The Basics

In the early 20th century there were three mayor flanks to cinema; those were the works of D.W. Griffith in United Status, the German Expressionism, and the Soviet Realism. These three sides were highly political in their content and the developments of the techniques during this period are the basis for today cinema.
D.W. Griffith gift to cinema was to break the “theatrical scene into the cinematic unit of the shot”; by this Griffith developed a new narrative. With techniques such as the cross-cut, the American director managed to bring very distant spaces together in the mind of the spectator. “Griffith discovered that the narrative content of the scene, not the location of the scene, determined the correct placement of the camera and the correct moment to cut from one perspective or setup to another. This discovery is frequently called “grammar and rhetoric” of the film” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 72). This same type of logic in the grammar and rhetoric of the film is still used by filmmakers, even tough there are variations this is the basis. In addition, it is important to note that Griffith’s works had a political touch, generally concerning the theme of racial segregation, such as “The Birth of a Nation” which was propaganda in favor of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the same way, but on the other side of the world, a movement called the Socialist Realism raised in the Soviet Union. The Socialist Realism was a really powerful propaganda that defended the Communist doctrine, as a form of art this was aloud because, “while the flickering images held their audiences captive, the events on the screen emphasized the virtues of the new government and encouraged the people to develop those traits that would best further it. Whereas the American film began as an amusing novelty, the Soviet film was created explicitly as a teacher, not as a clown” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 198). Nevertheless, this Soviet Realism developed the foundations of film editing, because they concentrated on the effects of joining the shots together; this is know as the Soviet Montage. The Soviet Montage is the contribution of this movement to the film industry. “Sergei Eisenstein regarded montage as a dialectical means of creating meaning. By contrasting unrelated shots he tried to provoke associations in the viewer, which were induced by shocks. Eisenstein was a theorist in addition to being a filmmaker. He established five "methods of montage": 1) Metric: based solely on the length of a shot, 2) Rhythmic: based on the length of a shot, plus the visual composition of the image, 3) Tonal: based on the dominant visual style of an image, 4) Overtonal: based on the interaction of dominant visual styles and 5) Intellectual: based on the symbolic content generated by two (or more) juxtaposed images; a film metaphor” (www.wikipedia.org).
On the other hand, the German Expressionism’s gift to the film industry is in terms of the image and the shot. This is so clear that the term Expressionism refers to the understanding that “the look or style of the visible, the external universe can take its shape, color, and texture from the artist’s intuition of its essential inner being of from internal human sensations.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 175). German Expressionism gave the film industry a critical eye to be smart enough to know the importance of mise-en-scéne elements, symbolism and the psychological perceptive that the camera could work as a “window to the mind; that is that the camera could itself mirror the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of a character experiencing an event.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 174,175). One of the two types in which the German films of this era consisted was on the intellectual paradigms of Freud and Weber, which were very political more because of Weber than Freud. On the one hand we have Freud that was born in a Jew family and went to study in Vienna under an intense anti-Semitism, on the other hand is Max Weber which was a German, and his most important works concerned the rationalization of sociology of religion and government. Even tough the movement of cinema were very politically charged and sometimes used as propaganda, today films are not that much because of the invention of TV, but more important than the content is that during these years, the techniques concerning camera movement, subject matter, and even more editing, narrative and rhetoric developed were polished so much that they became what we know today as the basis of filmmaking.

