Women and New Hollywood: Gender, Creative Labor, and 1970s American Cinema

by Aaron Hunter (Editor), Alicia Kozma (Contributor), Nicholas Forster (Contributor)

The 1970s has often been hailed as a great moment for American film, as a generation of “New Hollywood” directors like Scorsese, Coppola, and Altman offered idiosyncratic visions of what movies could be.  Yet the auteurist discourse hailing these directors as the sole authors of their films has obscured the important creative roles women played in the 1970s American film industry. 
 
Women and New Hollywood  revises our understanding of this important era in American film by examining the contributions that women made not only as directors, but also as screenwriters, editors, actors, producers, and critics. Including essays on film history, film texts, and the decade’s film theory and criticism, this collection showcases the rich and varied cinematic products of women’s creative labor, as well as the considerable barriers they faced. It considers both women working within and beyond the Hollywood film industry, reconceptualizing New Hollywood by bringing it into dialogue with other American cinemas of the 1970s. By valuing the many forms of creative labor involved in film production, this collection offers exciting alternatives to the auteurist model and new ways of appreciating the themes and aesthetics of 1970s American film. 
 

Genres: Film

260 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 2023

Reviews

[Jonathan Isaac]

Overall enjoyed this book, which I picked up because of a recent interest in the “auteur” era of film. This book’s introduction offered a provocation to thinking differently about the construct of New Hollywood, which until now has been built around white masculinity. The essays within were good, if somewhat inconsistent between them, but such is the nature of an edited collection.

Best essays:
Introduction
Women Editors in New Hollywood
Barbara Loden’s Wanda