self-conscious, omniscient,
and communicative passages“
David Bordwell: Narration in the Fiction Film. London:
Routledge 1985: 160.
16
Charade (US 1963, Stanley Donen)
17
Bye Bye Birdie (US 1963, George Sidney)
18
Conditions for the use of splitscreen (in
Hollywood, around 1960)
• Genre (comedy, musical)
• Milieu (forced modernisation)
• European-US relations
• Creative industries (interior design, heritage
industry, art, advertising)
• Modern media (telephone, television, computer)
• Acoustics (composers, singers etc)
19
Managing Complexities (part II)
20
Preconditions for further splitscreen
experiments
• Society in transition and upheaval – open for
new ideas
• Hollywood in crisis (television, youth,
suburbanisation)
• Cultural atmosphere of experimentation
(thematic exhibitions)
21
I got the idea for the split screen and the multiple
images from Francis Thompson and his film TO BE
ALIVE at the New York World’s Fair [in 1964/65]. It
impressed me a great deal as did Charles
Eames’s film for IBM. I spent some time with
Eames afterwards discussing split screen because
GRAND PRIX was really ideally suited to it.
Gerald Pratley: The Cinema of John Frankenheimer. London:
Zwemmer / New York: Barnes 1969: 156.
22
Grand Prix (US 1966, John Frankenheimer)
23
I don’t think split screens will ever be used dramatically to
tell, for example, a suspense story, which, more than any
type of film, requires one scene after the other. I do think it
can be done for something like Grand Prix when you’re
dealing with past and present, doing a kind of miniscule
examination of an entire season of racing, trying to portray
five characters on the screen without enough time to really
get into each one of them as deeply as you would like to
[...]. It’s difficult for the audience to concentrate on more
than one picture at a time, and if you are looking at one you
really aren’t observing the other.
Pratley, Frankenheimer, op.cit.: 156f.
24
Grand Prix (US 1966, John Frankenheimer)
25
Saul Bass (1920-1996)
• Graphic design, title
design
• Studied with György
Kepes
• Work for IBM, AT&T,
Warner
26
„Bass’s animated visualizations are both narrative
and nonnarrative, referencing art and art
illustrations, flattening space to emphasize the
conscious construction of images.”
Jan-Christopher Horak: Saul Bass : Anatomy of Film Design.
Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky 2014: p. 124.
„…Saul Bass was a great filmmaker. He would look at the
film in question, and understand the rhythm, the structure,
the mood — he would penetrate the heart of the movie and
find its secret.” (Martin Scorsese)
27
Grand Prix (US 1966, John Frankenheimer)
28
The Boston Strangler (US 1967, Richard
Fleischer)
29
“[T]he mind and eye have been proved to be capable of
tremendous speed and versatility in accepting multiple
images [...]. Viewers in the audience may feel that they are
just on the verge of missing something, which is fine, but
the total effect on the audience is wonderful, because it
makes their eyes and ears explore the entire screen and
keeps them very conscious of what is happening.”
Richard Fleischer quoted in »Multiple-Image Technique for ›The Boston
Strangler‹«. In: American Cinematographer, vol. 50, no. 2, Feb. 1969:
204.
30
visual designer Fred Harpman: “We went up together to
EXPO 67 to see the unsual film presentations and we got
all excited over them”.
anon.: “Multiple-Image Technique for THE BOSTON STRANGLER”. In:
American Cinematographer, vol. 50, no. 2, Feb. 1969: 205.
31
„à la suite de ma visite de l’Expo Universelle de Montréal
en 1967. C’est en voyant les exhibitions d’écrans multiples
que je réalisais le potentiel de cette technique pour le
cinéma. Je réussis à convaincre le studio et Richard
Zanuck en particulier de me laisser tourner le film avec ce
système.”
Stéphane Bourgoin: Richard Fleischer. Paris: Edilig 1986. (Filmo – 16):
99. [„…following my visit to the Expo in Montreal in 1967. When I saw
the exhibitions with multiple screens I realized the potential of this
technique for the cinema. I managed to convince the studio and
Richard Zanuck in particular to let me shoot the film with this system.“,
my translation]
32
The Boston Strangler (US 1967, Richard
Fleischer)
33