How do you understand the new tungsten movies in Hollywood? You need professional answers. Thank you!

New Hollywood Movies and Independent Production

In the mid-1960s, with the appearance of a number of films such as The Sound of Music (1965) and doctor zhivago (1965), the Hollywood film industry showed a prosperous scene. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and the problem soon appeared. The future of expensive movies is bleak, because the TV networks that used to buy such movies no longer refuse to spend a lot of money to buy such movies. On average, the American film industry loses almost one billion people at the box office every year (this figure does not include the greater impact after the popularization of home video recorders). By 1969, Hollywood loses an average of more than 200 million dollars every year.

Hollywood producers are trying to find a solution. One of the countermeasures is to make "counterculture" movies for the younger generation. Perhaps the most influential and popular movie is "Happy Riding the Earth" (1969) produced by dennis hopper at a low cost. However, a large number of other films about campus trends and alternative lifestyles did not attract more box office. What really helps the American film industry recover is a series of influential films directed by a group of young directors, among which the most successful works include: francis coppola's The Godfather (1972); William Flandeken's The Exorcist (1973); Jaws by Steven Allan Spielberg (1975) and The Third Intimate Contact (1977); Halloween in j carpente (1978); George lucas's American style painting (1973), Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980). In addition, Brian de Palma's Black Angel (1976) and martin scorsese's Taxi Driver and Angry Bull can also be quoted, which also attracted the praise of critics.

Together with other similar directors, these directors are called "young people in the film industry" and gradually replace the old directors of major companies. Most of these young directors graduated from various film schools, such as new york University, University of Southern California and UCLA. They not only mastered the technology of film production, but also studied film aesthetics and film history. Different from the early Hollywood directors, these young directors are familiar with the famous films and directors in the film history, and even those who did not enter the film academy are knowledgeable and full of admiration for the classic Hollywood tradition.

Like the "new wave" in France before, these young directors who are crazy about movies have also produced a number of films with strong personal colors. These "young people in the film industry" follow the style of traditional film types, but add a lot of personalized styles. For example, American Style Painting is not only a musical that young people like, but also Lucas' reflection on the growth of California in the 1960s. In the film Godfather, Coppola goes deep into Italian-American families, interweaving their inner joys and sorrows. The screenwriter Paul Schrade integrated his observation and thinking on violence and sex into his plays Taxi Driver and Angry Bull, as well as his own film Hard Core (1979).

As movies become a major part of these young directors' lives, many new Hollywood movies are based on the old ones. De Palma's films draw lessons from Hitchcock's films in many places, especially The Eighth Edge (1980) is obviously a copy of Psycho (1960). What's Peter Bogdanovich's next step? (1972) is a fanatical comedy, which is particularly similar to Howard Hawkes' Raising a Baby. Carpenter's attack on the 13th district (1976) can be traced back to Hawkes' bravo river (1932), in which the main actor john wayne also played a role in Hawkes' westerns.

At the same time, many directors also appreciate the style of European films. For example, martin scorsese learned a lot of visual expressions from Italian director Visconti and British director mike powell. Some directors dream of drawing lessons from the European model and shooting complex "art films". Perhaps the most famous example of this is Coppola's talk (1974). This mysterious story is based on antonioni's enlargement (1966), trying to unify reality and illusion. Robert altman and Woody Allen are another way. They gave full play to their creativity under the nutrition of European films. For example, Three Women by Altman (1977) and My Heart by Woody Allen (1978) are all deeply influenced by ingmar bergman's works.

Altman and Woody Allen belong to the older generation. However, successful directors in this era are constantly emerging among these "young people in the film industry". Lucas and Spielberg became the most powerful film creators. They all devoted themselves to the Indiana Jones series, and formed a distinctive personal style among the new generation of Hollywood. Coppola failed to keep his own production company, but he is still undoubtedly the most important director. Scorsese's popularity is growing. By the end of 1980s, he had become one of the living American film artists and the most valued person in the film critics.

In the 1980s, these new talented artists won social recognition and created a new Hollywood. Many great influences come from Lucas and Spielberg, but there are also a number of other successful directors who seem to be younger: Terminator I (1984) and Terminator II (also translated as Terminator II, 199 1) by James Cameron, and Batman by tim burton. 》( 1988)。 1993 and 1994 brought Hollywood back to life, namely Jurassic Park by Spielberg and Forrest Gump by Zemekis.

The revival of mainstream commercial films is also attributed to a group of film artists from outside Hollywood, many of whom are directors from the British Conservative Party and Radle Scott. Peter Will and Fred Sepish from Australia; Wolfgang Peterson, Germany; Paul Varhavin of the Netherlands; Renlai Harlem and other Finns. In 1980s, more female film artists also became successful leaders of commercial films, such as Amy Hackling, Martha Koenigs and Pennop Sphinlis.

