West Los Angeles College Development of the American Cinema Discussion This is a reading and writing homework. 3 different essay. Two of them are 2 page an

West Los Angeles College Development of the American Cinema Discussion This is a reading and writing homework. 3 different essay. Two of them are 2 page and one of them is 3 page minimum. I have uploaded the reading documents for each chapte

Please read Chapter 6, “Postwar Challenges to the Movies,” from our textbook, A Short History of Film.

please submit a two-page essay in .doc, .pdf, or .txt format, in your own words, explaining how the collapse of the Studio System, the rise of television, and the Blacklist impacted the American film industry.

Please read Chapter 8, “The 1960s Explosion,” from our textbook, A Short History of Film

Once you have read the chapter and watched the films on the please submit a two-page essay in .doc, .pdf, or .txt format, explaining how the French New Wave, British Free Cinema Movement, and other International Cinema impacted American Cinema. Use examples from the movies that you have watched in this module.

Please read Chapter 10, “The New Hollywood,” from our textbook, A Short History of Film.

IMPORTANT: Also read the linked Filmsite article 2000s.

https://www.filmsite.org/2000sintro6.html

Once you have read the chapter, read the Filmsite article 2000s, and watched the movies from the Films of the New Millennium Page, please choose one of the movies that you watched, and write submit a minimum THREE-page essay in .doc, .pdf, or .txt format, in your own words, explaining how this movie relates to Chapter 10 or the Filmsite article 2000s. Also, provide your own analysis of that movie. Did you like it? Why or why not? PLEASE DO NOT summarize the movie Copyright © 2008. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted
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SIX
POSTWAR CHALLENGES TO THE MOVIES
T
he first major postwar cinematic movement was Neorealism, which
began in Italy with Rossellini’s Open City (1945) but soon had an international impact. While Visconti’s Ossessione (Obsession, 1943) was certainly
a forerunner of the movement in terms of cinematic style and thematic outlook, Open City was a clarion call to the international film community that
an entirely new set of values were now in play. Europe was in ruins and thus
served as a spectacular backdrop for the uncompromising vision of the first
Neorealists, as evidenced in such films as Visconti’s La Terra trema: Episodio
del mare (The Earth Trembles, 1948), Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette
(The Bicycle Thief, 1948), and Rossellini’s Paisà (Paisan, 1946) and Germania
anno zero (Germany, Year Zero, 1948).
Of these, De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief is undoubtedly the most famous,
and deservedly so. Shot almost entirely on location, the film tells the story
of Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), who supports his family by putting up
posters around Rome. One day his bicycle, which Antonio desperately
needs to keep his business going, is stolen while he works. Though Antonio
tries to recover the stolen bicycle, descending into the depths of Rome’s
Black Market to do so, he finds that there is little that the police or his
neighbors can do to help him. The bicycle, it seems, has probably already
been “stripped” for parts, and Antonio is left without any means of transportation, bereft of hope. At the film’s end, in an act of pathetic desperation, Antonio steals a bike himself, but is almost immediately caught. The
owner refuses to press charges, but Antonio, now branded as a thief and
seemingly out of options, sits down on a curb to assess his hopeless future.
By his side, his son, Bruno (Enzo Staiola), who has accompanied his father
on his downward social spiral, stares at Antonio with a mixture of fear and
concern. What will happen to the family now? How will Antonio get work?
The film ends on a note of complete despair, as passersby pay no attention
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postwar challenges to the movies
Bill-poster Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) and his son, Bruno (Enzo Staiola),
try to find Antonio’s stolen bicycle in the
streets of Rome in Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri
di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief, 1948).
to the humiliated Antonio and his son. The system has
failed Antonio, and De Sica refuses to give the audience
the artificial luxury of a happy ending.
The Bicycle Thief and Open City were worldwide sensations. Neorealism was now recognized as a secure cinematic movement, an
innovative way of looking at the world and seeing what was really there, as
