Designs on Film

A Century of Hollywood Art Direction

Cathy Whitlock, The Art Directors Guild

• Publisher: It Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780060881221
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062241603
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Popular Culture in Art

Who can forget the over-the-top, white-on-white, high-gloss interiors through which Fred Astaire danced in Top Hat? The modernist high-rise architecture, inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, in the adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? The lavish, opulent drawing rooms of Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence? Through the use of film design—called both art direction and production design in the film industry—movies can transport us to new worlds of luxury, highlight the ornament of the everyday, offer a vision of the future, or evoke the realities of a distant era. In Designs on Film, journalist and interior designer Cathy Whitlock illuminates the often undercelebrated role of the production designer in the creation of the most memorable moments in film history. Through a lush collection of rare archival photographs, Whitlock narrates the evolving story of art direction over the course of a century—from the massive Roman architecture of Ben-Hur to the infamous Dakota apartment in Rosemary's Baby to the digital CGI wonders of Avatar's Pandora.

Drawing on insights from the most prominent Hollywood production designers and the historical knowledge of the venerable Art Directors Guild, Whitlock delves into the detailed process of how sets are imagined, drawn, built, and decorated. Designs on Film is the must-have look book for film lovers, movie buffs, and anyone looking to draw interior design inspiration from the constructions and confections of Hollywood. Whitlock lifts the curtain on movie magic and celebrates the many ways in which art direction and set design allow us to lose ourselves in the diverse worlds showcased on the big screen.

PART ONE

THE DESIGNERS: ARCHITECTS OF DREAMS

Le voyage dans la lune (1902) • Georges Méliès, art director

THE ART DIRECTOR

He must have knowledge of architecture of all periods and nationalities. He must be able to visualize and make interesting a tenement or a prison. He must be a cartoonist, a costumier, a marine painter, a designer of ships, an interior decorator, a landscape painter, a dramatist, an inventor, a historical and, now, an acoustical expert.

—WILLIAM CAMERON MENZIES, THE FIRST CREDITED PRODUCTION DESIGNER

THE BIRTH OF ART DIRECTION: WILFRED BUCKLAND

With little more than a hand-painted trompe l’oeil scene on a flat panel constructed by a carpenter, the practice of film design was born.

While historians may differ as to the first film to employ actual set design, one of the earliest designed productions can be traced back to 1902. The film, Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), was a science fiction fantasy produced by the French magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès. Famous for its “fool-the-eye trickery,” special effects, and intricately painted backdrops, the twelve-minute silent film was considered a masterpiece.

The development of film and the natural emergence of subsequent sets evolved hand in hand. It was the time of film before sound, and art direction was a mere shell of itself. It borrowed heavily from its predecessor, the theater, and often involved the practice of designing boxed stages with walls or a painted backdrop.

Wilfred Buckland (1866–1946), originally a theater set designer, is considered by many film historians to be the first art director to use the title on record. Buckland was brought to Hollywood by filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille to design and light architectural settings for films like The Cheat, Carmen, and Male and Female. DeMille, like Buckland, had also trained on Broadway under the famed producer David Belasco.

Buckland headed up a staff of artists and draftsmen who comprised the film distribution company Famous Players–Lasky. Working at an exhausting pace, Buckland literally broadened the scope of design by “thinking out of the box” of the ready-made theater set. Buckland’s first film sets were built in the very first “studio”—an old barn on the corner of Vine and Selma avenues in Hollywood. Buckland’s innovations included the use of the Klieg light for interior and exterior shots, and application of chiaroscuro effects (the use of light and shade to exaggerate images). This controlled studio lighting ushered in a new era of artistry in filmmaking. Before Buckland’s arrival in Hollywood, films were shot in the harsh California daylight. Even interior shots were set up in the open air, with gauze or silk reflectors to diffuse the sunlight on the actors. Wind blowing through a backdrop was not an uncommon sight.

Early art direction grew out of a simple need—a basic backdrop that could help tell a story. Art direction was not necessarily realistic, emotive, or stylistic until Buckland’s paradigm-shifting lighting techniques. And in 1922, as supervising art director alongside William Cameron Menzies and Anton Grot, Buckland provided filmgoers with a view into a completely new world of his creation—the majestic castle and its unforgettable accompanying sets in Douglas Fairbanks’s Robin Hood.

Introducing audiences to the term swashbuckler, Fairbanks is dwarfed by the film’s enormous castle. At ninety feet high, it was considered the tallest tower built for film at that time. The film’s massive scale and detailed set design became a blueprint for future adventure epics.

