‘’American new wave films ignored taboos and appealed to the youth, addressing sex and violence with now iconic moments in cinema history.’’ (Saporito, 2016) This new brand of filmmaking was bewitching audiences and generations of eventual filmmakers. These films were centred on complex themes with morally ambiguous messages, reflecting the nonconforming generation disillusioned by Vietnam and the Vietnam war, which changed American film into a means of looking critically at the country's history and future.
In his book, Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema, Film studies professor and author Todd Berliner syas that five principles govern the narrative of the New Hollywood movement:
· ‘’A tendency to integrate, story and stylistic devices;
· Situate their film-making practices in between those of classical Hollywood and European and Asian art cinema;
· prompt spectator responses more uncertain and discomforting than Hollywood cinema;
· irresolution, when Hollywood movies tie up loose ends;
· hinders narrative linearity and momentum to generate suspense and excitement.’’ (Berliner, 2010)
New Hollywood’s run through the 1970s changed cinema forever. Filmmakers continue to be inspired by and draw from the works of the New Hollywood auteurs, such as Scorsese and Coppola.
Looking at what Author Todd Berliner said about the five main principals of American new wave film it is easy to see how they are applied to both the mainstream cinematic films, like The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) and Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967), and smaller more independent films, Like Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969).
In regards to The Godfather (Coppola 1972) it seems like a crime picture or a gangster movie but contains some of the coming of age elements evident in the new wave movement. But it diverts towards the rise of mainstream Hollywood cinema with its high budget and cinematic shots. It focuses on the truth of what is going on at the time with the crime and violence with the mafia. Making people see a different reality rather than that of the Vietnam war. One scene in particular, when we hear about the meeting arranged and follow the plan to conceal a gun in the lavatory of the small, neighbourhood Italian restaurant chosen for the rendezvous. Within that there's the night-time car ride where Michael is frisked and approved during which we see the typical shadows and lowkey lighting effects like chiaroscuro associated with Film noir and new holly wood films as well as the long takes of the dialogue between the characters in the car. The film noir element isn’t a key feature of American new wave however is a feature of the French new wave which gave rise to New Hollywood. As Berliner said ‘’seventies films Situate their film-making practices in between those of classical Hollywood and European and Asian art cinema’’ (Berliner, 2010), taking some elements of French new wave with the film noir style and the tendency towards extreme violence from Asian art cinema. In the restaurant itself, there's Italian talk at the table, with subtitles, and Michael asks to be allowed to go to the bathroom, proving Berliners point of ‘’Seventies films showing a tendency to integrate story and stylistic devices.’’(Berliner,2010) in the background the noise of the rise and fall of a subway train passing is heard in between the dialogue. The train is used an artistic device, a heightening effect. With New wave films dialogue drowned out by noises was used as a sense of verisimilitude to show audiences that they are watching a film that has a sense of reality written within, that and most shots were only filmed once due to a lower budget, The Godfather may have had a larger budget but shots were still usually done in one to save time, in this case the train noise wasn’t drowning out dialogue but added background noise changing the mood of the scene.
Michael comes out with a gun and leaves the two men for dead. Coppola deliberately does not use the more popular approach of sadistic punishment, rejecting the Hitchcockian way of violence and the conventions of classic American cinema noted by Mulvey, she suggested, ‘’ this domination has caused a clear masculine bias in how films are shot and presented to viewers who, sometimes unknowingly, consume examples of harmful masculinity.’’ (Mulvey, 1999)
But something else has happened – Michael, the good boy in the family has crossed over. He has come of age, coming of age films were a large part of 1960's/1970s cinema in Hollywood giving the audience something to connect to. The Godfather suddenly reveals itself as not just a gangster chronicle, but the progress of Michael towards evil. What makes The Godfather new wave is the focus on the true-to-life gloom of Italian American life. The old distinction between good guys and bad guys will not pass in an America suddenly aware of its own corruption and compromise.
On that same note of good, bad and America becoming aware of own corruption we have Easy rider (Hopper 1969), Easy Rider is a record of a certain time in American history, and a chronicle of a culture clash that never quite ended. It’s a freewheeling take on freedom—what it means and what it costs. The word freedom also describes the mind-set that created Easy Rider. The film was shot totally outside of studio channels, for around $350,000, and was cowritten by Hopper, Fonda, and Terry Southern all representing facets of the counterculture. They were united by their embrace of a bohemian lifestyle and their dissatisfaction with post war America.
Billy and Wyatt cross the United States in two senses of the word: literally as a road trip across America, and in giving offense. They disrupt, oppose, betray. Like so many of the fringe characters the duo meets on their journey, they don’t have regular jobs, families, or homes. They live from one drug deal to the next, go where they please, and stick around until they feel like moving on again. Showing the other sense of the phrase. Billy’s and Wyatt’s appearances challenge prevailing notions of manhood (the bikers are routinely harassed for their long hair and eccentric clothes and mocked as girls or queers).
‘’Hopper treated Easy Rider as a laboratory in which to test his theories of what constituted truly adventurous writing, directing, and acting. And he drove himself and his castmates to give intuitive, risky, confessional performances.’’ (Seitz, 2010)
Hopper’s background as a photographer and art director informed the movie’s loose, inventive visuals. He encouraged his cinematographer to shoot most of the film’s exteriors with natural light. Most daringly, Hopper denied conventions of classical cinema and used long takes of the of the guys riding their bikes for the majority of the film. Easy Rider also transcends its cultural moment, because it’s about more than bikers and hippies or the tension between libertines and reactionaries. It’s about the difficulty of escaping social conditioning and economic imperatives and sustaining a truly free life which is why drugs are shown prominently throughout the film as society in the 60’s/70’s used drugs as a way to escape what was going on.
