New Hollywood
Encyclopedia
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood
, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s (Bonnie and Clyde
, The Graduate
) to the early 1980s (Heaven's Gate
, One from the Heart
) when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and marketing, and impacted the way major studios approached filmmaking.
The films they made were part of the studio system, and these individuals were not "independent film
makers", but they introduced subject matter and styles that set them apart from the studio traditions. New Hollywood has also been defined as a broader filmmaking movement influenced by this period, which has been called the “Hollywood renaissance”.
and the advent of television
, both of which severely weakened the traditional studio system, Hollywood studios initially used spectacle to retain profitability. Technicolor
became used far more frequently, and widescreen processes and technical improvements, such as Cinemascope
, stereo sound and others such as 3-D
, were invented in order to retain the dwindling audience and compete with television, but were generally not successful in increasing profits.
The 1950s and early 60s saw a Hollywood dominated by musicals, historical epics, and other films that benefited from the larger screens, wider framing and improved sound. However, audience share continued to dwindle, and by the mid-1960s had reached alarmingly low levels. Several costly flops, including Cleopatra
, Tora, Tora, Tora, and Hello, Dolly!, and failed attempts to imitate the success of My Fair Lady
and The Sound of Music
, put great strain on the studios.
By the time the baby boomer
generation was coming of age in the 1960s, 'Old Hollywood' was rapidly losing money; the studios were unsure how to react to the much changed audience demographics. The marked change during the period was from a middle aged high school educated audience in the mid 60s, to a younger, college-educated, more affluent one; by the mid 70s, 76% of all movie-goers were under 30, and 64% had gone to college.
European art film
s (especially the Commedia all'italiana
, the French New Wave
, and the Spaghetti Western
) and Japanese cinema were making a splash in America — the huge market of disaffected youth seemed to find relevance and artisic meaning in movies like Michelangelo Antonioni
's Blowup
, with its oblique narrative structure and full-frontal female nudity.
The desperation felt by studios during this period of economic downturn, and after the losses from expensive movie flops, led to innovation and risk taking through allowing greater control by younger directors and producers. Therefore, in an attempt to capture that audience which found a connection to the “art films” of Europe, the Studios hired a host of young filmmakers (many of whom were mentored by Roger Corman
) and allowed them to make their films with relatively little studio control. This, together with the breakdown of the Production Code in 1966 and the new ratings system in 1968 (reflecting growing market segmentation) set the scene for New Hollywood.
-educated, counterculture
-bred, and, most importantly from the point of view of the studios, young, and therefore able to reach the youth audience they were losing. This group of young filmmakers — actor
s, writers
and directors
— dubbed the New Hollywood by the press, briefly changed the business from the producer
-driven Hollywood system of the past, and injected movies with a jolt of freshness, energy, sexuality, and a passion for the artistic value of film itself.
Todd Berliner has written about the period's unusual narrative practices. The 1970s, Berliner says, marks Hollywood’s most significant formal transformation since the conversion to sound film and is the defining period separating the storytelling modes of the studio era and contemporary Hollywood. Seventies films deviate from classical narrative norms more than Hollywood films from other eras. Their narrative and stylistic devices threaten to derail an otherwise straightforward narration. Berliner argues that five principles govern the narrative strategies characteristic of Hollywood films of the 1970s:
Technically, the greatest change the New Hollywood filmmakers brought to the art form was an emphasis on realism. This was possible when the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system was introduced and location shooting was becoming more viable. Because of breakthroughs in film technology, the New Hollywood filmmakers could shoot 35mm camera film in exteriors with relative ease. Since location shooting was cheaper (no sets need be built) New Hollywood filmmakers rapidly developed the taste for location shooting, which had the effect of heightening the realism and immersion of their films, especially when compared to the artificiality of previous musicals and spectacles. The use of editing to artistic effect was also an important factor in New Hollywood cinema, e.g. Easy Rider
’s use of editing to foreshadow the climax of the movie, as well as subtler uses, such as editing to reflect the feeling of frustration in Bonnie and Clyde
and the subjectivity of the protagonist in The Graduate
. Aside from realism, New Hollywood films often featured anti-establishment political themes, use of rock music
, and sexual freedom deemed "counter-cultural" by the studios. Furthermore, many figures of the period openly admit to using drugs such as LSD
and marijuana
. The popularity of these films with young people shows the importance of these thematic elements and artistic values with a more cinematically knowledgeable audience. The youth movement of the 1960s turned anti-heroes like Bonnie and Clyde and Cool Hand Luke
into pop culture heroes, and Life magazine called the characters in Easy Rider
"part of the fundamental myth central to the counterculture of the late 1960s." Easy Rider
also had an impact on the way studios looked to reach the youth market. The success of Midnight Cowboy
in spite of its X rating was evidence for the interest in controversial themes at the time and also showed the weakness of the rating system and segmentation of the audience.
