A Journey Through My Collection: The 1970's
Yes, the 1970’s are the turning point decade of American cinema, the studio system was drying up with the success of television, the Hays Code ended in the 1960’s and a new batch of young directors and producers seized the opportunity to take some artistic risks. This is an important decade for film, and there were a number of very good, very important films, but as a whole this was not my favorite decade. I think the cynicism after the end of the ‘60’s led to a lot of overly serious movies and the free reign after the Hays code did away with subtlety, for better or worse. With these viewings, I was reminded that what I do like about 1970’s film are when timeless comedies broke out, and that this happens to be a decade when a lot of my favorite directors filmographies overlapped, like Spielberg, Lumet, Scorsese, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Varda and Gilliam.
Catch-22 (1970)
When I was in college and a little after, I probably watched this a dozen times or so, then didn't watch it for over a decade until now. And yet, this is one of those great movies where almost every scene and every beat, almost all of the dialogue, is right there in the front of my brain to lip sync along to. And yet, I had forgotten how amazing the performance Alan Arkin gives is, or the fact that there are about 15 actors that are really well known and another 5 character actors that I don't know from anything else that are really great. I don't know Richard Benjamin from anything else (although I've probably seen a couple of the movies that he directed), so I looked him up and learned he's married to Paula Prentiss who plays a nurse. This film jumps from scene to scene on editing jokes of dialogue and images and at one point it cuts from a sexy scene with her to a reaction shot from him in another location. These jumps are discombobulating much like the book and film of Slaughterhouse-Five, a film I hadn't seen until recent years, and I feel like those two movies are much more related than this and MASH. Apparently, at the time, this was overshadowed by the film of MASH as two counterculture war films, although MASH is more of a Boomer sense of humor and this is more of a product of the 1950's comedy. Oddly, that '50's sense of humor that Arkin and Bob Newhart and Charles Grodin were part of, is a more timeless form of comedy and the incredible lengths of all three of their careers are proof positive of this. I feel like MASH was a war movie in the spirit of the '60's, free spirits in the face of cold war and Vietnam War societal traumas, but Catch-22 sees the end of the '60's, entirely cynical of everything, right down to the very words in spoken language. And it's all shot incredibly well by another 1950's comedian, Mike Nichols.
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
I needed a movie from my collection from 1971 and this is what I was stuck with. One of the least exciting Bond movies, this is pretty lazy when it comes to international locations. While I really do appreciate that this opens in a very 1970's Paris, setting most of this movie in Las Vegas is fairly boring. Paris of the '79's and '80's as depicted in film is very colorful, classy, highlighting the riverboads and flowers, it's a setting in film that I am nostalgic for. I took a trip with my family to Paris in 1988 that felt exactly like this,. moreso than movies from the '60' and before that are their own kind of interesting, but a different look and the '90's and after that are nice but lose the 80's kitschy charm. Vegas in the '70's is perhaps that city's ugliest time period, and this film languished in that blah for most of the runtime.
The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
I think this was the last movie I had left from the America Lost and Found Criterion box set and it is a decent group of movies, although not exactly my style This was pretty interesting, Jack Nicholson is great, I was totally drawn in by the switch from his opening monologue to show that it was part of his radio show. Apparently I can never recognize a young Bruce Dern and he totally looks like a regular guy that snuck into the movie. I love the use of Atlantic City here, it really does feel like we get a unique American setting.
