The Other Hollywood Renaissance

411 Pages·2020·10.71 MB·English

by  R. Barton Palmer, Murray Pomerance, Dominic Lennard

THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD RENAISSANCE
Traditions in American Cinema
Series Editors Linda Badley and R. Barton Palmer
Titles in the series include:
The ‘War on Terror’ and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second
Terence McSweeney
American Postfeminist Cinema: Women, Romance and Contemporary
Culture
Michele Schreiber
In Secrecy’s Shadow: The OSS and CIA in Hollywood Cinema 1941-1979
Simon Willmetts
Indie Reframed: Women’s Filmmaking and Contemporary American
Independent Cinema
Linda Badley, Claire Perkins and Michele Schreiber (eds)
Vampires, Race and Transnational Hollywoods
Dale Hudson
Who’s in the Money? The Great Depression Musicals and Hollywood’s New
Deal
Harvey G. Cohen
Engaging Dialogue: Cinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema
Jennifer O’Meara
Cold War Film Genres
Homer B. Pettey (ed.)
The Style of Sleaze: The American Exploitation Film, 1959–1977
Calum Waddell
The Franchise Era: Managing Media in the Digital Economy
James Fleury, Stephen Mamber, and Bryan Hartzheim (eds)
The Stillness of Solitude: Romanticism and Contemporary American
Independent Film
Michelle Devereaux
The Other Hollywood Renaissance
Dominic Lennard, R. Barton Palmer, and Murray Pomerance (eds)

www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/tiac
THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD
RENAISSANCE
Edited by Dominic Lennard, R. Barton Palmer,
and Murray Pomerance
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the
humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial
and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more
information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© editorial matter and organization Dominic Lennard, R. Barton Palmer,
and Murray Pomerance, 2020
© the chapters their several authors, 2020
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12(2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 10/ 12.5pt Sabon by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire,
and printed and bound in Great Britain.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4744 4264 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 4265 7 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 4267 1 (epub)
The right of Dominic Lennard, R. Barton Palmer, and Murray Pomerance to be
identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights
Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
CONTENTS
List of Figures viii
Notes on the Contributors xvii
The Other Picture Show: An Introduction 1
Dominic Lennard, R. Barton Palmer, and Murray Pomerance
1. Hal Ashby, Gentle Giant 26
Brenda Austin-Smith
2. Remaking Gender in the Early Films of Peter Bogdanovich 44
Douglas McFarland
3. In Extremis: John Boorman’s Cinema of Dislocation 57
Ina Rae Hark

4. John Cassavetes: In Your Face and Off the Grid 71
Rebecca Bell-Metereau

5. “Let Me Love You”: Ambiguous Masculinity in Michael Cimino’s

Melodramas 88
I-Lien Tsay

6. De Palma’s Embattled Red Period: Hitchcock, Gender, Genre, and
Postmodernism 102

Linda Badley
the other hollywood renaissance
7. Escape from Escapism: Bob Fosse and the Hollywood Renaissance 117
Dennis Bingham
8. The Little Deaths of John Frankenheimer 134
Daniel Varndell
9. William Friedkin: Frayed Connections 148
Dominic Lennard
10. Sidney Lumet and the New Hollywood 161
David Desser
11. Terrence Malick’s Emergent Lyricism in Badlands and Days of
Heaven 177
Rick Warner
12. Elaine May: Subverting Machismo “Step by Tiny Step” 189
Kyle Stevens
13. Paul Mazursky: The New Hollywood’s Forgotten Man 204
Lester D. Friedman
14. New Hollywood Crossover: Joan Micklin Silver and the Indie-
Studio Divide 222
Maya Montañez Smukler
15. Mike Nichols and the Hollywood Renaissance: A Cinema of
Cultural Investigation 236
Nancy Roche
16. “There Will be No Questions”: 1970s American Cinema as
Parallax in Alan J. Pakula’s “Paranoia Trilogy” 250
Terence McSweeney
17. Genres of the Modern Mythic in the Films of Sam Peckinpah 265
Daniel Sacco
18. Bob Rafelson’s Ambivalent Authorship 278
Vincent Longo

19. We’ve Never Danced: Alan Rudolph’s Welcome to L.A. and
Remember My Name 296
Steven Rybin
20. Jerry Schatzberg’s Downfall Portraits: His Cinema of Loneliness 308
R. Barton Palmer

21. Inside John Schlesinger Outside 329
Murray Pomerance

vi
contents
22. Fire and Ice: Paul Schrader 345
Constantine Verevis
23. Peter Yates: On Location in the New Hollywood 359
Jonathan Kirshner
Index 371

vii
FIGURES
I.1a The Last Picture Show. (1970, Peter Bogadanovich). Digital
frame enlargement. Courtesy of BBS/Columbia Pictures 1
I.1 I Love My Wife (Mel Stuart, 1970) featured Elliott Gould’s
memorable performance as a disaffected husband who cannot
save his failing marriage. Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy
of Universal Pictures 2
I.2 Robert Redford stars in The Candidate (Michael Ritchie,
1973) as an idealistic politician caught up in the dirty business
of electoral politics. Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of
Redford-Ritchie/Wildwood 4
I.3 A number of auteurist films discovered forgotten corners of
American life, such as the southern coastal island in Martin
Ritt’s Conrack (1974), starring Jon Voight. Digital frame

enlargement. Courtesy of 20th- Century Fox 8
I.4 Second-rate boxers who live on the margins, sometimes in

success but mostly in failure, are the subject of John Huston’s
poignantly realist Fat City (1972). Digital frame enlargement.
Courtesy of Columbia Pictures 17
I.5 Renaissance films often touched on contemporary politics,

as in the chronicling of campus revolt in The Strawberry
Statement (Stuart Hagmann,1970). Digital frame enlargement.

