70s Cinema

Did JAWS and Star Wars ruin cinema? 

In this essay episode, Luke Ferris dives into why the 1970s were a critical decade in film history because of the two trajectories of its young, creative talent. One path, like Spielberg, Lucas, and De Palma, was to create universally appealing genre films. The others, like Scorsese and Coppola, chose to create serious dramatic works focusing on the counterculture ideas of the period. Was one way the correct way? 

Or is there a deeper understanding of the morphism of this era of filmmaking? 

---

Catch new episodes of Least Important Things every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

Support Least Important Things on Patreon

You can be part of the show by leaving a voicemail here.

You can email the show at leastimportantthings@gmail.com or reach out via social media at the links below.

Read our articles and learn more about the show at www.leastimportantthings.com

---

Sources for this episode:

• Royalty-free music and sound effects via Artlist.com
• The Deer Hunter - Trailer - (1978) - HQ
• The Deer Hunter ending

Follow Least Important Things: 

• Letterboxd 
• Instagram
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Facebook

All content falls under fair use: any copying of copyrighted material is done for a limited, educational and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I once had a professor that said George Lucas and Steven Spielberg ruined cinema. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I was twenty-one, sitting in a creaky old chair in one of the historic buildings on the north side of Michigan State University's campus. I was taking a film studies class. It was fall of my senior year, and I was wrapping up my academic career. Most of my credits were already completed, and I thought it would be fun to do a film studies class. I almost studied nonfiction film, so to fill up my credit time, I thought, hey, what the heck? It feels very academic to take a film studies class while you're an undergrad. I was expecting the class to be a lively discussion about movies, maybe a couple essays. Not this. Now, if you're imagining my professor as some hotshot or an old curmudgeon film snob, you'd be wrong. He was a warm, lovely man. He was tall, soft around the edges, thinning, spiky hair, and this eloquent, soft voice that almost sounded southern, but not explicitly southern. So when he dropped this in front of class, this hot take, my mouth was a gape. How and why can you claim that the director's responsible for some of the most seminal moments in my childhood, some of the most seminal works in movies, ruined movies. They are movies. I think I actually probably went wow out loud audibly when he said that. My professor smiled and I think he kind of expected this reaction from a class of 20-something millennials. And he explained that this class central thesis was almost going to be this point. Because prior to Star Wars and Indiana Jones and E.T. and Jaws, there was an era of movies I like to call 70s cinema. Now the 1970s was a special time in movie making. They call it the New Hollywood. It was this opportunity when all of these young directors who had gone to film school decided to take the almost hippie mindset of the culture of the late 60s into the 70s, making darker, moodier films. The review boards and rules around what could be shown in a movie had changed and evolved, allowing for more darker and sinister types of works. And it was a reflection of what was happening in the country. Gone are the days of the early 60s, the 50s. If you look at 50s Hollywood, it's very bright, it's very hopeful. It's kind of that post-war imaginary idealism. Whereas the 70s were raw, gritty, and in your face. In Quentin Tarantino's book, Cinema Speculation, I've been talking about Quentin Tarantino a lot on the show, I feel like, lately. Um, it's not because I'm a fanboy, I guess maybe I am, it's mainly because I'm reading this book and I'm thinking a lot about movies. This is Quentin Tarantino's book about 70s cinema, and there's a bunch of different essays about this time, specific movies, but I wanted to share a few excerpts that I think explains what 70s cinema is all about. In this excerpt, he's talking about the movie brats, which were this group of young up-and-coming directors that seem to be all friends, all working towards the same goals, and that really were part of this new school, this new Hollywood, that changed the course of cinema. Both in movies that are Oscar-worthy, that are legendary, that are meaningful, but also another path, the path of Steven Spielberg of George Lucas. The movie Bratz, so dubbed because of Michael Pye's book-length critical study of them, were the first film school-educated generation of young white male directors raised on television, who emerged and ended up defining the decade with their snazzy pop flicks. The movement had its members, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, John Millis, Steven Spielberg, and Paul Schrader. And later in the essay, Quentin Tarantito talks about how John Millis once told him, quote, We all wanted to make Hollywood a better place because we were there. But those were Francis's dreams, Francis Ford Coppola. He was the only one who tried to do anything about it. And in a way, you could say, all those dreams failed. Hollywood isn't a better place because ET made$300 million. Spielberg's place is a better place. So when we're talking about 1970s cinema, we're talking about two distinct paths of films. The Jaws path of the blockbuster that created modern movie going that we understand and still participate in today, the blockbuster event, the event film. And then there's the other way in the 70s, which were these darker, more ambitious projects. Your godfather, your networks, your taxi drivers that showed a different side of America that had darker tones and storytelling with themes and ideals of the counterculture. Now, going back to Luke at 21, a lot of these movies I hadn't seen. I'd seen the 70s popcorn movies, but I hadn't seen a lot of these specific movies like Network, like Deliverance. But towards the end of class, one of our final assignments was to do a full essay on one of the movies that we hadn't watched in class, so we had to pick a 70s movie. And I had really enjoyed it learning about 70s movies, but my professor's claim did not change my opinion about the Spielbergs and Lucas's of the world. That is until I watched the film The Deer Hunter.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

You gotta listen to me. Don't do it. Don't do it.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Don't do it. What's the matter with you?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Don't you recognize me?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

