Seventy Year ItchSeventy years in the making, the new PBS
10-part series ‘American Cinema’ examines the influence and history
of Hollywood’s film industry and the film movements that have
shaped American culture
By Barbara Hernandez
Daily Bruin Staff
When people see movies today, they have no idea about the
70-plus years of creation involved  the big budget escapism
of the Depression, the romantic comedies of the ’40s, the false
America of the ’50s and the sense of disillusion of the ’60s and
’70s.
Today’s cinema has changed and grown over the years into an end
product of cultural domination.
"[American cinema] is international like the fairy tales were,"
says Bertrand Tavernier, a director, in "The Hollywood Style," the
first of the 10-part PBS "American Cinema" documentary examining
American filmmaking. "And it succeeded brilliantly."
The miniseries, which runs on KCET every Monday night, takes in
every part of the cinematic history and creation of what the world
thinks today of American cinema. By interviewing various film
scholars, actors, writers and production staff, the documentary
gives valuable insight into how movies in the golden age were made
 studio-run by an iron fist to the modern whirl of big names
and big money deals. Each installment deals with a different genre
or aspect of American Cinema, including "The Film School
Generation," (Feb.27) which talks to directors who got their start
in film school, like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese and George
Lucas.
At the height of the early Hollywood studio period, 90 million
Americans went to the movies each week (only 20 percent of that
number attend now), and the studio system strove to hold onto that
money by producing about 52 films a year. In the Depression, it was
only the motion picture industry that grew more powerful and
profitable, providing a cheap escape from a harrowing reality.
Endowed with scintillating New York writers like F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Ben Hecht and Sidney Buckman, witty
banter and strong storylines were made easy in the assembly line
studio system. Without these groups of writers, the romantic
comedy, a staple from 1934-1944, could never have existed.
In the series’ "The Romantic Comedy" installment (Jan.30),
homage is paid to the best of the "screwball comedies" by George
Stevens, Howard Hawks and Frank Capra  most ex-slapstick
directors, movies that portrayed both high and low comedy.
One of the highlights of this ten-part series, "The Romantic
Comedy" takes on an anthropologic point of view, tracking American
values through the characters portrayed on the screen.
Using bankable stars like Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, James
Stewart and Barbara Stanwyck, to name a few, these movies showed a
new side to the American cinema  strong women. To this day,
the same banter used in these films still makes for the most
delicious sexual tension.
Because social intercourse was the only intercourse encouraged,
romantic comedies had to have smart and sexy dialogue. In The Lady
Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, an ultra-feminine
(yet indisputably sexually dominant) shady female hunts down a shy
society bachelor.
Stanwyck embodied the intelligence and strong character of women
in these films, while Fonda portrays the somewhat confused yet
earnest young man. In a time of rigid gender roles, these films
were surprisingly egalitarian, giving women personalities and words
of their own.
In the ’50s, the romantic comedy had become less sharp and
sensual and, frankly, more boring, dealing mainly with institutions
of marriage. Billy Wilder attempted to satirize these values in
Some Like it Hot and The Seven Year Itch, portraying both the ideas
of infidelity and homosexuality without being caught.
By the ’60s the genre was gone. "Hollywood responded to the
women’s movement by ignoring it," says Molly Haskell, movie critic.
"In the late ’60s and early ’70s women virtually disappeared from
the cinema … The tension between the sexes is so great it’s no
laughing matter."
The emergence of women directors and writers has given birth to
new wave of the romantic comedy, films more honest and real.
Whereas explicit sex ruined the romantic comedy in the ’60s and
’70s, it was integrated in the ’80s and ’90s with somewhat mixed
results.
Yet just as the romantic comedy has changed as a genre, the rise
of the movie studio business itself has affected film as a
whole.
In "The Studio System," (Jan. 30) the documentary explores the
tolls and benefits the big studios inflicted and enriched,
including an era of artistry developing in Paramount, due to
"talent raids" in Europe. It also chronicles the emergence of
television and its effect on movie receipts, and eventually the
fall of the studio system due to independent contractors and loss
of studio monopolized theaters. By the ’70s, they system was run by
powerful agents, stars and directors almost exclusively, leading to
American "cultural imperialism" lambasted by European
filmmakers.
The series also deals with the increasing competition from
television in the installment "Film in the Television Age," (Feb.
20) and the various ways studios tried to over come it through
Smell-a-vision, 3-D, Cinerama, and eventually the successful
Cinemascope and color.
Television, a mainly live endeavor, centered around dramatic
screenplays, often by screenwriters recruited later by studios.
When sponsorship threatened any controversial material, the era of
dramatic television ended, to be replaced by bland sitcoms.
For the first time, filming, thanks to innovation in film and
light, could take place at night lending the eerie darkness to "The
Film Noir," (Feb. 20) the title of one of the series’ installments.
Dealing mainly with extreme circumstances, "the film noir" became
what Kathryn Bigelow calls "a descent into hell."
"If they’re reflecting this general sense of jeopardy in life
… then it’s a correct representation of the anxiety caused by the
system," says Abraham Polonsky, director and screenwriter. "It’s
how circumstances become more unendurable, and yet you must
endure."
The dark underbelly of America was often explored by the
hard-boiled detective, and the smart and sexually dangerous femme
fatale, often a part of a triangle. Post-World War II, women
changed; they were a little independent and frightening, and it
reflected in film noir. They used the protagonist, mainly as a tool
to get what they wanted, not for love or seduction, all in the
background of black and white shadow.
The series also takes a look at the other vast genres, "The
Western" (Feb. 13) and "The Combat Film" (Feb. 13), elegies to male
bonding and the great mystery a man must surround by nature or
gunplay to figure out. It portrays the difference from idealistic
older films to the new realism found in the "modern" western, with
good and evil not clearly defined.
The other episodes "The Film School Generation" (Feb. 27) and
the "The Edge of Hollywood", (Feb. 27) highlight the newest and
often brightest innovators in cinema today, from Quentin Tarantino
to the Coen Brothers.
Although highlighting "token" filmmakers in the last episode
(devoting a lot of undeserved press to Spike Lee), it is director
Carl Franklin’s (One False Move) eloquent interview and thoughts
that truly bring what independent and often "fringe" American
cinema is trying to do.
"American Cinema" tries to tell the movie business as it is, as
it was, and an attempt to explain its future. For anyone who
believes themselves film enthusiasts, it’s a must, to understand
and outline what American cinema truly has become.
TELEVISION: "American Cinema." Now showing every Monday 9 p.m.
to 11 p.m. on KCET through Feb. 27.