Film List Hollywood 50s 

Around 1959, the American film industry entered the worst crisis in its history. The boom of television from 1947 weakened Hollywood more than the war before. 6000 movie theaters had to close, finally the loss of the industry amounted to more than 6 million dollars. The supreme court caused another devastating judgement because the big studios were forced to sell their cinema chains. Companies like MGM thus lost their most secure sales opportunities. From then on the privatized cinemas enjoyed the freedom to no longer exclusively accept the productions of the corporations. Already during the 50s the cinema tried to meet the competition of television with attractions. The production of cheap black-and-white films was almost completely stopped by the studios in favour of expensive material. Although the attempt to produce three-dimensional films failed due to the resistance of the audience, a number of widescreen methods prevailed. The robe was the first Cinemascope film and beat the box office records of all earlier productions. The length of the films grew, the expenditure of extras, costumes and buildings exceeded every known measure. But a number of independent producers could establish themselves next to the majors; not with colossal movies, but with interesting material that paid off faster. The most successful were the companies of director Stanley Kramer as well as the actors Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Henry Fonda. The United Artists, the distributor for independent productions, became the most powerful company of its time - even though he had been on the verge of bankruptcy in 1951. In the end they arranged themselves with the television as well as with the independent producers and it succeeded gradually to become master over the crisis: Older movies were released for television, big studios also rented their facilities to independents and in the end even produced TV series themselves. In 1961 the income exceeded the record year 1947 again for the first time.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Home 

Two questions will never be answered in Home: 1. how did this family come to live here in the first place? 2. why does the mother so desperately refuse to move away from here? Even when a motorway is being built in their front yard? In the beginning, they live comfortably in their little house, not far from the country road, which has not been used for ten years. The road basically belongs to them and is also suitable as a hockey field. But then thick lorries approach and lay a new layer of asphalt. Guard rails are installed. The hockey sticks and the paddling pool are moved aside by the workers without a word. Even the charcoal grill. Then you hear something on the radio about the inauguration of this road and shortly afterwards the first car speeds past. The family seems basically quite average - perhaps a little more unconventional than my family, for example (or so it seems). The parents cuddle, the boy plays, the twenty-year-old daughter smokes in secret. she is a typical teenager, wears black and looks sad. Every morning the father (Olivier Gourmet) drives to work in the green Volvo, while the mother (Isabelle Huppert) does the housework. The opening of the motorway was no surprise to them. But the heavy, incessant traffic is becoming a real problem. In the past, the children crossed the road to get to school faster. Today, the way to the house is full of dangers. Is there even a danger of carbon dioxide poisoning? It is now much harder for the boy to visit his friends. Only the teenage daughter continues to sunbathe in the front garden and gives the truck drivers the middle finger. And the film gets darker and darker... Director Ursula Meier skilfully leads us to explosive passages. Much of what happens would make no sense in most households. Apparently, however, there are some shallows in this family - which we sense from the beginning. At least we know that for sure, the moment disaster takes its course. The great thing about Home is, of course, Isabelle Huppert. She seems to have been looking the same for ages while slipping into fundamentally different roles. Again and again she takes on completely new characters from the inside. We can never guess what she is thinking - although we have known this actress for ages! Huppert's face is almost unfathomable and therefore all the more fascinating! Here we can put ourselves in the place of Huppert i a woman for whom a home is not just a house.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Arthur Penn - Alice's Restaurant

