Romance film
Romance films or romance movies are romantic love stories recorded in visual media for broadcast in theaters and on TV that focus on passion and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters and the journey that their genuinely strong and pure romantic love takes them through dating, courtship or marriage. Romance films make the romantic love story or the search for strong and pure love and romance the main plot focus. Romance lovers face obstacles such as finances, physical illness, various forms of discrimination, psychological restraints or family that threaten to break their union of love; as in all quite strong and close romantic relationships, tensions of day-to-day life and differences in compatibility enter into the plots of romantic films. Romantic films explore the essential themes of love at first sight, young with older love, unrequited romantic love, obsessive love, sentimental love, spiritual love, forbidden love/romance, platonic love and passionate love, sacrificial love and destructive love, tragic love.
Romantic films serve as great escapes and fantasies for viewers if the two people overcome their difficulties, declare their love, experience life "happily after", implied by a reunion and final kiss. In romantic television series, the development of such romantic relationships may play out over many episodes, different characters may become intertwined in different romantic arcs. A romantic story with a period setting; this includes films such as Gone with Doctor Zhivago. Romantic dramas revolve around an obstacle which prevents deep and true romantic love between two people. Music is employed to indicate the emotional mood, creating an atmosphere of greater insulation for the couple; the conclusion of a romantic drama does not indicate whether a final romantic union between the two main characters will occur. Some examples of romantic drama films are Titanic, The Bridges of Madison County, The English Patient, Casablanca, Coming Home, Jungle Fever, Memoirs of a Geisha, Last Tango in Paris, Water for Elephants, 5 Centimeters per Second, Love Story.
Chick flick is a term associated with romance films as many are targeted to a female audience. Although many romance films may be targeted at women, this is not a defining characteristic of a romance film and a chick flick does not have a romance as a central theme, revolve around the romantic involvement of characters or contain a romantic relationship; as such, the terms cannot be used interchangeably. Films of this genre include Dirty Dancing, The Notebook, Dear John, A Walk to Remember, Romeo + Juliet. Romantic comedies are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. Humour in such films tends to be of a verbal, low-key variety or situational, as opposed to slapstick. Films within this genre include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Moonstruck, As Good as It Gets, Something's Gotta Give, It Happened One Night, When Harry Met Sally... Annie Hall, The Apartment. Romantic fantasies describe fantasy stories using many of the elements and conventions of the romance genre.
Romantic action is a film that blend action. Examples include Killers and Day, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, This Means War and The Bounty Hunter. Romantic thriller is a genre of film which has a storyline combining elements of the romance film and the thriller genre; some examples of romantic thriller films are The Adjustment Bureau, The Phantom of the Opera, The Tourist, The Bodyguard and Wicker Park. List of romance films AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions Romantic comedy Drama film Interracial romance film Romance novel Romance True love IMDb guide to Romance movies List of amazing romance movies Romantic Movies Database Best Romantic Movies
Gipsy Love (operetta)
Gipsy Love is an operetta in three acts by Franz Lehár with a libretto by Alfred Willner and Robert Bodanzky, provided with English translations and revisions by several hands. The story centres on the daughter of a Romanian landowner, engaged to a man of her own class but is attracted to a gipsy violinist at her engagement party; the brooding, romantic story featured dance music. The original production, had its premiere at the Carltheater, Vienna, on 8 January 1910. A French version, Amour Tzigane, toured France with great success in 1911, the piece continues to be played in Eastern Europe; the English-language Gipsy Love opened at the Globe Theatre on Broadway, on 17 October, 1911, with a libretto and lyrics by Harry B. Smith and Robert B. Smith, starring Marguerite Sylva. A new translation and revision by Basil Hood and Adrian Ross opened at Daly's Theatre, London, on 1 June 1912. For the London production, George Edwardes had Hood write into the new libretto the comic part of Lady Babby for Gertie Millar.
