Reappraising the Renaissance

Reappraising the Renaissance The New Hollywood in Industrial and Critical Context Nicholas Godfrey Bachelor of Arts (Honours) A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2014 Department of Screen and Media School of Humanities and Creative Arts Flinders University South Australia i ii Contents Introduction… 1 The New Hollywood that Couldn’t… 1 Aims and Context: Which New Hollywood?... 8 Chapter One: Easy Rider… 22 Chapter Two: Variations on a Theme - Five Easy Riders… 54 Part I: Five Easy Pieces... 56 Part II: Two-Lane Blacktop… 79 Part III: Vanishing Point… 126 Part IV: Little Fauss and Big Halsy… 149 Part V: Adam at 6 A.M…. 162 Chapter Three: Politicising Genre… 175 Part I: Dirty Harry… 179 Part II: The French Connection… 202 Chapter Four: The Limits of Auteurism… 222 Part I: The Last Movie… 222 Part II: The Hired Hand… 254 Conclusion… 278 Bibliography and Filmography… 293 iii iv Thesis Abstract This thesis offers a reappraisal of the “New Hollywood” of the late 1960s and early 1970s that aims to move beyond the currently accepted reductive historical models. It challenges many of the assumptions underlying prevailing accounts of the period, including the makeup of the orthodox “canon” of New Hollywood movies, the time frame within which the movies were contained, and the role played by the critical establishment in determining the ways in which the movies of the period were understood. Bringing together industrial context, textual analysis and critical (re)interpretation, it examines the complex interplay of factors that allowed a movie such as Easy Rider to achieve commercial and canonical success, while so many of its contemporaries and imitators failed to make an impact, either at the box office or within the annals of film history. Taking the cultural and industrial impact of Easy Rider as its starting point, the thesis identifies a number of unifying characteristics shared by the youth-cult road movies spawned in the wake of Hopper’s film. While these films were unable to replicate Easy Rider’s commercial success, the thesis explores the partial reappraisal of this cycle, and its significance within the critically-constructed New Hollywood canon. The contemporaneous violent cop cycle of urban thrillers elicited highly politicised responses from mainstream film critics in 1971. An examination of the differing stylistic practices, adherence to generic convention and modes of stardom in Dirty Harry and The French Connection reveals both these films to be hybrid works that do not comfortably fit the New Hollywood mould, in turn determining the legacies enjoyed by these films. The limitations of the New Hollywood canon are similarly tested by The Last Movie and The Hired Hand (both 1971). As commercial and critical failures that v inspired no further production cycles, these films contrast markedly with 1971's more stylistically conservative commercial successes such as The Last Picture Show. Belying the myth of auteurism that has become central to New Hollywood lore, it becomes clear that the Classical generic modes of Old Hollywood endured within the New Hollywood moment. By 1971, American film critics had already developed a set of aesthetic parameters that determined the conditions of entry to the rapidly- codifying New Hollywood pantheon. The arguments in this thesis provide the basis for a broader and more contextualised reappraisal of the transition from Classical to contemporary modes of production. vi Declaration I certify that this thesis does not incorporate without acknowledgment any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any university; and that to the best of my knowledge and belief it does not contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text. vii viii Acknowledgements This thesis could not have been completed without the help of the following individuals: My principal supervisor Richard Maltby was extremely generous with his time and his vast repository of knowledge, and was always on hand to offer an erudite turn of phrase to lead me down avenues I would otherwise not have considered. I would not have undertaken this research project without the encouragement and enthusiasm of my secondary supervisor, Ruth Vasey, and without her pugilistic vigour and incredible attention to detail at the eleventh hour, I may well not have finished it. To my family, especially my parents Julia and Stephen, for their unflagging support, and to my partner Louise Berlecky, whose patience and good humour spanned the duration of this project, I extend my gratitude. ix x Introduction: The New Hollywood That Couldn’t Every age need not be a renaissance; it is only necessary for our own to be one. To that end, critics and audiences create their own masterpieces and their own masters... We are not, as yet, living in a renaissance.1 -Stefan Kanfer, 1970 In recent years, the period of film history informally known as the New Hollywood has become an increasingly visible area of inquiry. Nick Heffernan neatly summarises the typical conception of the New Hollywood era, dubbing it a “brief