Influence & impact on contemporary films or other media

New Hollywood cinema has appeared as a film genre since 1967 till 1977 and it was during that time that the directors went through the cultural revolution. They experience the rise of feminism and the sexual liberation along with the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the fall of Communism. It was these factors that influenced contemporary media to what we see today.

In the past, most film makers were very reluctant to put any sexual elements into their films due to the conservatism of that period where sexual content was seen as a taboo and should be censored. But going against that, the directors of the New Hollywood Cinema movement bravely decided to go against the norm and do films which had sexual elements in it. There innovativeness brought in a new element to filming which is still seen a lot of most modern day films. In the end, audiences have begun to see such sexual elements in a film as a norm which we can see through more current films such as “Basic Instinct (1992)”, “American Pie(1999)”, “You don’t mess with the Zohan (2008)” and etc

.(2 above) scenes from Basic Instinct

New Hollywood cinema employs fast cuts unlike previous films where each scene was long and drawn out to help illicit the audiences emotions for that particular scene. This new style of filming gained a lot of popularity with the younger generation of movie-goers during that time and until this day, most of the films Hollywood produces still use fast cuts and dynamic camera angles to attract the younger crowd. This use of fast cuts makes it hard for the audience to anticipate what is going to happen next in the film and allows room for surprise twists in the plot. This keeps the audience’s attention on what is happening on screen because they will never know what to expect and it makes the ultimate end of the film hard to guess because there could possibly more ways than one that the film could end. This condenses the storyline which engages the audience while also adding more complexity to it.

Another factor of film that the New Hollywood movement influenced was the level of violence in films. Where in the past scenes of violence where something unheard of in films, now days it’s a norm to see such scenes in practically a lot of the movies coming out. People get a sense of excitement and pleasure from watching depictions of violence and gore in the film scenes. Such movie violence has even seeped into children’s movies. Examples of movies that have over the top violence and gore in them are movies such as “Final Destination” and “Saw”.

In Final Destination for example, each death was extremely bloody and violent which each of the characters being killed and mutilated in the most horrific fashion possible. Another example of over the top deaths is in "Rambo 5" where literally one bullet shot can make a head explode.

Film Analysis

Taxi Driver 1976

Synopsis

New York taxi driver, Travis Bickle constantly, almost obsessively reflects on the ugly corruption of life around him. He becomes increasingly disturbed by his own loneliness and feelings of being alienated by the rest of society. In nearly every phase of his life, he remains a complete outsider, failing to ever achieve one form of emotional contact with someone. Suffering from insomnia, he frequents the local pornography emporiums to find some form of solace and come up with a way to escape from his current existence.

The director for Taxi Driver is Martin Scorsese (born 17 November 1942) who is graduate of New York University majoring in film. Scorsese’ style includes the frequent use of New York as a setting as seen in Gangs of New York (2002), The Age of Innocence (1993), The King of Comedy (1983), After Hours (1985), New York, New York (1977) and Mean Streets (1973). He also portrays his lead as morally ambiguous, prone to violence, looking for a means to be accepted by society and are not infrequently loners or people who cannot fit in well with society around them.

(Scorsese's cameo in Taxi Driver)

The inspiration for Taxi Driver came from scriptwriter, Paul Schrader who in turn got his own inspiration partly from Arthur Bremer’s Assassin’s Diary which tells the story of Arthur Bremer, the would be assassin of the Alabama governor, George Wallace. Travis Bickle’s life is loosely based on Arthur Bremer’s adult life.

Robert De Niro plays the role of the alienated Vietnam war veteran, Travis Bickle who works long hours as a taxi driver due to his insomnia. Screenwriter Paul Schrader makes the character a Vietnam veteran because of the mood of the country during that after the Vietnam War along with the trauma that most soldier’s suffered after the war accorded well with Bickle’s paranoid psychosis. Travis is a byproduct of the violence of the late 1970s who is determined to ‘wash all the scum off the streets’.