This is a good and very unexcited film by Arthur Penn. At no point does one get the impression that he wanted to make a big movie. On the contrary: Penn simply shows some friends and some months of their lives. Births, deaths, weddings. Up to this degree he actually behaves in a "factorylike" way towards the songs of Arlo Guthrie, who plays the leading role. I think any other film (which would be more under pressure to perform) would be inappropriate! Maybe Penn even should have done without the rudiments of a plot, because Guthrie is always best when he's on the road. On the highway by hitchhiking, when he plays guitar or just visits his friends Ray (James Broderick) and Alice (Ray Quinn). Not quite as relaxed and convincing are the scenes in which we learn more about the love life of Alice and Ray. Alice is something like a hippie mother for everyone. She takes in the lost souls, tries to bring them back to life. Sometimes she succeeds; Alice would probably call it a transfusion of life. However, she is a sensual and spiritual person. But then Ray shows up and the two begin to quarrel and their relationship becomes ambiguous. What should we think now? Is Alice unfaithful? And what does Ray believe? Arthur Penn leaves us floating, which is why the love scenes haven't become as good as they could have been. Also difficult is the decision that Arlo's father (Joseph Boley), who is already showing signs of old age, will appear. Do we see Arlo here in a few years? Isn't that a little too close to life? I think we should accept these scenes as a sign of how honestly Alice's restaurant is meant. Still, these scenes seem a bit artificial. But most of the time Alice's Restaurant is a warm, lively movie. Penn portrays a lifestyle, no plot with different characters. It's the attitude towards life of the hippie generation. We feel the touch of New Hollywood! Convincing also Arlo Guthrie himself, who seems so quiet, open and natural in front of the camera. Alice's Restaurant unites the spirit of the singer Guthrie with the tact of his director Penn. 

Film List hollywood 40's incl. FREE STREAMS 

Already in the 30's a certain politicization of Hollywood had begun which had a full effect in the 40's. After the war some directors and authors tried to become independent by founding their own companies - which in most cases failed because of the banks. But some, like Samuel Goldwyn, who had already created a studio before the war, produced some of the best works of the 40s. The greatest blow was dealt to the left by the Senate Committee for the "Investigation of Un-American Activities" set up in 1938. A state of paralysis spread which only began to give way after the abdication of the responsible Senator McCarthy. The turn to reality made the American documentary film movement clear, the cut to a new period marked the appearance of Orson Welles Citizen Kane. Kane bore the features of various self-made men, including Welles. He presents himself as an idealist or materialist, egoist or altruist - as the situation demands. Every opinion about him is correct, but none hits its core. The structure of the film resembles a journalistic study and does not obey conventional dramaturgy. The favourable conditions under which Citizen Kane was produced were never given to Welles again. With von Strohheim he shared the lot of an "auteur maudit". In addition to Welles, it was William Wyler who initiated the renunciation of the traditional style. Similar to Welles Wyler stood for a kind of "inner montage" of his movies, The best years of our lives used the film language of the Italian neorealists. Like Chaplin's, Hitchcock's work does not belong to any period. He stayed the same forever, his crime movies were regarded as the perfection of the genre, but they were never interested in the crime case. In a static order Hitchcock's heroes experience the uncanny, they get into a crime, are falsely suspected or pushed into action. The horror rises from the everyday. Familiar objects such as telephones, liquids or jewellery become messengers of disaster. Through the perspective of the camera, things change and become uncanny. As in the British horror novels, everything grows out of everyday bourgeois life and is not metaphysically grounded as with the German Expressionists. Hitchcock's Happy Endings are usually transparent as attempts at appeasement; his horror is broken again by Anglo-Saxon irony. Preston Sturges was an author in the European sense who developed the American comedy of the pre-war period into a social satire. He activated forgotten techniques of comedy all the way back to slapstick comedy. Sturges polemicized against society and against his own comedies. Sullivan´s travels was the main work, a milieu investigation among the very poor, whose preferences the director Sullivan explores in order to create in the end not a social film, but an undemanding laughing stock for his clientele. The black series hit the tone of the time the hardest, was equally suspicious of the ruling order and authentic in its milieu drawing. The black series, the documentary crime film and the socio-critical film were three trends of the time. Of all three, "pure" works can be derived such as John Huston's debut The Maltese Falcon. The best documentary crime films are Kiss of death by Henry Hathaway, The naked city by Jules Dassin and Panic in the streets by Elia Kazan. They don't focus on crime, but on its resolution. Socially critical films such as The best years of our lives by William Wyler, The men by Fred Zinnemann or All the king´s men by Robert Rossen examine the susceptibility of the petty bourgeoisie to totalitarian movements. Even anti-racist films such as Home of the Braves or those that denounced antisemitism such as Crossfire were made. In contrast to the black series, the socially critical films of the 40s had no style of their own. Many of the directors sank to insignificance during the 50s or gained some important works from the reception of the style of the 40s. Only a few grew beyond the limits of the realism of the 40s, only John Huston, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, Fred Zinnemann and Joseph L. Mankiewicz stood out later with individual works.