in 1967. Produced by and starring Warren Beatty
, its mix of graphic violence, sex and humor as well as its theme of glamorous disaffected youth was a hit with audiences, and received Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress
and Best Cinematography
. Its portrayal of violence and ambiguity in regard to moral values, and ‘shock’ ending, divided critics. Following a negative review, Time magazine received letters from fans of the movie, and according to journalist Peter Biskind, the impact of critic Pauline Kael in her positive review of the film (October 1967 New Yorker) led other reviewers to follow her lead and re-evaluate the film (notably Newsweek and Time). Kael drew attention to the innocence of the characters in film and the artist merit of the contrast with the violence in the film: “In a sense, it is the absence of sadism — it is the violence without sadism — that throws the audience off balance at Bonnie and Clyde. The brutality that comes out of this innocence is far more shocking than the calculated brutalities of mean killers”. Kael also noted the reaction of audiences to the violent climax of the movie, and the potential to empathise with the gang of criminals in terms of their naiveté and innocence reflecting a change in expectations of American cinema. The cover story in Time Magazine in December 1967, celebrated the movie and innovation in American New wave cinema. This influential article by Stefan Kanfer claimed that Bonnie and Clyde represented a "New Cinema" through its blurred genre lines, and disregard for honoured aspects of plot and motivation, and that “In both conception and execution, Bonnie and Clyde is a watershed picture, the kind that signals a new style, a new trend.” Biskind states that this review and turnaround by some critics allowed the film to be rereleased thus proving its commercial success and reflecting the move to New Hollywood. The impact of this film is important in understanding the rest of the American New Wave, as well as the conditions that were necessary for it.
These initial successes paved the way for the studio to relinquish almost complete control to these innovative young filmmakers. In the mid-1970s, idiosyncratic, startling original films such as Paper Moon
, Dog Day Afternoon
, Chinatown and Taxi Driver
among others (see below), enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success. These successes by the members of New Hollywood led each of them in turn to make more and more extravagant demands, both on the studio and eventually on the audience.
(1975) and Star Wars
(1977) marked the beginning of the end for the New Hollywood era. With their unprecedented box-office successes, Steven Spielberg
's and George Lucas
's films jumpstarted Hollywood's blockbuster
mentality, giving studios a new paradigm of how to make money in the changing commercial landscape. The focus on high-concept premises, with greater concentration on tie-in merchandise (such as toys), spin-offs into other media (such as soundtracks), and the use of sequels (which had been made more respectable by Coppola's The Godfather Part II
), all showed the studios how to make money in the new environment.
On realizing how much money could potentially be made in films, major corporations started buying up the Hollywood studios. The corporate mentality these companies brought to the filmmaking business would slowly squeeze out the more idiosyncratic of these young filmmakers, while ensconcing the more malleable and commercially successful of them.
The New Hollywood's ultimate demise came after a string of box office
failures that many critics viewed as self-indulgent and excessive. Directors had enjoyed unprecedented creative control and budgets during the New Hollywood era, but such expensive flops as At Long Last Love
, New York, New York
, and Sorcerer
caused the studios to increase their control over production.
