Anger and Conflict in Cinema
Rob Edelman
Whether a film is a pulse-pounding thriller, a mind-massaging drama, or a quick-witted romantic comedy, conflict is one of the key components of successful storytelling. It is essential to the establishment and development of the central characters and the flow of the storyline. And, usually, feelings of anger are a byproduct of conflict. Whether hero, heroine, or villain, characters will be spurred on by anger as they embark on their efforts to achieve their objectives or seek revenge against those who have thwarted those endeavors.1
In any serious analysis of film, it is essential that several points about the moviemaking process be established. Most importantly, within the boundaries of mainstream American cinema, films are a “product.” (Hollywood is an industry town and, within that industry, motion pictures are known as “products.” They are no different from automobiles, lightbulbs, or bathroom tissue. This was true in 1925, and it remains so now.) At the same time, many films are created by talented, serious-minded individuals who wish their output to be successful financially but also want to create meaningful entertainment and cinematic art. These aspirations give rise to the creative approaches they take as they choose the stories they wish to tell, select camera angles, and decide how and when to move the camera, collaborate with cinematographers to determine the most effective lighting design, or determine when one shot will end and the next will begin. In particular, editing plays a powerful role in this process and in expressing the conflict and anger that is inherent to the storyline. According to Sergei Eisenstein (1949), each shot in a film is a unit with a dynamic visual charge. The goal is to successfully connect one shot with the next, resulting in a contrast and collision of images, and what might be described as conflict on a purely visual level.
As we study the history of cinema, we also can analyze specific films for the manner in which they record the past or reflect the prevailing culture at the time in which they were made. And with all this in mind, a successful film—whether it was produced to provoke thought or merely to entertain—will grab onto and hold the attention of audiences while transporting them into realms that are far from everyday reality. If, for example, two individuals meet, share an attraction, begin dating, marry, start a family, and remain a contented couple for decades to come, that certainly is a real-world ideal. It can be said that individuals who are raised by loving parents, complete their schooling, find gainful employment, pay their taxes, take vacations, and eventually enjoy quiet retirements are living peaceful, productive lives. But scenarios that feature such happy beginnings, middles, and endings will not translate into compelling storytelling. Where is the conflict? Where is the anger? Where are the issues? Without them, audiences quickly will become bored with what is unfolding onscreen.
To be sure, a scenario that is rife with conflict will feature the problem-solving that is an intrinsic part of forceful storytelling. The anger-related issues exhibited by the characters will be resolved, leading to the happy-ever-after endings that permit the movie-going masses to exit the theater with smiles on their faces. And if there is no resolution by the final credit roll—if the conflict and anger issues are not settled—the audience will be left to ponder the plights and fates of the characters.
Anger and Romance
The plotlines of myriad romantic comedies and musicals are spun into motion by anger and conflict. The central characters may hear wedding bells at the finale, but they often are at odds upon first meeting. They even may intensely dislike each other and, as the story progresses, they will clash over serious issues or personality differences. But eventually, as their stories unfold, they will develop feelings for each other as they strive to overcome those obstacles. Such is the tried-and-true formula employed in boy-meets-girl storytelling.
Take, for example, the 1930s Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. In most of them, when Fred and Ginger meet, there is an intense dislike on the part of one or both of their characters. In Top Hat (1935), Fred plays Jerry Travers, a musical revue star who practices his tap dancing while ensconced in a London hotel. The resulting noise enrages Dale Tremont (Rogers), who occupies the room below. Upon meeting Dale, Jerry is smitten, but she rebuffs him. What follows is a cat-and-mouse scenario involving various misunderstandings. At the finale, of course, the struggles disappear, Dale’s marriage to a less-suitable suitor is sabotaged, and Fred and Ginger merrily glide down a flight of stairs and across a dance floor. In Swing Time (1936), Fred is John “Lucky” Garnett, a dancer-gambler; he meets Penny Carrol (Rogers), a dance instructor who misconstrues his friendliness for an unwanted sexual come-on and even accuses him of thievery. Yet again, Fred’s character is infatuated but rejected. Yet again, Ginger’s character is set to wed an inappropriate suitor, but the union is disrupted. Yet again, a host of additional complications are resolved. And at the finale, Ginger agrees to wed Fred and the two overlook a picturesque window view of snow falling over a Big City vista while briefly, sweetly reprising Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields’s “A Fine Romance.”