He imported Hungarian operetta star Sári Petráss for the romantic role of Ilona, with W. H. Berry as Dragotin, her father; the piece was a flop in New York, but a success in London, running for 299 performances and touring Great Britain in 1913, featuring Daisy Burrell. Traubner, Operetta: a theatrical history ISBN 1135887837 Rodway, Phyllis Philip and Lois Rodway Slingsby. Philip Rodway and a Tale of Two Theatres, Birmingham: Cornish Brothers ASIN: B0006AMU3O Gipsy Love at guidetomusicaltheatre.com
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. Operettas have similarities to both operas and musicals, the boundaries between the genres are sometimes blurred. For instance, American composer Scott Joplin insisted that his serious but ragtime-influenced work Treemonisha was an opera, but some reference works characterize it as an operetta; some of Leonard Bernstein's works he designated as operas are categorized as operettas, his operetta Candide is sometimes considered a musical. Operettas are shorter than operas, are of a light and amusing character. Operettas are considered less "serious" than operas. While an opera's story is believable and more relatable to its audience, an operetta aims to amuse. Topical satire is a feature common to many operettas. However, satire is used in some "serious" operas as well: Formerly, in countries such as France, operas expressed politics in code – for example, the circumstances of the title character in the opera Robert le diable referred, at its first performance, to the French king's parental conflict and its resolution.
Some of the libretto of an operetta is spoken rather than sung. Instead of moving from one musical number to another, the musical segments – e.g. aria, chorus – are interspersed with periods of dialogue. There is no musical accompaniment to the dialogue, although sometimes some musical themes are played under it. Short passages of recitative are, sometimes used in operetta as an introduction to a song; the operetta is a precursor of the modern musical theatre or the "musical". In the early decades of the 20th century, the operetta continued to exist alongside the newer musical, with each influencing the other; the main difference between the two genres is that most operettas can be described as light operas with acting, whereas most musicals are plays with singing and dancing. This can be seen in the performers chosen in the two forms. An operetta's cast will consist of classically trained opera singers. A musical may use actors who are not operatically trained, the principals are called upon to dance.
These distinctions can be blurred: Ezio Pinza, Paulo Szot, Renée Fleming and other opera singers have appeared on Broadway and Broadway musicals have been remounted in opera houses. There are features of Hammerstein's Show Boat, among others; the characters in a musical may be more complex than those in an operetta, given the larger amount of dialogue. For example, the characters in Lerner and Loewe's musical My Fair Lady – based on George Bernard Shaw's 1914 play Pygmalion – are unchanged from those in Shaw's stage work, because the musical version is quite faithful to the original to the point of retaining most of Shaw's dialogue. Man of la Mancha, adapted by Dale Wasserman from his own ninety-minute television play I, Don Quixote, retains much of the dialogue in that play, cutting only enough to make room for the musical numbers which were added when the play was converted into a stage musical. Operetta grew out of the French opéra comique around the middle of the 19th century, to satisfy a need for short, light works in contrast to the full-length entertainment of the serious opéra comique.
By this time, the "comique" part of the genre name had become misleading: Georges Bizet's Carmen is an example of an opéra comique with a tragic plot. The definition of "comique" meant something closer to "humanistic," meant to portray "real life" in a more realistic way, representing tragedy and comedy next to each other, as Shakespeare had done centuries earlier. With this new connotation, opéra comique had dominated the French operatic stage since the decline of tragédie lyrique. Most researchers acknowledge that the credit for creating the operetta form should go to Hervé, a singer, librettist and scene painter. In 1842 he wrote the little opérette, L'Ours et le pacha, based on the popular vaudeville by Eugène Scribe and X. B. Saintine. In 1848, Hervé made his first notable appearance on the Parisian stage, with Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança, which can be considered the starting point for the new French musical theatre tradition. Hervé's most famous works are the Gounod-parody Le petit Mam ` zelle Nitouche.
Jacques Offenbach further developed and popularized operetta, giving it its enormous vogue during the Second Empire and afterwards. Offenbach's earliest one-act pieces included Les deux aveugles, Le violoneux and Ba-ta-clan, his first full-length operetta success was Orphée aux enfers; these led to the so-called "Offenbachiade": works including Geneviève de Brabant 1859, Le pont des soupirs 1861, La belle Hélène 1864, Barbe-bleue and La Vie parisienne both 1866, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein 1867, La Périchole 1868 and Les brigands 1869. Offenbach's tradition was carried on by Emmanuel Chabrier, Robert Planquette, André Messager, others. What characterizes Offenbach's operettas is both the grotesque way they portray life, the frivolous way this is done bordering on the pornographic. Émile Zola describes the back-stage and on-stage situation in the Théâtre des Variétés during the Second Empire in his novel Nana, which takes place in late 1860s and describes the career of operetta diva/courtesan Nana.
The character was modeled after Offenbach's female star Hortense Schneider, Offenbach's librettist Ludovic Halévy gave Émile Zola the details. Considering how Zola's Nana describes an Offenbach-style operetta performance in Paris, it is not surprising that the male, upper-class audience crowded the various the
Technicolor
Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating to 1916, followed by improved versions over several decades. It was the second major color process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, the most used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952. Technicolor became known and celebrated for its saturated color, was most used for filming musicals such as The Wizard of Oz and Down Argentine Way, costume pictures such as The Adventures of Robin Hood and Gone with the Wind, animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Gulliver's Travels, Fantasia; as the technology matured it was used for less spectacular dramas and comedies. A film noir—such as Leave Her to Heaven or Niagara —was filmed in Technicolor. "Technicolor" is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, now a division of the French company Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, W. Burton Wescott.
The "Tech" in the company's name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921. Most of Technicolor's early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served as the company's president and chief executive officer; the term "Technicolor" has been used to describe at least five concepts: Technicolor: an umbrella company encompassing all of the below as well as other ancillary services. Technicolor labs: a collection of film laboratories across the world owned and run by Technicolor for post-production services including developing and transferring films in all major color film processes, as well as Technicolor's proprietary ones. Technicolor process or format: several custom image origination systems used in film production, culminating in the "three-strip" process in 1932. Technicolor IB printing: a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable and permanent than those formed in ordinary chromogenic color printing.
Used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. Prints or Color by Technicolor: used from 1954 on, when Eastmancolor supplanted the three-film-strip camera negative method, while the Technicolor IB printing process continued to be used as one method of making the prints; this meaning of the name applies to nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits. Technicolor existed in a two-color system. In Process 1, a prism beam-splitter behind the camera lens exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black-and-white negative film one behind a red filter, the other behind a green filter; because two frames were being exposed at the same time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures, two lenses, an adjustable prism that aligned the two images on the screen; the results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21, 1917.
Technicolor itself produced the only movie made in Process 1, The Gulf Between, which had a limited tour of Eastern cities, beginning with Boston and New York on September 13, 1917 to interest motion picture producers and exhibitors in color. The near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today. Convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes; this culminated in what would be known as Process 2. As before, the special Technicolor camera used a beam-splitter that exposed two consecutive frames of a single strip of black-and-white film, one behind a green filter and one behind a red filter; the difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were physically present in the print, no special projection equipment was required and the correct registration of the two images did not depend on the skill of the projectionist.
The frames exposed behind the green filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film, the frames exposed behind the red filter were printed on another strip. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter: orange-red for the green-filtered images, cyan-green for the red-filtered ones. Unlike tinting, which adds a uniform veil of color to the entire image, toning chemically replaces the black-and-white silver image with transparent coloring matter, so that the highlights remain clear, dark areas are colored, intermediate tones are colored proportionally; the two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, we
Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel was an English comic actor and film director, part of the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. He appeared with his comedy partner Oliver Hardy in 107 short films, feature films, cameo roles. Laurel began his career in music hall where he developed a number of his standard comic devices, including the bowler hat, the deep comic gravity, the nonsensical understatement, his performances polished his skills at music hall sketches. He was a member of "Fred Karno's Army", he and Chaplin arrived in the United States on the same ship from the United Kingdom with the Karno troupe. Laurel began his film career in 1917 and made his final appearance in 1951. From 1928 onwards, he appeared with Hardy. Laurel retired following his comedy partner's death in 1957. In 1961, Laurel was given a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for his pioneering work in comedy, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd. Laurel and Hardy ranked top among best double acts and seventh overall in a 2005 UK poll to find the Comedians' Comedian.
In 2009, a bronze statue of the duo was unveiled in Laurel's home town of Ulverston. Arthur Stanley Jefferson was born in his grandparents' house on 16 June 1890 in Argyll Street, Lancashire, to Arthur Jefferson, a theatre manager from Bishop Auckland, Margaret, an actress from Ulverston, he was one of five children. His parents were both active in the theatre and always busy. In his early years, Laurel spent much time living with Sarah Metcalfe, he attended school at King James I Grammar School in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, the King's School in Tynemouth, Northumberland. He moved with his parents to Glasgow, where he completed his education at Rutherglen Academy, his father managed Glasgow's Metropole Theatre. His boyhood hero was Dan one of the greatest English music hall comedians. With a natural affinity for the theatre, Laurel gave his first professional performance on stage at the Panopticon in Glasgow at the age of sixteen, where he polished his skills at pantomime and music hall sketches.
It was the music hall from where he drew his standard comic devices, including his bowler hat and nonsensical understatement. He joined Fred Karno's troupe of actors in 1910 with the stage name of "Stan Jefferson"; the music hall nurtured him, he acted as Chaplin's understudy for some time. Karno was a pioneer of slapstick, in his biography Laurel stated, "Fred Karno didn't teach Charlie and me all we know about comedy, he just taught us most of it". Chaplin and Laurel arrived in the United States on the same ship from Britain with the Karno troupe and toured the country. During the First World War, Laurel registered for military service in America on 5 June 1917, as required under the Selective Service Act, he was not called up. Between 1916 and 1918, he teamed up with Alice Cooke and Baldwin Cooke, who became his lifelong friends. Amongst other performers, Laurel worked alongside Oliver Hardy in the silent film short The Lucky Dog, before the two were a team, it was around this time. Around the same time, he adopted the stage name of Laurel at Dahlberg's suggestion that his stage name Stan Jefferson was unlucky, due to it having thirteen letters.
The pair were performing together. After making his first film Nuts in May, Universal offered him a contract; the contract was soon cancelled during a reorganisation at the studio. Among the films in which Dahlberg and Laurel appeared together was the 1922 parody Mud and Sand. By 1924, Laurel had given up the stage for full-time film work, under contract with Joe Rock for 12 two-reel comedies; the contract had one unusual stipulation:. Rock thought. In 1925, she started interfering with Laurel's work, so Rock offered her a cash settlement and a one-way ticket back to her native Australia, which she accepted; the 12 two-reel comedies were Mandarin Mix-Up, Monsieur Don't Care, West of Hot Dog, Somewhere in Wrong, Pie-Eyed, The Snow Hawk, Navy Blue Days, The Sleuth, Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde and Half a Man. Laurel next signed with the Hal Roach studio, where he began directing films, including a 1926 production called Yes, Nanette, it had been his intention to work as a writer and director. The same year, Oliver Hardy, another member of the Hal Roach Studios Comedy All Star players, was injured in a kitchen mishap and hospitalised.
Because he was unable to work on the scheduled film, Get'Em Young, Laurel was asked to return to acting to fill in. Starting early in 1927, Laurel and Hardy began sharing the screen in several short films, including Duck Soup, Slipping Wives and With Love and Hisses; the two became their comic chemistry soon became obvious. Roach Studios' supervising director Leo McCarey noticed the audience reaction to them and began teaming them, leading to the creation of the Laurel and Hardy series that year. Together, the two men began producing a huge body of short films, including The Battle of the Century, Should Married Men Go Home?, Two Tars, Be Big!, Big Business, many others. Laurel and Hardy made the transition to talking films with the short Unaccustomed As We Are in
Musical film
Musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve as breaks in the storyline as elaborate "production numbers." The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. The biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater. In a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it; the 1930's through the early 1950's are considered to be the golden age of the musical film, when the genre's popularity was at its highest in the Western world. Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the earliest Disney animated feature film, was a musical which won an honorary Oscar for Walt Disney at the 11th Academy Awards.
Musical short films were made by Lee de Forest in 1923–24. Beginning in 1926, thousands of Vitaphone shorts were made, many featuring bands and dancers; the earliest feature-length films with synchronized sound had only a soundtrack of music and occasional sound effects that played while the actors portrayed their characters just as they did in silent films: without audible dialogue. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was the first to include an audio track including non-dietetic music and diegetic music, but it had only a short sequence of spoken dialogue; this feature-length film was a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face", "Toot, Tootsie", "Blue Skies", "My Mammy". Historian Scott Eyman wrote, "As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights, Sam Goldwyn's wife Frances looked around at the celebrities in the crowd, she saw'terror in all their faces', she said, as if they knew that'the game they had been playing for years was over'." Still, only isolated sequences featured "live" sound.
