Italy in post WW2 had to rebuild from scratch in the world of film. Their studio's were destroyed through the war, they had a minimal amount of professional actors, they would use newsreel stock film and had minimal equipment such as artificial light. In films like Bicycle Thieves (1948) it's obvious that they didn't have the same amount of luxuries in film making as Hollywood did at the time, such as the actors, sets and props. Italy made this into their art form; shooting films in the style of documentaries. Not doing the supposed Fictional story lines that Hollywood was doing at the time. A (for the lack of a better word) "positive" of 9/11 is that it didn't damage the literal production quality of film.
Post WW2 if anything became lucrative for a lot of people involved with film. A lot of the film studio's smartly used "War Heroes" such as Audie Murphy and Jimmy Stewart and made them huge stars (given Jimmy was an actor before the war, but without the fame he had after the war). Audie Murphy was one of the most decorated American soldiers during the war and was the perfect poster boy. Post 9/11 didn't lead to any individual people getting a career (acting wise). In all it looks like a lot more people/methods benefited from WW2. It was at a time film had a lot more room to grow, studios/film makers were forced to look into different methods/story-lines/cost effectiveness/equipment to use. 9/11 although it did effect western cinema in a big way, it was just the "enemies"/the fear factor. |
The post-9/11 production context is still influencing film making as we are still in the post-9/11 era, this production context hasn't created a new genre, but it has influenced many genres including action, sci-fi and horror. The heroes in films now aren't as strong as the protagonists in Film Noir films, a lot of them can't be seen as either good or evil e.g. Batman or have some kind of mental health problem like Tony Stark/Iron Man who has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the events of Iron Man (2008) and The Avengers (2012). Also, many action and sci-fi films have terrorists as the antagonists, which reflects the increase in terror attacks and terrorist groups seen in the world today. Films now also have a lot of strong female characters, but they are not seen to be a threat in most films, a good example of this is Lt. Uhura from the new Star Trek films. However, it can be argued that some female characters are a threat, like Tris Prior (The Divergent Series) and Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games franchise) but there characters are more of a threat because they are good fighting evil, rather than seen to be a threat because they are a strong independent woman (like in Film Noir)
Now onto my conclusion, I feel that the post-WWII production context had slightly more of an effect on modern film making, as it created a new genre, where as the post-9/11 production context as only effected some already existing genres. It is hard to say as the post-9/11 production context is still having an effect on film making.