One of the classic modern-day romances in which an oil-and-water encounter evolves into love is found in When Harry Met Sally . . . (1989). At the outset, twenty-somethings Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) meet while sharing a ride from Chicago to New York. To Harry, Sally is superficially happy; to Sally, Harry is a slob with a “dark side.” They disagree over the plot of Casablanca. They have different approaches to ordering meals in restaurants. They argue about everything and, at the end of the trip, Harry tells Sally, “It was nice knowing you,” while Sally tells Harry, “Have a nice life.” But over the years, they keep encountering each other in bookstores and airports and eventually forge a friendship. They date others, sleep with others, and commiserate over their failed romances. They squabble, and they apologize—but will their connection somehow segue into romance? Is true love in the picture for Harry and Sally? Of course it is and, at the better-late-than-never finale, the pair acknowledge they indeed are more than friends.
If anger and conflict are not keys to the scenario when the boy and girl first meet, they are fated to factor into the plot as the story unfolds. In Annie Hall (1976), Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and the title character (Diane Keaton) meet and begin a romance. At the outset, they get along famously—but in order for the storyline to resonate, the two must quarrel. Alvy’s and Annie’s relationship is destined to nosedive: Alvy is, like Woody Allen, a confirmed New Yorker, while Annie chooses to move to Los Angeles to advance her career. Upon rejecting him after he jets off to California to visit her, Allen expresses Alvy’s anger visually by having him smack his rented car into one auto after another in a restaurant parking lot. At the finale, they meet by chance on a Manhattan street. Their romance clearly will not be rekindled, but they share happy memories of their union. However, if the scenario did not progress beyond Alvy’s and Annie’s initial attraction, Annie Hall would not have been much of a film.
Similarly, in other Woody Allen films, the central characters become involved with women who are attractive, supportive, devoted: idealized romantic partners who would be coveted by any sane male. But Allen’s males are irrational and highly neurotic, and conflict enters the storyline as they sabotage their relationships. In Deconstructing Harry (1997), the title character (played by Allen) is paired with the ever-adoring Fay (Elisabeth Shue), but Harry implores her to not take their bond seriously. So when Fay meets, dates, and marries Larry (Billy Crystal), angst-ridden Harry is devastated. In Manhattan (1979), Allen is forty-something Isaac Davis, whose girlfriend is beautiful, sensuous—and is all of 17. However, Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), despite her age, is up front with her feelings in a manner that eludes Isaac, who constantly disappoints her and even advises her to try dating boys who are her contemporaries. A conflicted, disappointed Tracy eventually distances herself from Isaac.
Anger in Drama
If the film in question is a drama, mystery, or thriller, the hero or heroine will face off against the machinations of a villain who is exploiting all those in his or her path; in this regard, anger and conflict are the central aspects of the storytelling. In a Western, the crooked, all-powerful cattleman or saloon owner will be fleecing the town and its citizens. In a crime tale, the underworld overlord will be robbing banks, dealing drugs, selling illegal liquor, and committing murder. In a spy or sci-fi tale, the megalomaniacal villain will be scheming to dominate the world. The victimized masses are powerless to protest; anyone who is angered enough to do so—the newspaper editor in the Western town who prints editorials damning the crook or the newly installed district attorney who promises to rid the corrupt city of the crime syndicate—is assaulted or murdered by the villain’s henchmen. The conflict escalates upon the arrival of the hero: the federal marshal who is assigned to clean up the town; the G-man who is determined to eradicate the criminal element; or the representative of law, order, and decency who takes on and subsequently crushes the world domination-obsessed rogue.
Some of the very best dramatic films, those that offer piercing psychological portraits of the central character, veer away from these formulas. One of the all-time-great American films is On the Waterfront (1954), which, despite its thinly veiled rationale for “naming names” before government committees, is a poignant tale that stresses the anger and conflict that are an intrinsic part of everyday life. The central character is Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a none-too-bright former boxer who, once upon a time, “coulda been a contender” for a boxing crown. However, upon the urging of Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), a thuggish union boss, and Charley the Gent (Rod Steiger), Terry’s brother and Johnny’s right-hand-man, Terry thoughtlessly allowed himself to throw the fight that might have landed him a shot at the title. And so Terry is not so much a has-been as a never-was.
