As much as contemporary box office figures continue to astound (in spite of the increasingly popular practices of downloading and pirating,) the fiscal returns of 1947 have yet to be surpassed.
1947 was a banner year for Hollywood: untold numbers of ex servicemen were home from the war, eager to revel in the pastimes and indulgences of which they had been deprived.
And yet, a closer look at the slate of films released that year reveals a very small percentage of 'forget your troubles' fare. Most of the films are of a dark, foreboding nature - titles like Out of the Past, Kiss of Death, and Calling Northside 777. The ex servicemen were not just in the cinemas to be entertained; at the same time, they were vicariously re-piecing the fear, longing and moral ambiguity from which they had just emerged, taking it apart and re-assembling it like an army issue rifle.
Their partners in this practice were masters of the murky and macabre - names like Dassin, Rossen and Tourneur, who were forging a new genre that would soon be labeled "film noire."
What had dominated the '30s - comedies and musicals - was out, the manic rich-poor tug of war that had long been comedy undergoing a genteel domestication, with films like The Egg and I and The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, while the musicals were taking a breather between acts, only to make a grand re-entrance in Technicolor gowns and candy striped suits with the emergence of post war affluence.
The one bright light of 1947 is the plucky perennial Miracle on 34th Street. Santa, then, was not just Santa - the on-screen affirmation of his existence a public certification that, for all of the spiritual erosion brought on by the war, belief in a benign force had not been significantly pierced by ak-ak technology. It was the first inkling of the subscription to Christian ideals - a "Let there be green light" - to the religious epics that would soon widen screens.
In addition, however, 1947 was also the year that Hollywood developed a lasting social conscience, courtesy of Elia Kazan (the Best Picture Oscar went to his Gentlemen's Agreement) and his school of actors obsessed with authenticity, setting the stage for increased realism and existential themes.
1947, then, was the first year of a new war, fought not on battlefields but in production offices, and not between Americans and Europeans but between 19th century-born showmen and twentieth century-born upstarts.
Judged by either financial or cultural standards, 1947 was indeed a seminal year in the life of American film.
