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I Asian Cinema
International recognition for the film cultures of Japan and India came after 1945, beginning with acclaim for individual filmmakers. Veteran Japanese directors Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujiro, along with the younger filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, were acknowledged in the 1950s as leading stylists of the film medium. Ozu made intricate, intimate films of domestic life, such as Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953). Mizoguchi made complex atmospheric works that combined realism with a sense of the supernatural, as in Ugetsu (1953). Kurosawa, still active in the 1990s, became known for such epic period films (films set in the past) as Rashomon (1950) and (1954). In the 1960s Japan had its own “new wave” with the films of , Imamura Shohei, and Shinoda Masahiro.Film in India had developed during the 1930s as a popular entertainment dominated by musicals. In a country of more than a dozen major languages, film music reached across linguistic barriers. Performers who sang gained extraordinary celebrity from recordings and radio broadcasts of film music. Perhaps the first Indian filmmaker to be appreciated internationally as a cinema stylist was Satyajit Ray, whose “Apu trilogy”—Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959)—adapted a well-known Bengali novel in a neorealist style. Mrinal Sen became known as a director of films on political topics. Popular Indian cinema continued its tradition of music and melodrama.
Films also emerged from Chinese cultures during the 1980s. A new generation of directors, including , Zhang Yimou, and Tian Zhuangzhuang, appeared in the Peoples’ Republic of China. Breaking with a tradition of studio filmmaking, they went to rural China to make films of daily life. From Taiwan, Hou Hsiao-hsien directed important films exploring the island’s history. Hong Kong, with a reputation for commercial martial arts movies, also produced filmmakers such as Stanley Kwan, who made popular melodramas with sensational narratives and incisive social commentary.
J Cinema of Australia and New Zealand
Although the English-speaking nations of Australia and New Zealand released films in the early 1900s, they had difficulty establishing their own film cultures because American and British films dominated their theaters. A resurgence of the film industry began in Australia during the 1970s with increased government financing for film projects and better training for filmmakers. This policy reaped success both in the volume of films produced and in the international recognition accorded such directors as Peter Weir, for Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1977); Fred Schepisi, for The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978); Gillian Armstrong, for My Brilliant Career (1979); and Bruce Beresford, for Breaker Morant (1979).
Success, however, can bring opportunities elsewhere, as it did for British directors (and performers) after World War II. All the Australian filmmakers named above accepted offers to direct in Hollywood and have remained for the most part in the United States. The same holds true for actors such as Mel Gibson. As the star of the Australian films Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max 2 (1981), Gibson became a familiar figure in Hollywood action films and went on to direct and star in the Academy Award-winning Braveheart (1995).
Australia functioned toward New Zealand much as Hollywood did toward Australia, as a much larger film industry luring talent away. New Zealand director Jane Campion made her name in Australia with films such as Sweetie (1989) before returning to film the international hit The Piano (1993). Director Lee Tamahori made an impressive debut with (1994), about city life today among the Maori natives of New Zealand. Tamahori then skipped Australia and went directly to Hollywood.
K Cinema of Africa and the Arab World
Although Egypt and a few other Arab and African countries had produced films for decades, filmmaking generally began to develop on the continent of Africa only after the 1960s, in the period of nation-building that followed the withdrawal of European colonial powers (Africa: Postcolonial Development). Egyptian cinema also experienced a surge in the 1960s as political changes made it possible for filmmakers such as Youssef Chahine to produce social commentaries in a neorealist style, as in the film Al-Ard (The Land, 1969).
In Africa south of the Sahara, the pioneering filmmaker was Ousmane Sembène of Senegal, a novelist turned film director. Film historians consider Sembène’s film debut, La noire de ... (Black Girl, 1966), the first black African feature film, even though it was shot mostly in France with a French crew. Later Sembène returned to Senegal and made a series of political, social realist, and period films that rank him among the era’s leading filmmakers. Other important African filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s include Souleymane Cisse of Mali, director of Finye (The Wind, 1982) and Yeelen (The Light, 1987), and Idrissa Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso, director of Yaaba (1989) and Tilai (1990). Restrictions in many countries on the expression of divergent political views have led a number of African directors to work in exile, however.