The conflict and subsequent anger on the part of Terry results from his unknowingly becoming an accessory to the murder of a dockworker who had agreed to testify before a waterfront crime commission. Terry begins questioning the motives of Johnny and Charley, and his festering, all-consuming anger is expressed in the film’s legendary taxicab scene. Here, Terry has realized that his shot at the title was stripped away from him solely because of the greed of Johnny Friendly and the support of Charley. Terry might have been a champion. He might have risen out of the exploited working class. But instead, he is nothing but a self-described “bum,” on a “one-way ticket to Palookaville.” This is his present, this surely will be his future, and at the heart of Terry’s plight is his sibling’s deception. Terry faces off verbally and emotionally against his brother, his pent-up anger coming to the surface as he excoriates Charley for not looking after him. In On the Waterfront, the core of this brother-brother relationship is greed and deceit, which segues into the conflict between the two men and Terry’s justifiable, all-consuming despair.
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), another Hollywood classic, is the story of three World War II veterans and their plights as they return to their fictional Midwestern hometown. If these men were to reunite with their wives, girlfriends, or parents and seamlessly blend into the American mainstream, the result would not be much of a film. But each man faces a specific issue, one in which conflict and anger are at center stage. Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) arrives home missing both his hands, and the questions facing him are: How will he be accepted by his family? Will he be treated as an invalid, and will he be a burden to Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell), his childhood sweetheart? Meanwhile, how will Al Stephenson (Fredric March), a middle-aged former bank officer, readjust to civilian life? Will he be allowed to employ his military experiences and meet the special needs of the veterans who request loans from his bank? And what of the plight of Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a bona fide war hero who lacks education and is unable to secure lasting employment? What will be his future? How will he react when the skills he acquired as a GI—skills that were intrinsic to the war effort—now are shown to be worthless? Also, how will he respond when Marie (Virginia Mayo), his self-absorbed wife, cheats on him? The Best Years of Our Lives, released during the first full post-war year, is at once a portrait of life in America in 1946 and an exploration of the varying degrees of anger and conflict that affected veterans.
Occasionally, mainstream dramatic films directly examine provocative, controversial social issues. For example, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), the story of an innocent man (Paul Muni) incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, exposes the mistreatment of prisoners on Southern chain gangs; its storyline is representative of American social conscience films at their most compelling. To varying degrees, a host of films—the list begins with Fury (1936), Black Legion (1937), They Won’t Forget (1937), and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)— lambaste lynching and other offshoots of mob justice. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) and Crossfire (1947) are condemnations of anti-Semitism. Dozens of films whose productions parallel the beginnings of the civil rights movement denounce racism American-style; these titles only begin with Intruder in the Dust (1949), Home of the Brave (1949), Lost Boundaries (1949), Pinky (1949), No Way Out (1950), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), and Bright Victory (1951). By their very nature, all these films feature characters who are conflicted for a range of reasons: They are innocent individuals who are unfairly imprisoned and abused within the criminal justice system; they are victimized by the out-of-control, vengeance-seeking masses; or they are persecuted because of their race or religion. These storylines emphasize the conflicts and resulting anger that are directly related to the victims’ maltreatment. Simultaneously, they are meant to provoke anger in viewers, anger on the part of the fair-minded filmgoer who will respond to the injustices being perpetrated against the characters, and perhaps even anger on the part of those who would justify the actions of lynch mobs or the mistreatment of Blacks and Jews and summarily blame “liberal Hollywood” for the content of these films.
However, it must be acknowledged that countless films produced before the advent of the civil rights movement feature characters who are not allowed to express their feelings simply because of their race. Prior to the late 1940s, African Americans were endlessly stereotyped in Hollywood movies as thick-witted souls who wrecked the English language. They referred to every white person as “Boss,” and the purpose of their onscreen presence primarily was for comic relief. But what was going on inside these characters? How did they feel about their second-class American citizenship? Did they resent the manner in which they were patronized by Caucasians? Were they ever conflicted? Were they ever angry? Because of the accepted mainstream view of African Americans, their issues and feelings were ignored simply because of race.
