In movies of the 1950s, parental lack of love and understanding (especially from fathers) is considered to be the major cause leading to juvenile delinquency and mixed-up teenagers.
In James Dean’s two major films, Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, the need for love is emphasized as the major plot device.
In both films, the girl–Natalie Wood in Rebel Without Cause and Julie Harris in East of Eden–switches her initial attraction from one boy (in the former) or one brother (in the latter) to another.
As many scholars have pointed out, the narratives of these films reduce all desires, hopes, coercions and deprivations to the simple formula of the universal need for love.
This was the convenient explanation of mainstream Hollywood for the increasing confusion, alienation, and estrangement of American youths of all classes, especially the middle or upper stratum.
Fathers-Daughters
To Kill a Mockingbird
Films (A to Z)
Barbarian Invasions:
Blood and Sand (1941)
Father died, he kills the man who offended him and his father’s honor
Blue Velvet
Boogie Nights
Color of Money
Detective, The
Field of Dreams
Graduate, The
Gentleman’s Agreement
Great Santini, The
Both father and son were Oscar Nominated
I Am Sam (2003)
Last Picture Show
Lion King
Magnolia
Missing
Nobody’s Fool
Padre Padrone
Peyton Place
The Return (Russian)
Road to Perdition, The
Shine
Secondhand Lions (2003)
Spider
Secondhand Lions (2003)
Haley Joel Osment as a boy who never knew his father, raised by selfish mother, and then given to two uncles, who teach him hw to be a man.
Shine (1996)
Mueller’ Stahl’s chilling performance as David Helfgott’s martinet father
Spider
Adaptation of Patrick McGrath’s novel
Spider’s alcoholic father (Gabriel Byrne); he’s a mentally disturbed man
Gregory Peck: Benevolent Patriarch
In his long and fertile career, Gregory Peck usually played fathers, liberal, honest, conscientious fathers (not rigid patriarchs)
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947):
Widowed father, working as a journalist, raising his young son, with the help of his mother.
Family, The: Fathers and Sons; Fathers and Daughters in Hollywood Movies
an 29, 2024
Family: Fathers and Sons
In movies of the 1950s, parental lack of love and understanding (especially from fathers) is considered to be the major cause leading to juvenile delinquency and mixed-up teenagers.
In James Dean’s two major films, Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, the need for love is emphasized as the major plot device.
In both films, the girl–Natalie Wood in Rebel Without Cause and Julie Harris in East of Eden–switches her initial attraction from one boy (in the former) or one brother (in the latter) to another.
As many scholars have pointed out, the narratives of these films reduce all desires, hopes, coercions and deprivations to the simple formula of the universal need for love.
This was the convenient explanation of mainstream Hollywood for the increasing confusion, alienation, and estrangement of American youths of all classes, especially the middle or upper stratum.
Fathers-Daughters
To Kill a Mockingbird
Films (A to Z)
Barbarian Invasions:
Blood and Sand (1941)
Father died, he kills the man who offended him and his father’s honor
Blue Velvet
Boogie Nights
Color of Money
Detective, The
Field of Dreams
Graduate, The
Gentleman’s Agreement
Great Santini, The
Both father and son were Oscar Nominated
I Am Sam (2003)
Last Picture Show
Lion King
Magnolia
Missing
Nobody’s Fool
Padre Padrone
Peyton Place
The Return (Russian)
Road to Perdition, The
Shine
Secondhand Lions (2003)
Spider
Secondhand Lions (2003)
Haley Joel Osment as a boy who never knew his father, raised by selfish mother, and then given to two uncles, who teach him hw to be a man.
Shine (1996)
Mueller’ Stahl’s chilling performance as David Helfgott’s martinet father
Spider
Adaptation of Patrick McGrath’s novel
Spider’s alcoholic father (Gabriel Byrne); he’s a mentally disturbed man
Gregory Peck: Benevolent Patriarch
In his long and fertile career, Gregory Peck usually played fathers, liberal, honest, conscientious fathers (not rigid patriarchs)
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947):
Widowed father, working as a journalist, raising his young son, with the help of his mother.