A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This new non-fiction illustrated book tries to explain the origins and details of the so called ‘New Hollywood,’ that period of unparalleled artistic growth that is celebrated by many, to this day, as the high point of American cinema.
Written by Jean-Baptiste Thoret
Illustrated and colored by BrunoIn the late 1960s a new generation of filmmakers took Hollywood by storm. Visionaries like Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, Peckinpah, Romero, and Cimino led cinema in a new direction, capturing the spirit of the counterculture and the frustration created by the Vietnam War..
The first thing to notice regarding “Little Book of Knowledge: New Hollywood” is that it is not really a comic-book. I’m no formalist puritan – if somebody wants to put one-panel gag strips like “The Far Side” or books that only have partial comics section in them like “Captain Underpants” in the comics shelves I will not argue; the more the merrier. But “New Hollywood,” despite the abundance of images by the usually able European artist Bruno fails in the most important task – the words and images do not combine. Most of this short book could’ve published as is sans-images as a beginner’s pamphlet for Cinema’s history and the readers would be none the wiser.
Possibly the problem lies in the writer, French film-critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret, who appears to make his first step into the world of comics with this work. His treatment of the images is not that different from insert stills put inside an Academic work – it is there to illustrate a point the text is making, not to interact with it. while the book is all images you can see the relations in the way the text is arranged – often filling up designated blank spaces above and beneath an image; the places where to work becomes more comics-esq is when a quote from a film is put as if in a speech balloon emanating from a mouth of a character. But even that feels limited.
Since the writer doesn’t seem to ask for a lot the artist, Bruno, does not provide: I know Bruno from the recently released adaptation of “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea” (which he also wrote) and in that book his work was not only far livelier but also more intriguing – bringing to mind Mike Mignola not just for his heavily shadowed designs but for the interesting way he cuts from image to image, leaving intentional gaps for the reader to pick up on. Not so here – with mostly flat works aping famous images from classic films, or the familiar pose of respected film industry figures, without adding anything to them.
I’m been clamoring for more non-fiction comics for years, saying that the medium is perfect for summing up and delivering complex ideas in shorts spaces, the recently released “A Quicky and Easy Guide for They/Them Pronouns” does a lot more with a smaller page count (and is a far better read to boot), but this book simply drags information across the page – ignoring (how ironic for a book about cinema) the transformative power of the image.
But let us take the work as it: A long form essay about New Hollywood. This is a subject I am eager to know more about so the book has me just from the title. The problem is that Jean-Baptiste Thoret doesn’t have a clear structure in mind – as the book jumps between dedicating a page to talk about a certain director to talk about certain films in particular to analyze changes in trends across the years. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason as to which subject fellows which. Neither does the author seems certain as what exactly he defines as ‘New Hollywood’ – in terms of years or people involved. He speaks freely about films from the early 1960’s and even late 1950’s, mentions in a passing chapter the Blaxploitation movement without clarifying what was its relation to the super-star directors (like William Friedkin, Coppola at el) who wielded massive budgets and influence for a while.
There are some interesting notions within the book: Thoret’s theory regarding the influence of the Kennedy assassination film, as separated from the act itself, on a new generation who accepted violence and destruction of old foundations in the headline news is certainly fascinating. But a lot of this stuff is very rote, known even to a layperson such as myself: the complaints about Lucas and Spielberg ‘killing off’ the notion of New Hollywood by introducing special effect blockbuster aimed at a kiddie audience are certainly something I’ve heard about a million times before.
Continued belowOvertly the book’s biggest issue is that Jean-Baptiste Thoret appears to be too much of a fan to engage with the material in any unique way: he takes it for granted that these are all grand works and thus fails to critic them in any meaningful way. Surely the chapter dedicated to Blaxploitation demands a fellow up discussing how the supposedly ‘liberal and progressive’ Hollywood of time remained composed mostly of white men, the same type of people who had been in control before and would be there after. Or what about the inherent sexism in many of these celebrated works (MASH in particular, read very differently to a modern audience)?
The biggest influence here seems to be the celebrated book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls But while the author of that book, Peter Biskind, was obviously a fan of the period and directors involved he never let his admiration overpower the text – there are many moments in that book that remind you that these movies were made by fallible people – people who made mistakes, or (more often) bad choices; people who made other pay the price of their success. All of that is absent from the “Little Book of Knowledge.”
Lines from the book such as “Movies have always been quick to mend the nation’s wounds – whether the fate of Native Americans or the Vietnam War – quick to mend and re-evaluate its history in film or fiction.” showcase brazen naiveté: does the author truly believe the treatment of Black Americans is the sole place in which Hollywood misfired? that seems to buy into the projected image of these directors without questioning it.
These are question worth asking, and worth answering. But you will not find these questions here. It is fitting that book talks about the anti-establishment tendencies of these directors as a continuation of the Beat Movement when “The Beats,” a graphic novel by Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor, stands as a far better version of a non-fiction comics: not only for its superior presentation but also for its willingness to get into the grim and gritty of the lives of artists without simply taking them at their words. “Little Book of Knowledge: New Hollywood” is more of a fan letter than a frank examination, and thus it is a failure.