For decades, Hollywood has been known as a “dream factory.” Yet dreams are not always bright or comforting—they can also be unsettling, fragmented, and filled with doubt. This course examines how American films of the 1960s and 1970s captured both the hopes and the fears of a nation undergoing dramatic change.

During these turbulent decades, Hollywood struggled to reconcile idealism with excess, communal aspirations with growing distrust, and optimism with disillusionment. As American society shifted under the pressures of civil rights struggles, generational conflict, political scandal, and war, the film industry itself was transformed. The unity and confidence of the postwar era gave way to uncertainty, influenced by the countercultural movements of the 1960s and the darker turning points that followed.

We will trace this evolution from the fading traditions of “Old” Hollywood to the bold experimentation of New Hollywood. Along the way, we will explore how films from the period reexamined familiar myths and confronted changing attitudes toward gender roles, marriage and family life, ethnicity, and the promise—and limits—of the American “melting pot.”

Through discussion and close viewing, the course will reveal how cinema not only reflected the profound social and political upheavals of the era but also helped audiences make sense of a world in flux.