Hollywood in the Seventies and Eighties

The enormous popular successes of two conventional formula films: Love Story and Airport restored Hollywood’s faith in the big-budget, mass appeal feature, and the seventies witnessed an inflation in the production costs of American films unparalleled in the industry’s history

Disaster Films suggesting the security of an economy that could produce such cathartic epic scale disaster films

• The Poseidon Adventure
• The Towering Inferno
• Earthquake in Sensurround

Between 1972-77 the budget for a single film increased by 178 %. By 1979, production costs nearly double the 1977 figures to $7.5 million per feature plus a steady increase in the amount spent on advertising and marketing campaigns designed to ensure the films’ success. These expenditures often rising as high as twice the production costs.

• In this volatile fiscal environment, it is almost impossible for a new writer or director to be given a chance to work on an even modestly expensive $7-10 million film.
• TOO, most of the established Hollywood studios allowed themselves to be absorbed by huge conglomerates…

Example: Warner Bros. reincorporated as Warner Communications Inc. with sale to Kinney Services in 1969.

• Later, Warner Communications acquired Lorimar and merged with Time Inc, owner of HBO, Cinemax, and many other holdings to form Time Warner Inc.–the world’s largest communications comp.

However, in 1980 – the watershed year of conglomeration – was also the most lucrative year in its history before 1987, and new producer/distributor organizations like Orion (1978), Tristar (1982) sprang up on either side.

BUT number of films per year reduced–so average output 160 films.

Genres differentiation

Film critics and scholars classify genre movies into four main cycles:

1. primitive–phase is usually naïve, though powerful in its emotional impact, in part because of the novelty of the form.
   • An example of this type of horror film in Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).
2. classical – poised and symmetrical, its values were assured and widely shared.
   • Balance preserved between the form and content, which is a mixture of both traditional and original motifs.
   • Ex. Whale’s Frankenstein (1931)
3. Revisionist genres are generally symbolic, ambiguous, less certain in their values.
   • Tend to be stylistically complex, appealing more to the intellect than the emotions.
   • Often the genre’s preestablished conventions are exploited as ironic foils to question or undermine popular beliefs.
   • ex. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
4. Parodic – phase of a genre’s development is an outright mockery of its conventions, reducing them to thumping cliches and presenting them in a comical manner, though often with affection a Young Frankenstein (1974).

Parodic films are generally, revisionist: revised or undercut an implied classical ideal.

By definition, in an ironic mode, questioning many of the values of the genre in its classical phase.

Example: Cabaret (1972)

• part love story, like most classical musicals.
• But instead of the traditional boy-wins-girl finale, Fosse’s bitter tale ends with the girl procuring an illegal abortion and going her solitary was, too fearful and self-absorbed to commit herself to a permanent relationship.

Detective thrillers, instead of Sam Spade who is in control of situation, new protagonists stumble in confusion, deceived by even close friends.

• as in The Long Goodbye (1973).
• The hero of Chinatown (1974) is powerless to prevent the tragedy that overwhelms him.
• And the detective hero of Night Moves (1975) can’t solve a single problem, professional or personal.
• French Connection (1971)
  • Chase sequence: editing punctuated by abrupt jump-cuts, explosive juxtaposition, and a driving sense of urgency.
  • The sweeping hand-held cam propels us forward, refusing to allow us to catch our breath or recover our equilibrium.
    • The soundtrack reverberates with a cacophony of gunshots, screams of horrified bystanders, and the shrieking noises of a driverless subway car surging forward like a roller-coaster out of control.
    • The sequence climaxes with this shot in which the detective protag finally nails his quarry