New Wave, New Hollywood

Reassessment, Recovery, and Legacy

Nathan Abrams, Gregory Frame, Nathan Abrams, Gregory Frame, Gregory Frame, Nathan Abrams

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501360398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

As a period of film history, The American New Wave (ordinarily understood as beginning in 1967 and ending in 1980) remains a preoccupation for scholars and audiences alike. In traditional accounts, it is considered to be bookended by two periods of conservatism, and viewed as a (brief) period of explosive creativity within the Hollywood system. From Bonnie and Clyde to Heaven's Gate, it produced films that continue to be watched, discussed, analysed and poured over. It has, however, also become rigidly defined as a cinema of director-auteurs who made a number of aesthetically and politically significant films. This has led to marginalization and exclusion of many important artists and filmmakers, as well as a temporal rigidity about what and who is considered part of the 'New Wave proper'. This collection seeks to reinvigorate debate around this area of film history. It also looks in part to demonstrate the legacy of aesthetic experimentation and political radicalism after 1980 as part of the 'legacy' of the New Wave. Thanks to important new work that questions received scholarly wisdom, reveals previously marginalised filmmakers (and the films they made), considers new genres, personnel, and films under the banner of 'New Wave, New Hollywood', and reevaluates the traditional approaches and perspectives on the films that have enjoyed most critical attention, New Wave, New Hollywood: Reassessment, Recovery, Legacy looks to begin a new discussion about Hollywood cinema after 1967.

1 Introduction

Nathan Abrams and Gregory Frame

When in the summer of 2016 we discussed holding a conference the following year to launch the new Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at Bangor University, the subject seemed obvious. The year 2017 would mark the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the American New Wave. The mythology of the New Wave or, if you prefer, “The Hollywood Renaissance” or “New Hollywood” has solidified around the idea that 1967 represented a radical and definitive break from that which came before. The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) and Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) embodied something new in American cinema: rejecting the splashy, big-budget family entertainment that had dominated in the years following the Second World War, breaking the shackles of the stringent and moralistic Production Code, and finding inspiration from the stylistic swagger of European cinema, the young, maverick filmmakers of this “New Wave” aimed to deliver something different. More realistic, more alive to the politically turbulent times in which they were working, more experimental and challenging in terms of form, style, and narrative.

This is the story most commonly told of the American New Wave. It has been rehearsed and repeated by critics and scholars. Our absorption of this narrative of the New Wave reflects a certain historical naivete and, despite admiration for the films of the period, a level of ignorance regarding the debates that continue to rage about them. What was revealed through the development of the conference, the variety of papers that were delivered, and the subsequent assembly of this collection is that there remains a great deal, despite the plethora of writing about it, to be said about the New Wave (not least a debate about what would constitute an appropriate moniker). When did it start and end, for can it really be the case that it begins definitively with the release of Bonnie and Clyde, and is concluded by the spectacular failure of Heaven’s Gate (Michael Cimino) in 1980? What would constitute an appropriate New Wave canon, given that the films that dominate discussion in this area are characterized by a rather narrow set of themes and aesthetic features? Relatedly, and most importantly, who gets to be a part of this story, and who gets to tell it? In this introduction, we seek to examine the parameters of this debate and illustrate how the chapters that follow seek to respond to, and challenge, the dominant discourse.

What, and When?

What is implied by the various names by which the New Wave goes? The term “New Wave” enables what was produced in the American cinema during this period to ally itself to the innovative films emerging out of a variety of other national contexts: most obviously, the films made in the United States owed a great deal to the French New Wave, though the very discourse of what constitutes a “wave” that is “new” demands some attention. New Hollywood is also a complex designation, as it often refers both to the idiosyncratic, challenging work of the late 1960s and early 1970s as well as to the more self-consciously popular and populist entertainment produced from the middle of the decade onward (as well as to the films a reconfigured corporate Hollywood produced through the 1980s and beyond). The Hollywood Renaissance, which has been employed by other prominent scholars in the area, could also be interpreted as reiterating the mythological construction of the films, most often associated with it being emblematic of a creative rebirth after a long period of aesthetically unchallenging, creatively moribund filmmaking. However, we will unpack here the various implications and usages of the different terms.

As all three terms have their benefits and drawbacks, it is tempting to pick one and stick with it. The recent scholarship examining the period is illuminating in its assessment of the current thinking in this aspect of the debate. Peter Krämer and Yannis Tzioumakis’s volume addresses the problematics of the different terms and focuses particularly on the use of “new,” a designation regularly employed by critics to describe American cinema from the late 1940s onward. Their argument raises significant issues about the appropriateness of any of the terms employed here: that innovation in postwar Hollywood was an ongoing process, and that it is impossible to say definitively that one film (or set of films) represented a definitive break with the past. As they suggest, “one has to be very cautious about making claims concerning fundamental breaks and turning points in American film history.”¹ Their justification for the use of the term The Hollywood Renaissance derives principally from the famous Time magazine cover story in December 1967 that featured Bonnie and Clyde prominently and spoke of a new artistic flourishing in American filmmaking. Geoff King and David Cook have also used the term. For King, The Hollywood Renaissance is employed to differentiate the films and filmmakers from the earlier period (1967–74), before the success of Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), the advent of the modern blockbuster, and the recovery and expansion of corporate Hollywood. For Cook, the term “Renaissance” is used to identify the period of auteurism’s greatest flourishing in Hollywood, representing the creative apex for many of the directors most closely associated with it, followed by an overall decline. Krämer and Tzioumakis make a compelling case for the use of the term The Hollywood Renaissance to describe Hollywood in this period. Unlike King and Cook, they make clear that they are focused on a particular and rather small subset of American films in relation to it, and they leave the time frame under consideration open. They make an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the period through their close attention to the industrial conditions, production processes, and collaborative relationships between the creative personnel that produced some of the most important films of the time. Their departure from the ahistorical auteurist discourse that has dominated the study of Hollywood’s “Renaissance” represents an important methodological step in the ongoing reevaluation and reappraisal of this period. However, this volume seeks a more expansive examination of the American cinema to incorporate consideration of the period’s legacies and blind spots. Therefore, the term “Renaissance,” wedded as it is to the analysis of the work of the films and filmmakers about which much has been said, is not the most appropriate one for us to use.

