Film List New Hollywood Thriller 

I can well imagine how the audience must have felt in 1967 when they saw Arthur Penn's Bonnie And Clyde on the screen: This "first modern American film" had the effect of a punch right in the face! Never before had anything like it been seen! In tone and freedom, Bonnie And Clyde descended from the French Nouvelle Vague - especially early Truffaut. And much like the French models, it sparked a worldwide fashion boom (Warren Beauty's beret and Faye Dunaway's skirt), plus the soundtrack by Flatt and Scruggs). At the center; a violent character with sexual problems. None of the main actors were known before, all became stars. The idiosyncratic camera and editing techniques triggered a flood of imitators, all wanting to look just as French Impressionist. In short, something new was born: New Hollywood. Born out of the bankruptcy of Middle America with the courage to break old cinematic habits and self-destructive antiheroes. The America of rural backwoodsmen, seedy motels and decaying cities, the America of bigoted communities in the bible belt. New Hollywood is not simply the end of the old studio system and the brief flowering of the American auteur film, but simply a time of upheaval full of new talent, a "regime change." The thriller is one of the most typical forms of New Hollywood cinema, openly marked by the loss of confidence in the USA and the self-doubt as to whether life, liberty, happiness and justice are still American values.