New hollywood Cinema Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

New hollywood Cinema - Essay Example Earlier on, there was the saying that this was the eventual death of Hollywood. This did not only prove to be greatly exaggerated but also a misguided conclusion. Hollywood reinvented itself once again to a new market as a new industry that flourished greatly in changing the marketplace of the media. Major studios that previously dominated the media such as Warner’s, MGM and Paramount continued to dominate the industry. The idea of a movie was still retained as the industry continued looking more complex as days went by. The term Hollywood Renaissance can thus be reduced to denote the adjustment from one period to the other: from classical to new Hollywood (Madsen 1975; Thompson & Bordwell 1994; Solomon 1976) One of the main reasons for Hollywood to retain its place was the rise of the blockbuster movie. In production values, market strategy and budgets, Hollywood changed to a hit driven industry from the early 1950’s. In classical Hollywood, studios would release a few prestige pictures yearly and then would relish an occasional runaway hit. The classical Hollywood would mainly rely on A-class features in order to generate revenue. In new Hollywood it changed from the occasional hit to the well calculated blockbuster. This would lead to changes in the way movies were produced and the thematic topics and styles used (Schaltz 1988; Mast 1992; schaltz 1981). This paper is going to look at the film â€Å"The Godfather† as a product of the new Hollywood era. It is going to examine the film in terms of its industrial, social, formal, political and cultural perspectives as a new Hollywood movie. Industrial perspective Arguably, â€Å"The Godfather† is the best movie of all times based on its level of sales and thematic relevance. It was heavily promoted and advertised. Its production was a big and it had very profitable returns. The godfather veered off the mainstream conventions of a movie when it portrayed a different view of the mafia. It showed the activities of the mafia from inside rather than the American conventional view of the mafia (De Stefano 2007; Schiach 1972; Steinberg 1980). As a new Hollywood film the godfather gained acclaim from across many cultures. Not only in the United States did the movie achieve a lot of success but also in Europe and other places in the world. It has become the best movie since 1965 in cinema attendance. It also sets the pace for other new Hollywood directors and actors. Mario Puzzo had the manuscript of the movie written and passed it on to Robert Evans the production head of paramount at the time. Previously, during the era of vertical integration in Hollywood, such a manuscript could not be taken from the big studios like paramount, played all the roles in the production of a film. In classical era only occasionally hits were released while other movies would be screened all year in the cinema (Lincoln 2005; Silverman 1988) In classical Hollywood, during production a film would be made to a beginning, middle and an end. The godfather defied this formula and didn’t have a definite beginning or events that signified a point of central tendency. However, it had an end similar to that of classical Hollywood era movies. The conventional style of classical Hollywood was such that the actors are used to motivate viewers