Searching for New Frontiers: Hollywood Films in the 1960s

Description

Searching For New Frontiers offers film students and general readers a survey of popular movies of the 1960s. The author explores the most important modes of filmmaking in times that were at once hopeful, exhilarating, and daunting. The text combines discussion of American social and political history and Hollywood industry changes with analysis of some of the era’s most expressive movies.  The book covers significant genres and evolving thematic trends, highlighting a variety of movies that confronted the era’s major social issues. It notes the stylistic confluence and exchanges between three forms: the traditional studio movie based on the combination of stars and genres, low-budget exploitation movies, and the international art cinema. As the author reveals, this complex period of American filmmaking was neither random nor the product of unique talents working in a vacuum. The filmmakers met head-on with an evolving American social conscience to create a Hollywood cinema of an era defined by events such as the Vietnam War, the rise of the civil rights movement, and the moon landing. Content: Post Hollywood and a changing America. -- Hollywood, Hitchcock, and the postwar era -- Domestic relations, 1953-1967, Bachelor pads, nervous dads, & marriages on the rocks welcoming The Graduate -- Negotiating the civil rights movement, To kill a mockingbird the rise of Sidney Poitier -- The new Hollywood, Vietnam, and the schism. -- Art cinema and counter-culture, Dr. Strangelove, A Hard day's night, Blow up, Bonnie and Clyde, Weekend -- Nowhere to run: the late western. One-eyed Jacks, The Man who shot Liberty Valance, A Fistful of dollars, the Wild Bunch -- The War, The Longest day, Hell is for heroes, The Dirty dozen, Castle keep, The Green berets -- Far out: new Hollywood voyages of discovery, A Space odyssey, Easy rider.