Constraints imposed by political or religious authorities have also hampered some filmmakers in North Africa and the Middle East. The complex intervention of politics in private life became the subject of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khieifi’s Noce in Galilee (Wedding in Galilee, 1987), set in a West Bank village under Israeli military occupation.
L Latin American Film
A resurgence of Latin American filmmaking, beginning in the 1960s, had roots in both cinema and politics: neorealism and the French new wave on one hand and political changes such as the 1959 Communist revolution in Cuba on the other. The most prominent film movement, cinema novo (new cinema), occurred in Brazil with works that dramatized the nation’s social ills. Director Glauber Rocha made powerful films set in remote regions of the country, including Barravento (The Turning Wind, 1962), Deus e o diablona terra do sol (Black God, White Devil, 1964), and Antonio das Mortes (1969). In Vidas Secas (Barren Lives, 1963), Nelson Pereira dos Santos dramatized a 1930s novel depicting the poverty in Brazil’s northwest backlands.
After Fidel Castro’s government gained power in Cuba in 1959, it took nearly a decade before state efforts to promote filmmaking began to bear fruit. The most important Cuban filmmaker was Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, whose Memorias del subdesarollo (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968) was a reflective work contemplating changes in Cuba during the early 1960s. Also in 1968, Humberto Solas made Lucia, a film that sought to re-envision Cuban history in three historical episodes centering on the lives of women.
The Mexican cinema had already experienced three important periods of filmmaking: the years around World War I, the 1930s, and Buñuel’s years in Mexico in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Although the country did not sustain a significant film movement in later decades, it did produce individual works of importance. These range from Paul LeDuc’s Frida (1984), dramatizing the life of painter Frida Kahlo, to Alfonso Arau’s Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate, 1991), a highly popular work that blends realistic detail with elements of fantasy in a style called magic realism.
VIII American Cinema from 1960 to the Present
A Conglomerate Takeovers
The American film industry entered one of its most troubled eras at the beginning of the 1960s. At the time its decline as a medium for mass entertainment appeared unremitting, given the increasing dominance of television. Only in retrospect can those difficult years be seen as a time of transition for the industry, a search for effective new marketing techniques that would come to fruition in the mid-1970s.
The factors causing a crisis in American cinema were many. Besides a continuing drop in motion-picture attendance, a generation of producers and filmmakers who had worked in movies since the days of silent film was reaching the age of retirement. Executives who had decades of show business experience were being replaced by relative novices. A rapid transformation of American cultural values in the era of rock-and-roll music, civil rights struggles, and conflict over the Vietnam War (1959-1975) left many film companies unsure of how to appeal to a young generation that made up the majority of moviegoers.
Weakened by financial setbacks, the film companies were ripe for takeover by large corporations. Whereas in earlier decades—and again in the 1990s—movie companies united with related entertainment businesses, during the 1960s unrelated enterprises, including a parking lot company and an insurance company, acquired motion-picture studios. In some cases these firms decided that the real estate owned by a studio was more valuable than the movies it produced.
Another major development of the 1960s was the elimination of the Motion Picture Production Code and the office that had been set up in the 1930s to monitor studio compliance. Given changes in the public use of language and in sexual candor over several decades, the code’s prohibitions were seen as outdated, and, from a practical viewpoint, detrimental to making films that contemporary audiences wanted to see. After several years in the mid-1960s without industry standards, movie producers adopted a rating system for guiding parents and children. The key terms are PG, for parental guidance suggested, and R, for restricted to people under age 17 unless accompanied by an adult. In practice, the ratings board has sought to regulate the representation of sexual activity in motion pictures but has given less attention to the depiction of violence.
The fortunes of the motion-picture industry began to change for the better in the mid-1970s when studios developed a new method of marketing films: By putting motion pictures onto thousands of screens simultaneously, supported by advertising campaigns on national television, studios could maximize revenue on a handful of popular films. Financially thriving once again, most major movie companies became divisions of large entertainment conglomerates that had holdings in publishing, television, music, and other media.
B New American Filmmakers
One important result of the turmoil among U.S. movie companies during the 1960s was an increasing emphasis on the importance of the director. With the breakdown of the old studio system, directors were no longer studio employees but functioned independently. The French critical emphasis on directors as auteurs also helped give filmmakers more power. A new generation of directors emerged in the 1960s, amid the industry’s financial difficulties, to bring new artistry to American cinema and enhance its prestige.
