Openings
There is much that has been said and written about the movies of the 1970s. Indeed, the period is a whole area of study in its own right. It is not for me to even attempt to join such a rarefied atmosphere of theoretical discourse – mainly because I have never ‘studied’ film and, for the life of me, could never write something like:
The answer to that question is simply a matter of dawning fascination.
If style could forget the 1970s I figured, having lived my formative years through that decade, I could do likewise. And I tried so very hard to accomplish this feat of willful repression.
So indelible was the trauma the 1970s inflicted, I was always half-conscious of trying to snowboard up Mt. Everest.
Fortunately, my stilt-walking abilities were never put to the test by having to walk in those tower block shoes, but I did have to endure the draftiness of those ridiculously wide Oxford Bags.
And who can forget the rubbish piled in the streets because the dustbin men were on strike? Or the frequent lack of electricity due to the power workers being on strike? Or the sitting in school with our outside coats on as there was no fuel for the heating due to the drivers being on strike? Everyone was on strike in the 1970s! Or that’s how it seemed at the time.
And, then, Elvis died!
No decade could ever be so bleak as the dark, cold, style-less 1970s.
But, ‘The Godfather’ (1972) has always been one of my favourite films. Films like ‘Jaws’ (1975), ‘The French Connection’ (1971), ‘The French Connection II’ (1975), ‘Chinatown’ (1974) - and the list could go on - are films that, once seen, were never forgotten and, in fact, re-watched over and over again. Until, finally, it dawned on me that, despite (or because of) the sheer unadulterated depression-inducing character of the decade, the 1970s was probably the single greatest decade in movie history.
Having always been a fan of film noir and Humphrey Bogart – not to mention falling in love with Ingrid Bergman at the age of about nine when I first saw ‘Casablanca’ (1942) – I’d always been partial to the 1940s as a choice for best movie decade. As much as I can re-watch and still love those old black-and-white movie classics, I have had to concede the honorific to the 1970s, despite my still deeply ingrained hatred of the decade as a figment of my imagination.
I suppose it is only natural to want to find something positive about that which plagues us, if only to convince ourselves that maybe it isn’t so awful after all. The only thing I can find of any worth from that decade I wish time would forget is the movies – and what movies they are!
Love ‘em or loath ‘em, 1970 saw the birth of the disaster movie with the success of ‘Airport’ and, in ‘Hercules in New York’, the first film appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Not counting his uncredited appearance in the Bob Hope/Eva Marie Saint crime comedy ‘Cancel My Reservation’ (1972), the late great John Wayne made ten films in the 1970s – his last film being ‘The Shootist’ (1976). 1970 saw the release of two very John Wayne movies, ‘Chisum’ in July and ‘Rio Lobo’ in December. The John Wayne of these movies could never have played Harry Callahan in 1971’s ‘Dirty Harry’, a role he turned down. Obviously, he later regretted this decision, which would explain ‘74’s ‘McQ’ and ‘75’s ‘Brannigan’.
Robert Mitchum had quite a good movie decade, starting with 1970’s Oscar-winning ‘Ryan’s Daughter’. ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ (1973) is another one of those movies that once seen I never forgot. In fact, the first time I saw it, I hated it! Never forgot it though, so when I revisited it recently, I realised how completely I’d failed to see its genius – and Mitchum is superb!
After refusing the Oscar for Best Actor, George C. Scott went on to have a very busy decade. Besides the Oscar snubbing ‘Patton’ (1970), he got to play a psychotic who just might be Sherlock Holmes in ‘They Might Be Giants’ (1971) and Stacy Keach’s mentor in the Joseph Wambaugh adaptation ‘The New Centurions’ (1972). If he’d started the decade riding high on victory, he ended it wading in the slime of California’s pornography industry in 1979’s ‘Hardcore’ – a very ‘70s decade in film.
And, of course, the 1970s was the decade the box-office was ripped from the hands of The Duke and passed on to Dirty Harry. A new sheriff was in town, looking for someone to make his day.
All-in-al, whatever the 70s themselves were, it was the decade of great movies. Probably the greatest of movie decades. Definitely a decade worth watching, for they really don’t make movies like that anymore.
