The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition) PDF
Preview The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition)
FFIILLMM FFIILLMM For many lovers of film, American cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s – dubbed the New Hollywood – has remained a Golden Age. T As the old studio system gave way to a new gen- H CCUULLTTUURREE E CCUULLTTUURREE eration of American auteurs, directors such as L Monte Hellman, Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Rafel- A S son, Martin Scorsese, but also Robert Altman, IN TRANSITION T IN TRANSITION James Toback, Terrence Malick and Barbara Loden G R helped create an independent cinema that gave E America a different voice in the world and a dif- A T ferent vision to itself. The protests against the A Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and M E feminism saw the emergence of an entirely dif- R I ferent political culture, reflected in movies that C A may not always have been successful N TThhee with the mass public, but were soon P recognized as audacious, creative and IC off-beat by the critics. Many of the films T U have subsequently become classics. R The Last Great Picture Showbrings E LLaasstt GGrreeaatt S together essays by scholars and writers H who chart the changing evaluations of O W this American cinema of the 1970s, some- AAmmeerriiccaann times referred to as the decade of the E lost generation, but now more and more L S also recognised as the first of several A ‘New Hollywoods’, without which the cin- E S ema of Francis Coppola, Steven Spiel- S PPiiccttuurree E berg, Robert Zemeckis, Tim Burton or R Quentin Tarantino could not have come , H into being. O R W NNEEWW SShhooww A T H HHOOLLLLYYWWOOOODD A N D CCIINNEEMMAA IINN ISBN90-5356-631-7 K IN TTHHEE 11997700SS EEDDIITTEEDD BBYY G TTHHOOMMAASS EELLSSAAEESSSSEERR AALLEEXXAANNDDEERR HHOORRWWAATTHH 9 789053 566317 NNOOEELL KKIINNGG AAmmsstteerrddaamm UUnniivveerrssiittyy PPrreessss AAmmsstteerrddaamm UUnniivveerrssiittyy PPrreessss WWW.AUP.NL The Last Great American Picture Show The Last Great American Picture Show New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s edited by Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath and Noel King Amsterdam University Press Frontandbackcoverillustration:FayeDunawayinBonnieandClyde(1967, Arthur Penn) Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out:japes, Amsterdam isbn9053564934(hardcover) isbn9053566317(paperback) nur674 © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam,2004 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,nopartofthisbookmaybereproduced,storedinorintroducedintoa retrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans(electronic,me- chanical,photocopying,recordingorotherwise)withoutthewrittenpermis- sion of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. TableofContents 5 Table of Contents Part One Introductions The Impure Cinema: New Hollywood 1967-1976 9 Alexander Horwath ”The Last Good Time We Ever Had”: Remembering the New Hollywood Cinema 19 Noel King American Auteur Cinema: The Last – or First – Great Picture Show 37 Thomas Elsaesser Part Two Histories The Decade When Movies Mattered 73 David Thomson A Walking Contradiction (Partly Truth and Partly Fiction) 83 Alexander Horwath The Exploitation Generation. or: How Marginal Movies Came in from the Cold 107 Maitland McDonagh New Hollywood and the Sixties Melting Pot 131 Jonathan Rosenbaum Part Three People and Places Dinosaurs in the Age of the Cinemobile 155 Richard T. Jameson ”The Cylinders Were Whispering My Name”: The Films of Monte Hellman 165 Kent Jones 6 The Last Great American Picture Show Nashville contra Jaws, or “The Imagination of Disaster” Revisited 195 J. Hoberman For Wanda 223 Bérénice Reynaud Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: The Uneasy Ride of Hollywood and Rock 249 Howard Hampton Auteurism and War-teurism: Terrence Malick’s War Movie 267 Dana Polan Part Four Critical Debates The Pathos of Failure: American Films in the 1970s: Notes on the Unmotivated Hero 279 Thomas Elsaesser Trapped in the Affection Image: Hollywood’s Post-traumatic Cycle (1970-1976) 293 Christian Keathley Grim Fascination: Fingers, James Toback and 1970s American Cinema 309 Adrian Martin Allegories of Post-Fordism in 1970s New Hollywood: Countercultural Combat Films and Conspiracy Thrillers as Genre Recycling 333 Drehli Robnik Bibliography 359 List of Contributors 371 Pictures (with credits) 375 Index of Film Titles 377 Part One Introductions The Impure Cinema: New Hollywood 1967-1976 Alexander Horwath So you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream; onto a network by which X number of Americans are truly communicating whilst reserving their lies, recita- tions of routine, arid betrayals of spiritual poverty, for the official government de- livery system; maybe even onto a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie.1 The title of this book suggests a certain cultural pessimism. It talks about a Golden Age and a closed chapter of history: The Last Great American Picture Show.Generally,demarcationsofthissortarehardtojustifyandaremoreofa hindrancetoanopenengagementwithfilms.Theytendtooriginateinthero- manticnotionthatculturalhistoryunfoldsindiscreteepisodes(”narratives”), andtheyoftenreflecttheformativeinfluencesoftheauthor.Ifyouhavecome ofageasacinema-goerduringtheheydayofNewHollywoodcinema–some- timebetweenBonnieandClydeandTaxiDriver–you’veprobablyexperi- enced the main brands of post-1970s American cinema by necessity as less rich, less intelligent, less political, as retrograde. Myownfirstexperiencesofthecinemastandincontrasttothisaccount– evenif,intheend,theyledtosimilarconclusions.Istartedtogothemovies regularlyattheendoftheSeventies.StarWars,whichIsawsixorseventimes during 1977/78, propelled this habit. It’s a film that fairly exactly marks the pointatwhichpublicdiscourseandpopularcinemaintheUnitedStatesun- derwentacrucialshiftinemphasis.TowardstheendoftheSeventies,thein- creasinglycomplexnarrativenegotiationof(bothfictionalandveryreal)con- tradictions and conflicts started to recede behind the phantasms of a neo- conservativediscourseofre-mythologisation,re-evangelisationandre-milita- risation, gradually disappearing from view altogether in the course of the Reaganiteera.Soinasensemyfirstcinemawasalready“post-classical”2and post-modern–acinemaofhyper-genres,oftenaccompaniedbyanironicaffir- mation of shop-worn myths and relying more on textures, surfaces, aural-
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