American Look
About American Look
The Jam Handy Organization short, made for Chevrolet, moves through late-1950s American goods: building exteriors, rooms, packaging, office machines, and factory equipment. Families picnic, children watch television, and models sit among Herman Miller furniture and Donald Deskey packages. The last third goes inside General Motors' Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, where stylists model the 1959 Chevrolet Impala. The narration calls the range of models a buyer's freedom to choose.
More about American Look
W. F. Banes and John Thiele directed. Roger Fenimore, Pierre Mols, and Robert Tavernier were the cameramen. Robert Mounsey, Charles Nasca, and Otto Simunich were art directors. V. L. Herman and Harold Rogers edited. It was shot in Technicolor and SuperScope, and also issued on 16mm Technicolor. The National Film Preservation Foundation notes a premiere at the 1958 conference of the American Society of Industrial Designers.
Themes
Background
The short sells the 1959 Chevrolets at the end of a decade when several GM lines shared mechanical parts and competed on shape. The Technical Center in Warren, designed by Eero Saarinen, had opened a few years earlier.
Making
Jam Handy made the picture as a Chevrolet promotional film, not as a theatrical feature. The Impala sequence is staged as moments in the design and clay-model process at the new Technical Center.
Reviews
Designer and critic Ralph Caplan later called American Look a popular film that designers disliked, because it used only the word 'stylist' and gave a misleading picture of how design gets done.
Look
Fenimore, Mols, and Tavernier shot it in Technicolor and the widescreen SuperScope format. The camera tours rooms, machines, and the Impala clay models rather than following a character.
Music
Samuel Benavie, James Higgins, and Milton Weinstein wrote the music.
Preservation
The Library of Congress holds a 35mm print, scanned for the National Film Preservation Foundation. Prelinger Archives circulates a public-domain copy.
Notes
- It received the Freedoms Foundation's George Washington Honor Medal in 1958.
- The National Film Preservation Foundation scanned a 35mm print held by the Library of Congress.
- Prelinger's notes say the film treats industrial, interior, and product design all as 'styling,' and that 1959 was the year Chevrolet tailfins were at their longest.
- A line in the film says the greatest freedom of the American people is the freedom of individual choice.
Awards
- Freedoms Foundation George Washington Honor Medal (1958)
Scenes
- The camera passes kitchens, office machines, and Herman Miller furniture before any car is named.
- Designers at the Warren Technical Center work on the 1959 Impala, tailfins included.
Also available
- Internet Archive (american-look-1958)
Quotes
The greatest freedom of the American people is the freedom of individual choice.