A review by brokenrecord
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris

4.0

4.5 stars. I was interested in checking this out after enjoying Mark Harris's Mike Nichols biography so much, and in general I love old Hollywood history. I've seen 4 of the 5 movies this book focuses on (never got around to Dr. Dolittle and I still don't have a strong urge to), but the book is really more about the context of Hollywood when these movies were in production. I don't think you'd need to have seen all or most of the movies to still get a lot of enjoyment out of this as long as you're interested in the state of Hollywood in the 60s and are generally familiar with the films' plots and stars. There were a lot of interesting areas this book covered, like Sidney Poitier's career and position in Hollywood, and how the production code changed during this period. I found it all really fascinating, and it was a really easy read, which isn't always the case with non-fiction books. I'm definitely planning on reading Five Came Back sometime soon.