World of fun

During the 1960s the studio system in Hollywood declined, because many films were now being made on location in other countries, or using studio facilities abroad, such as Pinewood in England and Cinecittà in Rome. “Hollywood” movies were still largely aimed at family audiences, and it was often the more old-fashioned films that produced the studios’ biggest successes. Productions like Mary Poppins (1964), My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) were among the biggest money-makers of the decade. The growth in independent producers and production companies, and the increase in the power of individual actors also contributed to the decline of traditional Hollywood studio production.

There was also an increasing awareness of foreign language cinema during this period. During the late 1950s and 1960s the French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard produced films such as Les quatre cents coups and Jules et Jim which broke the rules of Hollywood cinema’s narrative structure. As well, audiences were becoming aware of Italian films like Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita and the stark dramas of Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman.

In Britain, the “Free Cinema” of Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and others lead to a group of realistic and innovative dramas including Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Kind of Loving and This Sporting Life. Other British films such as Repulsion, Darling, Alfie, Blowup and Georgy Girl (all in 1965-1966) helped to reduce prohibitions sex and nudity on screen, while the casual sex and violence of the James Bond films, beginning with Dr. No in 1962 would render the series popular worldwide.

During the 1960s, Ousmane Sembène produced several French- and Wolof-language films and became the ‘father’ of African Cinema. In Latin America the dominance of the “Hollywood” model was challenged by many film makers. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino called for a politically engaged Third Cinema in contrast to Hollywood and the European auteur cinema.

Further, the nuclear paranoia of the age, and the threat of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange (like the 1963 close-call with the USSR during the Cuban missile crisis) prompted a reaction within the film community as well. Films like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe with Henry Fonda were produced in a Hollywood that was once known for its overt patriotism and wartime propaganda.

In documentary film the sixties saw the blossoming of Direct Cinema, an observational style of film making as well as the advent of more overtly partisan films like In the Year of the Pig about the Vietnam War by Emile de Antonio. By the late 1960s however, Hollywood producers were beginning to create more innovative films such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), and The Wild Bunch (1969). Bonnie and Clyde is often considered the beginning of the so-called New Hollywood.