Searching for New Frontiers: Hollywood Films in the 1960s

Searching for New Frontiers offers film students and general readers a survey of popular movies of the 1960s. The author explores the most important modes of filmmaking in times that were at once hopeful, exhilarating, and daunting. The text combines discussion of American social and political history and Hollywood industry changes with analysis of some of the era′s most expressive movies.

The book covers significant genres and evolving thematic trends, highlighting a variety of movies that confronted the era′s major social issues. It notes the stylistic confluence and exchanges between three forms: the traditional studio movie based on the combination of stars and genres, low–budget exploitation movies, and the international art cinema. As the author reveals, this complex period of American filmmaking was neither random nor the product of unique talents working in a vacuum. The filmmakers met head–on with an evolving American social conscience to create a Hollywood cinema of an era defined by events such as the Vietnam War, the rise of the civil rights movement, and the moon landing.

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Changing Times 1

Part I Postwar Hollywood and a Changing America 13

1 Hollywood, Hitchcock, and the Postwar Era 15

The Vital Center Cannot Hold 17

Postwar Film Production and Exhibition 21

New Looks at Mothers, Genres, and Style 26

2 Domestic Relations, 1953 1967: Bachelor Pads, Nervous Dads, and Marriages on the Rocks 39

Bachelor Pads 41

Nervous Dads (and Moms) 58

Marriages on the Rocks 66

Welcoming The Graduate 71

3 Negotiating the Civil Rights Movement: Message Movies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Rise of Sidney Poitier 83

It s a Sin 85

An American Story 94

Poitier, 67 99

Part II The New Hollywood, Vietnam, and the Schism 111

4 Art Cinema and Counter ]Culture: Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day s Night, Blow Up, Bonnie and Clyde, and Weekend 113

General Ripper Exceeds His Authority 118

Meet the Beatles (and the New European Cinema) 125

Quiet Enigma in Swinging London 129

We Rob Banks 137

Coda: Battleship Potemkin Calling the Searchers 146

5 Nowhere to Run: One–Eyed Jacks, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, A Fistful of Dollars, and The Wild Bunch 153

The Frontier Myth and the Classical Western 155

California or Maybe Oregon 158

Who Was Tom Doniphon? 162

No Name, Sudden Impact 169

Those Days Are Closing Fast 175

Destroying and Saving the Village 181

6 The War: From The Longest Day to The Green Berets 191

The Good War Refought and Rethought 192

Unconventional Warfare 201

Art of War 208

The Only War We ve Got 211

7 Far Out: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Easy Rider 225

Beyond the Infinite 226

Marketing and Reception 237

From Hell s Angels to Easy Riders 239

They Blew It, But 248

Afterword 259

Bibliography 265

Index 275

Rick Worland is Professor of Film & Media Arts at Southern Methodist University where he teaches film history, documentary, and popular genres including Westerns and horror films.