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

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
An epic account of how the revolution hit Hollywood, told through the stories of the five films nominated for the 1967 Academy Awards

The year is 1963. The studios are churning out westerns, war movies, prudish sex comedies and overblown historical epics, but audiences whose interests have been piqued by an influx of innovative films from abroad are hungering for something more, something new. At Esquire, two young writers hatch a plan to create a movie treatment that they hope will attract the director Franois Truffaut: the story of the gangsters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Mike Nichols, an improvisatory comedian turned neophyte theater director, gets his hands on an obscure first novel called The Graduate and wonders if he's ready to make the jump to Hollywood. Warren Beatty, just 26 years old and struggling through a series of flops after the success of Splendor in the Grass, decides to take his career into his own hands, but can't seem to settle on his next move. Dustin Hoffman, sleeping on friends' floors and scrounging for temp work in New York, struggles just to get an off-Broadway audition. Sidney Poitier, after two dozen movies, still yearns for something that seems completely unattainable: a good role. And 20th Century Fox, on the brink of financial catastrophe, puts all its hopes in a genre-the family musical-that will revitalize the company and then nearly destroy it again.

Pictures at a Revolution tracks five movies-the milestones Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the popular hits Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, and the big-budget disaster Doctor Dolittle-on their five-year journey to Oscar night in the spring of 1968. It follows their fortunes through the last days of the studio system and the first sparks of a cultural upheaval that would launch maverick new stars and directors, topple more than one industry titan from his pedestal, and redefine what American movies could be. In 1967, moviegoers witnessed the arrival of taboo-shattering sex and violence on screen, the debuts of Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway, the return of Katharine Hepburn and the poignant farewell of Spencer Tracy, the audacious risks taken by Warren Beatty, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols and Norman Jewison, and Hollywood's agonized attempt to grapple with an incendiary moment in American race relations, with results that would change Sidney Poitier's career forever.

By tracing the gambles, the stumbles, the clashes and the creative partnerships that produced these films, Mark Harris captures both the twilight of old Hollywood and the dawn of a new golden age in studio filmmaking. Based on unprecedented access to the actors, directors, screenwriters, producers and executives whose movies defined the era, as well a wealth of previously unexplored archival material, Pictures at a Revolution is an utterly original, revealing, and entertaining history of a true cultural watershed.

Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

A cultural and film making revolution dissected February 24, 2008
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

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!

5 out of 5 stars

The Year 1967 in Movies February 16, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars

Superb! February 18, 2008
8 out of 11 found this review helpful

This is one of the best-written books on film I've read in a long time. It is detailed, entertainingly easy to read, and full of facts. Harris has taken 5 films and details them brilliantly. The only qualm I would have is that of the 5 1967 Best Picture nominees, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" seems to have been shortchanged in terms of space given in the book. Not to say he doesn't cover it, but we know "Bonnie and Clyde," "The Graduate," "In the Heat of the Night," and "Doctor Dolittle" backwards and forwards by the book's end, but to me, it seemed "Dinner"'s facts weren't as fully covered. This is minor, if you love Oscar-winning films and histories of filmmaking, READ THIS BOOK!

5 out of 5 stars

damn this was good February 18, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars

Boola Boola February 19, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful

Boola! Boola! Kudos to Mr. Harris for the right book at the right time: full of insight and engrossing anecdote: many thanks for a well-written book.

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