22

Bonnie and Clyde

C HAPTER

HOLLYWOOD’S FALL AND RISE: 1960–1980

T he postwar struggles for racial equality in the United States achieved

partial success in the 1960s during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy
and Lyndon Johnson. Both administrations promoted liberal domestic poli-
cies (which Johnson termed the “Great Society”), including the passage of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” instituted work-
study programs in colleges and created the Job Corps. At the same time,
these administrations carried on the policy of containing Communism
within the East-West conception of the Cold War. During the 1950s, the
Star Wars

United States had begun to support the French against Ho Chi Minh’s Com-
munist forces in Vietnam. In 1963, the year in which Kennedy was assassi-
nated, America decisively entered the hostilities. Over the following nine
years, the United States would send more than two million soldiers into a
war that became increasingly unpopular at home.
The early 1960s saw a new frankness about sexual behavior, accelerated
by the invention of the birth-control pill and changing views of women’s
roles. A freer social milieu encouraged the “counterculture,” that broad ten-
dency among the young to drop out of the mainstream and experiment with
sex and drugs. The counterculture also played a role in sustaining the New
Left, a radical political stance that distanced itself from both traditional
liberalism and 1930s-style socialism and Communism. Soon, student move-
ments were arguing for more domestic social change and US withdrawal
from Vietnam.
Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, social activists clashed
with authority to an extent not seen since the Great Depression. The lib-
eral stance of the civil rights movement had given way to the more radical
position of the Black Power movement. Opposition to US involvement in
the Vietnam War had intensified. Social cohesion seemed to vanish. Martin
Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X were assassinated.
Police attacked demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic Convention in

452
 The 1960s: The Film Industry in Recession 453

Chicago, and President Richard Nixon widened the Universal—still controlled distribution, and they released
Vietnam War. Campuses exploded; 400 closed or held nearly all the films that made money. Lawrence of Arabia
strikes during 1970. (1962), Cleopatra (1963), Dr. Zhivago (1965), and other
The withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam in 1973 left historical epics played for months. Broadway musicals
deep divisions in American society. The New Left col- continued to yield such hits as West Side Story (1961), The
lapsed, partly because of internal disputes. The shooting of Music Man (1962), and The Sound of Music (1965), the
students at Kent State University in 1970 also seemed to decade’s top-grossing film. Independent “teenpics” such
prove the futility of organized action. Nixon’s successful bid as Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) catered to the drive-in audi-
for the presidency resulted from middle-class voters’ resent- ence with the lure of clean fun in the sun. The Disney
ment of Eastern liberals, the left, and the countercul- studios dominated the family market with hugely success-
ture. Yet less than two years later, Nixon became the first ful films such as 101 Dalmatians (1961), Mary Poppins
US president to resign from office amid impeachment hear- (1965), and The Jungle Book (1967).
ings related to the Watergate scandal. Although stars were free agents, many signed long-
The era’s upheavals led to an international critical po- term production deals with studios. Paramount had Jerry
litical cinema (Chapter 23). In the United States, Emile Lewis, Universal had Rock Hudson and Doris Day, MGM
De Antonio, the Newsreel group, and others practiced an had Elvis Presley. Each studio released between twelve
“engaged” filmmaking of social protest. At the same time, and twenty features per year—a pattern that would hold for
with diminishing profits from blockbusters, the Holly- decades. The Majors had made peace with television. Net-
wood industry tried to woo the younger generation with works were paying high prices for the rights to broadcast
countercultural films. The effort led to some experiments films, and the studios began making “telefeatures” and
in creating an American art cinema. series programs.
Responding to the US government’s turn to the right
in the early 1970s, left and liberal activists embraced a mic-
ropolitics. They sought grassroots social change by organiz-
The Studios in Crisis
ing around concrete issues: abortion, race- and gender-based Despite all the evidence of prosperity, the 1960s proved to
discrimination, welfare, and environmental policy. Many be a hazardous decade for the studios. Movie attendance
American documentary filmmakers participated in these continued to drop, leveling out at about 1 billion per year.
movements (see Direct Cinema p. 426). At the same time, Studios were releasing fewer films, and many of those
however, this activism was fiercely opposed by the rise of were low-budget pickups or foreign productions that would
the New Right, conservative organizations that aroused lo- have been passed over in earlier years. Most of the Majors
cal support for school prayer, the abolition of newly won were stuck with large facilities, forcing them to lease sound
abortion rights, and other issues. The struggle between lib- stages to television. Big stars proved a mixed blessing.
eral movements and New Right forces was to become the Once they joined a package, they usually insisted on con-
central political drama of the 1970s, and many films (Jaws, trol of the script and direction, along with a percentage of
The Parallax View, Nashville) bear traces of it. a film’s grosses. Yet most star vehicles did not yield profit
The drama was played against the backdrop of a wan- to the studios.
ing US economy, fallen prey to oil embargoes and brisk The bulk of the films released by the Majors were
competition from Japan and Germany. The 1970s ended independent productions, often cofinanced by the stu-
America’s era of postwar prosperity. This period coin- dio. More and more the films that the Majors financed,
cided with Hollywood’s reinvention of the blockbuster and planned, and produced on their own tended to be the
the rise to power of the movie brats, the pragmatic and sort of roadshow movies that had succeeded during the
influential young filmmakers who became the new cre- 1950s. During the 1960s, about six films were road-
ative leaders of the industry. showed per year, and most proved lucrative. The Sound of
Music roadshowed at 266 theaters, running for up to
twenty months on some screens. Almost no standard re-
THE 1960s: THE FILM leases grossed more than $1 million, but a third of the
INDUSTRY IN RECESSION roadshow pictures surpassed that figure. The success of
roadshow films such as West Side Story, El Cid (1961),
Superficially, Hollywood seemed healthy in the early How the West Was Won (1962), and Lawrence of Arabia
1960s. The Majors—MGM, Warner Bros., United Artists, drove the studios to overspend on epic movies. In 1962,
Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Columbia, Disney, and MGM lost nearly $20 million, thanks largely to cost
454 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

overruns on Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Cleopatra’s (parking lots and funeral parlors). In 1967, Transamerica
protracted production pushed Fox to a loss of more than Corporation (car rentals, life insurance) bought United
$40 million. Artists. In 1968, financier Kirk Kerkorian gained control
By the late 1960s, every studio faced a financial crisis. of MGM, downsized it, and used its assets to build the
Most releases lost money, and executives proved slow to MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
understand that the big picture was no longer a sure thing. Studios used to operating as freestanding companies
Despite Cleopatra’s high box-office take, its production now found themselves small slices of big corporate pies.
costs guaranteed that it would lose money upon theatrical Fox escaped for the moment because Star Wars (1977)
release—as did many other expensive historical epics, such made it self-sustaining, but in the 1980s it too would join a
as The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and The Battle of conglomerate, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. As for Dis-
Britain (1969). Nor was the musical film a guaranteed ney, despite its weakened animation wing, it released very
winner. Although The Sound of Music was a hit, Doctor profitable, modestly budgeted live-action features, such
Dolittle (1967), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), Star! as Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. (1966), The Love Bug (1968),
(1968), and Paint Your Wagon (1969) were expensive and The Shaggy D.A. (1976). Eventually, as we will see in
fiascos. Chapter 28, Disney itself became a thriving entertainment
Even the Walt Disney studio suffered a slump during conglomerate.
this period. During the 1950s and 1960s, Disney had in- The conglomerates could help the ailing studios by
creasingly focused on its television productions, live-ac- injecting money from other businesses and guaranteeing
tion films, and Disneyland (opened in 1955). Its animated lines of bank credit. But nothing seemed to stem the
features of the 1960s routinely appeared on the lists of flow of red ink. Between 1969 and 1972, the Majors lost
annual top-grossing films: 101 Dalmatians, The Sword in $500 million. The studios quickly brought in new execu-
the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book, and The Rescuers tives, often with little experience in film production.
(1977). Disney’s death in 1966, however, led to a period of Banks forced companies to trim the number of releases,
less prestigious and less profitable cartoons. The studio’s avoid big-budget films, and partner with other studios in
low point in animation was the expensive failure, The coproductions (as when Warners and Fox joined forces
Black Cauldron (1985). Not until 1989, with The Little for The Towering Inferno, 1974). In 1970, unemployment
Mermaid, would Disney once again produce a stream of in Hollywood rose to more than 40 percent, an all-time
popular cartoon features. high. As recession gripped the industry, the roadshow
The only bright spots were a few low-budget films, era ended. Exhibitors began splitting their houses into
usually aimed at the college audience, that yielded remark- two or three screens and building multiplexes, usually
able returns. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) cost $3 million and cheaper shopping-mall theaters. The result was a genera-
returned $24 million domestic rental income to Warner tion of narrow auditoriums with poor sightlines and
Bros., while Midnight Cowboy (1969) cost $3 million and garbled sound.
yielded $20 million to United Artists. The winner in the
low-budget sweepstakes was the independent release The
Graduate (1967). It cost $3 million and returned
Styles and Genres
$49 million to its small distributor, Embassy Pictures. With the decline of the studios and the continuing drop in
This scale of profits made the sophisticated young-adult attendance, 1960s Hollywood was unsure about what the
film very attractive to studio decision makers. public wanted. When a performer won a loyal audience,
The Majors, at their weakest point since World War he or she could count on studio support. Perhaps the most
II, were ripe for absorption into healthier companies. In obvious example is Jerry Lewis. After teaming with Dean
1962, Universal was acquired by the Music Corporation Martin on several hugely successful Paramount releases in
of America (MCA), but at least the deal remained in the the 1950s, Lewis set out on a solo career—writing, direct-
Hollywood family because MCA was a former talent ing, and performing in his own comedies. In most of his
agency (see Mainstream Independents: Agents, Star films, Lewis gave his idiot-child character a spasmodic,
Power, and the Package p. 295). But now conglomerates demonic frenzy. In The Nutty Professor (1963), he
circled the studios. In 1966, Gulf + Western industries (a portrayed not only a geeky simpleton but also a suave la-
firm with holdings in auto parts, metals, and financial dy-killer modeled on Dean Martin. As a director, Lewis
services) acquired the ailing Paramount Pictures. In displayed considerable visual flair: The Ladies’ Man (1961)
1967, Warner Bros. was bought by Seven Arts, which two presents a women’s boarding house as a colossal doll-
years later was absorbed into Kinney National Services house (Color Plate 22.1).
 The 1960s: The Film Industry in Recession 455

