Instructor: Walter Metz

American Cinema in the Fifties

Institutional Film History

What we have been calling the Classical Hollywood Cinema, a rigidly organized system of filmmaking, would come to an end by the latter half of the 1950s. The reasons for the "death" of the Classical Hollywood Studio System lie in the Paramount Decree, a Supreme Court decision finalized in 1948 which declared that the studio system was an oligopoly (an industry controlled by a few companies) which colluded against fair competition. The decision came as the result of the 1938 action by the Justice Department against the Hollywood studios. Because of the war and the slow speed of American justice, there was a 10 year delay before the case was fully adjudicated. Once it was, a consent decree resulted which was signed by all of the Hollywood studios. The decision claimed that the Hollywood studios represented a vertically-organized oligopoly, controlling the film industry from beginning (production) through distribution to the end (exhibition). The consent decree stipulated that the studios must sell off their exhibition outlets. Because of a lethargy to fully comply, and a few years’ delay until the full impact of this change was felt, the Hollywood studio system did not fully transform until the late 1950s. For this reason, the shift from Classical to "New" Hollywood is generally located at 1959-1960. This is why we periodize Classical Hollywood as 1917-1959 and New Hollywood as 1960-present. In the long run, the Paramount Decree actually saved Hollywood, since most of the profits in the film industry lie in distribution. A more radical consent decree forcing the studios to sell off their exhibition and distribution outlets really would have caused the death of Hollywood.

The Effects of the Paramount Decision

Even if the Paramount Decision did not kill off Hollywood, it did have a major transformational effect on American cinema.

The effects of the Paramount Decree are wide-spread and varied

1. The Importation of European Art Cinema:  Because the Hollywood studios no longer had a dictatorial control over which films American movie theatres could book, exhibitors could now look elsewhere than Hollywood for films to show. This caused, for the first time since before World War I, a major influx of foreign films into American movie theatres. Very often, since these (largely European) films were not controlled by the Production Code, a greater degree of sexuality entered American movie theatres. Also, since the Classical Hollywood model was not as strong in other countries, the imported films featured more aesthetic and narrative experimentation (which I have linked to modernist technique).
2. The Rise of Independent Production:  Imported films were not the only source for exhibitors to draw from beginning in the 1950s. The freedom of exhibitors to choose films from outside the Hollywood system also led to the rise of independent production by American filmmakers. This began with producers, directors, and actors who had formerly worked for Hollywood studios breaking out on their own to form independent production companies. Otto Preminger is a famous case of a former Hollywood director who began producing his films independently. Kirk Douglas is a famous case of an actor who formed his own production company, Bryna, so that he could produce and have artistic control over the films that he would appear in. New post-war exhibition sites like the drive-in also explain the rise of independent producers of exploitation films, such as Roger Corman’s American International Pictures (AIP) and William Castle, who produced films mainly for the matinee and teenage drive-in movie audience.
3. The Fall of the Production Code:  The freedom of exhibitors to choose also meant that they could begin to exhibit films which had not received the seal of approval from the PCA. These films at first came exclusively from the independent and foreign producers, but by the early 1960s, the Production Code was in practice moot. The American cinema was de facto uncensored from the late 1950s until 1967, when the MPPDA instituted a replacement for the Production Code, the ratings system that we now live under.  CLIP: Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959): The Egg Scene.  Anatomy of a Murder is a perfect example of a film only possible after the Paramount Decree. It is an independent production from Otto Preminger. It concerns taboo subject matter (the film is about a rape trial, it is the first American film to feature the word "panties", etc.). This particular scene is also a perfect example of how aesthetic practices (such as mise-en-scene), and not explicit dialogue, can carry ideological meaning.
4. The Demise of the Blacklist:  The rigid control Hollywood had over its talent during the Classical Hollywood period was abused most forthrightly during the anti-Communist witchhunting of the late 1940s and early 1950s, as I have discussed previously. The Paramount Decree played a large function in the demise of the power of the blacklist. By the early 1960s, the exhibitors could choose to play films that were known to be made by blacklisted talent without fear that the studios would retaliate against them. Thus, we can periodize the blacklist era of Hollywood by examining a moment (1954) when the blacklist still mattered very much against a moment (1960) when it mattered very little. In 1954, Elia Kazan made a film, On the Waterfront, which effectively offers a rationale for why someone would co-operate with government investigators. Kazan had named names at the second convening of HUAC’s investigation of Hollywood in 1951, and was ostracized by many Hollywood leftists. On the Waterfront, in allegorical fashion, validates anti-communist witchhunting and the practices of the blacklist.  CLIP: On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954): Brando testifies before the crime commission.   By 1960, independent producers, such as Kirk Douglas, were publicly denouncing the nefarious blacklist. Bryna produced Spartacus, giving a public screen credit to one of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo, the film’s scriptwriter. Furthermore, Spartacus also allegorically engages the blacklist, except this time to praise not the people who co-operate with it, but the people who oppose it with their dying breaths.  CLIP: Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960): "I Am Spartacus"
5. The Economic Re-organization of Hollywood:  The most important effect of the Paramount Decree is how it destabilized the economic functioning of the Hollywood studios. When we study the institutional history of New Hollywood, we will see how the Paramount Decree so weakened the Hollywood studios, that, in the mid-1960s, they were bought up by multinational corporations, and studio production became a tax write-off for companies like General Tires and Kinney Shoes, companies that cared little for the making of movie art and much for the making of profit.

