A Decade Under the Influence, My Dude

This week was our focus on the 70’s, specifically the blockbuster era.  It looked to me that the 70’s were one of the best times for movies period.  Even with the later part of the decade sort of falling into the blockbuster pattern, what was accomplished through pure art was amazing.  Studio heads were handing over the golden keys to the kingdom to these young directors who were all trying to make the best movie they wanted to with these huge budgets they’d been given.  They constantly went out of their way to make pictures that actually had meaning in art.  This was all inspired by the French New Wave, where many young directors wanted to rebel against the old way of making movies with very traditional  stories and camera techniques.  They wanted to make a style that was all their own, with interesting scripts that had more to do with the youth of their generation than anything else.  The old style directors were out of touch and refused to change their camera techniques.  The new young directors saw this opportunity to incorporate what was known as a sin in the industry; jump cuts.  Once they started to see that it was possible to show the passage of time without actually having to follow the actor around or use a dissolve and could just jump to the relevant part, a whole new style of film making opened up to them.  This certainly carried over to the American directors of the time, who were still all watching art house films that could show them exactly what new styles were being used.

The industry in America however started to really shift when blockbusters started to be made in the modern sense.  This also wouldn’t have really happened without the major flops that started to pop up from directors that had previously been making smash hits.  Then came Jaws.  Jaws was such a hit, things changed forever.  It still affects the media landscape when it comes to film, and rightfully so.  Industry leaders saw that a certain type of film would be the type to dominate the future, a type of film that they didn’t need young creative directors to make all the decisions on.  The studios now knew how to print money essentially, and this squashed out the creative talent that these directors had.  Movies like Star Wars almost made more money of off the toys and products that were licensed for the movie than the movie itself.  It was the beginning of the end for creative Hollywood.  On Wednesday, we watched Poseidon Adventure.  I missed class regrettably, but I really wanted to see it.  I’ll probably watch it this weekend, but I looked up a bunch of reviews and articles about the impact it had on film culture today.  It’s so amazing to me that the first disaster film had such a basic concept, yet went on to spawn a full genre.  A genre which continues to produce films today, some of the most popular films of our day and age.