New Hollywood excess culminated in two unmitigated financial disasters: Michael Cimino
's Heaven's Gate
(1980) and Francis Ford Coppola
's One from the Heart
(1982). After astronomical cost overruns stemming from Cimino's demands, Heaven's Gate only earned $3.5 million in box-office sales after costing $44 million to produce. The loss was so great that it forced United Artists
into bankruptcy, resulting in its sale to MGM
. Coppola, having flourished after the near financial disaster of Apocalypse Now
, plowed all of the enormous success of that film into American Zoetrope
, effectively becoming his own studio head. As such, he bet it all on One from the Heart, which only took in $636,000--barely a fraction of the $26 million it cost to make. The film lasted only a week in theaters, bankrupting Coppola and his fledgling studio. (Following the box-office disaster, Hollywood wags started referring to the picture as "One Through the Heart".)
These two costly examples, as well as the above-mentioned box-office failures, coupled with the new commercial paradigm of Jaws and Star Wars gave studios a clear and renewed sense of where the market was going: high-concept, mass-audience, wide-release films. Therefore, the costly and risky strategy of surrendering control to the director ended, and with that, the New Hollywood era.
Writing in 1968, critic Pauline Kael argued that the importance of The Graduate was in its social significance in relation to a new young audience, and the role of mass media, rather than any artistic aspects. Kael argued that college students identifying with the graduate were not too different from audiences identifying with characters in dramas of previous decade.
John Belton points to the changing demographic to even younger, more conservative audiences in the mid 70s (50% aged 12–20) and the move to less politically subversive themes in mainstream cinema.
Thomas Schatz sees the mid to late 1970s as the decline of the art cinema movement as a significant industry force with its peak in 1974-75 with Nashville and Chinatown.
Geoff King sees the period as an interim movement in American cinema where a conjunction of forces lead to a measure of freedom in filmmaking.
Todd Berliner says that seventies cinema resists the efficiency and harmony that normally characterize classical Hollywood cinema and tests the limits of Hollywood's classical model.
or Hal Ashby
) in this period. Others, such as Martin Scorsese
or John Boorman
, have continued to make acclaimed and successful films. Aside from this, however, "membership" of the New Generation is a blurred line. Initially, thus, many of these filmmakers' earlier productions (famously Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957) did not play a part in informing the New Generation zeitgeist
as, say, Nashville (1975) or Midnight Cowboy
(1969) did.
Classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s (Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
, The Graduate
The Graduate
The Graduate is a 1967 American comedy-drama motion picture directed by Mike Nichols. It is based on the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The screenplay was by Buck Henry, who makes a cameo appearance as a hotel clerk, and Calder...
) to the early 1980s (Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate (film)
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s...
, One from the Heart
One from the Heart
One from the Heart is a 1982 musical film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The characters themselves do not actually sing but the powerful score dominates the movie. It is set entirely in Las Vegas, on the Las Vegas Strip and the desert surrounding the city...
) when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and marketing, and impacted the way major studios approached filmmaking.
The films they made were part of the studio system, and these individuals were not "independent film
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
makers", but they introduced subject matter and styles that set them apart from the studio traditions. New Hollywood has also been defined as a broader filmmaking movement influenced by this period, which has been called the “Hollywood renaissance”.
Background and overview
Following the Paramount CaseUnited States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 US 131 was a landmark United States Supreme Court anti-trust case that decided the fate of movie studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would...
and the advent of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, both of which severely weakened the traditional studio system, Hollywood studios initially used spectacle to retain profitability. Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
became used far more frequently, and widescreen processes and technical improvements, such as Cinemascope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
, stereo sound and others such as 3-D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
, were invented in order to retain the dwindling audience and compete with television, but were generally not successful in increasing profits.
The 1950s and early 60s saw a Hollywood dominated by musicals, historical epics, and other films that benefited from the larger screens, wider framing and improved sound. However, audience share continued to dwindle, and by the mid-1960s had reached alarmingly low levels. Several costly flops, including Cleopatra
Cleopatra (1963 film)
Cleopatra is a 1963 British-American-Swiss epic drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The screenplay was adapted by Sidney Buchman, Ben Hecht, Ranald MacDougall, and Mankiewicz from a book by Carlo Maria Franzero. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy...
