Hollywood's Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film in America

by Jonathan Kirshner

Between 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 period including Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Graduate, and Nashville, as well as underappreciated films such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Klute, and Night Moves were 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.

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Genres: Film, History, Nonfiction, Media Tie In

280 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2012

Reviews

[Farnaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

این کتاب یه راهنمای خوب و جامع هست راجع به موج هالیوود جدید در سینمای آمریکا که فیلم‌ها رو از منظر تاریخی- سیاسی و المان‌های سینمایی تحلیل می‌کنه و نهایتا یه لیست فیلم برای آشنایی با هالیوود جدید در اختیارتون می‌ذاره. خوندنش مفید و لذت‌بخشه.
ایرادی که داره و به نظر می‌رسه بخشی از سیاست کلی بیدگله، اینه که پانویس‌ها در آخر کتاب به صورت یه مجموعه آورده شده و این کار رو سخت می‌کنه، همچنین نام فیلم‌ها در متن بدون هیچ پانویسی کاملا به فارسی برگردونده شده که به نظرم خیلی کار بد و اشتباهیه.
اما در مجموع از کتاب و ترجمه‌ش راضی بودم و خوندنش رو به شما هم - البته اگر به سینما علاقه دارید- توصیه می‌کنم

[Franco · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 1970's Hollywood film analysis book written by a politics professor. Yes, please.

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 3 out of 5]

به‌هیچ عنوان از بستگیِ این‌چنینیِ فضای هالیوود خبر نداشتم. خیلی مفید بود.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent. recommended

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author Jonathan Kirshner isn’t shy about his love for the Kennedys, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and he certainly will make sure you know about his loathing and disdain for Nixon. Of course this book was published in 2012, so one has to wonder if perhaps Kirshner has since backed off Nixon a little—after all, the guy knew when to quit—and shifted a good amount of that hatred considering the present administration. And hell, I’ve not even gotten around to the movies yet!

Kirshner seems to pride himself on being a “revisionist,” giving his 70s contextual hot take on films released between 1967 and 1974—his definition of the Seventies Film era; more accurately put, “The New Hollywood.” But for his self-proclaimed revisionism, he spends a lot of time covering the Greatest Hits of the 60s come-apart that lead to the vile Nixon era that begat some truly great cinema. And Kirshner does a terrific Film 101 connection between art and life of that time period, alternating between “what’s goin’ on, man” and the resulting film auteur response to it all.

He hardly misses any major film between 67 and 74, and spends a large sections of the book profiling films like “Taxi Driver,” “Klute,” “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,” “Night Moves,” “The Graduate,” etc. And finally, after another round of beating us over the head, dotting the I and crossing the T on his hatred for Nixon, just in case you forgot or thought maybe he had gotten soft on the late former President, Kirshner chimes the death knell of New Hollywood with the arrival of “Jaws” and the blockbuster era.

It’s as if the world was just disappointing enough to provide some great films in response, and when the world shaped up with the coming of Jimmy Carter, people felt too good about life and started making less depressing movies, which in Kirshner’s very dry opinion, brought about terrible, less important movies, like God forbid, “Star Wars.”

That’s not to say he’s wrong, but his tone throughout comes across very dry and humorless as he looks down his nose at us proclaiming great things about movies that have already had more than enough said about them. The result makes it difficult for me to sympathize and wholly agree with him as a reader, which may be the point, and to which I say bravo.

A great history of the era and a thorough profile of many fascinating films that makes for a must-see list, but it felt a little like reading the verbatim of a very unenthusiastic film class, except for hating Nixon, which was kind of bubbly.

Three stars.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent look at the last era of “movies that mattered” - that fabled 10 year period from roughly 1967 to 1976. During that time of huge political and societal upheavals, the artistic careers of American filmmakers like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, Bob Rafelson, Hal Ashby, Martin Scorsese, etc., blossomed. Individually they created a remarkable body of complex, very personal films for mainstream Hollywood that still provoke passionate discussion, debate, and devotion today. Many of these films, among them Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Chinatown, etc., are acknowledged classics, alive and thoughtful in a grittily personal way, very much created in the spirit of those fractious, tumultuous years. Rather than spoon-feeding audiences films rendered in simplistic black and white, these filmmakers offered stories composed in morally ambiguous shades of gray. Unfortunately, through a myriad of cultural, political, economic, and interpersonal factors this creator-led era eventually wound down; in 1975, when the summer blockbuster as we know it was created with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, the writing was on the wall. Today the made-for-adults mainstream Hollywood film is now very much the exception rather than the rule. Kirschner, a professor at Cornell, gives a cogent and very lively argument here, never delving into academic-speak or pretzeling facts to fit into his thesis. I was surprised at the great depth and detail with which he discussed real life realities of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon’s time in the White House, and the Watergate scandal - he buttresses his ideas with the real heft of history, and always in an engaging way. Like a reviewer on Amazon, this book makes me want to kind of hibernate for a week or two and have a mini film festival: I’d catch up with those I’ve yet to see (Night Moves, Bonnie and Clyde, Mean Streets), and revisit some old favorites (Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, Nashville, Klute, The King of Marvin Gardens). 4 ½ out of 5.

