Film Flam
Last night I stayed in and watched The French Connection on AMC (which, to my horror, is now interrupting the movies with commercials! Argh!). It's been many years since I saw it and was simply blown away by the quality of the filmmaking, the complexity of the performances, the nuance to what is really a very straightforward plot, and the refusal to provide any kind of simple resolution. It's almost inconceivable that Hollywood today would release a film this raw and complicated, even if there were someone around willing to make one. And yet, such was the quality of American cinema in the 1970s that one would be hard-pressed to include The French Connection on even a top-20 list of best films of that decade.
Today we're so conditioned to view the 70s as some kind of cauldron of kitch that it's difficult to conceive of the idea that the decade represented a golden age of American cinema. But the evidence is right up there on the screen. In addition to The French Connection (I and II), there were the Godfather I and II, Chinatown, A Clockwork Orange, M*A*S*H, Being There, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, Five Easy Pieces, Taxi Driver, One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest, Nashville, Manhattan, The Sting, Midnight Cowboy, Mean Streets, Network, The Conversation and literally dozens of other films of an artistic achievement and ambition that are almost inconceivable today. Every one of them holds up to repeated viewings, even 25 years down the road. John Houston's great epic The Man Who Would be King, brilliant comedies like Animal House and Young Frankenstein, minor classics like The Last Detail or Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, and solid entertainers like Star Wars, The Exorcist and the early work of Steven Spielberg (Jaws and Close Encounters), which all outshine almost anything produced since, hardly even rate during this heyday of cinematic creativity. And remember, most of these films weren't independents, like they would have to be today: they were major studio films featuring the era's biggest stars, and given big, well-publicized releases around the country.
Strange and sad how much Hollywood's vision has narrowed even as its budgets have bloated beyond measure. The 70s may have a lot to answer for culturally, but film isn't on the list.
12:39:18 PM 
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