opposed to what one wished to see. For example, Rossellini’s Paisan offered
the public six vignettes of life in postwar Italy, depicting the tenuous relationship between Italian citizens and the occupying American forces at the
end of the war. Germany, Year Zero is an even bleaker film, depicting life in
bombed-out Berlin after the war, as a young boy scavenges on the streets for
food, at one point joining a crowd as they strip the flesh from a dead horse
in order to survive. Drawn in by early neo-Nazi ideology, the young boy
murders his father, who is ill and therefore considered unfit to live, and at
length kills himself in an act of supreme defeat.
By 1948, Rossellini was becoming more “theatrical” in his films, creating a
two-part film, L’Amore (titled Ways of Love in the United States), which he
designed as a vehicle for the star who had helped him bring Open City to
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a short history of film
fruition, Anna Magnani. One section of L’Amore was a faithful presentation
of Jean Cocteau’s devastating playlet “La Voix Humaine” (“The Human
Voice”), in which Magnani breaks up with her lover on the telephone but
then is horrified to realize that he is already in the apartment of his new mistress. While Cocteau’s scenario is superb, the film represents a departure
from the everyday concerns of Neorealism, and as his career progressed
Rossellini seemed increasingly interested in pursuing new avenues in his
work. It was also during this period that the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman
wrote an admiring letter to Rossellini offering her services for one of his
forthcoming films, and their relationship evolved into a love affair during
the filming of Stromboli (a k a Stromboli, terra di Dio, 1950).
In the same month the movie was released, Bergman gave birth to a baby
fathered by Rossellini. Since both were married to others at the time, the resulting scandal damaged their careers, especially in the United States. The
bleak Stromboli, in which Bergman plays the wife of a brutal peasant fisherman living on a desolate island, was dismissed upon its initial release. Similarly, Viaggio in Italia (Voyage in Italy, 1954), featuring Bergman as the wife
of a bored businessman (George Sanders) on a disastrous trip to Italy to
clear up a family inheritance, was also poorly received but is now considered
a classic, famous for its bizarre narrative structure. Bergman and Sanders are
at each other’s throats for nearly the entire film, trading insults, flirting with
strangers, and it appears their marriage is in ruins. But in the last two minutes, they come upon a Catholic religious procession during a street fair and
instantly renounce their bitterness, declaring their undying and passionate
love for one another. Like many of his countrymen, Rossellini had an ambiguous relationship with Catholicism; as a realist, he seemed to reject it, but
as a man of faith, he embraced it for the hope and comfort it offered. The
sad, grinding death of the couple’s marriage in Voyage to Italy is thus transformed through faith alone rather than by any machinations of the film’s
narrative. Rossellini has led us in one direction for nearly ninety-seven minutes and then gives us an ending that appears to defy logic. And yet, on a
spiritual level, the ending makes sense and is completely satisfying.
motion pictures and the first amendment
The Rossellini work that would have an even greater international impact
was the second section of L’Amore, “The Miracle” (“Il Miracolo”), following
Cocteau’s “La Voix humaine” segment. With Tullio Pinelli and a young actor
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postwar challenges to the movies
named Federico Fellini, soon to become one of the most important directors
of the postwar Italian cinema, Rossellini co-wrote the story of a tramp
(Fellini) who has an affair with a mentally unbalanced woman; when she
gives birth to a son, she says he is the Messiah. The Catholic Church responded by mounting an aggressive campaign against the film. After it was
finally released in the United States in December 1950, the New York State
Board of Regents succeeded in banning it on the grounds that it was sacrilegious. But the film’s American distributor took the case all the way to the
Supreme Court, which in 1952 decided that the Regents’ ruling had violated
the separation of church and state.
This decision was enormously important for the future of motion pictures, because it was the first time that the medium had been ruled to be
protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. In 1915 the Supreme
Court had ruled in a similar case that motion pictures were merely a form of
