THE 1970’S

THE 1970’S

Although the 1970s opened with Hollywood experiencing a financial and artistic depression, the decade became a creative high point in the US film industry. Restrictions on language, adult content, sexuality, and violence had loosened up, and these elements became more widespread.

The hippie movement, the civil rights movement, free love, the growth of rock and roll, changing gender roles and drug use certainly had an impact. And Hollywood was renewed and reborn with the earlier collapse of the studio system, and the works of many new and experimental film-makers (nicknamed "Movie Brats") during a Hollywood New Wave.

THE 1970’S

In the 70s, the once-powerful MGM Studios sold off many of its assets, abandoned the film-making business, and diversified into other areas (mostly hotels and casinos).

Much of the focus was on box-office receipts and the production of action- and youth-oriented, blockbuster films with dazzling special effects. But it was becoming increasingly more difficult to predict what would sell or become a hit. Hollywood's economic crises in the 1950s and 1960s, especially during the war against the lure of television, were somewhat eased with the emergence in the 70s of summer "blockbuster" movies or "event films" marketed to mass audiences, especially following the awesome success of two influential films:

27 year-old Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975)

33 year-old George Lucas' Star Wars (1977)

Although the budget for Jaws grew from $4 million to $9 million during production, it became the highest grossing film in history - until Star Wars. Both Jaws and Star Wars were the first films to earn more than $100 million in rentals. [The average ticket price for a film in 1971 was $1.65, and by 1978 cost about two and a half dollars in first-run theatres. Second-run film theatres could charge less and often dropped their admission price to $1.00. The average film budget by 1978 was about $5 million - increasing dramatically to $11 million by 1980 due to inflation and rising costs. Therefore, production of Hollywood films decreased precipitously in the late 70s, e.g., down to 354 releases in 1978 compared to the previous year's total of 560.]

THE 1970’S

With more power now in the hands of producers, directors, and actors, new directors emerged, many of whom had been specifically and formally trained in film-making courses/departments at universities such as UCLA, USC, and NYU. Corman supported this new breed of youthful maverick directors, referred to by some as "Movie Brats" or "Geeks." The AIP studio (and Corman himself) was responsible for giving a start and apprenticeship experience to many upcoming filmmakers and actors, emphasizing low-budget film-making techniques and manipulative elements.

Corman hired the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Paul Bartel, and Robert Towne

THE 1970’S - SCORSESE

Newcomer Martin Scorsese, a graduate of the film school at NYU, first gained recognition with personal films, including his first low-budget feature “Who's That Knocking At My Door?” (1968) with Harvey Keitel, developed from an earlier student film. The debut film had all the typical Scorsese trademark themes and locales that would figure prominently in most of his films - New York City, unglamorous violence, brutality, Italian-Americans, competitiveness, the guilt-inducing impact of Catholicism, hostility, complex characters, and peer pressure in dark urban settings.

Scorsese's brutal and unforgettable Taxi Driver (1976) (with a screenplay by Paul Schrader) again starred De Niro in the decade's most notorious vigilante picture - a film that helped to spawn the modern American horror film with new extremes of violence and shock value. It was the story of a disturbed, lonely, psychotic New York City cabbie (and recent war veteran dischargee who reflected Vietnam War alienation) with a savior complex intent on rescuing twelve year-old hooker Iris Steensman (Jodie Foster) after being rejected by blonde campaign worker Cybill Shepherd. Its feverish violence, ambiguous ending, and showcase of acting talent were unprecedented. The film's realism and dark presentation of child prostitution and the seedy underworld, exemplified in Robert De Niro's characterization of Travis Bickle ("You talkin' to me?"), was as startling as Marlon Brando's performance as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) two and a half decades earlier.

Scorsese's grim Raging Bull (1980), with De Niro in an Oscar-winning performance as self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta, was considered one of the ten best films of the next decade. The film brought Scorsese his first Best Director Oscar nomination.

THE 1970’S - COPPOLA

All of Francis Ford Coppola's earlier 60s films were flops. He made his first film at UCLA (Tonight For Sure (1961)), served an apprenticeship with famed B-film director Roger Corman (e.g., The Terror (1963), Dementia 13 (1963), and Battle Beyond the Sun (1963)), made his commercial directorial debut with You're a Big Boy Now (1966), co-scripted Is Paris Burning? (1966), directed the entertaining, fanciful musical comedy Finian's Rainbow (1968) with Fred Astaire, and then from his own script directed his fourth feature film - the dramatic road film The Rain People (1969). In 1969, Coppola established his own production company, American Zoetrope - used for the production of George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971) and American Graffiti (1971). Coppola's Oscar win as co-screenwriter of the script for Patton (1970) gave him the break he needed for future, big-budgeted opportunities.

The first biggest hit of the early 70s was Paramount's and Francis Ford Coppola's overpowering and absorbing, grand-scale gangster film - the Best Picture winner The Godfather (1972). The explicitly violent, complex, and majestic saga of the Brooklyn-located Corleone crime family that was based on Mario Puzo's pulpish best-seller presented so many memorable scenes and mythic overtones: the opening wedding sequence, the horse's head in a bed, the "I believe in America" speech, the Don's collapse in the garden, and Sonny's (James Caan) death at a tollbooth. This first film of the three-part epic became the first film to gross $100 million domestically, although its arrival was denounced by Italian-Americans protesting its violence and the association of the 'Mafia' with their ethnic group. Brando, who won his second Oscar, had shrewdly negotiated for only $100,000 and a percentage of the film. The influential film also brought Al Pacino to film stardom as boyish war hero and mob boss Michael - propelling the Lee Strasberg-trained actor from off-Broadway obscurity to prominence.

