American Cinema of the 1950s (Screen Decades: American Culture/American Cinema) Review

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American Cinema of the 1950s (Screen Decades: American Culture/American Cinema) ReviewAmerican Cinema of the 1950s doesn't include any movies by David Lynch (his first major film, Eraserhead, didn't come out until 1976), but this book proves Lynch's point.
Adrienne L. McLean's essay on Vertigo and Hitchcock (1958) kept reminding me of Lynch. Hitchcock always said he was trying to create "pure cinema" and Lynch says he wants to put "dreams" on the screen. In Vertigo, Judy is Madeleine, and in Lynch's films Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive the main characters are all really someone else.

Each chapter has a brief survey of the major films of the year and then looks at whatever theme struck the author as being important. I like this approach because it emphasizes the stories themselves - - what they meant to say, what they succeeded in saying, and what they might have failed to say.
In his essay on race in 1959 movies, Arthur Knight talks about Harry Belafonte's apocalpytic fantasy The World, the Flesh, and the Devil and his crime drama Odds Against Tomorrow. Both movies dealt with the same theme - - the struggle between a black man and a white man. In the fantasy there's hope at the end, but in the noir each protagonist would rather die than let the other escape. In the crime story they're fighting over money, and in the end-of-the-world story they're fighting over a woman. So in The World, the Flesh, and the Devil there may be hope for racial peace, but only if the one woman left alive will allow the two men to decide her place in the new society.
There are other essays that deal with the women in fifties movies and the women who made fifties movies. In her chapter on "Movies and Landscapes" in 1950, Mary Beth Haralovich compares Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place and Ida Lupino's Outrage, looking at "characters who suffer emotional trauma in the violent domestic aftermath of World War II."
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It's interesting that in the film In a Lonely Place, directed by Nicholas Ray, the angry veteran Dix Steele is just as much a victim as Laurel, the woman he falls in love with but still can't help almost murdering. However in the novel the movie's based on, written by a woman, Dix is the serial killer the police are looking for.
Masculinity gets examined too, in Kristen Hatch's chapter on 1951, which analyzes A Place in the Sun, Strangers on a Train, and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Another good essay is Barry Keith Grant's on 1956 and "Movies and the Crack of Doom." Nineteen fifty-six was the highpoint of the decade for science fiction and horror. Invasion of the Body Snatchers of course, but also Forbidden Planet, World without End, Godzilla, Earth versus the Flying Saucers, The Beast with a Million Eyes, even The Ten Commandments would qualify (as both fantasy and horror).
But the "Crack of Doom" doesn't just come via the monster from the Id or seed pods from outer space, it also comes out of "the hydrogen jukebox." Nineteen fifty-six was the start of another invasion - - of rock and roll movies aimed at a new audience, teenagers.
And the door closed on John Wayne's Ethan Edwards at the end of The Searchers (the last of the old-fashioned racist Westerns, and the only John Ford movie that's still watchable for anyone born in the 1950s or later).
American Cinema of the 1950s has a timeline of social, political, and military events, and major academy award winners for each year.
What made this book interesting was focusing on worries that forced their way to the surface in each year of the 1950s. We still worry about the same things.American Cinema of the 1950s (Screen Decades: American Culture/American Cinema) OverviewFrom cold war hysteria and rampant anticommunist witch hunts to the lure of suburbia, television, and the new consumerism, the 1950s was a decade of sensational commercial possibility coupled with dark nuclear fears and conformist politics. In the face of these social, political, and cultural conditions, Hollywood was under siege: from the Justice Department, which pressed for big film companies to divest themselves of their theater holdings; from the middle class, whose retreat to family entertainment inside the home drastically decreased the filmgoing audience; and from the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was attempting to purge the country of dissenting political views. In this difficult context, however, some of the most talented filmmakers of all time, including John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente Minnelli, Nicholas Ray, and Billy Wilder produced some of their most remarkable work.Bringing together original essays by ten respected scholars in the field, American Cinema of the 1950s explores the impact of the cultural environment of this decade on film, and the impact of film on the American cultural milieu. Contributors examine signature films of the decade, including From Here to Eternity, Sunset Blvd., Singin' in the Rain, Shane, Rear Window, and Rebel Without a Cause, as well as lesser-known but equally compelling films, such as Dial 1119, Mystery Street, Suddenly, Summer Stock, The Last Hunt, Bitter Victory, and many others.Provocative, engaging, and accessible to general readers as well as scholars, this volume provides a unique lens through which to view the links between film and the prevailing social and historical events of the 1950s.

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