In recent decades, countless films include reaction shots of children who are dazed, confused, and traumatized as they stand off to the side in quiet shock while their parents scream at each other, or even physically abuse each other. But such was not always the case. In particular during the 1950s, various scenarios put forth what then was an accepted idea about children: They are half-formed human beings, incapable of being conflicted or angered; their feelings somehow are not real, and are not to be considered within the realm of the “adult world.”
For example, in The Big Heat (1953), big city cop Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is determined to bust open an all-powerful crime syndicate. Bannion, who values the love of his devoted wife and sweet young daughter, is plunged into anger and despair when his mate is murdered. But the impact on the child, who logically is just as equally damaged, is completely ignored. In the first scene after the killing in which she appears, the girl merrily greets her dad and asks him to read her a story. Later on, she clutches a ragdoll and kisses her father goodnight. While the adult is embittered, the child’s pain is nonexistent. She is not allowed to ask: “Where is mommy?” “What happened to mommy?” “Will I ever see her again?”
At the finale of Between Midnight and Dawn (1950), a psychotic bad guy is dangling a little girl out of an apartment window and threatening to drop her to her death. The child is screaming hysterically, as one would expect. But after she is rescued amid additional violence and chaos, she is shown to be oblivious to what has just happened—and the now-relaxed, smiling child is carried off by her mother. But what about her ordeal? It is as if what she has just experienced never occurred; the following morning, she will wake up from a peaceful slumber and play with her toys or head off to school. The message here is that she will not be scarred by this experience or even remember it, simply because of her youth.
The Marrying Kind (1952) is the story of Florrie and Chet Keefer (Judy Holliday and Aldo Ray), a New York couple who are seeking a divorce, with their case being argued in the city’s Court of Domestic Relations. The scope of their relationship unfolds in flashback and, at one point, their young son accidentally drowns. Both parents are anguished. Florrie cries hysterically, while Chet is in shock. But the Keefers also have a daughter, and she is not allowed to express any emotion over the tragedy. In her first appearance after the accident, the child pesters her mother for a soda, just as any kid might. Next, she excitedly greets her father after a separation, just as any kid might. Then she helps her mother set the dinner table and sounds off on her favorite desert, just as any kid might. Is she in any way traumatized by the tragedy? No. Does she question the fate of her sibling? No. Is she shown to miss him? No.
The Marrying Kind may be progressive in its portrayal of gender roles: The wise, patient judge who hears the case is a woman. (At this time, myriad post-war American movies depicted women as subservient figures who were expected to toss their conflicts, ambitions, and feelings aside, all in the name of marriage and family life.) But the Keefers’ daughter is a half-formed character. She expresses emotion after her brother’s death only in one scene: Her parents are loudly fighting, and the sleeping child is awakened by the “mad people” who are hollering. But her hysteria has nothing to do with her state of mind. It only is present in relation to her parents and their issues.
For decades, children who had grown into adolescence were acknowledged to be old enough to deal with anger and conflict. Often, however, those feelings were linked to class. In innumerable films, ghetto kids—particularly those who were lacking positive role models—joined gangs and broke laws. One example: In Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), the Dead End Kids, a band of scruffy, surly teen boys, idolize neither parent nor educator nor religious figure but Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney), a notorious hoodlum. Meanwhile, in other films, the children of the American middle class, as personified by Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) in a series of popular MGM features released from the late-1930s to mid-1940s, were solid citizens-in-training whose conflicts were of the “who shall I take to the prom” variety. The very real feelings of young people who were born into outwardly respectable families finally were acknowledged in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), a landmark exploration of teen angst. The central character is Jim Stark (James Dean), a troubled product of the American middle class. His hapless, clueless parents constantly toss mixed messages in his direction, and at one point the seething teen admonishes them by lamenting that they are “tearing me apart.” Jim Stark’s anger and conflict were—and are—ever-so-relatable to young people who are coming of age in a less-than-hospitable culture.
