The history of film has been dominated by the discovery and testing of the paradoxes inherent in the medium itself. Film uses machines to record images of life; it combines still photographs to give the illusion of continuous motion; it seems to present life itself, but it also offers impossible unrealities approached only in dreams.
The motion picture was developed in the 1890s from the union of still PHOTOGRAPHY, which records physical reality, with the persistence-of-vision toy, which made drawn figures appear to move. Four major film traditions have developed since then: fictional narrative film, which tells stories about people with whom an audience can identify because their world looks familiar; nonfictional documentary film, which focuses on the real world either to instruct or to reveal some sort of truth about it; animated film, which makes drawn or sculpted figures look as if they are moving and speaking; and experimental film, which exploits film's ability to create a purely abstract, nonrealistic world unlike any previously seen.
Film is considered the youngest art form and has inherited much from the older and more traditional arts. Like the novel, it can tell stories; like the drama, it can portray conflict between live characters; like painting, it composes in space with light, color, shade, shape, and texture; like music, it moves in time according to principles of rhythm and tone; like dance, it presents the movement of figures in space and is often underscored by music; and like photography, it presents a two-dimensional rendering of what appears to be three-dimensional reality, using perspective, depth, and shading.
Film, however, is one of the few arts that is both spatial and temporal, intentionally manipulating both space and time. This synthesis has given rise to two conflicting theories about film and its historical development. Some theorists, such as S. M. EISENSTEIN and Rudolf Arnheim, have argued that film must take the path of the other modern arts and concentrate not on telling stories or representing reality but on investigating time and space in a pure and consciously abstract way. Others, such as Andre Bazin and Siegfried KRACAUER, maintain that film must fully and carefully develop its connection with nature so that it can portray human events as excitingly and revealingly as possible.
Because of his fame, his success at publicizing his activities, and his habit of patenting machines before actually inventing them, Thomas EDISON received most of the credit for having invented
the motion picture; as early as 1887, he patented a motion picture camera, but this could not produce images. In reality, many inventors contributed to the development of moving pictures.
Perhaps the first important contribution was the series of motion photographs made by Eadweard MUYBRIDGE between 1872 and 1877. Hired by the governor of California, Leland Stanford, to capture on film the movement of a racehorse, Muybridge tied a series of wires across the track and connected each one to the shutter of a still camera. The running horse tripped the wires and exposed a series of still photographs, which Muybridge then mounted on a stroboscopic disk and projected with a magic lantern to reproduce an image of the horse in motion. Muybridge shot hundreds of such studies and went on to lecture in Europe, where his work intrigued the French scientist E. J. MAREY. Marey devised a means of shooting motion photographs with what he called a photographic gun.
Edison became interested in the possibilities of motion photography after hearing Muybridge lecture in West Orange, N.J. Edison's motion picture experiments, under the direction of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, began in 1888 with an attempt to record the photographs on wax cylinders similar to those used to make the original phonograph recordings. Dickson made a major breakthrough when he decided to use George EASTMAN's celluloid film instead. Celluloid was tough but supple and could be manufactured in long rolls, making it an excellent medium for motion photography, which required great lengths of film. Between 1891 and 1895, Dickson shot many 15-second films using the Edison camera, or Kinetograph, but Edison decided against projecting the films for audiences--in part because the visual results were inadequate and in part because he felt that motion pictures would have little public appeal. Instead, Edison marketed an electrically driven peep-hole viewing machine (the Kinetoscope) that displayed the marvels recorded to one viewer at a time.
Edison thought so little of the Kinetoscope that he failed to extend his patent rights to England and Europe, an oversight that allowed two Frenchmen, Louis and Auguste LUMIERE, to manufacture a more portable camera and a functional projector, the Cinematographe, based on Edison's machine. The movie era might be said to have begun officially on Dec. 28, 1895, when the Lumieres presented a program of brief motion pictures to a paying audience in the basement of a Paris cafe. English and German inventors also copied and improved upon the Edison machines, as did many other experimenters in the United States. By the end of the 19th century vast numbers of people in both Europe and America had been exposed to some form of motion pictures.
The earliest films presented 15- to 60-second glimpses of real scenes recorded outdoors (workmen, trains, fire engines, boats, parades, soldiers) or of staged theatrical performances shot indoors. These two early tendencies--to record life as it is and to dramatize life for artistic effect--can be viewed as the two dominant paths of film history.
Georges MELIES was the most important of the early theatrical filmmakers. A magician by trade, Melies, in such films as A Trip to the Moon (1902), showed how the cinema could perform the most amazing magic tricks of all: simply by stopping the camera, adding something to the scene or removing something from it, and then starting the camera again, he made things seem to appear and disappear. Early English and French filmmakers such as Cecil Hepworth, James Williamson, and Ferdinand Zecca also discovered how rhythmic movement (the chase) and rhythmic editing could make cinema's treatment of time and space more exciting.
A most interesting primitive American film was The Great Train Robbery (1903), directed by Edwin S. PORTER of the Edison Company. This early western used much freer editing and camera work than usual to tell its story, which included bandits, a holdup, a chase by a posse, and a final shoot-out. When other companies (Vitagraph, the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, Lubin, and Kalem among them) began producing films that rivaled those of the Edison Company, Edison sued them for infringement of his patent rights. This so-called patents
war lasted 10 years (1898-1908), ending only when nine leading film companies merged to form
the Motion Picture Patents Company.
One reason for the settlement was the enormous profits to be derived from what had begun
merely as a cheap novelty. Before 1905 motion pictures were usually shown in vaudeville
houses as one act on the bill. After 1905 a growing number of small, storefront theaters called nickelodeons, accommodating less than 200 patrons, began to show motion pictures exclusively.
