A new kind of movie: Style and form in Hollywood cinema, 1965--1988 (California)

My dissertation is a historical study of style and form in contemporary Hollywood cinema, focusing upon trends in genre filmmaking, in particular visual style and its functions.; The European art cinema and the American direct cinema documentary became important influences on narration and style in some varieties of Hollywood prestige films by the late 1960s, especially those targeting a youthful, countercultural audience. By the 1970s, changing commercial fortunes encouraged a more conservative approach, with equivalent Hollywood prestige films marked by a synthesis of genre narrative structures and formal and stylistic strategies associated with art cinema and documentary production. Of particular importance were techniques which came to be associated with “realism” in the context of Hollywood genre narratives; these included visual devices (including handheld camerawork and desaturated color), as well as genre revisionism. These techniques were compatible with Hollywood genre film production, while allowing filmmakers to forge aesthetic associations to realist modes of film practice. With the commercial ascent of the “megapicture” mode of production in the late 1970s and 1980s, realism became a much less important artistic motivation. However, the self-conscious aestheticization of the 1970s realist, revisionist genre film persisted in the form of generic allusion and, especially, hyperbolic pictorial stylization. The emphasis upon experimentation and innovation in visual style throughout the 1980s testifies to the continuing, but increasingly indirect, impact of the art cinema upon mainstream Hollywood production.