ipl-logo

What Extent Did The Counterculture Movement And Foreign/Domestic Affairs Influence Popular Films In The 1960s

1404 Words6 Pages

To what extent did the counterculture movement and foreign/domestic affairs influence popular films in the 1960s-70s?

Sophia He
Fritch 6th Block
May 8, 2023
During the 1960s and 70s, America underwent a period filled with anti-war movements and ever-changing youth culture. This was due to Johnson and Nixon’s presidential administration, the Vietnam War, and the rejection of conformity seen in younger individuals. However, political and social demise in the nation shifted the film industry to a new era of self-expression and broke down conventional norms, as seen through award-winning movies such as “The Godfather” and “Star Wars.” These movies proved that one of the darkest time periods of our nation was simultaneously one of …show more content…

Presumably one of the most famous and talked about movies in history was “The Godfather,” published by Paramount Pictures and directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1972. The movie shattered multiple records and was the first film ever to earn one million dollars a day. The plotline of “The Godfather” details a mob drama based on Mario Puzo’s novel. The movie explains a story about an Italian crime family and their refusal to be part of a drug community in exchange for mafia protection. The film depicts a vivid and interesting plotline that details public hysteria in the 1970s and gives audiences an insight into criminal activity such as mafia groups and drug deals. Throughout the movie, historical references to the negative use of drugs are made to give the movie a more realistic and modern approach. Public and federal opinions on drug usage and criminal behavior are referenced in the film, and some argue that the reason why the movie became so popular was because of the sense of reality being portrayed in the …show more content…

Perspectives from the long-lasting and mostly stagnant Vietnam War, also known as “the living room war,” was also employed in movies such as the popular science-fiction film, Star Wars, released in 1977. Public disillusionment was strongly fueled by the Vietnam War as many citizens felt that the war was drawing too many stalemates for the number of casualties suffered and the lack of war aims. These factors all contributed to the anti-war movements that became especially popular after the Johnson administration was exposed by the Tet Offensive in 1968. President Johnson became increasingly less popular and decided not to seek reelection for a second term, leading to Richard Nixon being elected as president on a campaign of “law and order.” In 1973, Nixon finally withdrew America from the Vietnam War under the Paris Peace Accords. The end of American involvement in the foreign war after almost a decade stirred questions of whether or not America was really a world power. The themes of imperialism, war, and justice appeared frequently in the films following America’s withdrawal from the war. The release of Star Wars, directed by George Lucas in 1977, served as a major milestone in American film with its high-tech characters, fast-paced plotline, and amazing soundtrack and visuals, winning 7 Oscars in 1978. The film portrayed common and

Show More
Related
408 Words | 2 Pages

hurt with Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray in the comedy Caddyshack, and see life from the eyes of mob henchmen, Tom Hanks, in the crime and gangster film Road to Perdition. American cinema has used Alfred Hitchcock to create fear for many years like it was displayed in the horror film Psycho, has allowed us to sing in dance with the cast in the musical Chicago, and check out, momentarily, from reality in many science fiction films. American cinema has taken us back in time as we rode horse-back with our western heroes John Wayne and Clint Eastwood or put on the badge with the brothers of the law in Tombstone. Some of the greatest impacts from the world of cinema have been from films that covered war.

Read More
649 Words | 3 Pages

Foreign policy also sparked debate amongst the people due to the unfavorable war with Vietnam. Though once the tet offensive occurred, surprising the world with major damage to American cities during a cease fire, the debate dulled down when Viet cong took heavy causalties, indicating a win for the United States. Anti-War Movement still grew through 1968. Once Nixon was elected in 1968, "Vietnamization" began lowering American casualties. The desire to get out of the Vietname War rose drastically and affected American Foreign policy for once among the

Read More
1847 Words | 8 Pages

Throughout the 70s, innovative and impactful movies featuring heavy African-American involvement hit the scene of thousands of theaters across the United States. The overall positive perception of Blaxploitation films provided many opportunities for black involvement in America’s entertainment industry that Hollywood failed to provide. Audiences positively perceived things that were not brought to light in the white dominated entertainment industry such as, new stereotype defying roles, uplifting messages, and the exposure of different communities and their issues. Blaxploitation was a result from African-Americans having a very strong desire to “see themselves empowered” in films (Christian). This genre of 70s cinema, were mostly set

Read More
1026 Words | 5 Pages

Their innovations profoundly altered the genre by developing a new visual language for movies. Thirdly, the 1960s movies were significant because of their impact on the following generations of filmmakers. The films of the 1960s inspired a new generation of filmmakers to experiment with unique approaches and aesthetics, paving the way for 1970s cinematic fads like the New Hollywood era. Fourthly, it allowed future generations to influence the kinds of movies that were popular since without public opinion, the films produced by filmmakers would not be as

Read More
1511 Words | 7 Pages

The US first started getting involved with Vietnam in 1960 under President Truman to prevent communism taking over all of Vietnam and would not end its involvement until 1973 under President Nixon. In the beginning of his term, Johnson approved NSAM 273 “which directed the U.S. government to assist the people and Government of South Vietnam to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy" and NSAM 288 which increased US involvement (Germany, “Lyndon B. Johnson”). Johnson officially authorized the US entering the Vietnam war in 1965 where “its legacy was 58,220 American soldiers dead, a huge drain on the nation’s finances, social polarisation and the tarnishing of the reputation of the United States” (White, “Why did Lyndon”). Towards the end of the term he reflected “I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved” saying that he was torn between leaving the Great Society or letting communism take over Vietnam (White, “ Why did Lyndon”).

