Brief history of film
The great movie event of 1972 was The Godfather, the top-grossing film of the year and possibly of all time. In a nation apparently worried about violence in motion pictures, on television, and in its streets, the popularity of The Godfather made ironic commentary on American attitudes and values. The year began with angry outcries against the blood and gore of A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs, released in December, 1971; and the publication in March of the Surgeon-General's Report on Televised Violence further upset the public. Nevertheless, Americans paid well over $125 million to witness a three-hour testimony to the glories of gangsterdom. Concerned chiefly with power struggles among rival gangland "families," which are, implicitly, units of the "Mafia" or "Cosa Nostra," The Godfather has two central themes: first, in the words of Balzac, that "Behind every great fortune there is a crime," and second, that beneath the bravado and butchery, gangsters are warm and loving human beings, good friends, good husbands, good fathers, and good sons.The public did not complain about the brutality of the film; significantly, the cruelty is not sex-linked as in Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs. No
Vehemently antiyouth, it was received with delight by many critics and it did well at the box office. The Godfather was not 1972's only blockbuster. Despite the tradition of seriousness and social conscience (for example, West Side Story and South Pacific ), American musicals have nearly always been conceived as "family entertainment. Controversy raged about these films, most of which fell into the tried-and-true pattern of Hollywood "B" pictures. The names of Francois Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Eric Rohmer, Luis Bunuel, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston drew serious film audiences and excited critical interest in Two English Girls, Fellini's Roma, Chloe in the Afternoon, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Frenzy, and Fat City. They included romantic westerns such as Buck and the Preacher, starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte and directed by Belafonte; and The Legend of Nigger Charley, starring former football player Fred Williamson, in which black superheroes merely stepped into the boots of the white gunfighters of yesteryear. Blacula, however, was only a prelude; 1973 would see Blackenstein and The Werewolf from Watts, among others. A trend that began in 1971 and gathered greater force in 1972 was the production of films starring, and sometimes written and directed by, black artists, and addressed primarily to black audiences. Based once again on a proven property -- an unusual one, the popular underground comic strip created by Robert Crumb -- the film is a pornographically explicit treatment of the social and, above all, sexual mores of young people during the 1960s. Another film, Superfly, ignited the box office; in less than three months, the film grossed $11 million. In addition, their titillating violence and sex, together with their lack of redeeming aesthetic quality, led critics to see them as exploitation films. All of these films, with the exception of Fat City, are European imports. Twentieth Century-Fox released Sounder, a tender story of black sharecroppers from which Cicely Tyson emerged as an actress of considerable gifts and reputation.
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Black Films,
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Acceptance Essays