In the oft-cited campfire scene near the end, Wyatt tells Billy, “We blew it.” That line has been taken as an indictment of the American counterculture, but the line is also seen as more of a personal sort of confession, an admission that they have ultimately succumbed and bought into their own.
In a particular moment of the film Wyatt and Billy are sitting in a graveyard with two girls, drinking, smoking and taking acid, a drug common in the 60's, from what is seen in these two minutes they are having a bad trip. further reading of the film as a whole shows that after this bad trip in the graveyard the two lads go on a journey of spiritual truth, the start of which can be seen and directly related to the underlying religious setting of a graveyard but also the use of a non-diegetic but then diegetic voice over from a girl reading either from a bible or one of the lords prayers. At the start of the clip we get a mid-shot low down looking at the four sat in front of a tombstone on of the lads is dressed as a native American, again foreshadowing the spiritual trip they will take later in the film. The lack of dialogue between the group doesn't help to show anything that is going on other than the words ''just shut up and take it'' the only speech here that conveys anything is the voice over that comes in, throughout the scene there is a loud non-diegetic sound that seems like drums banging or something loud and ominous probably foreshadowing the nature of the trip they are about to take from the actual drugs themselves, ironically before they take a trip across America to find spiritual truth. The shot then jumps between a shot of them and a pan upwards of the tomb as well as a lens flare across the screen possibly showing this idea of spirituality as god is the light, this is also seen with the a shot of the sun then going to a white out to the jump back to their bad trip. However, reviewing what Berliner said, the scene is confusing and does what he says American New Wave films do. “
prompt spectator responses more uncertain and discomforting than Hollywood cinema’’. (Berliner 2010)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn 1967) not only defies the conventions of classical cinema and the traditional gangster films of the 30’s onwards, where film noir was very popular, by doing things differently, not only defying the conventions of cinema but also the views of society, issues of Gender, extreme violence, social hierarchy and Race were all explored. Pfeiffer said the film “pioneered a new era of filmmaking, tearing down barriers in the depiction of violence and sexuality”. (Pfeiffer, 2018). The film defys the norm of gender roles by giving Bonnie Power, as in society and in traditional Gangster cinema men were the ones with the power. But the main thing Bonnie and Clyde stood for just like Easy Rider was Freedom but also the cost of freedom.
“Love is never free. Neither Penn would lead us to believe, is freedom” …” Penn is not creating gangsters that go against the social order – he uses them to make the audience uncomfortable with that order”’ … “Penn allows Bonnie and Clyde to generate themselves as figures of freedom”. (Kolker, 2000)
Take the final scene, where the film descends into a violent and disturbing conclusion. While it had seemed that they might be able to outrun the police forever, the group finds that this is not the case after they are apprehended at the cabin they are staying in. Because the Barrow gang has caused so much chaos in the region, the cops are intent on killing them as soon as they find them. The violent consequences of the gang's actions lead to horrifying images of violence. Penn does not spare the viewer from the sight of blood or any of the grisly violent details. The fact that they are hunted down and apprehended after their escape shows this lack of freedom and the ideal that both Easy rider and Bonnie and Clyde both have that freedom has a price and we are never truly free from society or the world events. Linking back to the Extreme violence and Defiance of classical conventions, the final scene heightens the violence with the build up towards it, using long takes, shot reverse shot and a lack of non-diegetic background music. These techniques both heightened the focus on the violence but also made the audience uncomfortable generating a response that was not like that of classical cinema. Again, agreeing with what Berliner said about the narrative of new wave. “
prompt spectator responses more uncertain and discomforting than Hollywood cinema”.
Overall, it appears that the common trend throughout the multitude of films is the portrayal of Freedom and changing times. “..rose to prominence in the late 60s, bringing a new set of values representative of the counter-culture and an aesthetic influenced by the French New Wave’’ (Hitchman, 2013). Which with the Vietnam war going on people needed a form of escape from reality. The vast array of films brought to light the significance of freedom, coming of age, good vs evil and the decay of an old world and society and has been renowned as being the start of what we know as Mainstream Hollywood cinema.
Works Cited
Berliner, T. (2010). Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema. Austin: university of texas press.
Coppola, F. F. (Director). (1972). The Godfather [Motion Picture].
Hitchman, S. (2013). A History of American New Wave. Retrieved from New Wave Film: http://www.newwavefilm.com/international/american-new-wave-1.shtml
Hopper, D. (Director). (1969). Easy Rider [Motion Picture].
Kolker, R. (2000). A Cinema of Loneliness. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mulvey, L. (1999). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford University Press.
Penn, A. (Director). (1967). Bonnie and Clyde [Motion Picture].
Pfeiffer, L. (2018, March 15). Bonnie and Clyde. Retrieved from ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bonnie-and-Clyde-film-by-Penn
Saporito, J. (2016, july 14). Q: The Filmmaker’s Handbook: What was the New Hollywood movement? Retrieved from The Take: http://screenprism.com/insights/article/the-filmmakers-handbook-what-is-the-new-hollywood-movement
Seitz, M. Z. (2010, November 24). Easy Rider: Wild at Heart. Retrieved from The Criterion Colection : https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1667-easy-rider-wild-at-heart
