Introduction

If the Paramount decree and the post-World War II recession ushered independent filmmaking in the US towards its second major phase, the factors that led to its further evolution in the late 1960s were once again economic, though changes in American society and culture played also a significant part. The end of the 1960s was one of the most volatile periods in the history of the country, characterised by: civil unrest in the streets of major American metropoles like New York and Chicago; assassinations of extremely influential political figures such as Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; the escalation of the war in Vietnam (and the intensification of the country's commitment to it); the continuation of the Cold War with the Soviet Union; and the increased visibility and activism of formerly marginalised social groups in terms of race and sexuality (such as African American, gay and lesbian people) or age (young adults and college students). All these factors contributed to a remarkable change in attitudes and mores in American culture which, reflected in the films of the period, make even the most liberal films of the late 1950s and early 1960s (such as the social-problem films by Stanley Kramer) look like fake Hollywood constructions with naive ideological messages.

While the country was in social and cultural upheaval, the American film industry had to face its own set of severe problems as well as keep up with the transformations in the American social and cultural fabric. These problems included: the financial overexposure of the majors (manifested mainly in the production of a large number of expensive family films that increasingly started to falter at the box office, and in the efforts of many majors towards diversification); the continual audience decline, which reached an ultimate low of 15.8 million people a week in early 1971); the decrease in the number of theatres; the entrance of the television networks into the theatrical market, which increased competition and contributed to a glut of product; and an extremely outdated (despite substantial revisions) Production Code, which the industry was still trying to enforce at a time of sweeping changes in sexual mores.