NEW HOLLYWOOD
New Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", or "The Hollywood Renaissance", refers to a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in the United States. They influenced the types of films produced, their production and marketing, and the way major studios approached film-making.
In New Hollywood films, the film director, rather than the studio, took on a key auteur role.
The Studio system had fallen into decline due to some high profile legal cases which ended their monopoly and the competition create by television. They were no longer making films the new young suburban audience wanted to see ,
Fortunately there was a new wave of film directors( often just out of film school) who could identify more with the audience and who were quickly given the power and money to make their original films .
The films made in this movement are stylistically characterized in that their narrative often strongly deviated from classical norms and conventions and were more experimental in style. Endings tended to be downbeat, genre conventions subverted, there were few sequels or franchises, character actors and unknown actors were favoured instead of stars and films were often violent and linked to themes of rebellion, paranoia and social conflict as well as responding to key events and issues such as Watergate, youth culture ,the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war.
The Studio system had fallen into decline due to some high profile legal cases which ended their monopoly and the competition create by television. They were no longer making films the new young suburban audience wanted to see ,
Fortunately there was a new wave of film directors( often just out of film school) who could identify more with the audience and who were quickly given the power and money to make their original films .
The films made in this movement are stylistically characterized in that their narrative often strongly deviated from classical norms and conventions and were more experimental in style. Endings tended to be downbeat, genre conventions subverted, there were few sequels or franchises, character actors and unknown actors were favoured instead of stars and films were often violent and linked to themes of rebellion, paranoia and social conflict as well as responding to key events and issues such as Watergate, youth culture ,the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war.
Successful films of the early New Hollywood era include Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Night of the Living Dead, The Wild Bunch, and Easy Rider, The director as auteur and independent filmmaking is still in existence but usually more controlled by the studio.
Towards the end of the 1970s there were several large financial failures as directors gained more (too much ?) power and spent more money on more personal and less obviously commercial films
( Apocalypse Now, Heaven's Gate)This eventually led to the studios taking back control and taking less risks on unpredictable auteur filmmakers.
Some filmmakers of the era created hugely successful films ( Jaws and Star Wars) and this became the template for new blockbuster filmmaking in the 1980s and beyond. Blockbustere filmmaking was a return to more traditional studio films and focused on maximum profits and large-scale sequels, high concept film franchises in simple genres . This can be seen as influence on mainstream film production today.
SUMMARY VIDEO ON NEW HOLLYWOOD and the end of the studio system
OTHER RESOURCES
The rise and fall of the auteur in New Hollywood ( short doc)
French New Wave and its influence on Scorsese and New Hollywood ( video essay)
EASY RIDERS RAGING BULLS Feature history on New Hollywood auteurs : look a t part one
FEATURE LENGTH doc on NEW HOLLYWOOD
Examples of New Hollywood films
Bonnie and Clyde 1967 ( Arthur Penn)
The Graduate 1967 ( Mike Nichols)
Easy Rider 1969 ( Dennis Hopper)
Badlands 1973 ( Terence Malick)
The Godfather 1972 ( Francis Ford Coppola)
American Graffiti 1973 (George Lucas)
The Exorcist 1973 ( William Friedkin) ( explicit content )
Mean Streets 1973 Martin Scorsese
The Conversation 1974 ( Francis Ford Coppola )
The Godfather 2 1974 ( Francis Ford Coppola )
The Parallax View 1974 ( Alan Pakula )
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest 1975 ( Milos Forman)
Taxi Driver 1976 ( Martin Sccorsese )
The Deer Hunter 1978 ( Michael Cimino )
Apocalypse Now 1979 (Francis Ford Coppola )
During the later part of the New Hollywood era, the new era of blockbusters was created which changed the industry again.....
Jaws 1975 ( Steven Spielberg )
Star Wars 1977 ( George Lucas )