Key figures of the 1960s generation included Stanley Kubrick, Arthur Penn, Sam Peckinpah, and Robert Altman. Kubrick, who moved to England early in the decade, made such important films as Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), a black comedy about nuclear holocaust, and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a landmark work that revised the science fiction genre. Penn directed Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which dramatized the activities of 1930s outlaws and spoke to a 1960s sense of social alienation. Peckinpah’s most famous work was The Wild Bunch (1969), a Western notable for its graphic depictions of violence. Beginning with M*A*S*H (1970), concerning an emergency medical unit in the Korean War (1950-1953), Altman brought a satirical touch to several traditional Hollywood genres.
In the early 1970s a younger generation of filmmakers burst onto the Hollywood scene. They were called “movie brats” both for their youth and because most of them were film school graduates, prompting the movie establishment to say that these filmmakers knew more about old movies than about life. These figures included Francis Ford Coppola, , Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. Coppola directed a huge hit of the early 1970s, The Godfather (1972), a film that gave signs of the industry’s revival. Lucas made American Graffiti (1973), a highly popular film about teenagers that looked back to the previous decade. Scorsese’s first important film was Mean Streets (1973), set in the ethnic milieu of New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood. After directing several small films, Spielberg, the youngest of the group, directed the film whose enormous success was to change the American movie landscape, Jaws (1975) (see “Big-Budget Blockbusters,” below).
Most of these figures continued as important filmmakers in the decades following Hollywood’s mid-1970s revival. A number of others joined their ranks as American cinema’s top directors. New York-based Woody Allen made wry urban comedies such as the Academy Award-winning Annie Hall (1977). Michael Cimino won an Academy Award for The Deer Hunter (1978), a critically acclaimed examination of the Vietnam War. British director made two highly significant films, Blade Runner (1982), a futuristic film praised for its visual effects, and Thelma & Louise (1991), about two women on the run from a male-dominated society.
Blue Velvet (1986), directed by David Lynch, a surreal film set in a small American town, was ranked by critics as one of the top American films of the 1980s. Similarly ranked was Do the Right Thing (1989) by black filmmaker , who also directed a biographical film about a militant and controversial black leader of the 1960s, Malcolm X (1992). Lee’s film followed another controversial film examining recent history, JFK (1991), directed by Oliver Stone, which claimed that a conspiracy among government officials lay behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Actor-director Clint Eastwood gained recognition as a major filmmaker with (1992), a Western that won Academy Awards for best picture and director.
C Big-Budget Blockbusters
If any one film can be so designated, Jaws marked the turning point in the fortunes of the American film industry. So-called blockbuster films had always been part of the Hollywood production mix, but Jaws rewrote the blockbuster formula and, above all, proved that in conjunction with new marketing strategies a single motion picture could produce unprecedented revenues. Jaws was the first film to earn more than $100 million for its studio.
Although it was based on a best-selling novel—in conformity with the earlier blockbuster formula—Jaws lacked big-name stars, but it did offer a fabulous, frightening special-effects mechanical monster shark. The waning significance of stars and the growing importance of special effects were aspects of the new blockbuster phenomenon that developed in the aftermath of Jaws. These changes also indicated the studios’ intent to capture the attention of young adults and children, the most important segment of the movie audience. These trends were confirmed by the film that surpassed Jaws at the box office, George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977), a science-fantasy film that displayed the most spectacular special effects of space flight ever seen in cinema up to that time.
Star Wars shaped the blockbuster phenomenon over the next two decades. Blockbuster films tended to be fantasies based on comic-book characters or adventure heroes. Lucas and Steven Spielberg, the director of Jaws, were involved in most of the biggest box-office draws. In the 1980s Lucas produced the next two films in the Star Wars series: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), directed by Irvin Kershner, and Return of the Jedi (1983), directed by Richard Marquand. During the same time Spielberg directed and Lucas produced three films concerning an intrepid archaeologist named Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and (1989). Spielberg’s other blockbusters included E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), concerning an alien left behind on Earth by his spaceship, and Jurassic Park (1993), a work combining computer-generated animation of dinosaurs with human action.