Courtesy of MGM 19
I.6 Women’s dissatisfaction with bourgeois marriage, then taking

viii
figures
shape in second-stage feminism, was dramatized in a number
of Renaissance films such as Diary of a Mad Housewife
(Frank Perry,1970). Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of
Frank Perry Films 23
1.1 Fanny and Elgar come to terms in The Landlord (1970).
Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of Cartier/Mirisch 30
1.2 Harold and Maude’s radical love in Harold and Maude
(1971). Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of Mildred Lewis
and Colin Higgins/Paramount 32
1.3 The “mother-fucking shore patrol,” in The Last Detail (1973).
Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of Columbia/Bright-Persky 34
1.4 Luke and Sally in Coming Home (1978). Digital frame
enlargement. Courtesy of Jerome Hellman Productions 39
2.1 Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd) embraces Duane Jackson
(Jeff Bridges) in The Last Picture Show (1971). Digital frame
enlargement. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures 46
2.2 Judy (Barbra Streisand) alluringly reclined in What’s Up, Doc?
(1972). Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of Warner Bros 50
2.3 The strikingly aware Addie (Tatum O’Neal) in Paper Moon
(1973) Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of Directors
Company/Saticoy/Paramount 55
3.1 Point Blank (1967) re-stages film noir in a modernistic,
dystopian LA. Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of MGM 59
3.2 The banjo virtuoso in Deliverance (1972), deconstructing a
national stereotype. Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of
Warner Bros 62
3.3 Zed returns phallic masculinity to the sterile Vortex in Zardoz
(1974) Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of John Boorman
Productions/20th- Century Fox 67
4.1 Both hilarious and disturbing: men compare their biceps in
Husbands (1970). Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of
Faces Music/Columbia Pictures 72

4.2 Nick (Peter Falk) and (Mabel) Gena Rowlands in A Woman
Under the Influence (1974). Digital frame enlargement.

Courtesy of Faces International Films 77
4.3 The aging actress Myrtle (Gena Rowlands) in Opening Night
(1977), as a stagehand comments on her condition. Digital
frame enlargement. Courtesy of Faces International Films 82

4.4 Gena Rowland as Jeannie in Faces (1968), the entitled male
executive Richard Forst (John Marley) standing behind her.

Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of Faces International
Films/Criterion 85

ix
the other hollywood renaissance
5.1 Criminals-in-arms Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) and John
“Thunderbolt” Doherty (Clint Eastwood) celebrate their
recovery of the bank loot with cigars in Michael Cimino’s
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). Digital frame enlargement.
Courtesy of Malpaso/United Artists 93
5.2 Michael (Robert DeNiro) takes aim in The Deer Hunter
(1978), while his friends Stanley (John Cazale), Axel (Chuck
Aspegren), Nick (Christopher Walken), and John (George
Dzundza) look on in varying states of readiness. Note the
Cadillac still festooned with Just Married decorations from the
previous night’s wedding. Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy
of EMI/Universal Pictures 94
5.3 In Heaven’s Gate (1980), John Irvine (John Hurt) and
James Averill (Kris Kristofferson), members of the Harvard
Class of 1870, participate in commencement. Digital frame
enlargement. Courtesy of United Artists 97
6.1 Peeping Toms: Margot Kidder posing as a voluptuous blind
girl to entrap Lisle Wilson, Candid-Camera style, in Sisters
(1973). Digital frame enlargement. Courtesy of Pressman-
Williams/American International Pictures 107
6.2 Courtly love or incestuous sublime? Geneviève Bujold and
Cliff Robertson embrace in Obsession (1976). Digital frame
enlargement. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures 108
6.3 Split screen: The female gaze is unleashed by Sissy Spacek
at the prom in Carrie (1976). Digital frame enlargement.
Courtesy of Red Bank Films 110
6.4 Blonde confusion: Nancy Allen confronted with Susanna
Clemm in Dressed to Kill (1980). Digital frame enlargement.
Courtesy of Filmways Pictures 112
6.5 Film within the film: Greg Wasson auditions for a porn movie
with Melanie Griffin in Body Double (1984). Digital frame
enlargement. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures 113

6.6 John Travolta is devastated by the assassination of Nancy
Allen in Blow Out (1981). Digital frame enlargement.

Courtesy of Filmways Pictures 115
7.1 Fosse dance moves: down and in. Suzanne Charney and
“The Aloof” dancers in “Rich Man’s Frug” in Sweet
Charity (1969). Fosse may not have realized it yet, but his

eventual preference in film musicals would be for numbers
performed on a stage. Ostensibly a five-and-a-half-minute

series of POV shots, in its widescreen glory, its deadpan wit,
and its application of the “Fred Astaire rule”, the sequence

x