By 1908 an estimated 10 million Americans were paying their nickels and dimes to see such
films. Young speculators such as William Fox and Marcus Loew saw their theaters, which
initially cost but $1,600 each, grow into enterprises worth $150,000 each within 5 years. Called
the drama of the people, the early motion pictures attracted primarily working-class and
immigrant audiences who found the nickelodeon a pleasant family diversion; they might not
have been able to read the words in novels and newspapers, but they understood the silent
language of pictures.
The popularity of the moving pictures led to the first attacks against it by crusading moralists, police, and politicians. Local censorship boards were established to eliminate objectionable
material from films. In 1909 the infant U.S. film industry waged a counterattack by creating the first of many self-censorship boards, the National Board of Censorship (after 1916 called the National Board of Review), whose purpose was to set moral standards for films and thereby save
them from costly mutilation.
A nickelodeon program consisted of about six 10-minute films, usually including an adventure, a comedy, an informational film, a chase film, and a melodrama. The most accomplished maker
of these films was Biograph's D. W. GRIFFITH, who almost singlehandedly transformed both
the art and the business of the motion picture. Griffith made over 400 short films between 1908
and 1913, in this period discovering or developing almost every major technique by which film manipulates time and space: the use of alternating close-ups, medium shots, and distant
panoramas; the subtle control of rhythmic editing; the effective use of traveling shots,
atmospheric lighting, narrative commentary, poetic detail, and visual symbolism; and the
advantages of understated acting, at which his acting company excelled. The culmination of Griffith's work was The Birth of a Nation (1915), a mammoth, 3-hour epic of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Its historical detail, suspense, and passionate conviction were to outdate the 10minute film altogether.
The decade between 1908 and 1918 was one of the most important in the history of American
film. The full-length feature film replaced the program of short films; World War I destroyed or restricted the film industries of Europe, promoting greater technical innovation, growth, and commercial stability in America; the film industry was consolidated with the founding of the first major studios in Hollywood, Calif. (Fox, Paramount, and Universal); and the great American
silent comedies were born. Mack SENNETT became the driving force behind the Keystone
Company soon after joining it in 1912; Hal Roach founded his comedy company in 1914; and
Charlie CHAPLIN probably had the best-known face in the world in 1916.
During this period the first movie stars rose to fame, replacing the anonymous players of the
short films. In 1918, America's two favorite stars, Charlie Chaplin and Mary PICKFORD, both
signed contracts for over $1 million. Other familiar stars of the decade included comedians Fatty ARBUCKLE and John Bunny, cowboys William S. HART and Bronco Billy Anderson, matinee
idols Rudolph VALENTINO and John Gilbert, and the alluring females Theda BARA and Clara
BOW. Along with the stars came the first movie fan magazines; Photoplay published its
inaugural issue in 1912. That same year also saw the first of the FILM SERIALS, The Perils of Pauline, starring Pearl White.
The next decade in American film history, 1918 to 1928, was a period of stabilization rather than expansion. Films were made within studio complexes, which were, in essence, factories
designed to produce films in the same way that Henry Ford's factories produced automobiles.
Film companies became monopolies in that they not only made films but distributed them to
theaters and owned the theaters in which they were shown as well. This vertical integration
formed the commercial foundation of the film industry for the next 30 years. Two new producing companies founded during the decade were Warner Brothers (1923), which would become
powerful with its early conversion to synchronized sound, and Metro-Goldwyn (1924; later MetroGoldwyn-Mayer), the producing arm of Loew's, under the direction of Louis B. MAYER and Irving THALBERG.
Attacks against immorality in films intensified during this decade, spurred by the sensual implications and sexual practices of the movie stars both on and off the screen. In 1921, after several nationally publicized sex and drug scandals, the industry headed off the threat of federal CENSORSHIP by creating the office of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
(now the Motion Picture Association of America), under the direction of Will HAYS. Hays, who
had been postmaster general of the United States and Warren G. Harding's campaign manager,
began a series of public relations campaigns to underscore the importance of motion pictures to American life. He also circulated several lists of practices that were henceforth forbidden on and off the screen.
Hollywood films of the 1920s became more polished, subtle, and skillful, and especially
imaginative in handling the absence of sound. It was the great age of comedy. Chaplin retained
a hold on his world-following with full-length features such as The Kid (1920) and The Gold Rush (1925); Harold LLOYD climbed his way to success--and got the girl--no matter how great the
obstacles as Grandma's Boy (1922) or The Freshman (1925); Buster KEATON remained
deadpan through a succession of wildly bizarre sight gags in Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator
(both 1924); Harry Langdon was ever the innocent elf cast adrift in a mean, tough world; and director Ernst LUBITSCH, fresh from Germany, brought his "touch" to understated comedies of
manners, sex, and marriage. The decade saw the United States's first great war film (The Big
Parade, 1925), its first great westerns (The Covered Wagon, 1923; The Iron Horse, 1924), and
its first great biblical epics (The Ten Commandments, 1923, and King of Kings, 1927, both made
by Cecil B. DE MILLE). Other films of this era included Erich Von STROHEIM's sexual studies,
Lon CHANEY's grotesque costume melodramas, and the first great documentary feature, Robert
J. FLAHERTY's Nanook of the North (1922).
EUROPEAN FILM IN THE 1920s
In the same decade, the European film industries recovered from the war to produce one of the richest artistic periods in film history. The German cinema, stimulated by EXPRESSIONISM in painting and the theater and by the design theories of the BAUHAUS, created bizarrely expressionistic settings for such fantasies as Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919), F. W. MURNAU's Nosferatu (1922), and Fritz LANG's Metropolis (1927). The Germans also brought their sense of decor, atmospheric lighting, and penchant for a frequently moving
camera to such realistic political and psychological studies as Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), G. W. PABST's The Joyless Street (1925), and E. A. Dupont's Variety (1925).
