ON CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA: BEYOND THE CLASH

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The expression “the norm in classical Hollywood

cinema”—very aptly used in the title for this mo-

nographic section of the journal—raises some

very interesting questions. It may perhaps be

appropriate to begin this paper by pointing out

one in particular that effectively encompasses all

the others: behind its apparent objectivity, this

six-word phrase conceals a number of problems

related to apparently neutral concepts. Some of

these concepts, such as style (also mentioned in

the call for papers for this issue), classicism (and

the many derivatives of the term classical) and

norm (a term itself associated with the controver-

sial notion of canon), will be discussed in this arti-

cle, which takes the following idea as its starting

point: that the norm in classical Hollywood cine-

ma is inextricably intertwined with the very idea

of deviation or transgression. In other words, the

descriptive dimension of this particular ﬁlm genre

contradicts its prescriptive dimension, which has

established a canon of ﬁlms and ﬁlmmakers based

precisely on the subversion (to varying degrees of

intensity and explicitness) of the style described.

This working hypothesis is based on the recog-

nition that while different studies of the concept

of classical Hollywood cinema identify particular

features of this ﬁlmmaking tradition, attempts at

canonisation—in the secular sense that Kermode

(1988) and Harris (1998) give the term—such as

ﬁlm analysis, anthologies or bio-ﬁlmographies, fo-

cus their attention on ﬁlms and ﬁlmmakers who

are worthy of attention because, among other

reasons, they push the boundaries of those very

same features associated with the classical style.

In analysing how the classical Hollywood style

has been established in the imaginary of the ﬁlm

world, it is revealing to consider some of the most

important authorities, at least in the academic

context. Noël Burch, famous for having coined

the concept of the IMR or Institutional Mode of

Representation—a notion hazardously insepara-

ble from classical cinema—claims that the IMR

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JOSE MARÍA GALINDO PÉREZ

ON CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD

CINEMA: BEYOND THE CLASH

BETWEEN STYLE AND CANON

119

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has the single effect of “embarking the spectator

on that ‘motionless voyage’ which is the essence

of the institutional experience,” and he identiﬁes

the “constant identiﬁcation with the camera’s

viewpoint” (Burch, 1990: 249) as a fundamental

feature of that experience. André Bazin suggests

that American cinema “had visibly reached we-

ll-balanced maturity” (Bazin, 2016: 88), referring

to the traditional distinction between content and

form. With respect to content, we can recognise

a model based on “well-tried genres, governed by

carefully worked-out laws, capable of entertai-

ning the largest possible international public”; as

for form, “the photographic and narrative styles

were perfectly clear and they conformed with

their subject: a total reconciliation of sound and

image” (Bazin, 2016: 88). Taking up Bazin’s propo-

sitions, Santos Zunzunegui speaks of the “strict

respect for the dramatic and psychological deter-

minations of the scene” and of the “construction

of an ideal spectator for whom the deconstruction

of the scenic space must never endanger its credi-

bility” (Zunzunegui, 1996: 118).

To conclude this necessarily brief review of

the literature, it would be impossible to overlook

David Bordwell, for whom “the principles which

Hollywood claims as its own rely on notions of

decorum, proportion, formal harmony, respect

for tradition, mimesis, self-effacing craftsmans-

hip, and cool control of the perceiver’s response”

(Bordwell, Staiger & Thompson, 1985: 3).

It is thus fair to say that there is a certain con-

sensus on what “classical Hollywood cinema” re-

fers to: a cinematic style characterised by its use

of every resource of cinematographic language

to construct an intelligible story, aimed at a spec-

tator for whom the diegetic order is what mat-

ters most. This simple deﬁnition, unfortunately,

elides an essential discussion of terms that are

constantly present but rarely analysed carefully.

These terms are style, classical and canon. Any

examination of the norm in classical Hollywood

cinema should at least include a consideration of

a set of terms used so profusely—and sometimes

confusedly.

CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS IN EVERYDAY

EXPRESSIONS

When using certain terms there is always a danger

of imprecision. In everyday conversation this does

not generally constitute a problem, but in academic

discussion it is hazardous to use a term without

ﬁrst setting some clear boundaries of meaning.

Let us begin with the concept of the classical.