Aesthetic and Technological Film History

Beyond the devastating effects of the Paramount Decree, the 1950s also represent a period of aesthetic experimentation in Hollywood, as the studios attempted to deal with the competition that television and other leisure entertainments posed with movie-going. The peak of attendance at American movie theatres had occurred in 1946-1947. Shortly after, a recession caused movie attendance to plummet. The 1950s saw the popularity of American cinema continually decline. For example, in 1946, 20% of every recreation dollar went to movies, while by 1950, this had fallen to only 12%.

A myth that traditional film historians propagate is that Hollywood studio heads were too stupid to sense the threat that television presented to their industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Hollywood studios tried often and hard to co-opt and buy into the new post-war television technology. However, the Communications Act of 1934 stipulated that no known trust violator could be granted a license to operate in the broadcasting industry. As a result of the Paramount Decree, the Hollywood studios had few options to intervene in the fledgling television industry.

Thus, Hollywood’s battle with television, out of necessity, was organized around new film technologies and aesthetic practices. During the 1950s, to compete with television, Hollywood films attempted to deliver what television could not: stereophonic sound, 3-D images, widescreen images, and color.

As just one case study of how 1950s films tried to be bigger and better than television images, let’s consider the case of color films. In 1950, CBS tried to establish its color television system as the standard, but for a number of complex regulatory reasons (including the fact that the FCC commissioner was on the take from RCA), NBC’s black-and-white television system was chosen as the industry standard. Thus, color was one area in which films could deliver something that television could not.

Interlude: A Brief History of the Development of Color in Cinema

1. Like sound, color is something that had been with cinema since its invention. There had always been color in the silent cinema. At first, specific sequences from major silent films were hand-tinted.  CLIP: The Great Train Robbery (Edison Co., Edwin S. Porter, 1902): the dance sequence.
2. Then, codes for colors were adopted to distinguish night scenes from day. This was accomplished by vat-tinting the entire film stock by dipping it into different colored vats of dye. Blue-tinted scenes stood for night while untinted scenes stood for day.   CLIP: The Haunted House (Eddie Cline, 1921): Buster Keaton enters the haunted house. 
3. By the late 1930s, Technicolor, a three-color photography system had been perfected. The system was still very expensive, and was generally used for big-budget "A" pictures at each of the studios.  CLIP: The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner Bros., Michael Curtiz, 1938):  Robin Hood shows Maid Marian about poverty.
4. However, it was not until the battle with television that color in American cinema began to be used more frequently. For example, in 1947 (the first year of regularized television broadcasting), 12% of Hollywood features were made in color, but by 1954, 50% of Hollywood features were in color. The 1950s also saw color beginning to be used for complex narrative and thematic purposes. This is one of the areas where Douglas Sirk and the color design in his 1950s melodramas enters the picture.  CLIP: All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955): Kay makes Cary give up Ron.

Social Film History

Genre films in the 1950s became more and more critical of the formulas from which they derived. This so-called "genre revisionism" (a genre film which interrogates/questions/challenges the assumptions of its genre) can best be seen in two of the most important 1950s film genres:  the melodrama and the Western.

1. The Melodrama

Douglas Sirk is typically considered the great master of the 1950s revisionist melodrama. Sirk had worked in Weimar Germany as a theatre director, and had staged some of the modernist plays written by Bertoldt Brecht. Sirk’s 1950s melodramas have many of the same characteristics of the plays of Brecht: they attempt to get us to notice social contradictions through a self-conscious use of style (an aggressive style which is usually labelled "baroque"). For example, All That Heaven Allows gets us to notice Cary’s isolation grounded in gender discrimination by constantly showing her to be literally consumed by the consumer objects of the middle-class home.

CLIP: All That Heaven Allows: "Life’s parade at your fingertips"

2. The Western

In the 1950s, the Western was transformed from a simplistic cowboys versus indians narrative tradition into what became known as the adult or psychological Western. In these more relevant 1950s Westerns, the good and bad guys were much harder to distinguish from one another.

CLIP: The Searchers (John Ford, 1956): Ethan maniacally shoots at the buffalo herd

I wanted you to read Brian Henderson’s essay on The Searchers to get an idea of the kinds of concerns of the psychological Western. In the essay, Henderson argues that this John Ford psychological Western allegorically tracks American cultural response to Brown v. Board of Education (May 17, 1954). What undergirds Henderson’s analysis is that 1950s revisionist Westerns use Native Americans as allegorical stand-ins for African-Americans in order to address the conflicts over race raging in American culture at the time.

CLIP: The Searchers: Ending

Ethan, the segregationist (a believer in what Henderson calls "kinship by blood only") is banished from the American home, while Martin, the assimilated Indian (benefitting from what Henderson calls "kinship by adoption") is let in.

Note, however, that this does not mean that The Searchers is a progressive text. In fact, The Searchers is quite conservative, if not outright racist. That is, the Native American Scar, who refuses to be assimilated into white culture is vilified, and has to be killed, serving as a lesson to the other Native Americans, that they are welcome as long as they fully assimilate into American culture. This is why Henderson calls The Searchers "a manual for non-whites" (448).

American genre filmmaking--The Graduate (1967) as revisionist melodrama and The Wild Bunch (1968) as revisionist Western--would become even more revisionist by the late 1960s (fueled by the late 1960s social protest movements), as we shall see in a few weeks, but the 1950s melodramas and Westerns represent a moment in American cinema when filmmaking was on the cutting edge of criticizing an American social order which had not yet become able to directly articulate its own problems.

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This page was last updated on May 30, 2001

Questions or Comments? Please phone me at (406) 994-6403 or send e-mail to:  metz@montana.edu

Walter Metz, Department of Media and Theatre Arts, Montana State University--Bozeman