Innovation also came from the completely different approach taken by filmmakers in the USSR, where movies were intended not only to entertain but also to instruct the masses in the social and political goals of their new government. The Soviet cinema used montage, or complicated editing techniques that relied on visual metaphor, to create excitement and richness of texture
and, ultimately, to affect ideological attitudes. The most influential Soviet theorist and filmmaker was Sergei M. Eisenstein, whose Potemkin (1925) had a worldwide impact; other innovative
Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s included V. I. PUDOVKIN, Lev Kuleshov, Abram Room, and
Alexander DOVZHENKO.
The Swedish cinema of the 1920s relied heavily on the striking visual qualities of the northern landscape. Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom mixed this natural imagery of mountains, sea,
and ice with psychological drama and tales of supernatural quests. French cinema, by contrast, brought the methods and assumptions of modern painting to film. Under the influence of
SURREALISM and dadaism, filmmakers working in France began to experiment with the
possibility of rendering abstract perceptions or dreams in a visual medium. Marcel DUCHAMP,
Rene CLAIR, Fernand LEGER, Jean RENOIR--and Luis BUNUEL and Salvador DALI in Un
Chien andalou (1928)--all made antirealist, antirational, noncommercial films that helped
establish the avant-garde tradition in filmmaking. Several of these filmmakers would later make significant contributions to the narrative tradition in the sound era.
THE ARRIVAL OF SOUND
The era of the talking film began in late 1927 with the enormous success of Warner Brothers'
The Jazz Singer. The first totally sound film, Lights of New York, followed in 1928. Although experimentation with synchronizing sound and picture was as old as the cinema itself (Dickson,
for example, made a rough synchronization of the two for Edison in 1894), the feasibility of
sound film was widely publicized only after Warner Brothers purchased the Vitaphone from
Western Electric in 1926. The original Vitaphone system synchronized the picture with a
separate phonographic disk, rather than using the more accurate method of recording (based on
the principle of the OSCILLOSCOPE) a sound track on the film itself. Warners originally used
the Vitaphone to make short musical films featuring both classical and popular performers and to record musical sound tracks for otherwise silent films (Don Juan, 1926). For The Jazz Singer, Warners added four synchronized musical sequences to the silent film. When Al JOLSON sang
and then delivered several lines of dialogue, audiences were electrified. The silent film was
dead within a year.
The conversion to synchronized sound caused serious problems for the film industry. Sound
recording was difficult; cameras had to shoot from inside glass booths; studios had to build special soundproof stages; theaters required expensive new equipment; writers had to be hired
who had an ear for dialogue; and actors had to be found whose voices could deliver it. Many of
the earliest talkies were ugly and static, the visual images serving merely as an accompaniment
to endless dialogue, sound effects, and musical numbers. Serious film critics mourned the
passing of the motion picture, which no longer seemed to contain either motion or picture.
The most effective early sound films were those that played most adventurously with the union
of picture and sound track. Walt DISNEY in his cartoons combined surprising sights with
inventive sounds, carefully orchestrating the animated motion and musical rhythm. Ernst
Lubitsch also played very cleverly with sound, contrasting the action depicted visually with the information on the sound track in dazzlingly funny or revealing ways. By 1930 the U.S. film
industry had conquered both the technical and the artistic problems involved in using sight and
sound harmoniously, and the European industry was quick to follow.
HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN ERA
The 1930s was the golden era of the Hollywood studio film. It was the decade of the great movie stars--Greta GARBO, Marlene DIETRICH, Jean HARLOW, Mae WEST, Katharine HEPBURN,
Bette DAVIS, Cary GRANT, Gary COOPER, Clark GABLE, James STEWART--and some of
America's greatest directors thrived on the pressures and excitement of studio production. Josef
von STERNBERG became legendary for his use of exotic decor and sexual symbolism; Howard
HAWKS made driving adventures and fast-paced comedies; Frank CAPRA blended politics and
morality in a series of comedy-dramas; and John FORD mythified the American West.
American studio pictures seemed to come in cycles, many of the liveliest being those that could
not have been made before synchronized sound. The gangster film introduced Americans to the
tough doings and tougher talk of big-city thugs, as played by James CAGNEY, Paul MUNI, and
Edward G. ROBINSON. Musicals included the witty operettas of Ernst Lubitsch, with Maurice
CHEVALIER and Jeanette MACDONALD; the backstage musicals, with their kaleidoscopically
dazzling dance numbers, of Busby BERKELEY; and the smooth, more natural song-and-dance
comedies starring Fred ASTAIRE and Ginger ROGERS. Synchronized sound also produced
"screwball comedy," which explored the dizzy doings of fast-moving, fast-thinking, and, above
all, fast-talking men and women.
The conflict between artistic freedom and censorship rose again with the talking picture. Spurred
by the depression that hit the industry in 1933 and by the threat of an economic boycott by the
newly formed Catholic Legion of Decency, the motion picture industry adopted an official
Production Code in 1934. Written in 1930 by Daniel Lord, S.J., and Martin Quigley, a Catholic
layman who was publisher of The Motion Picture Herald, the code explicitly prohibited certain
acts, themes, words, and implications. Will Hays appointed Joseph I. Breen, the Catholic
layman most instrumental in founding the Legion of Decency, head of the Production Code Administration, and this awarded the industry's seal of approval to films that met the code's
moral standards. The result was the curtailment of explicit violence and sexual innuendo, and
also of much of the flavor that had characterized films earlier in the decade.
EUROPE DURING THE 1930s
The 1930s abroad did not produce films as consistently rich as those of the previous decade. With the coming of sound, the British film industry was reduced to satellite status. The most stylish British productions were the historical dramas of Sir Alexander KORDA and the mysteryadventures of Alfred HITCHCOCK. The major Korda stars, as well as Hitchcock himself, left Britain for Hollywood before the decade ended. More innovative were the government-funded documentaries and experimental films made by the General Post Office Film Unit under the direction of John Grierson.
