Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood

The ungraceful giraffe held up production of Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, but it wasn't the reason Doctor Dolittle lost the Oscar for Best Picture in 1967. Neither was Harrison's drinking nor going over budget. It lost because America and Hollywood changed that year. Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution is the best film book since Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. Peter Biskind explained the interaction between Hollywood movies and American society in the fifties. Harris does it for the sixties. Bonnie and Clyde changed movie style. The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition) and In the Heat of the Night (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition) focused on the subject matter of two different revolutions - - youth and civil rights. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition) was the last time old liberal America (in the person of liberal director Stanley Kramer) congratulated itself on how socially advanced it was. It was appropriate that the president of the Academy that year was Gregory Peck - - Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird (Collector's Edition) and the investigative journalist who exposes anti-Semitism in Gentleman's Agreement. What surprised Stanley Kramer was that younger filmmakers didn't give him credit for having his heart in the right place. Instead he was mocked for being behind the times both in style and subject. Kramer "was now certain he wouldn't be accused of irrelevance." But Richard Schickel of Life magazine said, "Kramer is earnestly preaching away on matters that have long since ceased to be true issues." Most critics (and audiences) thought that in making Poitier's character "a regular Albert Schweitzer" that Kramer was stacking the deck in his movie. There was no real conflict between the parents and their daughter, because Poitier's character was so perfect. To be fair, no one ever took Guess Who's Coming to Dinner seriously as a study of race in America; it was just the last chance to see Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn together. What moved me the most in Mark Harris's book was the story of Sidney Poitier, the human being and actor. Harry Bellafonte (who had criticized Poitier's professional choices) said it wasn't Poitier's fault he was Cary Grant and not Humphrey Bogart. (In other words, smooth and comforting on screen, instead of edgy and challenging.) While In the Heat of the Night might not have gone far enough in telling the truth about America, it went farther than Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. When Poitier as Virgil Tibbs slapped a rich white man, the country recognized that it had already changed in an important way. Katharine Hepburn comes off as something of a hypocrite. She lived with Tracy for decades while Tracy wouldn't get a divorce from his wife (that itself shows how times had changed), but made sure newspapers hinted at Hepburn and Tracy's relationship. "Her behavior represented an act of self-deni

This book reads like a thriller with hairpin twists and turns, and has an ever-broadening epic scope, a huge cast of sharply realized characters with surprising key appearances by, for example, Godard, Truffaut and Robert Kennedy, scintillating episodes of wicked humor and true pathos, and a relentless urgency earned by its contemporary political and cultural relevance. Yes, there was an American film revolution in the sixties; these pages capture all its glories and its ironies. Let's hope another comes soon, if only so Mark Harris can write about it as well.

I am a bit of Hollywood history buff and it is wonderful having a number of books on the subject out right now (check out Misfits Country). In this well written and excellently researched book the author takes the reader back to 1967 and analyzes the five nominees for best picture and there reflection and effects on society in at that momentous time of change. The Movies are: "The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition)," "Bonnie and Clyde," "In the Heat of the Night (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)" and "Doctor Dolittle." Aside from being a great walk down memory lane it is also full of insightful social commentary. The sixties were a special time of social change and the movies and the movies of that decade reflected and effected this change on so many levels. I would love to see the author expand on this in another book that might take on the best movies of the decade. And do try Misfits Country an excellent read that is a behind the scenes look at the making of the classic movie The Misfits!

i tore through this huge book in a couple of hours. god, the memories it brought back. i was 12 in 1967 but my very liberal parents took me to or let me see these movies and it was thrilling to read about them again. i loved them all except Doolittle and it was even fun in a Schadenfruede kind of way to read about that train wreck of a movie. Page after page of wonderful anecdotes about these movie that were able to derail the big studio system and for a brief while, Hollywood made strange and daring movies until Star Wars came around and destroyed the whole thing. But take a look at this years five nominees and you will have hope for movies as they are all worthy and good examples of smart movies getting made again. we need another revolution like the Graduate/Bonnie and Clyde thing and it might be happening with No Country/There Will be Blood movies.

Mr. Harris has taken the five Best Picture nominees for the 1967 Oscars and pin-point that year as the fall of the studios. Two films dealt with racism ("Guess Who's Is Coming To Dinner," and "In the Heat of the Night") in very differnet ways, one with sexuality and changing morals ("The Graduate"), another with amoral violence ("Bonnie and Cycle") while the last picture attempted to be another Hollywood musical ("Dr. Dolittle.") This was the year that independent film-making and European influences reached a critical mass against the static studio machine. Ironically Sidney Poitier was shut out for a Best Actor Oscar with three brilliant performances, two of them in the Best Picture category. These little tidbits are found in the book that follows the five movies from pre-production to the Oscar. The narrative is quite readable and the behind the scenes stories are interesting and amusing. Mr. Harris should pick out other landmark years and repeat the process. This book is a must for any movie fan.