Action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger also participated in the blockbuster phenomenon, but some action films fared poorly at the box office. In the 1990s other types of films attained blockbuster status. In the same year as Jurassic Park, Spielberg also released Schindler’s List (1993), a film about one man’s efforts to save European Jews from Nazi death camps during World War II. This work, shot almost completely in black-and-white, earned Spielberg his first Academy Award. Titanic (1997), directed by James Cameron, depicted the 1912 Titanic disaster, in which a luxury liner sank during its first transatlantic voyage. The film broke box-office records and won 11 Academy Awards. Action and fantasy films did remain popular, however. One of the biggest box-office draws of 1999 was The Phantom Menace, George Lucas’s fourth installment in the Star Wars series.
Mega-blockbusters continued to rule Hollywood at the start of the 21st century. Director Ridley Scott’s action-filled Gladiator was one of the biggest successes of 2000 at both the box office and the Academy Awards, where it won for best picture and best actor. Remakes and sequels were well-represented among top money-makers, with box-office leaders including the remake Planet of the Apes (2001) and the sequels Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), Jurassic Park III (2001), Men in Black II (2002), and the fifth Star Wars movie, Attack of the Clones (2002). Other major movies were based on popular fantasy books—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)—and comic characters—Spiderman (2002) and Scooby-Doo (2002).
IX Recent Trends
While the blockbuster dominated the economics of motion pictures screened in theaters in the years after 1975, the advent of home entertainment delivery systems had an equally profound effect on movie culture—perhaps the most striking impact of any technological change in the medium’s history. The first new system was the videocassette recorder (VCR), which could play prerecorded videotapes or record programs shown on television for later playback. At the same time, cable television systems vastly expanded the number of channels available to the home viewer along with access to recent movies (see Broadcasting, Radio and Television: Current Trends; : Cable Transmission). As these new technologies came into widespread use, on the horizon loomed the computer, offering possibilities for home viewing and as a tool in media production. The digital video disc, or DVD, became one of the major techniques for viewing movies on computers and also began replacing videocassettes as the major format for home viewing.
The VCR and DVD technology spawned an entirely new way of viewing movies on prerecorded cassettes or discs that could be rented or purchased at video shops. Despite the fears of the motion-picture industry, the new technology did not contribute to a decline in movie theater attendance. Instead, it fostered a much wider experience of movies for viewers who sought entertainment more frequently at home than in public settings. The consequences were numerous: The history of motion pictures, in addition to recent films, became available to the home viewer; cassette and disc rental and sales earned new revenue for motion-picture companies—in some cases, more than the theatrical release; and advance sales of video rights enabled small production companies to finance the creation of low-budget films.
With cable networks as additional sources of revenue, and functioning in some cases as producers themselves, one consequence was a substantial increase in independent feature-film production. Blockbusters coexisted with dozens of smaller films that helped to attract more mature viewers back to the medium. Motion pictures were not the dominant popular medium that they had been before the advent of television, but they still commanded a prominent place. Perhaps because of movie publicity and the impact of larger-than-life images on the big screen, movies took a central place in debates about the social consequences of presenting violence and sexual content in popular entertainment.
Other issues arose from the prospect of new technologies that could shape screen experiences or alter images through computer graphics. The motion picture Twister (1996), directed by Jan De Bont, attained new levels of special-effects spectacle in its scenes of rampaging tornadoes created through digital imaging. The special effects used in Titanic were designed to disguise the fact that most of the action was not filmed on location on an oceangoing luxury liner but in a studio. In The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, George Lucas used digital imaging to create scenes and characters that could never exist in real life.
At the beginning of the 21st century the motion-picture medium offered a study in contrasts. Popular blockbuster films, enhanced by computer graphic imagery, continued to attain unprecedented worldwide attention. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, based on the young wizard character from the novels of British author J. K. Rowling, opened simultaneously on one-fourth of all movie screens in the United States and broke box-office records. At the same time, films of artistic and cultural interest from throughout the world were available in theaters and in a variety of home-viewing formats. Emerging cinemas, such as that of Iran and China, captured critical attention, and the Chinese-language martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) became the most successful subtitled film ever released in the United States. Entering its second century of existence, the cinema appears more than ever to be in an ongoing state of transformation.
("History of Motion Pictures," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.)