Soviet filmmakers had problems with the early sound-film machines and with the application of montage theory (a totally visual conception) to sound filming. They were further plagued by
restrictive Stalinist policies, policies that sometimes kept such ambitious film artists as Pudovkin and Eisenstein from making films altogether. The style of the German cinema was perfectly
suited to sound filming, and German films of the period 1928-32 show some of the most creative
uses of the medium in the early years of sound. When the Nazis came to power in 1933,
however, almost all the creative film talent left Germany. An exception was Leni
RIEFENSTAHL, whose theatrical documentary Triumph of the Will (1934) represents a highly
effective example of the German propaganda films made during the decade.
French cinema, the most exciting alternative to Hollywood in the 1930s, produced many of
France's most classic films. The decade found director Jean Renoir--in Grand Illusion (1937)
and Rules of the Game (1939)--at the height of his powers; Rene Clair mastered both the
musical fantasy and the sociopolitical satire (A Nous la liberte, 1931); Marcel PAGNOL brought
to the screen his trilogy of Marseilles life, Fanny; the young Jean VIGO, in only two films, brilliantly expressed youthful rebellion and mature love; and director Marcel CARNE teamed
with poet Jacques Prevert to produce haunting existential romances of lost love and inevitable
death in Quai des brumes (1938) and Le Jour se leve (1939).
HOLLYWOOD AND WORLD WAR II
During World War II, films were required to lift the spirits of Americans both at home and
overseas. Many of the most accomplished Hollywood directors and producers went to work for
the War Department. Frank Capra produced the "Why We Fight" series (1942-45); Walt
Disney, fresh from his Snow White (1937) and Fantasia (1940) successes, made animated
informational films; and Garson KANIN, John HUSTON, and William WYLER all made
documentaries about important battles. Among the new American directors to make remarkable
narrative films at home were three former screenwriters, Preston STURGES, Billy WILDER, and
John Huston. Orson WELLES, the boy genius of theater and radio fame, also came to
Hollywood to shoot Citizen Kane (1941), the strange story of a newspaper magnate whose
American dream turns into a loveless nightmare.
POSTWAR DECLINE
Between 1946 and 1953 the movie industry was attacked from many sides. As a result, the
Hollywood studio system totally collapsed. First, the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee
on Un-American Activities investigated alleged Communist infiltration of the motion picture
industry in two separate sets of hearings. In 1948, The HOLLYWOOD TEN, 10 screenwriters
and directors who refused to answer the questions of the committee, went to jail for contempt of Congress. Then, from 1951 to 1954, in mass hearings, Hollywood celebrities were forced either
to name their associates as fellow Communists or to refuse to answer all questions on the
grounds of the 5th Amendment, protecting themselves against self-incrimination. These hearings
led the industry to blacklist many of its most talented workers and also weakened its image in the eyes of America and the world.
In 1948 the United States Supreme Court, ruling in United States v. Paramount that the vertical integration of the movie industry was monopolistic, required the movie studios to divest
themselves of the theaters that showed their pictures and thereafter to cease all unfair or discriminatory distribution practices. At the same time, movie attendance started a steady
decline; the film industry's gross revenues fell every year from 1947 to 1963. The most obvious cause was the rise of TELEVISION, as more and more Americans each year stayed home to
watch the entertainment they could get most comfortably and inexpensively. In addition,
European quotas against American films bit into Hollywood's foreign revenues.
While major American movies lost money, foreign art films were attracting an enthusiastic and increasingly large audience, and these foreign films created social as well as commercial difficulties for the industry. In 1951, The Miracle, a 40-minute film by Roberto ROSSELLINI, was attacked by the New York Catholic Diocese as sacrilegious and was banned by New York City's commissioner of licenses. The 1952 Supreme Court ruling in the Miracle case officially granted motion pictures the right to free speech as guaranteed in the Constitution, reversing a 1915
ruling by the Court that movies were not equivalent to speech. Although the ruling permitted
more freedom of expression in films, it also provoked public boycotts and repeated legal tests of the definition of obscenity.
Hollywood attempted to counter the effects of television with a series of technological gimmicks
in the early 1950s: 3-D, Cinerama, and Cinemascope. The industry converted almost
exclusively to color filming during the decade, aided by the cheapness and flexibility of the new Eastman color monopack, which came to challenge the monopoly of Technicolor. The content
of postwar films also began to change as Hollywood searched for a new audience and a new
style. There were more socially conscious films--such as Fred ZINNEMANN's The Men (1950)
and Elia KAZAN's On The Waterfront (1954); more adaptations of popular novels and plays;
more independent (as opposed to studio) production; and a greater concentration on FILM
NOIR--grim detective stories in brutal urban settings. Older genres such as the Western still flourished, and MGM brought the musical to what many consider its pinnacle in a series of films produced by Arthur Freed and directed by Vincente MINNELLI, Gene KELLY, and Stanley
Donen.
EUROPEAN FILM IN THE POSTWAR WORLD
The stimulus for defining a new film content and style came to the United States from abroad,
where many previously dormant film industries sprang to life in the postwar years. The defection
of mass American audiences to television, their replacement by those willing to experience more unsettling film entertainment, film festivals where international films competed for commercial distribution, and foreign government support of film production all contributed to the growth of non-American film industries in the postwar years.
