As the Making Movies exhibition demonstrates, a costume can reveal much about a film character. For example, a character’s social and economic class can be represented through the style and quality of her or his clothes, shoes, and jewelry, and whether those clothes are clean and fresh or tattered and soiled. Clothing also exposes a character’s unique personality traits and self-image. Steve Wilson, the Ransom Center’s Associate Curator of Film, talks about Robert De Niro’s costume in Taxi Driver, and how it supports and enhances the interpretation of the character Travis Bickle.

Associate Curator of Film Steve Wilson elaborates about Making Movies, an exhibition that focuses on the artistic collaboration that is unique to the medium. Wilson shares how the Ransom Center’s holdings document the history of the motion picture industry to illustrate the highly collaborative nature of the movie-making process.

Alfred Junge’s notes on design for ‘Black Narcissus.’ Click on the image to view larger version

The Making Movies Film Series runs throughout the summer and features films that are highlighted in the Making Movies exhibition. Tonight, the Ransom Center will screen Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947), starring Deborah Kerr and David Farrar. Throughout the series, Cultural Compass will highlight an exhibition item related to each film.

Arguably Britain’s greatest production designer, Alfred Junge was born in Germany and spent his teenage years working as an apprentice to a painter. At 18 he was “kissed by the muse” and began working in the theater, painting sets, designing costumes, and operating special effects. In the late 1920s he began working with…

Take the survey for the chance to win 'The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941'

Help the Ransom Center plan an exhibition about design by answering the questions in this survey. The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. Those who complete the survey will be entered into a drawing to receive a first edition of The Brooklyn Museum of Art’s exhibition catalogue The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941.

Click image to enlarge. Interstate Theaters Year Book: Slack Night, 1941

Early motion pictures were presented in arcades and amusement parks. Later, they were shown as short “acts” in vaudeville variety shows. The motion picture theater industry emerged in 1907 with the establishment of the “nickel show” or nickelodeon. By 1910, nickelodeons were everywhere, and after World War I they replaced vaudeville as the country’s favorite entertainment.

Soon, the trend grew toward more opulent movie palaces. Ornate auditoriums, legions of ushers, childcare, and air conditioning attracted large audiences. During the Great Depression, economic hardship necessitated the creation of more austere theaters, often built in the art deco style in urban centers and smaller cities and always “wired for sound.”

During and after World…

Finished film poster for ‘Kidnapped’

The star system emerged around 1910 when film producers began noting the public’s preference for individual actors. People wanted to know who the “Biograph Girl” was (Florence Lawrence) and the real name of the girl with the golden curls they knew as “Little Mary” (Mary Pickford). They also wanted their photographs.

The studios quickly learned the value of controlling their own publicity. By establishing their own photography studios, they could create a consistent look for their stars that the public would associate with the studios themselves. They hired teams of publicists to control the dissemination of those images to newspapers and magazines, especially the all-important fan magazines. At one point there were more than 300 motion picture…

Arguably Britain’s greatest production designer, Alfred Junge was born in Germany and spent his teenage years working as an apprentice to a painter. At eighteen he was “kissed by the Muse” and began working in theater, painting sets, designing costumes, and operating special effects. In the late 1920s he began working with British International Pictures and later Gaumont British where he gained a reputation not only for his brilliant designs but also for his organizational skills in running a large staff of art directors and craftsmen.

Junge’s best known film work is on Black Narcissus (1947), the story of emotional tensions among a group of Anglican nuns who try to establish a convent in the remote reaches of the Himalayas. Director Michael…

Click on image to enlarge. “A Code to Govern the Making of Motion and Talking Pictures” by the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., June 13, 1934.

The process of making movies involves thousands of decisions. Each decision is a turning point with rewards and consequences. Every detail matters to the success or failure—artistically and financially—of the final product. While filmmaking is fundamentally a collaborative effort, one person often dominates that process: the producer.

This document, “A Code to Govern the Making of Motion and Talking Pictures” by the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., is an example of one issue that producers have had to deal with throughout cinema history: censorship.

Since the earliest days of commercial filmmaking,…

Two new exhibitions, From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe and Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works, open today at the Ransom Center.

In conjunction with the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, the exhibition Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works, drawn exclusively from the Center’s collections, showcases important astronomical discoveries of the last 500 years.

In this video, Mary Kay Hemenway, Research Associate and Senior Lecturer of the Astronomy Department at The University of Texas at Austin, shares insight about some of the items that provide an overview of centuries of astronomical discovery.