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Category:    Home > Essays > Film Studies > Hollywood - From Vietnam To Reagan... And Beyond (Book Review)

Hollywood – From Vietnam To Reagan… And Beyond

Robin Wood/Columbia University Press (Book Review)

 

Rating: A

 

 

In 1986, one of the most important volumes on cinema was released.  Robin Wood’s Hollywood – From Vietnam to Reagan was a landmark, examining the rise, fall, and reconstruction of Hollywood as a filmmaking entity.  More specifically, it dealt with exceptional, challenging films that the studios usually do not make, or independent films they rarely support.

 

It took seventeen years, but an updated volume that adds “… and Beyond” to its title, and it leaves the original text virtually untampered with.  New sections are added, beginning with an excellent 33 page Prologue, then offers four new chapters.  The best way to tackle this book is to go chapter by chapter.

 

Prologue (2003) – Wood discusses his personal and political side in a way he wishes he did more explicitly in the last volume, though his sexuality was not omitted from the original volume where applicable.  When he starts talking about the state of the world, it feels somewhat like Michael Moore and Ralph Nader.  In this, he discusses the greatness of the composer Janacek, then gets back to cinema.  He discusses how bad filmmaking has become in the hands of corporate-ownership of the studios that hires the non-filmmaker to produce product.  He is correct.  Then he accurately goes into how audiences are mindlessly accepting the surreal as real, especially in the Action genre.  His comments of John Frankenheimer’s Ronin and Doug Liman’s the Bourne Identity are well put.  He also talks about directors who would have had big careers even a few years ago, but committed the crime of making films that were too good, so they are not heard from widely again, if at all.  Spike Lee rounds out this section for the most part, being one of the last truly challenging directors to establish himself before things got so bad.  Steven Soderbergh also gets covered.

 

Cards on the Table – This first chapter spells out the various, conflicting ideologies that the book and film studies in general take on.  This did not need any updating.

 

The Chase – Flashback 1965 (Chapter Two) – This is a great chapter on how Arthur Penn’s thriller tried to break all the roles, only to have Columbia Pictures take it out of his hands and turn it into something it was not.  The film, however, is the first sign of the beginning of a New Wave in American cinema.  A few years ago, I accidentally caught some garbage on TV from some Religious Right program on Hollywood that showed a clip from this film, with the narrator saying ominously how “Hollywood started experimenting” as if filmmaking was recreational drug use or some Frankenstein experiment.  These people could care less about cinema, knowing very little about it, so they obviously had picked up the first edition of this book.

 

Smart Ass and Cutie Pie – Notes Toward The Evaluation of Altman (1975) (Chapter Three) – Of course, the director and year refer to one film, the mighty Nashville, one of the greatest cinematic achievements ever.  Wood uses that as a take-off point to deal with all of Altman’s films, including one’s in his mode of filmmaking directed by others.  This endures wildly, but I am disappointed that Wood did not expand on the director here.

 

The Incoherent Text – Narrative in the 70s (Chapter Four) – In one of the greatest distinctions that can be made about cinema, Wood makes the difference very clear between a film that is incoherent because it is badly made, and one that is working at a much higher level and does not come neatly together.  Examples of the latter include the Paul Schrader-penned Taxi Driver (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese, Richard Brooks’ Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), and especially William Friedkin’s Crusing (1980).  This is some of the most innovative writing about complex filmmaking ever written.

 

The American Nightmare – Horror in the 70s (Chapter Five) – Through issues of psychology and sexuality, Wood discusses how the Horror genre was in a peak time, but that there was still a split between A and B-movie films in the genre.  The original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Omen (1976) in particular are used to show the dichotomy.  The chapter also covers a history of the genre in brief, in its roots, influences, and what makes it tick.  That is then expounded upon in…

 

Normality and Monsters – The Films of Larry Cohen and George Romero (Chapter Six) – This is the chapter that “runs with it”, demonstrating why these are two of the most important directors in and out of the Horror genre.  This then runs into issues surrounding Vampire cinema, but the chapter can only go as far as early 1985.  The new version picks up on this one in Chapter 14.  This is very strong.