Italy
The European film renaissance can be said to have started in Italy with such masters of NEOREALISM as Roberto Rossellini, in Open City (1945), Vittorio DE SICA, in The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Umberto D (1952), and Luchino VISCONTI, in La Terra Trema (1948). Federico FELLINI broke with the tradition to make films of a more poetic and personal nature such as I
Vitelloni (1953) and La Strada (1954) and then shifted to a more sensational style in the 1960s with La Dolce Vita (1960) and the intellectual 8 1/2 (1963). Visconti in the 1960s and '70s adopted a more flamboyant approach and subject matter in lush treatments of corruption and decadence such as The Damned (1970). A new departure--both artistic and thematic--was
evidenced by Michelangelo ANTONIONI in his subtle psychosocial trilogy of films that began
with L'Aventura (1960). The vitality of Italian filmmaking continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s with the political and sexual allegories of Pier-Paolo PASOLINI (The Gospel According to
St. Matthew, 1964; Teorema, 1968; Salo, 1977); with Bernardo BERTOLUCCI's fusing a
radical political consciousness with a stunning visual style (The Conformist, 1970; Last Tango in Paris, 1972; 1900, 1977); and with retrospective glimpses of Italian history and cinema by
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Padre Padrone, 1977; The Night of the Shooting Stars, 1983).
France
With the coming of NEW WAVE films in the late 1950s, the French cinema reasserted the
artistic primacy it had enjoyed in the prewar period. Applying a personal style to radically different forms of film narrative, New Wave directors included Claude CHABROL (The Cousins,
1959), Francois TRUFFAUT (The 400 Blows, 1959; Jules and Jim, 1961), Alain RESNAIS
(Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959), and Jean-Luc GODARD, who, following the success of his
offbeat Breathless (1960), became progressively more committed to a Marxist interpretation of society, as seen in Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966), Weekend (1967), and La
Chinoise (1967). While Truffaut became obsessively concerned with the value of cinema as art, education, and communication (The Wild Child, 1969; Day for Night, 1973; The Last Metro,
1980), Godard became obsessively concerned with the way cinema--like all media of popular culture--masks the covert operations of ideology in bourgeoisie society (Tout va bien, 1972;
Sauve qui peut, 1980; First Name: Carmen, 1983). Eric ROHMER, mining a more traditional
vein, produced sophisticated "moral tales" in My Night at Maud's (1968), Claire's Knee (1970), Chloe in the Afternoon (1972), and Summer (1986). Louis MALLE audaciously explored such
charged subjects as incest and collaborationism in Murmur of the Heart (1971) and Lacombe
Lucien (1974).
Sweden
From Sweden Ingmar BERGMAN emerged in the 1950s as the master of introspective, often death-obsessed studies of complex human relationships. Although capable of comedy, as in
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), Bergman was at his most impressive in more despairing, existentialist dramas such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona
(1966), and Cries and Whispers (1972), in all of these aided by a first-rate acting ensemble and brilliant cinematography. In later color films, such as The Magic Flute (1974) and Fanny and Alexander (1982), Bergman cast off his fatalistic obsessions to reaffirm the magic of theater and cinema.
Great Britain
The British cinema, struggling in the shadow of Hollywood's English-language domination, had been largely reduced to a spate of Alec GUINNESS comedies by the early 1950s. Over the next decade, however, English directors produced compelling cinematic translations of the "angry young man" novelists and playwrights, of Harold PINTER's existentialist dramas, and of the
traditional great British novels. Britain regained a healthy share of the market with films such as Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1958); Tony Richardson's Look Back in Anger (1959), The
Entertainer (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), and Tom Jones (1963); Karel Reisz's Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Morgan (1966); Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life
(1963); Joseph LOSEY's The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967); Ken RUSSELL's Women in
Love (1969); and John Schlesinger's Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971). The popularity of the
James Bond spy series, which began in 1962, gave the industry an added boost.
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
The postwar cinemas of Eastern Europe walked a tightrope between their rich artistic tradition
and official Soviet policies of artistic suppression. The Polish cinema enjoyed two major periods of creative freedom--in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and two decades later, in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, which saw the rise of the Solidarity worker's movement. Roman POLANSKI
began with psychological studies of obsessed or neurotic characters (Knife in the Water, 1962; Repulsion, 1965), only to leave Poland for both American genre films and European literary adaptations (Rosemary's Baby, 1968; Macbeth, 1971; Chinatown, 1974; Tess, 1979). Andrzej
WAJDA remained in Poland to direct films in both periods of expressive freedom (Kanal, 1957;
Ashes and Diamonds, 1958; Man of Marble, 1977; Man of Iron, 1981).
With sketches of Czech life, films from Czechoslovakia dominated the international festivals for much of the 1960s. The major directors either remained silently in Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet invasion (Jiri Menzel, Closely Watched Trains, 1966) or emigrated to the West (Jan
KADAR, The Shop on Main Street, 1965). Most successful of Czech emigres has been Milos
FORMAN (Loves of a Blonde, 1965; The Firemen's Ball, 1967), who found a home in Hollywood
with his off-beat sketches of oddballs and loners (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975;
Amadeus, 1984; Valmont, 1989).
Soviet films have never since equaled the international reputation of the silent classics by Eisenstein and Pudovkin. During the era of repression that ended only in the late 1980s, the few films to make an impact beyond the Soviet sphere of influence were sentimental recollections of
the struggle against the Nazis (The Cranes Are Flying, 1959; Ballad of a Soldier, 1960) or the Boris Pasternak translations of Shakespeare classics, directed by Grigory KOZINTSEV (Hamlet,
1963; King Lear, 1971). The most adventurous Soviet directors made films with difficulty
(Andrei Tarkovsky: Andrei Rublev, 1966; Solaris, 1971); or, once made, their work was locked
up and forgotten. With the era of GLASNOST, however, many of these films began to surface. Audiences in the USSR and elsewhere can now see Aleksandr Askoldov's The Commissar
(1967), or Tengiz Abuladze's epic satire of Stalin, Repentance, (made in 1982, released finally in 1986). Some of the new Soviet films bear unsettling resemblances to Hollywood films: the
adolescent characters in Little Vera (1989), for example, behave exactly like their counterparts in the West.
