Hollywood and After: The Changing Face of American Cinema

First published in English in 1974, Hollywood and After presents contemporary cinema in all its complexity, describing and analyzing the various factors which, in the sixties and seventies, brought so many changes both inside Hollywood and throughout the film industry of the USA. The film industry has been restructured. No longer independent, it now forms only a part, sometimes only a small and secondary part, of large diversified corporations. Formerly rivals, today cinema and television not only coexist, but are forced to cooperate closely in a world of technical developments such as videocassettes, cable TV, and satellite transmissions.

The main part of this book is dedicated to artistic and creative questions. A new generation of film makers is making films for a new generation of film goers who are looking for fresh values on the screen. More and more the cinema mirrors the reality of American life: complicated, uneasy, shaken by violent outbursts, charged with a multitude of controversies and conflicts. The rose-tinted American dream, which Hollywood peddled, is a thing of the past. Today the US cinema offers a variety of artistic, political, and social approaches and a wide range of highly individual styles. In the world of social media, OTT platforms, and AI, this book is an important historical reference for scholars and researchers of film studies, film history, and media studies.