Class

DISCUSSING CLASS DURING THE COLD WAR

The post–World War II period also saw discussion of class reframed by the simmering tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union espoused socialist rhetoric criticizing the class divisions of Western capitalism, life in the USSR and its sphere of influence was itself often severely stratified between the haves and the have-nots. Anyone who dared to acknowledge such economic disparity was in danger of investigation, imprisonment, torture, and/or death. Such threats did not stop some filmmakers in eastern European countries, such as Jiri Menzel (b. 1938) in Czechoslovakia and Andrzej Wajda (b. 1926) in Poland, from presenting Soviet-dominated society as one that suppressed individual liberty more than it eradicated power hierarchies. These efforts usually led to crackdowns. Soviet-style communism was not alone in such censorship. In the late 1960s, China's Cultural Revolution effectively shut down the film industry entirely because it was considered too Western-influenced, and many filmmakers were imprisoned or went missing.

It is important to recognize, though, that in the United States attempts to discuss capitalism critically were often met with similar suspicions of treason. Many filmmakers who had made social problem films about economic injustice found themselves investigated by the federal government as communist spies or sympathizers. Throughout the 1950s, an era of paranoia reigned within the film industry as studio executives agreed to blacklist any worker suspected of having communist ties. While potentially imperiling Hollywood as a whole, the Red Scare affected the power of the industry's labor unions most of all, weakening the ability for collective bargaining that had been hard-won during the Depression.

Social problem films in Hollywood ebbed in favor of mega-budget spectaculars that promoted happiness and fulfillment through consumerism. Bigger was better in Hollywood in the 1950s—bigger sets, bigger crowds of extras, even bigger screens with the advent of CinemaScope. Such a drift to escapist celebrations of conspicuous materialism occurred throughout most of Europe by the end of the 1950s. With US support behind the scenes, the Socialist Party in Italy was voted out of power, and an "Economic Miracle" began. The new government was outspoken in its criticism of how neorealism portrayed Italian society, and by the end of the decade neorealism had been replaced by high-gloss sex comedies and big-budget peplum (sword and sandal) films. The United Kingdom also saw the rise of an affluent society during the 1960s, and the image of the "angry young man" was succeeded by the icon of James Bond, who reveled in high-tech gadgets, casinos, and "shaken, not stirred" martinis.

Yet, even as much of "First World" cinema seemed to manifestly promote what capitalism had to offer, some films also suggested problems that lay beneath such effusiveness. Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s sometimes hinted at a simmering dissatisfaction—a feeling that money and material goods were not bringing happiness. Italian directors such as Federico Fellini (1920–1993) ( La Dolce Vita [1960]) and Michelangelo Antonioni (b. 1912) ( L'Avventura [1960]) portrayed the Economic Miracle as having created a shallow, soulless society. The films of the French New Wave also seemed to rebel against what was portrayed as the stifling values of bourgeois society.

Such attitudes toward First World capitalism became even more attenuated in the various national cinemas that emerged in newly postcolonial Third World countries. As many in these officially independent countries realized their continued psychological, cultural, and

economic dependency on the West, they began to call for strategies of resistance. Throughout the 1960s, various film movements matched the growing radical political ideas of the Third World. Brazil's Cinema Novo described itself as an "aesthetics of hunger," for example, attempting to provide a voice for the peasant underclass against growing modernization and Western imperialism. Calls for an "imperfect cinema" in Cuba after the 1959 revolution, or for a type of guerrilla cinema termed "Third Cinema" by the Argentine filmmakers Fernando E. Solanas (b. 1936) and Octavio Getino (b. 1935), similarly attempted to divest themselves from dependence on Hollywood imperialist techniques. Many revolutionary filmmakers also sought to develop alternative or underground systems of production, distribution, and exhibition that were not motivated by the potential for profit.

Radical cinema began to make its presence felt in the United States and western Europe by the late 1960s, as countercultural factions began to swell within the population. Occurrences across the globe in 1968—the events of May in Paris and the riots during the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, as well as uprisings in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan—showed a widespread resistance to the establishment. Many individuals "dropped out" of the economy, creating communes and protesting government policies and business practices. A number of underground and leftist film-makers began producing experimental films and documentaries that challenged and critiqued what often was referred to at the time as the West's "military-industrial complex." Collectives such as Newsreel in the United States and the Dziga Vertov Group in France sought not only to provide alternative content but also alternative stylistics, production methods, and exhibition practices. Much like Soviet cinema of the 1920s or revolutionary Third World cinema of the 1960s, such films used alienation devices to snap viewers out of "false consciousness" and to make them aware and critical of both class division and its attendant ideologies (such as racism, sexism, and militarism). Going to an underground screening itself could feel like a radical act of resistance.

With younger audiences opting for underground or foreign films and older audiences often staying home to watch television, the Hollywood studios suffered major economic setbacks by the end of the 1960s. Desperate to find an audience, the studios began to address the concerns of the counterculture. Films like Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971), and Mean Streets (1973) attempted to show the emptiness of the American Dream and the drama of the working class. Studios also began distributing low-budget blaxploitation films that exposed the trials and tribulations that faced America's inner-city African American population (albeit with extensive violence and sex included). Such attempts were not exclusive to US cinema, however. Japanese New Wave directors of the 1960s often voiced the aggravations of a younger generation in the midst of rapid modernization and Westernization. Nihon No Yoru To Kiri ( Night and Fog in Japan , Nagisa Oshima, 1960) and Buta To Gunkan ( Pigs and Battleships , Shohei Imamura, 1961) are examples of such Japanese New Wave films. New German Cinema (such as Angst essen Seele auf [ Ali: Fear Eats the Soul , 1974], Stroszek [1977] and Die Ehe der Maria Braun [ The Marriage of Maria Braun , 1979]) often critiqued the effects of modern capitalism on West Germany. The German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982) in particular commonly invoked Hollywood melodramas and "white telephone films" but in an overly stylized manner in order to lay bare their issues of class (as well as race, gender, and sexuality issues).