Overview

The Last Great American Picture Show brings together essays by scholars and writers who chart the changing evaluations of the American cinema of the 1970s, sometimes referred to as the decade of the lost generation, but now more and more recognized as the first New Hollywood, without which the cinema of Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Tim Burton or Quentin Tarantino could not have come into existence. Identified with directors such as Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn, Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman, Bob Rafelson, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman and James Toback, American cinema of the 1970s is long overdue for this re-evaluation. Many of the films have not only come back from oblivion, as the benchmark for new directorial talents. They have also become cult films in the video shops and the classics of film courses all over the world.

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The Last Great American Picture Show offers a truly dizzying range of options simply for mapping the decade that has come--for better or worse, truth or legend--to acquire a hot retrospective golden glow. . . . The Last Great American Picture Show . . . restores to the decade the sense of fecund chaos that a more linear, journalistic account of the decade risks losing for the sake of imposing some retrospective linearity on what was ultimately remarkable for its incoherence: a few historical moments when Hollywood lost the script, forgot the plot, and stood there wondering just how it got there in the first place. -- Geoff Pevere Cinema Scope (04/01/2004)

The Last Great American Picture Show offers a truly dizzying range of options simply for mapping the decade that has come--for better or worse, truth or legend--to acquire a hot retrospective golden glow. . . . The Last Great American Picture Show . . . restores to the decade the sense of fecund chaos that a more linear, journalistic account of the decade risks losing for the sake of imposing some retrospective linearity on what was ultimately remarkable for its incoherence: a few historical moments when Hollywood lost the script, forgot the plot, and stood there wondering just how it got there in the first place. --;i>cinema scope <br>--Geoff Pevere Cinema Scope (04/01/2004)

Author Information

Alexander Horwath is the director of the Museum of Cinema in Vienna, Austria|Noel King lectures in film studies at the University of Tasmania, Australia.| http://www.thomas-elsaesser.com/ target= _blank >Thomas Elsaesser is Professor of Film and Television Studies in the Department of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam.

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