The 1960s continued the upscaling of B genres that (1963) and the edgy drama Alfie (1966), which traded on
had begun in the 1950s (see Exploitation p. 297), espe- the fashionable “swinging London” image, proved popu-
cially in the big-budget espionage film. The catalyst was lar (see Great Britain: Kitchen Sink Cinema p. 400), as
Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Agent 007 proved his did the Beatles films.
box-office worth with the phenomenally profitable Gold-
finger (1964) and its successors. The Bond films had erot-
ically laced intrigues, semicomic chases and fight scenes,
Modifying the Classical Studio Style
outlandish weaponry, wry humor, and dazzling produc- Most Hollywood products of the early 1960s had a glossy
tion design (Color Plate 22.2). The series spawned imita- studio look, but some filmmakers broke with this style. The
tions and parodies around the world. Pawnbroker (1965) and other New York-based films offered
The sexiness of the Bond films was typical of the pe- a harsh, ethnically inflected realism. Location filming be-
riod. The roadshow pictures and the Disney product pro- came more frequent, even within cramped bars and apart-
vided wholesome family fare, but theaters welcomed more ments. Long-focal-length lenses, which acted as a telescope
risqué films that could lure viewers away from bland TV in enlarging a small area, allowed the cameraman to film
programming. Universal’s Doris Day comedies (including from a safe distance on an urban location. The long lens
Pillow Talk, 1958 and Lover Come Back, 1962) celebrated became fashionable; it tended to flatten the shot’s space
women’s sexual stratagems, often at the expense of the and produce soft, blurry contours (22.1). In 1962, Arthur
male ego. Other films snickered at promiscuity (A Guide Penn’s black-and-white The Miracle Worker employed sharp
for the Married Man, 1967), suburban flirtations (Boys’ deep focus and crisp lighting (22.2), but five years later the
Night Out, 1962), and aggressive women (Sex and the Sin- much flatter imagery in his color Bonnie and Clyde (22.3)
gle Girl, 1964). resulted from extremely long lenses. By the late 1960s, long
Some audiences enjoyed films from outside the Hol- lenses were used for most medium shots and close views,
lywood mainstream. Studios distributed films from Eu- whether filmed on location or in studio sets.
rope, not just quickly made costume pictures such as During this period, directors abandoned the long-take
Hercules (1957), but also ambitious, polished efforts such aesthetic of the postwar years and experimented with
as Zorba the Greek (1965). British imports were particu- faster, flashier editing. Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night
larly successful. The erotic period comedy Tom Jones (1964) and Help! (1965) fractured the Beatles’ musical
The Miracle Worker

Bonnie and Clyde

Easy Rider

22.1 Easy Rider: the long lens minimizes 22.2 The Miracle Worker: deep focus 22.3 Bonnie and Clyde: during the final
the space between distant and closer planes. and the wide-angle lens. shoot-out, Clyde Barrow’s dying descent
is filmed with a long lens, which softens
focus and flattens space.

22.4, left Discontinuity in A Hard Day’s

Night: as “Can’t Buy Me Love” plays on
the sound track, Lester shows the Beatles
romping in a soccer field . . .

22.5, right . . . and immediately cuts to

A Hard Day’s Night

A Hard Day’s Night

them relaxing.
456 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

numbers into discontinuous shots (22.4, 22.5). Lester’s Identifying the Audience
zany technique derived from the French New Wave, TV
commercials, and British eccentric comedy. He pushed Ford was right: many boundaries of taste had been
fast cutting further in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way crossed. Throughout the 1950s, the power of the Hays
to the Forum (1966). Other directors accelerated the pace: Office to dictate film content had been eroding (see
Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967) averaged Challenges to Censorship p. 294). In the 1960s, major
3.5 seconds per shot. films such as The Pawnbroker and Alfie were distributed
Lester created a vogue for wordless scenes, often without the Production Code seal, while others carried
montage sequences, backed by pop songs. The most fa- a seal despite nudity and profanity. It became apparent
mous example is probably Simon and Garfunkel’s vo- that the Code not only was ineffectual but also was cre-
cals in The Graduate (1967), which comment on the ating lucrative publicity for the films it rejected. The-
hero’s indifference. With the “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ aters screening Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
on My Head” scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance required that under-eighteen patrons be accompanied
Kid (1969), the integration of full-length songs into by an adult, and the film earned huge profits. The Code
scenes became a staple of American cinema. Film stu- was dead.
dios affiliated with music companies could cross-plug In 1966, the Motion Picture Association of America
movies and recordings, making the sound-track album a (MPPA) stopped issuing certificates. Instead, films that
source of profit. failed to conform to its guidelines were labeled “Sug-
Lester’s eye-catching techniques were applied to vol- gested for Mature Audiences.” Backing down from this
atile content by Arthur Penn in Bonnie and Clyde. With toothless policy, the MPAA companies created a rating
an average shot length of less than four seconds, the film system coded by letter: G (general: recommended for all
also popularized the use of slow motion to render ex- ages), M (mature: recommended for viewers over
treme violence. The climax, showing the title couple cut sixteen), R (restricted: viewers under sixteen to be ac-
down by a hail of bullets, turns into a spasmodic dance companied by parent or guardian), and X (no one under
through rhythmic slow motion (see 22.3). Sam Peck- sixteen admitted).
inpah pushed Penn’s approach further by rendering The rating system allowed the industry to present it-
blood bursts and falling bodies in slow motion and a hail self as being sensitive to public concern while giving film-
of shots. The Wild Bunch (1969) celebrates an anarchic makers license to treat violence, sexuality, or unorthodox
band of robbers who are tracked by an obsessive lawman. ideas. The new latitude helped make hits out of Bob &
Straw Dogs (1971), with its portrayal of an ineffectual Carol & Ted & Alice, The Wild Bunch, and Midnight Cowboy
professor taking bloody revenge for the rape of his wife, (all 1969). Subsequent films succeeded by pushing the
outraged critics even more. Peckinpah’s critics still de- standards of acceptability further. Eventually the rating
bate whether his lyrical treatment of carnage distances system was revised, raising the age for R and X films and
us, arouses us, or invites us to reflect on our own appe- replacing the M category with PG (parental guidance
tites. After Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch, fast suggested).
cutting and slow motion became common ways of pre- Producers noted that The Graduate and Bonnie and
senting violent action. Clyde had appealed to young audiences, and they learned
Innovations such as these arrived as most old-guard that half of all moviegoers were aged 16 to 24. Studios
filmmakers were in their final creative years. John Ford, launched a cycle of youthpics, which offered young audi-
Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Raoul ences entertainment unavailable on television. The pro-
Walsh, and many others who had started in silent cinema totype was Easy Rider (1969), a chronicle of two drug
or the early days of sound were no longer at the forefront. dealers’ motorcycle trip across America. Made for less
Ford and Walsh retired after careers lasting nearly fifty than $500,000, it became one of the most successful
years. Their solid technique looked staid, their attitudes films of its year. The youthpics cycle included films of
old-fashioned. Hawks remarked of Peckinpah’s slow- campus rebellion (The Strawberry Statement, 1970),
motion filming, “Oh hell, I can kill and bury ten guys in countercultural dramas (Alice’s Restaurant, 1969; Joe,
the time it takes him to kill one.”1 “Hollywood now is run 1970), nostalgia pieces (The Last Picture Show, 1971),
by Wall St. and Madison Ave., who demand ‘Sex and and anarchic comedies (M*A*S*H, 1970; Harold and
Violence,’” wrote John Ford after completing his last fea- Maude, 1971). When Yellow Submarine (Great Britain,
ture, Seven Women (1965). “This is against my con- 1968) became a phenomenal hit by offering a string of
science and religion.”2 “psychedelic” vignettes illustrating Beatles songs,
 The 1960s: The Film Industry in Recession 457

