lune7000
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Post by lune7000 on Jul 7, 2021 18:00:04 GMT
And why did you pick this year or span of years so signify the end?
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Post by timshelboy on Jul 7, 2021 18:27:45 GMT
Opinion differs - anywhere from early 50s to late 70s... but I suspect more than a few settle on the period 1967-1970.
The studios were reeling from expensive flops and the Civil Rights movement(s) and youth/antiwar audiences wanted films reflective of their values and the new permissevieness.
BONNIE AND CLYDE was the first volley and in quick succession we got that audience making huge hits of THE GRADUATE, ROSEMARYS BABY, THE WILD BUNCH, EASY RIDER, BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE, MASH, SOLDIER BLUE, etc which revelled in sexual activity, drug use, violence, The final death knell for the classic era was probably MIDNIGHT COWBOY, a film about a male prostitute, winning best picture oscar.
I always said on the old board that if you want one specific moment it would be on August 19th 1969, at about 8pm ie about an hour into ANGEL ANGEL DOWN WE GO being shown to the public for the first time, when the former porn star played by none other than Jennifer Jones (former Mrs Selznick and dewy eyed Bernadette, Jennie Appleton, Singleton and Han Suyin), uttered the line " I appeared in over 30 stag films and I never once faked an orgasm!". At that point the clascic period in cinema had ended and we all knew the HARDY FAMILY weren't in town anyore.
The end of an era?
As a mark of it's quality pedigree the film was reissued as to cash in on the Tate/Manson murders (which occurred 10 days before the initial release of ANGEL),
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Post by Isapop on Jul 7, 2021 18:29:58 GMT
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Post by Prime etc. on Jul 7, 2021 20:37:20 GMT
After '67, "traditional" Hollywood movies, even when excellent, might seem a bit retrograde. Yeah the "studio look" seemed out of place--the bright studio lights.
The Mephisto Waltz was kind of like that. It felt studio-bound. Same with The Omega Man or They Only Kill Their Masters.
It was trying to be more modern and yet feels tied to the studio era.
You can usually tell a difference in cinematography.
I think there should be more examination of the smaller companies and how they were doing financially and with attendance.
Because there are a number of big studio movies that are now forgotten and yet many of these small fry films have active social media fan sites--Hammer, Amicus, AIP, etc.
And I was listening to a commentary track which had Ian Ogilvy and he was talking about how popular these films were--despite getting very little press coverage at the time they were released.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2021 22:30:12 GMT
After WWII. Then began the more gritty Modern Period, until c.1964-65, when Postmodernism took over - and we have been stuck with it ever since...
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Post by phantomparticle on Jul 7, 2021 23:14:07 GMT
Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide closes the door in 1965, although one could make a case for any year up to 1970 when the Baby Boom generation became dominant.
Traditional directors like Ford and Hitchcock were dying out and being replaced by young, hungry mavericks (Lucas, Spielberg, De Palma and Scorsese) who broke away from the studio system as soon as they had the power and money to form their own production companies, or had enough clout within the system to make their own demands.
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lune7000
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Post by lune7000 on Jul 8, 2021 1:44:30 GMT
With regard to cinematography and the modern "look" of films, I will say that the 1950's saw the camera become smaller and more mobile allowing for a surprising number of movies that appear to be almost all shot on location. I saw "Summertime" (1955) and could only pick out a few studio shots in the whole movie. The movie itself often felt more like a travelogue on Venice than a drama.
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Post by mikef6 on Jul 8, 2021 2:03:59 GMT
That's pretty much my pick except I round up to 1970 when New Hollywood was in full swing.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jul 8, 2021 7:48:24 GMT
It's probably a question that can't really be answered. Or at the very least, one that will get nearly as many answers as there are people to ask.
Perhaps one would have to begin by defining the "classic period" in the first place. Is it merely a matter of calendar year(s)? When something like a presidential term, or a war or a marriage or a job or even a life comes to an end, there's a definite date, and you can say, "Yup, that's when it ended."
