Thomas Penglase - Final Project

The 1970s were a time of dramatic shifts in the art of American filmmaking. My project set out to show through five visuals what I found through research to be the most important changes that took place in this dynamic period. The use and popularity of a new generation of directors, technological innovations, the Hollywood Blockbuster, the revival of the genre character and the influence of television and the baby boomer generation are the topics I chose to represent the film period of the 1970s.

My first visual depicts six directors of the 1970s, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Bob Rafelson, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg, who all mark the shift from Classic Hollywood to New Hollywood. The 1960s were a time of relatively broad failure among the main enterprises of the American film industry. Although there were several factors for this, the main cause was the lack of cultural response to an older generation of filmmaker’s movies. After several years of box office failure the studio managers had discovered a solution. In the late 60s, on the brink of a crippling recession the studios new corporate managers had discovered the youth market in the success of films like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, and Easy Rider, and they attempted to exploit it by recruiting a rising generation of writers, producers, and directors from the ranks of such film schools as USC, UCLA, and NYU (pg 6 Cook).

These youthful filmmakers were given complete creative freedom and used it to develop an American Auteur Cinema in the European Model. (pg 6 Cook). Now instead of the conceptually dated movies of the classical Hollywood generation, the new directors, producers, and writers were coming out with films that were culturally relevant to the times, predominantly with the underlying themes of violence and rawness that related to the Vietnam War and a new generations shift of cultural values.The 1970s were also a period of great technological innovation for filmmaking. My second visual represents an illustration of the use of the SteadiCam device and the PanaFlex 35mm camera and crane. Before the development of these devices and other similar technologies directors and cinematographers were limited in conducting shots that involved the stabilization of rapid movements and the act of filming in small spaces. With the invention of the new stabilization systems and camera cranes filmmakers could now conduct scenes in new and innovative ways. For example with the steadicam device, the actor could run down the street with the steadicam either ahead of him or behind him and attract minimal attention- because the operator was not looking through. A camera view finder as he followed the action. (pg 377 Cook). This filming with minimal attention drawn to the camera created a scene of much greater realism.

The use of the new crane systems also had an innovative effect. Now a director could do excitingly smooth transitional shots from ground to air and back which gave movie viewers an experience never previously felt in older movies.

The third visual I created was my own version of a high concept movie poster for the film Jaws. An entire 1970s film phenomenon was generated from the original poster when the film industry decided to put a great amount of its financial resources into the marketing of a film as a special attraction. If movie going had become less a matter of habit than discretionary choice, then each film needed to be sold as a blockbuster- a major event that would have the status of a unique experience-and sold on a global scale? (pg 26 Cook).

Now film companies were gambling all of their money on the hopeful success of one grand spectacle film per year. If the film did well it could carry the entire industry for a year and could carry the individual company that produced and distributed it or the exhibitor who played it, for several years. (Pg 25 Cook). The high concept movie idea is still one that is widely used today by the industry and many films spend more money on the marketing process than they do on the actual cost to create the film itself.

The fourth visual I created was a collage of genre film characters that were used in various 1970s films. The genre character was not a unique 1970s innovation but were important to the film industry because with so much riding on each film, block buster production sought to ensure profitability by relying on what had worked with audiences in the past. (Pg 27 Cook) Genre films were also important because they reflected the 1970?s reality. For example the film noir and other crime genres after a long stem of mainstream irrelevance once again became prominent under the realities of conditions forced upon honest people by a mendacious, self deluding society, and the sense of alienation, corruption, and pessimism that this implies returned to the American detective film with a vengeance during the era of Watergate and Vietnam. (pg 188 Cook).

The film Chinatown demonstrates this best. Chinatown’s main character is not the typical film noir detective. We find him to be very vulnerable often mixing up clues and even getting his nose split by a knife. This movie was contemporary for the period because is also reflects the corruption of Vietnam, Water Gate, and The overall corrupt power structure of America in its plot symbolically weaving its characters into a slowly turning vice that proves to show that the current system was tragic and hopeless.


The fifth and final visual I created is a drawing of a drive thru theatre and a family watching TV. This visual is meant to represent the great effect that television and the baby boomer generation had on the film industry in the 1970s. In the 1970s the growing popularity of the television greatly influenced how and where films were being watched. Now that the viewer could watch old Holly wood classics from the comfort of the home the cinema industry created a cylindrical method of movie output. This method was to build generic movie houses or multiplexes and sell the consumer overly priced snacks, a few previews, and then the block buster of the week. However, this process changed into the brief advent of the outdoor drive thru cinema which was easily accessible to the fast growing population of the baby boomer created suburbs. The drive thru cinema only lasted for a brief time because of the poor sound quality, movie selection, and the fact that the property owners could sell the land for a much more substantial profit.

In conclusion I hope that my five visuals succeed in illustrating what I found through research to be the greatest changes and innovations in 1970s filmmaking. New Hollywood film makers, technological innovations, the blockbuster phenomenon, post classical genre films, and the television all made the 1970s a decade of American filmmaking vastly exciting and never to be forgotten.

Bibliography:

Lost Illusions, History of the American cinema,University of California press
Berkely and Los Angeles,California, David A. Cook, 2000.