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Abstract

This essay analyzes the manifestations of America’s post-1960 film industry, more specifically the rise of “New Hollywood.” In response to governmental intervention of the studio system, the popularization of commercial television, and the influences of the French New Wave, Hollywood’s emerging “film generation” embraced the commercialization of the star auteur and the blockbuster picture. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, sons of the “Hollywood Renaissance,” capitalized on the potential of “high concept,” “ultra-high-budget” feature films and their associated synergetic marketing systems, a phenomenon referred to as the “blockbuster syndrome.” Jaws, a pioneering New Hollywood megapicture directed by Spielberg, exhibits the “Lucas-Spielberg” style, a spectacle-driven aesthetic criticized for abandoning the classical Hollywood storytelling conventions. By examining contrasting arguments from the established film scholars, Thomas Schatz and David Bordwell, New Hollywood should not be identified as an “anti-classical” establishment, but rather as a “hyper-classical” continuation and adaption of classical Hollywood.

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