Documentary Film Culture and Postwar Liberal Momentum

Abstract

Abstract No one dared guess the postwar future of American racial custom. Despite the fissures that had opened in the system as a result of the crisis of war, the black penetration into previously inaccessible seats of power, the signs that race had again become a national point at issue, there were conservatives afoot who expected a return to antebellum ways. Parallel to this line of political change, American filmmakers faced an equally uncertain future. On its face, the situation promised only a thermidorean reaction, a return to a familiar equilibrium after the dislocations of war. But at the same time, new conditions also invited a search for means of extending wartime alliances. Such a strategy seemed compelling because formerly stable Hollywood was so unsettled by soaring labor costs, the threat of war-deferred strikes, the buffeting of inflation, a baffling suburban migration by an audience seemingly bent on trying every new leisure-time activity that drew them away from the movie houses they formerly had attended twice each week, and a Supreme Court that threatened to make up for years of wartime judicial peace by inquiring into antitrust violations.