Anger, Conflict, and the New American Cinema
Keeping in mind that films are products of the time in which they were made and the prevailing culture, a new kind of motion picture emerged from Hollywood in the late 1960s and 1970s. These films mirror the uncertainty that existed in the United States at this time while exploring the issues of the day: the civil rights movement, the anti–Vietnam war movement, and the sexual revolution. They feature characters who are angered, conflicted, and alienated for a range of reasons. They are misunderstood by their parents, for example, or they feel powerless as the world around them is engulfed in chaos.
Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) in The Graduate (1967), Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) in Five Easy Pieces (1970), and Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) in Taxi Driver (1976) are three classic characters who embody the era. Ben Braddock refuses to embrace the “plastic” world of his parents and commences a sexual relationship with the infamous Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), a woman old enough to be his mother. Bobby Dupea rejects the elitism of his family and his classical music background, toils in an oilfield, and quietly seethes as he mixes with individuals of all classes. Travis Bickle, an alienated, psychologically scarred Vietnam veteran, complains about the lowlife scum who inhabit the Manhattan streets. So what does he do in his spare time? He watches porn movies in a sleazy movie house. Plus, he plots an assassination. It does not matter to Travis if he murders a presidential candidate (which would label him a villain of Lee Harvey Oswald–like proportion) or a pimp (which he does, and which earns him heroic status in the media). Travis is angry. He is aimless. He is alienated and conflicted. And he is a product of his era.
Meanwhile, the struggles and feelings of women that resulted in the feminist movement were explored in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), An Unmarried Woman (1978), and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). These films spotlight women of varying backgrounds and life experiences: respectively, a psychologically unhinged wife and mother (played by Gena Rowlands), a recently widowed mother (Ellen Burstyn) attempting to build a new life for herself and her son, an upscale Manhattanite (Jill Clayburgh) who is unceremoniously dumped by her cheating husband, and another wife and mother (Meryl Streep) who feels stifled by the expectations thrust upon her and who abandons both her mate and her offspring. Collectively, these women are angry and conflicted; they share a frustration with a male-dominated culture that devalues them solely because of their gender.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is yet another landmark film of its era. A fictionalized, highly romanticized biopic chronicling the stories of Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty), the infamous Depression-era criminals, the film reflects on the conflicts and angers that were enveloping the nation three decades after the Great Depression. The scenario portrays the title characters not as amoral lawbreakers, but as modern-day Robin Hoods who literally take from the rich while sparing the poor. In one sequence, while hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse, Bonnie and Clyde are joined by the former owner and his family: hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Americans who have been thrown off their land by the cruel, insensitive government. Bonnie and Clyde are sympathetic to the farmer’s plight, but they cannot steal the farm back. However, before the sequence ends, they provide the farmer with a gun and encourage him to vent his anger by shooting at the bank ownership sign. The farmer then introduces an African American who for years helped him work the land—and he too is permitted to shoot up the joint. In other words, the Black man is allowed a symbolic equality.
All of this may be translated into 1967 terms. In Bonnie and Clyde, a heartless, indifferent government tosses hard-working citizens off their farms. Compare this to a heartless, indifferent government that was sending off young Americans to their deaths in Vietnam. Unlike World War II, Vietnam was controversial; America’s presence in Southeast Asia was the subject of a growing national debate. And by playing into the farmer’s anger, and his conflict with a system that was indifferent to his and his family’s plight, Bonnie and Clyde becomes politicized. Even though it is set in the 1930s, the film mirrors the then-escalating angers and conflicts of the late 1960s.
Anger-Conflict Variations
Certain filmmakers employ satire to comment on the very real angers and conflicts of their characters. Quentin Tarantino is one writer-director whose cinematic sensibility allows him to brilliantly lampoon the cruelty and idiocy of the Holocaust and the history of slavery in the United States. In Inglourious Basterds (2009), Tarantino depicts a Jewish American GI who relishes bashing in the skulls of Nazis with a baseball bat; at the finale, Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a sadistic Nazi, ends up with a swastika etched onto his forehead. Django Unchained (2012), set prior to the Civil War, charts the story of the title character (Jamie Foxx), an escaped slave who morphs into the “fastest gun in the West.” In these films, Tarantino is making light of the anger and conflict that were very real in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s and in the United States prior to the 1860s. But he is not doing so in an insensitive or disrespectful manner. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained are revenge fantasies in which caricature is employed to expose and condemn piggish Nazi swine and sadistic slave owners.
