ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some of the key theoretical approaches to 'New Hollywood' or 'post-classical' cinema, which a number of theorists and historians argue emerged in the mid-1970s. It concerns the relationship between this cinema(s) and classical Hollywood cinema. The chapter reviews theoretical approaches to the apparent return of classical scoring in these films, particularly in terms of the relationship between these more recent scores and those of the studio era. It focuses on the similarities between these practices; others emphasize difference and suggest that such practices exemplify the existence of 'post-classical' scoring, rather than a return to classical scoring of the studio era. The decline in audience figures through the 1950s and 1960s did not affect the studios as much as it affected exhibitors. The structural conventions of classical scoring were emphatically reunited with the idiom and the medium of the classical Hollywood scores produced during the 1930s and 1940s.
