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With many of the once-controversial films of the New Hollywood era—Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, The Wild Bunch, et al.—now settled respectfully into the cinematic canon, the critical consensus about the wild-and-woolly years after the collapse of the studio system has itself settled into standard history. In his new book, Opening Wednesday at a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American ‘70s, film critic Charles Taylor presents an alternate take on that cultural moment as gleaned from the overlooked or dismissed genre offerings of the day. Working in the vein of Manny Farber who reclaimed the “anti-art” “underground films” of Howard Hawks, William Wellman and Anthony Mann from the rising tide of “distinguished film” in the late-1950s, Taylor returns to the grungy B films of the 1970s, including Michael Ritchie’s Prime Cut (1972), Jack Hill’s Foxy Brown (1974), and Irvin Kershner’s Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) to rediscover a cinematic antidote, as Taylor writes, to “the current juvenile state of American movies.” In the process, he brings that pivotal era vividly to life in all its gritty, melancholy complexity. The Archive is pleased to present this series of films drawn from the book with Taylor appearing in person to introduce the films and sign copies of Opening Wednesday on Friday, August 4 and Saturday, August 5.
Charles Taylor has written on movies, books, popular culture and politics for the New York Times, Salon, New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Dissent, The Nation, New York Observer and others. A member of the National Society of Film Critics, he has taught journalism and literature courses at the New School, the Columbia School of Journalism and the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU.
