The 1970s are often referred to as a Golden Period (capital G, capital P) of director led American cinema. In fact, for many fans of American cinema, this opinion is so widely accepted that to open any writing on the subject with the words “The 1970s are often referred to as the a Golden Period of director led American cinema” has itself become a sort of cliché.
As promised (or threatened) in my last blog entry This is my favourite decade. What’s Yours? I mentioned that I would soon be writing about cinema from Hollywood in the 1970s. Over the last few years I have tried to add many of the best movies from this era to the library’s DVD collection, in fact, so many have been added that I’ve come to the conclusion that a discussion of particular titles deserves its own later entry. So yes, this means the 70s kick I am on will have yet another chapter in the coming weeks.
There’s nothing particularly new in what I’m writing about but I thought I’d lay the ground work for anyone interested in learning more about 70s cinema ( even the alliteration found in “70s cinema” sounds great to my ears…it’s fun just to say) by zeroing in on one great documentary called A Decade Under The Influence – the 70’s Films That Changed Everything. It’s 3 hours long and is broken up into 3 segments and is as good an introduction as you’ll ever need. It has interviews from many newly annointed leaders in the industry from Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorcese, Paul Schraeder etc. Actors interviewed includes, Julie Christie, Roy Schneider, Bruce Dern and Sissy Spacek.
Similar ground is covered by Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders Raging Bulls: How the Sex -Drugs-And Rock’n Roll Generation Saved Hollywood – the title pretty says says it all – it’s a little on the salacious side. 
As the age of the iron fisted studio moguls of the preceding decades passed away, a void was created which the new generation of film makers stepped into. Starting in the late 1960s with the release in 1967 of the excellent Bonny and Clyde (which upped the ante for on screen violence exponentially), as well as The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy (which by today’s standards would probably only be rated 14A but at the time was thought to be so subversive, only an X Rating would do..to this day it remains the only X Rated film to win the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director).
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice brought the burgeoning free love scene to the big screen and to mainstream audiences. While it’s pretty easy to smirk at how clearly dated it comes across today ( “I just want to do what I feel!!”), I can easily imagine that its titilating tag line – “Consider the Possibilities” – as the four main characters look somewhat uncomfortable all lying in bed together – must have really got tongues wagging back in 1969.
Then there are the films by one of my favourite directors – John Cassevettes (who may be better known to some of the public as Mia Farrow’s husband Guy “Go along to get along….with the Devil” Woodhouse in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby – trivia for this entry – The Dakota Building in New York City where John Lennon lived and was killed in front of, also doubled for the exterior shots of building where Rosemary and all those creepy but o h so mild mannered devil worshippers lived) whose film Faces is so raw at times I felt occasionally embarrassed to be watching something so intimate.
But the film that really changed the thinking in Hollywood was Easy Rider. It proved that there was an appetite for small, low budget films without big stars but which reflected the reality of times (restlessness, drug use, living outside the mainstream of society etc) leading the studios to turn the movie making process over the from the money men to the directors.
Then came the 70s.
And movies finally caught up with the times. Less often filmed in studios, more often on location, they portrayed the modern convoluted and complex world – in other words – less of a sunny Beach Blanket Bingo approach – more grit, grime and despair with decidedly unhappy endings began to dominate. – there is a reason people so often consider the 70s depressing. The stories were more likely to include characters who were imperfect and struggled to do the right thing ( or conversely were perfectly content to do the wrong thing…) and generally the actors and actresses themselves did not resemble the films stars the preceding years. Gone were the chiseled features and pin up good looks – it can be startling to see what actors looked like before spending 5 hours a day in the gym with personal trainers became a prerequisite for success –their chops came from acting ability not from their bulging biceps and actresses could put on a pound or two without it being front page news in the tabloids. 
Just getting started were the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Peter Boyle, Donald Sutherland, Eliot Gould, Jon Voight, Woody Allan, Robert Deniro, Harvey Keitel, George Segal, Richard Dreyfuss and the amazing John Cazale (pictured here – who was only in 5 major films before he sadly died of cancer in 1978 at the age of 43, but what major films they were: He was Fredo in the first two Godfather films, Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation and The Deer Hunter – plus Meryl Streep was his girlfriend. A good documentary of his life was made recently called I knew It Was You) and although good roles were still limited for women (still seems to be a problem) some great actresses broke out in the 70s…Sissy Spacek, Ellen Burnstein, Gena Rowlands, Louise Fletcher, Karen Black, Shelley Duvall, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton,Faye Dunaway…most of these actors and actresses could be your pseudo-average looking neighbours….okay…maybe with the exception of Faye Dunaway… 
Although I think Jaws is an excellent film (for a rare less assuming Spielberg film check out his earlier low budget effort Duel – before a shark was his main antagonist – he went with a very menacing 18 wheeler as the villain) it also ushered in the era of big Hollywood blockbusters. As Peter Bogdanovich says in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls “Jaws was devastating to making artistic smaller films. They forgot how to do it. They’re no longer interested.”
And as much as the Star Wars series meant to me then (and still does now..at least the first 2.5 of the films..from the first moment those ewoks showed up, it was pretty much game over) it started the move towards bigger, bolder, glossier, films that were the mainstay of the big hits of the 80s and 90s and beyond. The era of the feel good summer blockbuster began, budgets soared, and focus groups often lead executives to dicate changes, with more attention paid to CGI than story.
In the third and probably last segment in my 70s retrospect, I’ll cover a few well known films from back then as well as some lesser known titles that are part of library’s DVD collection.