1976: Movies and cultural contradictions

FRANCK P. TOMASULO

In its bicentennial year, the United States was wracked by disillusionment and mistrust of the government. The Watergate scandal and the evacuation of Vietnam were still fresh in everyone's mind. Forced to deal with these traumatic events, combined with a lethargic economy (8.5 percent unemployment), energy shortages and OPEC price hikes of 5 to 10 percent, high inflation (8.7 percent and rising), and the decline of the U.S. dollar on international currency exchanges, the American national psyche suffered from a climate of despair and, in the phrase made famous by new California governor Jerry Brown the previous year, "lowered expectations." President Gerald R. Ford's WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons did nothing to bolster consumer/investor confidence and were widely perceived to be a public relations gimmick to paper over structural difficulties in the financial system. Intractable problems were apparent: Stagflation, political paranoia, collective anxiety, widespread alienation, economic privation, inner-city decay, racism, and violence. The federal government's "misery index," a combination of the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation, peaked at 17 percent. In short, there was a widespread perception that the foundations of the American Dream had been shattered by years of decline and frustration. 

Despite these negative economic and social indicators in the material world, the nation went ahead with a major feel-good diversion, the bicentennial celebration that featured the greatest maritime spectacle in American history: "Operation Sail," a parade of sixteen "Tall Ships," fifty-three warships, and more than two hundred smaller sailing vessels in New York harbor. Seven million people lined the shore, along with President Ford, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and a host of international dignitaries, including Prince Rainier and Princess Grace (née Kelly) of Monaco. The spectacular fireworks display was choreographed by Walt Disney Attractions and, as the radio simulcast of patriotic tunes noted, "was brought to you by Macy's." Crass commercial considerations of this sort were highly prominent throughout the festivities, in sharp contrast to the privations of America's revolutionary founders in 1776. 

The political landscape was also different than two hundred years earlier, although two schools of thought still remained prominent. The Federalists and Democratic-Republicans of the early days of the nation had morphed into the conservative Republicans and the liberal Democrats of the bicentennial year. However, neither Gerald Ford-the "accidental" president who succeeded Richard M. Nixon after Nixon resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal prior to his anticipated impeachment-nor Jimmy Carter-Ford's little-known centrist Democratic challenger-were the equivalent of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, or the other founders of the republic, but that was the choice offered to voters. Indeed, the closeness of the November presidential election (Carter, 50 percent; Ford, 48 percent) suggested the deep divisions in the nation. In many ways, the same ideological choice on the ballot was proffered to audiences of American films. The ideological themes (and styles) of the most popular films, as well as those most acclaimed by the critical establishment and the Motion Picture Academy, likewise reflected a growing national instability, a vestige of the Vietnam War and Watergate periods. 

Three of the top seven best-selling nonfiction books were about the Watergate scandal: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's The Final Days, a sequel of sorts to their All the President's Men; convicted Watergate conspirator Charles Colson's Born Again; and John Dean's Blind Ambition: The White House Years. The success of Alex Haley's Roots suggested that racial tensions were easing despite events that indicated the nation was still racially divided. Finally, although not a commercial best-seller, another highly influential book appeared this year: Daniel Bell's The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, whose thesis was that U.S. society was splintering. In fact, Bell's book contains twenty-two references to America as "unstable," as epitomized by the "'American climacteric,' a critical change of life" in the nation (213). On the international scene, Vietnam became unified, with its capital established in Hanoi and Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai died, leading to a power struggle for control of the People's Republic of China. The incoming pragmatists purged hardline Maoists, and many Mao loyalists, such as the Gang of Four (including Mao's widow, Chiang Ch'ing, a former film star), were imprisoned. 

Perhaps because of the uncertain times and the excitement surrounding the bicentennial, the arts returned to traditional and familiar modes of expression, thus eclipsing the long run of the more experimental, political, and modernist aesthetic in painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and music. As in past times of uncertainty, many "new" works harkened back to prior styles, such as realism, while incorporating a postmodernist pastiche of intertextual references to older themes and forms, especially those with upbeat themes of national renewal (or at least survival). Indeed, many commentators, including Glenn Man and David Cook, date the demise of the short-lived "Hollywood Renaissance" to 1976. Rather than continue to explore the European art cinema's themes and techniques, many American films relied on formulaic patterns-so much so that many movies were remakes of earlier hits and classic productions or adaptations of successful books. Examples include King Kong, A Star Is Born, All the President's Men, Carrie, The Seven Percent Solution, The Omen, and the ultimate pastiche movie, That's Entertainment, Part II, which consisted exclusively of clips from Golden Age Hollywood musicals. 

Even movies that were not specifically remakes or adaptations were often derived from an earlier ur-text. For instance, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver was essentially a neo-noir retelling of John Ford's classic western The Searchers (1954) set in a cesspool modern metropolis. Arthur Hiller's Silver Streak and Brian DePalma's Obsession relied so much on Hitchcockian themes and techniques that one expected the Master of Suspense himself to make one of his patented cameo appearances (Obsession even used a passionate Bernard Herrmann musical score to accentuate the Hitchcockian overtones). Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon told of the early days of Hollywood silent filmmaking, when the nation and the motion picture industry were far less jaded. Similarly, in homage to the silent film era, Mel Brooks's Silent Movie contained no spoken dialogue except for Marcel Marceau's "Non!" Although not a literal remake, John Avildsen's Rocky became emblematic of the retrenchment of creativity by sampling all the clichés of the boxing genre (and the Cinderella narrative)-and rose to the top of the box office ladder. 

