1. The History of Film The 1940s
The War and Post-War Years The Beginnings of Film Noir  

2. The early years of the 40s decade were not promising for the American film industry, especially following the late 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, and the resultant loss of foreign markets.
The most profitable peak of efficiency was during the years to 1946.
There were advances in film technology (sound recording, lighting, special effects, cinematography and use of color.
1946 (end of war), meant all- time highs recorded for theatre attendance.
THE 1940’S

3. The world was headed toward rearmament and warfare in the early to mid-1940s, and the movie industry, like every other aspect of life, responded to the national war effort
Making movies, producing many war-time favorites, and having stars (and film industry employees) enlist or report for duty.
The US government's Office of War Information (OWI), formed in 1942, served as an important propaganda agency during World War II.
Films took on a more realistic rather than escapist tone, as they had done during the Depression years of the 30s.
THE 1940’s

4. Hollywood Canteen, the West Coast's answer to Broadway's Stage Door Canteen, was typical of star-studded, plot-less, patriotic extravaganzas, one of several during the war years which featured big stars who entertained the troops.
Big name stars and directors either enlisted, performed before soldiers at military bases, or in other ways contributed to the war mobilization.
Rationing, blackouts, shortages and other wartime restrictions also had their effects on US film-makers, who were forced to cut back on set construction and on-location shoots.
THE 1940’S

5. Some of Hollywood's best directors, John Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston and William Wyler, made Signal Corps documentaries or training films to aid the war effort.
Frank Capra's Why We Fight ( ) documentary series.
Ford's December 7th: The Movie (1991) (finally released after being banned by the US government for 50 years)
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The first popular documentary of the war titled The Battle of Midway (1942),
THE 1940’S

6. THE 1940’S http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa-dGYjSq5k
The most underrated of all wartime propaganda films was the romantic story by Michael Curtiz “Casablanca” (1942).
It ‘s about a disillusioned nightclub owner (Humphrey Bogart) and a former lover (Ingrid Bergman) separated by WWII in Paris.
There was a limited release in late (and wider release in 1943), the resonant film was a timeless, beloved black and white work originally based on an unproduced play entitled Everybody Comes to Rick's.
Famous for it’s piano-player Dooley Wilson's singing of As Time Goes By, and memorable lines of dialogue such as: "Round up the usual suspects" and Bogart's "Here's looking at you, kid”
THE 1940’S

7. The 40s also offered escapist entertainment, reassurance, and patriotic themes, such as William Wyler's war-time film “Mrs. Miniver” (1942), starring Walter Pidgeon and Oscar-winning courageous heroine Greer Garson as husband and wife.
It was a moving tribute and account of courageous war- besieged Britishers reliving the trauma of Dunkirk and coping with the war's dangers in a village.
Alfred Hitchcock, who had recently migrated to the US, directed “Foreign Correspondent” (1940), ending it with a plea to the US to recognize the Nazi menace in Europe and end its isolationist stance.

8. A variety of war-time films, with a wide range of subjects and tones, presented both the flag-waving heroics and action of the war as well as the realistic, every-day boredom and brutal misery of the experience:
Warner Bros.' Sergeant York (1941), directed by Howard Hawks, A story of a pacifist backwoods farm boy (Gary Cooper) who became the greatest US hero of World War I by single- handedly killing 25 and capturing 132 of the enemy.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) (featuring a US bomber named Ruptured Duck) starred Spencer Tracy as Lieut. Col. James Doolittle who carried out the first US bombing raid on Japan.

9. Charlie Chaplin directed and starred in his first talking picture, “The Great Dictator” (1940) It was a war-time, anti-fascist, lampooning of the Third Reich and its dictatorial leader (rare among American films)
German star Marlene Dietrich, after becoming a US citizen in 1938, made a number of morale-boosting films, and other German and/or Austrian refugees risked personal popularity by playing roles as despicable Nazis in well-known films like Casablanca (1942), To Be or Not to Be (1942), and Hitchcock's allegorical war-time survival tale “Lifeboat” (1944]
German-born Ernst Lubitsch directed the anti-Nazi farce of a theatre couple outwitting the Nazis in “To Be Or Not To Be” (1942). It starred Jack Benny as Polish actor Joseph Tura, and was noted for the line: "So they call me Concentration Camp Erhardt."
Anti-Fascist Films of the 1940’S

10. BIGGEST STARS AND FILMS OF 1940’S
Some of the most popular box-office stars of the entire decade were: James Cagney, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Mickey Rooney, Bing Crosby, Gene Autry, Gary Cooper, Greer Garson, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman.
In 1946, five of the year's top ten box-office films starred Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman - two wholesome and likeable stars.
BIGGEST STARS AND FILMS OF 1940’S

11. CROSBY AND BERGMAN TOGETHER
The Bell’s of St. Marys (1945)
Staring both Bergman and Crosby
SYNOPSIS: At a big city Catholic school, Father O'Malley and Sister Benedict indulge in friendly rivalry, and succeed in extending the school through the gift of a building.
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CROSBY AND BERGMAN TOGETHER

