Making cinema anew: film criticism and the making of the new American cinema, 1959-1975

In the 1960s, film critics Pauline Kael, Jonas Mekas, and Parker Tyler changed how Americans thought about the cinema. In responding to the American experimental, independent, and New Hollywood cinema that constituted the New American Cinema (1959-71), Kael, Mekas, and Tyler used film criticism that appeared in mainstream publications like the New Yorker, alternative publications like the Village Voice, and specialized art and cinema magazines to demonstrate the cinema’s value to American culture and to analyze social issues through film writing. In their criticism of the New American Cinema, Kael, Mekas, and Tyler created a political film criticism that analyzed American identity in terms of class, gender, and sexuality, and they appealed to educated readers, who were interested in serious criticism that did more than promote Hollywood’s latest release. These critics also brought greater recognition to American experimental, independent, and “New” Hollywood cinema. In sum, Kael, Tyler, and Mekas changed American film criticism by demonstrating the cultural value of the American cinema, initiating a greater awareness of American social and cultural issues through film writing, and they anticipated contemporary popular film reception that focuses on identity and alternative film reception that considers non-mainstream cinema.