Movie mavens who can tear themselves away from the big screen and crack open a book are in for a treat with Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris.
Harris' subject is the five movies that were nominated for the 1967 Best Picture Oscar: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Doolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde. Quite a lineup, no?
Harris looks at the people involved -- everyone from Mike Nichols to Sidney Poitier to Faye Dunaway and what was happening with their careers at that point in time. But the author also looks at how these movies -- on screen and off -- changed Hollywood.
Big hits Hollywood had been riding on -- things like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music -- were suddenly challenged by movies with a whole range of issues -- sex, violence, and racism, among others. Harris argues that these movies and their ilk heralded "the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, forever."
written on Monday Feb 4, 2008
5 movies, 1967.