Film List Fantasy Arthouse incl. FREE STREAMS 

Fantasy is the genre that builds most on the familiar and offers fans a haven beyond reality. The great 60s fantasy novels are filmed in such a way that they satisfy the viewer's expectations, and the penchant for sequels prolongs this enjoyment. The list of Arthaus fantasy films does exactly that, they are excitingly different, break with the usual, take us into unknown territory. Between avant-garde and feature film, worlds are created here that one has never entered before, curiosity is the fascinating thing about it.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE The Wanderers 

In 1979, three great gang films saw the cinema screens of the world: "Quadrophenia", "The Warriors" and Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers. Kaufman looks (just like Quadrophenia) full of nostalgia back to a time about which we basically don't know much: The early 60s, the time between the rebels of the 50s, but still before the student revolt of the hippie era. Life on the streets of the Bronx 1963. The Wanderers are a teen gang of Italian immigrants, their opponents are the blacks and the Koreans. But the worst enemy of the wanderers are the bald "elders". Richie is the leader of the Wanderers and we see everyday life through his perspective. Everyone in his gang has just finished high school and is making their first steps with girls, shyly exchanging phone numbers and hosting rock'n'roll parties. This is done in a humorous and never precocious way. Sometimes you also feel the existential need around her (during a fight even a gang member dies). But Richie also has completely different experiences: He hears a folk singer named Dylan in a bar and learns about Kennedy's death - but reacts completely uninvolved. The decay of the gang comes naturally: Richie is expecting a child with his lover, two others have to leave because they had a fight with their father. In the Bronx, nothing keeps her: The families break down, the girlfriend just broke up, the school-leaving certificate doesn't help her. Like so many others, they leave for San Francisco... Philip Kaufman filmed this rigorously from the perspective of his protagonists and for them there was neither a "bourgeois" nor a "leftist" world view. Kaufman doesn't dramatize anything unnecessarily, but rather tells it casually. He relies on amateur actors. There is a lot going on in our heads, because here something like a first youth revolt arises, even if quite unconsciously.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Elia Kazan - A Face In The crowd 

There's always a film that predicted the political future - but it seems that A Face In The Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan in 1950, knew the future to this day. At the centre is philosopher Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, who first fools a film producer, then the makers of a TV show, the advertising industry and finally an entire country. Of course, he doesn't do it in a fine suit, but recognisably as part of the New York establishment. To preach the tenets of modern conservatism and reach the target audience, smug intellectualism only inhibits. Instead, it helps to tap into the popular sensibility, and that's exactly what Larry does. A hard-drinking misogynist, he's a radio host who tells smug Southern stories about home-cooked meals and eccentric relatives. So he rises through the ranks, ends up in television and uses his influence for political ends. Larry follows no script and his supposed authenticity ensures him a loyal audience. First and foremost is a personal vendetta against the local sheriff who previously put him in jail for drunkenness. As his influence grows, he serves a senator as a kingmaker. Of course, the senator's image must be corrected first.... Under Larry's direction, the senator becomes a down-to-earth guy you go hunting with. And whom you can invite to your own talk show to make a presidential candidacy palatable to him. It is now time to attack the social security system. Larry and HIS candidate wear two faces. One for the public: it serves to implore voters to vote against their own interests. This not only seems timelessly American; it can already be found in Europe and Germany. A very essential feature of any such campaign is blatant racism. An issue that is guaranteed to appeal to a certain proportion of male voters. The very section that feels marginalised by the demographics of the nation. It is the ugliest part of such strategies as Larry's that they must inevitably turn to violence. A film like this by Elia Kazan focuses primarily on Larry's personality, his flamboyance, less on the milieu and machinery that created him. We follow this vulgar, rough guy as he spreads lies with relish. We know we are dealing with a fraud, but we react as if hypnotised by his attraction. Television is his department, here he builds himself up in front of us, pushing all others to the side. But finally, r begins to bore us. That is the moment when we begin to think about ourselves and our reality again.