In the case of the era of classic films, I suspect there's overlap: it was winding down while whatever took its place - call it "the new Hollywood" or what have you - was burgeoning. In 1969, for instance, you had pictures like Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider and Alice's Restaurant, as representative as any of "the new Hollywood," in release right alongside ones like Anne Of the Thousand Days, Hello Dolly and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, themselves certainly representing vestiges of the classic era. And while directors like Scorcese, Cassavetes and Altman were finding their strides, producers of classics such as Hal Wallis, Darryl Zanuck and Jack Warner, along with directors like Wyler, Hitchcock and Mankiewicz, were working into the '70s or, in the cases of Wilder and Cukor, into the '80s.
I suppose much depends upon one's point of view. I'm willing to guess there were major film figures in 1930 who considered that their classic period had already ended. There's a story about Douglas Fairbanks walking over to a newly-built soundstage with a friend and, gazing into the dark emptiness of the cavernous space, lamenting, "The romance of picture making ends here."
There were those who felt a classic era had ended with the gradual collapse of the studio system in the '50s. In his autobiography, Frank Capra complained that, by the end of that decade, producers and directors were no longer dealing with actors like Frank Sinatra, John Wayne or Glenn ford as employees, but as corporations, with everything down to the smallest script changes being negotiated through their individual production companies.
I'm generally okay with a loose interpretation of the classic period winding down sometime from the mid-60s to the early 70s, while the next era was taking off. And that era has certainly produced its own share of now-classics: The Wild Bunch, Cabaret, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Network and so on. What do we call those: new classics? Sounds kind of funny when talking about films over 40-50 years old. I bet we can agree on this much: whatever we call that period, it's been over since the end of the 80s, when corporations, accountants, marketers and focus groups began determining what got green-lit or didn't.
Or maybe not. I'm easy.
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Post by timshelboy on Jul 8, 2021 8:59:46 GMT
Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide closes the door in 1965, although one could make a case for any year up to 1970 when the Baby Boom generation became dominant. Yes but he adjusted it from 1960 (the first Classic Movies edition cut of there)to 1965 (second edition) roundabout 2015 when he called it quits... and I expect he'd have adjusted it to 1970 in 2020 or so for the third edition if the book had not been put out of business by imdb five years ago...
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Post by timshelboy on Jul 8, 2021 9:05:11 GMT
It's probably a question that can't really be answered. Or at the very least, one that will get nearly as many answers as there are people to ask. Perhaps one would have to begin by defining the "classic period" in the first place. Is it merely a matter of calendar year(s)? When something like a presidential term, or a war or a marriage or a job or even a life comes to an end, there's a definite date, and you can say, "Yup, that's when it ended." In the case of the era of classic films, I suspect there's overlap: it was winding down while whatever took its place - call it "the new Hollywood" or what have you - was burgeoning. In 1969, for instance, you had pictures like Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider and Alice's Restaurant, as representative as any of "the new Hollywood," in release right alongside ones like Anne Of the Thousand Days, Hello Dolly and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, themselves certainly representing vestiges of the classic era. And while directors like Scorcese, Cassavetes and Altman were finding their strides, producers of classics such as Hal Wallis, Darryl Zanuck and Jack Warner, along with directors like Wyler, Hitchcock and Mankiewicz, were working into the '70s or, in the cases of Wilder and Cukor, into the '80s. I suppose much depends upon one's point of view. I'm willing to guess there were major film figures in 1930 who considered that their classic period had already ended. There's a story about Douglas Fairbanks walking over to a newly-built soundstage with a friend and, gazing into the dark emptiness of the cavernous space, lamenting, "The romance of picture making ends here." There were those who felt a classic era had ended with the gradual collapse of the studio system in the '50s. In his autobiography, Frank Capra complained that, by the end of that decade, producers and directors were no longer dealing with actors like Frank Sinatra, John Wayne or Glenn ford as employees, but as corporations, with everything down to the smallest script changes being negotiated through their individual production companies. I'm generally okay with a loose interpretation of the classic period winding down sometime from the mid-60s to the early 70s, while the next era was taking off. And that era has certainly produced its own share of now-classics: The Wild Bunch, Cabaret, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Network and so on. What do we call those: new classics? Sounds kind of funny when talking about films over 40-50 years old. I bet we can agree on this much: whatever we call that period, it's been over since the end of the 80s, when corporations, accountants, marketers and focus groups began determining what got green-lit or didn't. Or maybe not. I'm easy. Agree difficult to pick one moment... and yes - as much as"New Hollywood" fare had hits with authority baiting,wifeswapping, grass smoking, draft dodging leads etc an old school squaresville Big studio flic like AIRPORT could do as good business as any of the titles I mentioned in my first post.. if not better.
