230327 The Last Picture Show: New Hollywood and the American Imagination (S) (WiSe 2021/2022)

ONLINE & SYNCHRONOUS.

In this seminar, we will explore films from and critical writings in conjunction with the so-called “New Hollywood” period – an era which started in the late nineteen-sixties with films like Easy Rider (dir. Dennis Hopper, 1969) and Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967) and covered most of the 1970s. Sometimes hailed as a Hollywood’s last truly great era before the advent of the blockbuster, this period saw an outpour of creative energy, also owing to major shifts taking place in and beyond the film industry such as the erosion of the strict moral guidelines upheld by the Motion Picture Industry’s production code and the emergence of the independent filmmaker/auteur breaking away from the production of formulaic studio fare.

Not least of all, New Hollywood mirrored the manifold cultural and political upheavals in the U.S. of its day. As Jonathan Kirshner has argued, “The era of the seventies film reflected a shift away from the pristine exposition of linear stories with unambiguous moral grounding, and toward self-consciously gritty explorations of complex episodes that challenged the received normative structure of society.” (2012:2) Accordingly, our guiding question explores New Hollywood’s critical and aesthetic review of classic Hollywood formats from western to period drama and noir and with it, notions of (U.S.) American-ness past and present in a time that saw the rise of social, women’s and minority movements and an increased mistrust in U.S. national and international politics, from Vietnam to Watergate. Furthermore, we will also look into the legacy of New Hollywood, such as its key significance to independent filmmaking and the creation of platforms where these new cinematic articulations could be showcased, such as the Telluride and Sundance film festivals.

Work cited: Jonathan Kirshner, Hollywood’s Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film in America. Cornell UP, 2012.
(https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7591/9780801465840/html
VPN client needed)

Requirements for participation, required level

Important: Since this seminar is located at the intersection of cultural and film studies, one prerequisite will be familiarity with film analytical terminology. For a very basic introduction, read up on Yale University’s Film Analysis website https://filmanalysis.yale.edu/

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS SEMINAR WILL BE CANCELLED. PLEASE SIGN UP FOR ANOTHER CLASS AND / OR KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR RECENTLY ADDED SEMINARS WITHIN THE SAME MODULE.

Bibliography

To be announced.

Some of the films and additional readings will be made available by means of a Semesterapparat at the university library. You should, however, also be willing to stream a couple of films at your own expense (for example, Bonnie and Clyde is EUR 3.99 at amazon prime at the time of this writing/June 2021).