Put like that, you can understand why today’s directors look to the 1970s with yearning: it was the age of the auteur, when bold young bucks broke into a paralysed studio system to put their stamp on a changing culture. In fact, the “New Hollywood” really began earlier, with an Academy Awards battle between 1967 Best Picture nominees whom the Los Angeles Times dubbed “the dragons” and “the dragonflies”. As Mark Harris recalls in his book Scenes from a Revolution, the “dragons” were Stanley Kramer, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Rex Harrison, while the “dragonflies” included Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty and directors Mike Nichols and Norman Jewison. In the end, Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture, and Mike Nichols took Best Director for The Graduate: the dragonflies had triumphed, and the coming decade belonged to them.