Emphasis on realism of character and theme

Scorsese emphasis on realism of character is portrayed by Travis Bickle’s character who is an ex-Marine from the Vietnam War. Scorsese wanted to show viewers the sort of physical and psychological trauma that war veterans go through, by means of creating a character that reflects a tortured soul who has trouble fitting back into normal society. Unable to conform to society, Travis just spends him time alone, driving his taxi through a city rife with corruption and crime. Travis’s taxi emerge into the cinema frame out of a cloud of steam as if it is being born into the world of the film. Throughout the film Scorsese shoots both Travis and his yellow taxicab from every angle possible, ensuring all components of the man and the machine get their own close-up at least once. They are one and the same; cruising the less desirable parts of New York and slowly being changed by the city. The taxi picks up dents from hurled objects and stains from the passengers in the back seat, Travis picks ups some disturbingly peculiar ideas about women on what they want and what they should do.

Sexuality and Violence

Travis falls for Betsy, a woman who works in the campaign office of Senator Palatine. He becomes increasingly obsessed with her and decides to go in to the office posing as a candidate supporter to ask her out for coffee. He takes her to a porn movie on their first date where she finds his behaviour appalling and refuses to meet him again. Not long after Betsy rejects him, Travis encounters a passenger who delights in telling him about his intent to murder his cheating wife. Ever impressionable, Travis expresses his anger feelings of rejection from Betsy by planning to hurt her by assassinating the politician - Palatine she is campaigning for. Travis buys guns from an illegal businessman and uses it to shoot down the robber when he is going to the shop that he used to visit. Travis then encounters child prostitute Iris who he had seen often on his routes and decides to help her get out of a life of prostitution by confronting her pimp. He sees the act of getting Iris out of prostitution as a small way of him cleaning up the streets and also helping the girl reclaim her purity. This goes in Scorsese's style of portraying the female character as an angelic figure in the eyes of the lead. This was also seen early in the way Travis viewed Betsy and his growing infatuation with her.

Upper class vs. lower class

There are a variety of people in New York City that are divided into different status levels. We can see from one part of the town, The Bronx. Lots of people from the lower social class gather and stay there together. There is also discrimination towards those of different social statuses. For example, when Travis dresses up neatly like he is from the upper class during the election, he receives good treatment but the opposite occurs when he is driving the cab, he is asked to drive away instead of blocking the street.

Besides that, New York City is a place that has a higher criminal rate due to the libertarian socialism. They stress on human rights and freedom of choice. Gun licensing is a norm and practically a lot of them own one piece or more. Even they don't have a license for a gun; they still get one as long as they have money to go through the improper channels of procuring one. Prostitution in New York is a common phenomenon to them. Some places are listed as 'black areas'. For example, during  the conversation between Travis and another taxi driver, Wizard. There is a guy behind them that is being caught by the cops. At the opening of the film, when Travis goes to apply for the job of a taxi driver, 2 guys behind him are arguing with each other. 

Racism is also one of the issues in New York City. Discrimination always happens among the black people and the white people. The black people always bully and insult the white people while the white people hate the black people so much. The grocery shop owner gets robbed by black people and Travis accidently shoots them down in order to help the owner. The owner then starts to hit the dead or half dead black people after Travis leaves the shop in fear. When Travis drives pass the alley the black people throw glass bottles at his cab.

Taxi Driver conforms to familiar convention such as those of continuity editing and narrative motivation, providing a ground against which elements of innovation can be measured. The narrative of Taxi Driver fails to establish any clear - cut motivation for Travis Bickle's actions. The voice - over narration from a diary kept by Travis Bickle is the main highlight of the film by allowing you to follow how the story flows.

The scene where Travis’s rampage ends uses a shot that creates a feel that evokes the imagination of Travis’s soul departing into the night. It’s a deliberately ambiguous ending, but the outcome is that the film ends with the audience in Travis’s world. Shots of the streets of New York seem to suggest at Travis’s collapsed state of mind.

Scorsese shows us the world through Travis’s eyes, an unhinged individual who is all too ready to respond to the aggressive stimuli around him. However, once we’ve seen the world the way Travis sees it, on a purely emotive level there is something disturbingly seductive about God’s lonely man and his deranged crusade. In this regard Taxi Driver is dangerous cinema and it’s all the better for it.

The introverted world of Bickle, which is created by Scorsese, De Niro, Schrader and director of photography Michael Chapman, represents a time when movie studios took risks and heralds the end of the era of New Hollywood.