 

Brian De Palma – The Politics of Castration (Chapter Seven) – Besides adding how great De Palma is with the two directors of the previous chapter, this is the number one document that proves that he was not just good at imitating Alfred Hitchcock, but was doing something with that by pushing the boundaries, picking up where Hitch left off.  Especially great are his analyses of two of De Palmas’s very best films: Sisters (1973) and Blow Out (1981).  He has plenty more to say, making this one of the best chapters.

 

Papering the Cracks – Fantasy and Ideology in the Reagan Era (Chapter Eight) – This chapter goes after the worst of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, questioning the “feel good” film and exposing the myth of how “creative” there films really aren’t.  It then wraps up with a stunning analysis of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.  Too bad this was not updated to include the new trilogy of Star Wars films or Spielberg works like the third Indiana Jones film, A.I., Minority Report, and Catch Me If You Can.  Not addressing the serious trilogy of Spielberg films, Schindler’s List, Amistad, and Saving Private Ryan makes what should be inarguable, arguable.  There are no more (and no new) words on Spielberg or Lucas in the rest of the book.

Wood does manage to make a note of the 1992 “director’s cut” of Scott’s film, but he was not aware at press time of the rumors of an even better cut in the horizon, so this edition could not avoid missing out there.

 

Horror in the 80s (Chapter Nine) – The decline of the Horror genre thematically is covered here.  Wood shows its regression into formulaic “slice & dice” films.  Beyond the murders becoming more graphic and sadistic beyond the character’s intent (i.e., hack filmmakers), he delves into the difference between a liberated society and a permissive one.  This is the time where the promiscuous must die, yet the killer(s) never do, no matter how much you kill them.  This formula has become somewhat of a joke, but it has not faded away yet.

 

Images and Women (Chapter Ten) – This one covers Feminism in Hollywood, best defining Wood’s distinction between two realisms: one being actual realism, and the more sinister, artificial version that is used to mask and disguise ideology in film.  He starts by analyzing Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974).  As a counter to those, he then exposes how woman-hating Clint Eastwood’s Bronco Billy (though some of this might be about his eventual, bitter break up with co-star Sandra Locke) and James Bridges’ Urban Cowboy (1980) are, with other problematic Debra Winger films (Taylor Hackford’s An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and James L. Brooks’ Terms of Endearment (1983) thrown in for good measure.  It wraps up with a look at women directors and uses four of their films as examples: Lee Grant’s Tell Me a Riddle (1980), Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Joan Micklin Silver’s Chilly Scenes of Winter (aka Head Over Heels, 1979, from the director who later gave us Crossing Delancey and Loverboy), and Claudia Weill’s Girl Friends (1978).  Considering the time that has elapsed between volumes, the advances for women directors have been few, so this is a fascinating read.

 

From Buddies to Lovers (Chapter Eleven) – In a continuing thesis of genre in film, Wood examines the “buddy” film cycle of the late 1960s, running into the late 1970s with its logical culmination in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978).  Then, Wood addresses the films that were more explicit, yet more oppressive about Homosexuality, namely Arthur Hiller’s Making Love (1982).  I am surprised by the absence of that film’s somewhat independent forerunner, A Very Natural Thing (1973, reviewed elsewhere on this site) and that the new edition does not address the Gay New Wave in any way.  His ideas about its successes and failures would have been a great addition.

 

Two Films by Martin Scorsese (Chapter Twelve) – Raging Bull (1980) and The King of Comedy (1983) are looked at more closely, in both respect to their gender issues and psychology.  This also inadvertently proves how viable Scorsese was in this period, contrary to what many lesser critics have tries to say.

 

Two Films by Michael Cimino (Chapter Thirteen) – The unlucky number marks what was the final chapter in the original book, not only outlining the brilliance of The Deer Hunter, but also successfully revising thought on Heaven’s Gate.  It shows that the film was partly attacked for ideological reasons, how film critics have absolutely failed the artform ever since, and why the longer cut would actually make sense.  Wood spectacularly demonstrates how innovate Cimino was being with narrative structure, how he was taking multi-layered filmmaking to the next level after Nashville.  Some of his points on Heaven’s Gate can still be refuted, but I was most surprised that he did not update information on the film.  As the first edition of this book was issued, Steven Bach’s Final Cut – Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate was issued and became a bestseller at the time and has also been issued in updated editions.  Wood does not address the 5 hour, 25 minutes-long version of the film, erroneously believes a 3 hour, 40 minutes-long version premiered in L.A., when the screening of that shorter version was cancelled.  That shorter cut is the so-called director’s cut form the out-of-print LaserDisc and DVD issued since the first edition.  The theatrical edition in 1980 was more like two hours long. However, despite all this, the chapter is a classic in telling the tale of why great Hollywood filmmaking stopped.

