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From El Dorado to Lost Horizons: Traditionalist Films in the Hollywood Renaissance, 1967–1972

Review

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Abstract

  • Scholarly treatments of the Hollywood Renaissance tend to highlight the same set of groundbreaking films, cinematic work that challenged traditional genres, styles, and audience expectations (see, for example, Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema's Most Celebrated Era, ed. by Peter Krämer and Peter Tzioumakis). Windrum (Los Angeles Pierce College) takes an unusual approach to this era by focusing on more conventional Hollywood productions-films that, as he writes in the foreword, "do not overtly, noisily break with the status quo" and "seemingly hew to classical Hollywood practices of content, narrative structure, and style." Windrum places these traditionalist films in four categories: Westerns such as El Dorado (1967), war spectacles such as Patton (1970), naughty sex comedies such as I Love My Wife (1970), and big-budget musicals such as Lost Horizon (1973). Through incisive analyses of these films' cinematic styles and narratives, Windrum concludes that even the seemingly traditionalist films "surprisingly and consistently reflect the era's progressive dimensions through form and content."

Publication Date

  • 2020

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