Making waves : new cinemas of the 1960s / Geoffrey Nowell-Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

New wave films--Italy--History and criticism.

New wave films.

New wave films--France--History and criticism.

New wave films--History and criticism.

France.

Italy.

Physical Description:

x, 230 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Continuum, 2008.

Summary:

The 1960s was famously the decade of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. It was also a decade of revolution and counter-revolution, of the Cuban missile crisis, of the American intervention in Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, of economic booms and the beginning of consumerism and the rebellion against consumerism. And it was a decade in which modernism reasserted itself and an improbable alliance of high art and pop threatened the consensual values of mainstream culture. The cinema was central to this atmosphere of cultural ferment. Hollywood was in decline, both artistically and commercially. The genres which had held audiences captive in the 1940s and 50s - musicals, westerns, melodramas - were losing their appeal and their great practitioners were approaching retirement. Not that Europe had any reason to feel complacent, since there too the old cinemas were beginning to look stale. The scene was therefore set for new cinemas to emerge to attract the young, the discriminating, the politically conscious, and the sexually emancipated.

The innovative features of the new cinemas were not the same everywhere. Common to most of them, however, were a political and aesthetic radicalism and a break with the traditions of studio filmmaking and its cult of perfect illusion. Most of these new films were made outside of the studios, devised by small teams of directors and writers, and shot on location. Producers played a supportive rather than controlling role. Among other innovations, the new cinemas were not afraid to introduce reflexive elements, previously only ever used in comedy, reminding the audience that what it was watching was not a substitute reality, but a film. Making Waves is a sharp, focused, and brilliant survey of the innovative fimmaking of the 1960s, placing it in its political, economic, cultural, and aesthetic context-capturing the distinctiveness of a decade which was groundbreaking for the cinema and for the world at large.

Contents:

Introduction: What Were the Sixties? 1

Part I Before the Revolution 15

1 World Cinema in the 1950s 17

2 Criticism and Culture 28

Part II The New Cinemas 41

3 New Cinemas, New Politics 43

4 Sex and Censorship 56

5 Outside the Studio 68

6 Cinema Verite and the New Documentary 80

7 Technological Innovations: Colour, Wide Screen, the Zoom Lens 93

8 Narrative 101

9 New Cinemas, National Cinemas 112

Part III Movements 121

10 Britain: From Kitchen Sink to Swinging London 123

11 France: From Nouvelle Vague to May '68 138

12 Italy 152

13 From Polish School to Czech New Wave and Beyond 163

14 Latin America 176

Part IV Three Auteurs 187

15 Young Godard 189

16 Antonioni 197

17 Pasolini 204.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-220) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780826418197

0826418198

9780826418203

0826418201

OCLC:

166255201