Where does the Hollywood Renaissance actually begin and end?

Where does the Hollywood Renaissance actually begin?

It is often defined as being the period from Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to Star Wars (1977). Everything else before or since has nothing to do with it.

I have always felt that this limits its impact on our film culture and have always wanted to know just where the ideas that formulated the new wave of American filmmaking ideas actually formed. Of course, the further back you go one can always find some earlier film that could be inspirational.

I traced the ideas and ideals back to the late noir films of the 1950’s, where a both a certain photorealism and desire to attack problems crept into the genre. The primary example is Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) alongside others such as Kiss Me Deadly(1955), and the early films of Stanley Kubrick: Killers Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956), and Paths of Glory (1957). This in and of itself can be traced back towards two films by one man which revitalized noir and made it a criticism of our own version of humanity. These are Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd.(1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951). One examines the dark underside of the Hollywood dream factory and the other reveals our society’s complete lust for fame, fortune, exposure, and power. Combined, they are a portrait of America so true that no one wanted to really think about (and in the case of Ace in the Hole, no one wanted to see this either…) Sadly, Wilder was forced to go running for cover and spent the rest of the 1950’s making more box office friendly products. It was not until the 1960’s that he was able to make a more daring and risky expenditure.

I have already traced the provoking lineage of the Hollywood Renaissance to 1950. Is there any need to trace it further back? By going one year further in time, we arrive in 1949, where the film that changed the world was released, Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Here we have the beginning of everything, the lack of lies, real world locations, shadowy figures in both visuals and plot, no clear sense of good and evil, sympathization with supposedly bad characters, worthless “hero”, and lack of all resolution. It sounds as if I am describing one of the classics form the Hollywood Renaissance. All of it is present here in The Third Man. The medium practically began in 1895, but it took until this time for film to discover both itself and the world outside it. Here we have the first truly modern film that is not afraid to go into war torn Vienna that even after four years cannot pull itself out of the rubble of WWII.

The film is an unsmoked cigarette that is tossed off in self-disgust.

After the runaway success of Jaws in 1975, the Renaissance is often said to have being nearing the end. Star Wars is the film that killed it off completely and ushered in the age of the corporate blockbuster. Both of these successful popcorn entertainments were actually products of the new movement. They were so steeped in the wave of fresh ideas and enthusiasm that their success was more of a direct appeal to the public than selling out. The Renaissance did not die in 1977. It actually continued through notable films and exceptions to the rule through the 1980’s, but with increasing loss of potency.

Apocalypse Now (1979), Being There (1979), Manhattan(1979), The Shining(1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Prince of the City (1981), Blade Runner (1982), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) are just some examples of this work. Films like these became both harder to finance and sell to an audience due to a lack of interest by studios because such high returns could be made from mass marketing one blockbuster. Interestingly, all of these films have become largely influential to the few who have seen them and have sparked entire genres onto themselves. William Friedkin’s career since the Exorcist (1973) has been one long series of ups and downs. In 1985, his To Live and Die in L.A.was released to little fanfare and marginal box office returns. Yet its influence can clearly be seen in the television series Miami Vice, and virtually every late 80’s action film franchise form Lethal Weapon (1987) to Die Hard (1988). It was an unexpected and virtually unseen return to form for Friedkin, who then promptly did nothing with it.

Films like these were unmarketable in the happy go lucky world of film in the 1980’s. The corporations had bought the studios and had decided that every movie must be a blockbuster and make them millions. This is what killed the Renaissance period, this along with the fact that the artists let them do it.