American film from the 1960’s to present time has undergone a complete makeover. Prior to this decade, the Golden Age of Hollywood reigned. Movies were a major source of entertainment for all generations. With the popularization of television in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the average movie-goer was more likely to stay home to get their entertainment than to venture out to the theater. Studios had to learn how to deal with lesser resources while still wanting to make big-budget films. This set the stage for many changes in the film industry. Beginning in the 1960’s, Hollywood Studios showed declining production rates— falling from over 500 movies per year to, on average, 159 annually throughout the decade (221 Gianetti). The studios believed they needed to bring people back to the theaters. To do this they made movies they thought could compete with television. Big budget, extravagant movies were common in the early part of the decade, encouraged by the success of Ben Hur (1959). Cleopatra (1963) turned out to be a costly mistake for Twentieth Century Fox. It was originally budgeted at $1.2 million but eventually cost $40 million. The studio continued to make high budgeted movies including Sound of Music (1965), Doctor Doolittle (1967), and Star! (1968). Of these, only Sound of Music was a commercial success. Pauline Kael (1919-2001), an American film critic wrote “The success of a movie like the Sound of Music makes it even more difficult for anyone to try to do anything worth doing, anything relevant to the modern world, anything inventive or expressive.” (223, Gianetti) The attempts by Hollywood to portray anything realistic were also over the top regarding budget and star power, Judgment at Nuremburg (1961) was an epic movie... ... middle of paper ... ...e forced people to look at the darker gruesome side of the world, he wanted people to know it was not just all good and people could be evil. (332, Giannetti) The latest technologies were a downfall to cinema industries, videocassette recorders (VCR) changed the way the viewer saw film. With society treasuring their finances, they saw the opportunity to save money by purchasing a VCR and renting a movie for as little as two dollars, instead of paying five for each individual family member to visit a theater. Theaters started to decline, people wanted the comfort of their homes over viewing films with large groups of people. By 1987, video rentals surpassed ticket sales as the industry leading source of revenue. (324, Giannetti) Works Cited Giannetti, Louis D., and Scott Eyman. Flashback: A Brief History of Film. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.
Lewis, J. (2008). American Film: A History. New York, NY. W.W. Norton and Co. Inc. (p. 405,406,502).
During this decade, the film industry went through massive changes that would completely change what movies were or stood for. After the Great War, more people began considering movies as a form of entertainment. This increased attention caused change in the industry, allowing the experience of the movie goer to massively change for the better. Many new genres, ideas and technologies emerged in the 1920s that would later dominate the industry. The 1920s saw massive changes happening in the movie industry that would help it to get one step closer to what it is today.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
During the mid and late 1970’s, the mood of American films shifted sharply. People needed to get away from such negative memories as the Vietnam War, long gas lines, the resignation of President Nixon, and ...
In this paper I will offer a structural analysis of the films of Simpson and Bruckheimer. In addition to their spectacle and typically well-crafted action sequences, Simpson/Bruckheimer pictures seem to possess an unconscious understanding of the zeitgeist and other cultural trends. It is this almost innate ability to select scripts that tap into some traditional American values (patriotism, individualism, and the obsession with the “new”) that helps to make their movies blockbusters.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
McCrisken, T. B., & Pepper, A. (2005). American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
The fifties was a learning year and the 60's became the time to express everything that they learned. The 60's was a time for new and innovative ways to entertain the people. Since the blacklisting continued in Hollywood, the making or films became very difficult to express. The restrictions, such as the production codes, kept the big corporations to produce films that had no interesting subjects. These films also had to be films that show no signs of communistic values. The film industry was failing to bring in the audience to the theaters. With the TV making a big wave all over, the U.S. the film industry was losing it is money. Then in 1961 something big happened, 20th Century Fox took apart its lot. This act was one that led to a chain reaction. Studios were assuming the role of distributors. This would allow the independent companies to come in and add a new flavor to the silver screen. During this time films changed it's traditional film making ideas. Things started to get graphic, more violent, sexual and more expressive. Movies had found a new look and with the production codes now gone and the blacklisting ending, there was an explosion of ideas that would be presented to the United States.
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
Largely influenced by the French New Wave and other international film movements, many American filmmakers in the late 1960s to 1970s sought to revolutionize Hollywood cinema in a similar way. The New Hollywood movement, also referred to as the “American New Wave” and the “Hollywood Renaissance,” defied traditional Hollywood standards and practices in countless ways, creating a more innovative and artistic style of filmmaking. Due to the advent and popularity of television, significant decrease in movie theater attendance, rising production costs, and changing tastes of American audiences, particularly in the younger generation, Hollywood studios were in a state of financial disaster. Many studios thus hired a host of young filmmakers to revitalize the business, and let them experiment and have almost complete creative control over their films. In addition, the abandonment of the restrictive Motion Picture Production Code in 1967 and the subsequent adoption of the MPAA’s rating system in 1968 opened the door to an era of increased artistic freedom and expression.
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
Hollywood in the 30’s and 40’s was the golden-age of a new era of filmmaking. The films of that period went beyond the silent films being produced in the past. Diagetic sounds like dialogue and more advanced filmic techniques would push cinema to a new mode of filmmaking, that being classicism. The classical Hollywood structure was being developed in the past with silent films but it came to full fruition in the 30’s, where many filmmakers would produce feature-length films with fully developed storylines and the use of glamorous lighting and larger-than life characterizations to give audiences a more cinematic experience. Genre films like: the gangster, comedy, western, horror, and other various genres of the era, provided large revenue for studios and the creative means for filmmakers to manipulate the mise-en-scene to make each genre films slightly different from the rest. Classicism would provide audiences with clear-cut characterizations, simple storylines, non-intrusive directing, and simple but entertaining conclusions that neatly wrap up the story.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
France during World War II was a dark place for a film industry that had once experienced such successes. As a result of Nazi Germany’s occupation, the selection of films available in France was severely limited. With Hollywood films strictly banned, theatres during the war mostly exhibited German imports and only a handful of domestically produced and heavily censored features. Immediately following WWII the French film industry was in ruins like the rest of the country’s industry.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...