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Film History I
8 December 2008
A Decade Under the Influence
In the Independent Film Channel’s production, A Decade Under the Influence, the question of what happened between then and now is explored. The major impact of the production, though, is an examination of the cycle of movies from the 1960’s, through an exploration of post-Production Code possibilities, and back into a closet of money centered dreck.
The 1970’s saw a widening of the American cinema to include subject matters, situations, and scenes that had theretofore been taboo. The generation was influenced directly by the drug culture that had emerged in the decade before. This meant that the drugs had become much more common as aspects of daily life, and thus the impact was felt in the youth culture being depicted in the movies of the day. Likewise the sexual revolution of the mid-century was finally being caught on film. Frank portrayals of homosexuality, promiscuity, and other nontraditional relationships became more open to discussion. In The Graduate (1967), Mike Nichols used the relationship of a young man with an older woman (and eventually her daughter) to explore the vacuum of life that accompanies graduation from college. Nichols also touched on another major point of the generation, detachment, drifting, and existential hollowness. As one of the first films in the wave, Nichols used the character of Benjamin to exemplify the lack of direction of the generation.
It is important to remember that the timing of the emergence of this new American cinema was strategic. The Vietnam War was raging and people had grown tired of waiting. The world was becoming more international, and the influence of the French New Wave, Italian Neorealist movement, and the groundbreaking work of Kurosawa in Japan were all felt strongly in the emergence of American film. The French had also taken American B-films of a generation earlier and reinvented them. The American directors of the 70’s used these as a recycled form of inspiration to create something less synthetic and more real. The gap of believability was becoming narrower as the directors began to show on screen what was going on in the lives of real people. Domestic dissonance became a real problem on the screen, and movies like Woman Under the Influence explored that in depth. In a more comedic way, Woody Allen looked into the new face or relationships and sexuality in Annie Hall.
The filmmakers of this time period were going out on limbs and making movies unlike those that had been produced in America before. What’s more, they created films that have stood the test of time and shown what groundbreaking talent their writers and directors held. Along with the creative, ballsy movies that were being made came the inevitable capitalist god: the bottom line. Many of these well-made movies became box office successes, and the summer blockbuster tradition that now sustains us began in the 1970’s with the likes of Jaws and The Godfather. Unfortunately for these movies (though arguably one much more than the other), the advent of the summer blockbuster brought with it the harbinger of death, namely the sequel. Once movies were noticed to be commercially advantageous, the formula that made them such was identified and duplicated. It’s hard to imagine the indignities forced upon the shark community as a result of the business Jaws brought in. Jaws: the Revenge (1987), the fourth installment of shark movie mayhem based on the 1975 original, was obviously less a piece of well-crafted film and more a giant commercial for itself.
Because of the propensity of the entertainment market to make formulaic product in hopes of a quick return on investment, the artistry of the era became increasingly a commercial venture as opposed to an artistic journey. Of course everyone needs to have a paycheck to live, but the deification of money in this system seems counterproductive in the progress of artistic exploration. Moviemaking is not, after all, a punch-the-clock job, even if the studios would beg to differ. Watching talented filmmakers make commercials for movies is like making love to a prostitute: it may be slick, but it won’t be genuine. There are some exceptions to this, and they mainly fall into the areas of film in which fans are most adamant—fantasy. Science fiction fans often debate the merits of one installment of a cinematic series versus another. If one can decipher what they are talking about, it might be ascertained that they think that X-Star Wars was better than Y- or Z-. Similarly, devoted fans heavily debate the Lord of the Rings movies and all their ilk.
In an age of consumerism to the maximum, it is hard to imagine that movies are not solely determined by their earning power. However, the independent film movement and the progress of moviemakers in making films in the first place is evidence that art is not, indeed, dead. The 1970’s proved to be a trying time for the United States at home and abroad. The cinema it produced was especially effective at exploring the dark reaches of a society coming to terms with itself. Perhaps ticket sales did not hurt the effort.
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