, Tora, Tora, Tora, and Hello, Dolly!, and failed attempts to imitate the success of My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
and The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
, put great strain on the studios.
By the time the baby boomer
Baby boomer
A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964. The term "baby boomer" is sometimes used in a cultural context. Therefore, it is impossible to achieve broad consensus of a precise definition, even...
generation was coming of age in the 1960s, 'Old Hollywood' was rapidly losing money; the studios were unsure how to react to the much changed audience demographics. The marked change during the period was from a middle aged high school educated audience in the mid 60s, to a younger, college-educated, more affluent one; by the mid 70s, 76% of all movie-goers were under 30, and 64% had gone to college.
European art film
Art film
An art film is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience...
s (especially the Commedia all'italiana
Commedia all'italiana
Commedia all'italiana or Italian-style comedy is an Italian film genre. It is widely considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's I soliti ignoti in 1958 and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorzio all'italiana .-Stars:Vittorio Gassman, Ugo...
, the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
, and the Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...
) and Japanese cinema were making a splash in America — the huge market of disaffected youth seemed to find relevance and artisic meaning in movies like Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
's Blowup
Blowup
Blowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...
, with its oblique narrative structure and full-frontal female nudity.
The desperation felt by studios during this period of economic downturn, and after the losses from expensive movie flops, led to innovation and risk taking through allowing greater control by younger directors and producers. Therefore, in an attempt to capture that audience which found a connection to the “art films” of Europe, the Studios hired a host of young filmmakers (many of whom were mentored by Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
) and allowed them to make their films with relatively little studio control. This, together with the breakdown of the Production Code in 1966 and the new ratings system in 1968 (reflecting growing market segmentation) set the scene for New Hollywood.
Characteristics of the New Hollywood films
This new generation of Hollywood filmmaker was film schoolFilm school
The term film school is used to describe any educational institution dedicated to teaching aspects of filmmaking, including such subjects as film production, film theory, digital media production, and screenwriting. Film history courses and hands-on technical training are usually incorporated into...
-educated, counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
-bred, and, most importantly from the point of view of the studios, young, and therefore able to reach the youth audience they were losing. This group of young filmmakers — actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
s, writers
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and directors
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
— dubbed the New Hollywood by the press, briefly changed the business from the producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
-driven Hollywood system of the past, and injected movies with a jolt of freshness, energy, sexuality, and a passion for the artistic value of film itself.
Todd Berliner has written about the period's unusual narrative practices. The 1970s, Berliner says, marks Hollywood’s most significant formal transformation since the conversion to sound film and is the defining period separating the storytelling modes of the studio era and contemporary Hollywood. Seventies films deviate from classical narrative norms more than Hollywood films from other eras. Their narrative and stylistic devices threaten to derail an otherwise straightforward narration. Berliner argues that five principles govern the narrative strategies characteristic of Hollywood films of the 1970s:
- 1. Seventies films show a perverse tendency to integrate, in narratively incidental ways, story information and stylistic devices counterproductive to the films’ overt and essential narrative purposes.
- 2. Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s often situate their filmmaking practices in between those of classical Hollywood and those of European and Asian art cinema.
- 3. Seventies films prompt spectator responses more uncertain and discomforting than those of more typical Hollywood cinema.
- 4. Seventies narratives place an uncommon emphasis on irresolution, particularly at the moment of climax or in epilogues, when more conventional Hollywood movies busy themselves tying up loose ends.
- 5. Seventies cinema hinders narrative linearity and momentum and scuttles its potential to generate suspense and excitement.
Technically, the greatest change the New Hollywood filmmakers brought to the art form was an emphasis on realism. This was possible when the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system was introduced and location shooting was becoming more viable. Because of breakthroughs in film technology, the New Hollywood filmmakers could shoot 35mm camera film in exteriors with relative ease. Since location shooting was cheaper (no sets need be built) New Hollywood filmmakers rapidly developed the taste for location shooting, which had the effect of heightening the realism and immersion of their films, especially when compared to the artificiality of previous musicals and spectacles. The use of editing to artistic effect was also an important factor in New Hollywood cinema, e.g. Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
’s use of editing to foreshadow the climax of the movie, as well as subtler uses, such as editing to reflect the feeling of frustration in Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
and the subjectivity of the protagonist in The Graduate
The Graduate
The Graduate is a 1967 American comedy-drama motion picture directed by Mike Nichols. It is based on the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The screenplay was by Buck Henry, who makes a cameo appearance as a hotel clerk, and Calder...
