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at a time when cinema audiences appeared
to be in terminal decline. This convinced
movie producers that one did not need to
spend millions of dollars to make a hit movie,
especially if it was geared to the counterculture
youth market.
The US film industry during this period was
in dire financial straits. Following the sensational
box office returns for both
Mary Poppins
(1964)
and
The
Sound of Music
(1965), all of the
major studios had heavily invested in expensive
family-friendly roadshow musicals – the majority
of them specifically designed to replicate the
Julie Andrews extravaganzas. But
Dr Doolittle
,
Hello Dolly!
,
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Paint Your
Wagon, Sweet Charity
and
Star!
turned out
to be colossal box office flops. Consequently,
by the end of 1969, practically all of the
Hollywood studios were teetering on the brink
of bankruptcy.
With the exception of Columbia Pictures,
20th Century Fox and Disney, the major film
studios had been taken over by conglomerates.
The old movie moguls had all been replaced
by a melange of business executives,
bankers and lawyers. They saw movie
production primarily as just another part of their
overall investment strategy. However, these
industrial businessmen knew very little about
moviemaking.
The box office success of
Bonnie &
Clyde,The Graduate
and
Easy Rider
had
revealed 58 per cent of theatre admissions
in 1968/69 were from the 16-25 age
group. This encouraged the studios' new
corporate managers to recruit younger
filmmakers and screenwriters. Some that were
hired became collectively known as “Movie
Brats”. Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Paul
Schrader, John Milius, Martin Scorsese and
their mentor, Francis Ford Coppola, were all
film school graduates, educated and steeped
in cinema history. This group, along with Peter
Bogdanovich and Jonathan Demme, had
served apprenticeships churning out cheap
horror/exploitation movies for Roger Corman
at American International Pictures. But now
they were all given unprecedented creative
freedom by the major studios to make movies.
They swiftly developed this opportunity into
an era of American auteurism, in which the
director is the major creative force of a motion
picture. A possessory credit at the opening of a
movie declaring “A Francis Ford Coppola Film”
or “A Martin Scorsese Film", became de rigueur
during the 1970s.
A
resurgence of male-dominated films
followed, featuring protagonists who were –
much like the young audience they were aimed
at – anti-authoritarian. Movies like
Five Easy
Pieces, Mean Streets,
the two
Godfather
films
,
The Conversation, The Last Picture Show, Taxi
Driver and American Graffiti
also
introduced
to audiences an array of new, unconventional
movie stars. Actors such as Al Pacino, Robert
De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfuss,
Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Harvey Keitel,
Jeff Bridges and Robert Duvall looked and
sounded nothing like the handsome matinee
idols of Hollywood’s Classic Golden Age.
However, what they brought to the screen
was a refreshing new realism. The movie
brats and their new young actors were able to
express contemporary concerns onscreen much
better than their older peers could. They did this
by handcrafting visionary films that spoke for
young modern audiences. Movies had become
relevant again.
But this period of innovative and
thematically challenging films would only last
for a few short years, due primarily to the
enormous commercial success of a “summer
blockbuster”. This movie released in 1975 would
once again change the course of American
filmmaking and remind Corporate Hollywood
that it was in business to make money.
To be continued...
FEATURE
EXTRAS
A Martin Scorsese film –
Mean Streets
(1973)
Francis Ford Coppola directing Robert De Niro in a scene from
The Godfather: Part II
(1974)
Peter Bogdanovich on the set of
The Last Picture Show
(1971)
George Lucas directing a scene from
American
Graffiti
(1973). Note the camera attachment to
the car, very much in the style of the French
Nouvelle Vague
Some [younger filmmakers and writers] that were hired
became collectively known as “Movie Brats”