Revolution!: The Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties

The 11-year span from 1958 to 1969 proved one of the most transformative and dynamic periods in cinema history, and film historian Cowie interweaves historical narrative and candid interviews with European filmmakers to chart the origins of this revolutionary celluloid expressionism and its later influence on American filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and John Cassavettes. Movements such as Italian neo-realism, led by Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Francesco Rosi, and the French New Wave reflected a post-World War II landscape brutalized by fascism and fascinated with the rise of communism. The period's benchmark films, by mostly European directors and writers, shifted the camera lens to the character of society and away from the man who lives in it. ""Rewriting the grammar of film,"" according to Cowie, was Jean Luc Godard, who launched the French New Wave movement with his 1960 film, a bout de souffle. With this and the endeavors of Fran\xE7ois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and others, French filmmakers introduced a more natural, autobiographical style of moviemaking that accentuated the minutia and redundancy of life. Cowie also profiles less publicized pioneers, such as Andrzej Wajda, considered the Ingmar Bergman of Eastern Europe, who helped put Polish cinema back on the map after the country's years of foreign occupation. In Britain, directors John Schlesinger, John Boorman and Carol Reed captured the bleak factory life of the proletariat and rebelled against social norms and the European class structure under the nose of the conservative British government. A comprehensive and engrossing study, the book ably illuminates the path from the 1960s explosion of ideas to their not-so-subversive presence in today's art-house films. 62 b&w illustrations.