Last year I wrote a few blog entries about the 1970s and now 12 months later it’s time I fulfilled the promise (threat?) to write about a really strong candidate for runner up in the favourite decade sweepstakes – the 1930s.

Much like the 70s, the 30s often get a bad rap..to be fair this negative designation comes with some justification.  After all, a whole heap of horrible events came to pass during this time, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler in Germany and the outbreak of WWII, the famine in the Ukraine, the Japanese invasion of China, The Great Purge in Russia and the Spanish Civil War to name but a few of the lowest points.

Before I get into all the fantastic movies out there cooling their heels on the library’s shelves (my next blog topic), there are a whole slew of compelling reasons for thinking the 30s are best thing since the invention of sliced bread (Fun fact: Wonderbread first made sliced bread available across the land in 1930).

Here we see a photo from the Strand Palace Hotel in London, first unveiled in 1930. Consider this a not so subtle entreaty for you to enter the world of the 1930s as you would walk through the lobby of this amazing example of art deco architecture.  Other examples of architecture in the style of art deco are two of New York’s most famous attractions, the Empire State Building (1931) and my favourite The Chrysler Building (1931). Learn more about art deco here.

The Pulps

I could not in good conscience discuss the 30s without getting into the pulps (see also old time radio programs, comics) which is largely what it comes down to for me.  Check this out: What do Buck Rogers, The Green Hornet, Doc Savage, Superman, Batman, Dick Tracy, the Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon…throw in the Looney Tunes plus The Shadow (my personal favourite…in the 30s The Shadow had the incomparable Orson Welles doing his voice…more on Welles later) have in common? Well..naturally they all got their start in the 1930s via radio dramas, comics, film and  magazines. That is quite a legacy as many of these characters have been featured in films (of varying degrees of quality) within the last 20 years. These are characters that endure.  Throw H.P. Lovecraft into the mix and the 30s pulp reading list is nearing completion.  One last mention of The Shadow  radio show – it was sponsored for a long time by the Blue Coal company with The Shadow himself as the pitchman. Nothing quite breaks the spell of an episode called something scary – The House That Death Built for example- like hearing the following mid-episode announcement: Not only does The Shadow know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, he also knows that Blue Coal is the best coal to heat your  home this winter! The Shadow knows!                                                                                                                                                 

Here we see Lovecraft’s own sketch of Cthulu. I like how he looks a bit depressed -just hanging out on the corner waiting for the bus or something.

Without a doubt one of the most unbelievable events in American popular culture came to us via what we now call Old Time Radio drama…Orson Welles’ mock transmission of an alien attack -based on H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (New Jersey being the natural landing point for the tentacled trespassers) that had thousands all too seriously panicked and heading for the hills to escape imminent annihilation by invaders from Mars and their murderous “heat ray”. Naturally, this being the US, many people tried to sue Welles afterwards..I assume for inadvertently making them feel dumb.  I really think Benjamin Franklin’s quote of “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” should have been given some serious consideration at the time but it does go to show that much faith listeners put in the broadcasters of the day.

The radio was central to home entertainment for both radio programs as well as music.   – Below we see a hot date in progress – 1930s style. 

A big development in Canadian radio during the 30s was the first GM Hockey Broadcast across the airwaves in 1931. Saturday nights were never the same again.

Radio programs were obviously not the only things coming out of speakers during this time: a whole lot of vinyl was being played for the listeners as well…some of my favourites are The Carter Family, Robert Johnson, Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong, Leadbelly, Bob Wills as well as a lot of big band musicians Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw (he of the 8 wives) among others.

I like lists so here’s a list of the top 5 grossing artists of the decade.

1) According to family members he’d never make number one father but he does come in as top ranking recording artist of the decade – Bing Crosby (or Der Bingle as I like to call him)

2) Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians (London,Ontario’s own!)                                   

