1930's Style Trends

Some trends in 1930's film:

• Due to the Great Depression, more films dealt with positive and uplifting themes (generally). Even monster movies or film noir ended on a positive note, with the survivors or gumshoe getting the girl.
• You may notice that the 1930's films generally use longer cuts. Scenes tend to be a little longer, partly due to dialogue.
• The "talkies" often edited to match the rhythm of the actor's speech. 
• Many critics saw the new sound films as a return to the theatre of the turn of the century (1900's)—precisely the type of cinema that the modernist and avant-garde film movements of the 1920s had tried to remove. Many films sound like staged plays. This forces a certain amount of "realism" to "formalist" cinema style.
• Staging was often done in a studio, as opposed to outside on location. Broad sweeping epics (like those of D.W. Griffith) for the moment are a thing of the past. 
• For the first time, radio became both a rival to film and a way to integrate both mediums into one.