Shifting the focus slightly from ﬁlm studies, Henri

Peyre, in his analysis of French literature, offers a

clear synopsis of the three main uses of this term:

ﬁrst, to deﬁne “authors for use in schools and by

scholars” (Peyre, 1996: 32), who are chosen “more

for the purpose of educating our youth” (Peyre,

1996: 33); secondly, “authors whom students are

made to read because they are considered the

best”, thus entailing a “value judgement, acclaim,

the proclamation of superiority” (Peyre, 1996: 33);

and thirdly, to refer exclusively to “writers of Clas-

sical Antiquity” (Peyre, 1996: 34). In other words,

the adjective classical is used chieﬂy in three sen-

ses: a moralising sense, an aesthetic sense, and an

historical sense.

Based on this triad, we could draw the fo-

llowing conclusion: “classical” may designate a

creator or object worthy of imitation, whether on

moral or aesthetic grounds, and may also refer to

a particular historical period in the evolution of

an expressive medium. “Classical” could thus be

said to encompass both the prescriptive element

associated with the concept of a canon and the

descriptive element associated with the concept

of style. What is interesting here is the point that

these two dimensions share: the criteria that un-

derpin them depend on the discourses developed,

basically, within the ﬁeld of cinematic culture.

In the case of classical Hollywood cinema, how

does the label classical function to deﬁne this spe-

ciﬁc mode of representation? Returning to some

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of the observations made above, the classiﬁcation

of certain Hollywood ﬁlms as “classical” is inten-

ded to refer, in its descriptive dimension, to the

substance of the story, its adherence to a series

of psychological and dramatic rules in the inte-

rests of narrative verisimilitude or of a particular,

imprecise expressive containment, among other

features. In its prescriptive dimension, it alludes

to what Alonso refers to somewhat derisively as

“cinema-cinema” (Alonso García, 2010: 34): the

real way to make a ﬁlm, which every ﬁlmmaker

should be aiming for one way or another.

The second concept to be considered is that

of style. It is remarkable that a concept so widely

used in ﬁlm studies has not been as productively

developed

as it has, for example, in art history

or literary studies. Panofsky (2000) demonstra-

tes this when he considers the concept of style

from three perspectives: the perspective of histo-

rical and geographical coordinates (based on the

Baroque style), the perspective of aesthetic forms

or genres (based on the idea of cinematographic

style), and the national perspective (based on the

so-called “English style”). According to this analy-

sis, style can be identiﬁed as a loosely deﬁned

concept that refers to a particular expressive ma-

nifestation entailing a set of formal features that

make it recognisable. This is also how Umberto

Eco understands it when he suggests that “style

becomes synonymous with ‘writing’ and therefo-

re with the way one expresses oneself in literary

terms” (Eco, 2005: 161), or when he suggests that

“speaking of style means discussing how the work

of art is made” (Eco, 2005: 163).

Panofsky hits the nail on the head when he

speaks of the excessively ubiquitous use of the

concept of style, something that could be resol-

ved with Eco’s proposition, albeit at the risk of ex-

cessive generalisation. Wölfﬂin agrees with this

all-encompassing deﬁnition of the idea of style as

both the “expression of an era and a national sen-

timentality, as well as the expression of a personal

temperament” (Wölfﬂin, 2016: 32). Antal, a nota-

ble ﬁgure in the sociology of art, incorporates yet

another dimension when he argues for the “con-

sideration of the social factors and political ideas

which formed the background to these artistic

currents” (Antal, 1966: 25), and also advocates a

notion of style “not being restricted to formal fea-

tures, but including subject-matter” (Antal, 1966:

179).

To sum up, when speaking of style we need to

consider formal elements, content and its nature

as a vehicle of expression. This raises the question

of where to locate the classical Hollywood style,

because ultimately there is one big problem posed

by all the observations reviewed above: whether

style is individual or collective. Bordwell claims

that classical cinema is an example of a “group

style” (Bordwell, Staiger & Thompson, 1985: 2).

But how is such a style established? This question

can only be answered with a two-way response:

style is an expressive construction conditioned

by all the contexts in which it occurs, inﬂuencing

the creators—in this case, ﬁlmmakers—who make

their works; and, at the same time, style is the ra-

ther heterogeneous combination of all the indi-

vidual styles that appear at a particular point in

space and time. This would be an appropriate way

of understanding the notion of style in classical

Hollywood cinema, although always bearing in

mind something that by this point can be seen to

be a constant: the importance of the canon in the

historiographical construction of a given style. As

Charles Rosen suggests:

What makes the history of music, or of any

art, particularly troublesome is that what is most

“CLASSICAL” COULD THUS BE SAID TO

ENCOMPASS BOTH THE PRESCRIPTIVE

ELEMENT ASSOCIATED WITH THE

CONCEPT OF A CANON AND THE

DESCRIPTIVE ELEMENT ASSOCIATED WITH

THE CONCEPT OF STYLE

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exceptional, not what is most usual, has often the

greatest claim on our interest. Even within the

work of one artist, it is not his usual procedure

that characterizes his personal “style”, but his

greatest and most individual success. This, howe-

ver, seems to deny even the possibility of the his-

tory of art: there are only individual works, each

self-sufﬁcient, each setting its own standards.

