Elia Kazan brought the actress to light, when he would cast Carroll Baker in the screen adaptation of the transfixing Tennessee Williams tale Baby Doll in 1956 while she was all but a babe in the Broadway woods, only just coming into her own as a budding theater actress, albeit  the world would catch wind of her smoldering somethingness - this flaxen-haired filly and voila, she would never have to sing for her supper again. Born under the Gemini sun in 1931 in Cambria County, Pennsylvania to a family of humble means, Baker was no neophyte to the art of pulling oneself up from the bootstraps. In her elementary school years, she took to the stage, performing in many a musical and was soon enlisted with the school marching band.

During the latter half of the 1940s, the sardonic tones of the music were a device that intended to jar the nerves of the moviegoer, whilst the shadows cut their jagged path into the visual space. The viewer found himself on dangerous ground, an ironic phrase that would serve as a symptomatic tile of a future film noir by Nicholas Ray.

Seduced by the deadly sexuality of the femme fatale, lured into the shadows by the methodical cinematography of John Alton, Nicholas Musuraca and John F.

Weirdsville is perhaps a town that remains unlisted on that folded up map you have tucked away inside of your glove compartment, but in cinema's universe, this town is alive and jumpin'! If you'd like to take a holiday there it can be arranged  by seeing some of the following :

Cat Women of the Moon (1953). Now this would be Sonny Tufts' surreal schlock-fest that was oh so bad it was oh so good for ya. Mr.

Mike Nichols (1931-2014) initially earned his gilded reputation when he partnered with Elaine May (b.1932). first in the nightclub circuit and then on to Broadway in a series of fashionable satire sketches.

The overarching agenda of neo-realist filmmaker Francesco Rosi was to portray the life of Italy, to examine the forces at work in the nation and to prompt a debate of ideologies. When watching any of the films of his canon the audience may witness the development of Italy's history from the beginning of World War 1 to the economic and political climate of the Sixties and Seventies. His work confronts topics such as fascism in a Lucanian village circa 1930s.

If direct politics was not possible, a sort of indirect protest indeed was. This was most evident in the actions of America's so-called 'rebel' stars : Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, James Dean, as well as stars that hailed from other countries such as Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski, France's Jean-Paul Belmondo and Albert Finney of England.

It was clear that by the second half of the 1930s, that the quota had failed to create a flourishing industry, even the contributions of Michael Powell himself couldn't help stave off its inevitable demise.

In the latter Fifties, the teenage tragedy was very much the calling card of American International Pictures (AIP), films liked Dragstrip Riot (1959) culminated in a free-for-all between two warring gangs of hard-scrabbled youths. There was of course a more saccharine side, In 1958's Summer Love which starred Jill St.

And by the mid-1960's  those little American boys who wanted to grow up and become cowboys would give up on those dreams, once the spy movie craze rolled into town. Sparing jingly jangly spurs, stetsons and quarter horses, in lieu of telephone watches and walkie-talkie shoes. And with a round of thanks to the Cold War, the film industry could continue capitalizing away on all the intrigue and those plots to bring disaster.

The 1980's boom in rock videos were aimed primarily at television audiences and was detrimental to the cinema feature, gone were the days of rock-and-roll movies that were based around a band or its leading performer, though there wasn't a shortage of films that used rock music as soundtrack selling-points.
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