Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood

In the annals of Hollywood, 1967 is one of those legendarily watershed years when seemingly every sacred cow wound up in the slaughterhouse. All those assumptions about moviegoers — what they would and wouldn’t pay to see — were turned upside down. The fat, complacent and decidedly risk-averse studio system, which had ruled the industry for decades, all but collapsed. The morality police who ran the Production Code were finally rendered toothless. For cinephiles, it was a year of ignominious ends and promising beginnings, and it’s one captured beautifully in Mark Harris’ PICTURES AT A REVOUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD. Newly released in paperback, the comprehensive and enormously entertaining book chronicles how the movies of ‘67 — specifically, the five nominated for Best Picture by the Academy Awards — signaled both the demise of Old Hollywood and the rise of a youthful new force in filmmaking. Harris, who writes a movie biz column for ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, deftly interweaves the making-of stories of those five Oscar contenders every step of the way, from someone’s bright (or not so bright) idea to the films’ subsequent releases and receptions. “In Hollywood, by the time the 1967 Best Picture nominees were made public, it was increasingly clear that something was dying and something was being created, but the transition between old and new is never elegant or seamless,” the author writes. “The dragons couldn’t quite believe that they were running out of firepower, and the dragonflies, still excited to have buzzed their way across the moat and through the palace gates, would have been very surprised to hear that they were able to achieve a great deal more than that.” That year’s Oscar contenders were rife with cultural gravitas. The explosive, blood-soaked BONNIE AND CLYDE stemmed from the almost preternatural tenacity of producer/star Warren Beatty and two onetime ESQUIRE staff writers — Robert Benton and David Newman — who penned a screenplay they hoped would pay homage to the flicks of the French New Wave. THE GRADUATE, which would prove to be the year’s biggest commercial hit, showcased the mastery of director Mike Nichols, screenwriter Buck Henry and a nebbishy, woefully insecure young stage actor named Dustin Hoffman. Sidney Poitier leant his then-incomparable star wattage to a pair of films with very different takes on the Civil Rights Movement: Stanley Kramer’s GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER and Norman Jewison’s IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. And for comic relief, there was the bloated disaster of DOCTOR DOOLITTLE, a movie that likely earned its nomination because 20th Century Fox execs stuffed Academy voters with steak and booze. Film buffs will be riveted. Harris doles out plenty of gossipy nuggets, but his approach is less snarky than, say, Peter Biskind’s 1998 tell-all, EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS. His narrative finds a welcome balance between the scholarly and the salacious. Harris details how BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE revolutionized the way American cinema could explore (and exploit) violence, the counterculture and the burgeoning youth market, but he also slashes away at the insufferable arrogance of DOOLITTLE star Rex Harrison, who sparked turmoil on the set with his alcoholism and anti-Semitism. Exhaustingly researched and utilizing scores of interviews, Harris offers profiles that are complex and absorbing. Readers are given fascinating insights into Poitier and how he struggled with the burden of being the “super Negro” for Hollywood and white audiences. And the narrative branches out into unexpected turns. We learn, for instance, how NEW YORK TIMES film reviewer Bosley Crowther’s savaging of BONNIE AND CLYDE ultimately spelled the end of his decades-long career and fueled the reputation of critics such as Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION culminates, of course, in the Academy Awards, which were held in April of 1968. Harris even wrings suspense and a fair amount of drama from an event in which the winners are no surprise today. In the realm of Hollywood nonfiction, PICTURES is an extraordinary read. —Phil Bacharach Buy it at Amazon.

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