NEW PRODUCTION AND EXHIBITION TECHNOLOGIES 

The return of Hollywood cinema owed something to new Cinematographers liked the new maneuverability but also
ways of making images and sounds. By 1967, the studios wanted to make the handheld imagery steadier. Light-
depended on selling TV rights to features. As color televi- er-weight cameras, such as the 15-pound Arriflex 35 BL, be-
sion became common, the networks demanded color films came available at the beginning of the 1970s. Though
for broadcast, and Hollywood committed itself to color somewhat heavier, Panavision’s Panaflex could still be
production. Eastman Color became the stock of choice for braced on the operator’s shoulder, and this allowed shoot-
shooting and release prints, although some prints were ing in cramped circumstances. John A. Alonzo used the
made from Eastman negatives using Technicolor’s dye- Panaflex for meticulous wide-angle long takes in Roman
imbibition process. Polanski’s Chinatown (1974; Color Plate 22.4). For Steven
The industry had explored various versions of wides- Spielberg’s Sugarland Express (1974), cinematographer
creen cinema in the 1950s, and by the mid-1960s a few Vilmos Zsigmond obtained tight and steady shots inside a
had become dominant. Most films were shot in 35 mm and moving car by sliding a Panaflex along a plank.
masked during shooting or projection to a 1.85:1 aspect The Steadicam, first publicized on Bound for Glory
ratio. To obtain a wider image with 35 mm, the image (1976), was a camera support that used a system of counter-
would usually be anamorphically compressed, as in weights to suspend the camera on a brace attached to the
CinemaScope (15.4). But there were optical problems with operator’s body. It created smooth, floating tracking shots.
the original CinemaScope design, particularly its tendency Now the operator could stride through crowds and narrow
to make faces fatter in close-up (“’Scope mumps”). The Pa- doorways as well as up and down stairways—maneuvers
navision company designed a better anamorphic system, not possible with a studio dolly. Adding to the flexibility of
first used on some late 1950s films. By the end of the moving shots was the Louma crane, a remote-controlled
1960s, CinemaScope was defunct and Panavision became aluminum arm that could lift a Panaflex high above a set.
the anamorphic standard. For still more grandeur, big mu- Both the Steadicam and the Louma crane used video moni-
sicals or historical epics would be shot on 65 mm stock tors for viewfinding.
and printed to 70 mm to allow for multitrack sound. Exo- The 1970s also saw a revolution in sound recording
dus (1960), Lawrence of Arabia, and other films were both and reproduction. Robert Altman’s California Split (1974)
70 mm and anamorphic. pioneered multitrack recording during shooting, planting ra-
Influenced by European films and Direct Cinema, dio microphones on the actors to create up to seven distinct
Hollywood cinematographers adapted zoom lenses channels. During this period, the “time code” designed to
(see Formal and Stylistic Trends p. 386). A fashion for self- identify frames on videotape was modified to synchronize
conscious zooming arose, as in The Train (1965). By the the film strip with one or more audio recorders. Time-codes
1970s, filmmakers felt that such sudden enlargements or made sound mixing and rerecording much easier.
reductions of images called too much attention to the In sound reproduction, the principal innovations came
mechanics of shooting, so zooming was mostly confined from the laboratories of Ray Dolby. Dolby introduced noise
to low-budget films. Still, many cinematographers kept reduction techniques to the music industry in the mid-
the zoom lens on the camera to allow them to frame a 1960s. A Clockwork Orange (1971) was among the first
shot precisely without changing camera positions. films to employ them. Several movies used Dolby mag-
Hollywood filmmakers also borrowed the handheld netic and optical processes for multitrack theater repro-
shot from Direct Cinema. The shakiness of the handheld duction, but Dolby’s stereo system did not become
camera could suggest a documentary immediacy (such as popular until Star Wars (1977). More and more theaters
the opening of Seven Days in May, 1964) or a nervous en- converted to stereo and surround-sound speaker layouts
ergy (the roadhouse dance and fight in Virginia Woolf ). to take advantage of the more powerful sound tracks.

producers realized that animation could also win college In the same years, the industry also benefited from a
audiences. Ralph Bakshi aimed Fritz the Cat (1972), the few old-fashioned hits targeting the general audience: the
first cartoon to receive an X rating, at viewers comfort- war film Patton (1970), the musical Fiddler on the Roof
able with the drugs-and-free-love ethos of underground (1971), a cycle of “disaster” pictures starting with The Po-
comics (Color Plate 22.3). seidon Adventure (1972), two films pairing Paul Newman
 458 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

and Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Many of the New Hollywood directors self-consciously
The Sting, 1973), and the adaptation of a best-selling novel, returned to classical studio genres, paying respects to vener-
Love Story (1970). But the tide would really turn in the ated filmmakers (see The 1970s Big Three: Coppola, Spiel-
mid-1970s, when a string of modestly budgeted films by berg, and Lucas p. 464). But studios also granted filmmakers
young, largely unknown directors would become stupen- the opportunity to create something like European art films.
dously profitable. Sometimes a single filmmaker like Coppola might partici-
pate in both trends. Both tendencies were characterized by
“movie consciousness,” an intense awareness of film history
THE NEW HOLLYWOOD: and its continuing influence on contemporary culture.
LATE 1960s TO LATE 1970s
Toward an American Art Cinema
The directors identified with the “New Hollywood” were a
diverse lot. Many—the “movie brats”—were in their late When Paramount Pictures asked Francis Ford Coppola to
twenties and early thirties. Others, such as Robert Altman make a film based on the novel The Godfather, he was in
and Woody Allen, were significantly older. Some direc- despair. “They want me to direct this hunk of trash,” he
tors, for example, George Lucas and Francis Ford Cop- told his father. “I don’t want to do it. I want to do art
pola, went to film school, but critic-turned-filmmaker films.”3 That Coppola could harbor such hopes reflects a
Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show; What’s Up, brief but important moment in American filmmaking.
Doc?, 1972) and former television director Bob Rafelson With the late 1960s recession and the search for college
(Five Easy Pieces, 1970; The King of Marvin Gardens, 1972) audiences, Hollywood became more hospitable to the sto-
did not. Some were fastidious intellectuals, such as rytelling techniques pioneered in the European art cin-
Terrence Malick (Badlands, 1973; Days of Heaven, 1978), ema. One cure for Hollywood’s slump seemed to be the
while others were countercultural movie mavens, such as art film dwelling on mood, characterization, and psycho-
Brian De Palma (Greetings, 1968; Sisters, 1973) and John logical ambiguity.
Carpenter (Dark Star, 1974; Assault on Precinct 13, 1977). A case in point is Richard Lester’s much-praised Petu-
While these directors established themselves in the early lia (1968). In one scene, the eccentric and abused Petulia
1970s, others about the same age came to prominence confronts her lover Archie at his apartment. Lester inter-
a little later: screenwriter/director Paul Schrader (Blue rupts their conversation with brief shots: a flashback of Ar-
Collar, 1978), Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter, 1978), chie trying to return the tuba Petulia had brought him and
David Lynch (Eraserhead, 1978), and Jonathan Demme a “false” flashback of Petulia stealing the tuba (22.6–22.9).
(Melvin and Howard, 1980). The film’s play with chronology and character subjectivity

22.6, left Petulia: Archie explains that

he tried to return the tuba Petulia had left
with him . . .

22.7, right . . . and Lester intercuts a

flashback of Archie doing so.
Petulia

Petulia

22.8, left Soon Archie learns that

Petulia paid for renting the tuba . . .

22.9, right . . . and Lester inserts a shot

of her breaking a pawnshop window to
steal the tuba. This visualizes a lie that she
told Archie earlier.
Petulia

Petulia
 The New Hollywood: Late 1960s to Late 1970s 459

22.10, 22.11 Dennis Hopper’s Easy

Rider assimilated the jump cuts that Jean-
Luc Godard had pioneered in Breathless
(see Formal and Stylistic Trends p. 387).
Easy Rider

is reminiscent of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (see

New Cinema: The Left Bank p. 394).
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) re-
vived the science-fiction genre while also exploiting the
enigmatic symbolism of European art cinema. Long scenes
of antiseptic life on the spacecraft (many stretches devoid
of drama), an ironic use of music, and a teasing, allegorical
ending invite thematic interpretation of a sort usually re-
Medium Cool
served for films by Federico Fellini or Michelangelo
Antonioni.
Some youthpics also experimented with art-film tradi-
tions. Easy Rider’s rock sound track and drug-laced tour of 22.12 The handheld camera captures demonstrators building
America may have attracted young audiences, but its style barricades against the police in sequences shot at the 1968
is quite jolting (22.10, 22.11). Transitions are choppy: a Democratic Convention (Medium Cool).
few frames from the last shot of one scene alternate with a
few frames of the first shot of the next. (Dennis Hopper, a
fan of underground films, may have borrowed the device scenes and a pervasive reflexivity (including titles read-
from Gregory Markopoulos [see Success and New Ambi- ing “SCENE MISSING”).
tions p. 441].) A puzzling flashforward shot of a burning Older directors also ventured into the American art
bike punctuates the narrative, foreshadowing the end of cinema. Paul Mazursky’s Alex in Wonderland (1970) paid
the drug dealers’ odyssey. homage to Fellini’s 8½, while Sydney Pollack’s They
Other road movies took a loose, open approach to Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) flaunted stylized flash-
narrative, as in Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces and forwards. Mike Nichols’s Catch-22 (1970) and George
Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop (1971), the latter Roy Hill’s Slaughterhouse Five (1972) juggled time in
remarkable for its sparse dialogue and minimal charac- adapting well-known novels. In Images (1972) and Three
terizations. Brian De Palma’s Greetings and Hi, Mom! Women (1977), Altman emphasized ambiguous shifts be-
(1970) were episodic counterculture films that merged tween objective reality and character subjectivity, deco-
rock music, raunchy humor, and reflexive stylistic de- rated with abstract, enigmatic compositions. Woody
vices borrowed from François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Allen’s Interiors (1978) was a somber chamber drama
Godard. Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969; 22.12), modeled on Bergman’s work, while Alan J. Pakula’s The
Paul Williams’s The Revolutionary (1970), and Michel- Parallax View (1972) adorned an assassination thriller
angelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) drew upon with alienating widescreen compositions that recall
the critical political cinema emerging in Europe (Chap- Antonioni (Color Plate 22.5).
ter 23); they often relied on ambiguous narratives and The auteur approach to film criticism had become
open endings. Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s widely known in the United States. Many movie brats
Baadasssss Song (1971), a frenetic call to Black revolu- who began their careers in the 1960s had learned of it in
tion, exploited a variety of New Wave techniques. Hop- film school and harbored dreams of becoming artists like
per’s The Last Movie (1971), about a Kansas cowboy the venerated European and Asian auteurs and Young
eking out a living in Peru, employed cryptic symbolic Cinema directors.
 460 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980
The Conversation

The Conversation
The Conversation
22.13 The Conversation: as Harry 22.14 . . . Coppola interrupts the scene 22.15 . . . and suggests that these
watches the mysterious younger people with glimpses of the murder . . . images could be either Harry’s
leave the corporation under press imaginings or fragments of the real
scrutiny . . . action.