interstate commerce, and as such were guaranteed no free-speech protection
under the Constitution. Known as the Mutual Decision, that ruling had
made it easier for the Hays/Breen office to control the production and exhibition of motion pictures. Now, in a single stroke, much of the Production
Code’s authority had been stripped away. It would be more than another
decade before the Code collapsed completely, but the “Miracle” Decision of
1952 was a major step on the road to artistic freedom for the cinema.
Meanwhile, similar trouble was brewing in Italy, even as Neorealism was
becoming influential internationally. In 1949, the Andreotti Law attempted
to halt the production of films, specifically those of the Neorealist school,
that did not serve “the best interests of Italy,” and to remove state subsidies
from films that failed to depict a thriving postwar Italian state. In some
cases, the law even denied export licenses for international distribution.
Many filmmakers found a way around the restrictions, but as the national
economy regained its footing Italian producers and audiences began to turn
to more traditional fare. As the 1950s dawned, new court rulings, technological advances, and changing audience tastes forced the studios to adapt in
order to survive.
the collapse of the studio system
In 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down what became known as the
de Havilland decision, ruling that the standard seven-year contract then
given to most actors could not be indefinitely lengthened by suspensions
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caused when an actor balked at appearing in a particular project. Olivia de
Havilland, best remembered for playing the sweet and gentle Melanie in
Gone with the Wind, had brought the suit against Warner Bros. that would
help lead to the eventual collapse of the studio system. Bette Davis had tried
the same tactic in the early 1930s, but at the time did not possess the star
power to make her rebellion successful. Now, under the de Havilland decision, actors would know exactly when their contract was up, and key players
within the industry, no longer indentured servants to their home studios,
began to look around for better scripts, directors, and projects.
Then came another ruling: in 1947, the Supreme Court declared that the
long-approved practice of block booking, in which a studio could force an
exhibitor to take an entire slate of films, many of them inferior, in order to
get more desired films, violated federal antitrust laws. Again, the studios
reeled. As a result, each film had to be sold solely on its individual merits.
The distribution strong-arm tactics that had served the studios so well for
nearly half a century were suddenly outlawed, and thus the studios cut back
on production, making fewer films but with higher budgets and production
values, signaling the beginning of the end for the “B,” or “second,” features.
This was followed by yet another ruling: the government filed antitrust suits
against Technicolor and Eastman Kodak, alleging that the companies held
an effective monopoly on the production of color motion pictures. The industry had gradually begun to shift from three-strip Technicolor to Eastman’s monopack system, using a single strand of film to record the full
spectrum of color. By late 1948, Kodak agreed to make its color film patents
available to competitors, ending Kodak’s lock on raw stock production and
color processing.
The same year, RKO Radio decided to sell its theaters, anticipating that
the other studios would soon be forced by the government to take the same
action. Owning production, distribution, and exhibition facilities clearly
constituted an unfair business advantage that the studios had been taking
for years. In May 1948, the Supreme Court ordered a district court to look
into the possibility of forcing the other studios to sell their theaters, thus signaling an end (for the time being) to Adolph Zukor’s master plan of vertical
integration. Paramount, which had fought the government the hardest on
this decision, finally signed a consent decree in 1949 that required it to sell
its theaters and distribution exchanges, concentrating solely on the production of motion pictures. Soon Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, and Warners
were forced to sell their theaters as well. No longer did the majors have a
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guaranteed market for their films. Now, theaters could play whatever films
they wanted, and the majors had to compete in an open marketplace.
In the final analysis, however, the consent decree eventually favored the
studios, who could now dictate the terms for their key films, forcing theater
owners to increase concession prices to defray operating costs. The biggest
