By the 1960s, Hollywood was a changed place.
The formula of bigger films, bigger stars, and bigger budgets wasn’t working anymore. In 1963, Cleopatra (starring Elizabeth Taylor) was one of the biggest hits of the year, but at a whopping 248 minutes long it still managed to almost bankrupt the studio that made it. The censorship regime of the Hays Code was falling apart, and the old Hollywood families were getting out of the business. The writing was on the wall: the movies needed to change.
And change they did. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Golden Age came to an end and gave way to something usually called "New Hollywood." Young directors made movies for young people — Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate — who felt disconnected with society and the American Dream. Filmmakers arrived in the industry not through apprenticeships, but through study — and brought with them an eye for international cinema.
The era of New Hollywood changed film music, too. Gone were the opulent, huge orchestras of the 1940s and 1950s — what audiences wanted was a more contemporary, more modest sound. The influence of jazz and pop found its way into the cinema, as did international traditions and a more avant-garde orchestral sound.
Until, of course, 1977, when the orchestra — and the dormant blockbuster model — rose again with an unusual science fiction film about a farm boy, some droids, and a Death Star.