3) Duke Ellington

4) Louis Armstrong

5) Tommy Dorsey

And just because she looks amazing in her fruit hat..here is number 13 Carmen Miranda.  The biggest song of the decade was Judy Garland’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

I can’t think of any easy way to transition between Somewhere Over the Rainbow and my next topic so I won’t even try.

As the late great TV show Carnivale says of the 30s – it was “the last great age of magic”…it could also be said that it was the last great age of bankrobbers, gangsters and outlaws… by 1931 Al Capone was already in prison and losing control of mental faculties but the era of the Public Enemy was just getting started.

Generally, not part of any mafia or crime syndicate, these bandits  generally hit banks and payrolls often looming larger than life in the imagination of the lower and middle classes who certainly were no fan of financial institutions at this time.  And on the flip side, paranoid file keeper extraordinaire and long time head of the FBI – J. Edgar Hoover and his G-Men were no fan of the outlaws.

Among the bigger names in the bank robbing business were –   the famous Barrow Gang made up of the infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow who were immortalized in Arthur Penn’s classic 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.                                                    

The list is extensive as the Wikipedia entry on Depression Era Outlaws will attest – over 90 altogether although some operated in the 1920s. John Dillinger (and the Dillinger gang) was probably the biggest of them all.  The charismatic Dillinger has been portrayed in films several times, most recently by Johnny Depp in Public Enemies.  Like many of these outlaws he was shot dead – the other alternative seems to be a long stretch in Alcatraz which is where a lot of these men ended up.  As an indication of his fame, the cinema that Dillinger was leaving as he was shot – The Biograph in Chicago – has since been placed on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Pretty Boy Floyd has been memorialized in song by Woody Guthrie and which portrays him sympathetically – more of a Robin Hood type character than a  criminal – the line from his song Pretty Boy Floyd “Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen” shows the divided loyalties that some Americans felt towards him (and other outlaws of the day) and the banks who lost money.  After assuming the mantle of Public Enemy # 1 when Dillinger was killed, Floyd too was gunned down by the FBI in 1934.

I could go on and on, but one last gang – The Barker-Karpis group has Canadian content so they get singled out.  Like many of these criminals, stealing, murder and kidnapping were fairly common – and Montreal born Alvin Karpis (nicknamed “Old Creepy”) was working with Ma Barker and her boys until serving a whopping 26 years in Alcatraz.  Weirdly, while in a different prison in 1962, Karpis meets another inmate – Charles Manson.  In his autobiography, Karpis describes Manson as “lazy and shiftless”

 And with that, this extremely selective look back at the 1930s is complete. Movies from back then will likely be up next.  As much as I enjoy looking back at the past, the people of the 1930s were excited to imagine what the future would look like – in the 1939 World’s Fair in New York the theme was The World of Tomorrow. And with what prescience “Tomorrow” was depicted! They were spot on with Electro the Smoking Moto Man- naturally if so many humans smoked back then, it only stands to reason that once robots developed artificial intelligence, surely the first thing they would do is take up smoking.

It’s time to finish up my three part look at the 1970s.  In part two I included some background info regarding the rise of 70s Hollywood and here in part three, I’m moving right along to particular movies from the decade.

Silent Running (1972) –Rare is the Bruce Dern film where Bruce Dern’s character is considered the most sympathetic one, but  Silent Running is such a film, although this may have more to do with the fact that for most of the film his only companions are two droids named Hewey and Dewey.  Set on a spaceship he is the sole caretaker for all the remaining plantlife in existance. After years in space, he is directed to return to earth along with his 3 shipmates but first he is ordered to destroy everything in the greenhouse. The Joan Biaz song Rejoice in the Sun that plays a few times throughout seems jarringly out of place for a sci fi film. Although the film is over 40 years old, Dern’s wild rant re: the organic versus synthetic food served onboard could easily apply to today’s epicurean battleground.

