because that's when Hollywood cinema reached "a level of classical perfection." That's when directors started making movies that went against the way Hollywood typically told stories.
"Directors such as Orson Wells and William Wyler participated in the international 'regeneration of realism in storytelling' which insisted on 'bringing together real time, in which things exist...along with the duration of the action, for which classical editing had insidiously substituted mental and abstract time.' This would seem to suggest that Hollywood's classicism of the 1930's was superseded...by a new aesthetic in the 1940's..."
What was Gilbert Seldes's main critique of Hollywood in his book, "The Great Audience"?
his main critique wasn't the way Hollywood was driven by a profit motive, but that Hollywood seemed to only cater to adolescents. he also argued that in order for Hollywood to thrive again, it must recapture the adult audience.
She felt that Hollywood's constant big blockbuster technique of film making would eventually lose its appeal as audiences become desensitized to the big spectacle and people would just start being "more comfortably bored at home."
As television became the dominant form of entertainment in America, the major studios began to sell their back catalogues of movies to television studios. The film industry now had to compete against the "good movies" of the late 30s which were available for viewing for free, and film production became ineffective. Thus, Ezra Goodman announced "the end of Hollywood."
Why was Richard Dyer MacCann optimistic about the future of the American cinema in 1962?
MacCann felt that since the film industry no longer had to crank out movies like a factory, film makers were free to focus on creating better films, and move towards realizing the full potential cinema has to offer.
