A Decade Under the Influence

In retrospect, the 1970s was a golden era for the American cinema, as demonstrated and explored by this documentary directed by Ted Demme and Richard LaGravenese. This IFC effort serves to illustrate and clarify the main idea of what that time meant for the careers of these illustrious people seen in the documentary.

The amazing body of work that remains, is a legacy to all the people involved in the art of making movies in that period. The decade was marked by the end of the Viet Nam war and the turbulent finale of those years of Jimmy Carter's presidency.

One thing comes out clear, films today don't measure against the movies that came out during that creative decade because the industry, as a whole, has changed dramatically. The big studios nowadays want to go to tame pictures that will be instant hits without any consideration to content, or integrity, as long as the bottom line shows millions of dollars in revenues.

The other thing that emerges after hearing some of America's best creative minds speak, is the importance of the independent film spirit because it is about the only thing that afford its creators great moral and artistic rewards.

This documentary is a must see for all movie fans.

This exploration of a unique decade in US cinema begins with the fall of one ailing, out-of-touch empire and culminates with the unstoppable rise of another, equally associated with escapism and box office receipts. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Or, as Peter Fonda observed in Easy Rider, "We blew it." In between, from Bonnie And Clyde to Star Wars, the young Turks (some under the guerrilla tutelage of Roger Corman) were creeping under the wires to produce some of the greatest artworks of the 20th century. While the story is already familiar from Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls directors Demme and LaGravenese are less concerned with muckraking than in providing a platform for the filmmakers and stars themselves.

Everyone from Martin Scorsese to Francis Ford Coppola and Julie Christie is interviewed and a roster of well edited clips places the decade in a socio-cultural and economic context. If their responses are self-congratulatory (to say the least), they're also highly quotable, funny and revealing, making this something of a cinephile's wet dream. Director William Friedkin reveals how the original The Exorcist poster was to feature a little girl's hand holding a bloodied crucifix and the legend 'For God's sake, help her", before he complained. Former Warner Bros.' head John Calley recalls that when he first saw Robert De Niro in Mean Streets he assumed Scorsese had secured a psychopath's day release for the shoot.

Happily, a certain amount of hard perspective has crept into the mix, as might be hoped from a politically motivated, consciousness-expanded generation; Hopper stresses "there's a lot of real crap in there too". Julie Christie observes that 1970s US cinema was "not a good time for women". But if Demme responds with a spoonful of sops to women's movies - brief clips of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, They Shoot Horses, Don't They and Klute - we're soon dragged back to the usual male wall-pissing contests.

The shift from tough, socially-conscious film-making to no-risk crowd-pleasers like Jaws for 'Nam-weary, fantasy-craving audiences is also documented, though a little rushed. But kudos too, for the inclusion of lesser-sung, but equally relevant films like Panic In Needle Park and Joe. "We weren't handsome," muses Bruce Dern on his contemporaries. "But we were f****** interesting."

What a wonderful documentary - I sat down thinking this would be a rehash of the bitchy stories told in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, but it is, in fact, a clear-eyed, glorious celebration of a strange and twisted era that spawned some truly great movies. What struck me was the lack of bitterness apparent in the director interviews, given that now the movie business sucks in a large fashion - instead, folk like Friedkin and Coppola's eyes seem to positively glitter recalling their glory days. The footage of an audience coming out of a daytime screening of the Exorcist was priceless. 'It was - traumatic,' one guy says. A great epitaph for the late Ted Demme, a thrilling film, I just wish it was longer - I could have sat through a three hour cut of this.

As I am a teenager, I have about one hundred years of movies to catch up on. I try to see a mixture of classics, mainstream, art-house, and other movies. The 70's is one of the most important decades for films: it's when the average, common, classical films changed into full of messages and anti-social behavior. It became like nothing anyone had ever seen before. What A Decade Under the Influence basically shows is how important all of the movies from around The Graduate to about Star Wars.

Richard LaGravenese and the late Ted Demme are the primary interviewers in this documentary, which interviews such people as Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Jon Voight, among others about how those few years changed cinema forever. It's a very professional, polished documentary, and it's even financed by IFC films. However, as this is a very professional one, I would think that they would at least edit out the noise of someone behind the camera laughing. To me, that took out a lot of how neat and clean the whole thing was.

On the other hand, it's a very interesting documentary, about film by the people who make it. Of course, they aren't bashing their own films or anything of the like, but they're portraying honesty on what they thought of the films and what they meant. I don't know much about film (but I want to be involved around it when I become an adult), so I feel like to someone like me this movie is a huge asset. I have seen a good number of movies that they mentioned, like Chinatown and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but a little more insight into those movies were very informative.

The main reason, however, I didn't love Influence is, as slickly as it was edited, it seemed to take its time in the beginning and be quite relaxed, therefore not having enough time to get to everything that they wanted to show. They crammed in Star Wars and Jaws in the last few minutes, when they were two of the most important. It seemed like they tried too hard to show lots of clips, and that's fine, but some of them were unimportant, such as an extended one from Network.

Overall, though, Influence is a very enthralling, informative documentary that helped me, at least, learn more about a second `golden age' in American cinema.

My rating: 7/10

Rated R for language, and images of sexuality, violence and drug use.

A surprisingly good documentary. My surprise was mainly due to the fact that I was confused by the title. I assumed this was about the influence of the drug culture on film making but no it is a much more far reaching and intelligent film than could have been expected. Demme has done a great job in encapsulating the period from the late 60s to the late 70s. From, 'Easy Rider' and the collapse of studio influence, through all those introspective 'real life' movies, where brilliant young directors tried to express themselves politically, sexually and artistically, through to the beginnings of the blockbuster and the return of the reigns to the money men and their studios. As someone who saw the 'real life' movies of Britain and the rest of Europe through the sixties and then the revolutionary US films of the 70s and is sad that the sequel to the sequel is so much the order of the day, this was a most fascinating film. The interview clips are measured (thanks to DVD the full interviews are available as extras!) and the film clips well considered. Also, as someone who has only just caught up with, 'Joe', I am impressed that this important little film gets its well deserved entry here.