. Aside from realism, New Hollywood films often featured anti-establishment political themes, use of rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, and sexual freedom deemed "counter-cultural" by the studios. Furthermore, many figures of the period openly admit to using drugs such as LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
and marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
. The popularity of these films with young people shows the importance of these thematic elements and artistic values with a more cinematically knowledgeable audience. The youth movement of the 1960s turned anti-heroes like Bonnie and Clyde and Cool Hand Luke
Cool Hand Luke
Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman. The screenplay was adapted by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson from Pearce's 1965 novel of the same name. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D...
into pop culture heroes, and Life magazine called the characters in Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
"part of the fundamental myth central to the counterculture of the late 1960s." Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
also had an impact on the way studios looked to reach the youth market. The success of Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. Notable smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John...
in spite of its X rating was evidence for the interest in controversial themes at the time and also showed the weakness of the rating system and segmentation of the audience.
Bonnie and Clyde
Perhaps the most significant film for the New Hollywood generation was Bonnie and ClydeBonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
in 1967. Produced by and starring Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
, its mix of graphic violence, sex and humor as well as its theme of glamorous disaffected youth was a hit with audiences, and received Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
and Best Cinematography
Academy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
. Its portrayal of violence and ambiguity in regard to moral values, and ‘shock’ ending, divided critics. Following a negative review, Time magazine received letters from fans of the movie, and according to journalist Peter Biskind, the impact of critic Pauline Kael in her positive review of the film (October 1967 New Yorker) led other reviewers to follow her lead and re-evaluate the film (notably Newsweek and Time). Kael drew attention to the innocence of the characters in film and the artist merit of the contrast with the violence in the film: “In a sense, it is the absence of sadism — it is the violence without sadism — that throws the audience off balance at Bonnie and Clyde. The brutality that comes out of this innocence is far more shocking than the calculated brutalities of mean killers”. Kael also noted the reaction of audiences to the violent climax of the movie, and the potential to empathise with the gang of criminals in terms of their naiveté and innocence reflecting a change in expectations of American cinema. The cover story in Time Magazine in December 1967, celebrated the movie and innovation in American New wave cinema. This influential article by Stefan Kanfer claimed that Bonnie and Clyde represented a "New Cinema" through its blurred genre lines, and disregard for honoured aspects of plot and motivation, and that “In both conception and execution, Bonnie and Clyde is a watershed picture, the kind that signals a new style, a new trend.” Biskind states that this review and turnaround by some critics allowed the film to be rereleased thus proving its commercial success and reflecting the move to New Hollywood. The impact of this film is important in understanding the rest of the American New Wave, as well as the conditions that were necessary for it.
These initial successes paved the way for the studio to relinquish almost complete control to these innovative young filmmakers. In the mid-1970s, idiosyncratic, startling original films such as Paper Moon
Paper Moon (film)
Paper Moon is a 1973 American comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was adapted from the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown, and the film was shot in black-and-white. The film is set during the Great Depression in the U.S. states of Kansas and...
, Dog Day Afternoon
Dog Day Afternoon
Dog Day Afternoon is a 1975 drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, written by Frank Pierson, and produced by Martin Bregman. The film stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, Penny Allen, James Broderick, and Carol Kane. The title refers to the "dog days of summer".The film was...
, Chinatown and Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...
among others (see below), enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success. These successes by the members of New Hollywood led each of them in turn to make more and more extravagant demands, both on the studio and eventually on the audience.
