The reading of this week written by Noel King basically explains the concept of ‘New Hollywood’, and introduces the history of its development and changes.
The author firstly tried to make it clear that although the descriptions on ‘New Hollywood’ are critical and different, but all these arguments agree that it is a specific period of Hollywood film history from 1960s onwards. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, due to the innovations of the European art cinema, the Hollywood also started to consider the direction it should take. Few expansive films were made, but the most were out of touch. Then the real and significant changes happened in the early 1970s, when new generation directors started to show their understandings on film criticism and art by making unti-heroes, commercial American films. They started to make experiments, to explore the new style and trey to mix the traditional classical Hollywood film genre with the new elements.
After those experiments in early 1970s and the emergence of ‘movie brats’, the next key move is the release of Steven Spielberg’s thriller Jaws in 1975. It is usually marked as the arrival of the New Hollywood, which redefined the commercial films as a cultural phenomenon. This successful, profitable mode has profound influences on the post-1975 Hollywood commercial films and film studies. More and more successful and influential films like Star Wars (1977), The lion King (1994) emerged and enriched the New Hollywood.