Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
by Mark Harris
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mark HarrisEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-02-14
ISBN: 1594201528
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Book Reviews of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Book Review: Brillant!
Summary: 5 Stars
The book traces standard form films, two films representing the new of age of filmography, and one film that shouldn't have been there, Dr. Dolittle. Let's put Dolittle to rest with a quick statement, Rex Harrison, comes across as a real @ss. With all the later year prima donnas, I wasn't aware there were any with such bad behavior from old school films. Think John McEnroe.
In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner are nice but flawed, films. This book really excels when discussing Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, two new age film lucky to be made that set the industry on its ears. Warren Beatty, like him or love him, shows his business acumen in getting this film made and establishing his persona for the rest of his career. The Graduate may have been the best movie and clearly the movie with the longest lasting legacy.
If there is a criticism of this book it is long and exhaustive. But, this is a critical transition year in the history of film and for me very much worth the attention. I strongly recommend this book for any film buff or student of the 60s.
Summary of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
An epic account of how the revolution hit Hollywood, told through the stories of the five films nominated for the 1967 Academy AwardsThe year is 1963. The studios are churning out westerns, war movies, prudish sex comedies and overblown historical epics, but audiences whose interests have been piqued by an influx of innovative films from abroad are hungering for something more, something new. At Esquire, two young writers hatch a plan to create a movie treatment that they hope will attract the director Fran?ois Truffaut: the story of the gangsters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Mike Nichols, an improvisatory comedian turned neophyte theater director, gets his hands on an obscure first novel called The Graduate and wonders if he's ready to make the jump to Hollywood. Warren Beatty, just 26 years old and struggling through a series of flops after the success of Splendor in the Grass, decides to take his career into his own hands, but can't seem to settle on his next move. Dustin Hoffman, sleeping on friends' floors and scrounging for temp work in New York, struggles just to get an off-Broadway audition. Sidney Poitier, after two dozen movies, still yearns for something that seems completely unattainable: a good role. And 20th Century Fox, on the brink of financial catastrophe, puts all its hopes in a genre-the family musical-that will revitalize the company and then nearly destroy it again.
Pictures at a Revolution tracks five movies-the milestones Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the popular hits Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, and the big-budget disaster Doctor Dolittle-on their five-year journey to Oscar night in the spring of 1968. It follows their fortunes through the last days of the studio system and the first sparks of a cultural upheaval that would launch maverick new stars and directors, topple more than one industry titan from his pedestal, and redefine what American movies could be. In 1967, moviegoers witnessed the arrival of taboo-shattering sex and violence on screen, the debuts of Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway, the return of Katharine Hepburn and the poignant farewell of Spencer Tracy, the audacious risks taken by Warren Beatty, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols and Norman Jewison, and Hollywood's agonized attempt to grapple with an incendiary moment in American race relations, with results that would change Sidney Poitier's career forever.
By tracing the gambles, the stumbles, the clashes and the creative partnerships that produced these films, Mark Harris captures both the twilight of old Hollywood and the dawn of a new golden age in studio filmmaking. Based on unprecedented access to the actors, directors, screenwriters, producers and executives whose movies defined the era, as well a wealth of previously unexplored archival material, Pictures at a Revolution is an utterly original, revealing, and entertaining history of a true cultural watershed.
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