The end of the New Hollywood era
In retrospect, JawsJaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
(1975) and Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
(1977) marked the beginning of the end for the New Hollywood era. With their unprecedented box-office successes, Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
's and George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
's films jumpstarted Hollywood's blockbuster
Blockbuster (entertainment)
Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...
mentality, giving studios a new paradigm of how to make money in the changing commercial landscape. The focus on high-concept premises, with greater concentration on tie-in merchandise (such as toys), spin-offs into other media (such as soundtracks), and the use of sequels (which had been made more respectable by Coppola's The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part II is a 1974 American gangster film directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script co-written with Mario Puzo. The film is both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather, chronicling the story of the Corleone family following the events of the first film while also depicting the...
), all showed the studios how to make money in the new environment.
On realizing how much money could potentially be made in films, major corporations started buying up the Hollywood studios. The corporate mentality these companies brought to the filmmaking business would slowly squeeze out the more idiosyncratic of these young filmmakers, while ensconcing the more malleable and commercially successful of them.
The New Hollywood's ultimate demise came after a string of box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
failures that many critics viewed as self-indulgent and excessive. Directors had enjoyed unprecedented creative control and budgets during the New Hollywood era, but such expensive flops as At Long Last Love
At Long Last Love
At Long Last Love is an American motion picture musical that was released in 1975. It was written, produced and directed by Peter Bogdanovich and stars Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd....
, New York, New York
New York, New York (film)
New York, New York is a 1977 American musical-drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a musical tribute, featuring new songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb as well as standards, to Scorsese's home town of New York City, and stars Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli as a pair of musicians and...
, and Sorcerer
Sorcerer (film)
Sorcerer is a 1977 thriller adventure film, produced and directed by William Friedkin, starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal and Amidou. It is the second remake of the 1953 French film Le Salaire de la Peur ....
caused the studios to increase their control over production.
New Hollywood excess culminated in two unmitigated financial disasters: Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...
's Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate (film)
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s...
(1980) and Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
's One from the Heart
One from the Heart
One from the Heart is a 1982 musical film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The characters themselves do not actually sing but the powerful score dominates the movie. It is set entirely in Las Vegas, on the Las Vegas Strip and the desert surrounding the city...
(1982). After astronomical cost overruns stemming from Cimino's demands, Heaven's Gate only earned $3.5 million in box-office sales after costing $44 million to produce. The loss was so great that it forced United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
into bankruptcy, resulting in its sale to MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
. Coppola, having flourished after the near financial disaster of Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
, plowed all of the enormous success of that film into American Zoetrope
American Zoetrope
American Zoetrope is a studio founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Founded on December 12, 1969, American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV...
, effectively becoming his own studio head. As such, he bet it all on One from the Heart, which only took in $636,000--barely a fraction of the $26 million it cost to make. The film lasted only a week in theaters, bankrupting Coppola and his fledgling studio. (Following the box-office disaster, Hollywood wags started referring to the picture as "One Through the Heart".)
These two costly examples, as well as the above-mentioned box-office failures, coupled with the new commercial paradigm of Jaws and Star Wars gave studios a clear and renewed sense of where the market was going: high-concept, mass-audience, wide-release films. Therefore, the costly and risky strategy of surrendering control to the director ended, and with that, the New Hollywood era.
Interpretations on defining New Hollywood
For Peter Biskind, the new wave marked a significant shift towards independently produced and innovative works by a new wave of directors, that significantly changed after Jaws, Star Wars and the realization by studios of the importance of blockbusters, advertising and control over production.Writing in 1968, critic Pauline Kael argued that the importance of The Graduate was in its social significance in relation to a new young audience, and the role of mass media, rather than any artistic aspects. Kael argued that college students identifying with the graduate were not too different from audiences identifying with characters in dramas of previous decade.
John Belton points to the changing demographic to even younger, more conservative audiences in the mid 70s (50% aged 12–20) and the move to less politically subversive themes in mainstream cinema.
Thomas Schatz sees the mid to late 1970s as the decline of the art cinema movement as a significant industry force with its peak in 1974-75 with Nashville and Chinatown.
Geoff King sees the period as an interim movement in American cinema where a conjunction of forces lead to a measure of freedom in filmmaking.
Todd Berliner says that seventies cinema resists the efficiency and harmony that normally characterize classical Hollywood cinema and tests the limits of Hollywood's classical model.