The most celebrated movie brat was Francis Ford Hollywood Strikes Gold
Coppola. With The Rain People (1969), shot on the road
with a Dodge bus, a crew of friends, and minuscule financ- During the 1970s, forces were at work to salvage the US
ing, Coppola sought to make a film that had the stylistic film industry. In 1971, a new law allowed film compa-
richness and the dedramatization of prestigious European nies to claim tax credits on investments in US-made
cinema. Natalie leaves her husband because her marriage films and to recover tax credits from the 1960s. This
is beginning to stifle her. On her aimless drive she picks up legislation not only returned hundreds of millions of
Killer, a brain-damaged football player. Abrupt, jagged dollars to the Majors, it also allowed them to defer tax
flashbacks interrupt scenes, and Coppola’s sound designer, on subsidiaries’ activities. In addition, a tax-shelter plan
Walter Murch, provides a montage of environmental allowed investors in films to declare up to 100 percent
textures—the crackle of phone lines, the muffled rumble of of their investment as exempt from taxes. The latter pro-
high-speed trucks shaking roadside motel rooms. The glis- vision helped successful, offbeat films such as One Flew
tening sidewalks of the opening credits take on significance Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Taxi Driver (1976) to
when Killer tells Natalie of the “rain people” who disap- be made. The tax-shelter provision was rescinded in
pear because “they cry themselves away.” 1976, and the studios’ tax-credit benefits were abolished
Coppola’s most ambitious art film was The Conversa- in the mid-1980s, but they had been crucial to the in-
tion (1974), financed on the success of The Godfather. dustry’s recovery.
Like many of Altman’s works (see Personal Cinema: Although many of the new generation of Hollywood
Altman and Allen box), the film blends conventions of the directors—especially the movie brats—considered them-
art cinema with those of a Hollywood genre—in this case, selves artists, few wanted to be esoteric. Some made not
the detective film. Although The Conversation is frequently just ordinary hits but films that broke records year after
compared to Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966), Coppola probes year. The top-grossing films of 1970 and 1971 (Love Story,
his protagonist’s mind far more deeply than Antonioni Airport, M*A*S*H, Patton, The French Connection, Fiddler
does. Harry Caul, an expert in audio surveillance, records on the Roof ) had each yielded between $25 million and
fragments of a conversation that lead him to suspect a $50 million at the box-office—strong showings, but lacklus-
murder plot. As he replays and remixes the telltale dia- ter in comparison with what was to come. The Godfather
logue (rendered in Walter Murch’s intricate sound de- ushered in an era of box-office income on a scale no one
sign), Harry’s growing anxiety is charted through dreams had imagined. The following figures are rentals, not box-of-
and fragmentary flashbacks (Video 22.1). The murder is fice grosses; the rentals are the revenues returned to the
presented in disorienting shards, as Harry glimpses and studio after the theaters have taken their percentages of
overhears it. Eventually, the audience discovers that parts gross ticket sales.
of the original conversation have been filtered through
Harry’s mind. As Harry realizes the true situation, Cop- 1972: The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola,
pola intercuts shots of him with shots of the murder, returned more than $81 million to Paramount in the US
perhaps as he now imagines it to have taken place market. Two years later, its global rentals and TV sales
(22.13–22.15). amounted to $285 million.
 The New Hollywood: Late 1960s to Late 1970s 461

PERSONAL CINEMA: ALTMAN AND ALLEN 

After the mid-1970s, efforts to maintain a Hollywood art Companion (2006), returned to the musical world of Nash-
cinema were much less common. One director who per- ville, but with a good-humored affection for the
sisted was Robert Altman. Altman directed some fairly or- performers.
thodox features before his career was energized by the Altman’s contemporary Woody Allen created a
late 1960s recession, the youthpics cycle, and the vogue personal cinema from a production base in New York. A
for Hollywood art cinema. His films travesty their genres, television gag writer and stand-up comedian, Allen wrote
from the war film M*A*S*H to the antimusical Popeye plays and starred in films during the 1960s. His first direc-
(1980). They radiate a distrust of authority, a criticism torial effort, Take the Money and Run (1969), became an
of American pieties, and a celebration of energetic, if immediate success, carrying on the wisecracking absurdist
confused, idealism. tradition of the Marx Brothers and Bob Hope. Allen’s early
Altman also developed an idiosyncratic style. He films also appealed to intellectuals through cinematic in-
relied on shambling, semi-improvised performances, a jokes, such as the homage to Potemkin’s Odessa Steps in
restless pan-and-zoom camera style, abrupt cutting, multi- Bananas (1971).
ple-camera shooting that kept the viewpoint resolutely With Annie Hall (1977), Allen launched a series of films
outside the character action, and a sound track of unprec- that blended his interest in the psychological problems of
edented density. His long lenses crowd characters in on the urban professional with his love for American film tra-
one another and lock them behind reflecting glass ditions and for such European filmmakers as Fellini and
(22.16; Video 22.2). Nashville (1975), for many critics Bergman. “When I started making pictures, I was inter-
Altman’s major achievement, follows twenty-four characters ested in the kind of pictures I enjoyed when I was younger.
over a weekend, often scattering them across the wides- Comedies, real funny comedies, and romantic comedies,
creen frame (Color Plate 22.6). In Altman’s films, characters sophisticated comedies. As I got a little more savvy, that
mumble, talk simultaneously, or find themselves drowned part of me which responded to foreign film started to take
out by the droning loudspeakers of official wisdom. over.”4
Without a major hit after M*A*S*H, Altman found Allen’s most influential films have thrown his comic
himself adrift in the 1980s, but he still managed to be quite persona—the hypersensitive, insecure Jewish intellec-
prolific, skewering American values in bare-bones play ad- tual—into a tangle of psychological conflicts. Sometimes
aptations (Secret Honor, 1984; Fool for Love, 1985). His the plot centers on the Allen figure’s confused love life
career was revived by the dark Hollywood comedy The (Annie Hall; Manhattan, 1979). In Hannah and Her Sisters
Player (1992), which returned him to more mainstream (1986) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1990), the plot
production. Venerated by a new generation of US inde- consists of intertwined romantic relationships among
pendent filmmakers, Altman continued his experiments in several characters, played for contrasts between verbal
decentered narrative and sardonic social commentary in comedy and sober drama (22.17). Allen built many of his
Short Cuts (1993), Gosford Park (2001), and many other films around the questions that preoccupied him, and he
works. His last film before his death, A Prairie Home unabashedly recorded his loves ( jazz, Manhattan),

22.16 In The Long Goodbye, a

dense window reflection shows the
detective Philip Marlowe on the beach
while inside the house novelist Roger
Wade quarrels with his wife.
The Long Goodbye

(continued )
 462 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

PERSONAL CINEMA: ALTMAN AND ALLEN, continued

22.17 Middle-class couples debate

artificial insemination: romantic satire
in Hannah and Her Sisters.
Hannah and Her Sisters

dislikes (rock music, drugs, California), and values (love, Memories (1980) is an overt reworking of Fellini’s 8½.
friendship, trust). Interiors (1978) and September (1987) are Bergmanesque
A unique production arrangement allowed Allen to chamber dramas, while the holiday family gatherings of
retain control over the script, casting, and editing. He Hannah and Her Sisters evoke Fanny and Alexander. Few
explored a range of styles, from the pseudo-documentary of his films made a profit, but into the 2010s Allen attracted
realism of Zelig (1983) to the mock German Expressionism major stars willing to take roles in his personal universe. By
of Shadows and Fog (1992). Allen also paid homage to a the early 2020s, though, renewed attention to allegations
number of his favorite films and auteurs. Stardust of sexual abuse left his future projects in doubt.

1973: William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (Warners; 22.18) No cluster of films had ever made so much money
surpassed The Godfather’s US rentals by $3 million. In the on initial release.5 Studios on the brink of bankruptcy
same year, Universal reluctantly released a small-budget found their profits hitting unprecedented levels. Richard
film called American Graffiti, directed by George Lucas; F. Zanuck, the son of long-time 20th Century-Fox boss
it reaped more than $55 million in rentals.
1975: Jaws (Universal), directed by Steven Spielberg,
earned $130 million in domestic rentals.
1976: Rocky, made without major stars and by little-
known director John G. Avildsen, earned United Artists
$56 million in domestic rentals.
1977: Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third
Kind (Columbia; $82 million) and John Badham’s Saturday
Night Fever (Paramount; $74 million) generated very
healthy profits, but records were broken again by George
The Exorcist

Lucas’s Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Fox). Costing

$11 million, it began as a summer movie, ran continuously
into 1978, and was rereleased in 1979. Star Wars earned
22.18 The Exorcist, an adaptation of a best-selling horror
more than $190 million in US rentals and about novel, aroused controversy with its blasphemous language and
$250 million worldwide, on a total ticket sales of more its shocking special effects. Here, thanks to a life-sized puppet,
than $500 million. the possessed Regan mockingly rotates her head.
 The New Hollywood: Late 1960s to Late 1970s 463

