In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

12 Enter Hollywood Lured by Brigitte Bardot, Columbia Pictures entered the art film market in a serious way beginning in 1957; by 1966 the majors dominated the market , having absorbed nearly the entire pantheon of European auteurs with sweet deals offering total production financing, directorial freedom, and marketing muscle. These auteurs included Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti , and Federico Fellini of Italy; Tony Richardson, Joseph Losey, and Karel Reisz of Great Britain; and François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, and Eric Rohmer of France.1 Hollywood’s motives were transparent. Foreign films—especially those that depicted sex in ways forbidden by the Production Code—were attracting customers , and the majors wanted a part of the business. The majors also wanted to exploit the European pop culture scene—particularly Swinging London fashions and music—to attract young adults. The core audience for foreign films during the 1960s now comprised America’s “cinephile” generation—university students born during the late 1930s and 1940s—who had joined an estimated four thousand college film societies by 1968. As obvious as these motives appear, taking on art films was basically a conservative move that enabled the majors to cover all the bases in a period of rapid cultural, political, and social change. This chapter describes the first phase (1957–66) of Hollywood’s entry into the market. It covers a period of relative industry stability during which the majors still adhered—albeit reluctantly—to the tenets of the Production Code. Hollywood’s venture into art films has to be seen as part of the American film industry’s postwar efforts to reestablish its hegemony over international distribution. It accomplished this by releasing its huge backlog of pictures 227 228 Part Three: Changing Dynamics  made during the war, adopting a united front to combat protectionism, and shifting production overseas to take advantage of European film subsidies—a phenomenon known as runaway production. International distribution also meant investing in European filmmakers and marketing foreign films in the United States. The two went hand in hand and had the goal of discovering and absorbing new talent wherever it could be found. Hollywood’s heaviest overseas investments were targeted to European production centers in Rome and London. Rome had much going for it. The city was within easy reach of colorful scenery, it had an abundance of trained extras, and it had up-to-date studios. Films made in Rome, which became known as “Hollywood on the Tiber,” could easily be tailored for American tastes. Such films included Mervyn LeRoy’s Quo Vadis? (MGM, 1951), William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (Paramount, 1953); Jean Negulesco’s Three Coins in the Fountain (20th Century-Fox, 1954), Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa (United Artists, 1954), King Vidor’s War and Peace (Paramount, 1956), Anthony Mann’s Trapeze (United Artists, 1956), William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (MGM, 1959), Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (20th Century-Fox, 1963), David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (MGM, 1965), and John Huston’s The Bible (20th Century-Fox, 1966). As foreign markets opened up, Hollywood signed coproduction pacts with top-ranked producers—starting with Goffredo Lombardo, Dino De Laurentiis, and Alberto Grimaldi—and financed or participated in the financing of Italian pictures intended for international distribution. Such ventures were typically bi- or tripartite productions between Italy, France, and Germany and were released in the United States dubbed for mainstream consumption. They usually teamed up American male actors with Italian stars such as Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Verna Lisi, Monica Vitti, and Silvano Mangano. What kinds of films did the majors produce? Every conceivable kind—peplums, romantic comedies, continental dramas, biblical epics, spaghetti westerns, sex comedies, crime comedies, and melodramas. A similar story can be told about London. By the 1960s the majors were financing nearly all the important pictures produced in Great Britain each year. The films from “Hollywood on the Thames” include the James Bond and Pink Panther series (United Artists), David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (Columbia, 1962), Fred Zinnemann’s A Man for All Seasons (Columbia, 1966), Lewis Gilbert’s Alfie (Paramount, 1966), Silvio Narizzano’s Georgy Girl (Columbia, 1966), Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (Columbia, 1967) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, 1968), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (MGM, 1967), Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (Paramount, 1968), and Joseph Losey’s Secret Ceremony (Universal , 1968), to name a few. Vincent Canby noted in 1962 that the ever-growing [18.221.165.246] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 20:06 GMT...

Share