In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, a blockbuster hit. Theaters scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen; the first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a musical sequence in a night club. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than a year all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively; the Broadway Melody had a show-biz plot about two sisters competing for a charming song-and-dance man. Advertised by MGM as the first "All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing" feature film, it was a hit and won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1929. There was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed versions of Broadway hits; the Love Parade starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton. Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929.
They photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor. This was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature, entitled On with the Show; the most popular film of 1929 was the second all-color, all-talking feature, entitled Gold Diggers of Broadway. This film broke all box office records and remained the highest-grossing film produced until 1939; the market became flooded with musicals and operettas. The following all-color musicals were produced in 1929 and 1930 alone: The Show of Shows, The Vagabond King, Follow Thru, Bright Lights, Golden Dawn, Hold Everything, The Rogue Song, Song of the Flame, Song of the West, Sweet Kitty Bellairs, Under a Texas Moon, Bride of the Regiment, Whoopee!, King of Jazz, Viennese Nights, Kiss Me Again. In addition, there were scores of musical features released with color sequences. Hollywood released more than 100 musical films in 1930, but only 14 in 1931. By late 1930, audiences had been oversaturated with musicals and studios were forced to cut the music from films that were being released.
For example, Life of the Party was produced as an all-color, all-talking musical comedy. Before it was released, the songs were cut out; the same thing happened to Fifty Million Frenchmen and Manhattan Parade both of, filmed in Technicolor. Marlene Dietrich sang songs in her films, Rodgers and Hart wrote a few well-received films, but their popularity waned by 1932; the public had come to associate color with musicals and thus the decline in their popularity resulted in a decline in color productions. The taste in musicals revived again in 1933 when director Busby Berkeley began to enhance the traditional dance number with ideas drawn from the drill precision he had experienced as a soldier during World War I. In films such as 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, Berkeley choreographed a number of films in his unique style. Berkeley's numbers begin on a stage but transcend the limitations of theatrical space: his ingenious routines, involving human bodies forming patterns like a kaleidoscope, could never fit onto a real stage and the intended perspective is viewing from straight above.
Musical stars such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were among the most popular and highly
Kate Price (actress)
Kate Price was an Irish-American actress. She is known for playing the role of Mrs. Kelly in the comedy series The Cohens and Kellys, made by Universal Pictures between 1926 and 1932. Price appeared in 296 movies from 1910 to 1937. Price was born in Cork and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1881, her brother was actor Jack Duffy. She began her stage and vaudeville career with her German-American husband, actor Joseph Price Ludwig, in 1890. Price's motion picture career began with the old Vitagraph Studios in New York City in 1902, she acted with movie stars such as Flora Finch, Douglas Fairbanks, John Bunny, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford. She was paired with Oliver Hardy for 14 films produced at the Vim Comedy Company in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1917, Price went to Hollywood, she had parts in The Sea Tiger, The Godless Girl, Reaching for the Moon. Her final MGM feature was Have a Heart. After making Easy Living and Live and Learn, she retired. Price died at age 70 at the Motion Picture Country Home, Woodland Hills.
Funeral services were held at St. Theresa's Church with interment in Calvary Cemetery, her Crowning Glory All for a Girl One Can't Always Tell Jerry's Mother-In-Law A Million Bid Bringing Up Father The Waiters' Ball A Maid to Order Twin Flats A Warm Reception Pipe Dreams Mother's Child Prize Winners The Guilty Ones He Winked and Won Fat and Fickle The Boycotted Baby Humdrum Brown Good Night, Nurse! Arizona Love Dinty That Girl Montana My Wife's Relations Flesh and Blood Paid Back Come on Over as Delia Morahan Broken Hearts of Broadway Enemies of Children Fools Highway The Sea Hawk The Wife of the Centaur The Sporting Venus The Unchastened Woman The Perfect Clown The Desert Flower The Arizona Sweepstakes The Beautiful Cheat Paradise The Third Degree Frisco Sally Levy Mad Hour Thanks for the Buggy Ride The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris Two Weeks Off 1929 Linda Linda The Cohens and the Kellys in Scotland Shadow Ranch Ladies of the Jury Have a Heart Linda Kate Price on IMDb Kate Price in a 1927 film
