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The New Hollywood Historical Film pp 21–56Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The ‘New Wave’ and ‘Old Hollywood’: The Day of the Locust (1975), ‘Movies About the Movies’ and the Generational Divide

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Abstract

A major trend in 1970s American film was studio and silent era set ‘movies about the movies’. A symptom of troubled times in Hollywood, this paradoxical genre simultaneously de-mystified and re-mystified movie glamour, celebrity and success, and satisfied cinemagoers’ schizophrenic impulses towards the questioning of America’s traditional myths and values, and their re-affirmation. Indeed, expressing both scepticism and romantic sentiment, most 1970s ‘movie movies’ attempted to play it both ways, apart from one notable exception and by far both the most ambitious and cynical of the cycle: The Day of the Locust (Schlesinger, 1975). Directed by New Wave auteur John Schlesinger and one of Paramount’s prestige historical releases, the film is significant for its uncompromising view of Hollywood’s world of illusions from the perspective of its struggling fringe players, and how it tests the ‘built-in’ contradiction of movies about the movies. This chapter provides an in-depth examination of the contextual factors that gave rise to the movie movie wave and the New Hollywood in general.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Christopher Ames, Movies About the Movies: Hollywood Reflected (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 4.

  2. 2.

    A shift occurred in the 1950s, the last period prior to the 1970s during which movie movies were produced in any significant quantity. Before this shift, movies about the movies functioned to affirm the ‘American Dream’, an ideological structure common to the vast majority of film genres in the first three decades or so of Hollywood filmmaking. Andersen cites Merton of the Movies (1947) as a key example from this period, a comedy romance about a naive, aspiring actor from Kansas who travels to Hollywood and, against the odds, manages to make it in the movies. From around the 1950s the movies about the movies classification moved away from celebrations of America’s myth of success, towards more critical and tragic exposés of the industry. Key examples of ‘anti-Merton’ films from the decade include The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). See Patrick D. Andersen, ‘In Its Own Image: The Cinematic Vision of Hollywood’, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Michigan (1976), p. 2.

  3. 3.

    John Belton, American Cinema/American Culture (London: McGraw-Hill, 1994), p. 257.

  4. 4.

    Richard Polenberg, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p. 127. Driving this demographic trend were bigger houses, open space and better schools, and making it a practical reality for many was car ownership, which rose steeply from 69,500 in 1945 to 7.9 million in 1955. See Belton, American Cinema, pp. 259–60.

  5. 5.

    Belton, American Cinema, p. 258.

  6. 6.

    Douglas Gomery, ‘Motion Picture Exhibition in 1970s America’, in David A. Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam (London: University of California Press, 2002), p. 409.

  7. 7.

    Gomery, ‘Motion Picture Exhibition’, p. 410.

  8. 8.

    The Paramount decree handed down by the Supreme Court on 4 May 1948, ruled that the big studios’ domination of the movie industry through the vertical integration of production, distribution and exhibition was a violation of anti-trust laws, and marked the beginning of the end of the old studio system. The result of the decision was that the studios were forced to end their control of the exhibition sector, and sell off the hundreds of movie theatres under their ownership. See Belton, American Cinema, p. 258.

  9. 9.

    The rationale behind this model was the recognition that for an increasing number of Americans movie-going was no longer the habitual leisure activity that it used to be. This major socio-cultural shift necessitated the promotion of movie-going as a ‘special event’. The ‘roadshow’ format dated back to the silent period and was designed to build awareness and interest by exhibiting a movie in a limited number of theatres in major cities, often on extended runs, prior to general release. Technological innovations such as widescreen and 3-D processes were major attractions, and helped differentiate cinema from TV. See Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 128–30 + 159–61.

  10. 10.

    The ‘silent majority’ was a ‘cleverly designed symbol’; evidence demonstrates that manual/low income workers were in fact more dovish than the rest of population; see Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Peace now!: American society and the ending of the Vietnam War (London: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 197–8.

