'30s Project Blog Post

1.In Murder at Winchester Mansion, our plot was centered around the death of Eben Winchester, a wealthy bachelor in New York City. Before his death, he meets a beautiful Dutch immigrant played by Jean Harlow who soon becomes his mistress. The main suspects of his murder are his butler,William Haines, and his mistress. I think that this film would do really well in 1935 due to the fact that its a drama film which was really popular because it wasn't as boring as the other genres of films. It gave the audience something to connect to in a sense. We decided to go for a more eerie or contemporary style film especially with it being in black and white. I believe our underlying meaning of the film was to present the issues of the high society. Jean Harlow trying to find her way is sort of the same thing as a gold-digger
2.We decided to suspense/thriller/drama to overall attract more money in the box office. Clark Gable and Jean Harlow are known to be in romance/drama films together so we thought it was sort of necessary to have them in the movie.
3.We decided to go with MGM just because they produce those glamorous and glitzy films and that's exactly what we were going for. We wanted a high scale film to bring more money in then going out. Of course, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow both work with MGM so we had them in our film making it to be one of the biggest if it were actually in 1935.
4.We had a pretty well rounded cast including:Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, William Haines, Clarence Brown, and Paul Muni. We basically picked our film based on the past roles that they played in other films. Our leading roles were of course Clark Gable and Jean Harlow who were known to have great chemistry on set. King Vidor was our director and we specifically chose him because he was widely accepted by the audience. He was also known to do court room films which where our film is mainly based. I think that the focus of our film will be both cinematography and editing due to us having to cut some main parts of the film out. We would have to make up for the not as exciting scenes with great camera views and editing of the flashback scenes.
5. The Hays Code affected our film a great amount. We couldn't add any passion scenes between the lovers nor a love triangle between the butler, mistress and bachelor. We also couldn't show any violent scenes which made us switch up the type of death.
6. I feel like our group worked well with each other. We decided on what everyone wanted and not just two people. I wouldn't have done anything differently.