A Década que Mudou o Cinema

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.

I swore I would never allow myself to devolve into to the bogus authority figures of the sixties who told me things were better in the "good old days" – the current Australian Prime Minister is a sordid example of just such a mind set.

But I switched over to "A Decade Under the Influence" because I found watching the much-heralded "Sneakers" documentary on the other channel such a dispiriting experience. I found the values expressed by the "Sneakers" interviewees too ugly to accept as reasonable. So materialistic! So devoid of any sense of outrage at a society that can countenance killing someone to steal his very ugly shoes! So lacking in any worthwhile purpose that they can report without distaste the exploitation an audience by haranguing them to hold those shoes above their heads to lock in a sponsorship deal for themselves with a company of cobblers was just too much to continue watching.

"A Decade Under the Influence" depicted a completely different response to the fruit of stupidity, corruption and concupiscence in high (and low) places.

I have noted the change in film-making that accompanied the exposure of America's disastrous foreign policy debacles in Vietnam and so many less reported places in my www.peterhenderson.com.au website. "A Decade Under the Influence" documents the precise moment at which that change took place.

Before the seventies, the armed forces were depicted in American films as an invincible fighting force comprised of decent human beings who transmogrified into conquering heroes on the battlefield. After the seventies they are generally portrayed as a dispirited rabble misled by a bunch of bureaucrat clowns in the Pentagon Before the seventies, the FBI agent and the honest cop tended to be depicted as your friend and protector. After the seventies, the FBI agents were all incompetent and the best a cop could aspire to was to ignore their foolishness and his superior's corruption and uphold justice in his own idiosyncratic manner.

Before the seventies, the archetypical American "little guy", the "average Joe", the Jimmy Stewart type would face down the problems encountered and thereby gain some insight into underlying wisdom of his elected leaders and justice of the "American Way". After the seventies, Kevin Costner usurps that role, but now he is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness for evil to be exposed, or accepting his lot and making out the best he can.

And now those "old time religion" mindsets have been stripped of any honesty and righteousness and portrayed (with a certain amount of justification) as sanctimonious bigotry and self-serving hypocrisy.

"A Decade Under the Influence" tells it like it was. "A Decade Under the Influence" tells it like it is now. It depicts the redemption of the American film industry from the hands of the artistically, morally and intellectually bankrupt studio moguls. It shows the storming of the Hollywood Bastille by the independent film makers who promised to get a disillusioned and tired audience back into the cinemas. The fact that their failures were numerous, and at times disastrous, merely underlines the greatness of their achievement. An achievement reflected in the adventurous and questioning attitudes of the big box office stars such as Clooney, Daman, Affleck etc and the directors and producers who provide the vehicles for their talent.

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.

A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE (2003) **** (Featuring interviews with: Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Marshall Brickman, Ellen Burstyn, John Calley, Julie Christie, Francis Ford Coppola, Roger Corman, Bruce Dern, Milos Forman, William Friedkin, Pam Grier, Dennis Hopper, Sidney Lumet, Paul Mazursky, Mike Medavoy, Polly Platt, Sydney Pollack, Jerry Schatzberg, Roy Scheider, Martin Scorsese, Robert Towne, Jon Voight) Excellent documentary about the last true Golden Age of Cinema: The '70s with interviews of those who made seminal films intercut with footage of the movies providing an interesting time-line of how the influences of previous filmmakers changed the face of filmmaking, the advent of the auteur, the dawning of the age of the blockbuster and the amazing array of unbridled, raw talent of actors providing a bumper crop of truly classic films. A must for all film buffs and those who are on the way to becoming a new age of cinema. Directed by Richard La Gravenese and Ted Demme (who passed away prior to its completion; this his fitting swan song to the art form).

This is a great compendium of interviews and excerpts form the films of the late sixties and early 70s that were a counter movement to the big Studio Films of the late sixties. Directed by Ted Demme, it is obviously a labor of love of the films of the period, but it gives short shrift to the masterpieces of the times.

Many of the filmmakers of this period were influenced by Truffaut, Antonioni, Fellini, Bergman, and of course John Cassavetes. Unfortunately the documentary logging in at 138 minutes is too short! The film is rich with interviews and opinions of filmmakers. Some of the people interviewed are: Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdonovich, Ellen Burstyn, and Roger Corman, Bruce Dern, Sydney Pollack, Dennis Hopper, and Jon Voight.

Bruce Dern has a moment of truth when he says that he and Jack Nicholson may not have been as good looking as the other stars that came before them but they were "interesting". This summarizes the other areas of this period of film-making in American history.

The filmmakers were dealing with a lack of funding from the Studios because they were expressing unconventional attitudes about politics, sex, drugs, gender and race issues, and Americas involvement in overseas conflicts like the Vietnam War.

There is a great interview with Francis Coppola saying that he got the chance to make "The Conversation" because the producers knew he had been trained by Roger Corman to make a movie with nothing so they bankrolled his film.

Another interview is with Jon Voight who was directed by Hal Ashby in "Coming Home" a clear anti-war film about a crippled soldier immersing himself back into society after his facing battle. Voight talks about how his working methods helped him achieve an emotional telling point when Ashby said that they were doing a "rehearsal" take and it ended up being the take used in the film- it was better because it was so un-rehearsed and not drained of its freshness by being over-rehearsed.

There are also many fine excerpts from Al Pacino's break-through film "The Panic in Needle Park", and interviews from Dennis Hopper on the making of "Easy Rider", and interviews from Sydney Pollack about making films.

All in all the documentary is a fine jumping off point for any film lover who wants to see great examples of what the new voices in film were like in the Seventies. Many of the Sundance Folks, where this film made a big splash, are unaware of just how much the Independent Film Maker today owes to the films of John Cassavetes, Milos Foreman, William Friedkin, and Roger Corman.

Rent it from your favorite shop. It will at least perk you up to some films you may not have seen before and can enjoy today. Amazon.com has it for as little as $11.50, if you want to buy right out.