Other anger-centric films are especially relatable to viewers in that they touch on tragedies that may befall anyone in the audience. One of the keys to the enduring popularity of Alfred Hitchcock is his penchant for spotlighting characters who are neither cops nor soldiers nor spies; they are, like most viewers, not in the “business of danger.” But by fate or accident, they find themselves accused of committing heinous crimes and often are hounded by the authorities as well as the real culprit. Such is the plight of a nondescript Canadian Everyman (Robert Donat) on vacation in England in The 39 Steps (1935); a suave New York advertising executive (Cary Grant) in North by Northwest (1959); a blue collar Glendale, California, aircraft factory worker (Robert Cummings) in Saboteur (1942); a nice-guy Washington DC-based tennis player (Farley Granger) in Strangers on a Train (1951); and a Queens, New York, musician (Henry Fonda), a workingman who rides the subway to and from work like millions of city dwellers, in the aptly titled The Wrong Man (1956).
Occasionally, onscreen anger and conflict may be taken to an extreme. Death Wish (1974) follows the plight of Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), an educated New Yorker with liberal inclinations who is transformed into a one-person vigilante squad after street punks brutally murder his wife and rape and traumatize his daughter. In its day, Death Wish was highly controversial. At its core, it offers the point of view that victims of brutality (or, extending this further, any kind of injustice) will be so enraged that they will place their ideals aside and fight violence with violence.
The manner in which issues relating to anger and conflict are resolved in Death Wish may be contrasted to the actions of one of the central characters in Network (1976), penned by the estimable Paddy Chayefsky. At one point, network news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) begins a lengthy on-air tirade that touches on the exasperation of any and all average Johns or Janes as he comments on everything from rising crime rates to unemployment, inflation to air pollution. What is Beale’s solution? How might the seemingly powerless, conflicted masses demonstrate their ire? For openers, he implores them to open their windows and loudly yell what has become one of the more celebrated bits of dialogue of recent decades: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
In Network, Chayefsky employs the anger and conflict that are intrinsic to everyday life and places them within a higher realm. Simply put, one does not have to internalize anger. One does not have to accept conflict as an inevitable aspect of everyday living. One can take action. And in this regard, a film like Network is more than just a Hollywood entertainment. As Howard Beale pontificates, Chayefsky’s words—just as those in On the Waterfront as Terry comes to understand and articulate his issues relating to his brother—become readily identifiable to the average viewer.
1. Anger portrayed in film focuses on depictions of individuals rather than groups for effectiveness in this medium. The apprehensions of onscreen characters may reflect on group anger or deal with the real-world concerns of the masses of individuals. In this regard, the characters’ plights and fates may be relatable to the masses. But for the sake of clarity and narrative cohesion, cinematic storylines spotlight individual behavior, individual feelings, and the specific issues faced by specific characters within the framework of their story arcs.
On the Waterfront is not the tale of a group of dockworkers and how they collectively respond to their exploitation by the corrupt union. It is a drama about one man—Terry Malloy—and how he comes to realize that he is being oppressed. The Best Years of Our Lives may touch on the challenges faced by countless World War II veterans who were transitioning from wartime to peacetime, but the scenario would lack power and poignancy if it generalized about these issues. The film works because it focuses on the specific problems of three men.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is an exploration of prison abuse. Countless films produced during the late-1940s and into the 1950s (Intruder in the Dust, Home of the Brave, Lost Boundaries …), acknowledge racism American-style. Films such as The Graduate, Five Easy Pieces, and Taxi Driver mirror the alienation felt by young Americans in the late-1960s and 1970s, while A Woman Under the Influence, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, An Unmarried Woman, and Kramer vs. Kramer explore the pre-feminist frustrations of women. These films can be relatable to audiences only because they are potent portraits of the plights of individual characters.
Romantic dramas or comedies may deal with issues faced by myriad couples as they establish and define their relationships. But the films will connect with the masses only if they are clever and original—and if their storylines spotlight specific couples: Harry and Sally in When Harry Met Sally . . . , for example, or Annie and Alvy in Annie Hall.
Reference
Eisenstein, S. (1949). The cinematographic principle and the ideogram. In Film form: Essays in film theory (pp. 37–40). New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World.