Pictures at a Revolution

In 1968, the five movies nominated for Best Oscar represented a dramatic shift taking place in film making that coincided with a social and political revolution in the United States. Doctor Doolittle, a bloated musical starring the omnipresent Rex Harrison tried (but failed) to continue a long string of super-successful movie musicals culminating with The Sound of Music. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner starred movie icons Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, along with the only notable black movie star to emerge from the early 60s civil rights era, Sidney Poitier. In GWCtD, Poitier finally gets a chance to play a romantic lead in a movie; and that year he was also the first black actor to star in a detective movie in In the Heat of the Night. And finally, there were the two upstart movies that represented the new breed: The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde.

In Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris does an incredible job of reporting on the culture wars taking place in Hollywood during this time, as well as the behind the scenes stories of what went into the making of these films: the struggles that screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman went through to get The Graduate made; the emergence of Warren Beatty as a serious director and not merely a pretty face; the angst of Poitier who wanted roles that were about more than his “negroness”; and the childish antics of Rex Harrison during the filming of Doolitle. This book made me want to go see these movies again (well, maybe not Doctor Doolitle) as well as many other movies that Harris discusses along the way. And it gave me a much deeper appreciation of the art of movie making and the genius of people like Mike Nichols (who directed the Graduate).