Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, by Mark Harris

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris is a highly readable account of the making of the five films nominated for best picture in 1967: Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Dr. Doolittle, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. Harris regards two of these films as groundbreaking: The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde. The latter film in a sense is the centerpiece of the book.

The "new Hollywood" is characterized by a willingness to abandon old formulas and stereotypes, the collapse of the Production Code, the rise of a younger group of stars and directors whose careers did not develop under the studio system; the decline of old-fashioned studios and their all-powerful producers; the increasing willingness of filmmakers and actors to deal with controversial and political materials such as race and sex and other issues; the use of more sophisticated and artistic film techniques; the influence of European cinema, especially French New Wave.
Harris notes that of the five films, the most conventional, traditional film of the bunch, Dr. Doolittle, was the only one to lose money. It was the only one of the five films made with what was for the time a huge budget.

Regarded today as a classic film of the 1960s, it is amazing to read in this book the history of the film Bonnie and Clyde. Screenwriters David Newton and Robert Benton had never written a script before. They were writers for Esquire who with virtually no screenwriting experience decided to write a movie about the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. Over a five-year period they developed the script and contacted various studios in hopes of selling it and various directors in hopes of finding one to direct the picture. Studio after studio turned the idea down. Francois Truffaut was interested on and off for several years in directing the film. He also interested Jean Luc Goddard in directing the project. Warren Beatty, whose film career was beginning to stall in the early 1960s, became interested in the project and finally took on the role of producer as well as the lead male actor. He took on the task of getting the film made. After several failed attempts to persuade him, he finally convinced Arthur Penn (whom Truffaut admired) to direct. Bonnie and Clyde was made for what in 1967 passed for a very low budget: $2.5 million. The Warner Brothers studio chief Jack Warner considered it a 1930s-style gangster film revival and hated it. 

 The anti-establishment bent of the film, along with what at the time seemed its portrayal of extreme violence, made Bonnie and Clyde a film that would have run afoul of the Production Code had the code itself not been collapsing. When the film was finally released, the studio was convinced it would make no money. It was initially shown in a limited number of movie houses. The first wave of reviews were largely negative. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther made attacking the film almost a personal mission and wrote about it on at least three different occasions (his opposition to Bonnie and Clyde and his general identification with old-style films helped paved the way for his departure as film reviewer at the Times; later in his life, he praised the film). Only over a period of time, as younger critics such as Pauline Kael chimed in on behalf of the film, did the critical tides turn. The movie was finally released to a much large number of theaters, and it was highly popular, though never a blockbuster commercially.

The first screenplay for The Graduate was the work of novelist Calder Willingham, who had done a lot of writing for films. Director Mike Nichols didn't like the screenplay and asked Buck Henry to try his hand at the story. Nichols used Henry's screenplay for the film. Calder Willingham protested that he should be given co-screenwriting credits, so the Academy Award for screenwriting went both to him and to Henry. Dustin Hoffman was an unlikely choice to play the lead character Ben Braddock. He was nearly eight years older than the 21-year-old character Ben Braddock. He was not especially attractive, had an unwieldy nose, didn't look like someone from Southern California, and had virtually no film-acting experience, though he was having some success with Broadway roles. After his first screen test, he was certain he wouldn't get the part, and even after the part was offered and he accepted it he didn't feel that he could measure up to the role. This film too, with its portrayal of an adulterous relationship between a 21-year-old man and an older woman, benefitted from the collapse of the Production Code.

Harris offers interesting comments on Sidney Poitier, who was a leading character in two of the nominated films: In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Poitier had established himself as the first mainstream African American actor in Hollywood by playing squeaky-clean, virtuous, noble roles that white viewers could be comfortable with. By the mid 1960s Poitier was beginning to receive criticism for not playing more aggressive roles, ones that an audience of color could identify with. While in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner he played the kind of role he had been criticized for, In the Heat of the Night offered him the opportunity to portray an independent, aggressive, and sharp-tongued police detective.

The two main stars in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner were Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Tracy from some viewpoints was the last of the big time Hollywood male actors. He was severely ill during the filming of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and died four days after the production ended. His death, and Katherine Hepburn, along with Poitier's increasing popularity, helped make this tame and safe film a box-office success. Production techniques in this film were old-fashioned. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, in contrast to The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde was a conventional old-style Hollywood movie. Although it concerns the parents of a white girl meeting for the first time the black man she has decided to marry, its treatment of this topic is not especially daring. The girl herself (played by Hepburn's niece) is portrayed as largely unaware that her marriage to a black man might be controversial—she's not portrayed as very intelligent in the film—and Poitier himself plays a wealthy, highly successful medical doctor who seems almost entirely deracinated.

In the Heat of the Night at least confronts the problems of racism in a more direct way, though its conclusion that whites and blacks "just need to learn how to get along" obscures and smoothes over the genuine complexities of race relations in the United States, then and now.

The discussion of the making of Doctor Doolittle is entertaining mainly for its description of the egotistical and tyrannical Rex Harrison and for the misguided efforts of a studio to capitalize on the success of My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) by making a film about a doctor who talks to animals. While The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde were produced with low budgets, Dr. Doolittle cost upwards of $16 million dollars and was a box office and critical failure. It helped mark the end of the big-time Hollywood musical.

Pictures at a Revolution is a well-written and readable book. It illuminates how films get made, how studios in the 1960s worked, the issues that actors, directors, and producers must contend with as they strive to bring a new film to the screen.