Germany
The rise of a postwar generation of German filmmakers, nurtured almost exclusively on
American films and actively supported by the German government, produced the most
impressive national cinema of the 1970s--rich in its output and diverse in its styles. Volker Schlondorf specialized in literary adaptations (Young Torless, 1966; the Tin Drum, 1981) while
Wim Wenders made German echoes of the American genre films that shaped his own view of
both film and the world (Kings of the Road, 1976; The American Friend, 1977; Paris, Texas,
1984; Wings of Desire; 1988). Werner HERZOG directed psychological studies of obsessed
characters who try to dominate their landscapes but are instead dominated by them (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1972; Kaspar Hauser, 1974; Fitzcarraldo, 1982). Rainer Werner FASSBINDER
was the most eclectic of the new German group, specializing in political allegories that mixed a radical critique of bourgeois society, a sadomasochistic view of sexual power relationships, and references to the Hollywood cinema that he both loved and mistrusted (Ali, Fear Eats the Soul,
1972; Fox and His Friends, 1974; The Marriage of Maria Brown, 1978; Berlin Alexanderplatz,
which was made for television, 1980). The death (1982) of Fassbinder ended an extraordinary
and prolific career, but his absence has yet to be felt--particularly in the United States, where many of his earlier films are being shown for the first time. Among other German films to attract international attention were the operatic epics of Hans Jurgen Syberberg (Our Hitler, 1977; Parsifal, 1981) and, at the opposite extreme, the minimalist and Marxist critiques of cinema illusion by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet (The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach,
1968; Moses and Aaron, 1975).
Spain
A promising national cinema emerged in Spain where, until the late 1970s, the regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco had restricted expression in all the arts. The most distinguished Spanish filmmaker, Luis BUNUEL, rarely worked in Spain but produced his films largely in
Mexico and France. Bunuel broke new ground with ironic examinations of the internal
contradictions of religious dogma (Nazarin, 1958; Viridiana, 1961; The Milky Way, 1969) and middle-class life (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie, 1972; That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977). Succeeding generations of Spanish filmmakers have been greatly influenced by Bunuel.
They include Carlos Saura (Cria, 1976; Carmen, 1983; Ay, Carmela, 1990) and Pedro
Almodovar (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1987; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
1990).
NONWESTERN FILM PRODUCTION
In the postwar era, directors outside the Western tradition for the first time brought their regional perceptions and concerns to an international audience.
Japan
From Japan came Akira KUROSAWA, who opened a door to the West with his widely acclaimed
Rashomon (1950), an investigation into the elusive nature of truth. His samurai dramas, such as
The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Yojimbo (1961), Kagemusha (1980), and
Ran (1985) were ironic adventure tales that far transcended the usual Japanese sword movies, a
genre akin to U.S. westerns. Kenzi MIZOGUCHI is known for his stately period films Ugetsu
(1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1955). Yoshiro OZU's poetic studies of modern domestic relations (Tokyo Story, 1953; An Autumn Afternoon, 1962) introduced Western audiences to a personal sensitivity that was both intensely national and universal. Younger directors, whose careers date from the postwar burgeoning of the Japanese film, include Teinosuke Kinugasa (Gate of Hell,
1953), Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman of the Dunes, 1964, from a script by the novelist ABE
KOBO), Masahiro Shinoda (Under the Cherry Blossoms, 1975), and Musaki Kobayashi, best
known for his nine-hour trilogy on the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, The Human Condition (1959-61), and Harakiri (1962), a deglamorization of the samurai tradition. An outstanding figure
in the new generation of Japanese filmmakers is Nagisa Oshima (Death by Hanging, 1965; In
the Realm of the Senses, 1976), who shares many of the political and stylistic concerns of Jean
Luc Godard. Juzo Itami makes comic movies that place the Japanese squarely between the
horns of a tradition vs. modernism dilemma. They include Tampopo (1987) and Taxing Woman (1988)--both films that were as popular in the United States as in Japan.
India
The Indian film industry produces more feature films than any other nation in the world for a vast population of movie goers. While most of these films follow clear and cheap formulas, the
problems of an India in transition have been vividly brought to life in the quiet and reflective films of Satyajit RAY, particularly in the trilogy Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956), and The
World of Apu (1958).
Third World
Many other nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have begun to produce films, primarily for their own regions but occasionally for the international market. Cuba dominates the Latin American cinema, with a vast government-funded film school and studio. Its most distinguished director has been Tomas Gutierrez Alea (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968). With the
loosening of political restrictions, the Brazilian and Argentinian cinemas emerged in the 1980s with such films as Hector Babenco's Pixote (1981) and Kiss of the Spider Woman, (1985), and-among many others--Fernando Solanas's Tango (1986).In the 1980s, films from the People's Republic of China began to circulate throughout the West. Other East Asian films include those from Hong Kong, most of them of the kung fu variety.
Australia
Although essentially Western, the Australian cinema shares many thematic concerns with
nations that see themselves as historically colonized and economically exploited by the West. After a series of successes directed by Peter WEIR (The Last Wave, 1977; The Year of Living Dangerously, 1982), Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, 1979; and Star Struck, 1982), Fred Schepisi (The Devil's Playground and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, 1978), Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant, 1980) and George Miller (Mad Max, 1979; The Road Warrior, 1981), many directors and stars (Judy Davis, Mel Gibson) left Australia for Hollywood.