(Rosen, 1971: 21-22).

This leads us to the concept of the canon. A

preliminary deﬁnition would refer to “those works

that a community sanctions as especially valuable

and worthy of transmission” (Galindo Pérez, 2013:

142). If a literary work, painting or ﬁlm is worth

passing on from one generation to the next in a

community, it is because that community has iden-

tiﬁed it as a standard or, in other words, as “a norm

established [...] for communicative practice” (Alon-

so García, 2008: 273). This brings us to an idea that

underpins this article: that the canon, that list of

creators and works, is the concrete crystallisation

of the norm for a communicative practice. In the

case of cinema, the norm in classical Hollywood

cinema (which the so-called experimenters and/

or innovators depart from or transgress) would

be the classical Hollywood ﬁlm canon. Or to put

it more simply: the canon is not only a repertoire

of the most highly valued works, but also, for that

very reason, a work standard to be adhered to or

deviated from. And it is this point that forms the

basis of the key criticism put forward in this paper:

the norm described doesn’t reﬂect the features of

the ﬁlms that constitute the canon.

The supposed rules of classical Hollywood

cinema—narrative transparency, erasure of the

markers of enunciation, the spectator’s immer-

sion in the story—are not the pillars that underpin

the aesthetic and moral value of the ﬁlms usually

included in the lists of the best directors and ﬁlms

of classical cinema. Paradoxically, in discussions

of classical cinema, a clear distinction is made be-

tween what that expression indicates from the

perspective of the description of the style and

what it indicates from a perspective of the pres-

cription, inherent in a canon, of the norm establi-

shed by ﬁlms and ﬁlmmakers.

In this respect, it is highly instructive to exa-

mine two works, one a historiography and the

other an essay, that analyse Hollywood cinema in

the so-called classical period. Tag Gallagher (1996:

311-403) offers an overview of the most signiﬁ-

cant ﬁlmmakers of a period covering the 1930s

and 1940s, which includes King Vidor, Howard

Hawks, John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Orson Welles,

Frank Capra, Charles Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock,

Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Max Ophüls, Dou-

glas Sirk, Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Anthony

Mann, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, among many

others. These ﬁlmmakers, responsible for titles

like City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931), Bringing

Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938), Mr. Smith Goes to

Washington (Frank Capra, 1939), Stagecoach (John

Ford, 1939), Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), The

Little Foxes (William Wyler, 1941), Sunset Blvd.

(Billy Wilder, 1950), All about Eve (Joseph L. Man-

kiewicz, 1950), Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock,

1954) and Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956),

are generally included in any reference work on

classical Hollywood cinema. On the other hand,

Carlos Losilla (2003) offers a critical review of the

concept of classical cinema through a selected list

of ﬁlmmakers, including Walsh, Ford, Vidor, Hit-

chcock, Mann, Mankiewicz and Wilder, as well

as the likes of Robert Aldrich and Nicholas Ray.

Comparing the norms associated with the classi-

cal Hollywood style against the pantheon of ﬁl-

AND IT IS THIS POINT THAT FORMS

THE BASIS OF THE KEY CRITICISM

PUT FORWARD IN THIS PAPER: THE

NORM DESCRIBED DOESN’T REFLECT

THE FEATURES OF THE FILMS THAT

CONSTITUTE THE CANON

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mmakers traditionally identiﬁed with the period,

it becomes clear that few if any actually subscri-

be to this cinematic model. How can we explain

this contradiction? It is a contradiction between

corpus and canon that Bordwell already clearly

identiﬁed: “In most ﬁlm histories, masterworks

and innovations rise monumentally out of a hazy

terrain whose contours remain unknown” (Bord-

well, Staiger & Thompson, 1985: 10). This is a way

of advocating the study of the typical ﬁlm or the

usual work which, in reality, fails to recognise that

the difference between these usual works and the

canonical works is not their quality, but their basic

cinematic form.

