A Richard Brody essay on what was something of a revolution.
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Something tectonic was happening in fifties Hollywood, but it was nearly undetectable up close; most American critics couldn’t see the trees for the forest, missed the mighty art of individual films and filmmakers because of their inextricable Hollywood roots. A decade ago, I threw together a casual cornucopia of great fifties Hollywood directors; if I were doing it again today, in light of subsequent viewings, I might need two cornucopias. The fifties was a golden age of daring and original direction—but it was also largely unrecognized, in part, because of historical trends that Hirsch details. Intellectual disdain for Hollywood remained high, for a variety of reasons. There was the spinelessness of studios during the McCarthy era—the alacrity with which, caving to pressure from Congress and right-wing groups, they went about blacklisting politically suspect writers, directors, and actors. There was an increase in technology-fuelled spectacle—part of a frenzied effort to compete with television—with such gewgaws as 3-D, various wide-screen formats, and stereo sound. No new technique is intrinsically dubious and each is a potential boon to artists, but, at the time, the hasty and ballyhooed deployment reeked of brazen commercialism. The result was that Hollywood sold its gems as costume jewelry, not through mercenary cynicism but because the studio potentates were no more aware of the enduring art being produced under their aegis than were critics or, for that matter, viewers.
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