Unique Characteristics Narrative and Stylistic of New Hollywood Cinema

The New Hollywood Era happened between the 1960’s to the 1980’s. After the fall of Old Hollywood, New Hollywood rose up to replace the old producer-driven mode of film making to something more dynamic and fresh which could attract the youth audience. These young film makers came from an educated background where they attended film school and therefore had a more thorough knowledge on film which came from a learned background instead of one where experience is gained through trial and error. Where the Old Hollywood cinema was one driven by the fact that most films were more or less standardized because all the cast and crew of the production were employees of a particular film studio which led to a lack of varied style on behalf of the directors who had to view themselves as employees rather than creative people. The New Hollywood cinema movement got rid of all the old systems by liberating the directors to be creatively active in their style of film making.

New Hollywood cinema used a linear narrative to present its story which made it for the audience to understand the content of the film. The three act structure was used to present the story by splitting it into an introduction, rising action and resolution.

Introduction: Introduce the main characters and how they fit into the world they live in.

Rising action: A build up of pace where the main character is trying to resolve the situation at hand but are unable to do so because of something they lack whether it be skills or complete knowledge of how to solve it. This portion contains the first turning point the story.

Resolution: Where the story is resolve along with whatever subplots the story may contain. The second turning of the story occurs here.

The mise-en scene and mise-en shot of for New Hollywood cinema focused on realism of character. Therefore not that many effects were applied to films of the New Hollywood movement. Even the lighting that was used was natural lighting which added to the feel of the movie being more realistic. The style of editing that New Hollywood cinema uses is parallel editing where two separate scenes are cut from one to the other to establish that two events are happening simultaneously and also to establish the relationship of certain characters. This kind of editing allowed for a deeper portrayal of the relationships of each character between one another thereby allowing the narrative to be driven forward. Continuity also played a major role in New Hollywood films to ensure a smooth transition of scenes which are shown from various perspectives. An example of a continuity technique was the eyeline match where the scene was cut from the gaze of the character to the object that the character was looking at. This allowed the scenes to be cut cleanly without awkward and out of place. In essence, New Hollywood Cinema had actually absorbed elements of French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, this can be seen through the fact that they did not use studio settings for their shots but rather went on location to do their filming.

“Bonnie & Clyde” is one example of a New Hollywood film which contained elements of humor, horror, graphic violence and sex. This movie led to some controversy during the rise of New Hollywood Cinema because during that time, such a movie was not easily accepted by the people film makers were targeting which led them to change their focus on who they want to target. The most controversial event due to New Hollywood films was the attempt at assassination of the president of the USA in Washington by John Hinckley Jr. John was a fan of “Taxi Driver”, he had watched the movie around 15 times because he idolized Jodie Foster who was an actress in the movie. His attempt of assassinating the president was his way of trying to impress her.

Bonnie and Clyde

The greatest change that the New Hollywood movement brought about was the emphasis on realism of character while featuring elements of anti-establishment political themes, use of rock music and sexual freedom which was against the culture of the day. It reached the heights of the film market allowing it to spread its influence to many countries. It also brought about a wave of popularity towards movie based music. Product placement is was also a common place thing in New Hollywood films. Different product brands would promote themselves by doing product placement of their brands in the films. An example of numerous product placement in a film is "Taxi Driver"

(Cola-cola product placement in Taxi Driver)

 (7-up)

 (Cola-cola)

 (Wonder Bread)

Thus was the change from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood. This change injected new life into the film industry and revitalized it. It brought about a renewed interest in the younger generation to watch films thereby allowing New Hollywood Cinema to grab hold of a bigger target audience and make a bigger profit.

Historical Background, Film List and Directors of New Hollywood Cinema

The 1960’s was the birth of the American counter-culture and the decline of Old Hollywood cinema, it was during this time that America underwent many social reforms because the young people of that time voiced out their discontent towards America’s materialistic, political and social norms. The young people of that time used music, politics and alternative lifestyle as a means of trying to create a better world for themselves, this led to the birth of what came to be known as counter-culture. Americans during this era also faced many controversial issues such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear arms, and the rise of drug use, sexual freedom, and nonconformity. 

Hollywood of that time faced a big crisis because of those social reforms along with technological advancements of that time such as the introduction of the television. It was thanks to television that movie audiences were in decline which led to American film companies to diversify with other forms of entertainment such as records, publishing, TV movies and the production of TV series. The year 1963 and 1964 were bad years for American film production with only 121 feature releases in 1963 (worst in fifty years) and 141 in 1964, 1964 was also the year which saw the highest number of foreign films released in America.

