New Hollywood
Film Art
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New Hollywood
In the fifties, the Golden Age of Hollywood ended (we can say that the fall coincided with the arrival of the Golden Age of Television; they are not isolated events).
The studio system collapsed, as did the star system, which together had been the magic formula for making very successful films. The productions with astronomical budgets and megastars were over (not forever). Movies produced with a strictly commercial criterion, as if they were just another product produced in a factory, were coming to an end.
Cinema, inevitably, had to reinvent itself. Something that usually starts out as a problem but ends up turning out to be marvelous.
In the late sixties, productions with more modest budgets appeared and established stars were no longer “essential.” (Although some new actors ended up being megastars thanks to these films.) However, as we can imagine, the reduction of economic resources was replaced by the creativity and talent of new directors and actors.
The directors began to have more importance than the studio producers, and in this new type of films, we can see their imprint, their personal signature, their particular view of the world. The directors not only offered us their look, but also developed their own language to communicate it.
So, the directors were the great creators, and their different ways of narrating enriched filmmaking. It was a trend that had already been gaining ground in Europe since the late 1940’s, with the so-called auteur cinema and the revolutionary French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague).
This reemergence from the rubble of a powerful industry can also be related to another even greater cultural phenomenon that gained strength in those times: the counterculture. The culture of non-conformism was against what was pre-established, against a conservative, materialistic, and consumerist system that had “failed” and provoked a search for new values and new ideals. A non-conformism that generated movements such as the Beatnicks, the hippies, and the sexual revolution.
We find a great example of this countercultural attitude, of this rebellion against traditional values, in the movie Easy Rider, where one motorcyclist tells the other that his choice of life is a symbol of freedom but that this freedom terrifies society. And so these motorcyclists who ride through the depths of the nation are despised, marginalized, beaten, and killed.
The films of the so-called New Hollywood included sexuality, violence, drugs, and all kinds of controversial and morally complex subjects. And this is not only because screenwriters and directors wanted to talk about these subjects but also because they could: 1967, the year of the first films of that new generation, was also the year in which the Hays Code and all its conditions ceased to be in force (see link at the end of the article).
This brilliant period, which produced an immense crop of talented directors, lasted until the end of the seventies, let’s say, until 1980. This is due to the arrival of new blockbusters that some of the directors of that generation began to make, such as George Lucas with Star Wars (1977) or Spielberg with Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Image: Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper ride their motorcycles along the roads of freedom in Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
Representative films:
The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
M.A.S.H. (Robert Altman, 1970)
The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)
Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
Recommended links:
The Golden Age of Hollywood (Classic Hollywood Cinema).
The Best American Movies in History according to the American Film Institute.
Film d’auteur (Auteur cinema).
The First Comedy Film of the History of Cinema.
Charles Chaplin and his character Charlot.
You can also find more material using the search engine.
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