Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies
and the Birth of the New Hollywood
by Mark Harris
Hollywood Grows Up
The New York Times bestseller that follows the making of five films at a
pivotal time in Hollywood history
In the mid-1960s, westerns, war movies, and blockbuster musicals like
Mary Poppins swept the box office. The Hollywood studio system was
astonishingly lucrative for the few who dominated the business. That is,
until the tastes of American moviegoers radically— and unexpectedly—
changed. By the Oscar ceremonies of 1968, a cultural revolution had hit
Hollywood with the force of a tsunami, and films like Bonnie and Clyde,
The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night,
and box-office bomb Doctor Doolittle signaled a change in Hollywood—and

America. And as an entire industry changed and struggled, careers were
suddenly made and ruined, studios grew and crumbled, and the landscape
of filmmaking was altered beyond all recognition.
Personal Review: Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the
Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris
Hollywood was changing in the mid-1960s, slowly and painfully; new
realities forcing a rethinking of what constituted worthwhile entertainment.
Mark Harris' 2008 in-depth examination of the five Best Picture nominees
from 1967 presents a snapshot for the cultural shift.
Two of the five nominees are often cited as signposts of the generational
turn: "Bonnie And Clyde", the nod to French New Wave that ushered in a
franker depiction of violence and sex; and "The Graduate", which mocked
middle-class American values. Most give at least grudging respect to that
year's Best Picture winner, "In The Heat Of The Night", where racial
tensions underscore an involving murder mystery.
Harris examines the writing, financing, and production of all three films, as
well as the other two, more conventional nominees; the liberal-minded
comedy "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and the children's musical
"Doctor Dolittle". Some might see the time spent on "Dolittle" and "Dinner"
as a waste, but it fills out the layered perspective Harris tries to bring, on
both the Old Guard and New.
It was a war, Harris writes, one often taken personally: "What many of 'The
Graduate's' naysayers felt the movie was against was them - their
standards, their notion of what a well-made picture should be, their ability
to control a cultural conversation that they suddenly felt was slipping out of
their grasp."
The films' vastly different pedigrees, and degrees of critical and
commercial success, make for a collective journey that's never dull,
especially as Harris writes it, laden with fresh quotes by those who made
the films happen: Actors Warren Beatty, Estelle Parsons, and Dustin
Hoffman; directors Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, and Norman Jewison;
writers Andrew Sarris, Robert Benton, and Buck Henry; and assorted other
worthies who give Harris generously of their various perspectives.
"Bonnie" co-star Faye Dunaway was called "Fadin' Away" by some on the
set who watched her work and wondered if she'd make it through the
shoot. But she and Beatty found their milestone characters working along
the same Texas streets the bankrobbing couple once prowled. "Warren
and Faye were not working on Bonnie and Clyde," writer Robert Towne
notes. "Bonnie and Clyde were working on them."
Harris is just as entertaining writing about artistic failure, especially
"Dolittle", where star Rex Harrison and his eccentric wife keep an already
overextended set hopping with their ego- and booze-fueled excesses.

When British song-and-dance man Anthony Newley was brought on board,
Harrison, a decided non-singer, didn't bother to conceal his jealousy.
"Harrison would disparage Newley, sometimes to his face, as a 'Jewish
comic' or a 'Cockney Jew'," Harris writes.
Hollywood wasn't forever altered by 1967; the following year the Best
Picture Award went to that year's kiddie musical, "Oliver!". But eventually,
as new critics arrived, and the old Production Code scrapped, the kind of
films Hollywood made would change for keeps. Harris may see this
change as more of a good thing than it really was, but the way he tells the
story makes for a sometimes wild, always involving ride.
Readers of Peter Biskind's memorable "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" may
see this book as a kind of prequel, set as it is at the dawn of the 1970s
auteur director phase of American film that "Easy Riders" depicts so
vividly. "Revolution" is less outrageous in its characterizations but just as
compelling a read.
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