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The key factors that constitute mainstream American cinema’s artistic ‘Hollywood Renaissance (1966-1976)’, and the emergence of a ‘Post- Classical’ film style.
Hollywood’s renaissance and its metamorphosis of mainstream American cinema can be attributed to several factors, as a result a rising constitution of new filmmaking ethics illustrate the emergence of a distinctive ‘post-classical’ film style. The revitalisation of the Hollywood filmmaking industry of the early sixties and seventies saw a significant shift in traditional notions. ‘Classicism’, preached through the industrial and aesthetical make-up of filmmaking in the ‘old Hollywood’, presided over all conceptions of the filmmaking process dictating both style and content. ... The term classical Hollywood cinema is then a ‘tradition, mimesis, self-effacing craftsmanship, and a cool control of the perceivers response’.
The label ‘classicism’ serves well because it swiftly conveys distinct aesthetic qualities (elegance, unity, rule governed craftsmanship) and historical functions (Hollywood’s role as the world’s mainstream film style)…For instance: Pensive character attitude, close up of a face, slow dissolve, voice over narration, sonic ‘flashback’, music.
Classicism has remained an aesthetic code of practice throughout Hollywood filmmaking history. Coherent continuity through narrative logic and editing, causal connections between temporal and spatial events, and the functional embodiment of dominant conservative ideologies ensured that the world classic Hollywood cinema would be ‘governed by a verisimilitude rather than any documentary style’ . In conjunction with the Hays Code/ the Hollywood Production code, classic Hollywood cinema philosophised an explicit conservatism through a set of explicit principles that oversaw all motion picture production between 1934 and 1966. ... More importantly the code’s ethos ensured a perpetual moralistic framework whereby films by their very nature were endorsed to uphold respectable notions of white middle class America. ... A segment of the Hay’s code production code below provides an idea of the ideological organization and the limitations they enforced. ...
A major aspect of Hollywood’s artistic renaissance development of a post-classical film style was in effect created by an industrial collapse in the studio systems and the old Hollywood’s infrastructure. The end of the vertical integrated system- the deathblow being a shift in American law forcing the majors to sell of their cinema chains- allowed such a major shift to occur. Consequently, the cinemas-now not owned by a studio, who in the past played the movies they made- began playing a wider selection of films, often b-movies pioneered by Roger Corman and his company AIP (American Independent Pictures). ... Add to which, the baby boom of the late 1940’s and 1950’s, the popularity of television, and the rise of the B movie, movies ‘niche markets’ shifted to a younger target audience whereby the growing numbers of drive in movies of the 1950’s and 1960’s were symbolic of such a shift.
In relation to Hollywood, Michael Storper and Susan Christorpherson argue that film production was now becoming ‘flexibly specialized’ in the sense that, ‘relative to the typically Fordist mode of production, the specialized units were far more capable of adapting to shifts in market need (or the needs of a variety of niche markets)’. The Hollywood renaissance is indicative of this period in which it’s violent and, at times, explicit content was result of the repercussions of the breakdown of the Hollywood Production Code in 1966. ... As a result, ‘the emergence in 1968 of the new ratings system-itself a further indication of the segmented movie audiences-filmmakers were experimenting with more politically subversive, sexually explicit, and/or graphically violent material’. Filmmakers could do what they wanted to do, operating with a greater sense of freedom enjoying the room to manoeuvre from the constraints imposed by the ‘Old-Hollywood’. ... The deconstruction of the studio system, loosened Hollywood notions built upon its image as a globalised village and created an autonomous critical consciousness of its ‘formulaic factory’ production style. ... When including the post-war European Film renaissance into the greater picture of post-classicism, it’s experimentation ‘influenced American filmmakers of the period to formulate eclectic styles that fused classical, neo-realistic, and expressionistic elements within their narratives.
Approximate Word count = 3278
Approximate Pages = 13.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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