Blog 4

Connor McShane

Film Blog 4

November 14, 2010    

     The post classical era of film became what it was due to the growing culture of the rebellious teen. We see in the time after WWII a revolutionizing shift within society. It is the rise of easy times that blew out of proportion and leisure is what was wanted. The time of fast food and drive-ins, the all electric dream home, able to do anything, drive-in theatres, the first credit cards, and an explosion of televisions showing up in the American household. Out of this life became easier, more and more was just handed to the American society; all because they had money. Life became leisurely, and because of money the American culture adopted a certain attitude, this attitude created a crack, and it was the teenage culture that slipped through. The rise of modern jazz and the birth of rock and roll fueled their teenage fires. This change in society was harnessed by Hollywood and a new road was taken by filmmakers. Because of this change, as said by Tim Dirks, “Older viewers were prone to stay at home and watch television”[1] while the young culture, wanting to be alone, went to the drive in and dark movie theatres.

     Teenagers wanted something new and with “the period following WWII when most of the films were idealized with conventional portrayals of men and women, young people wanted new and exciting symbols of rebellion. Hollywood responded to audience demands”[2], and thus created “the rise of the anti-hero”[3]. The filmmakers thrived to draw in the younger generations with their new films, it was a shocking new movement of material that was considered to vial for the theatre. The new content for these films were the result of a “new generation of young, cinema-crazed filmmakers [who] came to prominence in America, drastically changing not only the way Hollywood films were produced and marketed, but also the kinds of films that were made”[4]. The style of the old Hollywood was still run by people who were there from its birth and they were unable to reconnect with their audience. With this a new age of filmmakers they easily brought their audience back by creating widescreen epics. The body of work created from this period has become some of the greatest films ever made[5]. Before the baby boomer children became of age, the film industry was severely hurting for money; they didn’t know what the audience wanted and were struggling to get by, and all the while being able to have television at home wasn’t helping them. To their surprise “what the audience wanted was something new. European art films, the French New Wave, Japanese cinema, were all making a big splash in America—the huge market of disaffected youth found something in themselves when they saw movies like Antonioni’s Blow-Up, with its oblique narrative structure and full-frontal female nudity. Studio heads were baffled. Unable to figure out what was happening, producers gradually handed power over to the directors. This was when the Movie Brat generation broke in and Hollywood became an asylum that was truly run by the inmates”[6]. The new style that this Movie Brat generation was taking on was the end of old Hollywood and the birth of New Hollywood, which was an amplification of subjects such as violence and sexuality. Film was breaking free from the rules that were so constricting, suffocating it, and keeping it from being art.

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[1] Tim Dirks, “The History of Film The 1950s The Cold War and Post Classical Era The Era of Epic Films and the Threat of Television,” (amc, filmsite, written and edited by Tim Dirks, 2010), http://www.filmsite.org/50sintro.html (accessed November 14, 2010).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “New Hollywood (1967-1977),” (jahsonic.com), http://www.jahsonic.com/NewHollywood.html (accessed November 14, 2010).

[5] “New Hollywood (1967-1977),” (jahsonic.com), http://www.jahsonic.com/NewHollywood.html (accessed November 14, 2010).

[6] Ibid.