Chapter 15 of The Cultures of American Film focused on Hollywood after World War II, and how the film industry affected the culture around it.
The chapter starts by introducing a film called, The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler. The film insists that America will be reborn after the war into a nation of self-sufficient families where love and generosity reign. With this view, the film tries to shift the focus to peace after the war. Later in the chapter, we learn about the censorship that Hollywood introduced during this era. In 1948, the Supreme court ruled that the studios had to divide themselves of their distribution outlets, thereby drastically reducing their income. According to Kolker, this also marked the beginning of the end of the Hollywood Golden Age. We also read about how television was impacting the attendance at the theaters. The film industry increased the size of the screen to compete. We learned about the Anamorphic process, which was the process of squeezing the image onto a 35mm or 65mm strip of film, and the projector would create an image of 2.35:1. We also learned that Panavision
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This fear within the film community brought about the Hollywood 10. Leading up to the Hollywood 10, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals pressured studios to weed out communist. The Hollywood 10 were held in contempt of court after being subpoenaed to testify about their possible communist connections. This group of ten was later blacklisted and not employed within Hollywood. Writers like Dalton Trumbo were forced to write under aliases and did not make nearly as much money as they did before. However, Trumbo still won an Academy Award while writing under one of his aliases. The Blacklist was eventually repealed in 1959. The films in this era also addressed the issues of anti-semitism and race relations within the United