Hollywood's Last Golden Age

Jonathan Kirshner

Description

Kirshner's commentary on these and other films is stimulating...Kirshner's book provides intriguing insights for anyone interested in the relation between film and wider culture.The Journal of American CultureBetween 1967 and 1976 a number of extraordinary factors converged to produce an uncommonly adventurous era in the history of American film. The end of censorship, the decline of the studio system, economic changes in the industry, and demographic shifts among audiences, filmmakers, and critics created an unprecedented opportunity for a new type of Hollywood movie, one that Jonathan Kirshner identifies as the "seventies film." In Hollywood's Last Golden Age, Kirshner shows the ways in which key films from this periodincluding Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Graduate, and Nashville, as well as underappreciated films such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Klute, and Night Moveswere important works of art in continuous dialogue with the political, social, personal, and philosophical issues of their times.These "seventies films" reflected the era's social and political upheavals: the civil rights movement, the domestic consequences of the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, the end of the long postwar economic boom, the Shakespearean saga of the Nixon Administration and Watergate. Hollywood films, in this brief, exceptional moment, embraced a new aesthetic and a new approach to storytelling, creating self-consciously gritty, character-driven explorations of moral and narrative ambiguity. Although the rise of the blockbuster in the second half of the 1970s largely ended Hollywood's embrace of more challenging films, Kirshner argues that seventies filmmakers showed that it was possible to combine commercial entertainment with serious explorations of politics, society, and characters' interior lives.

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• History of the Americas
• History of film
• États-Unis
• Digital

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801465840
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

HOLLYWOOD’S LAST GOLDEN AGE

HOLLYWOOD’S LAST GOLDEN AGE

POLITICS, SOCIETY, AND THE SEVENTIES FILM IN AMERICA

JONATHAN KIRSHNER

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2013 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Kirshner, Jonathan.  Hollywood’s last golden age : politics, society, and the seventies film in America / Jonathan Kirshner.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801451348 (cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN 9780801478161 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Motion pictures—United States—History—20th century.2. Motion pictures—Social aspects—United States. 3. United States—Social conditions—1960–1980. I. Title.  PN1993.5.U65K56 2013  791.430973—dc23 2012016501

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Cloth printing Paperback printing

10 9 8 10 9 8

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Esty, the one she wanted

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Prologue 1. Before the Flood 2. Talkin’ ’bout My Generation 3. 1968, Nixon, and the Inward Turn

4. The Personal Is Political

5. Crumbling Cities and Revisionist History 6. Privacy, Paranoia, Disillusion, and Betrayal 7. White Knights in Existential Despair 8. Businessmen Drink My Wine Appendix: 100 Seventies Films of the Last Golden Age Notes Index

ix 1 4 23 52 76 102 133 166 189 217 233 261

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In working on a book that crosses disciplinary boundaries, my first debt is to my home institution, the Government Department at Cornell University. Among its great strengths is that it has always encouraged faculty to pursue their intellectual interests, wherever they might lead. Many of the ideas in this book were developed over the years in my seminar “The Politics of the Seventies Film,” and in various summer courses I taught at Cornell’s Adult University. (Ted Lowi also kindly agreed to coteach a seminar with me on the politics of the 1960s, which he must have known was really my way of taking a course from him.) I have also benefited enormously from the gener osity of scholars and friends who commented on various aspects of this work from the perspective of their own areas of expertise. These include Glenn Altschuler, David DeVries, Mark Feeney, Lester Friedman, Heather Hender shot, Michael JonesCorrea, Mary Katzenstein, Fred Logevall, Karl Mueller, and David Simon. It has also been a pleasure working with Cornell University Press; the commentary, enthusiasm, and close attention to detail of my editor, Michael McGandy, has made this a better book. I am particularly indebted to two anonymous referees for their extremely thoughtful readings and excellent sug gestions, and for additional comments, suggestions, and support from other members of the production and editorial team at the Press. I am especially grateful to the late Arthur Penn, who graciously received me in his home to spend a few hours talking about his filmNight Moves,and to Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Jennifer Warren for taking the time to talk with me about some of their seventies experiences as well. I also thank Amy Sloper at