Harris, Mark. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. New York: The Penguin Press, 2008 

 

 

Mark Harris’s book Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood talks about the years leading up to the five academy award nominations for best picture in 1967. The Films were Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, Dr. Dolittle, and In the Heat of the Night. All but one of the films, Dr. Dolittle, achieved box office and critical success, which is ironic because Dr. Dolittle’s budget was more than the other four movies combined. The book follows the films from their very origins in screenwriting to production and eventually casting and filming.
The books focus on Bonnie and Clyde begins with Robert Benton and David Newman slow and gradual formation of the Bonnie and Clyde Treatment in 1963. Their positions at Esquire Magazine afforded them sufficient time to leave work and visit the museum of Modern Art where they incessantly watched Hitchcock films in the museums retrospective. The two wrote the treatment with every intention that it would break down the norms of current cinema in the U.S. and establish a more European, art oriented style. The two writers were heavily influenced by the French new wave, and modeled their treatment and script after that style, targeting Francois Truffaut as their ideal director and almost part of the very script.
Truffaut however had his eyes set on Fahrenheit 451 as his first American project and turned it down, but recommended it to Jon Luc Godard, another one of Benton and Newman’s New Wave idols. Godard, however, had an entirely different vision for the project and was subsequently removed from the project, both of his own will and the production team’s. After Godard’s disappointing departure, Benton and Newman seemed to lose hope in their project and started to write Broadway musicals together.
The book then switched to following Warren Beatty after 1965 when he bought the option for the Bonnie and Clyde screenplay for $75,000. After trying to get Truffaut and Godard to direct the film failed yet again for Beatty, he finally convinced Arthur Penn to agree to the project in 1966, after the director had previously turned it down three times already.
The book provides valuable insight into the birth and assembly of Bonnie and Clyde and shows the inner workings of the films production. From Benton and Newman’s American French New Wave dream, to Beatty and Penn’s reworking of the script and groundbreaking final project that eventually led to the Oscar Nomination in 1967 and years of influence.