American New Wave Research 4

American Independent Cinema - An Introduction (Yannis Tzioumakis)

• In the Paramount Decree and the post-World War II recession ushered American Independent cinema towards its second major phase, the factors that led to its further evolution in the late 1960s were once again economic, though changes in American society and culture played also a significant part. (pg 169)
• The end of the 1960s was one of the most volatile periods in the history of the country. All these factors contributed to a remarkable change in attitudes and mores in American culture which, reflected in the films of the period, make even the most liberal films of the late 1950s/early 1960s (like the social-problem films by Stanley Kramer) look like fake Hollywood constructions with naive ideological messages. (pg 169)
• While the country was amidst social and cultural upheaval, the American film industry had to face its own set of severe problems as well as keep up with the transformations in the American social and cultural fabric. These problems included: the financial over-exposure of the majors, (expensive films failing at the box office); the continual audience decline, whited reached an ultimate low of 15.8 million people a week in the early 1970s; the decrease in the number of theatres; the entrance of the television networks to the theatrical market which increased competition and contributed to a glut product; and an extremely outdated Production Code which the industry was still trying to enforce at a time of sweeping changes in sexual mores. Grouped together with the larger social and political issues the country was experiencing, they represented another life-threatening set of obsticals for the film industry, which had only recently started establishing after the effects of the Paramount Decree. (pg170)
• Combing a mixture of exploitation strategies, art-house filmmaking techniques and an emphasis on distinctly American themes within not always clear-cut generic frameworks, the Hollywood renaissance films can be seen as the product of a new marriage between independent film production and the majors.
• As the established cinema had its own codes and conventions, grammar  and  syntax,  the  young  filmmakers  of  the  new  independent  cinema had to create their own language. In a short span of time, a large number of cinematic techniques, mainly associated with art-house filmmaking in Europe and Japan, were imported to American cinema. These included: improvisational acting, repeated actions, camera zooms, jump-cuts, freeze frames, telephoto shooting, hand-held camerawork, split screen, more frequent use of extreme close ups and extreme long shots, image-sound mismatches and many others. (pg179)

• As film style in mainstream American cinema

  had been obeying the rules of classicism and, for that reason, had largely remained unobtrusive, subordinate to the needs of a causally driven narrative, the sudden appearance of these new cinematic techniques and their infusion  with  existing  staples  of  Hollywood  style  changed  dramatically the ‘look’ of American films.