Given the ostensibly dramatic changes to the cinema's technological base, a significant body of recent film theory has called for the reinstitution of classical theories of filmic ontology, but often at the expense of excluding 1970s film theory and its paranoiac search for the discursive legibility behind the image.
(Croombs, Matthew (2011, June) Pasts and Futures of 1970s Film Theory. Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies. Retrieved from: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2011/june-2011/croombs.pdf)
So, why watch movies from the 1970s?The answer to that question is simply a matter of dawning fascination.
If style could forget the 1970s I figured, having lived my formative years through that decade, I could do likewise. And I tried so very hard to accomplish this feat of willful repression.
So indelible was the trauma the 1970s inflicted, I was always half-conscious of trying to snowboard up Mt. Everest.
Fortunately, my stilt-walking abilities were never put to the test by having to walk in those tower block shoes, but I did have to endure the draftiness of those ridiculously wide Oxford Bags.
And who can forget the rubbish piled in the streets because the dustbin men were on strike? Or the frequent lack of electricity due to the power workers being on strike? Or the sitting in school with our outside coats on as there was no fuel for the heating due to the drivers being on strike? Everyone was on strike in the 1970s! Or that’s how it seemed at the time.
And, then, Elvis died!
No decade could ever be so bleak as the dark, cold, style-less 1970s.
But, ‘The Godfather’ (1972) has always been one of my favourite films. Films like ‘Jaws’ (1975), ‘The French Connection’ (1971), ‘The French Connection II’ (1975), ‘Chinatown’ (1974) - and the list could go on - are films that, once seen, were never forgotten and, in fact, re-watched over and over again. Until, finally, it dawned on me that, despite (or because of) the sheer unadulterated depression-inducing character of the decade, the 1970s was probably the single greatest decade in movie history.
Having always been a fan of film noir and Humphrey Bogart – not to mention falling in love with Ingrid Bergman at the age of about nine when I first saw ‘Casablanca’ (1942) – I’d always been partial to the 1940s as a choice for best movie decade. As much as I can re-watch and still love those old black-and-white movie classics, I have had to concede the honorific to the 1970s, despite my still deeply ingrained hatred of the decade as a figment of my imagination.
I suppose it is only natural to want to find something positive about that which plagues us, if only to convince ourselves that maybe it isn’t so awful after all. The only thing I can find of any worth from that decade I wish time would forget is the movies – and what movies they are!
Love ‘em or loath ‘em, 1970 saw the birth of the disaster movie with the success of ‘Airport’ and, in ‘Hercules in New York’, the first film appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Not counting his uncredited appearance in the Bob Hope/Eva Marie Saint crime comedy ‘Cancel My Reservation’ (1972), the late great John Wayne made ten films in the 1970s – his last film being ‘The Shootist’ (1976). 1970 saw the release of two very John Wayne movies, ‘Chisum’ in July and ‘Rio Lobo’ in December. The John Wayne of these movies could never have played Harry Callahan in 1971’s ‘Dirty Harry’, a role he turned down. Obviously, he later regretted this decision, which would explain ‘74’s ‘McQ’ and ‘75’s ‘Brannigan’.
Robert Mitchum had quite a good movie decade, starting with 1970’s Oscar-winning ‘Ryan’s Daughter’. ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ (1973) is another one of those movies that once seen I never forgot. In fact, the first time I saw it, I hated it! Never forgot it though, so when I revisited it recently, I realised how completely I’d failed to see its genius – and Mitchum is superb!
After refusing the Oscar for Best Actor, George C. Scott went on to have a very busy decade. Besides the Oscar snubbing ‘Patton’ (1970), he got to play a psychotic who just might be Sherlock Holmes in ‘They Might Be Giants’ (1971) and Stacy Keach’s mentor in the Joseph Wambaugh adaptation ‘The New Centurions’ (1972). If he’d started the decade riding high on victory, he ended it wading in the slime of California’s pornography industry in 1979’s ‘Hardcore’ – a very ‘70s decade in film.
And, of course, the 1970s was the decade the box-office was ripped from the hands of The Duke and passed on to Dirty Harry. A new sheriff was in town, looking for someone to make his day.
All-in-al, whatever the 70s themselves were, it was the decade of great movies. Probably the greatest of movie decades. Definitely a decade worth watching, for they really don’t make movies like that anymore.
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