Read More
1835 Words | 8 Pages

combat troops had left Vietnam on March 29, 1973 to conclude the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The war did not seem to end there. The American people had gotten a taste of war that they were not familiar with. Having been enlightened by the horrors of the war veterans were treated horribly and suffered damaging post traumatic stress. Nixon’s administration suffered and following the Watergate scandal it was hard for the American people to trust their government in the same fashion as they did during the Kennedy administration.

Read More
209 Words | 1 Pages

It was not just the entertainment industry that was advancing in the sixties it was also, the military too. In the movie, We Were Soldiers, it shows

Read More
277 Words | 2 Pages

Being one of the most popular forms of entertainment during World War II, movies set foundations that would continue to be cherished for many years following the war. Hollywood movie studios, obviously sympathetic to the Allied cause, soon adapted standard plots and serials to feature our enemies at the time, Nazis and the Japanese, as villains and as types of people who did not have human like characteristics. Times have changed since then resulting in the more free usage and depictions of those people in movies now. In the early '40s, as war was starting to gain importance in Europe, the goal of Hollywood studios was still to entertain. Many productions were films that were uplifting in order to have the American public happier in a time

Read More
1524 Words | 7 Pages

The war in Vietnam to do this day has gone down as one of the influential and controversial wars in United States history. The war lasted from 1955 to 1975.The nation as a whole began to uproar over the war and the major consequences of the war. There were many reasons why so many Americans were against the war. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam (Wikipedia). Not to mention, many young people protested because they were the ones being drafted while others were against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture and drug culture in American society and

Read More
254 Words | 2 Pages

In conclusion Italian Neorealism is still impacting the film industry today over sixty years after the style first started. In Robert Pirro’s “Cinematic Traces of Participatory Democracy in Early Postwar Italy: Italian Neorealist in the Light of Greek Tragedy he talked about how Italian Neorealist films impacted the country when he said, “popular Italian films as social rituals enabling their audiences to renegotiate or clarify their changing cultural, material, and political enviorments, to discover meaning in a world where the traditional authority of Church and State had significantly eroded.” (Pirro, 411) Through these films like The Bicycle Thief not only were directors able to show their films to their own people who needed it but also

Read More
422 Words | 2 Pages

Hollywood's primary objective in Europe following the end of WWII was to make each nation's private industry powerful enough to uphold the large-scale spread of American films. The Italian Neorealist filmmakers often used non-actors in central roles, in the manner of Soviet Montage. After World War II, times began to shift. Before the war, Italy was one of the most productive and prominent filmmaking countries. They specialized in large budget epic films, with enormous sets and thousands of actors.

Read More
861 Words | 4 Pages

Cinema attendance rapidly declined which resulted in Hollywood losing money. Film companies were forced to adapt by creating movies for television in order to compensate the lack of audiences in the theatre. As television dominated the industry film genre’s started to change in the 1960’s. Movies were fun focused, rock n’ roll driven with entertainment as a priority and not drama like the previous eras. With the Vietnam War at the front of political and social issues, a burden was placed on the film industry.

Read More
2334 Words | 10 Pages

Shortly after the liberation of France in 1945 this backlog of American cinema started to hit the country’s screens to the enthusiasm of French film-goers. This exposure to Hollywood films was a formative influence on the young critics who would become the directors of the New Wave in the late 1950s. For them, American cinema was more vital, more varied and considerably more exciting than the postwar productions of the French film industry which they derided as ‘le cinéma de papa’ (‘Daddy’s cinema’). Film culture in postwar France was bolstered by the growth in the number of magazines devoted to cinema (including Positif, the long-standing rival of Cahiers, founded in 1952) and the revitalisation of a network of ‘ciné-clubs’, where film screenings would be accompanied by public debates and lectures by critics. Between 1948 and 1949, an important ciné-club was established, ‘Objectif 49’, whose organisers included Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson, Roger Leenhardt, René Clément, Alexandre Astruc, Pierre Kast and Raymond Queneau.

Read More
1159 Words | 5 Pages

The Godfather (1972) is said to be one of the greatest films ever made. When this movie was released in 1972, it was nominated for Ten Academy Awards and it won three: Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was adapted from the book with the same name written by award winning author of mafia fiction, Mario Puzo. This film takes place in a span of ten years following the life of Don Corleone, the head of the Corleone Crime Family. It was a film that changed the history of cinema, introducing a very talented filmmaker and several acting legends in the telling of a story of a Sicilian Crime Family.

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

Hollywood movies affect national culture in various ways. In one sense, movies could be characterized as America’s storytellers. Hollywood movies „Americanize“ global values and beliefs ,therefore they in a way diminish national culture traits and adapt and reinforce American customs. People tend to copy the ideas,customs and culture of American people or in other words they tend to acculturate. So called „Americanization“ is

Read More

More about What Extent Did The Counterculture Movement And Foreign/Domestic Affairs Influence Popular Films In The 1960s

Related Topics

Open Document