[David Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book. Got me watching and rewatching some great 70s movies with a new perspective. I also have a list of movies still to watch.
The author frames the chosen movies within the context of the times superbly.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This book does a good job of merging the explanation of the political and social climate of the 70s with the films that reflect key ideologies of the time. It also offers an interesting perspective on why films of the 70s were more exploratory based on the changing times by the end of the 60s, and why the era came to an end by the end of the 70s/beginning of the 80s. Definitely worth looking at if you want to see the connection between the times and the movies the times produced, or if you're simply interested in learning more about the films themselves.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kirshner's book is a personal look at films from the 1970s masquerading as cultural analysis. Sadly Kirshner who is trained as a political scientist is out of his depth writing in a field that is not his own. The film analysis is really old school in style and tone and doesn't pay attention to how film studies have changed in the last twenty years. The perfect example of why academics in one field should not write about another field.

[Joe Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kirshner shows how the great 1970s films were uniquely of their time because of the culture of that period - when society changed in the 80s so did the movies.
What makes the book special is the detailed historical context he provides us with. We see how the unfolding of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam war were reflected in the tone of movies that didn’t directly address either event.

[O'Neal Sadler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academic to be sure, but left a deep impression on me. I was never quite a fan of 1970's "Hollywood New Wave" but with this book and "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls," I learned why this period of filmmaking was so important. It was an age when movies inspired deep conversations, the liberation from the rigid Hayes Code, and the racial and sexual politics literally in the streets: movie makers and studios felt an obligation to preserve this period of time in celluloid amber. Unlike today, that feels "safe" and "apolitical," this area fictionalized our cynicism and disillusionment (Easy Rider or Shampoo); paranoia and fear (The Conversation and Images); the Vietnam War (M.A.S.H.) and even our Western Myth (McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Pat Garrett and Bill the Kid). What was the aim of these films? Was it to be really like the French? Well yes... and no. Yes, insofar as style but no insofar as abstract stories with more in common with the Avant Garde than Golden Age Hollywood. What New Hollywood did was make movies that upended the classical narrative, jumped around time, and made protagonists that had more flaws than strengths, and gave greater depth to female characters and concerns. While on race they were hardly impressive as I would have liked (with the exception of Blaxploitation), New Hollywood gave us a new cinematic language to express reality.

We've lost a lot since that period, and we're poorer for it (re: Marvel Studios), but there is a new generation of auteurs dedicated to "real" cinema.

[Stephen Lavington · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a perfectly adequate study of "seventies film" (a category which, rather bizarrely, is deemed to end roughly mid-decade).

The approach is fairly rote - defining criteria, dividing films into themes, a neat historical contextualisation of each theme and then a study of various key movies.

There is not a lot new in the conclusions (save for some interesting thoughts on the growing intrusion of market factors), though it is arguable whether there is much new to say about the Hollywood new wave, unless your goal is revisionism. This is not the author's aim here, the sympathy for the spirit and films of the time is prominent throughout - perhaps too prominent, as there is a fairly abrupt dismissal of later moviemaking as never quite living up to the seventies spirit.

This does seem a somewhat lazy conclusion: obviously, as times change movies will change also both to reflect changes in society and changes in the industry. This is an inevitability and does not, in itself, mean qualitative change. I love the films of the seventies (up to the end of the decade). I also love the films of the 80s, 90s and up to the present day.

There is much to celebrate about the late 60s / early 70s output of Hollywood (though it is important to remember that a lot of trash also came out in that period). This does not make it the last hurrah of great moviemaking and, in that respect, the idea of this as a "last golden age" is inaccurate and unhelpful.

[Saeed abedi · Rating 5 out of 5]

یکی از جذاب ترین کتاب هایی است که امسال خواندم کرشنر با اینکه استاد اقتصاد دانشگاه است با تسلط فوق‌العاده اش بر تاریخ جامعه شناسی و سینما کتابی به شما ارائه میدهد که هم ریشه های اجتماعی و تاریخی هالیوود نو را بیان میکند هم ریشه های فرهنگی و سیاسی اش را سقوط نظام سانسور پشت سر گذاشتن دوران مک کارتی ظهور نیکسون تااثیر هالیوود از موج نو سینمای فرانسه از علل شکل گیری سینمای درخشان دهه هفتاد می‌باشد که در فصول مختلف کتاب مفصل به آن پرداخته شده است
کتاب نسخه صوتی رایگان هم دارد که از لینک زیر میتوانید آن را بشنوید


https://castbox.fm/va/5642221

[Allie Neschandar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome!

[Jordan Ludwig · Rating 4 out of 5]

NEW WAVE TEXTBOOK YAY

[rowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a class obvs. Helpful. Boring. I will never be a cinephile

[Caitie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author seemed to be writing two different books--one about seventies politics and one with lengthy movie reviews. He tried tying them together, but it didn't always work (for me anyway). At times it felt as though the connection between the movies and politics seemed like an over-reach. I enjoyed reading the history, and the movie reviews, but they could've done better as separate books.