Reaganite Cinema

In the 1980s to 1990s the hustle and bustle of everyday life felt too much for any American to withstand. Many people looked back to the 1950s where life seemed too simplistic to even be real. Back then people only had to worry about work or the family and things didn't become much more complicated. Whether or not this stereotype is actually correct, theaters picked up on this profound interest and produced several unique movies. People would later dub this movie genre the Reaganite Cinema.

In the famous Back to the Future (1985) movie, a young boy named Marty (played by Micheal J. Fox) accidentally travels back in time and disrupts his parent's relationship, causing them to not get married. In order to save himself from fading out of existence, he's forced to interrupt the 1950s and reunite his parents. The docile world that they come from almost seems alien to Marty. This time period and alienation he receives, is symbolic of a parents inability to understand teenagers and what they go through. At the end of the film his visit to this utopian past does more then just cement his existence, all of his family struggles and financial problems are now gone.

Like many of the politicians of the time, movies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave extremely high focuses on rejuvenation from past experiences. By going to or learning from people in the past, many Americans felt they could fix their modern day problems. Although this seemed like a valid solution it was more of an escapist reality to not deal with modern day issues many people had never faced before. The movie Cocoon (1985) approached this issue and stated that the rejuvenation people were looking for should be spiritual and not physical (which many people wanted), because a physical rejuvenation won't change anything.

Indy Films: Donnie Darko

Although American films have changed, fluctuated, and created new medias/genres, they have kept a consistent flow. The area of movies to brake this consistent cycle have become known as independent films. What an independent film is varies from person to person and critic to critic. But one thing they all have in common is a break of the normal Hollywood Studio production. One of the most famous independent films in recent years has been Donnie Darko by Richard Kelley.

Like most indy (independent) films, Donnie Darko wasn't successful upon it's original release. The film was considered a flop and practically nobody went to see it. But thanks to the Internet and recent rise in interest with indy films by critics, the films DVD sales slowly rose over several years. Like many underground films in recent years, the movie has a sense of cinematography and creativeness rivaled only by the film noir generation. Many films like it have altered how larger box office pictures are done, newer movies now tend to take the deviant movie approach of experimentation. Now on the market we have more films like this then ever.

If you haven't seen Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind, or Mirriormask, I highly suggest heading over to amazon.com or your local Internet movie provider to grab a copy/copies. These films all have elements rarely seen up until a few years after their releases, where major movie makers started adapting their ideas. Indy films have also grown in popularity thanks to the Internet (youtube.com especially), because it allows people to more easily view films not controlled by the mass media.

Donnie Darko Trailer

Counter Culture

In the 1960s, American cinema was at it's all time low attendance. Hollywood was pouring more money then ever into films and getting the least bang for buck known to man. A few films were slightly successful, but overall the film industry was dieing and television was still consistently growing. Deciding to take a risk with an experimental film, Columbia pictures would distribute the most successful film seen in years.

Dennis Hopper's Easy Riders was extremely experimental (therefor risky), but even cheaper too make. It would become an immediate success since it was geared towards a younger generation that no films had targeted. Previous films were marketed to older generations and companies hadn't thought of selling their products with younger crowds. The film was an amazing success and Hollywood discovered the potential of kids backed by the International Bank of Mom and Dad. It was an untapped gold mine that future generations of marketing and massive corporations would follow. Since the films were so cheap many other movies would quickly follow suite.

Today Easy Riders is still considered one of the greatest breakthrough films. It approached issues in society relevant to a younger generation, in a way that had never been done before. It also saved the theaters and production studios from having to close. People today are now seeing a similar occurrence with independent films on the market.

Hollywood in the Age of Television

For a long period of time, movie theaters ruled what the public saw with an iron fist. But the innovation of the first commercial televisions in the 1930's changed how the public interacted with the media. For one fee you could purchase a television and never need to leave your house except for work and food. This meant that people didn't have too go to the theaters every week and fork over more money. Although Hollywood realized great financial possibilities lied in showing films on the TV, they also noticed the major problems it would pose.

Televisions originally had extremely small screens that made it impossible to fit any motion picture onto it. Because of this, many films had to crop their images down and cut out part of the picture. Towards the 1960s and 1970s televisions started catching up with movie pictures sizes but didn't use a widescreen format, causing the edges to be cut off. Widescreen formats have been standardized for movies since the 1930s, but just recently (2000) started airing for televisions. Another technological advancement over time has been the creation of standardized televisions. Like computers the original televisions had parts you could walk into a store and buy to fix your TV. As time went on the parts became more standardized and integrated because of the reduction in price manufacturing and maintenance.

Today's TVs sound so much more like computers then the ones we use. Perhaps as time progresses people will find that television slowly catches up with the cinemas. TVs currently aren't too far behind their technology, maybe they will surpass them in the future.

