Info

Welcome to At Home in the Movies: Artificiality of Home in Hollywood. This blog will mainly focus on the depiction of home in films from Hollywood's golden era, or in the "private" lives of the stars.

About the blog

How does the set design or cinematography reflect the part the home or the house plays in the film and what techniques or tricks do they use to make the set look like it does? How do they make something so artificial look like a lived in home? Why should a character have a specific wallpaper in their house? Or how do they decide which flowers would suit the character?

Of course these homes were constructed for the film, but so were the off-screen personalities of these stars. As part of the Star System the film companies controlled the way the domestic lives of the stars were depicted to the public. The lives of the stars were literally as constructed as their onscreen characters and the sets the characters lived in. Can I also learn from —and use— the techniques the studios used to construct these stars?

This research is part of an artistic project that aims to artificially create domestic traces based on memories and/or personal anecdotes.

A note on the posts

In the posts no in-depth synopses will be given, because the posts will become too long if I do. Hopefully the posts will still be readable if you haven't seen the films or better yet: tease you to see them. If you have seen the movies that are discussed, hopefully the posts will point out details in the film for you to see them in a different light.

About the author

Rachel Gruijters is a visual artist working mainly in photography and film with a special interest in personal history/memories and the performative aspects of embodying historically-informed characters. Rachel holds a master's degree in fine arts from KASK/School of Arts, Ghent (BE).

For more information: www.rachelgruijters.com