flowering of politically and culturally radical film-making that blossomed with the decline of the traditional movie mass audience in the mid-1960s and withered with the arrival of the big-budget blockbuster in the mid-1970s”.2 This now-familiar narrative, as typified by Peter Biskind’s 1998 Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, envisions a New Hollywood era spanning the decade from 1967-1977, prompted by heavy financial losses incurred through over-investment in historical epics and large-scale musicals throughout the mid-1960s, and the loss of the mass audience to television.3 In response, the major motion picture companies began investing in lower-budget, generically- unconventional films with untried directors granted new freedom with the collapse of the Motion Picture Code in the mid-1960s. Under this model, the New Hollywood begins with the films Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, 1 Stefan Kanfer, “I: Pick of the Litter", in Joseph Morgenstern and Stefan Kanfer (eds.), Film 69/70 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 26. 2 Nick Heffernan, “The Last Movie and the Critique of Imperialism”, Film International, Vol. 4, No. 3 (July 2006), p. 15. 3 Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex ‘n’ Drugs ‘n’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (London: Bloomsbury, 1999). 1 1967) and The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols, Embassy Pictures, 1967), and is closed off with Star Wars (dir. George Lucas, Twentieth Century Fox, 1977) and the associated rise of the blockbuster. While most critical considerations of this body of films offer either broad industrial histories, or auteurist writings focusing on the careers of individual directors, what is yet to emerge is an integrated formal/historical study of the films of the period that strives to identify the characteristics that distinguish New Hollywood films from the Classical Hollywood cinema that preceded it. There is also a dearth of analysis of the critical and discursive environment into which these movies were released, and the extent to which these commentaries may have influenced their reception and influence. To that end, my project seeks to undertake a formal analysis of these films themselves, linking aesthetic outcomes to industrial production practice. I aim to integrate formal analysis with a consideration of the films, and the secondary materials associated with their distribution and exhibition, as historically and industrially determined cultural artefacts. A central aim of my thesis is to demonstrate the tightly bound links between industrial production practice and critical and audience reception. While box-office success is the dominant factor in determining the persistence of a film cycle, the potential for commercial impact is often determined, limited, foreclosed, or at least guided by critical reception. Furthermore, this initial period of critical reception plays a very important role in determining whether or not a film may achieve canonical enshrinement beyond its commercial theatrical release. This thesis will investigate the role that mainstream film critics played in the shaping of the film canon that would come to be known as the New Hollywood, and the way that this canon has continued to shift over the course of the ensuing decades. My intention is to clarify aspects of the constitution and historical origins of the New Hollywood, the question of what 2 might be considered a typical New Hollywood film, and the extent to which the parameters of such typicality are critically determined. In order to investigate the formation of the New Hollywood canon as we now know it, I will explore a number of case studies that occupy various positions with respect to the conventional canon. The scope of this study permits the potential inclusion (or partial inclusion) of many movies that have not been considered in relation to New Hollywood in the past. The first of these case studies traces the lineage of films descended from a key film in any conception of the New Hollywood, Easy Rider (dir. Dennis Hopper, Columbia Pictures, 1969). Unprecedented in both its commercial success and the longevity of its cultural influence, Easy Rider transcended its exploitation origins, becoming what Richard Nowell dubs a “trailblazer hit,” spurring a cycle of commercially motivated imitators into production.4 Exploring some of the reasons for this, I undertake a close analysis of the formal and narrative workings of Hopper’s film in my first chapter. Amidst Hopper’s contradictory play with loaded cultural signs, and in the absence of a coherently articulated political stance, the film becomes a malleable text, open to differing interpretations. Despite its influence on the developing narrative and stylistic tropes of postclassical cinema, Easy Rider essentially adheres to the narrative conventions of Classical Hollywood cinema.5 Central to Easy Rider’s appeal is the use of self-contained motorcycle musical/montage sequences, which offer a break with narrative to revel in visual spectacle.

Load more