 

Day of the Dead – The Woman’s Nightmare (Chapter Fourteen) – This first new chapter picks up where Chapter six left off.  Wood declares this third of George Romero’s Zombie films remarkable and uses the occasion to attack the true mindlessness of Hollywood today.  I was surprised he did not rave too about Romero’s Monkey Shines (1988), but more on that later.

 

On and Around – My Best Friend’s Wedding (Chapter Fifteen) – Wood turns out to be very impressed by P.J. Hogan’s huge hit film and its similar predecessor, Muriel’s Wedding (1994).  This is a relevant piece about gender study, the state of women in society, and the differences between screwball and romantic comedy today, but this is all surprisingly subtle for such a radically innovative book as his.  I also have to say that this now the point in the book where I least agree with him.

 

Teens, Parties, and Rollercoasters – A Genre of the 90s (Chapter Sixteen) – Wood examines and even celebrates the teen films of the past decade known for their “gross-out” dynamic.  He does trace them to better films like Bob Clark’s Porky’s (1983), Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and even Michael Lehmann’s Heathers (1989), but that does not make them any more interesting.  He does go through the gender politics and discusses the failure of the education system, especially Universities moving away from the Arts, but he misses more important films.  I was expecting something in terms of unfinished business with John Hughes’ Weird Science (1985), the Home Alone phenomenon Hughes created, and especially the brilliant Martha Coolidge film Real Genius (also 1985).  There are a few surprises, like how Peyton Reed’s Bring It On (2000) defied the trend, though the book was too late to incorporate Reed’s underrated Down With Love from May/June of 2003.

 

Hollywood Today – Is an oppositional cinema possible? (Chapter Seventeen) – This new final chapter feels more on track and in line with the original book, examining filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher (he hits the nail on the head about Fight Club), and Jim Jarmusch.  He also notes the daringness of Spy Game (2001), even if he is not happy with Tony Scott, but makes a bizarre omission.  He also notes Training Day (also 2001) in the same section, which he even likes better, but inexplicably fails to credit the director: Antoine Fuqua.  In his zeal to talk up some good directors, how could Wood miss this?  Denzel Washington even mentioned him by name when he got his Academy Award for that film!  This epitomizes the patchiness I experienced reading the new sections of the book.  There always seems to be something missing here and there, sometimes glaringly so.  It is still a better book with the additions, but then there are other considerations.

 

Two reason I think Wood may have went into the direction he did has to do with the success of the quarterly magazine CineAction, for which he is an editor.  Also, he may mistakenly thinks continuing on about directors like Kubrick, Scorsese, Altman, Spielberg, and not even mentioning Oliver Stone is fine, likely because of Robert Phillip Kolker’s A Cinema of Loneliness is doing that.  Released in three editions (1980, 1988, and 2000), the film is as brilliant as Wood’s book here.  That’s no reason to not put in his two-cents worth on these filmmakers.

 

There also seems to be too long a period of time between the two editions, in which other films fell through.  In particular, two films vital to text in the original book are forgotten, both released in 1985:  Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon and William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A.  Essays on both appear in the same Summer/Fall 1986 issue of CineAction, but should those works not been updated here?  Wood wrote the Cimino analysis, while Richard Lippe and Florence Jacobowitz wrote the Friedkin piece.  The magazine has even done great genre issues on Horror and Screwball Comedies.  The lack of cutting-edge films versus celebrating a gross-out cycle and commercially over-known comedy plays counter to Wood’s valid complaints about how bad films have become.

 

Wood states that he was not political enough in the last book.  I do not know if that’s the case, as it was bold enough to get the Religious Right to quietly notice, hopefully shaking them up.  He is not, to his credit, politically correct.  His observations on film are some of the most important and original ever.  Even with my issues of direction for the book, it remains one of the most important volumes ever written on cinema and is a vital must-have.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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