  11. 11.

    William L. Lunch and Peter W. Sperlich, ‘American Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam’, The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1 (1979), p. 37.

  12. 12.

    For two engaging histories of the period see Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001).

  13. 13.

    Drew Casper, Hollywood Film 1963–1976: Years of Revolution and Reaction (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 59.

  14. 14.

    Casper, Hollywood Film, p. 59.; Males under the age of 40 made up 75 % of cinema audiences.

  15. 15.

    For a cogent assessment of this phenomenon see Robert B. Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 263–7.

  16. 16.

    The number of ‘art house’ cinemas peaked at 650 in 1966; Casper, Hollywood Film, p. 59.

  17. 17.

    The ‘auteur theory’ was originally expounded by the French Cahiers Critics in the 1950s and the influential film critic Andrew Sarris, the author of The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 (1968), became its major American proponent. The new audience created a burgeoning demand for books on film history and aesthetics during the 1960s, and Sarris’ seminal work, which places directors in a hierarchy of categories based on the author’s assessment of their personal style and the ‘wholeness’ of their art, was the most important, influential and audacious in convincing many Americans to start taking Hollywood film seriously. The various film retrospectives of ‘pantheon directors’ such as Orson Welles, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock at the New York Theatre and the city’s Museum of Modern Art during the 1960s, organised by Sarris and two critics his writing influenced, Peter Bogdanovich

    and Eugene Archer, further served this end. Sarris also wrote for New York’s Village Voice, and was among an upper echelon of esteemed film critics that included Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) and Stanley Kauffman (The New Republic), whose persuasive and frequently disputatious reviews and essays profoundly shaped the tastes and opinions of young cineastes. Kael’s long-standing feud with Sarris over the auteur theory, which she contended, among a range of criticisms, was elitist and failed to acknowledge the collaborative nature of filmmaking, was a lively feature of the critical debate.

  18. 18.

    See Casper, Hollywood Film, p. 60, and Belton, American Cinema, p. 301.

  19. 19.

    Paul Monaco, The Sixties: 1960–1969 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 261.

  20. 20.

    Monaco, The Sixties, pp. 27–9 + 261.

  21. 21.

    The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde made $44 million and $22.8 million in rentals, respectively; see Lawrence Cohn, ‘All-Time Film Rental Champs’, Variety, 10 May, 1993, section C, 76–106.

  22. 22.

    Easy Rider made $19.1 million in rentals; see Cohn, ‘All-Time Film Rental Champs’.

  23. 23.

    Ray, A Certain Tendency, p. 296.

  24. 24.

    Ray, A Certain Tendency, p. 300.

  25. 25.

    Monaco, The Sixties, pp. 56–66.

  26. 26.

    Casper, Hollywood Cinema, p. 128.

  27. 27.

    Cook, Lost Illusions, p. 275.

  28. 28.

    Krämer, The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars (London: Wallflower, 2005), p. 66.

  29. 29.

    For a contemporary article on the wider nostalgia craze see ‘A Life Special: Nostalgia’, Life, 19 February 1971, and on the nostalgia film, see John Russell Taylor, ‘Were Those the Days?’, American Film, vol. 3, no. 1 (1977), pp. 20–23.

  30. 30.

    James Paris, ‘How Hollywood’s Memory’s Plays Tricks on Us’, The New York Times, 23 November, 1975, p. 15.

  31. 31.

    Quoted in ‘Hollywood’s Latest: Movies About Movies’, US News and World Report, 15 March, 1976, p. 40.

  32. 32.

    ‘Hollywood’s Latest’, p. 40.

  33. 33.

    Charles Michener, ‘Old Movies Again’, Newsweek, 31 May, 1976, p. 39.

  34. 34.

    Michener, ‘Old Movies Again’, p. 39.

  35. 35.

    Joseph McBride, ‘The Glory That Was Hollywood’, American Film, vol. 1, no. 3 (1975), p. 54.

