Reinventing Hollywood

MPAA Rating System: The current president of the MPAA at the time, Jack Valenti, released a new motion picture rating in 1968. This new rating system was known as the voluntary movie rating system, and it had four different categories: G for general audiences, M for mature audiences with parental discretion advised, R for restricted and no one under 16 allowed unless they had a guardian, and X no one under sixteen was allowed. All of these new films were allowed an MPAA production seal, except for films designated X. Soon after this new rating system was announced, it was adopted and used industry wide. The department that rated these films now belongs to the Code and Rating Administration (CARA), which the MPAA made for the newly made rating system. (Lewis 292)

Popularity of Pornography: in the early 70s there were three sex films that out earned all major studio releases Deep Throat (Gerard Damiano, 1972), The Devil in Miss Jones (Damiano, 1973), and Behind the Green Door (Jim and Artie Mitchell, 1972). The earnings shocked the MPAA, especially since Valenti was originally unwilling to add the X rating into the new system since he thought that no films would have reason for it in the first place. These films made the X rating appear to be chic. This popularity was fueled by many social trends, and many questioned if this trend would continue through the 70s, but the U.S. Supreme Court made big decisions to stop these films from appearing in theaters. Miller v. California (1973) caused local communities to decide what could be banned on local movie screens, but Jenkins v. California (1974) caused R rated films to be shown, only since they did not show hard-core action. This meant that all films other than X rated ones became immune from local bans and seizures. (Lewis 296 – 298)

Major Films and Filmmakers of the Auteur Renaissance

Easy Rider: Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider made $19 million, and only cost $375k to produce. This film showed how important the younger generation and audience is to reviving Hollywood. The film had a more free-form style and its use of rock and pop music provided an example of where the younger generation was going in. The film is undeniably an auteur film, and the auteur’s eccentric style remade the road picture genre into something more modern and distinctive. The film also portrayed a documentary form of film, which helped the appeal of the film since it made audiences feel and sympathize with the characters. The film’s major success and cultural impact shows what many counterculture films could be. (Lewis 298 – 300)

The  Godfather: In 1970 Coppola got an offer to work on the WWII biopic Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970), and this won him his first academy award. Within the next year Paramount offered Coppola to be a director for the film The Godfather since several other top directors turned it down. The current production chief at Paramount, Robert Evans, went to Coppola since he had run out of high tier directors to offer the film to, his assistant loved Coppola’s work in Patton, and Coppola was Italian. The Godfather is in the genre of a traditional gangster film, along with its similarities of assimilation and ambition. The Godfather currently is seen as one of the best films ever made. It cost $6 million dollars to make and made $80 million dollars when it was first released, breaking the record that was held by Gone with the Wind from 1939. From the worldwide box-office and its other major releases it made $250 million dollars, and it is hard to not mention how this film not only saved Paramount, but also Hollywood. The Godfather laid a path for the auteur renaissance letting many directors have noticeable freedom in the 70s. Coppola has earned the debt of Hollywood, and many other directors of its time. (Lewis 301 – 306)

Chinatown: The success of The Godfather made Robert Evans want another film to do similarly well, and he had his bets on Chinatown (1974) to be the next big blockbuster from Paramount. He set Roman Polanski to be the director for the film since Polanski’s previous film, Rosemary’s Baby, earned ten times what it cost to make, and it won two awards. One of the major problems is he was the husband of Sharon Tate, one of the victims of the 1969 Mason family murders. This along with his creative freedom desire that he had from working in Europe made him look like damaged goods. Robert Evans still wanted him to work upon the film, and this worked out since it made five times its budget and won eleven Oscar nominations. Chinatown is a typical auteur film. It sticks with a tried and true genre with the best production money could secure at the time, and Polanski took full advantage of this and hired A-list production talent. Chinatown feels both at once nostalgic and modern, and just like other noir films, it has intense shadows with a labyrinthine plot being moved by a femme fatale. The end of the film establishes that morality is at the wills of whatever people want to do, and there is nothing any ordinary citizen can do. This is similar to the Watergate scandal and how the optimism from Kennedy is dying and the cynicism from Nixon is growing. Polanski is a confessed sexual predator, including drug raping a 13 year old girl in america before he fled to europe. Then he had two more women speak up about when they were 16 Polanski had unwanted sexual encounters with them. (Lewis 307 – 310)

