Why 1970's American Cinema Was The Balls

   Truly, American movies in the '70s were something to behold.

   You had classic after classic after classic coming out on a regular basis.

  

   The classics of the '70s are different from most other decades in American Cinema for many reasons:

• Artistic Thickness
• Strong Directorship
• Blockbuster Status
• Diversity of Subject Matter

   But how did this happen? Why did this happen? 

   To get a full understanding of how exactly this cinematic golden age came to be, we have to look at the decades prior to it. 

The Motion Picture Production Code

   Without getting too into detail of this old cinema I'm about to go over (as that is a whole other topic for a whole other post), in a nutshell, movies in the 1920's had some of the craziest, raunchiest stuff to ever be captured on film. That might seem like a shocker, seeing as how when most people think of "grandparent" cinema, they think of wholesome, classy little pictures. Some of the stuff that comes to mind is probably Elvis movies, Casablanca, Gone With The Wind...

   ... Maybe some "suggestive" but still tasteful Marilyn Monroe stuff...

   ... And of course, clean funnies by Abbott and Costello or Charlie Chaplin.

   However, I'm fairly certain that a great big portion of the 1920's and back evades your recollection. I'm as close to positive as one can possibly be in saying that when most think of Pre-1930's movies, they probably don't think of open homosexuality...

   ... Full-on nudity...

   Or incredibly violent and disturbing practical effects.

   Yeah.

   In short, films were shaping up to be very bold, daring, and freely expressive, with the 1920's acting as sort of a movie golden age, not just for America, but for the world.. Of course, the MPAA (Then known as the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America) would not stand for this. They created a set of rules known as the Motion Picture Production Codes, which spelled out what was and was-not okay to show to American audiences. For better or worse, these rules SEVERELY limited many a filmmaker for several decades. 

   On the upside, truly great directors were able to adapt in one of two ways: 1) By finding loopholes or 2) By being masterfully subtle.

1) There was a rule that said a man and a woman could NOT lock lips on screen for more than three seconds. To get around this, in Notorious, Alfred Hitchcock had Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant break away just before the mark, then go back for some more lip smacks. What results is a very intimate, real, classy, memorable make-out session without any sloppiness usually associated with the practice.

2) In Lolita, a movie about a romantic relationship between a middle aged man and young teenage girl, Stanley Kubrick couldn't very well show explicit physical affection between James Mason and Sue Lyon (who was actually 14 at the time). However, he still needed something to show a deep level of intimacy of intimacy between the two. Rather than have them kiss and hold each other for much of the movie, Kubrick opted out for a slow, loving pedicure, which in my opinion, is more effective than explicit physicality, although Kubrick later said that had he known censorship would direct much of his movie, he would've never made it.

   On the downside, lots of movies became very sterile and many directors felt very repressed. There was so much sappy wholesomeness that lots of guys just wanted so badly to do something different and touch on new subject matter. People in film were ready to say something new.

   Then, in the '60s, some beautiful stuff started happening. Rock and Roll from the previous decade had turned the culture around 90 degrees, and the New Age thinking of the 1960's were working on finishing the 180 turn. The cinema world started to rebel, releasing whatever they wanted without getting officially approved, and lots of directors were very stubborn towards the MPAA, forcing them to compromise more and more.

   This rebellious movement is perhaps best embodied by the proliferation of trash cinema, otherwise known as the exploitation genre. These movies were fast, loud, shameless, and absolutely wonderful. They were raunchy, violent, and highly subjective of women, but they were - at the same time - so organic, so fun, so cool, and so fresh that unless you're a cynic,or have a stick up your bum, or you're just not used to movies that are purposely made to not be taken seriously, there's no reason to dislike the genre.

   Russ Meyer probably made some of the best and definitive movies of the style.

 Another great one worth checking out is Barbarella by Roger Vadim. A polar opposite to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a truly great testament to the fun and goofiness of pre-'70s sci-fi, but done with some serious skill as evidenced by one of my favorite movie sequences of all time, around the 2:50 mark.

 

   Some movies, were considerably more tasteful, but with the same spirit as the aforementioned. and just as provocative, yet remaining unoffensive on personal moral grounds. Perhaps that's why they've been more prominent in film history...

   Another personal, obscure favorite of mine is 1963's The Sadist by James Landis, which pioneered - perhaps more than any other movie - many iconic staples of the modern horror genre.