12. Twelve-year-old child actress Elizabeth Taylor (born in the UK in 1932 to American parents) became a star after making Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet (1944)
Jennifer Jones became a star and won an Oscar for her portrayal of a religious St. Bernadette Soubirous who experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes in The “Song of Bernadette” (1943).
CHILD STAR “ELIZABETH TAYLOR”

13. By World War II's end, the genre most characteristic of the era and most associated with 1940s Hollywood was film noir.
The film noir 'genre' reflected the way Hollywood felt as it faced its greatest challenges during the war and post-war periods - darker and more cynical
The best hard-boiled detective pictures ever made - director John Huston's remarkable debut film The Maltese Falcon (1941).
The film about a treasure search for a black bird, adapted from Dashiell Hammett's novel, marked a turning point for actor Humphrey Bogart - it made him a star as private eye Sam Spade.
THE 1940’S: THE BIRTH OF FILM NOIR

14. Frank Tuttle's This Gun For Hire (1942), a dark revenge film that made Alan Ladd a star and spotlighted his co star Veronica Lake.
Billy Wilder's classic thriller/film noir Double Indemnity (1944), from crime novelist Raymond Chandler's adaptation of James M. Cain's novella about insurance fraud, corruption and adulterous murder, with Barbara Stanwyck as a deadly blonde, Fred MacMurray as the agent, and Edward G. Robinson as a dogged insurance investigator.
THE 1940’S: FAMOUS FILM NOIR’S

15. The gangster movie was revitalized with one of Warner Bros
The gangster movie was revitalized with one of Warner Bros. finest examples of the genre - director Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (1941), starring Humphrey Bogart (in his first starring role) as an aging gangster with a heart of gold.
Later in the decade, the gangster was not romanticized, but portrayed as a bully in John Huston's Key Largo (1948), and James Cagney in White Heat (1949)
THE 1940’S: GANGSTER FILM REVIVAL

16. The famous Paramount Studios' "Road" films (a total of seven films stretching out until 1962), starred a wise-cracking Bob Hope and his comedy partner Bing Crosby as two hapless musicians, and their colorful heroine Dorothy Lamour.
•The Road to Singapore (1940)
•The Road to Zanzibar (1941)
•The Road to Morocco (1942) - the best of the series
•The Road to Utopia (1946)
•The Road to Rio (1947)
•The Road to Bali (1952)
•The Road to Hong Kong (1962)
THE 1940’S:The "Road" Comedies

17. Bob Hope also starred in some of his best comedies during the decade, including My Favorite Blonde (1942) with Madeleine Carroll.
In 1941, comedians Abbott and Costello made their film debut in Buck Privates (1941), a comedy about their enlistment into World War II, and the pair would go on to make many more hit films for Universal Studios, following the decline of Deanna Durbin's popularity.
Abbott and Costello's most famous classic routine "Who's On First?" was performed in their film The Naughty Nineties (1945)
THE 1940’S: COMEDY TEAMS AND PAIRS

18. THE 1940’S: THE MARX BROTHERS
The famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers were to retire from the movies as a screen team in 1941 with their last film, MGM's The Big Store (1941). However, they later signed with United Artists to make the independent feature A Night in Casablanca (1946), and they also appeared in a 'comeback' film, their final film as a team - Love Happy (1949) with a little-known Marilyn Monroe.
THE 1940’S: THE MARX BROTHERS

19. Technical achievements were many
Technical achievements were many. Disney released more animated feature films in the 40s, including some of its most timeless classics.
The golden decade of Disney animation was heralded by Pinocchio (1940) and the wildly-experimental film Fantasia (1940) It was the first film with stereophonic sound ("Fantasound").
Other Disney feature-length animations included Dumbo (1941) Bambi (1942)
Disney's charming live-action feature film (with animated sequences) Song of the South (1946), was based on the Uncle Remus' tall-tale stories of Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris.
Although it was a commercial success, the film was criticized by the NAACP in 1946 for "the impression it gives of an idyllic master-slave relationship – Still nominated for best “Score” in a musical.
THE 1940’S:The Golden Age of Disney Feature Film Animation

20. THE 1940’S: THE MUSICALS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjRQFSYFuaI
Post-war films reflected the desire of audiences to put the war behind them. In 1945, the year of the war's end, six of the top ten box-office champs were musicals - in order:
• Thrill of a Romance (1945) •Anchors Aweigh (1945)
•The Harvey Girls (1945)
•State Fair (1945)
•The Dolly Sisters (1945)
• Up in Arms (1945)
THE 1940’S: THE MUSICALS

21. John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940), based on John Steinbeck's novel, was beautifully filmed by cinematographer Gregg Toland; it told of the struggle of a displaced, poverty-stricken American migrant family (including ex-con Tom Joad played by Henry Fonda) who left Oklahoma's dustbowl for California.
THE 1940S: FILMS OF SOCIAL CONCERN