Darryl F. Zanuck, produced The Sting and Jaws. He real- Despite some inroads made by independent distribu-
ized that “I had amassed more money with one or two tors, the market was ruled by familiar players. The major
pictures than my father had in a lifetime of work.”6 distribution companies garnered 90 percent of all theater
During the boom of the early and mid-1970s, most revenues. A film financed outside the studios could not
Majors had at least one top hit, so the industry main- get widely screened unless it was distributed by a top com-
tained its stability. Overall rentals from domestic and for- pany. The standard distribution fee, 35 percent, came di-
eign release increased about $200 million per year, rectly from gross rentals, so Jaws and Star Wars earned
reaching $2 billion in 1979. Television networks and distribution income for Universal and 20th Century-Fox
cable companies began paying large sums for rights to over and above any investments the studios made in the
broadcast the new blockbusters. The 1970s resurgence productions. The major distributors also controlled inter-
catapulted several filmmakers to fame, with three becoming national circulation of US films.
major producer-directors (see The 1970s Big Three: Coppola, Still, the Majors needed filmmakers. While some stu-
Spielberg, and Lucas box). dios, notably Disney, prided themselves on generating
their own projects, most came to rely on directors and pro-
ducers with strong track records. Spielberg and Lucas be-
The Return of the Blockbuster came powerful producers who could find financing easily
The 1970s blockbusters made producers far less willing to and even demand reductions in distribution fees. Studios
let filmmakers experiment with plot, tone, and style. cultivated long-term relationships with producers who
During the recession of the early 1970s, studios welcomed could bring together a script, a director, and stars. Increas-
even a small hit; directors were not expected to create big ingly, agents functioned as quasi-producers by gathering
pictures. By the late 1970s, however, companies did not their clients into packages, a tactic pioneered by Lew
want to risk money on untried subjects or approaches. Wasserman (see Mainstream Independents: Agents, Star
Clearly, the industry’s success was based on very few Power, and the Package p. 295). In 1975, two powerful
films. In any year, ten or so “must-see” pictures attracted talent agencies formed, International Creative Manage-
the bulk of admissions, while most of the Majors’ releases ment and Creative Artists Agency, both of which would
lost money. The industry therefore sought to minimize the become prime packagers in the 1980s.
risks. Companies released their big-budget films in the Many of the most adept moguls were TV-trained, such
peak leisure periods, summer and Christmas. Copying as Paramount’s Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, and
exploitation companies like AIP (see Exploitation p. 297), knew how to broker talent. Studios also hired agents as
Universal aired many television ads for Jaws and released executives. Accordingly, the 1970s initiated the era of “the
the film to hundreds of theaters simultaneously. Since deal.” Development deals generated income for the agents,
then, most major releases have received saturation adver- producers, scriptwriters, and stars, but few films resulted.
tising and booking, pinning their fates primarily on one Overall deals paid stars and directors to develop “vanity
opening weekend. projects” for studios, and housekeeping deals gave their
Hollywood discovered other ways to wring profits production companies an office on the studio lot. Every
from blockbusters. One strategy would be central to participant in a package held out for the maximum, so a
future studio filmmaking: the sequel. The Godfather, The project might take years to reach the screen. Filmmakers
Exorcist, Jaws, and Rocky were given additional install- complained that shooting films had become secondary to
ments; one Rocky sequel appeared in 2015, forty years deal-making.
after the original. George Lucas built the idea of a con- As successful filmmakers gained more control over
tinuing story into Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and their projects, budgets often inflated. Coppola’s Apoca-
his empire depended on sequels, prequels, and offshoot lypse Now took three years to shoot and cost more than
films. This practice would lead producers to set up $30 million. Even top directors were not immune to cost
franchises, ongoing stories spread across many films over overruns, as Spielberg’s 1941 (1979) showed. The system’s
many years. Another strategy pioneered by Lucas in- most notorious failure involved Michael Cimino’s ambi-
volved ancillary rights. In negotiating his stake in Star tious Western, Heaven’s Gate (1980). The budget rose to
Wars, Lucas shrewdly obtained a large percentage of the $40 million, the highest production cost of the 1970s.
rights to toys, T-shirts, and other fan paraphernalia. After After the film had a disastrous premiere, United Artists
studios saw the Star Wars ancillary income exceed its released a shortened version. It earned less than $2 million
box-office take, they created their own merchandising in rentals, and soon UA collapsed as a Major, eventually
divisions. to be absorbed by MGM.
 464 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

THE 1970s BIG THREE: COPPOLA, SPIELBERG, AND LUCAS 

Three directors who emerged at the beginning of the 1970s and he held dinners in which the actors stayed in charac-
became powerful producers and redefined what Hollywood ter. For The Godfather, Part II he added New York stage
cinema might be. Like other novices of the time, they had legends such as playwright Michael Gazzo and Lee Stras-
tried their hand at every aspect of the craft, from writing to berg, the dean of the Actors Studio.
postproduction. They understood movies as total creations This interest in performance was balanced by a risk-tak-
and sought to put their personal stamp on everything they ing cinematic sensibility. The Godfather was remarkably
did. They were also well acquainted with each other. Francis poised, partly because it refused the fast cutting and camera
Ford Coppola acted as producer and mentor for George movements of the early 1970s. Coppola and his cinematog-
Lucas on American Graffiti. Lucas and Steven Spielberg rapher, Gordon Willis, settled upon a style that emphasized a
collaborated on several projects, notably Raiders of the Lost static camera and actors moving through rich, often gloomy,
Ark (1980). Still, their paths diverged. With The Godfather, interiors (Color Plate 22.7). In contrast, the fragmentary mon-
Coppola proved that he could turn out a mainstream mas- tage of sound and image in The Conversation sets the audi-
terpiece, but he wanted to go further, to turn Hollywood into ence adrift in alternative times and mental spaces. In
a center of artistic cinema. Lucas and Spielberg wanted to Apocalypse Now, Coppola would strive to give the Vietnam
modernize the system without disturbing it. War an overpowering presence, with psychedelic color, sur-
Coppola broke through first. His youth comedy You’re round sound, and slow, hallucinatory dissolves.
a Big Boy Now (1967) borrowed the flashy techniques of Coppola had founded his company, American Zoetrope,
Richard Lester’s Beatles films and the swinging-London in 1969 in order to nurture his personal projects. He bought
pictures. Coppola came to know the collapsing studio sys- the Hollywood General studio in 1979, renamed it Zoetrope
tem from the inside, moving from Corman’s American Inter- Studios, and announced that it would be a center of new
national Pictures to screenwriting (the Oscar-winning script technology for feature films, an “electronic cinema” based on
for Patton, 1970) and then to directing, with the musical high-definition video sent out by satellite. He rebuilt the
Finian’s Rainbow (1968). The Godfather yielded him great stages and directed performances from his trailer via video
financial rewards, but instead of parlaying his success into feeds. The main result was One from the Heart (1982), a flam-
a commercial career, he plunged into an intimate, ambiva- boyantly artificial musical drama filled with stunning pictorial
lent art movie, The Conversation. He turned The Godfather, effects (Color Plate 22.8). One from the Heart would influ-
Part II (1974) into a complex, time-juggling piece. Then he ence the French cinéma du look of the 1980s (See France:
embarked on the vast, exhausting, budget-shattering The Cinéma du Look p. 561), but the cost overruns and public
Apocalypse Now (1979). indifference led to massive failure. Soon Coppola was forced
Coppola’s was bravura filmmaking on a grand scale. In to sell his facility to satisfy his creditors.
college he wanted to direct theater, and in many respects What followed were decades of difficulty. Coppola
he remained an actor’s director. For The Godfather he launched some intriguing projects such as the teenage
fought Paramount to hire Marlon Brando and Al Pacino dramas The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983), as
and gave prime roles to James Caan, Robert Duvall, Talia well as the brash Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988,
Shire, and other little-known actors. During rehearsals he produced by Lucas). He never ceased to experiment with
had actors improvise scenes that would not be in the film, eye-catching compositions (22.19) and offbeat storytelling

22.19 Tucker: an in-camera optical

effect connects Tucker with his wife as
they talk on the phone.
Tucker
 The New Hollywood: Late 1960s to Late 1970s 465

techniques, such as the use of a fake publicity film in with a skeptical attitude toward political leadership. Against
Tucker and the silent-film-style special effects in Bram the money-grubbing businesspeople of Amity, the film
Stoker’s Dracula (1992). Yet he failed to restart his career. offers three versions of male heroism: the grizzled man of
Even Godfather III (1990), a sequel to his biggest hit, did action Quint, the scientific rationalist Hooper, and the reluc-
not redeem him, and he became a director for hire. Cop- tant pragmatist Sheriff Brody. Each sequence hits a high pitch
pola began to be known not for his movies but for the of emotional tension, and scene by scene the audience’s
wine cultivated at his Napa Valley vineyard. anxiety is ratcheted up through crisp editing, John Williams’s
By contrast, Lucas and Spielberg sought to recover their ominous score, and inventive Panavision compositions
boyhood pleasure in movies. They tried to recreate the un- (22.20). Likewise, in the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park se-
complicated fun of space opera (Star Wars), action-packed ries, Spielberg revamped the traditions of Raoul Walsh and
serials (Raiders of the Lost Ark), and fantasy (Close Encoun- Ray Harryhausen for the blockbuster age.
ters, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982). In making Star Wars, Spielberg’s New Age-tinted spirituality, often ex-
Lucas pulled together the most exciting portions of several pressed as mute wonder at glittering technological marvels,
air battles from Hollywood combat pictures, storyboarded proved no less popular. Over and over the young man from
the compiled sequence, and then shot his space dogfights to divorced suburban parents replayed the drama of a family’s
match the older footage. As producers, Lucas and Spielberg breakup and a child’s yearning for happiness. He found
revived the family film of adventure (Willow, 1988) and car- emblematic images—spindly aliens communicating through
toon comedy (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, 1988; Color music, a boy bicycling silhouetted against the moon—that
Plate 22.9). While the Disney studio was floundering, two verged on kitsch but also struck a chord in millions.
baby boomers recaptured the old magic. Many critics noted Spielberg became New Hollywood’s reliable showman,
that Walt himself would have loved to make Star Wars or E.T. recalling Cecil B. DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, and the director
Spielberg divided his attention between what he whom he claimed he most resembled, Victor Fleming, the
called “fast-food movies” (Jaws, the Indiana Jones series) contract professional who had a hand in both Gone with
and more upscale directorial efforts (The Color Purple, the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
1985; Empire of the Sun, 1987). These dignified adapta- Less of a movie fan than Coppola and Spielberg,
tions of best-selling novels had a nostalgic side, too, re- Lucas spent his youth watching television, reading comic
calling the Hollywood prestige picture of the 1930s and books, and tinkering with cars. He satisfied the industry’s
1940s. Looking back to the great tradition, Spielberg filled craving for teen pictures with American Graffiti, which lov-
his films with reverent allusions to the studio program pic- ingly depicted the world of cruising and rock’n’roll. But the
ture (Always, 1989, is a remake of Victor Fleming’s A Guy meticulously designed music track and interwoven
Named Joe, 1943) and to Disney (Close Encounters; Hook, coming-of-age crises showed higher artistic ambitions,
1991; and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, 2001). and critics recognized the film’s homage to Fellini’s I Vitelloni
In one respect, Spielberg proved himself heir to the stu- (19.28). Star Wars offered chivalric myth for 1970s teens,
dio directors. With the right material, he could make a story a quest romance in which young heroes could find
come grippingly alive for his audience. Jaws balanced thrills adventure, pure love, and a sacred cause (22.21). Not

