The American New Wave or also known as New Hollywood was a movement in American film history from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in the United States bringing influence from The French New Wave. It all started in 1919 when four leading figures of American Silent Cinema M. Pickford, C. Chaplin, D. Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith formed the first indie studio "United Artists". Their aim was to better control their own work as well as their futures.
Then shortly after the second world war, major studio companies lost the majority of their power due to The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers which was formed by many of those who were members of United Artists combined with portable cameras lowering in price allowed indie filmmakers to compete with major studios and create more films.
The movement started with 'The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" both released in 1967. They both influenced the future of movie-making as these films saw less influence from their production studios and more influence from their directors. This lead onto more films created in the same style with a brand new set of conventions which mostly included breaking the rules of traditional Hollywood movies. these conventions included: Non-linear narratives or ones that just don't make much sense. Handheld cameras. Hiring random people off the street to act and work on the film with you. Unusual editing techniques such as the jump cut which traditional now was never used in American Filmmaking before, and overdubbing. As well as natural lighting and a natural setting. Most of this was due to a low budget but it was also a new way for young filmmakers to express themselves like no filmmakers have before. New Hollywood resulted in commercially viable pictures that explored previously taboo subjects in innovative new ways. However, New Hollywood isn't so much a style of filmmaking as it is a movement and a period of time. Within this video essay, I'll be talking about "Bonnie and Clyde" "Taxi Driver" and "Easy Rider".
Taxi Driver:
This is one of the most famous scenes from "Taxi Driver" where Travis practices confronting someone in front of his mirror. He points his gun at his reflection and utters the words, “You talkin’ to me?”
Taxi Driver was definitely a massive departure from the traditional style of Hollywood and exemplified what The American New Wave wanted to achieve in a number of ways from its non-traditional narrative combined with the unique aesthetics
Its style of editing was one of the key conventions in American New Wave. In opposition to the traditional continuity editing of Hollywood, disjunctive editing further distanced American New Wave films from their predecessors and served a number of purposes – from forcing the audience to actively be engaged in the film to disorienting them for artistic, ideological, or psychological purposes
The editing used in this scene, as well as the non-diegetic sound of Travis’s voice-over, was done to make the audience disturbed and disoriented, as well as portraying the paranoia and delusions occurring in his head. While it brings the viewer closer into Travis’s state of mind, it also makes his thoughts seem more violent and disturbing.
In her book, Hollywood Renaissance, Diane Jacobs discusses the innovative editing and camerawork present in Taxi Driver, saying: “While the camera’s pacing accelerates as the film progresses, it is as restless as its character’s mind from the very start” ( page 146).
Bonnie And Clyde:
With Bonnie And Clyde being one of the first American New Wave productions, it took a lot of its influence from The French New Wave. The film was based on the real-life events of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow who were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang, during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted
It originally took a while for "Bonnie and Clyde" to catch on. The film barely made it out with Warner Bros rebooting its opening. However "Bonnie and Clyde" dunked the cinema in style, blood, and glamour. It was the start of the creation of new American films which was proven by the fact that the two homicidal lovers on the run were to be recreated many times in films such as "Thieves like us" "Natural Born Killers" and "Badlands" But none of those films matched the brutal ending scene of "Bonnie and Clyde" where they were ambushed by the police, their bodies riddled with bullets in powerful slow motion. That exact sequence is what changed movies as we know it, opening the floodgates to more fearless movie makers to explore more taboo subjects and to not be afraid to show anything.
Easy Rider:
This scene from "Easy Rider" is one of the most iconic for American New Wave. It starts with a long cut of a mid 4 shot of the group actually drinking and smoking in a real cemetery. There wasn't a script written for this film so all dialogue was improvised from what the director told them to talk about or they were genuine reactions from what was happening like in this acid trip scene.
The dialogue in this long shot is heavily accompanied by what sounds like machinery making the dialogue almost inaudible. From what I can hear we have one of them asking "What's that?" and the others telling her to take what we can only assume is acid. When the acid is beginning to settle in, the scene starts to cut to and from a slowly tilting camera shot of an old run down building, with a huge lens flare and a female preacher talking in the background. This has been done to slowly show the effects on the acid in which they have taken. It's also done to remind you that you're watching a film instead of immersing you into it. American New wave was well known for doing this with techniques such the lens flare, breaking the 4th wall and bizarre jump cuts.
This is when the crew breaks one of the most important filming rules in Hollywood by pointing the camera directly into the sun. By doing this, the lens can act as a magnifying glass and focus the sun rays onto a very small area on the shutter and could burn a hole into the shutter or aperture mechanism of the lens itself
The rest of the scene is a montage/sequence of events that show a handful of American New Wave conventions. We see one of the actors having a real mental break down about the death of his mother as he sobs over a statue that reminds him of her. When he says "shut up" he's actually telling the crew to shut up and stop filming him. We also see more jump cuts and the use of hand-held cameras. Everything that happens here is unscripted and the crew secretly filming them. The director himself said that they used random people off of the street to hold the cameras for them and act as it was cheaper than getting professionals to do it for them.
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