22. British director Alfred Hitchcock ventured to Hollywood in 1939, and many of his films were premiered in the US.
Hitchcock also made some superb psychological thrillers: the favorite of all of his films was Shadow of a Doubt (1943) about a psychopathic 'Merry Widow' killer named Charlie (Joseph Cotten) in a small California town.
THE 1940S: HITCHOCK AND OTHER BRITISH INFLUENCES

23. THE 1940S: HITCHOCK AND OTHER BRITISH INFLUENCES
British film distributor J. Arthur Rank, in cooperation with Universal Studios and International Pictures, assured the production and importation of more British films into the U.S. including
•Great Expectations (1946)
•Oliver Twist (1947)
Lean's melodramatic tear-jerker Brief Encounter (1946), heightened by Rachmaninoff's piano concerto, told a story of unfulfilled romance between a married middle-class woman (Celia Johnson) and a doctor (Trevor Howard) - at a railway station tearoom.
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THE 1940S: HITCHOCK AND OTHER BRITISH INFLUENCES

24. THE 1940S: HITCHCOCK AND OTHER BRITISH INFLUENCES
British director Carol Reed filmed The Third Man (1949) set in a divided Vienna and starring American actors Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. Reed's earlier crime drama and tense character study Odd Man Out (1947), set in Belfast, starred James Mason as an IRA gunman wounded in a robbery gone wrong.
French director Jean Cocteau directed the classic live-action, love drama La Belle et La Bete (Beauty and the Beast) (1946) Also filmed, Marcel Carne's post- war romantic drama masterpiece Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945), a bittersweet tale set in 19th century Parisian theatre and secretly filmed during the Nazi occupation, was acclaimed for its lyrical beauty and doomed passion.
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THE 1940S: HITCHCOCK AND OTHER BRITISH INFLUENCES

25. THE 1940’S: THE HOLLYWOOD TEN AND BLACKLISTING
Paranoid witch-hunt investigations conducted by the House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), beginning in 1947, were ostensibly aimed at rooting out suspected Communists and political traitors within the Hollywood community and film industry.
•Lester Cole - screenwriter
•Dalton Trumbo - screenwriter
•Edward Dmytryk - director
•Herbert Biberman - director/producer
•Alvah Bessie - screenwriter
•Ring Lardner Jr. - screenwriter
•John Howard Lawson - screenwriter
•Albert Maltz - screenwriter
•Samuel Ornitz - screenwriter
•Robert Adrian Scott - producer/writer
THE 1940’S: THE HOLLYWOOD TEN AND BLACKLISTING

26. For their refusal to cooperate, the Ten were considered criminals and jailed for up to one year, and fined $1,000 for contempt of Congress. They were also unofficially 'blacklisted' by the US film industry.
Louis B. Mayer, Walt Disney, Elia Kazan, Bud Schulberg, Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan (President of the Screen Actors Guild since 1947), testified on communism in the industry. Actors, writers, and directors that were 'blacklisted' by unfriendly testimonies were banned from working in the film studios
THE 1940’S: THE HOLLYWOOD TEN AND BLACKLISTING

27. THE 1940’S: THE HOLLYWOOD TEN AND BLACKLISTING
Over 300 movie industry figures and blacklisted stars had their careers ruined between 1947 and 1952, when the HUAC investigation ended in the mid-1950s.
Suspect movie figures were -
•falsely accused of having Bolshevik connections or being Communist sympathizers (SPYS)
• investigated as suspected "communists."
•alleged to be part of a Hollywood "Communist Fifth Column" for refusing to answer questions.
THE 1940’S: THE HOLLYWOOD TEN AND BLACKLISTING

28. THE 1940’S: THE HOLLYWOOD TEN AND BLACKLISTING
Film director Joseph Losey, whose first US feature film was The Boy With Green Hair (1948), was labeled a member of the Communist party by HUAC (after failing to comply), moved to Europe in the early 1950s, and there directed such great films as The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).
THE 1940’S: THE HOLLYWOOD TEN AND BLACKLISTING

29. THE 1940S: THE STUDIO SYSTEM BEGINS TO END
At the end of this decade, reeling from depression, war, problems of the return to peacetime, and the ominous arrival of the atomic bomb, the world was a more cynical, chaotic, economically-unsure and film-noirish place.
Studios were also forced to re- evaluate their roles and approaches, with lawsuits that stripped the studios of their lucrative practices.
By the late 1940s, the motion picture industry surely faced its period of greatest crisis and challenge, with the depressing bleakness of the Cold War on the horizon.
THE 1940S: THE STUDIO SYSTEM BEGINS TO END

30. THE 1940S: THREATS TO THE STUDIO SYSTEM
Hollywood suddenly found itself with many threatening forces at the close of the 40s and the start of the next decade:
•the coming of television forcing potential moviegoers to remain at home
•blacklisting and McCarthyism (the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence)
•a 1945 studio labor union strike that raised salaries 25% for studio employees
• a short-lived 75% import duty, from , that restricted the import of all US films into the UK
•the gradual decline of theatre- attending audiences
•inflation that raised film production costs
•anti-trust rulings by the US government against the studios
THE 1940S: THREATS TO THE STUDIO SYSTEM