| Film History 1940-1949: Mavericks & Dreamers (Online)

Explore the visionary filmmakers and movements that reshaped Hollywood and world cinema in the 1940s, one of film history’s richest decades.

Note: This workshop will be held in a live, online format utilizing the Zoom platform.
Class meets Tuesdays, Sep 10-Oct 29, 2024 from 8-9:45pm ET.

The 1940s were one of the most creative and consequential decades in cinema history. In the United States, the forties marked Hollywood’s most successful period, with audience attendance at movies reaching its all-time peak at the middle of the decade. But this high point also saw the beginnings of radical changes that would eventually bring down the studio system, from legal challenges to the birth of television, the rise of independent filmmaking, and the breakdown of censorship. Artists broke new ground in narrative structures and visual techniques; after World War II, “semi-documentary” techniques and an interest in social problems and true crime brought a new level of realism to Hollywood films. In other countries, the war and its aftermath brought drastic changes to political systems and film industries, and filmmakers used new freedoms to address head-on their national traumas and rebuild their cultural identities. The 1940s saw the rise of film noir, Italian neorealism, and golden ages in national cinemas as diverse as Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Join film historian and critic Imogen Sara Smith for this fascinating journey into one of cinema’s most extraordinary decades. In addition to being a regular speaker on The Criterion Channel, and on disc commentaries for Criterion and other labels, Imogen is the author of two books on film and has published many articles and essays in leading film publications.

This survey of 1940s cinema will be offered in two parts, which can be taken individually or as a sequence. Part One, Film History 1940-1949: Mavericks & Dreamers, will focus on the visionaries who broke new ground and expanded our sense of what cinema could be; Part Two, World Cinema 1945-1949: Into The Shadows Of Noir (January 14-March 4, 2025), will explore global trends of the postwar era, with a focus on the international family tree of film noir.

Film History 1940-1949: Mavericks & Dreamers

The 1930s saw the Hollywood studio system reach its zenith as a dream factory, crowned by the legendary year 1939, whose most famous products–Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach—offered movie-goers seductive myths and fantasies. While the studios continued to thrive in the 1940s, the decade saw the arrival of mavericks and rule-breakers whose innovations shaped the evolution of filmmaking and challenged prevailing myths. Some worked successfully within the studios, at least for a time. Pioneering writer-director and comic genius Preston Sturges (Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story) produced an astonishing string of seven hits in four years, endowed with some of the most brilliant dialogue ever penned, before a dramatic fall from grace when his more offbeat personal projects failed at the box office. Producer Val Lewton, given charge of a B horror unit at RKO, took the small budgets and tawdry titles he was handed (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie) and transformed them into subtle, poetic, eerily evocative chillers, drawing on folklore and hewing to the principle that nothing is scarier than what we can’t see.

Other artists struggled against the rigidity of the studio system and the commercial imperatives of Hollywood. Orson Welles inspired countless other filmmakers with his narrative and cinematic inventions and sheer filmmaking brio, but never made a film after Citizen Kane (1941) that was not altered against his wishes by producers. Ida Lupino, a quadruple threat (actor, writer, director, producer) channeled her frustration with the roles she was getting as a contract star into co-founding an independent production company, becoming the only woman directing in Hollywood in the postwar years. Inspired by Italian neorealism, she brought a documentary-realist approach to taboo subjects such as unwed-motherhood, rape, and disability. Other women stars in Hollywood fought the studios and the limiting roles they were getting with lawsuits (Olivia de Havilland) or by choosing to work overseas (Ingrid Bergman); they and determined actresses like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck made the 1940s the high-water mark for “women’s pictures.” 

Meanwhile in Great Britain, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger—an English director of low-budget “quota-quickies” and a Hungarian refugee screenwriter—teamed up as “The Archers” (sharing producing, directing, and writing credits on all their films.)  Perhaps best known for The Red Shoes, they launched a phenomenal streak of creativity that made them arguably the most vibrantly original filmmakers of the decade. During World War II the duo produced subtle, idiosyncratic, and daringly honest propaganda films supporting the war effort, including the Technicolor masterpieces The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death. In France, the Nazi Occupation created lingering division and bitterness in the film industry; Henri-Georges Clouzot managed to alienate both the left and the right with his caustic, unsparing portraits of French society, and at the end of the decade, Jean-Pierre Melville, a former resistance fighter and the great loner of French cinema, launched his independent career, which would inspire the New Wave and neo-noir.

These extraordinary artists blazed trails and realized visions that influenced subsequent generations of filmmakers and continue to bewitch audiences.

Come and explore the decade that changed cinema forever!

Course requirements:

Note: Participants will watch films through streaming platforms and join a virtual classroom for live lectures and group discussions. Links to recommended texts will be provided. Students should expect expenses of approximately $50 to stream assigned films.