Pictures at a Revolution

Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood

By: Mark Harris

Narrated by: Lloyd James

Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.

It was the mid-1960s, and Westerns, war movies, and blockbuster musicals, such as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, dominated the box office. The Hollywood studio system, with its cartels of talent and its production code, was hanging strong, or so it seemed.

But by the time the Oscar ceremonies rolled around in the spring of 1968, when In the Heat of the Night won the 1967 Academy Award for Best Picture, a cultural revolution had hit Hollywood with the force of a tsunami. The unprecedented violence and nihilism of fellow nominee Bonnie and Clyde shocked old-guard reviewers and made the movie one of the year's biggest box-office successes. Just as unprecedented was the run of The Graduate, which launched first-time director Mike Nichols into a long and brilliant career and inspired a generation of young people who knew that, whatever their future was, it wasn't in plastics.

What City of Nets did for Hollywood in the 1940s, and Easy Rider and Raging Bull did for the 1970s, Pictures at a Revolution does for Hollywood and the cultural revolution of the 1960s. As we follow the progress of five movies, we see an entire industry change and struggle and collapse and grow - and we see careers made and ruined, studios born and destroyed, and the landscape of possibility altered beyond all recognition.

©2008 Mark Harris (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Thorough and engaging....Fascinating." ( Publishers Weekly)
"Fresh and candid....A particularly accomplished debut book." ( The New York Times)

Great, great book

The only thing better than this awesome book is Harris' latest, "Five Came Back." Can't wait for his next. Harris is no doubt one of the finest writers covering the movie business.

For film history buffs

Mark Harris for President. Also read "Five Came Back" by him.

The audiobook performer should've been coached on the pronouncing ion of some of the very well known artists. I was embarrassed for him.

Critical pivot for Hollywood

Details 1967, and the years before and after, brilliantly gauging how Hollywood expressed the culture of the time.

Apt mix of films

I hesitated at first because, truth be told, none of the films in the book are particular favorites of mine. Bonnie and Clyde is the best of the lot, but I would have much rather had accounts of The Wild Bunch (any Peckinpah, really) or Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown. But those are obviously films for different books. Once I started, I could see the logic behind this particular year of Academy Award nominated films. It does really exemplify the crossroads of old and new Hollywood. Frankly, I dislike the term New Hollywood, as it would only last halfway into the 70s. I much prefer the 2nd Golden Age of Hollywood, with similar quality films only to be found elsewhere in the decades to come. Dr. Dolittle is obviously the outlier, but it does provide a sometimes comic contrast to the newer style on the rise. The true star of the book, however (this should have been clear from the start, but sadly wasn't... and probably should have been reflected on the cover), is Sidney Poitier. A major player in two of the films (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and In the Heat of the Night), and tangential to the third (Dolittle), his story was really fascinating. There must have been tremendous pressure balancing the responsibility of being a viable, working actor, and a de facto representative for his ethnicity, often against his wishes. And there is the unlikely leading man Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, which also fit nicely into the theme of how the industry was changing. I liked the book more than I had expected.

But as noted by others, the pronunciation of some words and names becomes distracting. If only Leslie Caron had never met Warren Beatty...

Interesting Comparison

This was an interesting comparison of pictures. I found the background information on each picture to be very interesting - especially how the rating system in that era was so quickly turned on it's ear at the time these pictures were forcing there way into the cinema.
#Interesting #history #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

great story

it a great book on how the author intertwine 5 movies together and talk about a watershed year

Fascinating

This was second 'reading' of this selection. It won't be my last. I love the behind the scenes history of films and this offers such information for so many great films. The stories go beyond those mentioned in the cover. In a few years I'll give it another listen.

entertaining and insightful

strong recommend. content is excellent. well researched and informative. narration is compelling. Yes the other reviews are correct there are a number of mispronunciations. And it is surprising they were not re-recorded. But these small errors do not diminish the value of this work.

The Year that Changed the Movies

Excellent book but the narrator mangles so many names it's clear he knows absolutely nothing about Hollywood or films. Listen anyway.

Lazy Narrator

The book is fantastic and the narration is not bad except the narrator was lazy and miss pronounces so many names. It’s embarrassing. All he had to do was do a little research and figure out how peoples names are pronounced. Took me out of the story many times.