An Expression of Art

Hollywood’s today power and global monopoly of the film industry and the screens is due to the perspective in which this new art was seen by its pivotal developers, unfortunate events and the love of humans to look and be amused by new ways.
Mostly, films were about capturing reality itself and showing it to the delighted masses that dashed a train in a movie theater. Movies by this time lasted around 10 to 15 minutes, just one-reel, because of the attention span of the audience; in time, the films were longer and longer.
Eventually, in the beginning of films, this new art or way to express reality was rapidly absorbed by people, because it affirmed ideas that where conventional and already held by society. People just loved to see the portrayal of their most deep feelings and to be excited about stories that seemed real, such as: Georges Méliès’ “A trip to the Moon” or Edwin Porter’s “Life of an American Fireman”; nevertheless, there were technical limitations, these were more sophisticated films, still, the acting was very theatrical and the camera did not had a lot of movement because the focus was more on the set than in the shot. But films were becoming more and more popular each day, with France and Italy as the most globally popular and powerful.
Europe was at the top of the scale until World War I stroke the continent, causing a devastating interruption in the European Film Industries, which as an unintended consequence, putted the American Film Industry A.K.A. Hollywood in the position it has held ever since. Even though in the silent era of film, movements such as the German Expressionism or The Soviet Realism were struggling to get up, it was no match for the monstrous film industry of America, which jumped even higher after World War II.
The other important fact that launched Hollywood to its present stand was the perspective in which film was seen by its pivotal developers, the difference is really simple and is easy to see even today. In The American Film Industry, Thomas Edison, who was a businessman who developed many devices which greatly influenced life in the 20th century and one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production; led to the creation of the motion Pictures Patent Company. On the other hand, in Europe was Pathé Frères. The main difference resides in the history of each country and how this shaped the way of thinking; on the one side we have United States, a country with practically no artistic history, a country of immigrants and highly interested in its growth as a nation; on the other side we have Europe, a country full of artistic history and with a deep devotion to the high arts. These particular backgrounds made that Edison on the one hand thought of film in terms of paid entertainment, in capital terms, he was a businessman, so his interest was to make money. And in Europe films were and are still seen as an art, and expression of the feelings.
Since the very beginnings of the film industry, the road on which films were to walk, were delineated by the perspective of its precursors and developers, by people love to look and watch and by events that were uncontrollable by the industries it selves, all these things joined to such a point that it almost seemed as it had to be by destiny that Hollywood monopolized the film industry with its entertaining films, and Europe and other industries such as Latin American or Asian cinema were left in the shadow, with their films that represent a message and an expression of art.

Comedy's First Steps

While Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton devoted their lives to the construction of an insightful and intelligent critic to the society through comedy, the Marx Brothers were faithful to the comedy as an entertainment through their cartoon like ways.
The Marx Brothers comedy even tough it was performed for film; it had the mark of their earlier work in vaudeville, which is a style of multi-act theater where the characters could run from music to comedy, to athleticism, to magic, to animal acts, to opera, to Shakespeare, to banjo, to acrobatics and gymnastics. Their comedy was fast and explosive, it consisted in short jokes to make people go from laugh to laugh; it also consisted in very cartoon like recourses such as the movie “Horse Feathers” in which Harpo pulls out of his coat: a wooden mallet, a fish, a coiled rope, a tie, a poster of a woman in her underwear, a cup of hot coffee, a sword, and a candle burning at both ends, or the fake mirror scene wearing pajamas in “Duck Soup”; also to bring out this quick laugh, Marx Brothers comedy relied in acrobatics, such as the film “A Night at the Opera” in which the famous Opera “Il Trovatore” is deflated. The Marx Brothers comedy was in deed very ingenious and brilliant, which in comparison with today’s comedy which is based on stupidity, which is not fun at all; Marx Brothers comedy was mastermind. Nevertheless, it did not reach the superb insightful comedy of other authors.

Very few people have been able to take master the art of comedy in an intelligent way, that critiques fundamental things of humanity and society; the best examples of these genius are Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Buster Keaton was the only one that “could rival Chaplin in his insight into human relationships, into the conflict between the individual and the society. The character that Keaton fashioned compensated its apparent lack of emotion with the terrific range of his resourcefulness and imagination.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 158). Even tough Keaton was brilliant, the only and true genius of all time comedy was Charlie Chaplin who thought of the comic world as an opportunity that “provided the means to examine the serious world of human needs and societal structures. Chaplin was mature enough as an artist to show the ambivalence of power and wealth, its attractiveness and its emptiness. The comedies treat controversial themes such as drug addiction, poverty, hunger, crime on the streets, homosexuality, religious hypocrisy; but most importantly, the enduring qualities of the heart and the cruelty and complacency of institutions.” (A Short History of the Film, 2006, 110, 111, 112).
It is easy to figure out then, that while Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton devoted their lives to the construction of an insightful and intelligent critic to the society through comedy, the Marx Brothers were faithful to the comedy as an entertainment through their cartoon like ways. And that if someone compares the actual comedy in films to these conceptions, that person should know that with all the respect, the only critical comedy about society that is left, is seen in the world of TV animation in programs such as Family Guy, The Simpsons, American Dad, The Boondocks and/or Futurama; Its shameful, but true. Even worse film comedy nowadays is doomed and is sinking into nonsense stupidity.