History of Cinema

The 'New Hollywood' or Post-classical cinema

'The New Hollywood' and 'post-classical cinema' are terms used to describe the period following the decline of the studio system in the 50s and 60s and the end of the production code. It is defined by a greater tendency to dramatize such things as sexuality and violence, and by the rising importance of blockbuster movies.

'Post-classical cinema' is a term used to describe the changing methods of storytelling in the New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical/Golden Age period: chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature "twist endings", and lines between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The roots of post-classical storytelling may be seen in film noir, in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's storyline-shattering Psycho.

The 1960s

The 1960s saw the increasing decline of the studio system in Hollywood. Many films were now being made on location in other countries, or using studio facilities abroad, such as Pinewood in England and Cinecitta in Rome. Hollywood movies were still largely aimed at big family audiences, and it was often the more old-fashioned films that produced the studios' biggest successes. Productions like Mary Poppins (1964), My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) were among the biggest money-makers of the decade, but American films were losing the creative impetus to British and European film makers. The growth in independent producers and production companies, and the increase in the power of individual actors also contributed to the decline in traditional Hollywood studio production.

There was also an increasing awareness of foreign language cinema in this period. The late 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of the French New Wave with films like Les quatre cents coups and Jules et Jim from directors such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Italian films like Frederico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, and the stark dramas of Sweden's Ingmar Bergman were also making an impact outside their home countries.

In Britain the "Free Cinema" of Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and others lead to a group of realistic and ground-breaking dramas including Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving and This Sporting Life. Other British films such as Repulsion, Darling, Alfie, Blow-up and Georgy Girl (all in 1965-1966) helped to break taboos around sex and nudity on screen, while the casual sex and violence of the James Bond films, beginning with Doctor No in 1962 would turn the series into a worldwide phenomenon.

Africans had been denied the right to make movies for decades. In the sixties, however Ousmane Sembène produced several French- and Wolof-language films became the 'father' of African Cinema.

In Latin America the dominance of the Hollywood model was challenged by many film makers. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino called for a politically engaged Third Cinema in contrast to Hollywood and the european auteur cinema.

In documentary film the sixties saw the blossoming of Direct Cinema, an observational style of film making as well as the advent of more overtly partisan films like The year of the pig about the Vietnam War by Emile de Antonio.

By the late 1960s however, Hollywood was beginning to claw back some of the creative impetus with films like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), and The Wild Bunch (1969). Bonnie and Clyde is often seen as the beginning of the New Hollywood.

The 1970s

The 1970s saw the emergence of a new generation of film school-trained American film makers, like Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Brian de Palma. This coincided with the increasing popularity of the auteur theory in film literature and the media, a development which gave these directors far greater control over their projects than would have been possible in earlier eras. This lead to some enormous critical and commercial successes, like Coppola's The Godfather films, Spielberg's Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and George Lucas's Star Wars. It also, however, lead to some inevitable failures, including Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. The latter almost single-handledly brought down backer United Artists following its release in 1980.

The phenomenal success of Jaws and Star Wars in particular, lead to the rise of the modern blockbuster, with the Hollywood studios increasingly intent on producing a smaller number of very high budget films with massive marketing and promotional backing. This development has continued to the present day.

The mid-1970s had also seen a big increase in adult cinemas and the legal production of hardcore pornographic films in the U.S. Deep Throat and it's star Linda Lovelace became something of a phenomenon and lead to a spate of similar sex films throughout the decade. These would finally die out with the introduction of VCR technology in the 1980s.

The early '70s also alerted English language audiences to the new West German cinema, with Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders among its leading exponents.

The end of the decade saw the first major international interest in Australian cinema. Peter Weir's films Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave and Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith gained critical acclaim, while George Miller's violent futuristic actioner Mad Max was a substantial hit in 1979 and marked the beginning of Australian attempts to target the international market.

The '80s: sequels, blockbusters and videotape

The shift that occurred in the 1980s from seeing movies in a theater to watching videos on a VCR, is a move close to the original concepts of Thomas Edison. In the early part of that decade, the movie studios tried legal action to ban home ownership of VCRs as a violation of copyright, which proved unsuccessful. That proved most fortunate, however, as the sale and rental of their movies on home video became a significant source of revenue for the movie companies. THX Ltd, a division of Lucasfilm launched in 1982. Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980); After Hours (1985); The King of Comedy (1983).

The Digital Age

After the decade of the 1970s helped define the blockbuster motion picture, the way Hollywood released its films changed. Now films, for the most part, would premiere in an even wider number of theatres, although, to this day, some movies still premiere using the route of the limited/roadshow release system. Until this new "Digital Age", the primary way for audiences to see their favorite films again and again was to re-release films. But the medium of home video would change all of this.

Among the terms most associated with this new era include:

George Lucas: Star Wars
Industrial Light and Magic
Steven Spielberg: Jaws

The 1990s: technical advances

The history of film and video distributed online began in the year 1994 with the first public showing of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Influence of Comics. Smoke, 1995. In the 1990s, cinema began the process of making another transition, from physical film stock to digital cinema technology. Pixar, The Matrix. Meanwhile, in the home video realm, the DVD would become the new standard for watching movies after their standard theatrical releases.

The new millennium

Peter Greenaway's The Tulse Luper Suitcases takes advantage of new media and high definition technology. Interactivity of PlayStation, &, Grand Theft Auto relationship w/cinema: actors, soundtrack, narrative structure. The Superhero film also began to re-emergence in prominence, notably with the huge success of Spider-Man starting the trend. Faster edits. home theatre. Future: Problems of digital distribution to be overcome -- higher compression, cheaper technology. Content security. Expiration of copyrights, enforcing copyright.