AMERICAN FILM OF THE 1960s and 1970s
Throughout the 1960s and '70s, the American film industry accommodated itself to the
competition of this world market; to a film audience that had shrunk from 80 million to 20 million weekly; to the tastes of a primarily young and educated audience; and to the new social and sexual values sweeping the United States and much of the rest of the industrialized world. Major Hollywood studios became primarily offices for film distribution, and were often subsidiaries of huge conglomerates like Coca Cola. (A decade later, however ownership began to move
overseas, notably to Japan, where the Sony Corp. bought Columbia and Matsushita purchased
MCA.) Hollywood began to produce far more material for television than for movie theaters; and increasingly, films were shot in places other than Hollywood. New York City, for example, recovered its early status as a filmmaking center.
American movies of the period, from the beginning of the Kennedy presidency to the era of Watergate, moved strongly into social criticism (Doctor Strangelove, 1963; The Graduate, 1967; Bonnie and Clyde, 1967; 2001: a Space Odyssey, 1968; The Wild Bunch, 1969; MASH, 1970;
McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 1971; The Godfather, 1972; The Conversation, 1974; One Flew over
the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975). Challenging the traditional norms and institutions of American life-law, order, decency, and sexual purity--these films searched for spiritual meaning in an American society that had become entangled in Viet Nam, enslaved by the rigidly institutional and merely material. The collapse of the 1930 Hollywood Production Code and its 1968 replacement by the Motion Picture Rating System (G, PG, PG-13, R, and X), which indicated the level of audience maturity each film demanded, was an effect of these new themes. The X rating proved
unworkable, and in 1990 was replaced by a new label, NC-17 (no children under 17).
The most successful directors--Stanley KUBRICK, Robert ALTMAN, Francis Ford COPPOLA,
Woody ALLEN, George LUCAS, and Steven SPIELBERG--were those who played most
imaginatively with the tools of film communication itself. The stars (with the exceptions of Paul NEWMAN and Robert REDFORD) were, for their part, more offbeat and less glamorous than
their predecessors of the studio era--Robert DE NIRO, Jane Fonda (see FONDA FAMILY),
Dustin HOFFMAN, Jack NICHOLSON, Al PACINO, Barbra STREISAND, Diane KEATON, Meryl
STREEP.
The same two decades saw the rebirth of U.S. documentary films in the insightful work of Fred WISEMAN, the Maysles brothers, Donn Pennebaker, and, in Europe, Marcel OPHULS.
CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FILM
Since the late 1970s there has been a radical change in both film content and the distribution of the film product. While films of the previous decade challenged the myths of American life and movies, films of the late 1970s and the 1980s reaffirmed those myths and sought new ones. The epics of Steven SPIELBERG and George LUCAS (The Star Wars trilogy, 1977-83; Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977; Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981; E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, 1982) offered an escape from social reality into a movieland Oz of myth and magic, aided by the often beautiful, sometimes awesome effects of visual technology (see CINEMATOGRAPHY;
COMPUTER GRAPHICS). If many of the epics evoked the childhood wonder of space and
magic, others called up the darker myths of horror, terror, and irrational menace (the Halloween and Friday the 13th series; Alien, 1979; Poltergeist, 1982).
Many films that remained earthbound returned to earnest or comic investigations of the
dilemmas of everyday life (divorce and male parenting in Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979; a troubled
family in Ordinary People, 1980; a nostalgic return to lost youth in The Big Chill, 1983; motherdaughter relationships in Terms of Endearment, 1983). The Dirty Harry series of Clint
EASTWOOD films, as well as the Rocky and Rambo films of Sylvester Stallone, affirmed the
power of assertive individualism. The newest popular genre, the "Teen Pic," in which a youth
comes of age by discovering the value of social and sexual relationships, both acknowledged the
age of the majority of the movie audience and adapted the classic "bildungsroman" (a novel,
usually about the moral or intellectual maturing of youth) into optimistic teenage American terms (Saturday Night Fever, 1977; Flashdance, 1983; Risky Business, 1983; The Breakfast Club,
1985).
Vietnam has been revisited (Platoon, 1986; Full Metal Jacket, 1987; Born on the Fourth of July, 1990). Classics from other media are still being translated into cinema (The Bostonians, 1984; Passage to India, 1984; Room with a View, 1986; The Dead, 1987). In recent years, nostalgia
has come in two versions: baseball mythologizing (The Natural, 1984; Bull Durham, 1988;
Field of Dreams, 1989), and live-actor reproductions of revered comic strips (the Superman
series, which began in 1978 but continued well into the 1980s; Batman, 1989; Dick Tracy,
1990).
Since the 1980s, the film and television industries have become virtually indistinguishable. Not only do feature films use television technologies (videotape, video cameras, and video
monitors), but every feature film is composed for eventual viewing on television. The
simultaneous arrival of cable television and videocassette recorders (VCRs) increased both the
need and the audience for feature films in the home. The conversion of feature films to the VCR has almost totally eliminated CinemaScope and other striking visual technologies, reversing the visual tendency of four decades toward complex, contrapuntal compositions in extreme depth
and width. (Imax, a recent big-screen system, uses 70-millimeter film and fills a screen area ten times as big as the standard. But its use has been restricted, primarily, to specialty showings, such as those at museums.) Visual complexity simply cannot be seen on the small television
screen. Instead, movies have invested in stereo soundtracks, which sound tremendous in the
theater and on high-fidelity VCRs. To make their older films more attractive for television, the industry has invented a method for adding color to black and white films.
