E the Other Hollywood Renaissance
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EDITED BY DOMINIC LENNARD, R. BARTON PALMER AND, PALMER BARTON R. Traditions in American Cinema POMERANCE MURRAY Series Editors: Linda Badley and R. Barton Palmer This series explores a wide range of traditions in American cinema which are in need of introduction, investigation or critical reassessment. It emphasises the multiplicity rather than the supposed homogeneity of studio-era and independent filmmaking, making a case that the American cinema is more diverse than some accounts might suggest. THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD RENAISSANCE In the late 1960s, the collapse of the classic Hollywood studio system led in part, and for less than a decade, to a production trend heavily influenced by the international art cinema. Reflecting a new self-consciousness in the US about the national film patrimony, RENAISSANCE HOLLYWOOD THE OTHER this period is known as the Hollywood Renaissance. However, critical study of the period is generally associated with its so-called principal auteurs, slighting a number of established and emerging directors who were responsible for many of the era’s most innovative and artistically successful releases. With contributions from leading film scholars, this book provides a revisionist account EDITED BY DOMINIC LENNARD, R. BARTON PALMER, of this creative resurgence by discussing and memorializing twenty-four directors of note who have not yet been given a proper place in the larger history of the period. Including AND MURRAY POMERANCE filmmakers such as Hal Ashby, John Frankenheimer, Mike Nichols, and Joan Micklin Silver, this more expansive approach to the auteurism of the late 1960s and 1970s seems not only appropriate but pressing – a necessary element of the re-evaluation of “Hollywood” with THE OTHER which cinema studies has been preoccupied under the challenges posed by the emergence and flourishing of new media. HOLLYWOOD RENAISSANCE Dominic Lennard is a Teaching Fellow in the Pre-Degree Programs at the University of Tasmania. He is the author of Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film (2014) and Brute Force: Animal Horror Movies (2019). R. Barton Palmer is the Calhoun Lemon Professor emeritus at Clemson University, where he founded the World Cinema program. He is the author or editor of more than fifty books on film and literary subjects from various academic presses, including, both with Homer Pettey, Film Noir and International Film Noir (EUP, 2016). Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Toronto. He is the author of Virtuoso: Screen Performance and the Actor’s Magic (2019), A Dream of Hitchcock (2019), and Cinema, If You Please (EUP, 2018), amongst many others. Cover image: Serpico (1973). Directed by Sidney Lumet. Shown: Al Pacino © Paramount Pictures/Photofest Cover design: Stuart Dalziel Edinburgh 2428 eup Lennard et al_cmyk_PPC.indd 1 28/05/2020 18:10 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.