ON THE GAPS BETWEEN STYLE AND

CANON IN CLASSICAL CINEMA

One very simple way of exploring the tension

between style and canon in classical Hollywood

cinema is to deny the actual existence of classi-

cal Hollywood cinema as usually described. “Ho-

llywood has never existed except in the minds of

its inhabitants and of the spectators that it has

created” and “Hollywood is also an invention of

scholars” (Losilla, 2003: 12) are conclusions that

lean in this direction. Losilla deﬁnes classical Ho-

llywood cinema as a construction created collecti-

vely by cinephiles and academics, whose respecti-

ve conceptions of the subject are curiously similar

despite the disparity of their objectives and me-

thods.

Stopping short of this conceptual extreme,

other authors prefer to resolve the friction be-

tween style and canon in classical Hollywood

cinema by positing particular varieties within

the vast corpus that it includes. David Bordwell,

conscious of the difﬁculty entailed in such a broad

chronological delimitation like the one he propo-

ses for classical cinema, suggests that some leeway

for a more or less drastic departure from the para-

digm is itself an integral part of Hollywood’s clas-

sical style: “Any complete account of Hollywood

ﬁlmmaking must recognise the deviations from

the norm” (Bordwell, Staiger & Thompson, 1985:

72). Bordwell suggests that classical cinema’s cha-

racteristic features include the capacity to co-opt

and control deviations from the norm that nuan-

ce rather than undermine the general style, and

to this end he posits three categories with diffe-

rent degrees of mutability: devices, systems and

relations between systems. It could be argued that

what Bordwell does is attribute a Lampedusian

essence to classical Hollywood cinema, whereby

everything seems to change so that, in reality,

everything can stay the same. Kristin Thompson

takes this theoretical line when she asserts, for

example, that “This complex systematic quality of

the classical cinema allows Hollywood to experi-

ment in a limited way with new techniques and

functions, and to assimilate those which prove

useful into its overall ﬁlmmaking style” (Thomp-

son, 1993: 188). Vicente Sánchez-Biosca identiﬁes

the same tendency: “the co-opting of European

minds, including representatives of the avant-gar-

de [...] should be seen as a revealing symptom of

a deeper phenomenon: the dynamic capacity of

the Hollywood system for incorporating different

elements, integrating them for its purposes, but

also making use of them as instruments of inno-

vation and change” (Sánchez-Biosca, 2004: 139).

Rejecting the conception of classical cinema as a

construction, other authors do not deny the rea-

lity of the phenomenon but explain the obvious

heterogeneity of the ﬁlms included as examples of

the general style through mechanisms of aesthe-

tic adaptation based on textual appropriation or

on the controlled incorporation of new discourses

and individual elements.

While these are interesting propositions, the

discussion is not limited to them alone. Jesús

González Requena (2006), for example, addres-

ses the limitations that he identiﬁes in cognitive

and semiotic studies of classical cinema arising

from the common difﬁculty in distinguishing be-

tween narration and story. González Requena

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identiﬁes three modes—classical, mannerist, and

post-classical—the ﬁrst two of which are of rele-

vance to this study. Classical Hollywood cinema is

deﬁned, according to this author, by the predomi-

nance of the story over the representation, with

the narrative act itself playing the leading role in

the classical style. The mannerist style observes

a “validity” and a “sophisticated enhancement of

the formal procedures introduced by the classical

style” (González Requena, 2006: 19), together with

a “distancing from and growing distrust of the

symbolic universe—and the order of values—of

that style” (González Requena, 2006: 19). Gonzá-

lez Requena’s argument could be summed up as

follows: classical cinema focuses on the story it is

depicting, while mannerist cinema, without gi-

ving up altogether on stories, focuses on the act of

writing that representation itself. The main con-

tribution here is this concept of mannerist cinema,

a type of ﬁlmmaking that “appropriates both the

main narrative forms and the creative procedu-

res that characterise the classical ﬁlm” (González

Requena, 2006: 581), but that exhibits a “weake-

ning of its symbolic density” and employs certain

“procedures of classical writing with an extreme

virtuosity” (González Requena, 2006: 581). Man-

nerist cinema

is thus a kind of virtuoso variant

of classical cinema, which gives less weight to the

story and focuses more on exposing the nature of

ﬁlm representation itself.

The constructivist position, the Lampedusian

position and the mannerist variant all coincide

on one point: they all recognise a discrepancy be-

tween the classical Hollywood style and the deﬁ-

nition of the canonical norm of classical cinema

based on ﬁlms and ﬁlmmakers. The commentary

on this situation is clear: the authors who analyse

classical cinema, acknowledging this almost pri-

mordial friction, have developed speciﬁc theore-

tical responses that attempt to contextualise the

issue.