Across 110^th Street: Two lines from Bobbie Womack’s stellar theme song pretty much sum up this gritty crime drama

“You don’t know what you’ll do until you’re put under pressure,
Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester.”

Filmed on location in Harlem, it was one of the first films to give an non NYC audience a glimpse into the physical degradation facing the poor neighbourhoods in 1972. A group of local hoods pull off a stick up and in the process end up killing everyone – everyone in this case is in no particular order – some Harlem money men, corrupt police and high profile mafioso. Enter Anthony Quinn, a racist old school cop on the take,  with all the charm of Archie Bunker who has to team up with his new African American partner to bring justice to the streets (which quicly start flowing with blood…naturally.                                                                                                                                                               

Westworld: Forget King Mongkut of Siam, this is Yul Brenner as you’ve never seen him before – a terrifying, nearly indestructable robot cowboy that stops at nothing to complete his objective – that being to track down and kill the hapless Richard Benjamin who had been trying his best to enjoy himself in the futuristic vacation-land called Westworld. The tagline is “Boy, have we got a vacation for you and where nothing can possibly go wrong”..after which the viewer is counting the minutes until something goes terribly terribly wrong. Written and directed by Michael Crichton  (1973) whose bad guy Brenner is very much the forerunner of Swartzenegger’s Terminator released 11 years later.

The films of Sam Peckinpah – the Man, the Legend gets his own extended segment. Known during his great run from the late 60s to the mid 70s, this notorious director worked with some of the most famous leading men of the times – Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Oates, James Coburn, Jason Robards, James Caan and Kris Krisofferson to name a few – there is no comparable list of actresses, women tend to get short shrift in his films.  Rare is the mention of Peckinpah without the words violent and bloody following suite. I will simply say if you haven’t yet seen The Wild Bunch (although technically from 1969)..don’t get too attached the characters…any of them. Here’s a quote of the man responding to critics of his films as being too violent –  “Well, killing a man isn’t clean and quick and simple. It’s bloody and awful. And maybe if enough people come to realize that shooting somebody isn’t just fun and games, maybe we’ll get somewhere.”

Infamously self destructive towards the end of his life, his films remain controversial (1971’s Straw Dogs is still a bit of a hot potato) and although more modern films have raised the bar considerably for on screen violence, as long as Peckinpah was making films, the squibs industry would never hurt for business.

Check out: Cross of Iron, the original and superior version of Killer Elite, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and I just put in a order for the The Getaway (based on the book of the same name by one of my all time favourite authors Jim Thompson.

Night Moves (1975)– a great neo film noir, part of Gene Hackman’s amazing run of 70s films ( both French Connection films, The Conversation, Superman, Young Frankenstein, Poseidon Adventure, Scarecrow, Prime Cut) also was the film debut of James Woods and Melanie Griffin.

Fat City (1972) – One of John Huston’s last films – you just know any film which starts off with a Kris Kristofferson song playing is not likely to be a happy one, particularly when the song in question is called Help Me Make It Through The Night as the main actor (an underwear clad, supremely hung over past-his-prime-ex-boxer Stacy Keach) tries throughout the entire credits to stumble out of bed, and into the street..only to light a crumpled cigarette and go back inside. Also stars a very youthful Jeff Bridges and a wonderfully wasted Susan Tyrell who earned an Oscar nomination for her efforts.                

Mikey and Nicky (1976) – Who doesn’t like Peter Falk? One of the rare female directed movies of the era (Elaine May – previously part of Nichols and May, she unfortunately went on to direct the much maligned Ishtar), also starring John Cassevettes in this amazing atypical gangster film

Cisco Pike (1972) – Kris Krisofferson looks remarkably modern (sartorially speaking) in his film debut.  Harry Dean Stanton has his fingerprints on so many top drawer films and this one is no exception. It has great music and has a whole host of odd ball cameos – Antonio Vargas, Joy Bang, Viva etc. Oh..and yet again Gene Hackman comes up with another fine piece of work as the corrupt narc who pushed Cisco back into the world of dope peddling.

