The Politics of the Hollywood Pendulum

Paper Summary:

This paper uses three movies to illustrate the evolution of Hollywood from the conservative, controlled environment during the 1930s to the lack of barriers that can be seen in cinema today. The writer looks at the 1932 Howard Hawks film "Scarface: The Shame of the Nation", the 1967 Arthur Penn film "Bonnie and Clyde" and the 1994 Oliver Stone film "Natural Born Killers".

From the Paper:

"The 1932 Howard Hawks film Scarface: The Shame of the Nation was produced during the height of this social crisis. It was typical of a popular genre among moviegoers at the time - the gangster movie. Completed in mid-1930, its main character, Tony Camonte, was patterned after the infamous Al Capone, who was nearing the end of his reign as the kingpin of the mob (he would be put in prison and serve an 11-year sentence in 1931). Other characters in the film were actually caricatures of real-life mobsters also. The plot of the film relates the tale of a mobster who violently seizes control of a bootlegging operation from his boss, claiming his boss? girlfriend in the process, and killing anyone who gets in his way, quickly and violently. In the original screenplay, Camonte came out on top, only to be mowed down in a showdown with police."

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