Lately, I have been obsessed with watching movies from the 1970's. I think it really started after I watched the IFC documentary 'A Decade Under The Influence", which took a look at how cinema changed in the 70's as movies shifted away from the old guard actors, actresses and directors, and also the old guard types of movies - no more musicals - and moved towards a greater sense of realism and grittiness (if you haven't seen the documentary, it is definitely recommended). Movies in the Seventies started to push the boundaries of what had been allowed previously and also challenged the perception of what a movie had to be in order to be a success - movie studios realized that people would still pay to great stories and great performances even if the subject matter was unsettling (or even X-rated, like with Midnight Cowboy). Of course, the studios perception of what people would pay to see was changed AGAIN before the end of the decade when Jaws and Star Wars ushered in the era of the blockbuster, but that's another story.
One of the things that really hit home for me while watching that documentary was how many great movies from the Seventies I had never seen. And I'm talking the BIG ones - Apocalypse Now, All The President's Men. I decided that this was totally unacceptible, so, through the magic of Netflix online, I have been trying to correct that gap in my movie watching history. In watching movies like All the President's Men, Superfly, ...And Justice For All, and Dirty Harry (which I have seen many times, but just caught again on AMC the other day), I was struck by just how polished movies today look compared to older movies. Now, I'm not stupid - I realize that a lot of that is due to the improvement in technology over the last 30 years and also the deterioration of the prints of the older movies. However, thats not all of it. Too many modern directors like to tinker with the "look" of their films - changing the filters, the colors, etc. While there are times that this will add something to the film, most often all it does it create a sense of artificiality. It makes it harder to get lost in a film I think when you are constantly reminded that what you are watching isn't real (and I'm not talking about special effects-laden movies, like sci-fi flicks. Those types of movies already require a suspension of disbelief to get into, and I am fine with that). New technology doesn't always improve things. Anyone else agree or am I just making something out of nothing?
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