Martin Scorsese: in the early 1970s Martin Scorsese launched onto the film scene. Being film school educated he got his first break in the film industry creating B list movies for Roger Corman. Scorsese kept his films to be intimate and personal, since he wanted his films to be of the everyday dramas of people you may see on the streets. One example of this is his gangsters, they are working class men with problems of working class men such as paying off debts and finding money for a scheme that might make them somewhat richer. Another example of Scorsese’s auteur signature is in Mean Streets where the picture opens with a series of roughly shown vignettes, it is akin to a home movie showing colorful characters in a low budget film. Scorsese’s ability to capture the gritty reality of our world came from his sickly childhood. He was forced to stay inside of his apartment while other children played on the streets, and he saw a world with colorful characters with interpersonal violence that was both striking and disturbing. His career stalled after Raging Bull and essentially sat out the 80s. In 1990 he returned with the gangster film Goodfellas. (Lewis 311 – 314)

Robert Altman: He began his road to being a director from working at an industrial-film company instead of film school. He made training shorts and commercials here, but he moved onto episodic television in 1955 which was a success for him. From 1955 – 1968 he directed multiple episodes from many different series. In 1970 his career launched itself into popularity when he directed MASH, this film earned $20 million and won the Grand Prix in the Cannes Film Festival. This is the first American film to win a top prize since 1957.  The film also won many Oscar nominations. When the film was released the Vietnam war was in the news and minds of many young Americans, thus MASH was timely since the people wanted something that was relevant to the time. Altman was older than most, but he still showed the cynicism of America’s younger generation. Altman also worked with a new style of sound that involved a complex layering of sound. One way he did this was by having overlapping conversations and another monologue coming from a loud speaker. This layering of sound caused viewers to pay close attention to multiple conversations, and this aural technique helped achieve a sense of realism in his films. Between the release of MASH  and Nashville Altmans was incredibly popular for his dissembling of Hollywood genres and its filmmaking using Irony. Right after the failure of Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976) his career stalled. He did have a successful movie of Popeye (1980), but with his constant battling with studio executives he became hard to hire and his fame faded in the 1980’s. (Lewis 314 – 316)

Stanley Kubrick: Kubrick is hard to place within this renaissance since he already has 9 films to his name before The Godfather was released in America. With the arrival of the first American auteurs Kubrick started his semi-retirement and only made four more films. When Kubrick was learning about cinema he was a photographer, and this caused all of his films to have a photographic aesthetic for his films. He even became famous for doing takes multiple times to get the right shot, this reputation was shown extantly when The Shining had 1.3 million feet of raw unedited film. Kubrick is also known for his attention to detail in order to make films more realistic. One example of this is in 2001: Space Odyssey where he hired Douglas Thrumbull, a veteran filmmaker for NASA in order for him to oversee the special effects. The core of many of his films is that he has a dislike and distaste for what humans have done on the planet. Even if Kubrick mainly lived in an estate in rural England, many of his films were embraced by youth culture in the 60s and 70s. In 1975 Kubrick eventually became a symbol of what he could have been and less of an auteur. (Lewis 317 – 318)

George Lucas: Lucas is well known for his box-office successes and revitalization of Hollywood, but his reputation shows how he hurried the end of the auteur renaissance and started the blockbuster era. His first breakthrough film was American Graffiti (1973) which costed $750k to make, but made $21 million in its first showings. Star Wars in 1977 broke the record that was set by Jaws and Lucas’s film made $210 million in its first showings. Star Wars then set a new gold mine for entertainment and consumer industries with its merchandising and consumer product tie-ins. Lucas’s way of filmmaking offered little in instruction for the actors, instead he only told them to always be in character and that they should always consider themselves on camera. His work with music created a trend for future filmmakers to follow. His use of music in his films are not only used to help push the narrative, but to also market the film with an album in advance to release. Lucas gained more fame for a signature product than a signature style. He also focused more on postproduction via inserting visual effects, aural effects, and editing in order to make his films more entertaining. (Lewis 324 – 328)

