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COM 329, Contemporary Film
Study Guide
Williams & Hammond textbook
The 1960s
The 1960s--Introduction
-Four exhibition strategies adopted at the end of the Hollywood Studio System:
The road show
The traditional first run
The art movie
The drive-in
-Runaway productions (outside U.S.)
-Television and the migration of the audience to the suburbs
-Role of the star system in 1960s Hollywood (star as producer; agent as dealmaker)
-Jack Valenti and the 1968 MPAA ratings system
-The package unit system
-Corporate conglomerate buyouts (see also the Studio Genealogies ppt)
-The Blockbuster mentality
-The Hollywood Renaissance and the New Hollywood
-American International Pictures (AIP)
Chapter 1: American Cinema 1965-70
by Mark Shiel
-Hollywood’s inability to deal with urgent social issues
-The road movie—uniquely American?
-Roger Corman (also recall section on Corman from A Decade Under the Influence)
-Thomas Schatz: “the period’s schizophrenic alternation between a developing irony and
a reactionary nostalgia”
-Spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone (e.g., A Fistful of Dollars, 1964)
-George Romero and Night of the Living Dead (1968)
-Shift from studios as makers of films to studios as film distributors and financiers
Chapter 2: Debts, Disasters and Mega-Musicals: The Decline of the Studio System
by James Russell
-The eight companies of the Studio System (see also handout on the U.S. Studio System
and its Demise)
-More on the road-show phenomenon and runaway productions
-Independents in Hollywood (e.g., David O. Selznick)
-Power of the agent in Hollywood (e.g., Cleveland’s own Lew Wasserman)
-The musical in the 1960s (see also ppt of the Death of the American Movie Musical)
-Case study of Fox studio in the 1960s (Under the helm of re-hired Darryl F. Zanuck:
Cleopatra, 1962; The Sound of Music, 1965; Planet of the Apes, 1967)
Chapter 3: American Underground Cinema of the 1960s
by Michael O’Pray
-SEE Underground Cinema ppt!!!
-New York and San Francisco
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-“Low budgets, technically primitive techniques and either banal or sexually explicit
content became cool, fashionable and equally derided.”
-Underground film as—dissenting; investigating the film medium itself; utopian
aestheticism; outrageous sexual behavior; banal and boring
-Players:
Maya Deren
Kenneth Anger (Scorpio Rising, 1963)
Stan Brakhage
Andy Warhol
Michael Snow (Wavelength, 1967)
Jack Smith (Blonde Cobra, with Ken Jacobs, 1959-63; Flaming Creatures, 1963;
see also documentary about Smith--Jack Smith and the Destruction of
Atlantis, 2007)
-Alfred Leslie and Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy (1959)
-Maya Deren and Poetic cinema
-Lifestyles presented in key films—poets/gays/drag artists; lacking political or social
program; notion of community
-P. Adams Sitney and the notion of structural film
-Jonas Mekas and the Filmmakers Cooperative in NYC
Chapter 4: North American Documentary in the 1960s
by Brian Winston
-Shift from government supported docs to commercial sponsorship
-Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty, 1946-8)
-Move to 16mm, role of TV news
-The “dogma” of Drew Associates:
No speaking to subjects (no interviews, no direction)
No artificial lighting
No added sound (no VOG, no music)
-Direct cinema—and its criticisms
-Players:
Drew and Leacock (Primary, 1960)
Maysles brothers (Salesman, 1968)
Donn Pennebaker (Dont Look Back, 1967)
Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, 1968)
Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, 1988)
Michael Moore (Roger and Me, 1989)
-Rockumentaries
-Excessive shooting ratio of “pure” direct cinema
-Wiseman: “I don’t know how to make an objective film. I think my films are a fair
reflection of the experience of making them.”
Chapter 5: “The Last Good Time We Ever Had?” Revising the Hollywood Renaissance
by Steve Neal
-The Hollywood Renaissance as—aesthetic experimentation, generic revisionism,
European-style auterism, anti-establishment ethos
-Also—combining stylistic innovations from Europe with American subject matter,
iconoclastic attitude to prevailing social and cinematic conventions, exploiting the
suspension of the Production Code, featuring young performers, appealing to a youthful,
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cine-literate audience. . . and low-to-medium budget productions, a break with classical
narrative
-Hollywood Renaissance vs. New Hollywood
-Movie Brats (Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, etc.)
-The unique case of Psycho
-Examples of Hollywood Renaissance films, including The Graduate (1967), Bonnie and
Clyde (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Easy Rider (1969), M*A*S*H (1970) and Little
Big Man (1970)