The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema - Brossura

Davis, Blair

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0813552532 ISBN 13: 9780813552538

Casa editrice: Rutgers Univ Pr, 2012

Riassunto

The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theaters 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 theater chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theaters from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity in the wake of profound changes to the corporate organization and production methods of the major Hollywood studios.

In The Battle for the Bs, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the Bs. 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 (thinkDestination Moon and I Was a Teenage Werewolf) 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.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

BLAIR DAVIS is an assistant professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University. His essays appear in theHistorical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television and the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, and in such anthologies asAmerican Horror Film, Caligari’s Heirs, and Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Rutgers Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0813552532
• ISBN 13: 9780813552538
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 260