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Post by Isapop on Jul 8, 2021 10:40:07 GMT
Agree difficult to pick one moment... and yes - as much as"New Hollywood" fare had hits with authority baiting,wifeswapping, grass smoking, draft dodging leads etc an old school squaresville Big studio flic like AIRPORT could do as good business as any of the titles I mentioned in my first post.. if not better. Airport is a good example of how even a highly successful and entertaining movie would, nevertheless, feel retrograde in 1970. Contemporaneous reviews made comment of it. When it opened Variety said, "Airport is a handsome, often dramatically involving $10 million epitaph to a bygone brand of filmmaking." And the NY Times critic, Vincent Canby, wrote, "AIRPORT is the sort of movie most people mean when they say Hollywood doesn't make movies the way it used to."
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Post by Isapop on Jul 8, 2021 11:04:04 GMT
That's pretty much my pick except I round up to 1970 when New Hollywood was in full swing. There's lots of overlap to be sure. But there was definitely a sense in 1967 that the death knell for "classic" Hollywood filmmaking had sounded. A telling indicator was the poster ad for 1967's Rough Night In Jericho, which read, "Who said they don't make Westerns like they used to? We just did." www.imdb.com/title/tt0062218/mediaviewer/rm1416311552/
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Post by snsurone on Jul 8, 2021 12:27:06 GMT
I believe the Golden Age ended when the Hays Office was disbanded in 1968, and the rating system was employed. After that time, I saw ads for porno films like BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR proudly displayed in newspapers.
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Post by london777 on Jul 8, 2021 22:00:29 GMT
Give or take a few years, there seems a remarkably close consensus among posters and the critics as to when the classic era ended.
In which case, why do half the posts on this so-called Classic board discuss movies made since then?
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Post by Isapop on Jul 8, 2021 22:10:09 GMT
Give or take a few years, there seems a remarkably close consensus among posters and the critics as to when the classic era ended. In which case, why do half the posts on this so-called Classic board discuss movies made since then? I can't speak for the others, but I have ADD.
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lune7000
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Post by lune7000 on Jul 9, 2021 0:41:28 GMT
So did Europe also have a classic period? They didn't run off of the studio system and no "Hays office" to regulate content- what is the difference between European cinema before and after the 1960's?
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Jul 9, 2021 1:02:52 GMT
1969
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Nov 28, 2023 15:35:25 GMT
Personally, I view 1970 as the cutoff year. I was born that year and anything before I came along I consider to be classic and anything after is modern...although some of those 70's movies are looking less and less modern and more classic with each passing year.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Nov 28, 2023 23:10:34 GMT
That's pretty much my pick except I round up to 1970 when New Hollywood was in full swing. There's lots of overlap to be sure. But there was definitely a sense in 1967 that the death knell for "classic" Hollywood filmmaking had sounded. A telling indicator was the poster ad for 1967's Rough Night In Jericho, which read, "Who said they don't make Westerns like they used to? We just did." www.imdb.com/title/tt0062218/mediaviewer/rm1416311552/ By 1970 Airport was seen as a conscious throwback/reaction (even though it used contemporary techniques such as split screen). Judith Crist called it "the best picture of 1944".
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