  36. 36.

    Cook, Lost Illusions, p. 499.

  37. 37.

    James Monaco, ‘That’s Entertainment’, Take One, vol. 4, no. 5 (1974), pp. 38–9.

  38. 38.

    McBride, ‘The Glory’.

  39. 39.

    Alex Barris, Hollywood According to Hollywood (South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1978), p. 199.

  40. 40.

    Glenn Mann, ‘1975: Movies and Conflicting Ideologies’, in Lester D. Friedman (ed.), American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations, Screen Decades (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), p. 135.

  41. 41.

    Mann, ‘1975: Movies’, p. 135.

  42. 42.

    Kenn Rand, ‘Behind the scenes of ‘The Day of the Locust”, American Cinematographer, vol. 56, no. 6 (1975), p. 653. Warners, the studio that funded and distributed Midnight Cowboy, initially backed the project.

  43. 43.

    Ames, Movies About the Movies, p. 225.

  44. 44.

    The New York Times Magazine, 2 June, 1974, JRS/8/28, John Schlesinger Papers, The British Film Institute Library, London.

  45. 45.

    A. Leigh Charlton, ‘Babylon Visited’, UCLA Daily Bruin, 15 May, 1975, JRS/8/28, Schlesinger/BFI.

  46. 46.

    ‘Paramount Pictures Handbook of Production Information’, JRS/8/22, Schlesinger/BFI.

  47. 47.

    ‘A Look at Hollywood’s Golden Era’, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Dec, 1973, JRS/8/10, Schlesinger/BFI.

  48. 48.

    The entire sequence took two weeks to shoot, employed 1000 extras, and cost approximately $1,000,000; Rand, ‘Behind the scenes’, p. 692.

  49. 49.

    Rand, ‘Behind the scenes’, p. 653.

  50. 50.

    James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), p. 170.

  51. 51.

    ‘Notes on Day of the Locust’, p. 3, JRS/8/7, Schlesinger/BFI.

  52. 52.

    ‘Photographing “The Day of the Locust”’, American Cinematographer, vol. 56, no. 6 (1975), pp. 655–7.

  53. 53.

    ‘Photographing “The Day of the Locust”’, pp. 675 + 722.

  54. 54.

    Alistair Wisker, The Writing of Nathanael West (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), p. 96.

  55. 55.

    ‘Notes’, p. 3, JRS/8/7, BFI/Schlesinger.

  56. 56.

    Christine Sprengler, Screening Nostalgia: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 80–3.

  57. 57.

    Wisker, The Writing of Nathanael West, p. 96

  58. 58.

    Wisker, The Writing of Nathanael West, p. 100.

  59. 59.

    William Castle was a director, producer and occasional actor who started working in the film industry in the late 1930s, and who is best known for his ‘b-movie’ horror films. Castle produced Rosemary’s Baby (1968) for Paramount.

  60. 60.

    Wisker, The Writing of Nathanael West, p. 98.

  61. 61.

    This is noted in a memo to Schlesinger; see ‘A Proposal for the Publicity and Promotional Campaign for ‘The Day of the Locust”, JRS/8/23, Schlesinger/BFI. A number of critics referred to the production as a disaster movie or used the generic cycle as a frame of reference.

  62. 62.

    David A. Cook, ‘1974: Movies and Political Trauma’, in Friedman (ed.), American Cinema, p. 116.

  63. 63.

    Cook, Lost Illusions, p. 251.

  64. 64.

    Mann, ‘1975: Movies’, p. 154.

  65. 65.

    The production team utilised a contemporaneous Life magazine article on child actors in Hollywood; ‘Portrait of Hollywood’, Life, 3 May 1937, pp. 28–35, JRS/8/10, Schlesinger/BFI.

  66. 66.

