Stanley Kramer, Filmmaker With Social Bent, Dies at 87

[Doug Millison]

Stanley Kramer, Filmmaker With Social Bent, Dies at 87
By RICK LYMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/21/arts/21KRAM.html

'.... his acclaimed "High Noon" (1952), though a western, was 
actually a thinly veiled attack on the anti-Communist purges of the 
McCarthy era. ... In "On the Beach" in 1959, he was among the first 
mainstream directors to  explore openly and bleakly the notion of 
nuclear holocaust. And "Inherit the Wind," released the next year, 
remains Hollywood's most influential exploration of America's 
enduring social fault line over the issue of teaching evolution.  In 
1961 "Judgment at Nuremberg" was about the tendency of many in the 
postwar era to forget Nazi atrocities in the drive to battle 
Communism and get on with business. .... By the early 60's, though, 
Mr. Kramer said that he felt the need to prove that he could make a 
movie that was neither socially conscious nor serious. In fact, if 
anything, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" was socially disruptive 
and goofy, the story of a group of over-the-top comic characters 
driven to slapstick insanity in a race for hidden loot. It was his 
biggest box office hit, with a cast that included Sid Caesar, Milton 
Berle, Jonathan Winters and Ethel Merman. .... Mr. Kramer complained 
in the 60's that the rise of foreign voices and the growing youth 
culture had changed the artistic landscape from what it had been in 
his own youth. No longer, he said, were writers or filmmakers 
interested in creating the Great American Novel or the great American 
film, or indeed with exploring what it meant to be American."

In that context of film-making of the 60s as a response to the 
earlier generation might be found material for a discussion of 
Pynchon's appropriation of film in the service of the  changing 
worldview of which Mr. Kramer is said to have complained.
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