2. 1929: 95 Million
Movie Attendance (in millions)
War Years: 85
1945-1948: 90 100
1953: 46
late-60s: below 20 50
1971: 15.8
0
2002: 30+
3. • Between 1948 and 1968 Hollywood
lost three quarters of its audience
• Traditional historians assume that
the post war decline in motion
picture attendance was
related to television
• In fact, television was a superficial
symptom of a much more profound
change in post
war entertainment patterns
4. • Direct cause of downfall was the social and
economic transformation of post-war Americans to
the leisured masses
• Passive entertainment vs. action
• The house, the car
• The drive in
5. • Response of motion
picture industry was to
make fewer, but more
expensive films
• Cinerama-three strips of
film projected from three
separate booths in the
theater
• 3-D Assault- 3-D movies
pulled audiences into
the action of the film
6. • 3-D craze wanes, but Cinerama
suceeded
• Fox perfected Henry Chreiten's
anamorphic lens for cinerama
• Projection of wide screen films
as well as stereo sound was
meant to provide an
experience dramatically
superior to black and white
television
7. • Cinerama used curtains for
dramatic effect
• Also used advertisements with
audiences sharing in this "on
screen spectacle
• Todd-AO Process Began with
Oklahoma and claimed movie
goers could "live" the
experience
• Todd-AO was the first
commercially successful wide
film format and spawned many
wide film processes
8. War with Television, Peace with its Revenues
• Various films such as The Moon is Blue (1953) and
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) lampooned
television commercials.
• Sometimes things even got violent, one character
kicking in a series of tv screens.
• But Belton tells us that while on the silver screen,
the rivalry seems obvious enough, the reality is that
film is battling more with other, less two-
dimensional leisure-time activities.
9. • The dollar sign ($) changes hearts and minds: in
1954, Disney and ABC partner up for a Disney show
which promotes its theme park;
• in 1955, General Teleradio sells its RKO library to a
station;
• Columbia, Warner Bros, Fox, M-G-M do the same
with their pre-1948 films.
• Sometimes the sales even saved the studio.
• Around this time, many studios began to produce
their own shows, airing more recent movies.
10. • Packaging the silver screen to fit the sad, curved
1950s TV tube took some not-so-subtle cropping,
scanning, and panning.
• Networks paid more and more for the rights to play
films, in the 60s rising from $180k to $800k in ten
years. Some very recent releases cost as much as $5
million.
• Let s consider for a moment the artistic quandary
caused by cropping. . . .
11. • Between 1985 to 2002 the VCR became a standard
househould feature, 91% of households owned one.
• But the DVD market, since their arrival in 1997
(that s really not very long ago, is it), has exploded.
• DVD player sales: $320k in 1997 to $25 million in
2002
• Available titles: 600 in 1997 to 20k in 2002
• Percentage of households with DVD players: 35% by
2002
• Comparison of revenues in 2002:
– Theaters: $9.5 billion
– DVD sales and rentals: $22 billion
12. • HBO in ‘75
• Turner in ‘77
• Showtime in ‘78
• The Movie Channel in ‘79.
• Now 2/3 US households have
cable
13. • Second-run movie theaters gone.
• Porno houses gone.
• Repertory theaters gone.
• With the ability to replicate (in
decent fashion, at least) the
widescreen, surround sound
experience of the movies, why
should people bother going?
• The answer is . . .
14. • The heyday of widescreen
blockbuster: mid-1950s to
mid1960s.
• War and Peace (1956), The Ten
Commandments (1956), South
Pacific (1958), Ben-Hur (1959),
Spartacus (1960), Exodus (1960),
Mutiny of the Bounty (1962),
Lawrence of Arabia (1962),
Cleopatra (1963), and The Sound
of Music (1965)
• This pattern of infrequent
moviegoing could only sustain the
industry in an era of blockbusters
—an era in which each film
became a special even that drew
the sometime spectator away from
other leisure-time activities and
back into the movie
theater (Belton 322).
15.
16.
17. • Belton believes the viewer s
expectations in the last three
decades have narrowed, no longer
drawn into the spectacle of films,
such as those produced in the
earlier panorama days.
• The infrequent consumption of
motion pictures has become
automatic and habitual . . . (322)
• But the new craze for special
effects in the last decade has
restored some of the wonder of the
big screen movie-going experience.
• Examples of spectacular digital
effect films: Jurassic Park (1993),
Titanic (1997), The Matrix (1999),
Shrek (2001)
18. • What are some common themes and/or
motifs in the 1950s-60s blockbusters? Why
do you think these types of films were so
popular?
• What are some more recent examples of
Hollywood blockbusters? Notice any trends?
