Once Upon a Time: New Hollywood between Strangelove and Star Wars

The 1960s was a pivotal decade in U.S. culture, a period of rapid change that was felt across all areas of society. The rise of the counterculture was also reflected in Hollywood, which entered the 1960s in crisis. After a decade of being battered by the success of television, the once-mighty studios were trembling. Their ever more expensive, lavish spectacles were bringing in diminishing returns, and the films-conservative bent was alienating the youth audiences. As these studios teetered on the verge of collapse, a new generation of filmmakers offered a new direction, one dedicated to the revitalization of film as an art form. At once inspired by classical Hollywood and eager to move beyond it, filmmakers like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Peter Bogdanovich, Polly Platt, Martin Scorsese, Barbara Loden, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May-to name a few-set out to reinvent the movies. And not really knowing what else to do, the movie studios more or less let them.


But this period of intense, filmmaker-centered creativity was not to last: by the late 1970s, Star Wars and Jaws had inaugurated the age of the blockbuster that in some senses we are still living in. In this class, we'll look at maybe the most exciting decade in American movie history, with some familiar films, and some a bit off the beaten path-both within the U.S.'s behemoth film industry and on its periphery, as in the case of the L.A. Rebellion. Students will gain an appreciation of the influences, innovations, contradictions, problematics, and lasting impact of this unique period in cinema history.