At this point, a recapitulation is in order. The

description of the classical Hollywood style con-

sists of a series of characteristics related to var-

ying degrees to the importance of the story over

the representation, to the weight given to the

psychological construction of the characters, to

the conﬁguration of the ﬁlmic form in relation

to the privileged gaze of the spectator, and to the

widely discussed but even more ambiguous no-

tion of transparency. On the other hand, the ac-

tual expression of this style in speciﬁc ﬁlms and

ﬁlmmakers occurs, paradoxically, in directors and

works commonly highlighted as examples of how

that style can be subverted. This conceptual dis-

connect between style and canon is acknowledged

by different authors and scholars who have made

classical Hollywood cinema their object of study.

But the responses of these analysts have not been

aimed at exposing or questioning this friction, but

at offering theoretical propositions that fall into

two basic categories: to deny the existence of clas-

sical cinema outside the imaginary worlds of ci-

nephiles and academics, or to uphold its existence

by means of conceptual nuances to explain the

many varieties of expression found within the

genre.

These theoretical responses are certainly very

enriching, given the quantity of conceptual deba-

tes and theoretical explorations they have given

rise to. Their analytical and historiographical va-

lue is beyond question. But it is perhaps their very

richness, their intellectual depth, that constitutes

the risk they pose: it seems that after all these pro-

posals, there is little to be added to the debate. And

Y AND THIS IS WHERE I INTEND TO

POSITION THIS ARTICLE: IN THE

IDENTIFICATION OF THE GAP THAT

EXISTS BETWEEN STYLE AND CANON IN

CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA, AND

AN ATTEMPT TO OFFER A DIFFERENT

THEORETICAL RESPONSE TO THOSE

OFFERED UP TO NOW

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this is where I intend to position this article: in the

identiﬁcation of the gap that exists between style

and canon in classical Hollywood cinema, and an

attempt to offer a different theoretical response to

those offered up to now.

In what sense is this response different? Ba-

sically, in its exploration of the ideological foun-

dation that underlies this glaring discrepancy

between style and canon, in order to propose a

new historiographical premise that might better

and more closely reﬂect our understanding of the

kind of cinema produced in Hollywood.

THE IDEOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF

THE DICHOTOMY

Behind the friction between style and canon in

classical Hollywood cinema lies a tension that can

be traced back much further in time: the dispute

between artists and craftspeople. Although Larry

Shiner (2004) examined how this distinction was

constructed historically in eighteenth-century

Europe through a series of speciﬁc cultural, social

and economic processes, the dichotomy between

those who mechanically follow the rules of a tra-

de (craftsmen) and those whose expressiveness is

not subject to any rules other than the limits of

their own genius (artists) continues to hold a pro-

minent place in the popular imagination.

In cinema, this dichotomy has been re-deﬁned

on the basis of the contrast between two major

movements in ﬁlm history: Hollywood movies

and modern (mostly European) cinema. The po-

pular notion of the auteur

contributed conside-

rably to the development of an aesthetic cult of

personality around particular ﬁlmmakers (the

canon) who stand out above a way of making ﬁl-

ms often characterised for its simplicity and lack

of expressive ambition (style). This confrontation

between craftsmen and artists relies basically on

two discursive constructions that operate more as

naturalised (and therefore indisputable) ideas ra-

ther than theoretical concepts for debate.

The ﬁrst cliché or myth relates to style, spe-

ciﬁcally to the style of classical Hollywood cine-

ma. A prevailing notion in the imaginary of what

Metz (2001) identiﬁes as the three main sectors

of cinematic culture—ﬁlmmakers, spectators and

scholars—is that the Hollywood cinematic form is

characterised by expressive transparency and na-

rrative efﬁciency. This reduces the style of classi-

cal Hollywood cinema to a vehicle for storytelling,

through a production method that unashamedly

conforms to industrial practices like Fordism or

Taylorism. Classical Hollywood cinema is thus

portrayed as a trade to be performed, trade being

the operative word in this case, because it refers

to a standardised set of rules applicable to the pro-

duction of a culturally accepted and acceptable

product, a practice presented as being clearly an-

tithetical to artistic genius. Any ﬁlmmaker iden-

tiﬁed with this style, which is often presented as

the simple application of formulas, is added to the

list of “craftsmen”.

The second cliché or myth relates to the ca-

non, made up precisely of those ﬁlmmakers who

someho

w manage to achieve the rank of artist.

