American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations

America in the 1950s was a place of sensational commercial possibility coupled with dark nuclear fears and conformist politics. Cold war hysteria and anti-communist witch hunts influenced a culture already falling under the spell of suburbia, television and a brave new world of luxury goods.Throughout the decade Hollywood was under siege: from the Justice Department pressing for big film companies to divest themselves of their theatre holdings; from the middle classes, whose retreat to family entertainment inside the home drastically decreased the film-going audience; and from the House Un-American Activities Committee, attempting to purge the country of dissenting political views. This tumultuous decade also saw some of Hollywoods most talented filmmakers - John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Vincente Minnelli, Nicholas Ray and Billy Wilder - producing some of the best-loved movies in the history of cinema, including From Here to Eternity, Sunset Boulevard., Singin’ in the Rain, Shane, Rear Window, and Rebel Without a Cause.