Abstract
By the end of the 1940s, Hollywood had established a familiar pattern for dealing with passionate love stories in the romantic drama genre. Over the following years, the depiction of passion was modified as a result of a variety of social, political and filmic influences. The United States Supreme Court’s Paramount Decision in 19481 led to the breakdown of the traditional studio system, which played a major part in establishing genres like the romantic drama.
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Notes
See, for example, Herb Bridges. The Filming of Gone with the Wind. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1998: 3.
Stuart Brock. ‘Fictions, Feelings and Emotions’ Philosophical Studies 132, no. 2 (2007): 229. Brock’s discussion revolves around the general concept of ‘fiction’ rather than cinema specifically; however, his arguments can include film. He uses David Hume to argue that, ‘The genius in a work of fiction lies not only in the storyline, but also in the resources used to express it’. See Brock. ‘Feelings, Fictions and Emotions’ 229. In the case of these passionate love stories, the visual aesthetics emphasise the emotions. See also David Hume. ‘Of Tragedy’ in Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, 219–220. Indianapolis: Bobs-Merrill, 1965.
Robert R. Shandley. Runaway Romances: Hollywood’s Postwar Tour of Europe. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.
John Campbell. ‘Hong Kong Faces a “Many Splendored Thing”’ New York Times (3 April 1955): x5.
Gene Phillips. Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films ofDavid Lean. Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 2006: 329.
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, directed by Henry King (1955; Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2003), DVD.
The Notebook, directed by Nick Cassavetes (2004; Burbank, CA: New Line Home Entertainment, 2005), DVD.
Bosley Crowther. ‘Love Is a Few Splendors Shy: Patrick’s Adaptation of Suyin Novel Opens. Hong Kong Scenery Its Chief Excitement’ Review of Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. New York Times (19 August 1955): 10.
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See, for example, Robert J. Sternberg. ‘A Triangular Theory of Love’ Psychological Review 93, no. 2 (1986): 24; Anthony Giddens. The Transformation oflntimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.
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See also Katharina Giltre. Hollywood Romantic Comedy: States of Union 1934–1965. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Katharina Giltre reinforces the theme of desire.
See Richard Maltby. ‘Narrative 2: Clarity and Ambiguity in Casablanca’ in Hollywood Cinema 2nd edn. 479. Malden: Blackwell, 2003, 479.
Gregory D. Black. ‘Changing Perceptions of the Movies: American Catholics Debate Film Censorship’ in Hollywood Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences, edited by Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes, 83–84. London: BFI, 2001.
Francesca M. Cancian. ‘The Feminization of Love’ Signs 11, no. 4 (Summer 1986): 704. She also notes that the notion of sex has negative effects, as it is sometimes seen as an abusive tool for men.
See also Stanley Cavell. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981: 53. Cavell indi-ates that in classical romantic comedies, the father figure (the mother was usually absent) is there to ‘provide the daughter’s education and to protect her virginity’. In films such as The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941), The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) and It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934), the female protagonists often learn valuable lessons about life and relationships from their fathers mirroring tradi-ions of Shakespearean comedies.
Bill Marshall ed. ‘Brigitte Bardot’ in France and the Americas: Culture, Politics and History, vol. 1, 118. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
Cas Wouters. Sex and Manners: Female Emancipation in the West, 1890–000. London: Sage Publications, 2004: 124. Wouter’s italics.
Steve Neale. ‘The Last Good Thing We Ever Had? Revising the Hollywood Renaissance’ in Contemporary American Cinema, edited by Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond, 96–97. London; Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Box office returns that Neale presents for these two films reflect that the audience enjoyed the change, with 66 million dollars (United States currency) received in the United States and Canada between 1967 and 1968.
Doctor Zhivago, directed by David Lean (1965; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2001), DVD.
Eva Illouz. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. London: University of California Press, 1997; Mike Featherstone. ‘Love and Eroticism: An Introduction’ Theory, Culture and Society 15, no. 1 (1998): 6. See also Giddens. The Transformation of Intimacy. 39. Giddens explains that sexuality was historically an aspect of an aristocratic lifestyle across Europe, granting women freedom from the ‘chaste’ alternative in marriage.
Arlie Russell Hochschild. The Commercialization ofIntimate Life. London: University of California Press, 2003: 123.
Frank Krutnik. ‘The Faint Aroma of Performing Seals: The “Nervous” Romance and the Comedy of the Sexes’ The Velvet Light Trap 26 (1990): 69–70.
Tom Grochowski. ‘Neurotic in New York: The Woody Allen touches in Sex and the City’ in Reading Sex and the City, edited by Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, 150. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. See also McDonald. Romantic Comedy. 149; Mark D. Rubinfeld. Bound to Bond: Gender, Genre and the Hollywood Romantic Comedy. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2001: 148.
September Affair, directed by William Dieterle (1950; USA: Paramount Pictures, 1989).
Thomas Doherty. Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenalization of American Movies in the 1950s. revised and expanded edn.. Philadelphia: Temple University, 2002: 1, 2.
See William Wordsworth. Ode: Intimations of Immortality (originally published 1807; Great Britain: Simon King, 1991).
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Krin Gabbard and William Luhr. ‘Introduction’ in Screening Genders, 3–5. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008.
McDonald. ‘Homme-Com’ 149; Shumway. Modern Love. 107; Celestino Deleyto. The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009: 82–83.
P. David Marshall. ‘The Cinematic Apparatus and the Construction of the Film Celebrity’ in Cultural Studies: An Anthology, edited by Michael Ryan, 1124. Malden: Blackwell, 2008.
Dennis Bingham. Acting Male: Masculinities in the Films of James Stewart, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. New Brunswick: N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994: 7.
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© 2014 Erica Todd
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Todd, E. (2014). Passionate Love in Hollywood Romantic Dramas 1950s–1970s. In: Passionate Love and Popular Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137295385_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137295385_4
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