Movie Book: Pictures at a Revolution

Movie Book Review: Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Jacobs.

Mark Jacobs Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, goes over some terrain that has already been covered extensively. Essentially, the book looks at the death of the old Hollywood studio system and the birth of more director centric films from a new generation – an era that would last until the late 1970s. But the area is so extensive, that one book really is not enough to cover it all completely. And that’s why Jacobs’ book works as well as it does: instead of trying to cover EVERYTHING, he instead simply tries to cover the five movies that were nominated for best picture in 1967 – from the time they were conceived by their creators until Oscar night in early 1968. He could not have asked for five films more representative of the decline of the studio system, and the birth of the new Hollywood.

The five films nominated in 1967 covers a wide terrain of film genres, styles and intentions behind their making. Two of the films – Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate – represented something altogether new and different – films the type of which Americans had never made before. One of the films – Doctor Doolittle – represented the old Hollywood model of moviemaking to a T – make a big, long, expensive, lavish musical, hire some top flight stars and the money will come rolling in (of course, in this case, it didn’t). And two of the film – In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – are somewhere in between. Both were in the somewhat awkward situation of trying to address an issue – namely race – that some felt was passé and retrograde and others were still dead set in their old ways.

Jacobs essentially tells the story of the makers of these films from the time they were first conceived. The first part of the book deals a lot with Robert Benton and David Newman, two magazine writers for Esquire, who admired the French New Wave filmmakers, particularly Francois Truffaut, and were determined to bring that kind of filmmaking to America. The result was the screenplay for Bonnie and Clyde. The screenplay attracted a lot of attention- Truffaut and his colleague Jean Luc Godard both toyed with making the film themselves – until star Warren Beatty came on board as producer, and eventually convinced his friend, Arthur Penn, to direct the film. The production was an interesting one – almost everyone involved was new to Hollywood, or had been beaten down by the system. Yet somehow, the filmmakers caught lightning in a bottle. Audiences, and many critics, responded to the movie, but Beatty still had to fight tooth and nail to get the film seen in many places – old time studio head Jack Warner hated the film that much. After all, Beatty reportedly had to get down on his hands and knees and beg him to finance the film in the first place, after every studio had repeatedly turned down the film.

The Graduate story isn’t quite as interesting. Essentially Mike Nichols made a name for himself on Broadway, first as a performer, and later as a director. He was handed a copy of Charles Webb’s novel, and although he thought it needed work, he instinctively knew how to make it into a movie. But much like Bonnie and Clyde, no one wanted to make this film either. Finally, the found a lower rung studio to make the movie, but even they waffled a lot and talked of backing out, until Nichols’ first film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, became a commercial, critical and Oscar hit in 1966. Then Nichols kept making strange choices, none stranger than casting a then unknown Dustin Hoffman in the lead role. Hoffman didn’t look like he belonged in movies, and had utterly no confidence in himself, and yet somehow, they made landmark.

The Doctor Doolittle story is a comedy of errors almost right from the start. First, there were lengthy battles over who could produce the movie, based on a series of books, and then no studio actually wanted to make it. But when My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music became the biggest hits in history, all of sudden Fox, who had reluctantly agreed to make the film, threw all the money they had into it. But things didn’t go well. Alan Jay Lerner, who was hired to write all screenplay and music, essentially did nothing for years when he was on the project. A much lesser known Leslie Briscusse then took over and no one really liked what he did. Rex Harrison was a drunken, egomaniacal monster, especially after winning the Oscar for My Fair Lady, and made a series of increasingly ludicrous demands. Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier signed on for the film, and then were dumped. The shoot dragged on for nearly a year. The animals wouldn’t do what they were supposed. The special effects looked cheap. And, in the end, no one wanted to go see the damn thing. If it hadn’t been for a cheapie science fiction film, called Planet of the Apes that the studio had no confidence in, Fox may have been destroyed.

Yet perhaps the most interesting person discussed in the book is Sidney Poitier, who was the star of the other two films nominated – In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. By the time these movies came around, Poitier was already a star and an Oscar winner, yet he remained the only black actor getting any work in Hollywood at all. He was tired of playing what he called the “Upstanding Negro”, yet he didn’t know what else he could do. He longed to be taken more seriously – like his contemporaries Paul Newman and Steve McQueen – but there was little he could do about it. He agreed to do In the Heat of the Night for director Norman Jewison only if they toughened his character up a bit (for instance, instead of simply staring down an old racist who slaps him, Poitier slaps him right back). He really didn’t like the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner screenplay very much at all – once again he was to play a character solely defined by his race – but the opportunity to work in movie alongside Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn was too big to pass up. The one thing I wonder is if there was any bitterness in Poitier for the fact that Rod Steiger won an Oscar for his performance in In the Heat of the Night, as did Katherine Hepburn and Tracy was nominated, while Poitier was overlooked completely. The struggles and the criticism that Poitier faced from Liberal critics and prominent African Americans themselves was huge, but Poitier was in a trap. How was he supposed to make tougher movies in an era when some Southern States refused to play Bewitched on TV, because they felt it was a thinly veiled allegory for inter-racial marriage?

Jacobs does a wonderful job at telling us the story behind these movies. This isn’t a book of movie criticism, so whatever his own thoughts on the movies in question, it remains unsaid. But he looks at the era completely – not only dwelling on the films themselves, but also the reaction they each received. In many ways, this year represented a turning of the critical tide as well. New York Times’ critic Bosley Crowther, who at the time was the most powerful critic in the world, essentially lost his job over his pan of Bonnie and Clyde, and Pauline Kael became a legend because of her rave for the same film.


In short, this is a book for anyone who is interested in the era of American cinema in the late 1960s. Jacobs does an excellent job at distilling the era, and telling the fascinating stories behind the five movies. What strikes me as odd is how the kids in 1968 have become the old guard forty years later. True Arthur Penn and Hal Ashby (who was the editor of In the Heat of the Night) never really sell out, but can you think of more middle brow filmmakers today then Mike Nichols or Robert Benton? A sequel to this book could be fascinating, taking the same approach of concentrating on the five movies nominated for best picture. Can I suggest 1994? Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption and Four Wedding and a Funeral seem like a good line-up to show yet again, Hollywood changed.