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Intro. to 1970's Independent Film

Doug Anderson | Miami Beach, Florida United States | 08/21/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a kind of Independent Film of the Seventies 101. It's a good solid introductory course that explains just what forces conspired to make the early seventies the moment for the film artist or auteur. If you are already familiar with early seventies cinema and have seen Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands plenty of times then what you need is a graduate seminar on one particular area of cinema (Marty Scorcese's MY VOYAGE TO ITALY for instance is an excellent overview of Italian cinema and Italian cinema's influence on the American independents).



Both EASY RIDERS & RAGING BULLS and that other documentary on seventies cinema A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE came out at about the same time and both really cover the same ground. Film students and film buffs will already be familiar with the story of what happened to the studio system in the late sixties and just why film students like Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and Scorcese were allowed to make the kinds of gritty realist films that they wanted to make. Both of these documentaries are good solid introductions to early seventies independent cinema but neither will be enough to satisfy the film connoisseur.



The reason these overview documentaries are unsatisfying is because they deal only in generalities and they do not have time to explore what drove each independent artist to make the films they made and so the documentaries just feel like yearbooks of the directors and stars waxing about their youth which was a time when the artist reigned supreme. It was no doubt a heady time when experiment was encouraged (by a few prescient and opportunistic producers who knew Hollywood needed new formulas for bringing young people to the theatres and who also knew that these young filmmakers just might hold the key to those new formulas). This was a generation brought up on foreign films and they were taught to believe that film could be art. A lot of them made some art but also a lot of them made a lot of money as well. The heyday of independence lasted only about seven or eight years (roughly 1967-1975) and it ended once the studios realized that the big money was in marketing the cr*p out of a new kind of blockbuster (Jaws, Star Wars, Alien)that appealed to the widest demographic possible. The other reason the era of the independents waned was because some of the independent film makers began spending vast amounts of cash on outrageous projects (Apocaplypse Now, Heaven's Gate)that didn't translate into box office sales. So there were those who blamed Spielberg and Lucas for their successes in crafting a new kind of formula picture that still dominates the industry today; and there were those who blamed the end of the era on Coppola's and Cimono's excesses. But this is a story that many are already very familiar with.



The kind of documentary I would like to see is one that explores the lesser celebrated genres (horror, sci fi, exploitation, avant-garde cinema) and the lesser celeberated directors like Donald Cammell and Joseph Losey and Nic Roeg (as well as some of the stranger foreign influences on American & English directors of the seventies). This documentary is fine for those who are not yet tired of Coppola and Altman and Scorcese and the other oft celebrated bright lights of seventies cinema who will all no doubt get lifetime achievement awards. But a really good documentary tries to break new ground not just reiterate what is already common knowledge. One way to do this might have been to interview young directors and ask them about their influences and maybe even interview a group of young directors along with some of the older directors and get some interesting conversations going about where cinema has been and where its going.



As it is this documentary like A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE is just a popular history. The names of the directors represented here and the list of films will surprise no one. A worthy introduction for beginners but not a very daring or groundbreaking take on a fascinating fistful of years in film history.



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