 Hard Times (1975) –  Stars Charles Bronson who at the time was the 4^th highest box office earner in all of Hollywood (behind Robert Redford, Al Pacino and Barbara Streisand) although he didn’t acquire action hero status until after he turned 50 – with a string of quality films such as Death Wish, Mr. Majestyk, and The Mechanic. Here he stars with that other iconic tough guy James Coburn, plus Bronson’s real life wife Jill Ireland. Nerdy trivia time –Ireland starred in an episode of the original Star Trek as Leila Kalomi – aka the only woman Mr. Spock has ever loved. Who doesn’t want to see a New Orleans based Depression era film about the bare knuckle boxing circuit? As the poster states: “It was tough on the streets. But Bronson was tougher.” No doubt.           

Straight Time (1978)  This is an underrated Dustin Hoffmann film which tells the classic story of a criminal who gets out of jail only to find himself struggling to retain his freedom. Based on a story by real life criminal and author Eddie Bunker (aka the youngest prisoner ever to enter San Quentin prison aka Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs) and has a plethora of great supporting actors – once again Harry Dean Stanton is involved as is a young Gary Busey and Kathy Bates as well as the great character actor M. Emmet Walsh.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller ( 1971) A western directed by one of my favourites- Robert Altman (M.A.S.H. , Nashville, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us) starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie with Leonard Cohen providing the soundtrack and British Columbia providing the backdrop.  This is one of many superior westerns made in the 70s…some others being Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford), Little Big Man (Dustin Hoffman), Valdez is Coming (Burt Lancaster) Missourri Breaks ( Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson) Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (with Bob Dylan in a supporting role) and Clint Eastwood’s efforts (High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales)

I just saw this one last night so while it’s still fresh in my mind I figured I’d include it here. The California Kid (1974) was a TV Movie about..well..this opening description from the beginning of the film says it better than I can.

“In 1958 Clarksberg was a well known speed trap. During that year, seven persons were killed trying to outrun the law.  And then one day a stranger drove into town…”

That stranger was none other than –  you guessed it – The California Kid who is a rebel with a cause,  played by Martin Sheen.  Also starring is Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas fame, fresh faced Nick Nolte ( you may think Nick Nolte and fresh faced do not go together but watch this movie and you’ll see otherwise) and Vic Morrow (who died tragically in the well publicized helicopter accident during the filming of the Twilight Zone movie)  as the downright rotten sherrif who enjoys running speedsters off the road and to their deaths. While it can be a touch simplistic  like the  tv movie it is, it’s fun to see how the 70s does the 50s ( Happy Days style) it’s fairly well done and the score is pretty fantastic apart from during the shlocky bits (i.e. the parts that don’t feature cars)

Before I get too carried away, no discussion of American cinema in the 70s would be complete without the paranoid/conspiracy thrillers that abounded throughout the decade. During the era it seemed to be a common belief that shadowy figures controlled our destinies, pulling the strings, government and authority figures were not to be trusted and bad things were planned in the privileged backrooms and unlit corners of society.

A few examples of this kind of film are – Executive Action,  All the President’s Men, Chinatown, The Conversation, Capricorn 1, Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, The Boys From Brazil, Parallax View, Odessa File etc etc.

And lastly, the man who provided the excellent soundtrack to so many of the 70s (and 60s) films was  Lalo Schifrin (there is even a documentary about him in our collection – Movie Music Man) without whom the movies would not sound as awesomely cool as they do – a quick tip – he wrote the theme song to Mission Impossible.

And that brings to an end my look back at the 1970s which I started two blog entries ago way back when the days were longer and extra layers were not needed. Hopefully I’ve given you  some ideas how to delve  into the decade I started this whole journey off with by ranking it as my all time favourite era.  Next up I may very well get into what is probably the number two decade I’m most interested in – 1930s. Stay tuned. ..

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.