in the Godfather there's an interesting blend of traditional and revisionist techniques that are in keeping with Koppel as membership in a select group of young filmmakers coming to the fore in the 70s also in keeping with the 60s counterculture and the whole era of social protests and revolution cinema itself became increasingly politicized on a scale not seen since World War one it was a high point in the radicalization of youth worldwide not just in the US but throughout the world this could be seen in the rise of numerous new wave movements in documentary and fiction film it could also be seen in the rise of third cinema in the third world and formerly colonized nations where in political documentaries and socially realistic fiction became vital cinematic forms of propaganda used by filmmakers to incite marxist revolution as a means of overthrowing despotic oppressive governments but by the mid 1970s many of these revolutions launched in the 60s had failed as in latin latin america or they'd revealed the repressive side as in vietnam cambodia and china as for hollywood the golden era of the big studios was over by the late 1960s every major studio was in financial crisis and they found themselves competing with television the rise of the independent producers and Hollywood agents who were now putting together big movie deals as well as other leisure time activities and distractions that were drawing audiences away from movie theaters as well the ideological conflicts erupting in the surrounding political scene manifested themselves in a kind of filmmaking which could only be called bipolar and it's rocketing back and forth between the utopian sensibilities of the hippies and the gurus the peace and love generation and the dystopian sensibilities of the radical protesters the impact of the counterculture an increasing exposure to the European film scene also led to more risque film fare with more overt sexuality and violence both the european film scene and the independent arthouse cinema scene helped to introduce new and different aesthetics into Hollywood Sinha for example the New York style of filmmaking like the New Wave in France Britain Czechoslovakia and Poland was associated with a harsh and ethnically inflected realism new film technologies including fancy lenses like the zoom or slow-motion cinematography compact cranes and sync sound recorders enable directors to capture street action and live dialogue much more easily and more quickly without costly multiple setups or post-production dubbing as well there was a whole new wave of filmmakers who began to take the place of the older retiring directors these were the movie breaths I mentioned earlier in their 20s and early 30s many of them film educated like George Lucas who had attended USC and Francis Ford Coppola who had earned both the theatre arts degree from Hofstra and a graduate degree from UCLA film school there were also film buffs like Peter Bogdanovich and some directors who had worked in television like Bob Rafelson and some with no formal film education but who would making been making films on their own all their lives like Steven Spielberg so this new generation of brash young filmmakers were not anti Hollywood has been as had been their New Wave predecessors on the contrary these new American filmmakers had grown up in American cinema they were cinephiles aficionados whatever you want to call them they knew everything there was to know about Hollywood and revered the directors who came before them but unlike their predecessors many of them learned about the history of film and techniques of its construction outside the studio production system as I mentioned in universities or working as critics which gave them a more objective analytical approach they combined a love of film with a desire to understand it and so brought to it a scholarly perspective at the same time they were not interested in being independents but rather being part of Hollywood may King Hollywood pictures but always taking it to the next level putting their own mark on it and in many cases making social political cultural statements more relevant to their own times according to film historian Todd Berliner many of this generation of American filmmakers can be divided into two categories genre breakers and genre fenders genre breaker loudly broadcast the genres violation of tradition for example revisionism and invites the audience to join in the film's efforts to expose and mock genre convention on the other hand a genre bender relies on the viewers habitual responses to generic oaths misleading them a little to expect a conventional outcome at first the film seems true to form then like a booby trap it catches the viewer off-guard one area in which 60s and 70s filmmakers could most effectively make their statements was by making genre films which they chose precisely because of their classical structures and their myths about America but critiquing the genres either breaking or bending them they could also provide a devastating social critique interrogating American ideology American values and traditions and can cinematic inventions something very much in keeping with the surrounding a tea establishment and anti-authority context the jawbreakers and benders effectively be mythologized the classic genres and so precipitated the demise of preceding concepts of American heroism what was also so appealing about genre breaking films for audience at that time was that they were still to some extent in jokes about Hollywood for viewers to get the difference between classical and revisionist versions that presupposes a certain film literacy or familiarity and like satire or parody shower bending or breaking takes an added degree of cinematic style ization which departs from the classical approach another appeal of the jar breaking or bending jaw film the new cinema of the 70s was its therapeutic potential for example Sam Peckinpah is his Western the Wild Bunch released in 1969 we said to explore the general public outrage about Vietnam by exposing the stark naked truth about the loss of ideals and the lack of justification for atrocities perpetrated in the name of democracy and freedom so the nihilistic gruesome slow-motion violence and death in this film in the words of one from scholar collapses the frustration of detached intransitive spectatorship of the American TV viewers at home at home who were watching nightly media orchestrated reports about what was supposedly going on in Vietnam and Cambodia as well the constant retaliation of the men in the film the Cowboys against the Mexicans an eye for an eye he picks a deeply ingrained American response to injustice which was repressed in the Vietnam conflict there's also a suggestion that in the final moments of apocalyptic mayhem the Wild Bunch recuperates the Western myth by associating the on-screen gangs heroic decision to go for it and attack the Mexicans despite the fact that there are numbered with American anti-fascist efforts during World War two in the context of Vietnam the unpopular war fought by unpopular veterans this harkens back been nostalgic Lee to the times when Americans were cheered when they marched through the streets of liberated cities in Europe so in as much as the film seems to be based upon the anti-authoritarian anti-war anti-establishment zeitgeist of the 60s it can be argued that it actually co-opts the ideals of the older generation to make its dark image of America a little more palatable and to incorporate the anti-heroes the same can be said for Jaws the film which catapulted Steven Spielberg from a young television director to a blockbuster filmmaker though the narrative seems to be a cautionary tale about greed and materialism in contemporary America a small seaside town choosing to protect its tourist trade even as its are devoured by a row great white shark one can also read it as operating on a deeper level as an attempt to incorporate American military failure in Vietnam by dramatizing the honorable motivation of those who fight the good fight and win in this context the shark is not only a big bad monster killing vulnerable humans but an avocation of anxieties which culminate in the final scene of police chief Brody the newbie with no knowledge of sharks or experience and hunting them like Quint and Hooper his comrades he's able to shoot the pressurized tanks gripped in the Sharks massive teeth causing it to explode into a million pieces all over the ocean once again this could be read as a symbol of victory or triumph over troubling conflicts at home and abroad in Southeast Asia so if we can say that the Wild Bunch bends or breaks the Hollywood Western and that jaws bends or breaks the creature feature then certainly the Godfather bends or breaks the crime film this is evidence in the film techniques used by Coppola which are highly innovative and stand out for their time paying tribute to classic gangster films like Public Enemy Little Caesars Scarface and the Brotherhood but at the same time taking it up a notch Coppola consciously Minds the aesthetic of the classic classic gangster film with its expressionistic meselson and explosive montage to provide a current updated approach to the representation and exposure of the dark urban underbelly of america and the shadowy figures who appropriate and debauch its most sacred values and ideals and those of its champion mythmaker Hollywood