List of important figures in the New Hollywood era
Many of the filmmakers listed below did multiple chores on various film productions through their careers. They are here listed by the category they are most readily recognized as.Writers and directors
The issue of whether or not a specific director belongs to the "New Hollywood" generation is a difficult one to address. Many of those listed below made either their only films or their most successful films (BogdanovichPeter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
or Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby was an American film director and film editor.-Birth and early years:Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household and had a tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family which included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide and his...
) in this period. Others, such as Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
or John Boorman
John Boorman
John Boorman is a British filmmaker who is a long time resident of Ireland and is best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, Hope and Glory, The General and The Tailor of Panama.-Early life:Boorman was born in Shepperton, Surrey,...
, have continued to make acclaimed and successful films. Aside from this, however, "membership" of the New Generation is a blurred line. Initially, thus, many of these filmmakers' earlier productions (famously Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957) did not play a part in informing the New Generation zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
as, say, Nashville (1975) or Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. Notable smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John...
(1969) did.
Cinematographers, editors, and production designers
- Dede AllenDede AllenDorothea Carothers "Dede" Allen was an American film editor, well-known "film editing doctor" to the major American movie studios, and one of cinema's all-time celebrated 'auteur' film editors....
- Bill ButlerBill Butler (cinematographer)Wilmer C. “Bill” Butler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, part of the New Hollywood generation. He shot The Conversation, and completed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest after Haskell Wexler was fired from the production. He also shot three Rocky films, among many other movie projects...
- Caleb DeschanelCaleb DeschanelJoseph Caleb Deschanel, A.S.C. is an American film cinematographer and film/television director.-Early life:Deschanel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a French father and an American mother, who raised him in her Quaker religion. He went to Severn School for high school...
- Verna FieldsVerna FieldsVerna Fields was an American film editor, film and television sound editor, educator, and entertainment industry executive. In the first phase of her career, from 1954 through to about 1970, Fields mostly worked on smaller projects that gained little recognition. She was the sound editor for...
- Conrad HallConrad HallConrad Lafcadio Hall, ASC was an American cinematographer from Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia. Named after writers Joseph Conrad and Lafcadio Hearn, he was best known for photographing films such as In Cold Blood, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, American Beauty, and Road to...
- László KovácsLászló Kovács (cinematographer)László Kovács, A.S.C. was a Hungarian cinematographer who was influential in the development of American New Wave films. Most famous for his award-winning work on Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, Kovács was the recipient of numerous awards, including three Lifetime Achievement Awards...
- Marcia LucasMarcia LucasMarcia Lucas is an American film editor.In 1974, Lucas and Verna Fields were nominated for the Academy Award for Film Editing for their work on American Graffiti...
- Walter MurchWalter MurchWalter Scott Murch is an American film editor and sound designer.-Early life:Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch , a painter. He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961...
- Polly PlattPolly PlattMary Marr "Polly" Platt was an American film producer, production designer and screenwriter.-Early life:Platt was born Mary Marr Platt in Fort Sheridan, Illinois on January 29, 1939, later using the name Polly. Her father John was a colonel in the army while her mother Vivian worked in...
- Toby Carr Rafelson
- Thelma SchoonmakerThelma SchoonmakerThelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over forty years. She has edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull...
- Paul SylbertPaul SylbertPaul Sylbert is an American Academy Award-winning production designer, art director, and set designer who directed on occasion....
- Richard SylbertRichard SylbertRichard Sylbert was an Academy Award-winning production designer and art director, primarily for feature films....
- Dean TavoularisDean TavoularisDean Tavoularis is an American motion picture production designer whose work appeared in numerous box office hits such as The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Brink's Job, One from the Heart and Bonnie and Clyde.-Biography:...
- Haskell WexlerHaskell WexlerHaskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...
- Gordon WillisGordon WillisGordon Willis, ASC, is an American cinematographer best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather series as well as Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan....
- Vilmos ZsigmondVilmos ZsigmondVilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.-Biography:...
Producers and executives
- Steven BachSteven BachSteven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
- Peter BartPeter BartPeter Benton Bart is an American journalist and film producer. He perhaps best known for his lengthy tenure as the editor of Variety, an entertainment-trade magazine....