Only a few films by major New Hollywood directors challenged the return to normalcy by actively (and self-reflexively) interrogating the content and form of the Hollywood genre picture. One notable example was Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, an overtly self-referential satire on entertainment and American values in the guise of a western. Likewise, Arthur Penn's Missouri Breaks attempted to deconstruct the western, while Martin Ritt's The Front recreated McCarthy-era paranoia in the movie and television industries. Other inventive films included Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory, based on the autobiography of folksinger Woody Guthrie, who rode the rails across Depression-era America and discovered his voice of protest, and Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon, which harkened back to F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished last novel and legendary 1930s movie executive Irving Thalberg to comment on the current state of Hollywood moviemaking. Even the science-fiction genre was post-modernized in Michael Anderson's Logan's Run, in which the generation gap was transmogrified into a twenty-third century society where everyone over the age of thirty has to undergo "renewal" (in reality, death). 

As David Cook has noted, “That all aesthetically experimental, socially conscious cinéma d'auteur could exist simultaneously with a burgeoning and rapacious blockbuster mentality was extraordinary” (Lost, xvii). The movie industry itself underwent considerable change with the use of saturation booking and heavily targeted advertising. The blockbuster era was in full swing. Among the hallmarks of that trend was the use of bankable stars whose screen personas and professional reputations ensured box office success, or at least were a hedge against casting risk. The International Motion Picture Almanac listed nine such “profitability actors” (and one child star, Tatum O'Neal): Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Clint Eastwood, Mel Brooks, Burt Reynolds, Al Pacino, Tatum O'Neal, Woody Allen, and Charles Bronson (Cook, Lost, 339). 

Peter Lev's American Films of the 70s has a subtitle that summarizes Hollywood cinema in 1976: Conflicting Visions. That dialectical description could perhaps apply to any era in U.S. film history, but the term seems particularly apposite fur the bicentennial year. Downbeat films about personal alienation, public corruption, and paranoia, best exemplified by Taxi Driver and Network, vied for audiences with upbeat movies about personal achievement and feel-good emotions, such as Rocky and Bound for Glory. Others, such as the middle-of-the-road All the President's Men, both castigated the corruption of the political process and applauded that system's ability to rejuvenate itself. These five movies constitute what Fredric Jameson has called a “national allegory” (87) that simultaneously conceal and reveal the nation's split-sensibility to itself and to the rest of the world. Yet they are not isolated examples. Also noteworthy in this regard are Marathon Man, The Seven Percent Solution, King Kong, A Star Is Born, The Shootist, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Enforcer, The Bad News Bears, and Cannonball, as well as the documentaries Harlan County, USA, Underground, Hollywood on Trial, Number Our Days, and Union Maids. This chapter, however, focuses mainly on the live movies that, taken together, epitomize the bifurcated American zeitgeist. 

***

Frank P. Tomasulo

Frank P. Tomasulo is an American film critic, theoretician, and historian. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Brooklyn College, his M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and his Ph.D. in film and television from UCLA. He served as editor of the Journal of Film and Video from 1991 to 1996 and Cinema Journalfrom 1997 to 2002.

He has published widely on Hollywood and international cinema, American television, and screen acting. He has been a longtime advocate for the modernist cinema and an outspoken critic of the early movies of American director Steven Spielberg. His anthology on film performance, More than a Method, was co-edited with Diane Carson and Cynthia Baron.[1] (Nominated for the 2005 Theatre Library Association Book Award)[citation needed] Tomasulo's book-length monograph, Michelangelo Antonioni: Ambiguity in the Modernist Cinema, was published in 2019.[2]

Tomasulo has taught a wide variety of film history, theory, production, and screenwriting classes at UCLA, Ithaca College, Cornell University, the University of California–Santa Cruz, Georgia State University, Southern Methodist University, and Florida State University, as well as being an academic administrator. More recently, he has taught independent film and other cinema courses at The City College of New York, City University of New York and Hunter College and Hofstra University; television history and criticism at Sarah Lawrence College; and cinema history and genre film classes at Pace University. In addition, Tomasulo was Core Certified Professor of Film at National University, where he taught on-line graduate seminars on Silent Cinema, American Film History, Italian Cinema, The Horror Film, and other topics.

In 2009, Tomasulo became the first recipient of the University Film and Video Association (UFVA) Teaching Excellence Award; and in 2020 he was awarded the UFVA Teaching Excellence Award for Adjunct Instructors. He has also won a number of other pedagogical awards at Georgia State University, Ithaca College, and elsewhere. His scholarly writing has been recognized with awards from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), the University Film and Video Association, and Ithaca College, among other institutions and organizations.