Word: films
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Aside from these technical considerations, there is the influence on the film of maker and market. The film is a group project--plots, dialogue and all the rest of the details are discussed and determined in council--in comparison with the lonely and individual efforts of the novelist. Therefore the film is a far less personal creation. The film as industry--a big business requiring large capital--leaves its mark as well. With the exception of The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, most labor films, (even the excellent On the Water-front) depict labor disorders as being caused by personal...
Most important is the molding effect of the audience/customer. The novelist writes for a small audience with whom he can assume a certain rapport. The contemporary Hollywood film is aimed at everyone--young and old, men and women, educated and illiterate, Americans and foreigners. Hence, in addition to the inevitable "lowest common denominator," is the pressure to dilute material so that it will not offend the tender-minded of any persuasion. The voluntary Production Code which is "not of this world" is the most obvious instance, contributing in part to the idealization of life which has in the past characterized...
...most insidious element in the denaturalization of the American films stems from the nature of the market. Studies have shown, Bluestone points out, that the habitual movie-goer (particularly female) depends on the weekly movie for an escape from the tedium of daily life. And of course, everything must turn out for the best and true love triumph in the end. Hence, too, the "star" system in which the viewer identifies himself with a particular actor and the actor with a particular role. The popular film is thus required to create and sell folk myths which are satisfying and reassuring...
...criticism of the novels involved is both incisive and original. The films chosen are The Informer, which he classifies as a mediocre novel made into a superlative film; Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, The Grapes of Wrath and The Ox Bow Incident, excellent novels resulting in excellent films; and Madame Bovary, a classic that was butchered in adaptation...
...that the full resources of criticism should be turned on the cinema, which after all is the most influential of all the arts (how many more people see a movie a week than read a book a week?) and yet which is still not intellectually respectable. Surely, the American film is our greatest single cultural influence on the world today...