This book tracks the changing of the guard in the 1970s from the classic Hollywood studio system to a new generation of filmmakers who made personal movies targeted primarily to a thirty-and-under audience. These filmmakers reinvented the content and aesthetics of the medium to show that movies can be more than entertainment.

A fascinating year-by-year history of American film in the seventies, a decade filled with innovations that reinvented the medium and showed that movies can be more than entertainment.

In The Seventies: The Decade That Changed American Film Forever, Vincent LoBrutto tracks the changing of the guard in the 1970s from the classic Hollywood studio system to a new generation of filmmakers who made personal movies targeting a younger audience. He covers in kaleidoscopic detail the breadth of American cinema during the 1970s, with analyses of the movies, biographical sketches of the filmmakers, and an examination of the innovative production methods that together illustrate why the seventies were unique in American film history.

Featuring iconic filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola and films such The Godfather, Jaws, Taxi Driver, and The Exorcist, this book reveals how the seventies challenged the old guard in groundbreaking and exciting ways, ushering in a new Hollywood era whose impact is still seen in American film today.

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Introduction

1. How Old Hollywood Became New Hollywood

2. 1970

3. 1971

4. 1972

5. 1973

6. 1974

7. 1975

8. 1976

9. 1977

10. 1978

11. 1979

12. 1980 to 1987

Selected Bibliography

Notes

Index

About the Author