The issue in this case is how the ﬁlmmaking ar

tist obtains this title: through a process of brea-

king the established rules uniformly associated

with the classical st

yle. Filmmakers who, even

while working within the parameters of clas

sicism, manage to disengage themselves from

this collec

tive style and to build a body of work

that reﬂects a personal style are deemed to be

artists. Based on this idea are two others that

are of great interest for explaining the friction

between style and canon in classical Hollywood

cinema: ﬁrstly, the difference between crafts

man and artist can be determined by the degree

of ob

edience to a set of rules that constitutes a

group style; and secondly, the clash between the

classical Hollywood style and its canon can be

explained in terms of the tense coexistence be

tween the group style and the different indivi-

dual styles.

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Contained in these ideas is a theoretical and

historiographical problem that is presented as sol-

ved. However, this assumed solution is erroneous,

as it masks and oversimpliﬁes an issue which, as

can be seen, leaves numerous questions unanswe-

red. How can we cut a new path for the study of

classical Hollywood cinema, and speciﬁcally the

tension between style and canon? This question

can be answered with recourse to a terminologi-

cal redeﬁnition.

Richard Sennett (2009) offers an analysis of

the concept of craftsman that is extremely use-

ful in this respect. In his study, Sennett attributes

two decisive features to the concept: “an endu-

ring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job

well for its own sake” (Sennett, 2008: 9) and the

fact that people know how to do something, but

cannot verbalise what they know (Sennett, 2008:

94-99). Craftsmen are categorised on the basis of

their commitment to what they do (which, among

other things, implies the skill necessary to carry

out their task) and the supposed craftsman’s pro-

blem (the craftsman knows how to do something

but ﬁnds it much more problematic to convey that

knowledge). Developing these perspectives, Sen-

nett concludes with an issue that is of signiﬁcance

for this article: he suggests that the craftsman is

not the ﬂip-side of the artist, efﬁcient, but lacking

in inspiration, and he rejects the idea that creati-

vity is a concept associated exclusively with artis-

tic genius. The craftsman, as someone responsible

for a task, is also creative. Sennett thus points to a

new conception of the craftsman.

The craftsman/artist dichotomy is reﬂected in

the Spanish language’s most authoritative dictio-

nary. According to the Diccionario de la Real Acade-

mia Española, an artesano (craftsman) is a “person

who practices a merely mechanical art or trade”

(Real Academia Española, 2001). We can see here

how the language acts as a sounding board for

the dichotomy, and thus a re-conceptualisation

based on Sennett is perhaps not enough. Essen-

tially, the problem is reﬂected in the Spanish

translation of the title of Richard Sennett’s book:

El artesano. Indeed, artesano is the usual Spanish

translation of the English word “craftsman”, but it

is likely that the Spanish word that best ﬁts Sen-

nett’s explanation is artíﬁce, which is deﬁned in

the Spanish dictionary as “a person who executes

a work with ability or skill” (Real Academia Espa-

ñola, 2001).

The concept of the artíﬁce makes it possible to

evade the heavy ideological charge of the artist/

craftsman dichotomy. And it may be this very

term, whose multiple derivations have been ex-

plored by Ezio Manzini (1992), among others, that

can provide the basis for a new line of historio-

graphic and analytical research into classical Ho-

llywood cinema that will turn the spotlight on

some traditionally overlooked perspectives.

A NEW HISTORIOGRAPHIC HORIZON AS

A POSSIBLE CONCLUSION

The use of the concept of the artíﬁce is not a mere

lexical change. It is not just the substitution of

one term for another in the interests of greater

semantic precision, but the activation of a notion

that entails a necessary ideological shift. In this

case, it represents the elimination of the confron-

tation between artists and craftsmen, expressed in

the disconnect between two concepts that should

complement rather than contradict one another:

style and canon.

Examples that could be cited include Heinrich

Wölfﬂin’s insistence on the need for “an art his-

tory that, rather than only portraying individual

artists, shows the unbroken succession from a li-

near style to a painterly one, from a tectonic style

THE CONCEPT OF THE ARTÍFICE MAKES

IT POSSIBLE TO EVADE THE HEAVY

IDEOLOGICAL CHARGE OF THE ARTIST/

CRAFTSMAN DICHOTOMY

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to an atectonic one, and so on” (Wölfﬂin, 2016: 19).

What Wölfﬂin calls for is an art history without

names, not based on a pantheon of great men, but

on the identiﬁcation of styles.

A similar view is taken by George Kubler, who

de-personalises art history with the proposition

not of a history without names, but of a history of

things: “the ‘history of things’ is intended to reu-

nite ideas and objects under the rubric of visual

forms” (Kubler, 1962: 9).