Hollywood of that time was in financial decline and on the verge of bankruptcy, major studios financed and distributed independently-produced domestic pictures. And made-for-TV movies became a regular feature of network programming by mid-decade. Many "runaway" film productions were being made abroad to save money. By mid-decade, the average ticket price was less than a dollar, and the average film budget was slightly over one and a half million dollars. And by the end of the decade, the film industry was very troubled and depressed and experiencing an all-time low that had been developing for almost 25 years.

 (Ruby Slippers worn by Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz 1939 sold for $15 000 during Hollywood financial crisis, currently appraised at $3 million)

Studio-bound "contract" stars and directors were no longer. And most of the directors from the early days of cinema were either retired or dead. Some of the studios, such as UA and Hal Roach Studios, had to sell off their backlots as valuable California real estate (for condominiums and shopping centers). Some sold props (MGM was selling various film artifacts in 1970, including Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (1939)), offered tours of back lots (Universal began its famed studio tours in 1964), or created theme parks (DisneyWorld in Orlando, Florida).

Bonnie and Clyde(1967) is regarded as one of the first films of  The Hollywood Cinema.

Alien(1979) directed by Ridley Scott, an aggressive creatures stalks and kills the crews of spaceship.

It was during the year 1967 to 1977 that a new generation of young film makers came into prominence thereby establishing New Hollywood cinema. They changed not only the way Hollywood films were produced and marketed but also changed what types of films were being made. The directors of New Hollywood Cinema are Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Norman Jewison, John Boorman, Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn, Dennis Hopper, Sydney Lumet and etc. They came from the baby boomer generation and most of these new directors had previously gone to film schools such as New York University, and The University of California in Los Angeles (Film Art An Introduction, 2008, PG464). An interesting fact to note is that most of these young directors of the New Hollywood cinema were mentored Roger Corman who also helped launch the careers of quite a number of actors as well such as Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Talia Shire and Robert De Niro.

 (Robert De Niro*far left* in Roger Corman's Bloody Mama)

Other films of New Hollywood Cinema are Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, Bonnie and Clyde, THX 1138, Annie Hall and China Town.

Little Big Man(1970) by Arthur Penn.

What emerged from such studies was radical in innovation and sophistication which became characteristic of the Hollywood Renaissance. This was attributed to the new breed of independent filmmakers who had some training in television or were film college graduates. They introduced new advancements such as widescreen processes and technical improvements such as cinemascope, stereo sound and etc to try to recapture their dwindling audience by giving them a larger than life experience, one that television couldn’t match.

American Gigolo(1980) a crime drama directed by Paul schrader.

The Goodbye Girl(1977) by Herbert Ross

During the 1950s and early 60s, Hollywood film production was dominated by musicals, historical epics and other films that benefitted from the larger screens, wider framing and improved sound. This proved commercially viable during most of the 50s. However by the late 60s, audience share was dwindling at an alarming rate. Several costly flops, including Cleopatra (1963) and Hello, Dolly! (1969) put severe financial strain on the studios

 (Jospeh L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra)

Cleopatra (1963), filmed on location in Rome, brought together the explosive pairing of Elizabeth Taylor as the Queen of Egypt and future husband Richard Burton as Marc Antony, who brought more headlines with their blossoming romance than the budget problems. It proved to be a tremendous financial disaster for 20th Century Fox, headed by Darryl Zanuck. Taylor, already the highest-paid performer in the history of Hollywood at $1 million, had a costume wardrobe budgeted at almost $200,000, and with numerous cost over-runs, extravagant sets and thousands of costumes for the cast, the film was the most expensive up to that time at a record $44 million (in adjusted dollars, about $300 million), from an initial budget of $2 million. It was also the longest, commercially-made American film released in the US - at 4 hours and 3 minutes. [Fox was saved from financial disaster only by the release of the fact-based war epic The Longest Day (1963), an all-star re-creation of the events surrounding D-Day, and the blow was also softened by the unexpected success of The Sound of Music (1965).]

Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) marked the beginning of the end for New Hollywood cinema. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas helped spearhead a jumpstart in the Hollywood blockbuster mentality on how studios could make money by having tie-in merchandise, spin offs into other media such as soundtracks and having sequels for popular movies.