The Godfather, Part II (1974), expanding, deepening and improving the original with richer characters and a split narrative storyline. After losing in 1972 as Best Director, Coppola won the Oscar the second time around. And his film was the first sequel ever to win a Best Picture Academy Award. The film deepened the saga with multiple flashbacks and a fratricide. Between the two Godfather films, Coppola also filmed the critically-acclaimed The Conversation (1974), a box-office failure (but with the Palme d'Or win at the Cannes Film Festival) and a more personal film that studied the paranoia of post-Watergate wiretapping by an account of a surveillance expert (Gene Hackman). Ironically, Coppola competed against himself when nominated as Best Director in 1974 for both films.

Apocalypse Now (1979) - a powerful, brilliant but hallucinatory statement about the harrowing Vietnam experience that was adapted from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The film chronicled the upriver journey-odyssey of a disparate group of Vietnam soldiers led by Martin Sheen on a mission to kill jungle renegade colonel Marlon Brando. It was told through a series of amazing set-pieces, including Robert Duvall's memorable scene on a napalm-bombed beach where his GIs surf (and his confession: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning.") The film's production was plagued by a typhoon, Brando's late arrival and overweight condition, and a life-threatening heart attack for Martin Sheen - and it was so financially beleaguered that Coppola put up his home's mortgage in 1977 as collateral on a loan.

THE 1970’S – DAWN OF THE X RATING

The movie rating system was modified in 1970, replacing the "M" rating with PG (meaning parental guidance suggested), and redefining "R" (as at least 17 years or older, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian). “

X rated films were limited to eighteen years old and above.

The first PG-rated Disney Studios film was The Black Hole (1979), the studio's most costly film to date.

The first X-rated, adult-oriented, full-length animated cartoon was Ralph Bakshi's cult favorite Fritz the Cat (1972) - the lusty adventures of an anthropomorphic, dope-smoking tomcat named Fritz, a character originally created by Robert Crumb. It was also the first independent animated film to gross more than $100 million at the box office.

*** A Clockwork Orange!!

THE 1970’S – MEL BROOKS

In some cases, comedy reached new lows of vulgarity and tasteless jokes in this decade. After his breakthrough film in the previous decade, The Producers (1968), about Nazis and Broadway musicals, Mel Brooks further used comic stars Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn and Cloris Leachman in two films in 1974.

Brooks' first in a series of satirizing parodies of classic movie genres (often as star, scripter and director) was his lewd and raunchy western comedy Blazing Saddles (1974) - his first commercial hit. It told the story of the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) and Black Bart (Cleavon Little) - a black sheriff recruited to clean up a white frontier town. It was most remembered for its famous campfire scene with gaseous cowboys.

Young Frankenstein - 1974, Brooks spoofed Universal's mad-scientist, Frankenstein cycle of horror films with Young Frankenstein (1974) - one of his best films, with Gene Wilder as the brain surgeon, Peter Boyle as the Monster, and Marty Feldman as Igor.

THE 1970’S – BIG BUDGET FILMS

A number of films of the 70s commented little about the political and social scene - they were just sheer escapist entertainment on a large scale. The trend was toward bigger, more expensive films - with no guarantee of quality. These youth-oriented films and their sequels were aimed at less discriminating and demanding younger audiences - juveniles roughly between ages 12 and 24. Amazingly, some of the record-breaking films of the 70s relied more on special effects than leading stars:

Superman – 1978

William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) with a head-revolving, demonically-possessed Linda Blair

Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) with a mechanical great white shark

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) with a giant alien spaceship

George Lucas' Star Wars (1977) - the fourth episode subtitled 'A New Hope,' with James Earl Jones as the voice for David Prowse's character, and Peter Cushing as the Grand Moff Tarkin

Alien (1979) - it was publicized with a chest-bursting scene and the line: "In space, no one can hear you scream" and featured a part cockroach/part shark alien creature designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger, that terrorized the crew of the Nostromo.

THE 1970’S – TEEN MUSICALS

Two teen-oriented films with rock soundtracks (and both with John Travolta) were produced by Robert Stigwood, and marked a semi-comeback for the musical genre:

(1) Director John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977) that combined disco fever, the hit music of the Bee Gees, and a star-making vehicle for John Travolta in his first film role (he had been a TV star on Welcome Back, Kotter) as Brooklyn-dwelling Tony Manero - with tight white polyester pants dancing to You Should Be Dancing and other dance songs; Travolta's dance instructor Deney Terrio would go on to host a popular TV series titled Dance Fever (from 1979-85); the film was based on an article by rock journalist Nik Cohn

(2) Grease (1978), a zesty, nostalgic musical spoof of the 50s, developed from a long-running Broadway hit, was the highest grossing film of its year, and again starred Travolta (as Danny Zuko) and pop singer Olivia Newton-John (as Sandy)