Recovering the Chicano Social Problem Film: Racial Consciousness, Rita Moreno, and the Historiography of The Ring (1952)

Black Camera ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
García
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
Racial Consciousness ◽  
Social Problem Film

The Loud Silents: Origins of the Social Problem Film.

1990 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 604
Author(s):  
Michael T. Isenberg ◽  
Kay Sloan
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Problem Film

From the Cabaret Number to the Melodrama of Dance Reform

Dancing Women ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 139-178
Author(s):  
Usha Iyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Bodily Movement ◽  
Dance Training ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Problem Film ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Film Producing

Chapter 4 focuses on two Bharatanatyam-trained stars in the 1950s and 1960s, Vyjayanthimala and Waheeda Rehman, analyzing changes in film dance alongside the canonization of specific classical and folk dance forms by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. By studying how dance training influences acting repertoires, this chapter calls attention to movement, gesture, and bodily comportment to enhance our understanding of virtuosity and technique, proposing a movement-based analysis of film acting grounded in kinesthetic performance and spectatorship. Rehman and Vyjayanthimala’s most ambitious production numbers speak to their own performative desires as trained dancers. Films featuring these A-list actresses as dancing protagonists evince a generic tendency, described here as the “melodrama of dance reform,” which combines the dance spectacular with the “social problem” film, producing in the process cinematic figurations riven with anxieties and aspirations around female sexuality, bodily movement, and economic independence.

The Loud Silents: Origins of the Social Problem Film

1989 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 963
Author(s):  
Patrick G. Gerster ◽  
Kay Sloan
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Problem Film

Odds against Tomorrow

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-232
Author(s):  
Robert Miklitsch
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Space Travel ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
Social Problem Film ◽  
Social Message ◽  
Inside Out

In Odds against Tomorrow (1959), the relation between crime thriller and social commentary in Robert Wise’s film can be said to turn the generic glove inside out so that the heist picture becomes a vehicle for social protest. Unlike The Defiant Ones (1957), in which the positive social message is compromised by its ultimately regressive take on the prison picture, the apocalyptic, seemingly nihilistic conclusion of Odds against Tomorrow represents a negative critique of both the heist and social-problem picture. From this dual point of view, Wise’s film may be said to be what Jonathan Munby calls a “civil rights noir,” an oxymoron that points to the limits of the classic social-problem film even as it points up the latent utopianism of the heist picture. Unlike the conclusion of The Asphalt Jungle, which looks backward to the nation’s agrarian past, the ending of Odds against Tomorrow evokes the lunar landscape and, by implication, the promise of the “new frontier”--of space travel and civil rights in the oppressive face of ignorance and prejudice.

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