The elimination of names from ﬁlm history

would compel us to choose a different methodo-

logy, and even epistemology, that would organise

historical knowledge of the cinematic phenome-

non on the basis of other conceptual principles.

While in the ﬁeld of art Wölfﬂin’s and Kubler’s

propositions are based on the concepts of style

or of material objects, in the ﬁeld of cinema what

would be needed is a history that shifts away

from the more or less typical review of great ﬁl-

mmakers and masterpieces

that stand out over

a style that seems to serve only as a frame of

comparison for these essential milestones. This

shift needs to take into account one fundamental

element: the centrality of the ﬁlm, the ﬁnished

product, as the privileged object of study in ﬁlm

history and theory.

History, theory and analysis, the traditional

branches of ﬁlm studies, have focused on the pic-

ture as the object of their reﬂections, as reﬂected

in the studies of Allen & Gomery (1995) and Zu-

malde (2006; 2001). However, it is important to

point out an ongoing and increasingly pronoun-

ced shift notable for one basic characteristic: from

the ﬁlm text itself to its reception, to the question

of the spectator, a shift observable in studies by

Palacio (1995), Pujol Ozonas (2011), and Elsaesser

& Hagener (2015). This movement from ﬁlm to

spectator, from text to reception, highlights an

element that has often been overlooked: creation,

the cinematic process that results in a product.

This process, while it has been worthy of the at-

tention of some specialist literature, has not been

a central focus in complex considerations of the

cinematic phenomenon.

It is here that the concept of the artíﬁce could

prove useful in ﬁlm history and, speciﬁcally, in

studies of classical Hollywood cinema. The artíﬁ-

ce, as someone who makes ﬁlms, has to be integra-

ted into the ﬁlmmaking process. And the reason

for this is far from trivial: the way that ﬁlms are

made needs to be contextualised in a speciﬁc cul-

ture that conditions (and at the same time is con-

ditioned by) its textual forms and social practices.

The way ﬁlms are made is directly related to the

end product of those ﬁlms and the way they are

viewed and interpreted.

In order to bring about this epistemological

shift—the inclusion of the ﬁlmmaking process in

studies of ﬁlm history—the ﬁlm historian’s practice

is in need of a methodological change. To this end,

it is essential to create the speciﬁc tools needed to

integrate ﬁlmmaking praxis into ﬁlm history. Two

of these tools would be the ethnographic perspec-

tive and the ﬁlm archive perspective: direct ob-

servation of the work of ﬁlmmakers; and archival

research to track down cut-out footage, as opposed

to the footage that was ultimately used.

By way of conclusion, what all the above

points to can be summed up as follows. An analy-

sis of the norms of classical Hollywood cinema,

and the deviations from and subversions of tho-

se norms, brings to the fore a notably complex

theoretical problem: the divergence between the

descriptive dimension of classical cinema (style)

and its prescriptive dimension (canon). This is sig-

niﬁcant, as these two levels should operate to re-

ciprocally reinforce one another. Various authors

THE WAY FILMS ARE MADE IS DIRECTLY

RELATED TO THE END PRODUCT OF

THOSE FILMS AND THE WAY THEY ARE

VIEWED AND INTERPRETED

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have acknowledged this friction and have propo-

sed theoretical mechanisms (such as the concept

of “mannerist cinema”) in an attempt to address

it. The clash between style and canon, and the

ways in which scholars have sought to explain it,

reﬂects another dilemma that encompasses not

only cinema but the whole world of the arts: the

dichotomy between artist and craftsman. Finally,

this analysis of the problem points to a potential

new horizon for research in studies of ﬁlm his-

tory and of classical Hollywood cinema in parti-

cular: the integrated study of creative processes,

whereby the analysis of ﬁlm footage and the ob-

servation of the creators at work would lead to an

understanding of the ﬁlmmaking phenomenon in

which the ﬁnished product would be considered

in conjunction with its necessary complement, i.e.

the processes that lead to it. In this sense, classical

Hollywood cinema offers a relevant and conve-

nient object for the development of a historiogra-

phy of cinema re-deﬁned on the basis of the key

principles set out above.



NOTES

1 For an exploration of the basic components of every

ﬁeld of cultural production and their working dyna-

mics, see Rivas (2007) and his astute application of

the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural ﬁelds to an

analysis of the world of cinema.

2 Of course, signiﬁcant contributions in this respect,

like those of Salt (1983), should not be forgotten. The

dearth of conceptual development referred to here in

comparison with other disciplines is quantitative ra-

ther than qualitative.

