Changing Attitudes

[Correction]

Anyone who remembers the 1960s or ‘70s will find that Elaine Bapis reintroduces many significant films of those decades, including, quite probably, many reader favorites. Even more importantly, her work introduces both American culture and cinema from 1965 to 1975 to generations of students who often share misconceptions of both counterculture and national history for those times. This work will be particularly valuable in providing a context for classroom exploration and discussion.

Before analyzing individual films, the author carefully outlines the state of the industry in terms of production, exhibition, and changing attitudes on movie content and themes. The opening segment, “Industry and Audiences,” also examines the shift to an audience of cinephiles and enthusiasts of film as art, an audience strengthened by a growing film studies presence on college campuses across the country.

Growing out of the opening chapters, establishing a foundation from which to consider the movie business and the moviegoer of the era, Bapis turns to specific issues, using representative films to expand her discussion of social and cultural changes of the times as reflected in cinema, and as a medium for those changes. The first section, “Generation,” defines the generation gap. Using The Graduate (1967), Alice’s Restaurant (1969), and Easy Rider (1969), the author skillfully explicates the conflicts inherent in this gap, while using both popular press and scholarly sources to illustrate the polarization these films created between the under-thirty and overthirty audiences. The author contends that these movies helped create “a mode of rebellion through lifestyle.” From Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman), the graduate who still dressed appropriately by adult standards, to the communal lifestyle of the newlylabeled hippies, to Wyatt, aka Captain America (Peter Fonda) as biker, Bapis traces the shifts and rifts from nascent reexamination of middleclass standards to more active, organized attempts to radically change the status quo; attitudes expressed through dress, behavior, and rhetoric, much to the dismay of many older Americans.

The next theme, “Gender,” focuses on Midnight Cowboy (1969), M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), and Carnal Knowledge (1971). Building upon themes introduced in her discussion of Easy Rider, the author examines the myths of “cowboy” masculinity and the ambiguous relationship between, and the fluid, nurturing identities of Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman). In addition to a careful reading of these characters, Bapis situates the film within the expectations of traditional Westerns—rugged individualism and masculine authority. M*A*S*H, as Bapis asserts, created multiple, cultural meanings for both audiences and film scholars; the movie is viewed as anti-establishmentarian on many levels... Feminists found much to critique in Altman’s treatment of Major “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Sally Kellerman). Robert Altman tackled gender issues from a divergent perspective in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, as discussed by Bapis, who notes that despite the tough, business expertise of Constance Miller (Julie Christie), this character is finally left “without security and authority . . . voiceless and isolated from both lover and community of women.” The next chapter, aptly titled “What’s Sex Got to Do with It?,” analyzes the ways in which Mike Nichols and Jules Feiffer exposed problems that arose during the sexual revolution, which divorced love and romance from sexual activity. Ultimately, the male chauvinist retained the dominant voice in the film, yet Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) does not find what he hoped from the sexual revolution. Certainly the film tested visual boundaries, expanded the audience for R rated movies, and spawned heated, regional censorship debates.

In the final section, “Ethnicity,” genre conventions are tested in the treatment of Native Americans in Little Big Man (1970), and Italian-Americans in The Godfather films (Part I [1972] and Part II [1974]). Little Big Man brought revisionist history to the screen, with Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), the 121-year old protagonist, displaying the ability to move deftly from and adapt to Anglo-American and Native American life. Director Arthur Penn continued the retelling begun with the likes of John Ford in Fort Apache (1948) and The Searchers (1956). Because Crabb...