Visions of Eight (1973)
I was hard to resist loading up the rewatch of my collection with a few installments from the Criterion Olympic box set as the Paris Games get under way, and this is one of the most famous documentaries of the bunch This is a collection of eight filmmakers from around the world documenting different aspects of the games, most of the time in more artistic than historical interpretations. There were nine directors at these games, an African director filmed the men's basketball competition but his segment was cut out of the film. These are shot well to show movement, the bodies and the events of the games, but this almost completely ignores two of the most notable things to ever happen at a games. Mark Spitz rewrote the record books, winning seven gold medals, breaking world records with each gold, and this was also the games where the Israeli team was held hostage and murdered in a terrorist attack that invaded the Olympic village. Both were barely mentioned. This film did inspire me to dive quite a bit deeper into the filmographies of two of the directors, Milos Forman and Kon Ichikawa, both of whom have several really wonderful movies.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
This is such an odd movie. It's definitely a horror movie, viscerally dirty and bloody and soiled. Some of the acting is rough, yet it manages to amp up an unsettling realism. Yet, it's almost a comedy for how ritualistic and incapable the murdering family is, the old man can barely hold a hammer and yet they keep trying and trying to get him to make the kill, something that feels impossible, yet still ominous. I think this and Night of the Living Dead are the ultimate pioneers of DIY horror in their time, but there is the unfortunate reality that Tobe Hooper never quite connected on a film like this after many, many chances.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
This movie pulls of an incredible magic trick of not only being one of the most timelessly funny movies of all time, but also being really really well made. This is one of my favorite depictions of the Arthurian legend because it treats the many side stories of the story as sketches that can be dropped into and abandoned at will. It's the disregard for traditional cinematic storytelling and mixing comedic elements that make this a covertly serious movie. Oddly, I feel like the closest movie to this that happens to have come out just a couple of years before was Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain, a movie that is not blatantly humorous, but has a very similar style of oddness that it must have been an influence in some way. And somehow the Pythons had the restraint to not get as scatological as Jodorowsy.
Network (1976)
"I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" This quote is so often co-opted by politicians, in fiction, film critics, and by journalists, and it almost always is taken as a rally cry for striking back at outside forces that we have all been putting up with for too long. Yes, in that moment, that's how the character feels, but he is hardly a sympathetic character. Unhinged, selfish, and ambitious, he becomes a puppet master of his audience and the ultimate stooge of the network that is profiting off of him. This feels like the first of the great cinematography films I've watched of the '70's, and the scenes with an exposed light bulb in the middle of the shot in the meeting with the revolutionaries, and the scene with the line of green lights along the long table are two great examples of the beauty that Sidney Lumet brings to this, and I finally feel like I've come into the great artistry of '70's cinema.
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)
There are only a few Agnes Varda movies I had left in the Criterion box set to watch or re-watch and this is a great one to represent her filmography. For a film that is very much based on realism, and very much a feminist statement film, this so wonderfully goes in so many different directions to tell the stories of these two women. There are story points that are very bold that are just dropped in, like mentioning that one woman met her husband on a trip to get an abortion, or that she asked her ex for one more child so they can each have one, or that she tours as a feminist singer/songwriter/theatrical performer where they play in town squares. And it's so easy to watch because of Varda's great direction.
The Last Waltz (1978)
I love The Band and Martin Scorsese and embarrassingly didn't realize this existed until the last few years. This is very good, a great concert film and the lineup of performers ranges from odd participants to incredible collaborations and absolute rock legends. It's so odd that this was wedged into Scorsese's filmography in the height of the '70's cinematic revolution and in the broader sense of his career this is a very good installment.
The Life of Brian (1979)
This isn’t as riotously funny as I had recalled, that crown belongs to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but the storytelling is surprisingly superb for a comedy. This isn’t a thinly veiled satire, oh it’s pretty heavy handed, and to satirize the story of Jesus is dangerous ground to tread on, not just because religious jokes can be a sore subject, but it is a story that is widely known to much of the filmgoing world. Holy Grail was successful as a wacky comedy because it was basically a sketch movie, and by far the most successfully executed sketch movie ever. The Life of Brian is much more of a linear story with satire, silly jokes and a shock of an ending. By the time they got to The Meaning of Life, there was a bit of a split on whether they should do a sketch movie again or have more of a thruline, and a bit of laziness or burnout sent them down the sketch movie route, a result that some of the Pythons regret. Regardless, these installments from the ‘70’s were the pinnacle of their comedic and artistic powers and definitely my best bets for getting through a stretch of ‘70’s movies with a few laughs.
Final Thoughts
There are great, serious movies from the 1970’s and I enjoy many of them, but as a whole they are a bit much. Luckily, this was a pretty good time for silly comedy movies that took quite a few chances after the end of the Hays Code. This isn’t my favorite decade for movies, but the sheer volume of movies and the many great directors hitting their stride at this time meant that there is still a fine menu of cinema to choose from.
Up Next!
The Shining, Time Bandits, The King of Comedy, To Be or Not To Be, This is Spinal Tap, Tampopo, Mala Noche, The Last Emperor, The Last Temptation of Christ.
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