As a period of film history, The American New Wave (ordinarily understood as beginning in 1967 and ending in 1980) remains a preoccupation for scholars and audiences alike. In traditional accounts, it is considered to be bookended by two periods of conservatism, and viewed as a (brief) period of explosive creativity within the Hollywood system. From Bonnie and Clyde to Heaven’s Gate, it produced films that continue to be watched, discussed, analysed and poured over.
It has, however, also become rigidly defined as a cinema of director-auteurs who made a number of aesthetically and politically significant films. This has led to marginalization and exclusion of many important artists and filmmakers, as well as a temporal rigidity about what and who is considered part of the ‘New Wave proper’. This collection seeks to reinvigorate debate around this area of film history. It also looks in part to demonstrate the legacy of aesthetic experimentation and political radicalism after 1980 as part of the ‘legacy’ of the New Wave. Thanks to important new work that questions received scholarly wisdom, reveals previously marginalised filmmakers (and the films they made), considers new genres, personnel, and films under the banner of ‘New Wave, New Hollywood’, and reevaluates the traditional approaches and perspectives on the films that have enjoyed most critical attention, New Wave, New Hollywood: Reassessment, Recovery, Legacy looks to begin a new discussion about Hollywood cinema after 1967.
List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgments 1. Introduction Nathan Abrams and Gregory Frame 2. The Great Shift in Hollywood Cinema: Men, Women, and Genre Revisionism of the American New Wave Fjoralba Miraka 3. Formal Radicalism vs. Radical Representation: Reassessing The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) and Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971) Cary Edwards 4. A Wave of Their Own: How Jewish Filmmakers Invented the New Hollywood Vincent Brook 5. New Hollywood’s “Zany Godards”: A “Shirley” Serious Assessment of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker Emilio Audissino 6. Design as Authorship: Polly Platt’s New Hollywood Aesthetic Aaron Hunter 7. “The Ultimate Fusion of Commerce and Art”: Waldo Salt and Screenwriting in the 1970s Oliver Gruner 8. Expanding the Past: Julie Dash and Zora Neale Hurston, African American Women filmmakers of New Hollywood and Early Cinema Aimee Dixon Anthony 9. Lost in the Landscape: The Legacy of Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970) on the Contemporary American Independent Female Road Movie Aimee Mollaghan 10. The New Wave in the New Millennium: Joker, Taxi Driver, Nostalgia, and Trumpian Politics Karen Ritzenhoff and Hannah D’Orso 11. Indie Courtship: Pursuing the American New Wave Kim Wilkins 12. Afterword: New Wave, New Hollywood, New Research Peter Krämer Index
Nathan Abrams is Professor in Film at Bangor University in Wales. He is founding co-editor of Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal, as well as the author of The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema, Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual, Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film (with Robert Kolker) and The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick (with IQ Hunter). Gregory Frame is Teaching Associate in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of The American President in Film and Television: Myth, Politics and Representation (2014). He has published articles about the politics of American film and television in Journal of American Studies, New Review of Film and Television Studies, and Journal of Popular Film and Television.
Reviews for New Wave, New Hollywood: Reassessment, Recovery, and Legacy
A fascinating array of essays aimed at revising our understanding of the Hollywood New Wave of the 60s and 70s. * Robert P. Kolker, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Maryland, USA * A wide-ranging re-appraisal of the 'New Wave', which both underlines and questions its enduring significance for American film scholarship, and serves to reshape its parameters in important and timely ways. Essential reading for anyone wanting to understand this era and its vexed legacy. * James Lyons, Associate Professor in Screen Studies, University of Exeter, UK *