The New Hollywood, favored by Jonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis in their recent volume, presents its own problems. Their justification for its use, however, is reasonable enough, built on the assessment that some of the films produced from 1967 until 1976 did represent a break with the past, citing not only Bonnie and Clyde but also the violence of The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967), the temporally experimental Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), and the youthful rebellion of The Graduate, as indicative of this newness. Their determination of 1976 as the end of New Hollywood draws on an analysis of wider political forces, particularly the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Richard Nixon, the election of Jimmy Carter, and the later conservative resurgence that resulted in Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980. Cinematically, the triumph of underdog Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976) at the 1977 Academy Awards against its apparently more prestigious, ambitious competitors Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976), and All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) symbolized for them the relative decline of the New Wave and a shift in emphasis toward a New Hollywood centered on blockbusters and more conservative, traditional forms of entertainment.² J. Hoberman’s contribution to the collection is illuminating in this regard, citing 1976 as an emblematic moment, which began with the release of Taxi Driver—“Hollywood’s last great feel-bad movie” (this claim is rather grandiose, and very debatable)—and ending with the hugely successful debut of Rocky, “which created the template for the feel-good movies that would endure for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond.”³ There is a virtue in the neatness of this story. Though they acknowledge the potential slippages at either end of this period—the adaptation of the term “New Hollywood” to incorporate consideration of the modern blockbuster, and the continued growth of multinational media conglomerates in the early twenty-first century of which the old studios formed only a small part—Kirshner and Lewis remain attached to this somewhat definitive endpoint.

Because our collection is more interested in recovering those who have been marginalized and ignored by the plentiful studies of the period that have been conducted thus far, as well as exploring the long tail of the period’s impact and influence, we do not consider the term to be that useful on its own. If New Hollywood is both the creative flourishing of auteurist cinema from 1967 to 1976 and the subsequent relentless growth and expansion of a revitalized, corporatized industry built on the financial logic of the blockbuster thereafter, where do the artists working at the margins fit in? And what of the spirit of creative innovation and politicized challenge that survived in American cinema after Jaws and Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)?

It is, for this reason, this volume prefers to use both the terms New Wave and New Hollywood in its title and, for our contributors, they are employed interchangeably depending on the context about which they are writing. Some of the essays featured here are interested in critical reassessments of the films about which much has already been written, and would ordinarily fit straightforwardly under any of the three traditional designations. However, in looking at them from slightly different angles in their considerations of race, gender, and ethnicity, and emphasizing the involvement of important figures other than the director, they essentially challenge the received wisdom about much of this work. Similarly, in the focus on “genre” films that might otherwise fit easily within the “New Hollywood” designation, some chapters examine critically marginalized and neglected aspects of the period’s output, which embodied the same kinds of aesthetic experimentation and innovation present in their more celebrated contemporary counterparts. The second part of the collection’s mission, therefore, is to recover particular films, filmmakers, and creative artists from the margins of history—the screenwriters, production designers, and certain directors who have not received the level of attention they deserve. They were part of the New Wave in its initial flourishing, and many of them also continued to work in substantial and meaningful ways through the New Hollywood period.

Related to this, the final, and perhaps most significant, aspect of our purpose is to determine the legacy of the New Wave and New Hollywood. Here we move into a consideration of periodization, and what constitutes the appropriate time frame for analysis. It would seem the term one employs to describe the period—New Wave, New Hollywood, Hollywood Renaissance—is contingent on when one considers it to have begun and ended. The beginning seems obvious: Time magazine’s cover story on December 8, 1967. This is this moment at which Kirshner and Lewis, and Krämer and Tzioumakis, begin their introductions, though the latter qualify this in relation to the important amendments made to the Production Code in 1966 and the “special arrangements” made for the release of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966).⁴ Jeff Menne’s recent Post-Fordist Cinema offers a quite radical reconsideration of this aspect of the debate, arguing that many of the seeds that blossomed into the New Wave’s biggest successes, such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, were planted a considerable time before 1967. Similarly, he argues that the rigid focus on aesthetic debates has “le...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Great Shift in Hollywood Cinema: Men, Women, and Genre Revisionism of the American New Wave
• 3 Formal Radicalism versus Radical Representation: Reassessing The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) and Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)
• 4 A Wave of Their Own: How Jewish Filmmakers Invented the New Hollywood
• 5 New Hollywood’s “Zany Godards”: A “Shirley” Serious Assessment of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker
• 6 Design as Authorship: Polly Platt’s New Hollywood Aesthetic
• 7 “The Ultimate Fusion of Commerce and Art”: Waldo Salt and Screenwriting in the 1970s
• 8 Expanding the Past: Julie Dash and Zora Neale Hurston, African American Women Filmmakers of New Hollywood and Early Cinema
• 9 Lost in the Landscape: The Legacy of Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970) on the Contemporary American Independent Female Road Movie
• 10 The New Wave in the New Millennium: Joker, Taxi Driver, Nostalgia, and Trumpian Politics
• 11 Indie Courtship: Pursuing the American New Wave
• 12 Afterword: New Wave, New Hollywood, New Research
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Copyright Page