American Cinena in the 60s70s Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

American Cinena in the 60s70s - Essay Example This was the age of the mini skirt and the war against racial stereotyping. This era also witnessed an increase in Television entertainment and the American Cinema hit an all time low in 1963 when foreign films gained dominance over the local cinema. This crisis caused intense financial difficulties within the American film industry. Hollywood cinema found its way onto television to counter this slump and there was an increased trend of shooting films abroad because of low budgets ("runaway" film productions).Cinema ticket prices were falling and film production still remained unaffordable. There were no longer the studio bound contract stars and at this point the film industry lost many of its valuable directors. There was a business diversification within the industry as studios like the UA and Hal Roach Studios sold off parts of their studios and others like Disney(Orlando ,Florida) created theme parks within their studios for added revenues. There was an inauguration of the Hollywood Walk of Fame at the Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. All these measures were the effort of the giant called "Hollywood" to stand back on its feet. This was the age of the first 'multiplex' movie theatre in 1963 invented by Durwood who went on run AMC Entertainment, which was the third-largest movie theatre company in the nation. The studios were fast being taken over and merged by multi-national companies soon after the sad demise of movie moguls like Harry Cohn of Columbia. The traditional, Hollywood studio era would soon be history, as more and more studios were acquired by other unrelated business conglomerates. Now there would be a time of "packaged" films and the independent company and independent p roducer. In 1966, Gulf and Western Industries bought Paramount which would later be headed by Robert Evans to give such hits as Rosemary's Baby (1968), Love Story (1970), The Godfather (1972), and Chinatown (1974) . The very famous movie of Cleopatra(1963), starring Elizabeth Taylor as the Queen of Egypt and future husband Richard Burton as Marc Antony was a budget disaster for 20th Century Fox, headed by Darryl Zanuck. One can of course not ignore the British Influences on American Cinema during this time as most Hollywood movies started to be made in Britain due to budget constraints.Examples are films like Becket 1964 and The Lion in Winter 1968. This influence can also be seen in films like Doctor Zhivago (1965) which was about the Russian Civil War which became very popular for its "European" influence. There was a reduction ,almost a complete phase out of producing "inflated historical epics". The influence of the British realism ( styled "Kitchen Sink") as well as the role of "Angry Young Man" - the hero who was economically and socially frustrated fast became a part and parcel of American movies. The era ended with when Jaws in 1975 and Star Wars in 1977 were released .These sequel based films were based on the new formula of Sci-fi and commercial blockbuster reality and nothing like what the decade of 1960's produced and made popular. The term Blaxploitation refers to a group of films that found immense popularity in the early 1970s as they were all about black nationalism and the Black Power rebellion with an all black cast. The reason these films were perceived as exploiting the blacks was because most of these films