Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1950s! While I can understand why some people might not want to watch movies with social commentary because they view movies as pure escapism, the 1950s serve as a pretty strong rebuttal to people who say that movies should never include any social commentary. Cinema in the 1950s was packed full of commentary about the fallout (literal and metaphorical) of atomic weapons, finding one's identity in a post-WWII world, and the red scare fear mongering of McCarthy. Even the "B-movies" of the era (which saw an increase thanks to things such as drive-in theaters) were often giant monster movies, playing off of fears of atomic war. And while some of the movies from the decade now serve as mindless escapism, it is the social commentary (even in some of the more "mindless" films) that has led to so many of these movies becoming classics and still continuing to have a powerful impact!!
As a reminder, these History of Cinema episodes will not be a comprehensive coverage of every single movie that was released that decade. It isn't even necessarily going to be the "top" movies from the decade. Instead, it will be more of a broad discussion of some of the advancements, themes, and highlights from each decade, with the various movies that we watched as examples. This series is also serving as an opportunity for us to fill in some gaps in our own personal film viewings (this series was also inspired, in part, by our Horror Movie Blindspots series we did last year).
Video Monsters is brought to you by the Chattanooga Film Festival and Central Cinema in Knoxville, TN. Follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or online at chattfilmfest.org and centralcinema865.com
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music for Video Monsters by Evan Simmons
