1940s Hollywood
This is the biggest box office year in the history of the studio system.
What is 1946?
Into the 1950s, these started popping up, showing independent and foreign films.
What is the arthouse theater?
According to David Bordwell, art cinema acknowledges that this is a prominent feature of reality (and thus seems to revel in it).
What is uncertainty?
This cycle of postwar films popularized expressionism in Hollywood and favored cynicism over optimism.
What is film noir?
This director of Salt of the Earth was a member of the Hollywood Ten.
Who is Herbert Biberman?
This director, born in England, emigrated to Hollywood in 1939, signing a seven-year contract with David O. Selznick.
Who is Alfred Hitchcock?
Because they no longer owned these, the studios produced fewer movies during this decade.
What are theaters.
This critical theory, which originated from French critics in the postwar era, argued that directors are the chief architects of cinematic meaning.
What is the auteur theory?
In addition to Disney's animated features, this genre in the 1950s was always in color.
What is the musical?
This screenwriter used a front for his screenplay of Odds Against Tomorrow.
Who is Abraham Polonsky?
In 1948 this court ruling signalled the beginning of the end of the Hollywood studio system.
What is the Paramount Decrees?
This stereoscopic format meant to help Hollywood compete with TV was briefly popular during this decade.
What is 3D?
This postwar film movement in Italy is thought to be a primary influence on the international art film.
What is Italian neorealism?
This court case in 1952 deemed movies protected by the same free speech laws as art.
What is the Miracle Case?
This was a common theme in movies scripted and/or directed by blacklisted filmmakers.
What is backstabbing or disloyalty?
In Notorious, we might be initially fooled into thinking the uranium/spy espionage is central, when in fact it's the complicated relationship between the principals.
What is the MacGuffin?
Rather than produce all their movies, many studios during this decade relied on this side of the industry to keep them afloat.
What is distribution?
The international art film coincided with the emergence of this circuit, which tended to screen and help circulate these movies for an international audience.
What is the film festival circuit?
In addition to Playboy, these publications in the early 1950s opened up new perspectives on sexuality in the US.
What are the Kinsey Reports?
Many Hollywood executives and personnel were forced to appear before this US House of Representatives committee.
What is the HUAC?
With the exception of Orson Welles for CITIZEN KANE, Hollywood directors under contract in the 1940s were never given this right.
What is final cut?
During this decade, these two technological developments were increasingly standardized.
What is color film and widescreen?
According to the Third Cinema manifesto we read, art and "auteur" cinema is this.
Who is "second cinema"?
Many consider this the last classic American film noir (just before Psycho shifts the course of crime films).
What is Odds Against Tomorrow?
Given the history of commerce and colonialism in Senegal, Black Girl references this kind of trade pretty clearly.
What is slavery or the slave trade?