Films That Changed the Hollywood Landscape

Submitted by podizz on Mon, 12/12/2011 - 08:59
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  1. Birth of a Nation
  2. The Jazz Singer-In 1927, Warner transformed the Hollywood landscape with the release of The Jazz Singer, the first feature "talkie" film featuring Vitaphone powered sound. While the other studios considered the sound film to be a passing far, Warner Bros were alone is envisioning the future of movie-making. As Al Jolson, the Jazz Singer lead presciently announced, "You ain't heard nothin yet," and sure enough, Hollywood would never look back. Soon, many of the biggest stars of the silent film era found themselves out of work, unsuited for the requisites of the modern speaking role. Sound-on film soon replaced the Vitaphone technique, and with the pther studious following suit, nearly all theatres had been wired for sound in just four years.
  3. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs-Released in 1937, Snow White was the first feature length animated film. Appearing in full color, and being the first film to ever feature a soundtrack. Based on the Brothers Grimm tale. Called Disney's Folly while in production due to the widespread belief that that it would fail. It cost roughly $1.5 million, an exorbitant sum that Disney himself had to mortgage his house to finance. Made 4 times as much as any other picture released that year, by 1939 become the most successful film to that point. It helped made Disney the institution it is today, much of its revenue going directly towards the construction of Walt Disney Studios.
  4. Gone With the Wind
  5. Citizen Kane-24 year old Welles was given the keys to the RKO kingdom, an unheard amount of control to make the movie he wanted. He featured near constant use deep focus, illustrative shadowing, low angle shots, and inspired use and scale and interplay between the background and foreground. Roger Ebert sums it up best with his assessment that "Birth of a Nation brought together everything up until then in the movies.. from the point of view of technique...what Griffith did in Birth of a Nation was to coalesce all of the advances until then and put them all altogether into one movie that would point the direction of films to come and the same thing is true of Citizen Kane. Kane did for the sound period what Birth of the Nation did for the silence period. It accumulated all of these advances- new ideas is sound, in editing, in cinematography, even in acting and put them all together in one place at one time, so that every picture after that in some way or another will be informed by the breakthrough of Citizen Kane"
  6. "You can crush a man with journalism and u can't with motion pictures" Heart on why he didn't want to get into movies. 1 in 5 read his papers a week. both masters of their domain, domineering, unyielding,
  7. The Miracle-Released in the US in 1950, an Itailian film by Rossellini about a tramp who has an affair with a unbalanced woman, who upon giving birth to a son, declares him to be the messiah. The Catholic Church instantly railed against the film, who were able to convince the New York Board of regents to ban the film for supposedly being sacrilegious. The distributors would subsequently take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, declaring it to violate the separation of church and state. The momentious decision would forever alter the future of the industy, declaring the medium to be protected by the First Amendment, at once dismantling the power the the Product Code to regulate the content of movies.
  8. 2001: A Space Oddysey-legitimized the science fiction film genre, lightyears ahead of its time, a revolution in special effects, married his visuals to music in a way that few other movies ever have. No dialogue for the first half hour and very little plot and yet manages to still be one of the most compelling movies of its time. Kubrick a unique directorial talent in that he could do any genre well. Horror (The Shining), war (Full Metal Jacket), science fiction (2001), and political satire (Dr Strangelove).
  9. Bonnie and Clyde/Easy Rider/Midnight Cowboy (New Hollywood) With the studio system in shambles and popular interest in movies nearing all time lows, a new young crop of movie-makers began to emerge to seize up the reigns. As power shifted away from the producer, writers and directors enjoyed unprecedented freedoms, injecting their films with sexuality, violence, moral ambiguity, and rawness that resonated with an increasingly young and countercultural audience in ways that up until then had alluded so-called "Old Hollywood." With Coppola, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Altman, Freidkin and a host of others, the medium moved towards more thoughtful, personal, and artistic fair. Perhaps the first film to fully embody these themes was 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, its success at once shattering the way Hollywood approached movie making and paving the way for the new generation. Two years later, the (then) X-rated masterpiece Midnight Cowboy would win Best Picture, solidifing this new generations grip on Hollywood.
  10. Jaws/Star Wars (The Blockbuster) A young director named Steven Spielberg with little more to his name than a couple of minor tv credits and the The Sugarland Express. Shooting in the actual ocean an unprecedented undertaking-chose Martha's Vineyard. Ambitious, literally uncharted waters. dangerously overschedule and overbudget, buzz that it would sink Spielberg's career before it would even be released. (Richard Dreyfuss actually preemptively apologized for it in a tv interview) close to shutting down production and cutting losses. Malfunction after malfunction led to a drastic reduction in the shark's screen time, which unexpectedly turned out to be perhaps the film's greatest asset. Spielberg began to realize that imagined terror was more powerful than anything technology could drum up. The iconic John Williams score in no small part aided in the full realization of that terror. Studio execs decided to release the film simultaneously in theatres nationwide, a practice never before tried. Became a box-office behemoth, breaking all kinds of records. Transformed Spielberg from a young unknown into a Hollywood titan. It is looked to a the first true blockbuster, changing how studios release and market films.
  11. Toy Story-first completely computer generated movie, launched the Pixar dynasty, changed animation. Tron was the first feature film to featuge CGI. Raised the bar on just how good children's programming could be.