Gerald Mast
Bibliography:
GENERAL HISTORIES AND CRITICISM: Allen, Robert C., and Gomery, Douglas, Film History:
Theory and Practice (1985); Arnheim, Rudolf, Film as Art (1957; repr. 1971); Bazin, Andre,
What is Cinema?, 2 vols., trans. by Hugh Gray (1967, 1971); Brownlow, Kevis, The Parade's
Gone By (1968); Cook, David A., A History of Narrative Film, 1889-1979 (1981); Cowie, Peter,
ed., Concise History of the Cinema, 2 vols. (1970); Downing, John D., Third World Cinema
(1988); Eisenstein, Sergei M., Film Form (1949; repr. 1969); Ellis, J.C., A History of Film, 3d ed. (1990); Halliwell, Leslie, Filmgoer's Companion, 6th ed. (1977); Jowett, Garth, Film: The Democratic Art (1976); Kael, Pauline, Reeling (1976), 5,000 Nights at the Movies: A Guide from
A to Z (1982), and Movie Love: Complete Reviews, 1988-1991 (1991); Kracauer, Siegfried,
Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960); Leff, Leonard J., and Simmons,
Jerold L., The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code, from the
1920s to the 1960s (1990); Mast, Gerald, A Short History of the Movies, 4th ed. (1986); Mast, Gerald, and Cohen, Marshall, Film Theory and Criticism, 3d ed. (1985); Medved, Michael,
Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values (1992); Monaco,
James, How to Read a Film (1977); Peary, Danny, Cult Movies (1981); Robinson, David, The
History of World Cinema (1973).
NATIONAL FILM HISTORIES
AMERICAN, CANADIAN, AND LATIN AMERICAN FILM: Bogle, Donald, Toms, Coons,
Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1973); Bordwell, David, Thompson, Kristin, and Staiger, Janet, The Classical Hollywood Cinema (1984); Burton, Julianne, The New Latin Cinema (1976); Gabler, Neal, An Empire of Their Own: How
the Jews Invented Hollywood (1988); Hamilton, Ian, Writers in Hollywood, 1915-51 (1990);
Harpole, Charles, general editor, History of the American Cinema, 3 vols. (1991); Haskell,
Molly, From Reverence to Rape (1974); Jowett, Garth, Film: the Democratic Art (1976);
Medved, Michael, Hollywood vs. America (1992); Monaco, James, American Film Now: The
People, the Power, the Movies (1979); Morris, Peter, Embattled Shadows: A History of the
Canadian Film (1979); Nevares, B. R., The Mexican Cinema (1976); Quart, Leonard, and
Auster, Albert, American Film and Society Since 1945 (1985); Russo, Vito, The Celluloid Closet (1981); Sarris, Andrew, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968 (1968);
Sklar, Robert, Movie-Made America (1975); Veroneau, Pierre, ed., The Canadian Cinema
(1979).
AUSTRALIAN: Bertrand, Ina, ed., Cinema in Australia (1990); Murray, Scott, ed., The New
Australian Cinema (1981); Rhode, Eric, History and Heartburn: The Saga of Australian Film
(1981); Stratton, David, The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival (1981).
BRITISH: Armes, Roy, A Critical History of British Cinema (1978); Durgnat, Raymond, A Mirror
for England (1971); Low, Rachael, The History of British Film, 4 vols. (1973); Manvell, Roger, New Cinema in Britain (1969).
CHINESE: Clark, Paul, Chinese Cinema (1988); Eberhard, Wolfram, The Chinese Silver
Screen (1972).
FRENCH: Abel, R., French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915-29 (1987); Armes, Roy, The French
Cinema Since 1946, 2 vols., rev. ed. (1970); Harvey, Sylvia, May '68 and Film Culture (rev.
ed., 1980); Monaco, James, The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette
(1976); Sadoul, Georges, French Film (1953; repr. 1972).
GERMAN: Barlow, John D., German Expressionist Film (1982); Elsaessar, T., New German
Cinema (1989); Hull, David S., Film of the Third Reich: A Study of the German Cinema, 1933-
1945 (1969); Kracauer, Siegfried, From Caligari to Hitler (1959); Manvell, Roger, and Fraenkel, Heinrich, The German Cinema (1971); Phillips, Klaus, ed., New German Filmmakers (1984);
Sandford, John, The New German Cinema (1980); Riefenstahl, Leni, Leni Riefenstahl: A
Memoir (1993); Wollenberg, H. H., Fifty Years of German Film (1948; repr. 1972).
INDIAN: Barnouw, Erik, and Krishnaswamy, S., Indian Film, 2d ed. (1980).
ITALIAN: Jarratt, Vernon, Italian Cinema (1951; repr. 1972); Leprohon, Pierre, The Italian Cinema (1972); Rondi, Gian, Italian Cinema Today (1965); Witcombe, Roger, The New Italian
Cinema (1982).
JAPANESE: Bock, Audie, Japanese Film Directors (1978); Burch, Noel, To the Distant
Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema (1979); Mellen, Joan, The Waves at Genji's
Door: Japan Through Its Cinema (1976); Richie, Donald, The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1965),
The Japanese Movie: An Illustrated History (1966), and The Japanese Cinema (1971); Sato,
Tadao, Currents in Japanese Cinema (1982).
SOVIET AND EASTERN EUROPEAN: Cohen, Louis H., The Cultural-Political Traditions and
Development of the Soviet Cinema, 1917-1972 (1974); Dickenson, Thorold, and De La Roche, Catherine, Soviet Cinema (1948; repr. 1972); Kurzewski, Stanislas, Contemporary Polish
Cinema (1980); Leyda, Jay, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (1960; repr. 1973); Liehm, Antonin J. and Mira, The Most Important Art: East European Film after 1945 (1977);
Taylor, Richard, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (1979).
SWEDISH: Cowie, Peter, Swedish Cinema (1969); Donner, Jorn, The Personal Vision of Ingmar Bergman (1964); Hardy, Forsyth, The Scandinavian Film (1952; repr. 1972).
See also: ANIMATION; CINEMATOGRAPHY; DOCUMENTARY; FILM PRODUCTION; and articles on major directors and cinematic movements and genres.
Copyright 1995 by Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.