    See, for example: Tom Buckley, ‘The Day of the Locust: Hollywood, by West, by Hollywood’, The New York Times Magazine, 2 June, 1974, JRS/8/28, Schlesinger/BFI; and Norma McLain Stoop, ‘Preview with Pictures: “The Day of the Locust” Sets Within Set’, After Dark, March 1975, JRS/8/28, Schlesinger/BFI.

  67. 67.

    ‘A Proposal for the Publicity and Promotional Campaign for ‟The Day of the Locust”’, JRS/8/23, Schlesinger/BFI.

  68. 68.

    Abbie Bernstein, ‘The Reel Thing’, The Gardena Valley News, 27 May, 1975, JRS/8/28, Schlesinger/BFI.

  69. 69.

    Art Murphy, ‘The Day of the Locust’, Variety, 18 April, 1975, JRS/8/28, Schlesinger/BFI.

  70. 70.

    Steve Dunleavy, ‘This I believe’, National Star, 7 June, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  71. 71.

    Hollis Alpert, ‘Etched in Acid’, Saturday Review, 17 May, 1975, pp. 48–9.

  72. 72.

    Howard Kissel, ‘The Day of the Locust’, Women’s Wear Daily, 5 May, 1975, p. 12, JRS/8/28, Schlesinger/BFI; Liz Smith, ‘Hollywood Apocalypse’, Cosmopolitan, July 1974, and Michael Korda, ‘Movies’, Glamour, July 1975, both JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  73. 73.

    Vincent Canby, ‘The Day of the Locust’, The New York Times, 8 May, 1975, p. 48.

  74. 74.

    Vincent Canby, ‘A Marvelously Foolhardy ‘Day of the Locust”, The New York Times, 11 May, 1975, Section 2, p. 1.

  75. 75.

    James Russell, The Historical Epic and Contemporary Hollywood: From Dances with Wolves to Gladiator (New York: Continuum, 2007), p. 11.

  76. 76.

    Vivian Sobchak, ‘“Surge and Splendor”: A Phenomenology of the Hollywood Historical Epic’, in Barry Keith Grant, (ed.), Film Genre Reader II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), pp. 302–3. Sobchak writes: ‘[T]o use Hayden White’s characterisation, the “content of the form” of the Hollywood genre is its mimetic and onomatopoetic modes of representation and rhetoric, together constituting a representational excess that yields a particular “history effect”.’

  77. 77.

    Andrew Sarris, ‘Decline of the West in Adaptation’, Village Voice, 12 May, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  78. 78.

    John Simon, ‘Nightmare of the Locust’, Esquire, Aug 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  79. 79.

    Frank Rich, ‘How the West Was Lost’, New Times, 30 May, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  80. 80.

    Judith Crist, ‘Dream into Nightmare’, New York, 12 May, 1975, JRS/8/28, Schlesinger/BFI.

  81. 81.

    Larry Peitzman, ‘The Day of the Locust’, Bay Guardian, 14 June, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  82. 82.

    Paul D. Zimmerman, ‘Hooray for Hollywood’, Newsweek, 12 May, 1975, p. 52.

  83. 83.

    David Ansen, ‘Stay East, Young Man’, The Real Paper (Boston), May 21, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI. See also Reviewed by DFB-USCC, ‘A Savage Look at Hollywood’, Tablet (Brooklyn NY), 8 May, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  84. 84.

    Donia Mills, Washington Star, 20 May, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI.

  85. 85.

    Laura De Vincent, The New Orleans States-Item, 7 June, 1975, JRS/8/29, Schlesinger/BFI. See, for example, Vincent Canby, ‘A Lavish ‘Gatsby’ Loses Book’s Spirit’, The New York Times, 28 March 1974.

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  1. Arcadia University, London, UK

    Tom Symmons

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Symmons, T. (2016). The ‘New Wave’ and ‘Old Hollywood’: The Day of the Locust (1975), ‘Movies About the Movies’ and the Generational Divide. In: The New Hollywood Historical Film. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52930-5_2

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