|
|
Post by london777 on Jun 16, 2017 14:50:22 GMT
Posting about Rebel Without a Cause (1955) in another thread I wrote the above.
Of what other movies could you say the same?
Blackboard Jungle (1955). Same year and same reason: "teenagers" had been invented.
Roots (1977) TV mini-series. Paid (too much) for the DVD so I could show it to my partner, who is black but had no clue how her ancestors had arrived in the Americas. Was surprised how clunky it was, even by TV standards and it has since been much lampooned. But I do not think any film or TV series has ever had such an impact on society. No political or social movement did as much for Black Awareness.
Up the Junction (1965) Ken Loach. TV movie that caused a stir in the UK and advanced the debate on abortion and homelessness. Loach tried radical techniques for Brit TV and some of them just do not work, but the film is always quoted when discussing important TV productions.
|
|
|
|
Post by mikef6 on Jun 16, 2017 15:05:17 GMT
Perhaps the ultimate example and the one that people struggle with the most is “Birth Of A Nation.” It advanced the motion picture art in so many ways, esp. montage and cross-cutting, that its influence cannot be overstated. Yet, its subject matter should have relegated it to, at most, footnote status. Roger Ebert once wrote a long, two-part essay trying to reconcile the two halves of this film. I scanned over it once but don’t remember if he reached any conclusion. I don't think there is one.
|
|
gadolinium
Sophomore
@gadolinium
Posts: 282
Likes: 137
 
|
Post by gadolinium on Jun 16, 2017 19:33:22 GMT
The Jazz Singer (1927).
|
|
|
|
Post by london777 on Jun 16, 2017 21:14:28 GMT
Bonnie and Clyde for its ground-breaking portrayal of violence in American films.I was not aware of that infamy, spiderwort. Was it ground-breaking because more realistic, or because more gratuitous, or what? Whatever you answer, someone will come across examples that exceeded it and predated it. That is the nature of film buffery. |
|
|
|
Post by london777 on Jun 16, 2017 21:27:26 GMT
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for its ground-breaking use of profanity in American films. Again, the movie is famous for marital laceration, but not, as far as I knew, for profanity.That sort of vocabulary is commonplace for us Londoners. Must be a flyover American hang-up.  Do you think the two leads being not Americans made it more acceptable? Getting away from the original theme of this thread (but who cares?), once British films started to get more explicit about sex in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties, the hot chick was often played by a Continental import. It was a transitional stage from the "lie back and think of England" characters played by Deborah Kerr and Celia Johnson to the "anything goes" morality of the late 'sixties and "seventies. I wonder if similar thinking applied to the casting of Virginia Woolf? |
|
|
|
Post by OldAussie on Jun 16, 2017 21:46:50 GMT
Yesterday I watched the 1931 Dracula for the second time after a 50 year gap. There's no doubting its importance in film history, but good lord, it has aged BADLY.
As for Bonnie and Clyde I feel it has equal parts of importance AND merit.
Best example of importance exceeding merit possibly - Easy Rider.
|
|
spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,544
Likes: 9,340
|
Post by spiderwort on Jun 16, 2017 21:55:27 GMT
Again, the movie is famous for marital laceration, but not, as far as I knew, for profanity.That sort of vocabulary is commonplace for us Londoners. Muse be a flyover American hang-up. London, in terms of censorship in American films at the time, Virginia Woolf was the first film that was allowed to use the kind of profanity it did. It's definitively and historically significant for that reason.
As for Bonnie and Clyde, it is commonly acknowledged to be the film that broke the barriers of portraying graphic violence on the screen in America. I haven't seen every film in the world from every country, but I've seen thousands of American films, and I know that in my experience back to the silent era no American film before Bonnie and Clyde portrayed graphic violence in the way it did. I am not alone in that assessment; film scholars attribute it with that historical significance also.
I can't speak for you Londoners, though I have to say I haven't seen any English film before 1966 that had that level of graphic violence - but maybe there is one or more.
And your points about the more sexually explicit English films in the 50s are quite interesting. Censorship in America prohibited that until - God, I don't know when. Now it's all gone to hell in a hand basket and people can have sex on television in what used to be designated as "family hour."
|
|
|
|
Post by london777 on Jun 16, 2017 22:06:39 GMT
As for Bonnie and Clyde I feel it has equal parts of importance AND merit. I would agree with you, OldAussie, so maybe my posting it here was a misunderstanding of the original post. I feel the same way about Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which I also mentioned.I almost pointed that out, but then I thought, let the thread wendeth where it listeth (hows that for some English profanity?). We learn more that way. I was not aware of the particular significance of those two movies, so I thank spiderwort for patiently explaining to me. I actually miss a lot because there were two decades from 1984 to 2008 when I watched very few films. I have a lot to catch up on and this board is helping. |
|
|
|
Post by london777 on Jun 16, 2017 22:19:40 GMT
I can't speak for you Londoners, though I have to say I haven't seen any English film before 1966 that had that level of graphic violence - but maybe there is one or more.
Probably not. We are not big on violence in England. Backward of us, I know. From my birth in 1940 to the time I emigrated to Devil's Island in 2008, I never saw a firearm except holstered on ceremonial occasions or the military on guard or in transit. And for two decades of that stretch I lived in Central London. I am pretty sure I never knew anyone who owned one. Very different where I live now. The very first time I went to the bank I was alarmed to see some scruffy bandido types on the front steps screaming and waving shotguns. I thought a hold-up was in progress. I learned later that they were bank security guards (no uniforms) arguing over a small win on the lottery. Apparently the one holding the ticket had spent his share, and some of theirs, on rum and it was turning nasty. |
|
|
|
Post by london777 on Jun 17, 2017 0:22:10 GMT
Wow, I imagine that was pretty disturbing! What a story. And Devils Island. Hmm. Can't imagine what that's like. A lot of history there, so it's probably pretty interesting. And, of course, I realize the British aren't big on violence. I just wasn't thinking (that happens too often these days). I am not really on Devil's Island. Just what I call it because of the general corruption and lawlessness. It is a popular holiday destination I was half kidding about violence and things are going downhill in the UK as elsewhere. |
|