Shadows, Street Lights, and Confessions

One of the most common forms of narration in film Noir (French for black film) is the main character telling their own story. This is sometimes done by talking directly to the audience. In Detour (1945) the main character speaks to the audience as if they perceive him as the villain. This mellow approach gives the audience the idea that he is possibly only a victim in the situation, and not the criminal he's perceived to be. Less direct approaches can be seen in Double Indemnity (1944), where a man begins the film by talking into a recorder. This helps to give the audience a third person perspective of the film and discombobulate their perception of reality. The film ends where it begins by continuing on after the man's confession is complete. Many modern day films have adapted these narration techniques and use them quite frequently. A few of these films are The Prestige (2006) and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1999).

At the beginning of The Prestige, a man is drowned in a tank during the final act of a performance. It just so happens that his adversary is caught behind the stage and is expected to have killed him. The plot line then becomes extremely choppy and discombobulated as scenes mixed with random thoughts and memories come to life in a non-sequential order. As the story unfolds and the plot begins to make some coherent sense, it approaches the movie's opening scene. Through this mechanism we see the director able to better manipulate reactions from the audience.

Jack talks to himself, throughout all of Fight Club, this man truly makes you ponder his sanity. Most of his nights he spends thinking about sleeping (suffering from Insomnia) and going to meeting for drug and sex addicts because they boost his self-esteem. He narrates the events throughout the movie by talking to himself (or perhaps your supposed to be his subconscious interpreting events). This method of storytelling makes Jack an unreliable source of information for events because you can obviously tell he's insane. Eventually the author uses this shortcoming to throw in a literary twist, (which I won't ruin) I've never seen before in movies.

Throughout many modern day films we can see the older black and white films leaking through. Some of what may seem extremely original, then becomes not so original when you understand its origins. The film the prestige takes many of its discombobulated narrative techniques from the film Noir genre. Fight club also uses these tweaks with Jack telling the story from the end to the beginning as a reflection in his conscious. Through a better understanding of the original films, we better grasp the usage and development of them.

The Prestige Trailer

Bake a Cake!

Throughout the history of war movies, women have played unique and interesting roles. You might think though that it would be odd for a women to play a major role in a war movie and films like Black Hawk Down (2001) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) heed little or no attention to them. Interestingly the movies that do concentrate on women's roles in war films treat them solely as hurdles that need to be overcome in order to obtain absolute masculinity, or a threat to victory. I should add though that not all war films with women take this perspective, but many do (many films have also portrayed them as healers also).

When the main character in Jarhead (2005) thinks about his girlfriend and the time he can spend with her after his tour of duty is over, it motivates him to finish his tour of duty. But when disaster strikes and she hooks up with another man back at home, he feels as if life itself has abandoned his own body. His girlfriend is symbolic of everything he mises at home (friends, family, and security), without her he has now completely ascended his training and is no longer a slave to his desires back at home. In the film Pearl Harbor (2001) a completely different occurrence happens when two best friends find that they love the same girl. This builds animosity and distrust between the two. In a circle of aggression and hatred one character eventually dies and its not the girl. One of the two friends dies so that the others can live happily ever after, a morbid ending but symbolic of whether the things we fight for are really worth it.

Throughout many war films, women sadly seem to get a bad rap. This is primarily because of the anti-feministic mentality that military service takes. When you go into the army you don't bake cakes and read Shakespeare. You go in too fight for your country and learn to give it your all. Leaving behind things such as desires for love shows a strong sense of dedication for ones patriotism also. Love is not a bad thing, it just become complicated when war is involved.

>_< Pearl Harbor Trailer

The Comedy of Violence

After World War II ended in the 1940s, women had to give back the jobs they had temporarily filled during their husbands leave. This was one of the first major instances in American history where women assumed major work roles equivalent to men. This also marked the beginning of a battle of the sexes in the 1940s where women started gaining political power. The slapstick movie genre reflected this tension by pitting the two against each other in extremely aggressive roles. Sometimes the characters depicted in these films would perform shocking acts that many people thought oddly comedic during their time.

One of the most well known slapstick characters comes from the film The Lady Eve (1941). Throughout the movie Jean Harrington (played by Barbara Stanwyck) plays a con artist who attempts robbing a young rich man with her scheming father. When Jean falls in love with the man and tries to protect him from her father, her lover finds the truth of her identity. In an ironic twist he dumps her and she comes back with another identity she dubs Eve. The character vengefully torments, taunts, and belittles the young man into insanity. To make matters worse his father is fond of Eve and constantly promotes a marriage between the two. This aggressive behavior has other iconic characters such as the destructive Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), where a couple battles over odd rules and regulations while they live unmarried together in a house. The values these characters display strongly represent many feelings felt by both parties during this time period.

Many of the male figures being abused in the slapstick genre played on male insecurities (possibly that women really were plotting to take their jobs, divorce them, and other unthinkable things of those times). Women would have probably thought that male characters got what they deserved for their actions (which most of them probably did). Since both sexes could go to a film and laugh about these things instead of fight over them, it probably helped the film genres success. Even in today's society where men and womens rights are more equal, slapstick romance comedies, such as Intolerable Cruelty (2003) are still successful. Although the times have changed, it would seem that the subject matters of movies haven't.