Fyrir nokkrum árum gerði ég skólaverkefni um kvikmyndir. Skyldi það vera á ensku og fjalla um eitthvert ákveðið þema innan kvikmyndasögunnar. Það sem ég valdi var “Silfuröld” Hollywood. Þetta er heiti sem ég fékk frá einhverjum erlendum kvikmyndafræðing (man því miður ekki nafnið), og mér fannst fullkomlega viðeigandi. Í þessum inngangi útskýri ég meininguna með “Silfuröldinni”, og á eftir koma þrír kaflar um mismunandi “sjanra” og gengi þeirra á þessum árum. Vona að menn njóti vel:


WHAT IS “THE SILVER AGE” ?

Every film fan knows The “Golden Age” of Hollywood, a time when cigar-chomping studio moguls and legendary stars reigned supreme, and many of the most memorable Hollywood classics were made. This time in Hollywood history, ca 1935-45, is a constant source of nostalgia for film fans, and many books and websites are devoted to The Golden Age.

The years that followed are by many considered to be a time of decline for Hollywood. Although many fine films were made, it was a time of seriously declining box-office sales due to the advent of TV. Hollywood tried to offset this with a string of widescreen-tecnhicolour extravaganzas, which were visually impressive but often lacking in real substance.

This trend carried on well into the 1960's, even if it began to show serious signs of tiredness, as plainly evident in the Roman-epic Cleopatra (1964), which almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox due to a huge out-of-control budget and poor box-office reception. Audiences had clearly had enough of Biblical and Roman epics, but the studio executives were not quite sure what to do about it. It seemed Hollywood had reached a dead end.

But around 1965, change was just around the corner.

In the latter half of the 1960's, Western culture was undergoing profound changes. The relative social “tranquility” which had held sway since the end of WWII was giving way to a more liberal attitude, and more critical of society in general. This trend was being felt in all aspects of culture - literature, music, politics - so it was inevitable that it would also find it's way into films.

Some have attributed the changes that took place in Hollywood in these years almost entirely on one single event, the lifting of the ifamous Hays code, which restrained the freedom of filmmakers, banning such “immorality” as bad language, graphic violence and sex.

In this authors opinion however, the lifting of the code was merely a sign of the times. True, films such as Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate (both 1967) would not have been produced with the code still in effect. But then again, the code would not have been lifted if not for the pressure from filmmakers wanting the freedom to make such films.

Both afore mentioned films were greeted warmly by audiences and most critics, many of whom instantly recognized that, finally, something new was happening in Hollywood. By the early 1970's, a new generation of young filmakers had almost totally revolutionized Hollywood. Innovation seemed to have no bounds, and Hollywood was in high creative gear, producing some of the best films in its entire history.


So, if the time of David Selznick and Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Lana Turner was Hollywood's Golden Age, then the time of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, William Friedkin and Robert Altman can certainly be called Hollywood's Silver Age.


CONSPIRACY FILMS

The Watergate scandal of the early 1970's rocked the foundations of American society already rocked by the Vietnam War and general social turmoil. People's faith in the government and “the establishment” in general took a nosedive, and instead of the image of honest officials trying to do their best in public service, there were now crooks in every smoke-filled office-corner, plotting against the public, up to no good. After all, if the president himself was plotting burglaries and wiretaps, what were the rest of them up to?

Conspiracy films had been made before, but in those the evil conspirators were usually Communists as in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), or socialistic Aliens as in The Invasion of the Body Snatcthers (1956). The U.S. Government, in the form of a heroic FBI agent, usually resolved the situation, or at least came to the aid of the everyday American heroes of such films.

Not so in 1970's Hollywood films. By then, government agents were usually bad news, more likely to kill the hero than to come to his rescue. Let us now take a look at some of those films…

Even if it's more of a “docu-drama” than a conspiracy film, All the Presidents Men (1976) must be included here. Based on the real-life exploits of journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate affair, it's storyline and pacing set the tone for many a fictional conspiracy film to follow. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are journalists doing their job when suddenly they smell something fishy. They subsequently discover that the story is far bigger than they originally imagined. As they dig deeper into the case they recieve sublte warnings and outright threats, but keep on going until they manage to expose the whole conspiracy, and all ends well.