22.20 Ingenious depth staging in

Spielberg’s Jaws.
Jaws

(continued )
 466 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

THE 1970s BIG THREE: COPPOLA, SPIELBERG, AND LUCAS, continued

surprisingly, Star Wars was published as a comic book be- All three directors had colossal hits in the 1970s, but
fore the film was released. Coppola loved working with only Spielberg and Lucas continued to rule over the next
actors, but Lucas avoided talking with them except for the forty years. At one point in the early 1980s, the pair were
occasional “Faster!” He looked forward to creating his responsible for the six top-grossing films of the postwar
scenes digitally, shooting isolated actors against blank period. Coppola foresaw the multimedia future but be-
screens, or creating characters wholly on a computer. This lieved that Zoetrope Studios could become a vertically in-
dream, the ultimate film extension of the comic-book aes- tegrated firm on its own. His ambition outstripped his
thetic, was realized in the computer-generated Jar Jar business sense, however, as his plan proved futile in a
Binks of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). world ruled by agency packages, producer pacts, and
Lucas often called himself an independent filmmaker, franchises.
and in some sense he was. The triumph of Star Wars Lucas and Spielberg saw deeper, letting the studios
allowed him to dictate terms to any studio in town. After remain distributors while they provided content and ser-
frequent clashes with Fox on The Empire Strikes Back vices. Lucasfilm and LucasArts created theatrical films,
(1980), which ran over schedule and budget, he vowed television series, commercials, and interactive games.
that he would never compromise again. Retreating to his Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic pioneered the use of com-
own fiefdom, Skywalker Ranch, Lucas oversaw a high-tech puter graphics in film, becoming the gold standard for
wonderland based on a saga that gripped the imagination visual effects and computer animation as well as new edit-
of millions around the world and spawned novels, toys, ing and sound systems. Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment
games, action figures, and video games. Skywalker staff produced some of the era’s most popular films (Back to
maintained a volume, “The Bible,” that listed all the events the Future, 1985; Twister, 1996). Later, by partnering with
occurring in the Star Wars universe. music mogul David Geffen and former Disney executive
Yet Lucas continued to believe that he was spinning a Jeffrey Katzenberg, Spielberg realized Coppola’s ambition
simple tale grounded in basic human values. Like Spielberg, of forming a new studio, Dreamworks SKG. Focusing on
Lucas hit on a resonant New Age theme: the Force, repre- US distribution, the company produced and released al-
senting God, the cosmos, or whatever the viewer was com- most eighty titles between 1997 and 2009 before eventu-
fortable with. Beneath all the hardware, he claimed, Star ally reverting back to being a content provider for the
Wars was about “redemption.” Spielberg remarked, hyper- Majors. By 1980, Lucas and Spielberg had become the
bolically, that Star Wars marked the moment “when the most powerful director-producers in the industry, and they
world recognized the value of childhood.”7 remained at the top into the new century.

22.21 The heroes of Star Wars

rewarded.
Star Wars

Studio executives complained that every young direc- notes on scripts and rushes, and test screenings sampled
tor wanted to be an auteur, free of financial constraints. audiences’ reactions to the director’s cut.
Ironically, the rise of the New Hollywood, a director-based A new era of blockbusters, built on packages and deals
trend, led to a mistrust of directors. In the 1980s, studios and bolstered by stars and special effects, had begun.
strained to keep filmmakers on track. Executives provided Superman: The Movie (1978) was two years in the making.
 The New Hollywood: Late 1960s to Late 1970s 467

This independently produced film wound up costing awareness of tradition by featuring Liza Minnelli, the
somewhere between $40 million and $55 million. Gene daughter of the earlier film’s star Judy Garland.
Hackman demanded a salary of $2 million, and Marlon Now that simply updating genres occasionally pro-
Brando received $3 million for two weeks’ work. Mario vided hits, many directors steered away from the experi-
Puzo, author of The Godfather, was paid $350,000 for the mentation encouraged by the art-cinema vogue of the late
Superman script plus 5 percent of the gross receipts. Mil- 1960s and early 1970s. Most young directors did not try to
lions more were invested in the elaborate sets and special challenge mainstream storytelling. Instead, they followed
effects, prepared at England’s Pinewood Studios. Aware of Spielberg and Lucas in reworking established genres and
the value of a franchise series, the producers shot two referencing hallowed classics and directors. In several
films in one stretch of studio time so as to have a sequel ways, the New Hollywood defined itself by remaking the
ready. The film featured a score by the certified mega-hit old. “We were very much concerned with making the Hol-
composer John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encoun- lywood film,” recalled director John Milius, “not to make
ters). Released in December, Superman: The Movie eventu- a lot of money, but as artists.”8
ally grossed more than $80 million in its US run, becoming Many films became ironic or affectionate tributes to the
the top release of 1979 and Warner Bros.’ most profitable studio tradition. John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13
film to date. It spawned three sequels and millions in mer- updates Hawks’s Rio Bravo, pitting a stoic code of conduct
chandising, along the way spurring new interest in super- against contemporary urban violence. Brian De Palma be-
hero comic books. Directed by Richard Donner, a man came famous for his pastiches of Hitchcock: Obsession
without auteurist pretensions, it pointed the way to the (1976) is Vertigo with an incestuous twist; Dressed to Kill
expanded blockbuster strategy of the 1980s and 1990s (see (1980) confronts Psycho with contemporary sexual mores.
The Blockbuster Mentality p. 647). Milius revived the swashbuckling action film in The Wind
and the Lion (1975). These directors often cultivated a style
that borrowed from the masters. Carpenter’s rhythmic cut-
Hollywood Updated ting in Assault on Precinct 13 is indebted to Hawks’s Scarface.
No 1970s studio could afford to concentrate completely De Palma’s overhead shots, startling deep-focus imagery,
on big-budget pictures. Each firm made only two or three and split-screen handling of action recall Hitchcock’s swag-
of these per year. But since the studio’s distribution wing gering ingenuity. In Jaws, Spielberg borrowed Hitchcock’s
needed from twelve to twenty pictures each year to pay for zoom-in/track-out technique from Vertigo, a device that was
itself, the rest of the program was filled out with less costly to be used commonly in 1980s film to show a background
items—often, genre fare revamped for young audiences. eerily squeezing around an unmoving figure.
Comedy was pushed toward gross-out slapstick by direc- During the late 1960s and early 1970s, directors had
tors and performers associated with National Lampoon become reliant on long lenses; entire scenes might be shot
magazine and television’s Saturday Night Live in Animal with the depth-flattening telephoto. By contrast, Spielberg,
House (1978). Musicals were updated to incorporate disco De Palma, and other New Hollywood directors reintro-
(Saturday Night Fever, 1977) or to playfully mock 1950s duced wide-angle-lens compositions reminiscent of Orson
teen culture (Grease, 1978). The kind of doomed romance Welles, William Wyler, and film noir. The results were often
seen in George Cukor’s A Star is Born (1954) was ex-­ striking depth of focus and distortion of figures (22.22,
plored in New York, New York (1977), which signaled its 22.23). Yet directors did not abandon long lenses. From the

22.22 The return of wide-angle

shots: Close Encounters of the Third
Kind.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
 468 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

22.23 Debt collecting in Little Italy:

the “mook” scene from Mean Streets.
Mean Streets
Catch-22

22.24, 22.25 In Catch-22 (1970), Mike Nichols intercuts exaggerated deep-focus shots with images taken with a
much longer lens.