Buckland and his actress wife, Veda, were members of Hollywood society, and like many of their peers, the couple was eventually left penniless by the Great Depression. Buckland’s contributions changed the industry, yet the role of art director would not become prestigious for another decade. As Cecil B. DeMille wrote in his 1959 autobiography, “If anyone is ever inclined to catalogue contributions I have made to motion pictures, I hope that my bringing Wilfred Buckland to Hollywood will be put near the head of the list.” And DeMille should know about achievements: he is credited with everything from innovations in lighting, photography, and elaborate set designs to what we know today as the epic Hollywood blockbuster.

ART DIRECTORS OF THE HOLLYWOOD STUDIO SYSTEM

The period from 1910 to the early 1960s was known in the film world as the “Hollywood studio system,” a time where a few major studios began to rule the film industry. Also known as the “Golden Age of Hollywood,” during this period the classic studio system became a tightly controlled environment. Studios produced films with the efficiency of a well-run factory. From the first draft of a script to the final reel, all-powerful studio heads called the shots in true dictatorial style. Controlling the entire creative package, the studios locked in their top stars personally and professionally with long-term contracts, gave directors limited power, and monitored the pitch delivered by the publicity departments.

ART DIRECTION IN the Golden Age of Hollywood was also tightly controlled by the all-seeing studio heads. As a result, the singular style of the top art director usually defined that of an entire studio, resulting in a “trademark look” that was assigned to the majority of their films.

Robin Hood (1922) • Wilfred Buckland, art director

The modern definition of an art director was given the title of supervising art director during this period, a job that carried the duties of an executive as well as a designer. The supervising art director was responsible for the entire art department and oversaw the work of several hundred unit art directors, draftsmen, and painters, in addition to the prop, construction, and special-effects departments. It was a male-dominated division, where an influx of European and American artisans would come to work daily in their suits, roll up their white shirtsleeves, and spend the day drafting. Below the supervising art director, the unit art director was traditionally appointed to a single film and became its true acting designer. Unit art directors worked with the director and cinematographer, and supervised the production of sketches, sets, and miniature models for the film.

Like any successful factory, the art department worked at breakneck speed, and often required its members to keep a hectic, six-days-a-week schedule. Illustrators sketched sets while draftsmen turned artistic renderings into architectural drawings or models. Artists poured over beautifully designed presentations in order to sell the film’s designs to budget-conscious studio heads. Often illustrated in charcoal or painted in watercolor, they were truly works of art.

The decline of the studio system was a sign of the times and marked an end of an era. The invention, and subsequent popularity, of television created a shift in moviegoing habits, and, in addition, a 1948 Supreme Court ruling stated that the studios must divest themselves of interest in movie theaters. As a result, their feudal power over the overall filmmaking process and distribution diminished. The Golden Age of Hollywood was over.

WILLIAM CAMERON MENZIES

Two years after Buckland’s revolutionary sets for Robin Hood, an upcoming art director was cutting his teeth on a similar epic, The Thief of Bagdad. An arts and architecture graduate of Yale and the Art Students League of New York, William Cameron Menzies (1896–1957) started his career as a children’s-book illustrator. Following the path of his colleague Wilfred Buckland, Menzies joined Famous Players–Lasky in 1918 as a set designer for silent films. His first project was Witness for the Defense, in 1919.

Menzies teamed up with director Ernst Lubitsch and actress Mary Pickford on the 1923 film Rosita. While he had worked (uncredited) as an assistant art director on Robin Hood, it was his eye-popping designs for The Thief of Bagdad that put his career on the map. Also starring Douglas Fairbanks, the Arabian adventure tale was the ultimate fantasy. Its architecture drew from Moorish origins, and the ethereal interiors were perfectly staged for Fairbanks’s thief to swing in and out of the sets, swashbuckler-style. Considered a prodigy by those who worked with him, Menzies designed the remarkable fantasy film before the age of thirty. Art director Ted Haworth knew him as “a man with a million movies in his head.”

Armed with the talent of an artist and skills of a draftsman, Menzies sported style as varied as the subjects of the films themselves. He designed romantic, Spanish-inspired interiors for Rudolph Valentino’s Cobra and created a fantasy ship for another Fairbanks vehicle, Reaching for the Moon. Menzies even tried his hand (to bad reviews) in directing the sci-fi film Things to Come. He also has the distinction of winning the first Academy Award for Art Direction, in 1929, for his films The Dove and The Tempest, and was nominated for The Awakening and Bulldog Drummond, in 1928 and 1929, respectively.

Menzies wasn’t confined to a single studio and essentially worked as a freelance designer—a role that mirrors today’s production designer. He made films with a number of Hollywood luminaries, including D. W. Griffith, Samuel Goldwyn, Lionel Barrymore, Alexander Korda, and Alfred Hitchcock, but none would top...

Table of contents

• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One - The Designers: Architects of Dreams
• Part Two - A Century of Design
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Designer Credits
• Photography Credits
• Index
• About the Author
• Also by Cathy Whitlock
• Copyright
• About the Publisher