A typically interesting Louis Menand piece on Hollywood in this week's New Yorker, which more or less blames the crappy nature of today's blockbuster culture on the collapse of the studio system beginning in 1948 (for an alternative triumphalist account of that story, see the research database of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers). For a mixed account of the system's connection to the Hollywood blacklist, see here.
Posted by Alan Allport at February 2, 2005 01:49 PMCity of Nets is a good book about how they got from the highpoint of '39 to '48.
Posted by: ROBBIE at February 3, 2005 05:10 AMWe gush too much over the films of 40's. It was a great period and I love the good flicks of that time. But those studios were factories and we tend to forget all the garbage they put out.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at February 3, 2005 06:23 AMBut those studios were factories and we tend to forget all the garbage they put out.
Though it was partly because they put out so much (profitable) garbage that they were able to produce films of real quality also.
One has to admit that the 1940s Golden Age existed partly because of contingencies that had nothing to do with the studio system - for example, the large number of European literary emigres floating around LA who could be picked up as scriptwriters or consultants on the cheap.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 3, 2005 06:33 AMWe've also changed our standards. James Agee thought "Casablanca" was tacky war propaganda. He did have a point though about the dumbness of the expository line: "Oh, Victor, please don't go to the underground meeting tonight!"
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at February 3, 2005 04:12 PMBut Casablana was tacky war propaganda - a crass exploitation flick built on nothing but the newsworthiness of its titular city after the FDR-Churchill conference that took place there in February 1943. It just happened to be a great movie at the same time.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 3, 2005 04:17 PM