1970s onward, they mixed occasional deep-focus shots with The Godfather did not lead to a renaissance of the
flatter telephoto shots (22.24, 22.25). As the films’ scripts gangster film, but two other genres were revived on a ma-
often updated 1940s and 1950s genres, so their style be- jor scale. The horror film, long associated with low-budget
came a synthesis of techniques derived from many eras. exploitation, was given new respectability in Rosemary’s
Several films of the New Hollywood revisited tradi- Baby (1968) and The Exorcist. Carpenter’s Halloween
tional genres. The Godfather movies revived the classic (1978) spawned a long cycle of stalker-slasher films in
gangster film but gave the formula some fresh twists. The which the victims, usually voluptuous teenagers, meet gory
Godfather (1972) emphasizes the genre’s conventional eth- ends. Adaptations of best-selling novels by Steven King
nic divisions (Italian/Irish/Jewish/WASP) and its ma- yielded Carrie (1976, De Palma) and The Shining (1980,
chismo values but adds a new stress on family unity and Stanley Kubrick). Thanks to its relatively modest budgets
generational succession. Michael Corleone, at first remote and a loyal core audience, the horror film remained an in-
from the “family business,” becomes his father’s rightful dustry mainstay for decades to come.
heir, at the cost of distancing himself from his wife Kay. The other significant genre to be revived was science
The Godfather, Part II (1974) shows how Michael’s father fiction. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was the major fore-
became a success, harking back to another genre formula, runner, but it was Lucas and Spielberg who impressed Hol-
the immigrant gangster’s rise to power. This earlier time lywood with the profit possibilities of a genre previously
period is intercut with Michael’s expanding authority and identified with kiddie matinees and teenage exploitation.
ruthlessness in the 1950s. Although the first Godfather Star Wars showed that space adventure, mounted with up-
ends with Michael’s full assimilation into the male line of dated special effects, could attract a new generation of mov-
the family, Part II closes with him locked in autumnal iegoers, and its unprecedented success triggered not only its
shadow, alone and brooding, unable to trust anyone. own film series but one based on the television program
 The New Hollywood: Late 1960s to Late 1970s 469

Star Trek. Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned the studios in the 1970s. Woody Allen mocked the caper film
1950s “invasion film” into a cozy, quasi-mystical experience (Take the Money and Run, 1969) and the science-fiction
of communion with extraterrestrial wisdom. After these film (Sleeper, 1973). Mel Brooks made raucous, bawdy
films, science fiction would remain a dominant Hollywood parodies of the Western (Blazing Saddles, 1973), the Uni-
genre, often as a showcase for new filmmaking technology. versal horror film (Young Frankenstein, 1974), the Hitch-
The young directors acquired a taste for tradition from cockian thriller (High Anxiety, 1977), and the historical
film school or late-night TV, but an older figure gained it epic (History of the World, Part I, 1981). David and Jerry
more spontaneously. Starting as a studio contract player, Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams, savaged the disaster
Clint Eastwood moved from movie bit-parts to a successful film in Airplane! (1980). Such zany treatment of genre
1960s television series (Rawhide) and then to movie stardom conventions had already been employed in silent slapstick
in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns (see Italy: Young and in the comedies of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and
Cinema and Spaghetti Westerns p. 398). Returning to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Mocking Hollywood was
Hollywood, Eastwood deepened his star image in veteran itself a Hollywood tradition.
action director Don Siegel’s Coogan’s Bluff (1968) and Dirty
Harry (1972). Eastwood’s screen persona had a cynical, even
sadistic, cast that set him apart from Paul Newman and John
Scorsese as Synthesis
Wayne, his main box-office rivals. He began directing with A few filmmakers managed to express personal concerns by
Play Misty for Me (1971), casting himself as a disc jockey adapting aspects of the European art film, and several more
stalked by an obsessive fan. Eastwood directed conventional did so by reviving the studio tradition. Very few, however,
action fare such as The Eiger Sanction (1975), but he also were able to do both. Coppola managed for a time, but
brought a sour, mythic feel to the Western in The Outlaw Martin Scorsese blended both possibilities more consis-
Josey Wales (1976) and experimented with his image in The tently. Brought up on Hollywood features, Italian Neorealism,
Gauntlet (1977) and Bronco Billy (1980). He shrewdly and “Million Dollar Movie” TV broadcasts, Scorsese stud-
starred in other directors’ genre efforts, which gave him big ied filmmaking at New York University. He made an under-
hits such as Any Which Way But Loose (1978). ground reputation with several shorts and two low-budget
Eastwood shot his films fast and cheap, a process that features before his Mean Streets (1973) drew wide attention.
yielded solid profits but sometimes made them look staid in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More (1974) and Taxi Driver
an age of hyper-produced extravaganzas. Yet he became one propelled him to fame. Raging Bull (1980), a biography of
of Hollywood’s most respected directors. He worked in prizefighter Jake LaMotta, won still greater notice; many
nearly every genre, from war film (Heartbreak Ridge, 1986; critics consider it the finest American film of the 1980s.
American Sniper, 2014) and crime dramas (Mystic River, Scorsese’s later films (notably King of Comedy, 1982; The
2003) to biographical sagas such as Bird (1988), a testament Last Temptation of Christ, 1988; GoodFellas, 1990) ce-
to his love of jazz, and J. Edgar (2011). He revived the West- mented his reputation as the most critically acclaimed
ern with Unforgiven (1992) and even made a musical (Jersey American director of his generation.
Boys, 2014). His versatility, along with his unemphatic style, As a movie brat, Scorsese was heavily indebted to the
made critics call him the last classical studio director, but Hollywood tradition. Taxi Driver was scored by Bernard
his work did have an adventurous side. He tried unconven- Herrmann, Hitchcock’s composer, and, as preparation for
tional drama in Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Hereafter shooting New York, New York, Scorsese studied 1940s
(2010), and his paired Iwo Jima films Flags of Our Fathers Hollywood musicals. Later, with Cape Fear (1991), he would
and Letters from Iwo Jima (both 2006) offered complemen- remake a classic thriller. Like Altman and Allen, however,
tary perspectives on warrior cultures East and West. he was also influenced by European cinema. A shot change
Although he was known as a conservative, Gran Turino (2008) in Raging Bull was as likely to derive from Godard as from
was a pungent commentary on forces that would deny immi- George Stevens’s Shane, and the exploration of Rupert
grants a place in America. Perhaps Eastwood’s ultimate Pupkin’s world in King of Comedy creates a Felliniesque
commitment was to the solitary man of any political persua- ambiguity about what is real and what is fantasy.
sion who, despite flaws and guilt, persists in doing his duty. Scorsese’s film-consciousness also emerges in his virtu-
And although Eastwood’s work is marbled with violence, oso displays of technique. Alongside intense, aggressive dia-
his tribute to the heroic pilot of Sully (2016) resonates be- logue scenes designed to highlight the skills of performers
cause, as one rescue worker puts it, “Today, nobody dies.” such as Robert De Niro, there are scenes of physical action
Eastwood’s calm craftsmanship seemed distinctly served up with dazzling camera flourishes. These action se-
unhip alongside the satires and parodies pouring out of the quences are often abstract and wordless, built out of
 470 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980
Raging Bull

22.26, 22.27 Two different fights in Raging Bull, one objective, the other subjective from Jake’s point of view.

hypnotic imagery: a yellow cab gliding through hellishly

steamy streets (Taxi Driver; Color Plate 22.10), billiard balls
ricocheting across a pool table (The Color of Money, 1986).
Each of the boxing scenes in Raging Bull is staged and
filmed differently (22.26, 22.27). Whereas other movie
brats created spectacle through high-tech special effects,
Scorsese engaged the viewer by a bold, idiosyncratic style.
Like Allen’s films, Scorsese’s had strong autobiograph-
King of Comedy

ical undercurrents. Mean Streets drew on his Italian

American youth (see 22.23). After years of self-destructive
behavior, he felt ready to tackle Raging Bull: “I understood
then what Jake was, but only after having gone through a 22.28 Aspiring talk-show host Rupert Pupkin interviews
similar experience. I was just lucky that there happened to cardboard cut-outs of Liza Minnelli and Jerry Lewis in his
basement (King of Comedy).
be a project there ready for me to express this.”9 Perhaps as
a result of his emotional absorption in his stories, Scorsese’s
films center on driven, even obsessed, protagonists, and his comic-book origin story with elements drawn from Taxi
technique often puts us firmly in their minds. Rapid point- Driver and The King of Comedy.
of-view shots, slow-motion imagery, and subjective sound For fifty years, Scorsese showed that a filmmaker
heighten our identification with the prizefighter Jake could skillfully blend experimental impulses, personal vi-
LaMotta, the taxi driver Travis Bickle, and the aspiring sion, and the respect for traditional Hollywood craftman-
stand-up comedian Rupert Pupkin (22.28). Like Eastwood, ship that characterized the 1970s. In doing so, he became
Scorsese continued his career into the 2010s, usually pursu- a venerated figure for several generations of directors—and
ing a “one for them, one for me” principle. He was willing movie lovers.
to work for hire (The Aviator, 2004; Shutter Island, 2010) in
order to realize projects to which he had an almost sacra-
mental devotion (Gangs of New York, 2002; Silence, 2016). OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDEPENDENTS
His flamboyant technique could energize both a staid his-
torical drama (The Age of Innocence, 1993) and a tabloid The difficulties and recovery of the Majors were bound up
saga of American excess (The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013). with the fate of independent production in the United
As Scorsese had paid homage to masters he admired, States during this period. The 1948 Paramount decision
younger filmmakers signaled their debt to his work. The and the rise of the teenage market gave independent com-
Lion King (1994) includes a dialogue reference to the “Are panies such as Allied Artists and American International
you talking to me?” scene from Taxi Driver. David O. Rus- Pictures (AIP) an entry into the low-budget market (See
sell’s American Hustle (2013) mimics a Goodfellas shot Exploitation p. 297).
from inside a car trunk, while that film’s famous Copaca- During the late 1960s, the low-budget independents
bana long take is slavishly recreated in Swingers (1996). grew stronger, partly through the relaxing of the Produc-
Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019) merges aspects of the tion Code and partly through the decline of the Majors.
 Opportunities for Independents 471

