Have you ever questioned how an entire industry can change drastically in the matter of 50 years. Through my eyes, the film industry has come a very long way since 1965. It has gotten better in most aspects, but worse in a few as well. Obviously, as technology improves things like camera quality, visual effects, and audio all improve, but there is way more than that to a good movie. It doesn’t matter what year the movie was made when talking about things like an interesting plot, entertaining characters, and a good script. All movies are subject to someone’s opinion and some aspects of a movie are more important to some people than they are to others. It comes down to emotions. How a movie tugs at its audience’s emotions is to me, what makes a movie outstanding. The general statement that movies create emotion has not changed since 1965. What has changed is the way emotion is thrown into the audience, the range of emotions movies can have, and how successful the movie is based on the emotion received by its viewers.
Over the past few moths I have watched my fair share of movies, some great, some not so great. The four that stand out to me include Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Schindler’s List. These stood out to me because they each give their audiences strong emotions that other movies do not. These films create intense feelings that resonate with people, which is exactly what makes a movie successful.
The 1974 version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre directed by Tobe Hooper is a movie about a group of kids who travel into a rural part of Texas. They decide to stay at an old abandoned cabin, and have a strange encounter with a psychotic man on their way there. One by one, the kids end up stumbling upon a serial killing family who lives close by the cabin. A man with a chainsaw named Leatherface kills all but one of the kids by the time the credit start to roll. Emotion is created in the film with the use of suspense. The suspense keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and creates an element of paranoia within the the crowd. The suspense was so well thought out, that the viewers could be ready for Leatherface to pop out at any moment, but he never would. Therefore, all the audience members bottled up their nervousness which made the next jump scare even more frightening.
The success of Texas Chainsaw Massacre can be directly attributed to the quality and uniqueness of the film. The crew didn’t need an all-star cast or a big budget to make money. This film was created to entertain and scare the people that watched it. In this aspect it is very similar to movies created before 1965. What I appreciate most about these low-budget and older horror movies is that they can be successful just by sparking emotions.
Dustin Woodstock provides some great information about the blood and gore of TCM as well as how it became famous in his blog post http://collaboratex.com/2017/11/texas-chainsaw-massacre-vs-better-tomorrow/
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-texas-chain-saw-massacre-1974 (Links to an external site.) This resource is an article about Texas Chainsaw Massacre written in 1974. It gives insight into how popular the movie was and what people thought of it before it became iconic.
http://www.horrorfilmhistory.com/index.php?pageID=TexasC (Links to an external site.) This article is from one of my favorite sources. They summarize and analyze all the most iconic horror movies and categorize them into decades.
Another film I particularly enjoyed is Stanley Kubrick’s, The Shining. This horror flick is about a family that goes to watch over a hotel during the cold and snowy winter of Colorado. The main character Jack starts going crazy, as well as his son Danny. Eventually, Jack tries to kill his family, but ends up dying in a blizzard as his family escapes. Everything about The Shining is creepy, but the major thing that stood out to me was the dialogue. The way that Jack talks to his wife towards the end of the movie is sure to cause a reaction out of the audience. He smiles and tries to be nice, even though you know is intentions are bad. It makes the audience members anxious and surely gives people the chills.
This film is definitely a change from other horror movies since 1965. The plot is more complex and so is the range of emotions. Although the overlying emotion is creepy, just like Texas Chainsaw Massacre there is also suspense and gore. This combination leaves the audience members with the hair standing up on the back of their necks. Another difference is the budget. The Shining’s production budget was 19 million dollars, which considering it was made in 1980 and is a horror film, is quite a lot of money. This was one of the first times a horror movie was developed on such a large budget. However, Kubrick and his cast made the most of it as it has become one of the greatest horror films of all time.
My peer, Amberrose Morrel talks more about horror movies and their effect in one of her blog posts. http://collaboratex.com/2017/12/nightmare-elm-street-better-tomorrrow/
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-shining-stanley-kubrick-room-237-rodney-ascher/Content?oid=9206124 This article provides some different analysis about The Shining. It talks about how with The Shining’s budget and cast, Kubrick could have made a better movie.
As for my international movie, I chose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This movie revolves around a stolen sword, but also contains aspects of love, violence, and drama. Watching this movie is like strapping into a roller coaster of emotions. The story is so complex and moves so fast that you don’t even know what emotion you should be feeling while your watching it. It most cases, this might cause confusion within the audience, but the director Ang Lee does a great job on giving you time to catch up in between fight scenes. All of the emotion delivered to the audience comes from human to human interaction. Lee does this so the audience will get to know the characters better, therefore making the audience’s emotions stronger toward those characters. The scenes with fighting, romance, comedy, and drama all have strong effects on the viewers because of this.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a perfect example how America’s film industry has changed since 1965. This filmed opened the door for international movies and really showed Americans that the rest of the world is capable of making great films too. Before 1965, many of the international movies did not succeed in America. In fact, up until this movie international movies were not really considered for the American box office. It was a game changer in that regard.
In Keenan Levens blog post, he describes more about international movies and how America started to think of other countries when talking about movies. http://collaboratex.com/2017/10/rashomon-bonnie-clyde/
http://www.indiewire.com/2012/11/retrospective-the-films-of-ang-lee-103889/ This article talks about Ang Lee and the movies he directed. It then analyzes Lee’s films and describes how Lee uses his versatility to make outstanding movies.
Schindler’s List is a Steven Spielberg film about a man named Oscar Schindler. Schindler is a German businessman during World War Two and The Holocaust. The movie goes through the process of him secretly saving thousands of Jews in sacrifice for his own profit and money. A characteristic of the film that displays emotion is the visual effect of almost everything being in black and white. This effect gives the audience a dark and dull feeling about the movie. It makes it seem like there is no hope left for the Jews which should resonate with the audience and make them feel either sad, angry, or hopeless. This visual effect is key to understanding how Schindler’s List makes the audience feel a certain type of way.
Schindler’s List is very different from other older movies. It displays change because of the depth and sincerity it shows through emotion. Movies from before 1965 usually did not talk about controversial things like the holocaust and the death of innocent Jews. This movie however, focused on telling a story and telling it right, no matter how gruesome or depressing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NHNeLqgLlA (Links to an external site.) This is a great video analysis and summary of Schindler’s List. It talks about how the cast did such a great job and why it is considered one of the best films ever created.
Movies have changed a whole lot since 1965. A main component that helped change film in general was the use of emotion. Emotion is what keeps the audience intrigued in a film. Emotion is what defines a good movie from a great one. Emotion is the most influential thing within a movie. Whether it be Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or Schindler’s List, each of these movies display emotion beautifully and contributed the change in the movie industry since 1965.