The Deer Hunter is a 1978 Oscar-winning film directed by Michael Camino, starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Merrill Streep. It tells the story of these small town guys in Pennsylvania going over to Vietnam and then coming back. It's really a true revolutionary story of the going and the coming back of the veteran experience. Now, this film has a lot of controversy surrounding it, both in the development, shooting in Thailand, the dangers of that, and also its themes and messages. Much like I said, this is no Star Wars. This is a direct, clear statement about veterans' experiences coming back from the war. And the famous Russian roulette scene is, although arguably fantastical and not realistic, it is a symbol of the conflict facing these young men coming home. Now I think I watched this movie on my laptop in my apartment, and it's long, it's intense, but there's something about the tone of the movie, the way it's shot, the realism of it, the acting, the performances that captured me and sustained me. There's a lot of 70s movies I watched in my class and have watched since that are plotting, that are long, that take their time, slow burns. It's truly a huge part of 70s cinema. But there's something about the deer hunter that drew me in. And the three hours didn't feel like three hours. I was captivated in every moment, every scene of the characters in Pennsylvania on a deer hunt, sitting at a dive bar, drinking Rolling Rock, over in Vietnam, and then returning back to their hometown changed people. And after watching this movie, it was one of the first times where I really understood the 1970s was a rich gold mine of stories that I hadn't seen or didn't know about. And so it was pretty easy for me to start typing away and creating my final essay. Now I'd like to share a couple snippets of this essay that I think will help describe what's going on. Now my writings got a little less academic over the past decade, but I think the 21-year-old Luke who wrote this is experiencing something unique by watching this movie. The Deer Hunter is a portrayal of war and how it changes men as they return to American society. The film is not a direct political statement on Vietnam. Instead, it tells the honest story of the American veteran experience. The journey of war can deeply change men and affect the new realities of home they return to. Like the characters, the audience can respond to the final scenes of the Deer Hunter as a criticism of failed American politics, dismay of the disdained veteran experience, or a culmination of failed national ideas. No matter the interpretation, the Deer Hunter reflects the 1970s culture that faced a new and changed America without clear expectations or fulfillment of the future. In the coda of 1970s New Wave film, the Deer Hunter's messages lie in the story's dying embers. The Deer Hunter imposes an ambiguous ending left for audience interpretation. Out of the film's iconic moments, the one-shot lines, the deer hunts, and Russian roulette games, this is the most poignant. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen the movie, the remaining friends are left in the local bar after Nick's funeral. Somberly, each character joins together singing God Bless America. Like the characters, the audience can respond to the final scene, and the Deer Hunter as a criticism of failed American politics, dismay of the disdained veteran experience, or a culmination of failed national ideals. No matter the interpretation, the Deer Hunter reflects the 1970s culture that faced a new and changed America without clear expectations or fulfillment of the future. Okay, Luke, taking yourself a little too serious. But reading this, I'm actually inspired. It's been over a decade since I've opened this document. But it shows that I was wrestling through some things in my own personal life. It shows that watching a film set in the 70s, during a very real moment in American history where soldiers were coming back into society very differently than previous wars. And that a kid in December of 2014 writing an essay about that film can also be moved. Can also be changed in how he views the world. And now that I'm older, I think I'm enjoying watching movies from the 70s, from the 40s a lot more because they're a little less overproduced, less CGI, less in your face. There's, like I said, slow burns, there's details, there's small moments, and there's just a raw grittiness that I think we're missing in modern movies today. But I don't want to get into the this was the best era, that was the best era. Movies are an ever-evolving morphism. It's not a straight line of better or worse, or this was the right way and that was the wrong way. The eras and themes are always playing upon each other. I think it's pretty amazing that you can have a film like Jaws and The Deer Hunter and Star Wars all come out within a couple of years of each other in the era. It shows that even though today we might feel like everything is so corporatized and that we have to go to these big event films. I think there's a way forward. I think there's a way that we can learn from the 70s, that it's good to have both. It's good to have blockbusters where people are excited to go to the movie theater. It's really great to have pieces that are more serious dramas talking about today in modern lenses of how we view society. Because film and the generations that create them are all speaking to each other. I talked about this in my nostalgia feedback loop episode. The idea that the Spielbergs, the Lucases were going back to the films and TV shows of the 50s and 40s in the same way their counterparts were playing with novels and themes of the previous generation. And we're doing the same today. And that's why it's beautiful that as film fans, we can jump back from eras in history to understand and interpret what's happening today in our lives, in the future, and that's why these seminal works will always continue to be powerful. And that's why it's important to delve into 70s cinema, take it for a spin, see what you learn, see what inspires you. Not every film is going to be amazing, just like in 20 years, if you go back to now, not every film is going to be amazing, but there will be seminal works that stand the test of time. So I kind of know what my professor was doing all the way back in that classroom in the fall of 2014. I get it. He was trying to educate us, the next generation, that 70s movies were not just the Star Wars and the Jaws. There was a lot more going on. But I don't think Jaws and Star Wars drew in cinema. If anything, it enhanced it and allowed us to have layers of interpretation where 10 years later I can go back and watch these films and understand that the kid writing that essay is the kid still today excited about watching movies. And in a sense, I think he did his job. So thank you, Professor, wherever you are listening or watching. But I still disagree and I'd love to debate you on it. Thanks for listening and watching, friends. Least Important Things is a podcast about movies, friendship, and finding meaning in the most important of the least important things in our lives. You can connect with us on Patreon. That's patreon.com slash least important things. Click the links in the show notes for our social media, our website, all these other things that are happening. We've got a lot of fun rewatch episodes coming this summer. So stay tuned, stay subscribed, and I'll talk to you next time on least important things.