CHAPTER 12 – AMERICAN CINEMA IN THE 1950s
Multiple Choice
1. The genre of movie that knew the most success in the early 1960s was which of the following?
a. political thriller
b. screwball comedy
c. western
d. spectacle
2. Which of the following was not a problem with the major studios at the beginning of the
1960s? a. television viewer numbers
b. reasonable salaries
c. expense of literary and stage properties
d. lavish production values
3. Where did many of the newer directors of the 1960s come from?
a. New York
b. London
c. Paris
d. none of the above
4. Sidney Lumet was known to
a. work fast.
b. handle actors well.
c. bring in movies on time and on budget.
d. all of the above
5. Each of the following is true about John Frankenheimer’s films except
a. worked in several genres
b. used the motif of imprisonment often
c. vision tends to be optimistic
d. had no single theme
6. John Cassavetes used which of the following
a. tightly framed close-ups or medium shots
b. fancy camera work
c. action
d. quick cuts, short scenes
7. The film that was the “box office champion” of the 60s was
a. Seven Days in May
b. Husbands
c. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
d. The Graduate
8. What is true about movies by 1969?
a. Movie attendance rose rather than declined.
b. Movies returned to classical genre movies.
c. Movies restored the Production Code to protect audiences.
d. none of the above
9. Films became more strident as the 60s neared the end because of
a. The National Rifle Association
b. Vietnam
c. The Civil Rights Movement
d. Psychedelic music
10. What became true of movies of the 1960s?
a. They were careful not to mix tones like anguish and absurdity.
b. They focused on extraordinary, heroic characters.
c. Downbeat themes in movies were often money makers.
d. They used almost no film techniques like fast forward, slow motion, jump cuts, etc.
11. Movies made in the late 60s were often characterized by
a. small budgets.
b. rebels against the mainstream.
c. no-name or unimportant stars.
d. all of the above
12. All of the following are true about Sam Peckinpah’s movies except
a. tended to be personal and loosely structured
b. often had to be reedited to improve their lengths for the commercial market
c. was praised for his handling of sex
d. created controversy for his treatment of violence
13. Sam Peckinpah was a
a. champion of individualism
b. romantic conservative
c. neither a nor b
d. both a and b
14. Which of the following tended to be true of Vietnam era movies?
a. big-budget films ruled
b. the protagonist(s) often died
c. westerns disappeared
d. non-political positions were taken in the movies
15. The top male box office star of the 60s was
a. John Wayne
b. Burt Lancaster
c. Dustin Hoffman
d. Paul Newman
16. Stanley Kubrick made all of the following statements except
a. “The commie conspiracy has contaminated my precious bodily fluids…”
b. “I’m interested in the brutal and violent nature of man…”
c. “What I’m after is a majestic visual experience…”
d. all of the above
17. Which of the following is true about Stanley Kubrick?
a. he worked in America and Great Britain
b. he worked in a variety of genres
c. he was inclined toward a pessimistic view of the human condition
d. all of the above
True/False
(Place a T or an F in the line following the sentence.)
1. The early 1960s, in American cinema, were a time when English movies, financed with
American money, were very popular.
2. Cleopatra represents the excess and failure, in general, of the American spectacular.
3. The studio system benefited by gaining new perspectives when conglomerates like
Transamerica Corporation acquired them.
4. New movie directors in the 1960s often got their training in television.
5. Because they came from a different background, new directors had no sense of movie-making
style.
6. Martin Ritt once said, “It is possible to survive making films that basically represent who you
are and what you are about.”
7. Most film critics agree that the escalation of the war in Vietnam influenced movies, which
became angry, militant, and anti-Establishment.
8. Arthur Penn was interested in filming stories of people who were struggling to find their place
and get along in society—the essential theme, for example, of Bonnie and Clyde.
9. Sam Peckinpah has been criticized for glorifying, in a romantic way, extreme violence.
10. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is
a lighthearted comedy which makes fun of nuclear physicists during the Cold War.
Matching
1) Dr. Zhivago ___
2) The Wild Bunch ___
3) Rosemary’s Baby ___
4) The Pawnbroker ___
5) The Sound of Music ___
6) Midnight Cowboy ___
7) The Graduate ___
8) Birdman of Alcatraz ___
9) Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid ___
10) Easy Rider ___
a. George Roy Hill western
b. music and lyrics by Rogers and Hamerstein
c. Lumet NY City drama using radical editing
d. Mike Nichols film of sterile, middle-class materialism
e. won Best Picture Oscar with an x rating
f. more than a biker film by Dennis Hopper
g. John Cassevetes, urban horror movie
h. in the final shootout, virtually a whole Mexican village is destroyed
i. English film financed with American money
j. John Frankenheimer imprisonment movie
ANS:
Short Answer
1. What was the problem with realism in films at least during the early years of the 60s?
2. How were New York and television-trained films directors regarded by “Hollywood
regulars”?
3. What was the goal of noted African-American actor Sidney Poitier?
4. What happened to the Production Code in 1968 and what was the result?
Essay Questions
1. Why is Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn, considered the turning point from the old
filmmaking sensibility to the new?
2. Why is the cliché “all that glitters is not gold” appropriate for the films, whether realistic or
spectacle, of the early 60s?
3. What were some of the filmmaking techniques that directors from New York like Sidney
Lumet, John Frankenheimer, Mike Nichols, etc. used that made their films “arty”?
4. What characteristics of Sam Peckinpah’s westerns made them revisionist?