Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In the year 1966, six films were released with the designation 'Suggested for Mature Audiences', with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? credited with ushering in more permissive and mature content. Almost a year later, the December 8, 1967 cover of Time featured a picture from Bonnie and Clyde with the somewhat sensationalist headline: 'The New Cinema: Violence... Sex... Art'. Two years later, the MPAA Ratings System were put into place - acknowledging the success and generational change in the film industry with younger executives and directors adopting a new approach to mainstream filmmaking. Over fifty years on, Yannis Tzioumakis and Peter Kramer's collection on one of the most explosive eras of Hollywood history examines 13 films from this period, situating each in its historical and political context with reference to important filmmakers, stars, production trends and organisations.
The Hollywood Renaissance investigates these changes in the American film industry and American culture of the mid-1960s which made the Hollywood Renaissance possible. Concluding with a look at the legacy of the Hollywood Renaissance on contemporary American cinema, the volume explores both its aftermath in the late 1970s and the arguments about the emergence of the 'New New Hollywood' with its emphasis on the production of blockbuster by an increasingly conglomerated Hollywood majors and its impact on what became known as American independent or indie cinema.
Synopsis
In December 1967, Time magazine put Bonnie and Clyde on its cover and proudly declared that Hollywood cinema was undergoing a 'renaissance'. For the next few years, a wide range of formally and thematically challenging films were produced at the very centre of the American film industry, often (but by no means always) combining success at the box office with huge critical acclaim, both then and later. This collection brings together acknowledged experts on American cinema to examine thirteen key films from the years 1966 to 1974, starting with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a major studio release which was in effect exempted from Hollywood's Production Code and thus helped to liberate American filmmaking from (self-)censorship. Long-standing taboos to do with sex, violence, race relations, drugs, politics, religion and much else could now be broken, often in conjunction with extensive stylistic experimentation. Whereas most previous scholarship has examined these developments through the prism of auteurism, with its tight focus on film directors and their oeuvres, the contributors to this collection also carefully examine production histories and processes. In doing so they pay particular attention to the economic underpinnings and collaborative nature of filmmaking, the influence of European art cinema as well as of exploitation, experimental and underground films, and the connections between cinema and other media (notably publishing, music and theatre). Several chapters show how the innovations of the Hollywood Renaissance relate to further changes in American cinema from the mid-1970s onwards.