The rise and fall of avant-garde Hollywood cinema

As cinema grew in popularity in the early 1900s, businessmen immediately saw it as a lucrative business opportunity. This has forced filmmakers to defend their craft against leaders who only seek to make a profit and who do not consider the arts in their best interest. Without the history of avant-garde filmmakers, cinema might not have become as diverse as it is today. The era of avant-garde cinema took the world of cinema to new heights.

Avant-garde cinema: to rebuild, you must destroy

Like many of its inhabitants, Hollywood woke up with a bad hangover in the 1950s, having enjoyed an impressive decade of cinema in the 1940s. Theater releases were no longer as profitable in the studio system after having been weakened by the United States v. Paramount Pictures case and the advent of television. But the biggest blow to the industry came from within. Hollywood has become obsessed with the spectacle of big-budget musicals and historical epics. In 1957, Life Magazine called the 1950s a horrible decade for Hollywood. Instead of learning from these criticisms, the city has stubbornly decided to stay the course.

The Queen calls for an end

The 1963 Cleopatra had a greater impact on the studio system than any Supreme Court case or counter-programming. 20th Century Fox was desperate to recreate the grandeur of epics like Ben-Comment And Spartacus but was misguided by their cost-focused approach. Production began in 1960 with director Rouben Mamoulian and immediately stopped when leading lady Elizabeth Taylor was diagnosed with meningitis.

While she was ill, writer Nunnally Johnson was hired to rewrite the script. His work was met with dismay by Mamoulian and Taylor who felt that the tone copied previous adaptations of the character. Between his ailing star, script problems, and a bloated $7 million budget that produced only ten minutes of usable film, Mamoulian resigned and was replaced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

The final budget for Cleopatra was $44 million. Needless to say, it was the most expensive film ever made. Therefore, it faced an uphill battle to turn a profit after its theatrical run ended with $26 million in revenue. Fox finally broke even in 1966 when they exported the film overseas and sold the television rights to NBC for $5 million. This model of spending big and hoping for success was not feasible for the studios, especially since theater attendance was still declining. Something had to change and the studio executives had no idea, leaving it to their filmmakers to figure it out.

Let's see who's really in charge

In the summer of 1967, Jack Warner, CEO of Warner Bros., watched a rough cut of Arthur Penn. Bonnie and Clyde and I hated it. He did not give the film a wide release as he braced for criticism of its realistic and graphic violence, but the controversy did not have the consequences that was expected. Bonnie and Clyde was a huge success due to its French New Wave influences which introduced audiences to a surprisingly new type of film. This breakthrough led to the popularization of foreign cinema in Hollywood, notably the 1966 erotic thriller. Explode by Michelangelo Antonioni which shocked Warner Bros. by its strong audience demand in 1967.

Thus was born the New Hollywood movement. Peter Biskind describes the phenomenon perfectly in his book Easy riders, raging bulls, the greatest collection of film history ever written. Studio executives went from nodding their heads in incomprehension to nodding their heads in incomprehension because they knew that the key to the treasure chest was the filmmaker and his work.

Explore the best of the best

Like the Pictures Generation, New Hollywood filmmakers took the world by storm in the 1970s, as the industry produced its most diverse and remarkable works. Naming them all would be tedious considering there were around 6,000 films released at the time. Leading directors of the movement were Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian de Palma, George Lucas, William Friedkin, Terrence Malick, Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula, and Robert Altman would top this list. Their artistic authority was too powerful for studio heads to deny, so these directors gained complete creative control over their work.

These are not only films that have been well received by critics and audiences, but most of them have also been box office successes for the studios. The Godfather by Coppola, The Exorcist by Friedkin, Jaws by Spielberg, and Star Wars by Lucas were all the highest-grossing films of their era. Even the least accessible films like Klute by Pakula, Dog afternoon by Lumet, and Taxi driver by Scorsese were as lucrative as they were impressive. Finances aside, the cultural impact left by these filmmakers has been enormous. Just like DW Griffiths The birth of a nation After influencing cinematic storytelling techniques, these filmmakers taught subsequent generations how to implement their voices.

Hear the battle cry of cinema

Of the aforementioned filmmakers, the three most important to the movement would be Coppola, Spielberg, and Scorsese. After The Godfather, Coppola agreed to do The Godfather Part 2 only if he could also complete his passion project in the same year called The conversation. Then he made the harsh war epic Apocalypse now and his tumultuous production was documented by his wife Eleanor in the 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: an apocalypse of filmmakers.

In the span of about eight years, Coppola made two of the most famous films of all time and two other masterpieces that highlight the difficulty of making a film. He was the hottest director in all of Hollywood among a sea of ​​cohorts and competitors waiting to get their share.

A shark explosion at the box office

Amid Coppola's unprecedented success, a young Steven Spielberg attempted to adapt Peter Benchley's 1974 novel. Jaws for Universal Images. A bit like Apocalypse now, the production was disastrous as it was the first major film filmed on the ocean, leading to overspending and technical problems. Despite his adversity, Jaws quickly became the highest-grossing film of all time with a theatrical release of $476.5 million, or nearly $3 billion today. Spielberg redefined the blockbuster film with his expertly directed thriller and quickly did the same for science fiction by Encounters of the Third Kindreleased shortly after Star Wars. His filmmaking skills were a perfect fit for the type of movie studios desperately sought after, while those whose voices were most marginalized had to fight for their art.

Life is not easy on the street

The blockbuster never particularly interested Martin Scorsese, as he was always more interested in making small, personal films about faith and fear. The 1973 Mean streets It's not Scorsese's best film, but it is perhaps the most emblematic of his style and a significant breakthrough in the new Hollywood. It feels like a film made by its characters, so truthful and immersive that it feels like the viewer is actually walking alongside them. Yet as incredible as the film was, Scorsese immediately surpassed himself and his peers with his masterpiece. Taxi driver.

Taxi driver embodied the counterculture of the new Hollywood like no other film of the movement. Its protagonist, the loner Travis Bickle, is incapable of being a functioning member of society despite his youthful appearance and energy. It's up to the viewer to decide whether they did the right thing by choosing their own path or whether they should have followed another. In the case of the New Hollywood, audiences resoundingly chose the former, because filmmaker-driven cinema had ended the old studio system.

The fall of avant-garde cinema

A rude awakening came when Michael Ciminos collapsed in 1980. The Gate of Heaven his United Artists studio alone went bankrupt. Despite the abundance of goodwill over the previous decade, filmmakers found themselves once again at the mercy of the studios after this catastrophic event. This has led to a focus on producing more premium eyewear like Jaws Or Star Wars as well as an over-reliance on sequels. It's rare to see a studio film these days that isn't indebted to a pre-existing property, whether it's other movies/shows, comic books, or video games. To find original cinema, you have to turn to independent companies like A24 or Neon or to foreign industries where studio interference is minimal. Hopefully the cyclical nature of Hollywood will bring back an era of true art.