"Independent film is a vast and varied territory, and Phil Hall's remarkable book explores every inch of it with wit, intelligence, a sympathetic spirit, and a wide-open mind. Fresh discoveries and surprising revelations abound on every topic from Edison to Aronofsky, Anger to Warhol, the silent era to the Internet age. It's hard to imagine a study more keenly in tune with one of cinema's liveliest, most multifaceted fields.” — David Sterritt, Ph.D, chairman, National Society of Film Critics
The "remarkable book" in question is called The History of Independent Cinema, which, as the title implies, covers the century-long development of American filmmaking outside the big-studio lots. Published by BearManor Media, The History of Independent Cinema will be available beginning June 8.
Now, who were those independents?
Well, as author and film critic Phil Hall explains, they range from those fleeing the Thomas Edison East Coast oligopoly back in the early 1900s all the way to John Cameron Mitchell (right) in the early 21st century.
In between those two extremes, you'll also find, among others, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux, Roland West, Walt Disney, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walter Wanger, Otto Preminger, Morris Engel, Andy Warhol, John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Michael Moore, Gus Van Sant, and Darren Aronofsky.
Talk about an eclectic bunch. Eclectic and highly influential. As Hall explains, independent filmmakers helped to propel American cinema forward for the very simple fact that they could afford to take risks — generally speaking, they had less at stake from a financial standpoint than the more conservative big studios.
Otto Preminger, for one, helped to bring down both the Production Code (when he released the 1953 sex comedy The Moon Is Blue, above, with Maggie McNamara and William Holden) and the McCarthy era blacklist (when he hired one of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo, to write the screenplay for Exodus in 1960).
Jules Dassin, for his part, became one of the American pioneers of "realistic" filmmaking when he took his cameras to the streets of New York to shoot The Naked City, a Mark Hellinger production distributed by Universal in 1948.
The first feature-length color film? The 1935 period drama Becky Sharp, produced independently by Pioneer Pictures and released through RKO.
At the moment, the outlook may seem bleak for independent American films, but that's not the first such instance. Hard economic times come and go, but those determined independent filmmakers have been with us since the dawn of motion pictures. And they'll most likely be around for as long as there are people making movies.
Phil Hall (right), a steady contributor to Film Threat (check out his "The Bootleg Files" column), a former member of the Governing Committee of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Encyclopedia of Underground Movies and Independent Film Distribution, has kindly agreed to answer a few questions (via e-mail) about The History of Independent Cinema for Alt Film Guide. Read on…
I was Rouben Mamoulian's amanuensis in the late 1970s. He directed Becky Sharp and was very proud of that film.