The 1950s: the decade that invented teenagers and giant radioactive lizard monsters. And it’s hard to say which wreaked more destruction.
The 50s saw the rise of the rebel antihero, epitomised by Marlon Brando and James Dean, poster-children for mumbly, misunderstood kids everywhere. Hollywood woke up to the youth market – something that would have far-reaching consequences – dipping its toe into teen culture with Rock Around the Clock and Blackboard Jungle. Teen audiences showed their enthusiasm by spontaneous outbreaks of rioting and cinema-trashing.
The energy and anger of youth-oriented cinema was in stark contrast to the lush melodramas, saturated with longing and Technicolor, which were popular elsewhere. It took a while for the films of Douglas Sirk, including All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life, to be afforded the respect they now command. Initially dismissed, it took a campaign by the young turks at Cahiers du Cinéma (on which more later) for Sirk to be reappraised.
Meanwhile, the appetite for film noir remained undimmed, with In a Lonely Place, Kiss Me Deadly and Touch of Evil the high points. But, perhaps in a reaction against the silky malice of the femme fatale, Hollywood lost its head over an entirely different kind of heroine.
Marilyn Monroe was the blond bombshell of choice – although for a while it looked as though Judy Holliday (Born Yesterday) might be a contender – and became a global icon. Her’s was a career that played out almost entirely during the 50s. A supporting role in All About Eve led to a studio contract and a star-making double whammy of Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Highlights of her decade, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, saw her teamed with director Billy Wilder, who said of her erratic behaviour on the latter: “We were in mid-flight, and there was a nut on the plane.”
Actor headaches notwithstanding, Wilder found that the 50s suited his wry satirical approach rather well, kicking off the decade skewering Hollywood vanity, with Sunset Boulevard, and the cynicism of the newspaper industry, with Ace in the Hole.
Another director with a taste for blonds, Alfred Hitchcock, was at his most productive: Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo and North By Northwest were key. Hitch’s work tapped into a public mood of uncertainty and paranoia. This was, after all, the decade in which the world was required to put itself back together after the devastation of the war. Jitters about the future fed into the films.
In the US, this resulted in a wealth of sci-fi B-movies, but perhaps the perfect encapsulation of the nuclear threat came from Japan. In 1954, Ishirō Honda took the hubris of mankind, stuck a load of scales on it and unleashed it to trample over cities. But while Godzilla made a global cultural impact to rival that of the newly created teenager, the output of Honda’s compatriot Akira Kurosawa – which included Rashomon, Throne of Blood and Seven Samurai – was perhaps even more influential. It’s also worth noting that, in polls for the greatest Japanese film of all time, the main rival to Seven Samurai was also made in the 50s: Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story.
Elsewhere, India was enjoying its own golden era, with the rise of the parallel cinema movement in West Bengal. Key in this was Satyajit Ray, whose Apu Trilogy announced him on the world stage.
But what of Europe? In Italy, Federico Fellini was putting his own flamboyant stamp on an industry coming to the end of its love affair with neorealism. His collaborations with his then wife, the magnificent Giulietta Masina, La Strada and The Nights of Cabiria, were magnificent.
Meanwhile, Britain was doing what it tends to do in times of uncertainty: wallow in nostalgia. Audiences flocked to war films that reaffirmed the narrative of national greatness: The Cruel Sea, The Dam Busters and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
In reaction, the British film-makers Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz launched the Free Cinema movement, which advocated a forthright, documentary-style approach. In 1959, Jack Clayton’s Room at the Top heralded the UK’s social-realist movement, the “kitchen sink” dramas.
Across the channel, the same young Cahiers critics – among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut – who championed Sirk, spent the 50s voraciously consuming films in preparation for their own assault on the art form. The first sally came in 1959, with arguably the most important European film of the decade, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. And that’s when things started to get really interesting.