A group of directors who were originally from independent filmmakers also made mainstream commercial films, using the funds provided by the media to make movie stars known to the public. David rich shot the midnight movie Rubber Head (1978) to the relatively classic movie Blue Velvet (1986), while Canadian-born Daive Cohen Berg is good at shooting low-budget horror movies or thrillers, such as Trembling (1975) and Dead Zone (1975). The "New Hollywood Movie" has also attracted some minority directors among independent filmmakers. Wang Ying is a successful Asian director. She starred in films such as Missing Chen (1982), Smoke (1995), Spark Lee (1986) and Dreams Come True. For example, Regina Haddling's Family Reunion (1990), John Thain Leighton's Boyce and His Gang (199 1), and Margherio Piper's New Jack City (19/kloc).

Of course, there are also some directors who insist on independent production and are more or less at a distance from the production company. In L Bi's Strange Heaven (1984) and Under the Law (1986), Jamie Jia Mouche found a narrative way by showing eccentric white-collar workers through moving lenses. Alison Andy explores modern rebellious young women, or in a small town like a boarding house at a gas station (1992) or in a big city center like Mivida Rocca (1994); However, Lesny Harris's Just Another Girl of IRT L (1994) is more like focusing on the issue of colored women in the suburbs.

Stylistically speaking, there was no independent film genre in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of these young directors mainly continue and develop the tradition of American classic films, such as inheriting the fluency of editing, the clarity of time changes and the development of plot structure. Some directors have enriched and strengthened the traditional story-telling strategy in Hollywood by using the new visual expression technology with vitality. Since the movie Jaws, Spielberg has effectively used the tradition of deep focal length that has been continued from Citizen Kane. In the filming of Star Wars, Lucas developed the motion control technology of macro photography, and his film company "Electro-optical Phantom Studio" also became the leader of new special effects. With the joining of Electro-Optical Phantom Studio (1LM), Zemekis used digital technology to create images in the film Forrest Gump, and Spielberg and Lucas also took the lead in using digital technology to improve sound technology and create high-quality pictures.

With some new entrants joining Hollywood, the traditional forms, styles and narrative methods of the original mainstream commercial films have been enriched and strengthened. From the film discussion about Spark Lee in chapter 1 1 of this book, we see a concrete example. Another similar example is Wang Ying's The Joy Luck Club (1993), which takes place in several Chinese American families and tells the story of four immigrant mothers and their four Americanized daughters. In order to show the lives of these women, the film follows the narrative principle of the memory paragraphs in Citizen Kane. In the film, the three surviving mothers recalled their lives before coming to the United States and designed a fairly long flashback shot for each of them. With the help of each mother's flashback scene, the film further sets up the flashback of each daughter's life experience in the United States in the plot structure, and produces a series of rich themes with reality and dreams in parallel. Sometimes, the juxtaposition of mother and daughter will create sharp contrast, while at other times, they will be mixed together to emphasize the similarities between the two generations (photo 12.35). The voice-over of these women always makes the audience feel the meaning outside the narrative. In addition, they asked Wang Ying and her photographer to use flashback traditional techniques to enhance the emotional impact of the film.

The more stylized movements are Scorsese's films Taxi Driver, Angry Bull and Age of Innocence (1993), which expand the emotional impact through camera movement and slow motion. Palma has even become a more amazing stylist, and his films show long shots, exquisite structures and multi-lens shooting equipment. Coppola experimented with the rapid conversion of black and white colors in Betta (1983), used the voice effect of microphones in the foreground and background in one shot, and conveyed the mood of an era through old special effects in Cotton Club (1984).

A more experimental attitude is reflected in another group of independent directors, and the Cohen brothers strive to explore the source of film expressiveness in each film. In Rising Arizona (1987), high-speed tracking photography of foreground and background combined with distorted wide-angle close-ups created a comic-strip exaggeration style (figure 12.36). In any case, similar efforts also appeared in Craig Araki's road movie The End of Life (1992). In the film Loyalty (199 1), Hal hartle weakened the plot structure like a popular farce, and expressed it with slow and thoughtful close-ups and dynamic composition of the foreground background (Figure 12.37).

For the films made by the company, the return to traditional Hollywood was in the 1970s and 1980s. These talented young directors adopted the rules of classic Hollywood to meet the interests of contemporary audiences. At the same time, a vibrant tradition of independent production has been formed here, which has found its own audience among fans, young audiences and ethnic minority audiences, representing a subculture that tries to pursue different experiences and meanings from mainstream commercial films in practice.