Steven Spielberg: Although Spielberg has famous box-office hits and assisting with recovering Hollywood, he still helped bring an end of the auteur renaissance and beginning the blockbuster era. Jaws set the new box-office record that was set by The Godfather, which became the film industry’s first $100 million grossing film. This film set what the industry would follow for films in the summer season. Jaws can be seen as a common horror picture, especially with how the ending is just man vs beast, like many other monster pictures. Spielberg helped create the formula that many movie makers would follow, and the formula is to only make films that can be explained in 25 words or less. This way simple stories can be put into a tagline for an easier way to promote the film. Spielberg gained more fame for a signature product than a signature style. He also focused more on postproduction just like Lucas in order for his films to have more gravitation. (Lewis 324 – 328)

American Genre Cinema

Ultraviolet Western: Sam Peckinpah redesigned the Hollywood western genre with The Wild Bunch. The increasing intensity and length of violence is evident in The Wild Bunch and it shows how he remade the genre. The violence shown in this film can be seen as beautiful and horrific since the violence is shown in a hyperbolic way, This portrays the violence as an immense amount of bloodlust but cinematic skill as well. This new way to show a western was done by using the same character types, but instead of dueling at high noon everyone is armed to the teeth ready for a fight. Then when any amount of confrontation happens the amount of violence is apocalyptic. No western was this violent before with so many being killed. The amount of carnage from the film The Wild Bunch was being compared to Vietnam since the war was actively happening  when the film was being aired, and several scenes within the movie made it hard to compare them both. The new rating system allowed this escalation of violence on-screen, but some ponder if Vietnam, the violence on the streets of urban America, or the divide between generations is what caused this much violence to be normalized for screens. (Lewis 333 – 335)

New American Horror: during the 1970’s horror was resurrected  as another form for auteur cinema to take place. The first important film for this is Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), and it was the seventh highest grossing film when it was released. This amount of money for a horror film was thought of at the time. De Palma is a noticeable figure in the horror genre during this time. All of his horror films were both bloody and erotic, since De Palma thought that showing naked flesh made one feel vulnerable. He also made sure that the camera should linger on scenes of extreme brutality in order to create a stunning living picture. Halloween set guidelines for horror for the way it set up its setting. This film takes place mainly in a suburban area where not many other horror films take place in, and this scared some Americans when watching it. Films that take inspiration from Halloween feature a female main character who defeated the monster through their own smarts, moral chastity, and persistence. Hollywood is overfilled with girl sidekicks, love interests, and victims, but these types of main characters set the women out to be heroes. Many of these horror films are commonly watched by teen audiences and most find them comedic. These teens found an odd pleasure in the terror, and the theaters showing this screening can resemble a party, even if the jokes seem sick. (Lewis 336 – 339)

Woody Allen: Allen was one of the most influential stars of the 1970s because of their comedy films that they were in. Allen was known for making jokes at his own expense. Allen began as a comedian as a gag writer for other comedians at the time, but he found some success as a stand up. In the 1960s he found good business as a comedy writer for What’s New, Pussycat, and this modest hit was his first mark in Hollywood. Most of his early carrer Allen made films that were mainly episodic, or made up of skits in order to make as many jokes as possible within a movie, even if it meant to have a weak narrative. The film that launched Allen into fame was Annie Hall since it was a story driven adult themed comedy. This film won multiple Oscars and established Allen as an auteur. His next films Manhattan (1979) and Stardust memories showed how he continued away from his early career as a comedian. Stardust memories are the biggest signal that he has changed what he is doing, but there are allegations that he sexually abused his adopted daughter dating back to 1992. Many question if he should still be in employment in Hollywood. (Lewis 340 – 346)

Mel Brooks: Brooks was one of the most influential stars of the 1970s because of their comedy films that they were in. Brooks was known for making jokes at his own expense. His career started in the 1940’s in the Borscht Belt for stand up comedy. His first feature The Producers (1968) showed how comedy could be crude, lewd, and outrageous. This then proved to be ground zero for gross out comedy style. His next major film was Blazing Saddles (1974) which was a parody of the Hollywood western, and one scene that is famous from it is when an outlaw is able to knock a horse unconscious during a farting contest. Young Frankenstein (1974) is said to be one of brooks best. It spoofs off of old Hollywood horror films and also processes some genre cliches, the pacing of the film moves quickly and at incredible speed when jumping from one gag to next. The next films he appears in are either farces or parodies, and when compared to his previous films these seem weak. (Lewis 340 – 346)

