The Last great American Picture Show : new Hollywood cinema in the 1970s

This book brings together essays by scholars and writers who chart the changing evaluations of the American cinema of the 1970s, sometimes referred to as the decade of the lost generation, but now more and more recognized as the first New Hollywood, without which the cinema of Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Tim Burton or Quentin Tarantino could not have come into existence. Identified with directors such as Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn, Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman, Bob Rafelson, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman and James Toback, American cinema of the 1970s is long overdue for this re-evaluation. Many of the films have not only come back from oblivion, as the benchmark for new directorial talents. They have also become cult films in the video shops and the classics of film courses all over the world.Pt. I. Introduction. 1. The Impure Cinema: New Hollywood 1967-1976 / Alexander Horwath. 2. "The Last Good Time We Ever Had": Remembering the New Hollywood Cinema / Noel King. 3. American Auteur Cinema: The Last - or First - Great Picture Show / Thomas Elsaesser -- Pt. II. Histories. 4. The Decade When Movies Mattered / David Thomson. 5. A Walking Contradiction (Partly Truth and Partly Fiction) / Alexander Horwath. 6. The Exploitation Generation, or: How Marginal Movies Came in from the Cold / Maitland McDonagh. 7. New Hollywood and the Sixties Melting Pot / Jonathan Rosenbaum -- Pt. III. People and Places. 8. Dinosaurs in the Age of the Cinemobile / Richard T. Jameson. 9. "The Cylinders Were Whispering My Name": The Films of Monte Hellman / Kent Jones. 10. NASHVILLE contra JAWS, or "The Imagination of Disaster" Revisted / J. Hoberman. 11. For WANDA / Bérénice Reynaud. 12. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere: The Uneasy Ride of Hollywood and Rock / Howard Hampton. 13. Auteurism and War-teurism: Terrence Malick's War Movie / Dana Polan -- Pt. IV. Critical Debates. 14. The Pathos of Failure: American Films in the 1970s: Notes on the Unmoticated Hero / Thomas Elsaesser. 15. Trapped in the Affection Image: Hollywood's Post-traumatic Cycle (1970-1976) / Christian Keathley. 16. Grim Fascination: FINGERS, James Toback and the 1970s American Cinema / Adrain Martin. 17. Allegories of Post-Fordism in 1970s New Hollywood: Countercultural Combat Films and Conspiracy Thrillers as Genre Recycling / Drehli Robnik