Tall (1973) and Macon County Line (1974), Southern-fried

docudramas (hicksploitation) became sleeper hits for drive-in
circuits. In the wake of Night of the Living Dead and The Exor-
cist, the teenage horror market was tapped with films such as
Tobe Hooper’s grotesque Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
and John Carpenter’s more sober and expensive Halloween.
Corman’s new company, New World Pictures, created cycles
and trained new directors (Jonathan Demme, John Sayles,
James Cameron).
In some venues, the cheaper films could find an audi-
Night of the Living Dead

ence denied to the glossier studio product. Sunn Interna-

tional discovered, to the Majors’ surprise, that there was
still a family audience who could be lured from the televi-
sion set with wildlife adventures and quasi-religious
documentaries. Tom Laughlin, the enterprising direc-
22.29 With Night of the Living Dead, Romero pioneered the
tor-producer-star of Billy Jack (1971), showed that small-
low-budget horror film, often shot with friends playing walk-on
monster roles. The genre would be a mainstay of independent town viewers would still come to films that mixed
filmmaking from the 1970s onward. sentiment, action, and populist themes. Meanwhile, teen-
agers and college students began flocking to outrageous
movies like John Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1974), which
With the slackening of censorship controls, the 1960s saw owed a large debt to underground film (Chapter 24). The-
growth in erotic exploitation. “Nudies” surfaced from the aters found that midnight movies would attract a young
16 mm “stag film” world and could be seen in decaying crowd; The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Eraser-
picture palaces in America’s downtown neighborhoods. head (1978) became profitable almost solely through
Eroticism became mixed with gore in Herschell Gordon such shows.
Lewis’s Blood Feast (1963) and 2000 Maniacs (1964). The Majors responded by absorbing the sensational
Russ Meyer began in nudies before discovering his idio- elements that had given independent films their edge.
syncratic blend of hammering editing, gruesome violence, Big-budget films became more sexually explicit, and for a
and wildly overblown sex scenes (Motorpsycho, 1965; time Russ Meyer, exploiter of erotica, worked for 20th
Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, 1966). Meyer films like Vixen Century-Fox (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 1970). The Ex-
(1968) blazed the trail for the mainstreaming of pornogra- orcist traded on blasphemy and visceral disgust to a new
phy in the 1970s. degree. Star Wars and Close Encounters absorbed elements
The youthpics craze was fed by AIP’s cycle of motor- of low-budget science fiction (Silent Running, 1971; Dark
cycle-gang movies and Wild in the Streets (1968). The films Star, 1974), while Alien (1979) and other films reflected
of AIP’s main director, Roger Corman, had a strong influ- the new standards of gory violence established by indepen-
ence on young directors of the late 1960s, and AIP gave dent directors such as Carpenter and David Cronenberg
opportunities to Coppola, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Milius, (Shivers, 1975; Rabid, 1977; The Brood, 1979). “‘Exploita-
De Palma, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson. The tion’ films were so named because you made a film about
low-budget independent film Night of the Living Dead something wild with a great deal of action, a little sex, and
(1968), rejected by AIP as too gory, went on to become a possibly some sort of strange gimmick,” wrote Corman.
colossal cult hit and launched the career of director “[Later] the majors saw they could have enormous com-
George Romero (22.29). mercial success with big-budget exploitation films.”10
During most of the 1970s as well, independent produc- Apart from the mass-market independents, there
tion proved a robust alternative to the Majors. As the studios emerged a more artistically ambitious independent sector.
cut back production, low-budget films helped fill the market. New York sustained an “off-Hollywood” tendency. Shirley
Firms began to specialize in certain genres—martial-arts, ac- Clarke, known for her dance and experimental shorts,
tion pictures, erotic pictures (sexploitation). Films aimed at adapted the play The Connection (1962; Video 22.3) and
African Americans (blaxploitation) showcased young Black made the semidocumentary The Cool World (1963). Jonas
performers and, sometimes, Black creative personnel such as and Adolfas Mekas modeled Guns of the Trees (1961) and
directors Gordon Parks, Sr. (Shaft, 1971) and Michael Hallelujah the Hills (1963) on the experiments of
Schultz (Cooley High, 1975; Car Wash, 1976). Led by Walking European new waves.
 472 CHAPTER 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: 1960–1980

Basing his aesthetic on a conception of raw realism,

Cassavetes created a string of films featuring quasi-impro-
vised performances and casual camerawork. Faces (1968)
and Husbands (1970), with their sudden zooms to close-up
and their search for revelatory detail, use Direct Cinema
techniques to comment on the bleak disappointments and
deceptions of middle-class American couples (22.31).
Characteristically, his counterculture comedy Minnie and
Moskowitz (1971) centers on the love affair of a mid-
dle-aged hippie and a lonely museum curator. In A Woman
Under the Influence (1974), Opening Night (1979), and
Love Streams (1984), the drama alternates between mun-
Shadows

dane routines and painful outbursts that push each actor

to near-hysterical limits. This spasmodic rhythm, and his
22.30 The roughly shot beating of Ben (Shadows). focus on the anxieties underlying adult love and work,
made Cassavetes’s midlife melodramas seem experimental
by 1970s and 1980s Hollywood standards.
The New York scene received a further burst of en-
ergy from Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street (1975), a
drama of Jewish life in late-nineteenth-century New York.
Filmed for less than $500,000, it was released nationwide
and earned more than $5 million. When it received an
Academy Award nomination, the film sparked a new
awareness of off-Hollywood filmmaking.
The independent impulse spread to regional filmmak-
ers, who managed to make low-budget features centered
on cultures seldom brought to the screen. John Waters re-
Faces

vealed Baltimore as a campy Peyton Place (Female Trou-

ble, 1975), while Victor Nuñez’s Gal Young ’Un (1979)
22.31 After joking and shouting, Jeannie, whom Frost has
took place in Florida during the Depression. Another his-
picked up in a bar, is distressed when he breaks down in tears.
Soon she finds out that he’s pretending (Faces). torical drama was John Hanson and Rob Nilsson’s North-
ern Lights (1979), set in 1915 North Dakota during labor
unrest. It won the best first-film award at the Cannes Film
John Cassavetes was the most famous member of this Festival.
off-Hollywood group. A New York actor, Cassavetes made a Slowly, alternative venues were emerging for indepen-
career on the stage and in films and television. He scraped dent film. In addition to New York’s Anthology Film Ar-
up donations to direct Shadows (1961). “The film you have chive (founded in 1970), several festivals were established
just seen was an improvisation”: this curt closing title an- in Los Angeles (known as Filmex, 1971), Telluride, Colo-
nounced Cassavetes’s key aesthetic decision. The story, rado (1973), and Toronto and Seattle (1975), as well as the
about two Black brothers and their sister in the New York US Film Festival (1978), later known as Sundance. At the
jazz and party scene, was outlined in advance and the dra- same time, enterprising filmmakers organized the Indepen-
matic development of each scene was planned. During film- dent Feature Project (IFP) as an association of independent
ing, however, the actors were free to create their own film artists. The IFP established, in 1979, the Independent
dialogue. Although shooting in a semidocumentary style, Feature Film Market as a showcase for finished films and
with a grimy, grainy look (22.30), Cassavetes also relied on works in progress. The American independent cinema was
deep-focus compositions and poetic interludes familiar from poised for takeoff.
contemporary Hollywood cinema. Shadows won festival During the 1960s, the failing studios searched for new
prizes and led Cassavetes to undertake a pair of ill-fated corporate identities and business models. After some win-
Hollywood projects. He returned to independent cinema, nowing, the 1970s set in place patterns that would dominate
financing his films by acting in mainstream pictures, and American film for the future. A new generation of moguls
became an emblematic figure for younger filmmakers. would partner with a new generation of producer-directors,
 References 473

typified by Lucas and Spielberg, under the auspices of a 5. Gone with the Wind and the Disney animated classics
conglomerate. The studios would concentrate on funding had higher all-time returns, but they were rereleased at
and making must-see movies. Alongside the expanding in- intervals over many years. Still, if rentals are adjusted for
inflation, Gone with the Wind remains the highest-earn-
dustry was an independent sector whose fortunes fluctu- ing film of all time.
ated but whose commitment to alternative stories and styles 6. Quoted in Stephen M. Silverman, The Fox That Got
increased the diversity of US film culture. Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth
Century-Fox (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1988), p. 303.
7. Quoted in Bernard Weinraub, “Luke Skywalker Goes
REFERENCES Home,” in Sally Kline, ed., George Lucas Interviews
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), p. 217.
1. Quoted in Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It 8. Quoted in Michael Goodwin and Naomi Wise, On the
(New York: Knopf, 1997), p. 250. Edge: The Life and Times of Francis Coppola (New York:
2. Quoted in Tag Gallagher, John Ford: The Man and His Morrow, 1989), p. 30.
Films (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 9. Quoted in David Thompson and Ian Christie, eds.,
1986), p. 437. Scorsese on Scorsese (London: Faber and Faber, 1989),
3. Quoted in Peter Cowie, Coppola (London: Faber and pp. 76–77.
Faber, 1990), p. 61. 10. Roger Corman and Jim Jerome, How I Made a Hundred
4. Quoted in Eric Lax, Woody Allen: A Biography (New Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (New York:
York: Knopf, 1991), p. 255. Random House, 1990), p. 34.

We discuss some topics in this chapter further on our blog, Observations on Film Art:
“Replay it again, Clint: Sully and the simulations”
“Who got played? A guest post by Jeff Smith on THE PLAYER”
“HUGO: Scorsese’s birthday present to Georges Méliès”
“Scorsese, ‘pressionist”
Reflections in a crystal eye
Captain Cinephilia: Scorsese strikes back