3 Carlos Losilla (2009), in an anthology he edited, also

stresses the impure nature of classical cinema—refe-

rring in this case to the fact of the inﬂuence of Euro-

pean ﬁlmmakers on the development of the classical

form of expression.

4 The term mannerist cinema, used by Jesús González

Requena (1986) in his analysis of the ﬁlms of Douglas

Sirk, has been well-received in the world of ﬁlm stu-

dies, as demonstrated by studies from other latitudes

(cf. Campan & Menegaldo, 2003; Carrega, 2012).

5 For a more detailed analysis of the development and

ramiﬁcations of the notion of the auteur, see Galindo

Pérez (2015).

6 The proposition of a new methodology for studying

ﬁlm history is not a novel idea. Numerous authors have

contributed to a very necessary debate, resulting in a

deeper and clearer understanding of the ﬁlmmaking

phenomenon. In the case of this article, it is important

to acknowledge the inspiration of Santos Zunzunegui’s

work on Spanish cinema of the 1960s, in which he sou-

ght to combat the historiographic tradition relying on

“a picture that takes a so-called New Spanish Cinema

as a ﬁgure [...] which would come to be cut out over the

background of a standardised production made up of

sub-genres and co-productions of nothing more than

purely statistical interest” (Zunzunegui, 2005: 29). As

can be appreciated, different elements discussed here

(such as the core dilemma of style vs. canon) were alre-

ady present in Zunzunegui’s work.

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Edita / Published by Licencia / License

ON CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA:

BEYOND THE CLASH BETWEEN STYLE

AND CANON

Abstract

This paper explores the clash between the style of classical Ho-

llywood cinema and the canon of ﬁlms and ﬁlmmakers associated

with it. It considers how other authors have sought to resolve this

issue, what is really concealed behind the tension, and how ﬁlm his-

toriography can address it with a view to developing a deeper and

clearer understanding of cinema in general and classical Hollywood

cinema in particular. The divergence between the descriptive dimen-

sion, associated with style, and the prescriptive dimension, related to

the canon, is thus revealed to be an enriching source of discussion

in the interests of reﬁning the methods used to analyse classical Ho-

llywood cinema.

Key words

Classical Film; Hollywood; Style; Canon; Classicism; Mannerism; Ar-

tist; Craftsman.

Author

Jose María Galindo Pérez (b. Madrid, 1987) holds a PhD in Audio-

visual Communication and is Professor of Transmedia Storytelling

at CSEU La Salle. He has authored numerous works included in

anthologies, academic journals and international conferences. His

main research interests include the analysis of ﬁlmmaking and the

concept of the ﬁlm canon.Contact: [email protected].

Article reference

Galindo Pérez, J. M. (2019). On Classical Hollywood Cinema: Beyond

the Clash between Style and Canon. L'Atalante. Revista de estudios ci-

nematográﬁcos, 27, 119-130.

DEL CINE CLÁSICO DE HOLLYWOOD: MÁS

ALLÁ DEL CHOQUE ENTRE EL ESTILO Y

EL CANON

Resumen

El presente artículo centra su atención en el choque que se da entre

el estilo del cine clásico de Hollywood y el canon de cineastas y pelí-

culas asociados a él. De esta manera, se podrá comprobar cómo otros

autores han tratado de resolver la cuestión, qué se oculta realmen-

te bajo esta tensión, y cómo la historiografía del cine puede afron-

tarla para generar un conocimiento sobre el cine, en general, y el

cine clásico de Hollywood, en particular, mayor y más profundo. La

divergencia entre la dimensión descriptiva, vinculada al estilo, y la

dimensión prescriptiva, relacionada con el canon, se revela, de esta

manera, como una fuente enriquecedora de discusión para reﬁnar

los métodos de análisis del cine clásico de Hollywood.

Palabras clave

Cine clásico; Hollywood; estilo; canon; clasicismo; manierismo; artis-

ta; artesano.

Autor

Jose María Galindo Pérez (Madrid, 1987) es doctor en Comunicación

Audiovisual y profesor de Narrativa Transmedia en el CSEU La Salle.

Autor de numerosos trabajos en volúmenes colectivos, revistas es-

pecializadas y congresos internacionales, algunas de sus principales

líneas de investigación son el análisis de la praxis fílmica y el concepto

de canon cinematográﬁco. Contacto: [email protected].

Referencia de este artículo

Galindo Pérez, J. M. (2019). Del cine clásico de Hollywood: más allá

del choque entre el estilo y el canon. L'Atalante. Revista de estudios

cinematográﬁcos, 27, 119-130.