A Decade Under the Influence

How did Hollywood make so many great, challenging, offbeat films in the 1970s? A Decade Under the Influence lists the reasons--or rather, lets the people who did the filmmaking list the reasons. The decade-shaping interviewees include Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Francis Coppola, et al. The film's argument has actually been conventional wisdom for at least 10 years, but it's well-supported by an abundance of clips, which should inspire even hardcore film buffs to seek out rarities such as Thunderbolt and Lightfoot or The King of Marvin Gardens. One might observe that the scarcity of women directors or black filmmakers suggests that the decade was not entirely golden, and the memories may be burnished a bit by nostalgia. But there's no question that the big studios were far more adventurous back then, and this briskly moving survey gives a lively Film 101 lecture in exactly why. --Robert Horton Amazon.com

So-so look at 70s cinema

In 2003 the Independent Film Channel produced a nearly three hour long three part documentary called A Decade Under The Influence (a nod to the 1974 John Cassavetes film A Woman Under The Influence), about American cinema during the 1970s. The general posit of the film, co-directed by Ted Demme and Richard LaGravenese, is that the 1970s were a `tweener period between the collapse of the old Hollywood film studio system and the rise of the Lowest Common Denominator summer blockbuster mentality, ushered in by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, that destroyed the template of directors having control and authorship of their works.
Now, anyone that has even a passing interest in film- American or otherwise, cannot disagree with this premise. The problem is that the documentary itself is all style (including a great opening musical track) and no substance. In short, it's an MTV-like hyperreal and scattershot take on the films from that decade which were anything but hyperreal and scattershot. Imagine Steven Spielberg bemoaning the loss of Orson Welles when his career is the utter antithesis of that man's. Hypocrisy is a word that floats to mind. That or an ironic streak beyond sharp. Go with the former, people!
The film starts out with an homage to the European greats of the 1960s, who helped inspire the younger Americans. It also has the usual 1970s crowd of filmmakers- from greats like Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese to once-greats like Francis Ford Coppola and Hal Ashby, to has-beens like Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin, to never weres like Monte Hellman. And there are some classic clips from Easy Rider, The Godfather, Bonnie And Clyde, Chinatown, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, The Graduate, Annie Hall, Network, and others, but it's all perfunctory, surface, and vain. Not a single film nor scene is really looked at, analyzed, put into a blender and studied for why it worked, why it worked in the context it did, nor why such scenes are absent from the films of the Peter Jacksons and Michael Bays....This film lacks any real insight and is too fawning, as if a study of a small group of adepts who have a secret they don't want others to know. The problem is that their secret is well known and their acting like they can keep it is just plain silly....A critic like Kenneth Turan or Roger Ebert would likely have remedied those sorts of shortcomings, but, as with many possible fruitful avenues it could have gone down- such as viewing the decade through the lens of a dozen or two key films, and analyzing scenes for what they meant and how they expressed their points, the whole film fails. It lacks the substance and edginess that it claims for its very subject matter, even though some good insight is provided by, of all people, the British actress Julie Christie.
Then there is the smugness. Don't get me wrong- guys like Coppola and Scorsese made great films in that decade, and while Scorsese's only gone downhill in the last decade, Coppola's artistic drought is nearing thirty years since Apocalypse Now. And while Scorsese is not totally condemnatory of modern Hollywood, Coppola seems to buy in to the `Evil Suits' theory of American film destruction. No doubt that that is mostly to blame, but many of these young directors got big egos and vanity took over, resulting in critical and financial disasters like Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, or the crash and burn personal lives of filmmakers like Peter Bogdanovich (whose career never recovered) and Roman Polanski (whose career did). The only person in the film who even comes close to telling these truths is a production designer from Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show- Polly Platt, who blames the loss of the edginess that the 1970s films had on just this fatness and sassiness, claiming that the young auteurs, especially, got old, rich and lost touch with the very things they and their films once were icons for....
A Decade Under The Influence is a so-so attempt to reveal the depths of a subject better left for a ten or twelve hour PBS documentary by one of the Burns brothers. That's because the two directors of this film are too soft and intimately related to the subject matter (as example, Ted Demme's uncle- Jonathan Demme, was one of the young 1960s auteurs). A more objective approach to the film was needed, and this lack of objectivity is the underlying problem that results in all the film's aforementioned problems. In short, while they are the symptoms, a lack of objectivity is the cause, and the best documentaries always strive for objectivity, lest they become Michael Moorean agitprop. And that's a fate and storyline as bad as any lame Hollywood suit could brainstorm.
September 5, 2008

Intended for those with vast amounts of time on their hands

This was well done but quite long as it was originally a mini-series of sorts for television. It was fascinating but at the same time, not quite engaging enough for something so long. July 9, 2007

Great for the younger crowd!

As someone who didn't live through the 70's and doesn't know all too much about 70's filmmaking, this was a great little insight.

I can understand how some people may be greatly disappointed by this film...

If you experienced the 70's during a time in your life when movies really made an impact or you just simply know a lot about films from this era, there might be quite a bit left to be desired.

But for me, someone who's greatest and most thorough knowledge of films only spans from the late 80's on - A Decade Under the Influence is great!

You get to hear about how filmmakers dealt with the studio's, how the studio's dealt with the filmmakers, how the face of the leading man changed from someone very attractive to the guy next door, how actresses approached their jobs during that time, and how directors and producers approached filmmaking like never before.

This is definitely for younger people or those who never really knew much about films from the 70's in the first place.

And luckily since I don't know what's missing from it that could make it better, I don't have anything to complain about...

Overall, I highly enjoyed this film!
March 24, 2007

If You're Born in the Eighties, and love the 70's!

This is the film for you to learn about all the independent spirit that seems both in it's height, and in it's originality, which has paved the road for our famous, our entertaining directors of today. This is not to say that there is not a better picture to be made of the seventies, but it's the best one that's out at this time. Get it if you have interest in Filmmaking History, and here how the independent movement really started. A time when art was more important than ignorant obedience for a film with a talking fish. Hear about how athe great films changed the way people saw movies. Hear about it, and love it. March 7, 2007

Too polite and puppyish

This is about the shallowest possible overview of American filmmaking in the 1970s, a decade of remarkable films ill-served by overly reverential interviews with key figures from the period, too-brief and often poorly chosen clips from their films, and lazy media clips (Nixon, Vietnam, and so forth). No subject is ever asked hard questions about his work, no unpleasant truths are aired, and all are treated as if they were fragile Icaruses who flew too close to the sun. Please. William Friedkin, for one, is a terrible director who's lucky to've had any success at all. I can't improve on what "El Kabong" said in his review: people didn't line up to see The Exorcist for its sensitive treatment of religious issues, but because of its sensational money shots of vomit and spinning heads. And Altman, may he RIP, had in the end a terrible batting average, making stinkers like Popeye and Quintet at least as often as he produced stunners like McCabe & Mrs. Miller or 3 Women. (Ah, 3 Women...why didn't we get a scene from *that*?) If ADUTI gets neophytes to view some of the mentioned movies, then OK, but on its own merits it is nothing special. However, I did greatly enjoy the (infra-red?) clip of 1975 audiences reacting to JAWS: very funny!

This documentary originally aired on cable in three 50-minute episodes, and that's how it's packaged on this DVD. Was it actually released in theaters in a different edit? February 19, 2007

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