Richard Pryor: Pryor was one of the most influential stars of the 1970s because of their comedy films that they were in. Pryor made up stories about his life during his stand-up routines, he even asked viewers to find a bit of humor in the everyday hazardous life of African Americans. Pryor also started as a stand-up comedian, but only first casted in supporting roles. His film performances were great, but his best can be seen from his onstage performances from his series of concert films. These were immediately landmarks in comedy and were trails for fellow African American stand-ups to follow. He was also upfront about racial issues happening in America. For instance when filming in the Arizona penitentiary he notices that almost the entire prison is made up of black people, and he mentions that there are no black people in Arizona since they are only in prison. (Lewis 340 – 346)

Blaxploitation: in the 70s African Americans were made up of 15% of the current population, but they were 30% of the first run film audience. Many African Americans were consuming white cinema at the time many film executives thought it unnecessary to cater to African American audiences. This target audience was hungry for a film that was about their people or lives that resemble theirs. Studios eventually caved and made a film about race relations like Guess who’s coming to dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967). 1967 also had two other films that were black-themed and both had Poitier as a star, In the heat of the night (Norman Jewison) which won best oscar, and To Sir, with Love (Jame Clavell). Many of the films Poitier played focused on his race and how he might try to fit in an integrated America. The African American radicalism that was on the climb in the late 60s made it necessary for other types of black stories and celebrities. This film genre is known as Blaxploitation since it focuses on the awaiting black American audience and the marketing scheme from its production style of exploitation. The most well known blaxploitation films are Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971) and Superfly (Gordon Parks Jr., 1972). These films showcase heroic stories of handsome and capable men inside of the urban crime scene. These films had a lot of action (gunfights and fistfights) and nods to the popular African American music scene. This genre also got African Americans behind the camera as well as on-screen. Some of the best in this genre were Gordon Parks, Ossie Davis, and Melvin Van Peebles. The LA Rebellion was a film movement that was led by Africans, Caribbeans, and African Americans as independent filmmakers. They emerged near the same time blaxploitation was popular. This movement started in the University of California, LA, during the 60’s. The reason for this movement is because of the diversity efforts from UCLA and racial unrest in the city and the university. Many terrific films came about because of this movement such as Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), Gerima’s Bush Mama (1979), and Jamaa Fanaka’s crossover blaxploitation prison boxing film Penitentiary (1979).  (Lewis 347 – 351)

The New Woman’s Film: in the 70’s cigarette slims were on sale as a sleeker, and more feminine cigarette. The ad glorified the women’s liberation movement, the movement that was supposed to raise awareness about women’s issues. The ad showed a similarity between women being able to smoke freely and the right to vote. Since Madison Avenue was able to use women’s liberation to sell cigarettes, then film studios could use it to market movies. Hollywood found it hard to capture the women’s liberation movement onscreen however since the films they attempted to make were more of cautionary than celebratory like the film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Scorsese, 1974). One of the most popular and celebrated films of the film industry’s women in this era is Klute (Alan J Pakula, 1971), and it was produced by an all-male production team. This film was considered a progressive film from its time, but it more closely resembles the thriller genre than any form of politics of feminism. The auteur renaissance brought about a new type of film in America, but this generation of movie directors was vastly male dominated. The very few directors that were women were pushed out since they did not receive much financing and they instead had to go independent and screen their films at art houses. Many of the best films from the 70s are hard to find since they have been lost, but one film Wanda by Barbara Loden was written, directed, and starred by her in this amazing no budget film. This film has a cult status now, but during this time period it was almost completely unnoticed. Warner bros tried picking up one indie feature from Claudia Weill known as Girlfriends (1978), but with the support of a major studio release the film did not have much effect on the box-office. Few women got to direct films in the 70s; the era’s best known producers are Joan Carelli and Julia Phillips. Carelli was able to obtain an associate producer credit by working on the Oscar-winning film by Micheal Cimino, The Deer Hunter. She then got her full credit from looking after the daily production of Heavens Gate. Phillips was one of the most influential producers in the decade, one example of this is when she got introduced to Paul Schrader and she attached herself to the script of Taxi Driver. She was then able to use her skills behind the scenes of the film in order to place the film in a pantheon of American filmmaking. Even if Corporations like the Virginia Slims ad proclaim women have come a long way, they have not at all. The amount of male directors, producers, and writers showed that the century old industry had hardly changed. (Lewis 351 – 355)

Works Cited

Lewis, Jon. American Film: A History. 2nd ed., 2021