Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 452 g
1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema
Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 452 g
ISBN: 978-0-8135-5253-8
Verlag: Rutgers University Press
<p>The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theatres typically screened packages featuring one of each. With the former considered more prestigious because of their larger budgets and more popular actors, the lower-budgeted Bs served largely as a support mechanism to A-films of the major studios—most of which also owned the theatre chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theatres from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity.</p><p> In <em>The Battle for the Bs</em>, Blair Davis analyses how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950s B-movies took advantage of changing demographic patterns to fashion innovative marketing approaches. They established such genre cycles as science fiction and teen-oriented films (think <em>Destination Moon </em>and <em>I Was a Teenage Werewolf</em>) well before the major studios and also contributed to the emergence of the movement now known as underground cinema. Although frequently proving to be multimillion-dollar box-office draws by the end of the decade, the Bs existed in opposition to the cinematic mainstream in the 1950s and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come.</p>
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
<DIV>Acknowledgments<BR><BR>The Bs Take Flight: An Introduction<BR>1. Hollywood in Transition: The Business of 1950s Filmmaking<BR>2. The Battle Begins: Hollywood Reacts, Poverty Row Collapses<BR>3. The Rebirth of the B-Movie in the 1950s<BR>4. Attack of the Independent: American International Pictures and the B-Movie<BR>5. Small Screen, Smaller Pictures: New Perspectives on 1950s Television and B-Movies<BR>6. Big <I>B</I>, Little <I>b</I>: A Case Study of Three Films<BR>7. Notes from the Underground: The Legacy of the 1950s B-Movie<BR><BR>Notes<BR>Index<BR></div>