- David BegelmanDavid BegelmanDavid Begelman was a Hollywood producer who was involved in a studio embezzlement scandal in the 1970s.-Agent and studio head:...
- Stephen BlaunerStephen BlaunerJules Stephen "Boom Boom" Blauner was Bobby Darin's manager and very close friend, producer, and member of BBS Productions.-Early life:...
- Charlie BluhdornCharles BluhdornCharles Blühdorn was a Vienna, Austria-born American industrialist.-Biography:Per a Who's Who in Ridgefield he was considered such a "hellion" that his father sent the 11-year-old to an English boarding school for disciplining...
- David BrownDavid Brown (producer)David Brown was an American film producer.-Early life and career:Brown was born in New York City, the son of Lillian and Edward Fisher Brown. He was best known as the producing partner of Richard D. Zanuck. They were jointly awarded the Irving G...
- John CalleyJohn CalleyJohn Calley was an American film studio executive and producer. He was quite influential during his years at Warner Bros...
- Robert ChartoffRobert ChartoffRobert Chartoff is an American film producer. He and fellow producer Irwin Winkler won an Academy Award for Best Picture for the 1976 film Rocky....
- Roger CormanRoger CormanRoger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
: Though emphatically and self-consciously not a member of the New Hollywood generation, he started the careers of many of them. - Barry DillerBarry DillerBarry Charles Diller is the Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and the media executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting.-Early life:...
- Robert Evans
- Gary KurtzGary KurtzGary Kurtz is an American film producer whose list of credits include American Graffiti, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. He later produced The Dark Crystal and Return to Oz after departing from the Star Wars series...
- Stanley Jaffe
- Arthur Krim
- Alan Ladd, Jr.Alan Ladd, Jr.Alan Ladd, Jr. is an American film industry executive and producer. He is famous for giving George Lucas the go-ahead to make Star Wars and remained as Lucas' only support at times when the Board of Directors wished to shut down production...
- Julia PhillipsJulia PhillipsJulia Phillips was a film producer and author. She is remembered for being the first woman to win an Academy Award as a film's producer, and for a best selling tell-all memoir.-Early life:...
- Michael PhillipsMichael Phillips (producer)Michael Phillips is a film producer.-Film career:Michael Phillips, his then-wife Julia Phillips, and Tony Bill received the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing The Sting in 1973. The Phillipses were the first husband-and-wife team to win the Best Picture award...
- Fred RoosFred Roos-Life and career:Roos was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Florence Mary and Victor Otto Roos. Beginning in television as a casting director for The Andy Griffith Show, Roos went on to produce most of Francis Ford Coppola's films subsequent to The Godfather, including Apocalypse Now...
- Bert SchneiderBert SchneiderBerton "Bert" Schneider is an American movie producer, who was behind a number of important and topical films of the late-1960s and early-1970s. The son of Abraham Schneider, onetime president of Columbia Pictures, the younger Schneider tended toward the rebellious. He briefly attended Cornell...
- Harold Schneider
- Sidney SheinbergSidney SheinbergSidney "Sid" Jay Sheinberg is a lawyer and American entertainment executive. He is married to actress Lorraine Gary.-Early life and education:...
- Jules Stein
- Ned TanenNed TanenNed Stone Tanen was an American movie studio executive behind films that included American Graffiti and Animal House....
- Lew WassermanLew WassermanLewis Robert "Lew" Wasserman was an American talent agent and studio executive, sometimes credited with creating and later taking apart the studio system in a career spanning more than six decades...
- Fred WeintraubFred WeintraubFred Weintraub is an American film and television producer, director and screenwriter.-Background:Weintraub is the original owner and host of The Bitter End in New York City's Greenwich Village...
- Irwin WinklerIrwin WinklerIrwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards...
- Saul ZaentzSaul ZaentzSaul Zaentz is an American film producer and former record company executive. He has won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and in 1996 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award....
- Richard D. ZanuckRichard D. ZanuckRichard Darryl Zanuck is an American film producer. He iscredited for producing famous movies of the 1970's, 80's, 90's and the 21 century.-Life and career:...