trouble figuring out what the movies are made of, the producer sets this scene: "'A pretty

stenographer that you've seen before comes into the room and you watch her-idly. ...

She takes off her gloves, opens her purse and dumps it out on a table. She has two

dimes and a nickel-and a cardboard match box. She leaves the nickel on the desk, puts

the two dimes back into her purse and takes her black gloves to the stove, opens it and

puts them inside"' (32; emphasis added). Then the telephone rings. If the scene is meant

to allow the viewer to view the details "idly," then the ring disrupts that image. The plot

picks up; she tells the caller, Stahr continues, "'I've never owned a pair of black gloves in

my life"' (32). The narrative track has now been established, prompting the writer

Boxley's obvious question, "'What happens?"' (32). Rather than developing that line of

inquiry, however, Stahr replies that he doesn't know. The narrative does not seem to

interest him much; he was, he says, "'just making pictures"' (32). But then Boxley asks

the more intriguing question, about a detail that has stirred his idle curiosity, even though

it probably has nothing to do with the mysterious plot: "'What was the nickel for?"' (33).

At first, Stahr seems uncertain, but then responds: "'the nickel was for the movies"' (33).

His response ties the whole system of studio filmmaking to "the damn stuff' of cinema

(33). Even though his writer claims not to understand it, Stahr believes that, like every

moviegoer, he has intuited the allure of ambiguous detail. The nickel's appeal is not in its

symbolic meaning in the scene Stahr is narrating; it lies somewhere beyond it. The nickel

has crucial implications for our understanding of that other aspect of Hollywood

filmmaking: the role of the stuff that movies were made of.

 I have been tracking the twin paths of the studio system. Let me pause to identify

them, so we know where to go from here. On one hand, Classic Hollywood cinema