studio blockbusters commanded enormous guarantees from the theater
chains, which rapidly consolidated to offset their weak bargaining power.
The studios also demanded a hefty percentage of the box office, often a
90–10 split in their favor for the first week of a major attraction. Despite this
bargaining advantage, the studios were being backed into a corner by a combination of rising costs, shrinking markets, and new legal restrictions on
their methods of doing business. To compete, the studios cut production
costs to the bone, recycling scripts, sets, costumes, and musical scores to create cost-conscious films. Theater owners, with their new freedom to book
whatever they wanted, began to turn to independent producers, who offered
more favorable terms and reacted swiftly to fill the power vacuum left by the
studios’ loss of power.
With the abrogation of the seven-year contract, one-year contracts or
multiple-picture deals (usually two or three films at a time) became the industry norm. James Stewart became the first actor to command a percentage of a film’s gross with Anthony Mann’s brutal 1950 western Winchester
’73, part of a two-picture deal with Universal. The other film was Henry
Koster’s Harvey (1950), based on the Broadway play about a man whose
best friend is an imaginary six-foot rabbit. Universal paid Stewart a straight
salary for Harvey, but then gave him a huge chunk of the gross for Winchester ’73, which the studio viewed as just another program western, unlikely
to arouse much audience interest. The psychological penetration of Stewart’s performance, however, coupled with Mann’s aggressive visual style,
made the film a breakout hit and turned Stewart into a millionaire almost
overnight.
In the wake of Stewart’s successful deal, arranged by legendary Hollywood agent Lew Wasserman, other actors began leaving the security of studio contracts to freelance on a picture-by-picture basis, selling their services
to the highest bidder. Humphrey Bogart, for example, left Warner Bros. after
more than twenty years to form his independent Santana Productions, releasing his films through Columbia Pictures and working on material that
both deepened and enhanced the depth of his range as an actor, such as
Nicholas Ray’s superb Hollywood drama In a Lonely Place (1950).
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a short history of film
film noir in postwar america
Film noir, which had been bubbling under the surface in Hollywood since
the early 1940s in movies such as Detour, exploded into a major genre in the
postwar era, with RKO Radio, “the house of noir,” leading the way. The
world of noir is a continual pattern of betrayal, deception, and violence in
which no one can be trusted and everything is for sale at a price. Such films
as Joseph M. Newman’s Abandoned (a k a Abandoned Woman, 1949), a tale
of murder, impersonation, and black market babies; Robert Siodmak’s The
Killers (1946), based on the Ernest Hemingway short story, with Burt Lancaster, in his first major role, as a doomed hoodlum; or Jean Negulesco’s Nobody Lives Forever (1946), with a typically complex plot involving con men,
murder, and a string of double crosses, perfectly captured the new mood of
the nation. Noirs were cheap to make, requiring little in the way of sets or
costumes, just a lot of shadows and dark alleyways. Neorealism’s impact on
noir was enormous; directors competed with each other to see how much
filming could be done on location to increase authenticity, as in Jules
Dassin’s New York murder mystery The Naked City (1948), which prided itself on using nonprofessionals and actual street settings to enhance the grittiness and realism.
Adultery and murder were staples of the genre; in Henry Levin’s Night
Editor (1946), Tony Cochrane (William Gargan), a crooked cop, falls for the
worthless Jill Merrill (Janis Carter) and leaves his faithful and trusting wife,
Martha (Jeff Donnell), at home so he and Jill can park on lover’s lane. One
night, the two witness the murder of a young woman and clearly see the
identity of the killer—Douglas Loring (Frank Wilcox), the vice president of
a local bank—but Tony fears that an investigation would expose his illicit affair. For her part, Jill is sexually excited by the woman’s brutal killing, much
to Tony’s disgust, but since the two now share the secret of both their affair
and the young woman’s murder, Tony has no choice but to cover up clues to
the crime, while Jill returns to her palatial mansion and her much older husband, Ben (Roy Gordon). When Tony finally decides to make a clean break
from their affair and to turn Loring in to the police, Jill stabs Tony in the
back with an …
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