CINEMA IN THE '60s

Some Context on the times:

-First TV broadcasts in color

-President John F. Kennedy's assassination and Martin Luther King’s

-Miniskirt made first appearance

-Race riots, anti-war protests, women and gay marches

-Martin Luther King, Woodstock Musical Festival in upper-state New York

-Arpanet (first Internet) invented

-First Man on the Moon with Apollo 11 space flight

-Questioning of authority, more freedom and rights demanded for women and minorities (e.g.: homosexual marches)

-Sexual Revolution

-Socially accepted drug use (LDS, marijuana) psychedelic music.

-Breaking up of conventions and imposed morality

  

-Young people begin to revolt against the conservative norms of the time, creating a “counterculture” in USA, against the social conformity trend in the 50s (as excessive materialism) and the extensive govt. intervention in Vietnam (Hippie movement created)

Effect on Cinema

 The counterculture movement had a significant effect on cinema:

 -Movies begin to break social taboos such as sex and violence, causing both controversy and fascination. 

-They turn increasingly dramatic, unbalanced, and hectic as the cultural revolution was starting. 

  

-The 1960s were also about experimentation. With the inclusion of light-weight and affordable cameras, the underground (outside the scope of mainstream media and popular culture) vanguard film movement progressed.

Technical Innovations

-The invention of the Nagra 1/4", sync-sound, portable open-reel tape deck. 

-Move to all-color production in Hollywood films.

-Expo 67 where new film formats like IMAX were invented and new ways of displaying film were tested (motion picture film format, greater size and resolution than conventional film systems)

-Flat-bed film editing tables appear, like the Steenbeck. Better editing, less risk of damaging film. 

Events in Film Industry

-Removal of the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code in 1967. Voluntary MPAA film rating system.

 -The Studio System has much less control over filmmaking in general. Take-overs by multinationals (Paramount case forbid vertical integration before) 

-The rise of 'art house' films and theaters (not mainstream cinema aimed at mass) 

-Fall in sales, worst economical years for the studio system.

-The rise of independent producers that worked outside of the Studio System. 

-The French New Wave and New Hollywood (End of Classical Hollywood)

-Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité documentaries (capture of reality/truth)

NEW HOLLYWOOD

-Because of decaying Studio System, new approach to filmmaking: intention of being innovative

-Technicolor became used far more frequently, and widescreen processes and technical improvements, such stereo sound and 3-D, invented in order to retain audience and compete with the advance of television, generally not succeeding in the aim

-New audience generation: counter-culture bred, tendency to like art films, nude scenes, violent movies

-Musicals and historical epics not calling attention as before

-Less control of the Studio System on hired individual filmmakers to make market flexible against this changed context

-In movies, new levels of violence, sex, society-defying scenes and passion for artistic value itself (Controversial themes)

-Technically, the greatest change the New Hollywood filmmakers brought to the art form was an emphasis on realism, contrasted with “Old Hollywood’s artificiality,” as in musicals

-More introspective movies (e.g.: from real demons to inside psyche ones, as in Hitchcock’s Psycho, character with multiple personality disorders)

Bonnie and Clyde

Video Embedded

Some characters of epoch you might know

•Woody Allen

•George Lucas

•Keith Carradine

•Harrison Ford

•Clint Eastwood

• Brigitte Bardot

The End of New Hollywood

-Blockbuster mentality / high concept projects (e.g.: star wars)

Soundtracks and Sequels

FRENCH NEW WAVE

-Group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Some were writers of Cahiers du cinéma.

-New Wave filmmakers linked by their rejection of conventional cinematic form and their ideals of iconoclasm. 

-New filming techniques:

Innovative shots (see video)

Rapid scene changes

Improvised dialogue

Stylistic aggressive approach to defy mainstream conventions (eg.: characters directing themselves towards audience)

Themes, as accepting the absurdity of human existence, and the use of broke-up narrative structure.

-Radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative, part of a general break-up with the conservative style. 

-Half necessity and half vision, artistic themes represented on tight budgets. Limited crew and cast. Forced improvisation with equipment.

Jean-Luc Godard

•One of the most extreme/radical New Wave filmmakers.

•Broke with conventional filmmaking, audiences sometimes concluded he felt contempt of them for making such aggressive changes in movie structures, or radical shots

• Existentialism, politics and Marxism common themes.

Weekend shot