You fell in love not just with actors but with cinema itself.' Film was no less than a secular religion.' In the words of Susan Sontag, 'It was at this specific moment in the 100-year history of cinema that going to movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies became a passion among university students and other young people. 'This was a time when film culture permeated American life in a way that it never had before and never has since. And where did it all end? Perhaps New Hollywood's swan song was Coppola's majestic and romantic vision of a Los Angeles inhabited by expressionist neons, melancholic melodies and a couple's regret, One From the Heart (1982). Producers regained control, and the key authorial role of the director was lost in the mainstream, as New Hollywood's key figures were, little by little, stepped aside from the system and its economic resources. However, the great successes of blockbusters (as Jaws (1975) or Star Wars (1977)) as well as the financial failures and critical misinterpretation of more artistic and serious films (as Sorcerer (1977) and Heaven's Gate (1980)) caused new changes in studios, that decided to invest more and more in escapism and merchandising products. New Hollywood films reflected the political themes of that time (as in All the President's Men (1976)) and placed the spectator in a social and emotional level of uncertainty and doubt.

It continued with the counterculture hit Easy Rider (1969) and through the '70s with the beautifully nostalgic The Last Picture Show (1971), the paranoid drama The Conversation (1974), the psychological disturbing neo-noir Taxi Driver (1976) among many other films that are still regarded as some of the finest of the American cinema.

It is believed that this period began in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde, whose violence and liberal portrayal of sex made it a commercial and critical success. Famous for a generation of filmmakers that had an unusual amount of creative liberty at the time (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader.) its films, widely influenced by the European arthouse cinema, were audacious for their character-driven instead of plot-driven stories, technical and stylistic innovations, ambiguous endings and non-linear narratives.

New Hollywood (aka American New Wave) was a period in American film history that went from the mid-'60s to early '80s.

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