'New Hollywood' or post-
classical Hollywood refers to the brief time between roughly
1967 (''
Bonnie and Clyde'', ''
The Graduate'') and
1982 (''
One from the Heart'') when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, drastically changing not only the way Hollywood films were produced and marketed, but also the kinds of films that were made. These individuals and the films they made were part of the studio system, and were not "
independent filmmakers" as sometimes they have been erroneously considered.
Background and overview
Following the advent of television and the
Paramount Case, which nearly broke the movie business, traditional Hollywood Studios first tried to lure audiences with spectacle. Widescreen processes and technical improvements, such as
Cinemascope, stereo sound and others, were invented in order to retain the dwindling audience by giving them a larger-than-life experience.
Hence during the Fifties and early Sixties, Hollywood film production was dominated by musicals, historical epics, and other films that benefited from the larger screens, wider framing and improved sound. This proved commercially viable during most of the 1950s. However, by the late Sixties, audience share was dwindling at an alarming rate. Several costly flops, including ''
Cleopatra'' and ''
Hello, Dolly!'' put severe strain on the studios.
A problem the Studios all recognized was that they did not know how to reach the youth audience. By the time the
baby boomer generation was coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, Old Hollywood was hemorrhaging money; they had no idea what the audience wanted.
European art films, especially the
French New Wave, and
Japanese cinema, were all making a splash in America — the huge market of disaffected youth seemed to find something of themselves when they saw movies like
Michelangelo Antonioni's ''
Blowup'', with its oblique narrative structure and full-frontal female nudity. Studio heads were baffled. Therefore, in an attempt to capture that audience, 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.
Characteristics of the New Hollywood films
This new generation of Hollywood filmmaker was
film school-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, or so they hoped. This group of young filmmakers —
actors,
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 an obsessive passion for film itself.
Poster for ''Bonnie & Clyde''
Technically, the greatest change the New Hollywood filmmakers brought to the artform was an emphasis on realism. This happened because these filmmakers happened on the scene just as location shooting was becoming more viable. Because of breakthroughs in film technology, specifically smaller microphones that could be hidden in clothing, lighter cameras that did not require heavy support gear, and simpler post-production systems, the New Hollywood filmmakers could shoot 35mm in exteriors with relative ease. Since location shooting was, by definition, cheaper (no sets need be built to shoot an existing exterior), New Hollywood filmmakers rapidly developed the taste for location shooting, which had the effect of heightening the realism of their films, especially when compared to the artificiality of previous musicals and spectacles. Aside from realism, often their films 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 most important picture for the New Hollywood generation was ''
Bonnie & Clyde''. Produced by
Warren Beatty, its mix of humor and horror, graphic violence and sex, as well as its theme of glamorous disaffected youth was an unqualified hit with audiences. ''
The Graduate'', ''
Easy Rider'' and ''
Midnight Cowboy'' followed in quick succession, all of them major successes, ''Midnight Cowboy'' earning the Academy Award for best picture.
These initial successes paved the way for the studio to relinquish almost complete control to these brash young filmmakers. In the mid-1970s, idiosyncratic, startling original films such as ''
Paper Moon'', ''
Dog Day Afternoon'' 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.
The close of the New Hollywood era
''
Jaws'' in 1975 and '' in 1977, retrospectively, marked the beginning of the end for New Hollywood. With their unprecedented box-office successes,
Steven Spielberg's ''Jaws'' and
George Lucas's ''Star Wars'' jumpstarted Hollywood's
blockbuster mentality, giving studios a new paradigm as to how to make money in this 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 potentially how much money could 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 expensive flops including ''
At Long Last Love,'' ''
New York, New York,'' and ''
Sorcerer'' caused the studios to increase their control over productions.
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'' caused severe financial damage to
United Artists studios, and resulted in its sale to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 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 closed in less than a week, 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 '' 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.
The exploits of the New Hollywood generation are infamously chronicled in the book ''
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'' by
Peter Biskind.
New Hollywood and independent filmmaking
It can often seem that the members of the New Hollywood generation were independent filmmakers. Indeed, some of their members have tacitly signaled that they were the precursors of the independent film movement of the 1990s.
However, this is not the case. The New Hollywood generation was firmly entrenched in the studio system, which financed the development, production and distribution of their films. None of them ever independently financed or independently released a film of their own, or ever worked on an independently financed production during the height of the generation's influence. Seemingly "independent" films such as ''
Taxi Driver'', ''
Midnight Cowboy'', ''
The Last Picture Show'' and others were all studio films: the scripts were based on studio pitches and subsequently paid for by the studios, the production financing was from the studio, and the marketing and distribution of the films were designed and controlled by the studio.
There were only two truly independent movies of the New Hollywood generation: ''
Easy Rider'' in 1969, at the beginning of the period, and Bogdanovich's ''
They All Laughed'', at the end.
Peter Bogdanovich bought back the rights from the studio to his 1980 film and paid for its distribution out of his own pocket, convinced that the picture was better than what the studio believed — he eventually went bankrupt because of this.
Truly independent filmmakers such as
John Cassavetes and
Melvin Van Peebles — who secured outside financing and filmed their own scripts — were never a part of the New Hollywood generation, and should not be considered as such.
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
Cinematographers, editors, and production designers
Producers and executives
Actors
Others
★
Pauline Kael, movie critic
★
Sue Mengers, agent
List of notable New Hollywood films
The following is a chronological list of those films from the New Hollywood period that are generally considered to be seminal or notable. (For a more comprehensive list of films from the period, see
List of films from the New Hollywood era.)
See also
★
Cult classic
Bibliography
Peter Biskind's ''
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls''
External links
★
★
Interview with Peter Biskind, author of ''Easy Riders, Raging Bulls''
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