A big thing I've noticed about movies in the 70s compared to later decades is that they often [intentionally] showed the characters travelling from Point A to Point B instead of just cutting to them arriving at a destination, because movies in the 70s were more about the journey than simply what was happening at the destination. They have a very different form of storytelling than later decades. The longer cuts just add to that more grounded-in-life feel to them.
The opening shot of every movie from the early 70s was the underside of a jetliner coming in for a landing. Every one of those movies ended with the death of the hero.
Now it's all happy endings and neatly explained plots, no more downbeat or open endings where it's up to the viewer what happens next. About the going from Point A to Point B, in American films you saw the guy go to his car enter it and next he's at his destination, in a European film you see him driving there all the way. Well, being sarcastic there but it's kind of true.
1:01 A little thing to mention but the 70s also had a huge crime wave and crime was discussed more on TV than ever before. Top this off with the coverage of the Vietnam war and film started to reflect the realities of the dangerous world we live in.
@@suzygirl1843 Because it was the last war with mass conscription in the US. Protracted wars with non-professional armies tend to attract a lot of public attention.
@@suzygirl1843 Thats probably the exact reason they talk about it. It was a time of despair but also reflection. What to do now? Theres no glory unlike that of WWII since they didnt really win.
The people in these movies looked like real people that we see and interact with everyday. These days , every actor is dressed too perfectly. Every hair and every article of clothing is perfect...even if it's supposed to be a person , let say on the fringes or not "normal" Everyone is a caricature of a person. No one looks like the kid on my street, only a theatrical fake wanna be version of the kid on my street. The 70's and 80's had it right, because people for the most part looked like everyday people, making it more believable. Me thinks anyway.
I agree, actors in the past all looked their part because back then they were already characters to begin with oozing with charisma, often why they became actors in the first place, whereas actors today all look the same all pretty boys who must disguise themselves behind make-up to appear differently, say Depp or DiCaprio. They aren't interesting enough on their own personally, as human characters.
@@LarryFleetwood8675Exactly! Back then, actors had living experience, let’s call it. Made them seem real(er), more human, more charismatic. Most of them had been through the grind, and weren’t even getting fame or great roles while being very young. And those were different times ofc. While the 1980’s was an AMAZING decade for movies still, I believed it started mostly there.. that change; leading to what we have now. The Al Pacino’s, the Jack Nicholson’s, so on.. of the 70’s… wouldn’t have been the same in the 80’s. And you had more younger stars, picked while they were fresh and not nearly seasoned enough. I mean, look at someone like Mickey Rourke.. had all the talent in the world, all the “tools”!! In the 70’s he would’ve been in the best and most popular movies.. but in the 80’s it was a bit different already. He wasn’t your clean cut type, your do as you’re told type, your fresh from being a teen type, that whole sugar coated stuff…..
One thing I love about 70's movies is the extensive use of zooms. These days zooms are often unfairly judged as lazy and inferior to dolly shots, but it's just a different technique. Early 60's and 70's movies used them very effectively to add dynamic to a scene, build tension or connect several shots into a single take.
@@FilmStack Pretty much the entirety of The Graduate and The Conversation, especially the opening shots. Kubrick used them to great effect in Barry Lyndon and The Shining
@@FilmStack There are even some nice zooms in The Godfather, in the beginning when Don Corleona listens to Bonasera, when Micheal says he will kill Solozzo and McCluskey and also when he shoots them later. I would say that it always seem a bit weird but also entertaining how often (and really well) they used zooms in 70's movies
One of the biggest things that makes 70s films different was the emergence of light-sensitive Eastman Kodak color film, subverting Technicolor, which needed huge amounts of light, often in a studio. It was grainier and desaturated, but you could shoot in much lower light, giving movies like the French Connection their signature look, and allowing filmmakers to shoot on the fly, in real settings, and just made shooting faster and required much lower budget, allowing a different type of movie than one shot on a stage with a massive 2 ton Technicolor 3-strip camera.
Is that why films went from bright and shiny in the '60s to brown and grainy in the '70s? I've wondered about that for years. I love the look of Technicolour.
Personally I generally prefer the slower pacing of older movies because in addition to the plot and the characters I'm oftentimes really interested in the world they inhabit and in a slower movie it can be a lot easier to stop, smell the roses, and appreciate the world building.
Me, as well. Just checked out The Long Goodbye, and the first ten minutes is hilarious. Gould spends the first ten minutes trying to find a can of Curry brand cat food to feed his cat. What movie in 2023 would devote the first ten minutes to a PI trying to find a brand of cat food his cat will eat.
The rise of independent film and technology are probably the greatest influences for the 70's "look". The independents broke production out of the confining studio system, and encouraged free expression. Smaller cameras, faster film stock and lenses broke filming out of the studio and into the raw, gritty environment of the real world. Once the new technology and techniques were mastered, the gloss went back on in the 80's and 90's.
@@jamesbrice6619 In 1990, TMNT actually became the highest-grossing independent film at that time. Independent filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, etc... further opened those floodgates. Backed up by the likes of Miramax, Lions Gate, & New Line.
70s was the best era for movies : A Clockwork Orange, 2 Godfather films, Taxi driver, one flew over cuckoo's nest, Apocalypse now, Star Wars, Alien, Mad Max, Jaws, the Exorcist, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Chinatown, Rocky, Barry Lyndon etc. So good
Also had a lot of great "drive-in movies", aka B. Just recently watched Vanishing Point & Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, fun movies that kick in the balls at the end.
The 70's also had a strong independent movie scene with John Cassavetes, Melvin Van Peebles and Elaine May were standouts of the time continuously experimenting and making films better.
The 70s was the last era where virtually all films were indy or experimental. There was a real sense that you were going to get something you simply didnt think was possible to put on film, so they all had this "sharpness" to them as well as being rough around the edges as they were all redefining genres into more gritty versions of themselves (westerns) from the golden age of Hollywood, or building whole new ones from the ground up (sci-fi), and even reviving old favorites with less spectacle and more "frankness" (musicals). So many had no real money compared to today that they improvised all over the place, which also just made them seem more "real". And most were done on budgets that were close (or less) to some adult films, which were basically now mainstream releases in some cases! I still love how many 70s films just had these moments with no music playing, likely because they didnt have the budget, but it just makes those movies seem more in the moment. That is why so many of the movies from then became cult classics or all-time defining movies of cinema.
I also want to add that it’s both the end of the Hays Code and the studio system in Hollywood, during the mid 1960’s, that really allowed filmmakers to have more creative control over their movies because they’re no longer restricted to the old system anymore.
The 70's may be my favourite decade for movies, particularly as a fan of crime drama and the horror genre. In addition to some darker themes and brutal reality becoming an inspiration for various filmmakers, I also like the gritty atmosphere captured in some films of the era (which also appears in some genre movies of the early 80's).
Same, I'll add that the lack of accessibility made them more special as well, you literally had to catch them or you missed them. Maybe I'm sentimental because I was young back then, but I'm glad I'll never shake my love for that era of film making, it just hits different.
@@chizorama I totally agree. I was an 80's kid, so there was VHS of course, but it was still a matter of finding physical copies and still very different to the modern/online era. As I grew up, I dicovered many of my favourite films that were made in the 70's.
I love the graininess of 70s films. One of the things that bothers me about contemporary movies is the lack of grain - how slick it appears. Everything looks washed out whereas in films from the 1960s, colors just pop, especially when Raoul Coutard is the cinematographer. The 1970s, in terms of fashion covered a great deal, though there was a lot of earth tones, browns, avocado green, rust. It was an interesting decade that not only looked back to an entire 30 year period from the 1920-50s but also another Egyptomania craze swept the fashion world. The late 70s was saw a lot brighter colors in clothing than was the case for most of the decade - it began to feel like the 1980s, especially because of bands like the Talking Heads. Whit Stillman’s film, The Last Days of Disco (1998) was set “in the very early 1980s) - it was the period when people started wearing preppy clothes. The directors from the 1970s like Scorsese or Coppola are giants who really struggled to bring about a body of mature work.
Could not agree more. CGI has that sheen. It's a dead giveaway. What's cool is when I come across a 70s flick that has all the scratches and what not on the print. Amazingly, many 70s prints look pristine. How is that possible, I wonder. Scorsese struggled for a few years cuz King Of Comedy was such a bomb, but he hit his stride again with Goodfellas. But to me, he didn't struggle at all. King of Comedy, After Hours and Temptation were all sensational, I thought. But Coppola, boy howdy, Apocalypse was his Swan song.
I absolutely love these videos, it helps me to learn more about film history, since I was born in the late 2000's. I can't wait for the next videos. Wishing you the best.
@@new-lvivNot really I grew up with the shows and movies of the early 2000s despite being born in the late 2000s and Shrek was just a movie I didn't like.
The increase in pace is probably why I haven't liked many movies I've seen in the last decade or two. Nothing but non-stop action, flashing from scene to scene, and not really much of any story.
The first time I actually watched a film on a VHS machine was 1984. NO ONE I knew had a VHS player in the 1970's. They were a luxury item. We weren't poor, but we were not in the class of people who started buying those machines in the LATE 70's. It came in on the tail end of the decade.
Yes, I definitely associate tape machines with the 1980's. I remember renting tapes in that era. Movie rental shops would usually have a section for VHS tapes and a separate one for Beta.
I agree. Gotta say, this kid totally got that part wrong. Even among the families I knew who were wealthy - one of them whose father was even in the home entertainment business - didn't own video players yet. Wasn't a thing at all til the early 80s.
You’re absolutely right. My best friends dad was a big ophthalmologist in NJ/NYC. He used get gifts from optometrists because he would send his patients there for glasses. One year in was a VCR another year the full arcade game Asteroids you would see in an arcade. Free sunglasses of course.
Method acting. People did it in the 50s and 60s, but films like the Godfather and Kramer vs Kramer were really defined by it. A lot of the pacing is about letting an actor be the character, and letting interactions play out at a natural pace, as opposed to thinking about keeping the audience entertained. Making the characters and their interactions seem real and complex.
Yeah who can forget all the appliances in harvest gold, rust, and avocado green! I always wore the brighter colored clothes because they looked better on me.
70s fashion pieces I recall were T-shirts with iron-on decals, usually from favorite films (Star Wars, Grease) or TV shows (Charlie's Angels/Farrah Fawcett).
It still took a long time to catch on though. The inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown, was also the camera operator, and he thought he'd get a ton of work. But aside from The Shining and Rocky, and a few sequences or shots in other movies, so he could barely find a job for about a decade. But eventually by the late-80s, it took off. Garret talked at length in an audio commentary that I listened to, maybe from the Shining Blu-ray.
One of my favourite Spielberg movies is the relatively little-celebrated Munich. Set in the early seventies, of course, part of its genius is that it looks like a thriller from that era even though it was made in 2005. Most noticeable are lots of big zoom and dolly shots, but there's also filming of actors through car windows, vintage blocking techniques and even old-looking film stock. It really helps to sell the movie.
I have said this for a while, most current day videos and movies have a cut about every 3 to 5 seconds, and it can get annoying after a while, hell this video does it.
My brother loved the martial arts movies back in the 70s. The local channels used to run them every weekend, badly edited and scratchy copies, but he still watched. Miss you brother ❤
I love slowe paced movies - it makes me think more. As someone who grew up in the 70s i like the slowe paces mivies as they are more thought provoking. Most of todays movies seem boring & shallow with too much action and not thoughtful. My favorite 70s movies were the Godfather JAWS anything Woody Allen
Maybe because the 70's and 80 movies were not all sequels, prequels and remakes???? Maybe they had an actual stories and scripts that were performed by actors instead of plot holes with pretty sparkly people standing around pretending they know how to act. Maybe because you could actually HEAR the dialogue and not have your ears blow out but explosions every other second. Maybe because in the 70's and 80 they made sets and props, and did not depend on CGI and green screening every thing.
Same here I’m only 3 years younger than you and I remember when we were still using those heavy box tvs with a built in vhs player and that was when flat screens were still expensive
@@LethalForceEngaged1700lmao you may remember it but you're an exception for people your age, not the norm. By the late 2000's the vasssttttt majority of household living rooms had flat screens
I was born in 75 after Bruce Lee passed away. My dad introduced me to Bruce when I was 3 or 4. My neighbor was Chinese and had all his movies. I watched them all back to back in the order they came out. I loved them. I remember watching game of death and even then so young I could tell something was off with the movie. Afterwards I asked my dad what was next. He said there were no more movies and that he passed away. That bummed me out. What an icon that over 40 years later and it's one of my youngest memories.
this is my favorite era, I've seen more 70s films than any era, I've you looked closely at a lot of my reviews I typically review more 70s films, this era just speaks to me, everything about this time fits me, the music, the cinema, the culture, the beautiful fashion, why did I have to be born in 2003?..
Because then you would've been dead by now and wouldn't've watched whatever 70s movies you like with a simple click and have all the movies of history in your computer. If anything, I would have loved to be born in the 2100s so I could finally play a complete version of Cyberpunk 2077 and many other games that came out broken and every movie from this century.
Well, it wasn't all good. At least you don't reek of cigarette smoke every time you walk into a restaurant like we all did back then. But the cars were cooler, at least the early 70s pre-gas crunch cars. No stupid electronic shit although they did rust out quicker.
Great stuff, thanks! I would also add the fact that foreign directors/movie-makers had more access to older movies (many American ones) much more than ever before, while growing up and whatnot… and what’s funny is that they ended up influencing American directors/movie-makers that we’re doing their stuff in the 70’s (like you’ve stated)! Anyway, the 1970’s, really that whole New Hollywood era.. is definitely the best ever for film! Everything culminated into it and it peaked right there. You also had the highest combination between popularity and quality. Plus, the variety was also crazy; a vast majority of genres, styles, higher or lower budgets… and SO MUCH amazing stuff being made!
They went for the other extreme, though. That was another way Star Wars changed Hollywood - up until then 70s SF was incredibly bleak and depressing. Our vision of the future was Clockwork Orange, Rollerball, Soylent Green, Silent Running... the future was going to be a nightmare of overpopulation, pollution, crime, and repression. In other words, like the real world 70s but more so.
I can't believe that no one mentions (not just the video, the comments too) the holy grail of the 70s. DISASTER MOVIES. With an all-star ensemble cast. They were the same thing Marvel movies do now. And almost all of them had a bleak or outright sad ending.
they used actual practical FX, unlike how all movies are made now. "we could build a contraption that would be significantly cheaper, but naaaaaaaa id rather spend 28 million for cgi artist to do it instead, and make it look worse" - every single director from the 80's onward.
I would also add several additional things regarding 70s fashion and lifestyle differences vs today. Different or less makeup, more facial and body hair, different nutrition and exercise standards, resulting in different body types and more mature skin appearances. People also tend to speak more seriously in older movies. I believe at least some of the listed factors made people look and appear more mature in 70s movies (and in general). Apologies for my bad English...
I really enjoyed the 80s, 90s, and 2000s videos, and I liked this one a lot too, but I found it distracting and unfortunate that the vid showed so many modern films rather than actual period films. Especially that last section that spoke about the fashion -- there were almost exclusively modern period films that took place in the 70s and were designed to look that way. But the video is about actual 70s films, so why not show the examples in the actual films of the era, instead of showing clips from Good Fellas, Boogie Nights, et all? Sure, the video mentioned modern period films that emulated the old ones -- that would be the only time to show modern films. Shame that the rest of it had so many missed opportunities to show real 70s film clips. That aside, I did think the information and overall structure of this vid was well-done. Looking forward to when you get to the 60s and 50s. (:
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A lot of 70's films, and even some early 80's films, both American and UK make me feel like I'm in a school/hospital corridor/room on a damp morning. Sort of cold and stark? Porridge is an example of this.
Love how you included shots from Boogie Nights (1997) in this as illustrating the look of the 70's. Just goes to show they did a good job on that film.
70s is my favorite era. From Sting to Superman the Movie; from the French Connection to Jaws; from 3 days of the Condor to Star Wars. It was awesomeness. Frankenheimer, Spielberg, Friedkin, Donner, Lucas, Pollack, Lumet….entertained, intrigued, awed, edutained
There is FAR TOO MUCH fast paced action editing in modern cinema of course. AND not just in the current trend of Super hero films, this also goes for the modern action thrillers (which date back as far as 1971) they're really nothing new, it's reached a point now, where you can't keep up with the pacing of the story any more & your left with a noisy soulless mess of a film, oh for the old days of character development (so that you get time to care for the characters) i.e- SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, GLADIATOR etc, where scenes were longer & not looking like music videos and advertisments. with flickering primary colours flickering at you constantly
Don't forget some amazing underrated, "flew under the radar" gems that we got from this decade too. Some small 70s films like, The Late Show, The Turning Point, Three Women, Badlands, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, etc. The 70s is one of my favorite retro decades for film and music. Plus, the 70s didn't just have earth tones and suits. There were also some softer and more pastel colors and tones too. It's kind of interesting to see how everything looked so washed out and grainy compared to today's super clear and sharp/crisp films
Everything is upside down today, alas. Modern movies make a mockery of the cinematic holiness of the Steadicam by all their silly shakycam stuff when the Seadicam was actually invented to avoid that so you could see what's going on, say during a chase sequence, today the lazy filmmakers embrace the shakes and thus more visual ugliness. But movies weren't necessarily slower in the '70s, funnily enough US cinema would sometimes tend to be that whereas European cinema would actually be pretty fast-paced at times.
The big city Cops & Robbers Crime Dramas of the '70s were very topical, as Urban street Crime was way up in those days. Also, that then-new genre mostly replaced the Western, which had been very popular in movies (& TV) since the Silent Era of film (c. pre-1930s).
What I notice about style in the 70s is the hair: early-mid 70s had some holdovers from the “hippie” look. A lot of long hair. Guys had “mop heads”, for lack of a better term. Girls had typically shoulder-length hair that curled inwards at the end. Then of course there’s the iconic Afro in the disco scene. There’s most likely more iconic hairstyles from the 70s, but the point remains that hair is a big indicator of the style of the decade
70s hairstyles were a lot more styled than 60s hippies. Long hair wasn't anti-establishment any more, the only point was to be cool. The extremely authentic hairstyles in Dazed and Confused are a great example - no actual hippie would have put 1/4 the care into his hair that Wooderson did. Political consciousness of any kind was out and life being about nothing more than being cool and getting high and laid was in.
@@FilmStack Dude, you've got to put the name of the films on screen though! I'm glad to say I know most of these films, but there are a few I'd love to look up. Like the ones from 5:11 to 5:27.
I've no idea why people don't try to replicate this look, modern movies are really terrible looking, like giant budget movies look like they were shot on an iphone.
I don't know about that this whole "myth" I would say about a grey 70s my mother would totally contest differently she remembers everything been psychedelic colourful I believe that it's just the quality of camera but didn't really capture the sheer vividness of the 70's but if this video proves anything it proves how underrated and how game-changing the 70s were
Some of the best movies EVER were made in the seventies, I think these days they have run out of new ideas hence all the remakes & superhero w**k, hence I have no interest in so called new movies;
I'm surprised that American Graffiti didn't come up. I see it as being pivotal in opening the doors for later-70s sentimentality and more "old fashioned" filmmaking. Lucas recognized early on (probably due to THX flopping) that audiences were getting burned out on cynicism. Grafitti made rose-tinted nostalgia cool, and in some ways, Star Wars was an extension of that core idea: escapism through nostalgia. (And then the hugely popular TV show Happy Days, partially inspired by it, kept that nostalgic flame burning for years.)
True but compared to the later decade's movies American Graffiti still had a very 1970's gritty look, an era-specific meandering plot and naturalistic dialogue.
@C45rpm Yep, even as a little kid, I was listening to 50s rock. They sold collections on TV, and I got one for Christmas. You mention PotP (one of my faves!), in which Swan was said to be responsible for kicking off "the nostalgia wave of the 70s." It was a thing!
THX could be interpreted as having an optimistic outlook, at least because Thex escaped at the end. So the individual triumphed over the collective. Didn't destroy or alter the whole system, but SEN set out to do that and failed. In the commentary, George mentions that the society of that world is so far gone into the domain of oppression that it can't be changed for the better, only surrendered to or escaped from. I guess that could be interpreted as defeatist and fatalistic. But if an individual succeeds in escaping, as Thex did, then that's at least a little bit optimistic. Death to slave morality!
@@judsongaiden9878 It's not clear that THX survives though. To me it appears he winds up in the wilderness with no way to provide for himself and no human contact. If it is a "happy" ending, it's still pretty bleak.
In the 70s movies still had actual costume & wardrobe designers. Film influenced fashion for that reason. Period films like Bonnie & Clyde or even 2001 & Saturday Night Fever had a huge impact on the street fashions of the day at the same time as the technological innovations in fabric manufacturing. Soooo, yeah, a lot of synthetic fibres in 70s clothing that didn't exist in the decades before (polyester mostly) that allowed more variety/less expensive clothing options.
Nice work. One thing, though: Home video systems dudn't actually become ubiquitous until the 80s; they existed, but were quite expensive, in the 70s - very rarely seen in homes. However, cable TV, which played fairly recently-released movies, did start becoming popular by the late 70s, and exploded in popularity beginning in the early 80s - with channels like MTV and ESPN, and also movie channels - which cost extra - like HBO, becoming mainstream staples, until by the mid-late 80s practically everyone had cable (and home VCR machines).
Movies of the 70s look far better than those of the 80s. In the 1970s, movie genres went through revolutionary development, but in 80s movies seemed to stay still or go backward, with no dynamics at all.
I think you're wrong about pacing in modern movies, I think it's the opposite. I get far more bored with modern pacing. There may be quicker edits, but scenes seem to go on way too long and the structure seems to be more clunky. Pre 2010 everything felt more methodical ans economical. Now it just feels that just put everything they shot in screen. Movies have also gotten longer, or at least feel longer.
I was adopted by parents in their 30's, so my 80's experience was actually pretty 70's when I look back. I got snapped into the present day when I went off to school in the 90's, and even then was the weird 60's music listening kid. It wasn't until i was older that I really discovered the 80's properly. Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. The 70's. Burnt orange tiles in the kitchen, playing records in the lounge and crock pot dinners.
Watching films set in the 1970s always feels exactly that, a modern film set in the 1970s. What those films do not have is the actual feel of a film in the 1970s. Now if you could recreate that you’d add an extra dimension to a film set in that time.
VCRs were nowhere near as common in the 70s as they were in the 80s & later. Aside from coming late in the decade, both the machines & tapes were expensive, and rental tapes far less common. People would've bought them overwhelmingly only to record TV shows - albeit that was still the most common use throughout the life of VHS, but meant most people already had a compatible machine for rental tapes. While Betamax was somewhat superior initially, that didn't last very long, and there was little to no difference as time moved on. The perpetual myth of Betamax heavily exaggerates its superiority. Perhaps part of the reason is due to Betacam, which was used for news reporting etc, which was a similarly named but higher quality system.
There are quite a few 70's movies that don't have the typical happy ending that we are used to. I think this goes back to the less decisions by committee that was mentioned in the video. Individual directors/screenwriters were willing to take bigger risks.
I was a teenager in the 70s and even though I regularly went to the drive-in (cinemas or ‘pictures’ as we called them were too far away), I hardly saw any of these films mentioned. Ones I do remember are: airport, Poseidon adventure, grease, rocky horror picture show, Monty python and the holy grail, women in love, apocalypse now (as a young child I saw this- no ratings in those days) I remember seeing Star Wars and my mother asked me to take my 9 year old brother- I hated that movie. 70s fashions were amazing; yes guys mostly wore open necked shirts, jeans and t - shirts, some wore tweed type jackets and ankle leather boots. It was a fantastic time to be a teenager- much less pressure on girls to fit a beauty standard; there was more individualism.
Culture then had a texture and rawness that marks the beginning of the end of Modernism: once you get to the late 80s, Postmodernism is full-blown and surface became depth. Before that, you needed actual depth. And incidentally, 'A Clockwork Orange' is not a Crime film, it's a Science Fiction film and shot in Britain, with British actors based on a novel by a British author. It has very little to do with the US 'Crime' films you cite.
ironically, action sequences are sequences where nothing happens. They just fill in empty space with angst filled eye motion and noise. So .. modern movies, chock-a-block with action sequences, are movies where nothing happens - ie. no substance.
70's movies looked different because with rare exception they pointed cameras at actual people that did things people can do. Bruce Lee wasn't special because he was born that way... he was special because he put in the hard work to be that way, he was a real person. In Alien the protagonists were not space wizard and astro-marines they were tired overworked space truckers. Star Wars (where there were space wizards but darned few at the time)so big because it put in the hard work to show something original (at the time).
You're wrong. It was Italian Neorealism, not the French New Wave, that introduced gritty realism to film that directly influenced 70's Hollywood, as well as more modern indie film. French New Wave, as amazing and influential as it was, was more dreamy and fantastic. Every character had an air of coolness. Older men with young beautiful women. If you take the films of Godard and Truffaut especially, they were heavily influenced by Hitchcock. Whereas if we look at the movies of Martin Scorsese in the 70's, to his own admission, he was influenced by Fellini and Rosselini.
man i've been on a real 70s movie kick. i can't watch anything that isn't from that decade and i feel like it'll be a 70s summer all around for me. this video couldn't have come at a better time
I wonder why they had jettisonable ION Sails on the TIE Fighter toy? That sentimental era at the end cumulated in On Golden Pond in the 80's I guess. Movies and TV were our Culture, the best of the best writing stories to tell around the campfire. I hated when the "we have no culture" BS started in the mid/late 80's. We had the most unified Culture across the largest swath of land in the history of the World. Four time zones all waited for the "Dallas Grand Finale" as one example of a Community sharing a event.
With the slow vs past debate. I feel that action scenes are meant to be fast past however when there need to be standout part in the action that’s when you slow it down because you’re literally looking at that shot for longer.
The 70's is the greatest film era (probably expand from 1968 to 1982) for me. There are other great eras in their own way with great movies from every era the the 70s are the best. I think that the end of the Hays Code and creation of the MPAA rating system had a major affect.
The hair styles scream 70’s. No fades or blending, just sharp bowl cuts. Same with the beards. I call em Just-For-Men beards cause 70’s beards look like the guy on the box.
@@Drakemiser Everyone (including me) had feathered hair in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I don't know how they did it--probably fanning out the hair and cutting it so it has a layered effect?
I like the foreign and independent films of the 70s. There were some good Hollywood pix as well, like The Exorcist, The Sting, Jaws, etc... but it was the independent and foreign movies that really rocked.
Coming after civil rights and the Sexual Revolution, the 70s explored these topics freely, but nobody was worried about hurting feelings because everyone wanted to learn about the topics. The Mafia, Urban Black America, vigilantes, Nam, etc. Now these topics are off limits. The main thing is, in the 70's, the country wasn't as litigious as it is now.
Home video didn’t become a facet of most people’s lives until the 80s. During the 70s, the vhs vs beta wars were still largely confined to professional use (tv stations and such), vcr’s were very expensive, costing upwards of a thousand dollars when they first came out ($4,000 today), and studios were hesitant to release movies on tape. The first U.S. movies released on VHS didn’t come out until 1977 and sold for a hundred bucks a tape. As such, home video didn’t take off until the early 80s, when vcr prices dropped and there were finally enough movies available to kick off the first video rental stores. With the exception of the rich, home video wasn’t part of 70s culture at all.
For me, the 70s were the blossoming of the counterculture. Everything became disputable. Without questioning everything, nothing would ever change. No other decade captured this confluence of angst, adventure, newness, openness, danger and horror. Things weren't working and the prior stories told often lies; something had to change and one thing the powers that be hate is change. Life had to find a way, and the films reflected the longing, the successes and the failures. The "box" was killing us, and we had to break the mold. Too many films to name. The era quickly left with only the fear that our new stories too would need to eventually be questioned and reinvented. Stories both free us and imprison us anew. The one thing we did learn though: there is always another way.
One thing about 1970s and 1980s films had going for them is the lack of steering commitees putting their 2 cents in. The writers and producers could tell actual stories. Since the Robocop and Terminator movies came out, you got at least 5-10 steering commitees ruining every movie that comes out today. You think Demolition Man could get made today ??? We need the grittiness of the 70s, the action of the 80s, the anti-pc of the 90s, and the CGI of the 2020s to make movies great again.
A big thing I've noticed about movies in the 70s compared to later decades is that they often [intentionally] showed the characters travelling from Point A to Point B instead of just cutting to them arriving at a destination, because movies in the 70s were more about the journey than simply what was happening at the destination. They have a very different form of storytelling than later decades. The longer cuts just add to that more grounded-in-life feel to them.
The opening shot of every movie from the early 70s was the underside of a jetliner coming in for a landing. Every one of those movies ended with the death of the hero.
Now it's all happy endings and neatly explained plots, no more downbeat or open endings where it's up to the viewer what happens next. About the going from Point A to Point B, in American films you saw the guy go to his car enter it and next he's at his destination, in a European film you see him driving there all the way. Well, being sarcastic there but it's kind of true.
1:01 A little thing to mention but the 70s also had a huge crime wave and crime was discussed more on TV than ever before. Top this off with the coverage of the Vietnam war and film started to reflect the realities of the dangerous world we live in.
Why do American men love bringing up Vietnam? Didn't they lose?
@@suzygirl1843 Because it was the last war with mass conscription in the US. Protracted wars with non-professional armies tend to attract a lot of public attention.
@@Humanophage Last war? Afghanistan isn't still happening? Iraq? Ukraine is definitely funded by USA
@@suzygirl1843 Thats probably the exact reason they talk about it.
It was a time of despair but also reflection. What to do now? Theres no glory unlike that of WWII since they didnt really win.
@@suzygirl1843 he mentioned its television coverage during the 70's.. not randomly brought it up with no context? tf lol
The people in these movies looked like real people that we see and interact with everyday. These days , every actor is dressed too perfectly. Every hair and every article of clothing is perfect...even if it's supposed to be a person , let say on the fringes or not "normal" Everyone is a caricature of a person. No one looks like the kid on my street, only a theatrical fake wanna be version of the kid on my street. The 70's and 80's had it right, because people for the most part looked like everyday people, making it more believable. Me thinks anyway.
Gotta love The Goonies!
🤓
I agree, actors in the past all looked their part because back then they were already characters to begin with oozing with charisma, often why they became actors in the first place, whereas actors today all look the same all pretty boys who must disguise themselves behind make-up to appear differently, say Depp or DiCaprio. They aren't interesting enough on their own personally, as human characters.
@@LarryFleetwood8675Exactly! Back then, actors had living experience, let’s call it. Made them seem real(er), more human, more charismatic. Most of them had been through the grind, and weren’t even getting fame or great roles while being very young. And those were different times ofc.
While the 1980’s was an AMAZING decade for movies still, I believed it started mostly there.. that change; leading to what we have now.
The Al Pacino’s, the Jack Nicholson’s, so on.. of the 70’s… wouldn’t have been the same in the 80’s. And you had more younger stars, picked while they were fresh and not nearly seasoned enough.
