It seems that whenever there's a movie made, being set in the 70's, people tend to adore them. Some of my favorite films set during the 70's include Boogie Nights, The Ice Storm, the Zodiac movie, Dead Presidents, Anchorman, Remember the Titans, even the second season of Fargo. What are some of your favorite films set during the 70's?
shareBecause it enough time has passed to make the 70's seem like a completely different era. It's nothing new. Films and T.V. had their nostalgia for every decade. Right now, you're getting into that era where younger audiences would be fascinated with a story set in the 70's or 80's simply because of the differences in how people lived. I remember being a kid and wondering why my parents were nostalgic for the 50's and 60's. You're going to see more of that in the coming decade. Stuff set in the 80's with big hair, cocaine, and cassette tapes. Then there's going to be a 90's nostalgia with flannel, grunge, and Pokemon. Then a bunch of retrospectives on the early 2000's and how culture shifted. And so on, and so on.
shareI remain baffled why people today seem to prefer modern films that try to recreate the 70s, rather than discover the films that were actually MADE in the 70s which depicted contemporary life from that era.
Why settle for an imitation when you can revisit an authentic original?
Just to spotlight one example: So many people praise "Dazed and Confused", but are either unaware of or uninterested in the 1976 film that it clearly ripped off - "The Pom Pom Girls". Yet the low-budget "Pom Pom Girls" depicts more authentic 70s cars, fashions and attitudes than a backwards looking view through a 1990s lens. How could it not? It was actually made then. So go figure.
Films about contemporary life made in the 70s are always far more authentic than a post-1990 film that desperately try to recreate the 70s with costumes, hairstyles and sets that filmmakers take from old magazines and media clips that distort people's perceptions and memories of the era.
And do you know what else? The authentic films from the 70s are far more entertaining too than today's films that trade on 70s nostalgia.
So says I.
Yes, films made in any past era are, by definition, more authentic than films made today but set in that era.
The reasons people might prefer a modern film are legion - more familiar actors, better technical quality (in some cases), and more nostalgia. By the latter, I mean this: A modern film set in the past must recreate that past through use of period details; some do so more accurately than other. On the other hand, a film made in 1976 and set contemporaneously doesn't have to recreate anything. Often, that means the older film actually lacks the period detail that some viewers crave.
An example of what I mean is Plein Soleil, made in 1960 and set at that same time, vs. The Talented Mr Ripley, made in 1999 and set in the 1950s. While I liked both films, I was actually disappointed that PS didn't feel more like 1960, whereas TTMR had a wonderfully evocative ambiance. Of course, the reason is that Rene Clement had no need to remind 1960 audiences of what 1960 was like. Anthony Minghella, on the other hand, took some pains to recreate the feel of the expat American world of ca. 1955. The result, for a fan of the past, was actually more effective than the film set contemporaneously.
I agree that sometimes efforts at period recreation fall short. I disagree that they always fall short. Sometimes, the filmmakers are able to achieve a kind of distillation of [year in question] that, while it is more intensely flavored with period detail than life in [year in question] actually was, nevertheless is very effective at giving the 2016 audience a feeling of what [YIQ] was really like.
With films like Dazed and Confused you get two things you don't have in 70s films:
1. Perspective - The filmmaker has the ability to see the 70s as a "thing". The 70s are over. Its events and products are set in stone, no more change can be done.
2. Romanticizing - Films made in the 70s don't emphasize their 70s-ness. Linklater looks back at them with a great love, and people are likely to admire that.
Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime.
It also has to do with the filmmakers point of reference when they were younger as well.... After the rebellious nature of the 60's which lead the the excess and freedom of the 70's presents a certain allure for the filmmakers to reference.
Also the allusions of the fall of Detroit and the whole Social Justice Activism who's obsessed with the evils of capitalism ring true today. When they find the missing girl and she goes on her rant, you can find YouTube videos of kids acting just the same...
Remember the in the late 80's to the early 90's there were a ton of movies being set in the 1940's or having the 40's vibe(Dick Tracy, Batman, that awful Madonna movie to name a few) the prohibitions of the 30's leading to the organized crimes organization gave filmmakers a field to get inspired from...
People can't believe how naff it was. Living in the sticks in Britain during that dismal decade, I'm glad to seethe back of it. There may have been cool films been made but we saw little of them - instead we got ugly witless soft porn like Confessions films.
shareNo clue. I have found that there is something basically wrong with movies made in that decade,
but I don't know exactly what it is.
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.
It's an interesting era. The decade saw the release of such films as Alien, Frnech Connection, Sorcerer, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry, The Warriors, Serpico, Midnight Express, Carrie, how not to love it. In fact, if I could back in time, I'd back in 70s, or 80s.
shareThink. Movies set in present time might seem overdone. Most everyone loves neo noir.
"If Mad Max Fury Road is an 8 (I gave it a 1). Then I'll use 8 for OK, 9 is better, 10 is best."
Watch Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. Apparently it is a romantic comedy, but really it's about nostalgia and how everyone has a favourite time, a period of civilisation that was the epitome, the apex of the balance between art and society. For example, for many on this thread, it was the 70's. But if you go back to the 70's you'll encounter people who think the 50's had everything right. Go back to the 50's and you'll encounter people who thought that the 20's were the last great time, before it all went to hell and so on.
Interestingly, this movie starts off with this very sentiment, I can't remember the exact dialogue, but it was along the lines of "kids these days, they know too much" essentially saying that by the 70's society wasn't what it used to be.
For the same reason 50s-every early 60s nostalgia was big in the 70s (ShaNaNa or whatever they were called had their own TV show ffs, never mind American Graffiti, Happy Days). Every generation is obsessed at some point by the era they grew up in, from teenagers to young adults. The was huge 70s nostalgia in the 90s, 80s nostalgia in the 00s, and my daughter's generation (25) is even getting nostalgic about the early 90s now (as I am as well since I was born in 1970, though I'm more of a mid to late 80s nostalgic guy).
Every. 20. Years.