Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan is one of the most fascinating books ever written about movies. Author Robin
wood manages to cover everything from the
horror flick It’s Alive to Raging Bull in this incisive commentary that covers
films from a Freudian point of view.
The meat of the book concerns the socialpolitical content of films made during the 70’s and early 80’s, though the
movies focused on are not necessarily the big movies that you might expect. Wood does delve into such mainstays as McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Taxi Driver, but he really shines when he convinces the reader how deep and profound such B-movie horror flicks as Last House on the Left and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre really are. Focusing on these movies as retellings of the Oedipus
myth and showing how the best horror movies are bad dreams come to life with the attempt to escape the other as their signal symbolism.
Other chapters are devoted to the early works of Brian DePalma and how the Spielberg-Lucas blockbusters are parenthetical of Reaganomics and the conservative swing to the right. Another
chapter focuses on feminism and the images of women in 70s movies. Perhaps the most surprising and controversial chapter might be the one which views Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese’s boxing masterpiece, from the point of view of a homosexual subtext. This is followed by a truly engaging chapter that reveals Scorsese’s The King of Comedy to be a retelling of the Oedipus myth.
The books ends with analyses of two films directed by Michael Cimino, The Deerhunter and Heaven’s Gate. Be prepared to find that Wood finds both films to be masterpieces, that Heaven’s Gate is actually to be considered the better film.
Well written and truly visionary, Robin Wood is an unfairly overlooked critic of American
Film who should be as much a household name as Roger Ebert.
More reviews about the Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan