The Story of Film Episode 9 – American Cinema of the 70s

1967-1979: New American Cinema.

Old Style, New Techniques.

• Duck Soup (1933) dir. Leo McCarey – Satirizes American culture.
• Artists and Models (1955) dir. Frank Tashlin – Tashlin found consumerism dumb, so he made his films look like a cartoon. Color, style, and happiness show that society is fake.
• Catch-22 (1970) dir. Mike Nichols – The film title is said within the movie. Shows how attention of the audience is shown. Shows how a single actor can change how a movie is made.
• Mash (1970) dir. Robert Altman – Fills the screens with actors, and records all dialogue at the same time, and mixes a complicated soundtrack of even more dialogue. Can make a tragic scene look light-hearted. Also utilized zooms, and long lenses.
• The Graduate (1967) dir. Mike Nichols – Shows/inspires other movies about satire. Based on the novel of the same name. Utilizes lights turning off/on as a set of pacing.
• The Fireman’s Ball (1967) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Miloš Forman – Documentary-like.
• One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) dir. Miloš Forman – Forman had to change his style very little.
• The Last Movie (1971) dir. Dennis Hopper – Follow-up to “Easy Rider”. Filmed a documentary of a movie being filmed as a story. A story within a story. Shows anarchy within film. A hate letter to American film.
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) dir. Robert Altman – Anti-western. The camera roams, colors muted, lens is long, etc.  There are no heroes, just characters lost in the snow. Shows uncertainty.
• The Conversation (1974) dir. Francis Ford Coppola – About the new type of sound equipment. Utilizes audio, as some form of way of seeing the outside world. This can be shown with the way the camera moves.
• Mean Streets (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese – Utilizes tracking shots. Uses a metaphor of being a saint in a modern world.
• Taxi Driver (1976) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Martin Scorsese – Filmed a car in the fog in slow motion, like an iron coffin. Showed an ugly side of the world. About existentialism. Literally decides to not show a scene because it too embarrassing, so they move the camera to another position, yet keep the audio.
• Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi – Does not show the actors’ emotions directly.
• Raging Bull (1980) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Martin Scorsese – Utilizes flat lighting, and staging. Shot like a documentary. Later, utilizes slow motion shots, then fast cutting. Shows reflection, in both a literal and metaphorical sense.
• Italianamerican (1974) dir. Martin Scorsese – Similar to that of a documentary.
• American Gigolo (1980) (introduced in Episode 7) dir. Paul Schrader – Shows a fascination of religious grace. Utilizes 80’s red lighting. Borrowed the ending of “Pickpocket”. Where a woman brings the protagonist back in the real world.
• Light Sleeper (1992) dir. Paul Schrader – Utilizes nighttime blues as it’s color palette. Schrader shows visual emptiness for the protagonists. Borrowed the ending of “Pickpocket”. Where a woman brings the protagonist back in the real world. Shot with the exact same camera angles.
• Pickpocket (1959) (introduced in Episode 7) dir. Robert Bresson – Scene later utilized in “Light Sleeper”
• The Walker (2007) dir. Paul Schrader – Very yellow color palette.
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. D. W. Griffith – One founding films, yet shows old ideas, such as blacks being portrayed as drunks.
• Killer of Sheep (1978) dir. Charles Burnett – Told from a kid’s point of view. Filmed in black/white. Utilizes black music. A lot of poetic moments.
• The Shop Around the Corner (1940) dir. Ernst Lubitsch – Shows a Jewish character. A character who’s logic/humor provide the film’s beauty.
• Annie Hall (1977) dir. Woody Allen – Similar to that of the character in “The Shop Around the Corner”, center of the frame, directed at the camera, even talking to the camera. The cooking scene is a single shot, there is no cut. Makes a woman believe in herself. Utilizes a montage scene.
• City Lights (1931) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Charlie Chaplin – Makes woman see.
• Manhattan (1979) dir. Woody Allen – A city symphony. Utilizes widescreen images. As again, Allen’s Jewish character is at the center of the story.
• The Last Picture Show (1971) dir. Peter Bogdanovich – Mixed old and new. An old style of filming with black/white, yet in a modern setting. Also utilizes a 16 second dissolve as a cut. Also utilizes a camera pan shot of a ghost town.
• The Wild Bunch (1969) dir. Sam Peckinpah – Utilizes a lot of cuts, stretched Leone’s neo-realist idea to slow down a scene, which showed it’s agony, and beauty. Also utilizes widescreen.
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) dir. Sam Peckinpah – Shows the wild west in a different light, shows the west in a beautiful way. Shows a character shooting their reflection in the mirror, as if they want to rid themselves.
• Badlands (1973) dir. Terrence Malick – Tested the myth of the outsider. Scenes shot like Vietnam-trap scenes, a sort of montage.
• Days of Heaven (1978) dir. Terrence Malick – Camera flows a lot. Shot with a camera attached to a man with a brace. One of the first times this method was used. Showed a cut between a man, and landscapes. Shot in a certain time of day, so there was always panic to capture it. Filmed a locust with peanuts falling in reverse. Plays heavily with lighting. Especially with the ending, of a burning field, and the only light of that shown is the fire, everything else as a silhouette.
• Mirror (1975) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky – Film is similar to that of Malick. Heavily utilizes nature as a set piece.
• Cabaret (1972) dir. Bob Fosse – Mixed old techniques with new style. It was a musical, yet it was shot in closeup. Tilting up camera. Similar to that of Nazi Germany. Shows political messages within the film.
• The Godfather (1972) (introduced in Episode 6) dir. Francis Ford Coppola – Even more amoral. A re-visitation of the Gangster genre. Utilized North lighting. Low lighting levels limited actors to little movement. Showed a network of relationships.
• Chinatown (1974) dir. Roman Polanski – Almost film-noir. Based on a true story. Shot widescreen, had muted 30’s color. Filmed a shot with a side view mirror. Shows a sense of panic through a car horn. Also an example of a film story changing mid-production.
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. John Huston
• Jules et Jim (1962) dir. François Truffaut – Impressionistic lightness. Filmed in black/white.