What role did western movies and film noir play in the success of film studios during the Golden Age of Hollywood? Author and education Dr. Wyatt D. Phillips will examine that question as well as the role those film genres play in entertainment today, with his lecture “Singing Cowboys and Femme Fatales: Film Genre and the Economic Vernacular of the Hollywood Studios.” The lecture takes place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 27, in the McCasland Foundation Ballroom in the McMahon Centennial Complex. The event is open to the public at no charge and is made possible by the Holmes, Morris, and Newell Endowed Lectureship for Classic Film.
Phillips will discuss the way in which the genres of westerns and film noir became part of the economic system of film production during the classic Hollywood studio era, which ran from the advent of sound movies in 1927 through 1948, when the studio system had of total control over all aspects of film production and distribution began to break up.
“Westerns such as “Under Western Skies” (starring Roy Rogers) and “Riders of the Whistling Pine” (starring Gene Autry) played a crucial role in the economic success of the studio system,” explains Dr. John Morris, faculty advisor to the Magic Lantern Film Society. “Film noir pictures – mostly cheaply made B crime movies –- were also significant. Examples include ‘Detour,’ ‘Out of the Past,’ ‘The Hitch-Hiker’ and ‘Double Indemnity,’ one of the few big-budget A film noir pictures.”
According to Phillips, young directors during the Hollywood Renaissance of 1967 to 1976 reimagined these genres. George Roy Hill’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” and Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” are examples.
“Those movies were big budget films during the years when studios gave the green light to young directors for personal projects,” Morris says. “Blockbuster fever set in with the success of ‘Jaws’ in 1975 and ‘Star Wars’ in 1977 ending that era, ushering in the one in which we mostly still live.”
Phillips will also discuss how streaming companies like Netflix have continued genre production but are better able to track public interest than the film moguls of classic Hollywood.
“Netflix has produced westerns, among many other genre movies, in recent years,” Morris explains. “For example, it produced Marcelo Galvao's 2017 Brazilian take on the genre, ‘The Killers’ and Joel and Ethan Coen's 2018 anthology film ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.’“
Phillips is an associate professor of film and media studies and the director of graduate studies in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His scholarship has appeared in journals such as ”Film History,” “Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture” and “Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television,” and he is co-editor of “Camp TV of the 1960s: Reassessing the Vast Wasteland” (2023) and “Screening American Independent Film” (2023), the first publication from Routledge’s “Screening Cinema” series.
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