Sea Change: Reading Pictures at a Revolution

Just over forty-five years ago, the moviegoing landscape changed dramatically and for always.

The Studio System had long held a tight grip on which stars showed up in which films. The Hays Code made sure that strict moral guidelines were followed, thus offending few, though seldom pushing the boundaries. However, far away from Hollywood, from moviemaking hotbeds in places like France and Italy, a radically different approach (and far less restriction) brought a more exciting product. Moviegoers were beginning to take notice…so too were moviemakers.

The effect of films like JULES AND JIM and BREATHLESS proved great inspiration for filmmakers like Arthur Penn, Robert Benton, and Mike Nichols.

It all came to a head in 1967, when four watershed films would change the landscape once and for all, and all four would be fully recognized with Best Picture nominations. In a move that seemed to serve notice to Hollywood that the studios were on their last legs, one extravagant production would join them as the fifth Best Picture nominee.

This amazing moment of change in filmmaking is the subject of Mark Harris’ exhaustive and amazing book.

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and The Birth of New Hollywood by Mark Harris
Trade Paperback: Penguin, 2009 – eBook Available

One could argue that the book could be titled “Bonnie and Clyde and Four Films that Came Later”. I say that because as the film the Arthur Penn classic is most certainly the subject with the most amount of pages dedicated to it. It’s unsurprising though: the film went into development first, had the toughest road to production of all five, and ultimately – one could argue – had the deepest impact. Reading about the early involvement of Francois Truffaut, and – albeit briefly – Jean Luc Goddard certainly prompts the reader to wonder “what if?”. Considering how many pages are dedicated to the project’s early adoption by the French New Wave artists that inspired it, the reader actually lingers on “what if?” for a while. Ultimately bough, the legends that we know well start to unfold as Penn agrees to direct, Beatty tries his hand at producing, and studio head Jack Warner casts an imposing shadow over a production he doesn’t believe in. Where The book gets most interesting in its pages on Bonnie & Clyde is when it discusses how much of the film was shaped in the editing room.

An editor once explained the process to me as constructing a mosaic, and seldom is that metaphor more apropos than the construction of Bonnie & Clyde. Revolution points out that many of Bonnie’s most carefree and even “sexy” moments came from Dunaway getting in and out of a take. She’d flash a look, or make a gesture, not serving the script but just to centre herself. Interestingly, by taking these instances and re-incorporating them into the edit, editor Dede Allen found Dunaway – and by extension, Bonnie – her centre.

Last but not least is discussion of BONNIE AND CLYDE’s release, or more specifically its lack thereof. Not fully grasping why they had, Warner Brothers released the film quite cautiously in 1967. We squawk nowadays about films not making it into multiplexes outside of major cities. In ’67, Warner Brothers ignored the film’s steady box office in New York, and pulled it from theatres before it had a chance to really reach mass audiences. This despite a cover story in TIME magazine about its importance.

Indeed Revolution wants us to remember, just because a film is an unassailable classic doesn’t mean it was hailed from the word “go”.

Reading about IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT is one half of Revolution’s look at America in the Civil Rights era.

When Sidney Poitier won an Oscar for LILLIES OF THE FIELD, one would think that he’d land himself in a position to page the way for change in Hollywood. “Not so” says Revolution. Despite what Poitier’s Academy Award represented, he still found two trends dotting his career trajectory. The first was that he was constantly cast as the gentle black man, prodding change in racial attitudes with quiet dignity. The second is that anywhere outside of Los Angeles and New York, he was still being treated the same as most other black Americans.

Knowing this adds a great deal of context to his work on IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. For starters, it comes with a great amounts of guts, especially considering the four days it spent south of the Mason-Dixion line filming Poitier’s scenes at a Cotton Farm. Revolution recounts that short stay in The American Midwest as particularly hellish, and more than any actor (or filmmaker) should have to endure. What’s more is just how much IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT became a totem for its place in time. It arrived in an era of Race Riots…at a time when black American leaders were being assassinated.

Revolution makes no bones about the films importance in the cultural landscape, and just what it meant to see a black man slap a white man on-screen in the age of great tension. It was this timeliness, the book argues, that led to its ultimate legacy – including its Best Picture win.

But 1967 wasn’t all about artistic upheaval. No, in the face of changing attitudes and artistic expression, Old Hollywood was bent on continuing down the road the felt was “what the people want”. Imagine for a moment what that means in 2013; it meant pretty much the same thing in 1967.

For a few years, lavish musical spectacles had been bringin’ in the bucks. MY FAIR LADY, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, WEST SIDE STORY – all hits. Even when the films took a critical lashing, studios still had their decisions validated when Oscar nominations came down. Thus, even disasters like CLEOPATRA walked away bruised-not-broken.

Revolution points to DOCTOR DOLITTLE as evidence of a few different things.

