The Post-Studio Era

This week in class, we took a  vote to watch either The Poseidon Adventure or Jaws. Everyone said that they have watched Jaws before so we decided to watch The Poseidon Adventure. The Poseidon Adventure is a 1972 American disaster film directed by Ronald Neame and produced by Irwin Allen. Within this movie, there are 5 Academy Award winners.  The budget for this movie was $4.7 million and box office was $93.3 million. The Poseidon was on her way to Athens for retirement. While everyone was having fun celebrating the new year, the ship was taken by a tsunami and was turned upside. Many people died when this happened. One of the reverend, Scott, thought everyone would live if they moved upwards toward the engine room. Some of the passengers listened and followed him but others didn’t want to leave. After everyone who decided to go with Scott left, he tried to convinced everyone else to go with him but no one was listening. Once Scott left them, that entire area was under water and that’s when they all wanted to listen and move upwards but it was too late for them. This seems to happen a lot, someone says something but the others never listen until something actually happens to them. Scott was very upset that he couldn’t save everyone but it was not his fault. Scott did the best he could to save the people that was with him. I was heartbroken when he fell into the fire and die. I thought that he was going to live until the end of the movie. After he did what he could, someone else took over and lead them to victory. The survivors started to hear people and that’s when they all thought..”Scott was right the entire time”. They started hitting the pipes until they were heard and they waited until they cut upon the area and let them free. Overall, I thought this was a good movie, even though I did not like some of the things that happened.  I almost cried a few times.

In the reading this week, we learned about the rise and fall of the classical Hollywood studio system. During this era, from the 1920s to the 40s, the “studio system” referred to a factory based mode of film production and the vertical integration of production, distribution, and exhibition. The studio system flourished during the Depression era and World War II. These 2 major events induced the government to sanction the studios’ monopolistic control of the film industry. This allowed the studios to maintain their factory operations and also a contract system that kept filmmaking talent at all levels. The 40s proved to be a watershed era for Hollywood with a boom due to war conditions early in the decade followed by an industry decline and an end to the studios’ hegemony. After the boom, it was the studios  best years ever in terms of revenues and profits but then a year or 2 later the industry was in a free fall due to a succession of devastating blows.