Major films dealing in evil conspiracies by the government and/or big business were plentiful in the late 1970's. Michael Douglas jumped on that bandwagon, starring in two such films, one of which he also produced. In Coma (1978) he is a doctor who, sceptical at first, eventually realizes that his employers at a big city hospital are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for profit, all of course with the quiet approval of the authorities. And in The China Syndrome (1979), we again see Michael exposing a vile conspiracy. This time he's a cameraman who along with TV journalist Jane Fonda tries to expose a far-reaching cover-up involving an extremely unsafe nuclear power plant. In an amazing coincidence that would provide good material for any up-and-coming conspiracy-theorist, the real-life nuclear power plant disaster at Three Mile Island occured just three weeks before the film's premiere!

Cashing in on the classic “fake-moon-landings” conspiracy theory, Capricorn One (1978) tells a story of a fake Mars landing in the near future. This time around the heroic journalist is Elliot Gould, and the unfortunate fake-astronauts are James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O.J. Simpson. In this movie NASA joins the CIA and the FBI on Hollywood's list of evil government organizations intent on keeping the public ignorant and satisfied while plotting their own evil schemes.

In Alan Pakula's …And Justice for All (1979), Al Pacino plays an honest and well-meaning lawyer who gradually discovers how the whole judiciary system is rotten to the core. There is no conspiracy as such involved, but a common quiet understanding on maintaining the corrupt status quo. As a result, this film is perhaps more relevant in our time (or any time) than the more far-fetched conspiracy films of the era.

The Stepford Wives (1975) is often placed in the Sci-Fi genre, since the “wives” are all robots. But the film is not so much a Sci-Fi film as a feminist take on a conspiracy film, highlighting a sub-concious male “conspiracy” to subdue all women, restraining them in a robot-like houswife mentality. In fact, this film has all the makings of a conspiracy film. It is a somewhat brilliant and slightly tounge-in-cheek piece of propaganda, considering the strong-feminist attitude at the time. How it can successfully be remade in our time (2004), as is currently being attempted, remains to be seen.

Although it's late 1970's heyday passed, the conspiracy film genre is by no means dead. In Hollywood's world, the Pentagon is always full of evil generals stopping at nothing to advance their insidious bio-germ warfare programs, or their world domination plans. It takes not only countless films, but whole TV series such as the X-Files to cover all of their activities.

But perhaps the greatest conspiracy film ever came out not in the 1970's, but in 1991, Oliver Stone's JFK.


COP FILMS

Films with a police detective as the protagonist were nothing new in the late 1960's, but with the new attitude of the times, the Cop Film took on a distincitive new identity. For one thing, the cops in these films took on a new attitude, more independent and adversarial to authority and society in general. The Rogue Cop was born, and has been with us ever since.

Perhaps the first of the new style cop films was Bullitt (1968). Steve McQueen is the absolute star of the film, playing a super-cool police detetctive who wears designer suits and drives new-model sports cars when chasing after the bad guys. And of course his attitude is somewhat apathetic and adversarial when dealing with his superiors. It is a film fondly remembered by many who saw it when it came out, and sports-car enthusiasts still cherish the famous car-chase scene!

However, that film did not manage to “write the book” on subsequent cop films anywhere near as much as Dirty Harry (1971) did. Here is a film that started just about every cop-film cliché we've lived with since. The storyline: Harry Callahan is a tough San Francisco cop infamous for his unorthodox methods in dealing with criminals, and regularly gets screamed at by the chief inspector for wrecking whole city-blocks, to which he replies that he's just doing his job. The film starts with Harry being assigned a new partner, a young nerdy-looking rookie. They gradually come to like each other as they combine their skills in hunting down the pshycopathic villain. It's no wonder it's called “The Mother of all Cop Movies”.

As much as his Westerns, this movie made Clint Eastwood a superstar, his teeth-grinding rage-filled Dirty Harry being as memorable a character in movie history as “The Man with No Name”. It is ironical that while the film definately ushered in a new era in cop films, it was also bashed by critics for conveying a very dubious reactionary political message. The murdering pshyco being hippie-looking (even sporting a peace-sign), Harry's contempt for the rights of such “scumbags” and his apparent sadism - all aroused the fury of liberals. Some went so far as to call the film outright fascist propaganda. Taking notice of this, Eastwood made the villains in the sequel Magnum Force (1973) fascistic rouge cops, and considerably toned down the seemingly brutal aspects of the character.