   As time went on, more and more directors started doing what they wanted, the MPAA just lost power and couldn't enforce the rules like before, so they abandoned them altogether by 1969, instituting the famous rating system instead, giving new freedom to the movie world that hadn't been seen in about 40 years.

The Golden '70s

   Almost as soon as the '70s hit, at the very second the calender changed from 1969 to 1970, American film had graduated to an echelon that may never be seen again in film. Of course, exploitative movies were allowed to COMPLETELY let out their lustful, playful, danger-loving spirits through grindhouse movies and such, which was absolutely great. Aside from that though, big budget movies, Hollywood movies were taking amazing artistic strides. This was due largely in part to the New Hollywood group of directors, such as Steven Spielberg...

   ... Coppolla...

   ... Scorcese...

   ... The master himself, Kubrick...

   ... And many others. While these guys had all made movies in prior decades, the '70s (for most of them) is considered the time that their films reached a real maturity that wasn't seen before. While it's arguable whether or not their artistic vision was greater than that of those before them (Kubrick vs. Hitchcock is still a hot topic among film fans to this day), it is undeniable that they were allowed to have much more artistic integrity than directors in any other period before or after.

   These guys were GOOD. I'm talking... GOOD. Nearly everything they touched was gold, especially during this period. (Although Kubrick is an exception, as he's never been a huge figure with mainstream audiences, but anyone who cares about film even a little bit recognizes him as a master.) Every single one of them, to this day, could make anything they wanted even after the seventies. However, I believe that had the environment not been primed for them to shine, they wouldn't have been able to prove themselves in the way they did. You couldn't get a new Coppolla, or a new Brian de Palma, or a new Kubrick today because studios are maybe more intrusive than they ever have been.

   I suppose you could still be a genius, but the studios and their monopolies won't let you get above a cult status or have TOO big a budget. (See: Paul Thomas Anderson, director of Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, or Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler and Black Swan.)

   Whatever the case, the success of these guys encouraged the whole industry to be bolder and artistic and to take risks, becuase everyone FINALLY realized, "Hey! People like to see GOOD movies! It's so obvious!" It must've been fantastic to go to the movies and be guaranteed that whatever you were going to see was going to be very entertaining at the LEAST. These guys were all so different too, with Spielberg and Lucas inventing blockbusters...

 ...Kubrick refining film as an art form single-handedly...

(The funeral scene in around 3:25 in the next clip is aesthetically one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in any film. You ought to see this whole thing with the context of the rest of the film.)

 ...Scorcese taking his cool modern European-influenced style to play with his audience...

   ...and Coppolla making the freaking Godfather movies and Apocalypse now.

   Do yourself a favor and watch at least one of these. Incredible filmmaking, all of them.

   Something very interesting to me, and crucial to this era of film, is the fact that almost nothing came out feeling pretentious or forced. All of these movies feel very real, very personal. They all have a liveliness to them, a pulse, a heartbeat. That liveliness, I think, infected the whole decade. It's not like movies were either awesome trash cinema or awesome high cinema, but even the movies in the middle were very, very good, or at least interesting. Take for example, Black Caesar:

   While it's a blaxploitation, it's certainly not a trash film, being rather light on gore and nudity. It takes itself seriously enough to have a deeper motivation than sensational fun. Yet, it's not so serious as to be a hardcore art film. Regardless, it still has a drive, a vision. It makes interesting visual choices. Its soundtrack, made by James Brown, is used perfectly throughout the movie, when necessary. You can't see much here, but it uses film conventions to express some sophisticated emotions and tell a compelling, even unforgettable story. I'd highly recommend watching the whole thing if you ever get the chance. It's a re-imagining of Julius Caesar with a statement on the black community and race in America, while still being a very good film. 

   My point is, movies were not dull then, as they weren't dull before the '30s. Even the movies that were just movies to go watch - like if Hollywood had a movie quota - still made fantastic theatre experiences, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a '70s film that isn't genuinely entertaining in some way. 

   Sadly, once the decade passed, movies went back to being dull for the most part. Every decade since has had their share of nice stuff, but not to the same caliber as the 1970's. Today's film industry is probably as far away from this stuff as possible; how many movie trailers (or even movie credits) have you seen that explicitly name and show off the person directed it in recent years? I'm guessing not many. Hollywood runs things now. And according to them, people want re-tellings of the same handful of stories with no visual or aural stimulation, and absolutely no risk-taking or embracing that film is in fact a form of artistic expression. 

   My worst fear is that maybe they're right. But hey, what do I know? Go check out Fury, or The Woman in Black 2, or Unbroken. In theatres now.

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