For starters, it uses it to illustrate that even though studios like Warner Brothers and Columbia reaped the benefit of New Hollywood, they did so despite themselves. While up-and-comers like Mike Nichols and Warren Beatty were pouring their own sweat and blood into BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE, the establishment still believed that the public would turn out in droves for CAMELOT and DOCTOR DOLITTLE (they didn’t). What’s more, despite incident after incident that would delay production and balloon the cost, Fox stuck with the musical, believing that not every feather had been plucked from the golden goose.

But perhaps what might be most interesting about DOCTOR DOLITTLE is its Oscar campaign detailed in Revolution…or more specifically, its Oscar purchase. Fox leaned heavily on its own staff to nominate the underserving film, and even went so far as to promise free dinners and drinks to any Academy voters that attended Academy screenings. Revolution leaves no doubt that DOLITTLE bought its place on the ballot – at the expense of the much more deserving IN COLD BLOOD.

Next time a film or actor you believe is deserving is left off the Oscar ballot, remember DOCTOR DOLITTLE.

Leaving aside the atrocity of 1967, Revolution pushes back to respectability with its account of GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER.

The book paints the film as the hinge between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood. Specifically, what we see on-screen in this film is new ideas being played out by two of the most steadfast members of the Hollywood elite. In the golden age of film, few stars shone as brightly as Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and in 1967 the two got to pair up on-screen one last time. Reading about just how difficult that was to arrange (especially with Tracy’s failing health), and in some ways how difficult it became to film (again, especially with Tracy’s failing health) are indeed interesting.

However, where the discussion of GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER is most fascinating is in discussion about the youth reaction to the film at the time. In 1967, modern audiences called the film slight, even condescending. They bemoaned the fact that the couple only had one on-screen kiss  – the one you see above captured in a rearview mirror. Young audiences also believed they were being preached to about a message they already understood.  In a sense, young audiences felt that DINNER was the CRASH of its day; telling a story about the changing racial landscape, but from a position that seemed six steps removed from the front lines.

One can’t completely argue with their point of view – this was of course another instance of Poitier playing the steadfast, gentile black man he’d already perfected time and again. However, one can’t help but wonder if the youth of the day wanted too much too soon. This film wasn’t for them so much as it was for their parents, and at the end of the day, it would play a valuable role in Hollywood’s transition from the old guard to the new.

The final film is the one that seems to spend much of the book as an idea more than a film. THE GRADUATE is the film that began filming last and was released last.  Like BONNIE AND CLYDE, Revolution spends most of its GRADUATE energy discussing its long road to production. In this case though, the long road isn’t because of French directors coming and going, or filming locations continually changing. It all came down to the story being shaped “just so” and finding the right people to embody its characters.

To hear Revolution tell it, THE GRADUATE’s arrival finished what BONNIE AND CLYDE started. It sounded the death toll for Old Hollywood, and capitalized on a generation that wasn’t completely sure what it wanted – but they knew they didn’t want what their parents had. Seeing fresh faces that looked more like they did than ever before cemented that restlessness.

As I return the book to the shelf, I’m fixated on one key detail in Pictures at a Revolution: that of the critical reaction. Time and again throughout the pages of the book, we read about critic after critic that clobbered these future classics (sidenote: DOLITTLE was widely and rightfully panned). Some of the best critics that have ever held the post shredded BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE especially. Bosley Crowther called the former “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy…ridiculous, camp tinctured trvesties…with violence as pointless as it i lacking in taste”. Pauline Kael called the Latter “a bad joke” and compared it to a television commercial.

No critical experience detailed in this book however is more important than the tale of Joe Morgenstern and his take on BONNIE AND CLYDE. Morgenstern filed a review on the week of the film;s release that called the movie “a squalid shoot-em-up for the moron trade”. What’s important is what happened later that week. According to Revolutions, Morgenstern returned to the cinema mere days after filing that review, this time with his wife in tow. As the couple watched the film with a full house, it suddenly dawned on Morgenstern just what he had missed the first time around. The audience (of course) lapped it up, and Morgenstern was overcome with second thoughts at the same time that his review was hitting newsstands.

Not only did this reconsideration lead to a critic admitting just how badly they’d whiffed – a humbling position no critic wants to be in – but it would eventually lead to a much longer, more considered, and more impactful piece for TIME discussing the film and its place in the cultural landscape.

The reason why the critical reaction fascinates me so is because its evidence of so-called learned writers being so caught up in their own stance and their own ego that they fail to recognize history happening as it happens. I can’t help but believe that such feelings continue today; that so many want to seem like tastemakers, that they betray themselves and get more distracted by their position or that of others.

Even at a time of revolution, critics weren’t able to identify the revolt. If we can’t count on them for such things, what can we count on them for?