But if Dirty Harry was politically incorrect, at least he was a purely fictional larger-than-life movie character. Not so for Gene Hackman's “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971). The film was supposedly based on a true story, and it no doubt gave a more realistic view of real-life cops and their work than previous films had. Popeye is an old-style New York cop, ruthless and uncaring, and definately most politically incorrect, having no qualms about roughing up a few “niggers” without a warrant. He also frequently drinks while on duty. The film neither condemns nor condones such behaviour from him, it merely displays the character and leaves it to the viewer to form his opinion. True story or not, the film was for the most part realistic, one of the first films to focus on the drug trade. It was also beutifully shot, the chase-scenes holding well up to anything made today.

On the other side of the coin was Sydney Lumet's Serpico (1973), based on a true story, starring Al Pacino as a new-style cop exposing corruption in the NYPD. One of the first films to deal with police corruption, this film also sports a great performance by Pacino as the unconventional cop who goes so deep undercover as to be unrecognizable from the people he's observing, be it in appearence or impression. Although being the hero of the film, he is a fragile character, the strain of the job nearly destroying him, which was another first for a movie-cop.

The films mentioned above are the most notable cop films of the era, the trend-setters. They all generated countless more films in their time, and ever since.


DISASTER FILMS

A film genre synonymous with the 1970´s is “The Disaster Movie”. No one really knows why those movies became so popular as to have year-makes in their titles rather than Roman numerals.

Movies with disasters as the defining event had been made before, with the same formula as in the 1970's (we are introduced to 5-6 individuals or families at the beginning, including the hero, the disaster happens, all the character-stories interweave, all ends well). Before 1970, there had been at least 3 movies on the Titanic disaster, a 1930's disaster-musical on the San Francisco earthquake starring Clark Gable, and in 1960 Robert Stack took The Last Voyage on an ocean liner. Zero Hour (1957) about a stewardess landing a stricken airliner, was ahead of it's time, it might as well be renamed “Airport ‘57” !

But it was in the 1970’s that these movies became so popular and numerous as to constitute a genre of their own. It started in 1970 with a film called Airport, starring Dean Martin as an airline captain (!), Burt Lancaster, and (of course) George Kennedy who was to become a staple of those films. On it's own this might be an OK, if not very memorable film. But to any person viewing it today, this is the film that spawned 5 gradually worse year-marked sequels, started the great 1970's Disaster Movie craze, and indirectly launched the career of the ZAZ-comedians in the 1980's (see below).

Airport was a huge hit, and it set the tone for what followed. In The Towering Inferno (1974), Paul Newman and Steve McQueen saved the day in a burning skyscraper. Charlton Heston tackled the situation with customary effiency in Earthquake (1974). Strangely, Hollywood decided to save the real-life Titanic-disaster for another day, but The Poseidon Adventure (1972) provided a nice substitute for the time being. But on the subject of real-life disasters, squarely in the mold of these movies, even if based on a true story, is The Hindenburg (1975), starring George C. Scott.

As the 1970's drew to a close, so did the public's interest in disaster movies. Airport '79 - The Concorde was the last and the worst in that series. That film failed miserably at the box office, even if it fared a little better in the then infant video release market.

On this subject, mention must absolutlely be made to the “unofficial” end of the 1970's disaster movies, one of the greatest comedies ever made, a film called Airplane! (1980). The film debut of comedy-writers Zucker, Abrhams & Zucker, this film makes an delightfully hilarious mockery of the genre (along with some fine jabs at other movies.) Old hands Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack only add to the hilarity with wonderful cliche-chewing.

Although people were pretty sick of them by 1980, disaster movies have not completely disappeared from the scene since. They had a revival of sorts in the 1990's as evident in such movies as Deep Impact, Volcano (both 1997) and Armageddon (1998) And even as this is being written (2004) a movie called The Day After Tomorrow is hitting the theaters. All those movies owe a great deal to the disaster movie craze of the 1970's.


Vona að menn hafi haft gaman af. Seinni skammtur kemur bráðlega, en þar er fjallað um hryllingsmyndir, vestra, Seinni heimsstyrjaldar-, og Víetnam-myndir.