I mean, look at someone like Mickey Rourke.. had all the talent in the world, all the “tools”!! In the 70’s he would’ve been in the best and most popular movies.. but in the 80’s it was a bit different already. He wasn’t your clean cut type, your do as you’re told type, your fresh from being a teen type, that whole sugar coated stuff…..
The 60s made movies for families. The 70s made movies for adults. The 80s made movies for teenagers. The 2010s onwards make movies for man-childs
You're not wrong 🤔
"man-childs"
Hollywood has been making movies for manboys longer than that...Kung Fu movies for example, certain war themed movies like Top Gun etc.
pretty good summary!
and now... Hollywood is only focused on what white women want.
One thing I love about 70's movies is the extensive use of zooms. These days zooms are often unfairly judged as lazy and inferior to dolly shots, but it's just a different technique. Early 60's and 70's movies used them very effectively to add dynamic to a scene, build tension or connect several shots into a single take.
Very interesting. Thanks for commenting! Any movies or shots that come to mind? I'd love to check them out to get a better idea.
@@FilmStack Pretty much the entirety of The Graduate and The Conversation, especially the opening shots. Kubrick used them to great effect in Barry Lyndon and The Shining
Awesome thanks!
@@FilmStack There are even some nice zooms in The Godfather, in the beginning when Don Corleona listens to Bonasera, when Micheal says he will kill Solozzo and McCluskey and also when he shoots them later.
I would say that it always seem a bit weird but also entertaining how often (and really well) they used zooms in 70's movies
Hand camera was also popular, especially after French Connection, to add grit and documentary-style, realistic look.
One of the biggest things that makes 70s films different was the emergence of light-sensitive Eastman Kodak color film, subverting Technicolor, which needed huge amounts of light, often in a studio. It was grainier and desaturated, but you could shoot in much lower light, giving movies like the French Connection their signature look, and allowing filmmakers to shoot on the fly, in real settings, and just made shooting faster and required much lower budget, allowing a different type of movie than one shot on a stage with a massive 2 ton Technicolor 3-strip camera.
Godfather II was the last major film to use the old-style Technicolor film processing.
Is that why films went from bright and shiny in the '60s to brown and grainy in the '70s? I've wondered about that for years. I love the look of Technicolour.
Personally I generally prefer the slower pacing of older movies because in addition to the plot and the characters I'm oftentimes really interested in the world they inhabit and in a slower movie it can be a lot easier to stop, smell the roses, and appreciate the world building.
Me, as well. Just checked out The Long Goodbye, and the first ten minutes is hilarious. Gould spends the first ten minutes trying to find a can of Curry brand cat food to feed his cat. What movie in 2023 would devote the first ten minutes to a PI trying to find a brand of cat food his cat will eat.
The rise of independent film and technology are probably the greatest influences for the 70's "look". The independents broke production out of the confining studio system, and encouraged free expression. Smaller cameras, faster film stock and lenses broke filming out of the studio and into the raw, gritty environment of the real world. Once the new technology and techniques were mastered, the gloss went back on in the 80's and 90's.
My favorite films are the foreign and independent movies from the 70s. Especially the horror movies.
Let's remember blaxploitation was one of the genre that really helped Hollywood get on its feet
Independent cinema really took off during the 90s.
@@jp3813 really? I didn't know that. I thought by then that Hollywood pretty much had a lock on all the theaters.
@@jamesbrice6619 In 1990, TMNT actually became the highest-grossing independent film at that time. Independent filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, etc... further opened those floodgates. Backed up by the likes of Miramax, Lions Gate, & New Line.
Gritty and visceral. The French Connection is the ultimate 70s movie.
agree 100%
70s was the best era for movies : A Clockwork Orange, 2 Godfather films, Taxi driver, one flew over cuckoo's nest, Apocalypse now, Star Wars, Alien, Mad Max, Jaws, the Exorcist, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Chinatown, Rocky, Barry Lyndon etc.
So good
Have you ever seen the Sting?
@@GameyRaccoon yeah, it’s boring as shit
@@thomsboys77 lmfao based
The Shining was released in 1980 but it really is a 70s film.
Also had a lot of great "drive-in movies", aka B. Just recently watched Vanishing Point & Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, fun movies that kick in the balls at the end.
The 70's also had a strong independent movie scene with John Cassavetes, Melvin Van Peebles and Elaine May were standouts of the time continuously experimenting and making films better.
Are you meowing to me? ....
....
Just kitten you 😸🤷
The 70s was the last era where virtually all films were indy or experimental. There was a real sense that you were going to get something you simply didnt think was possible to put on film, so they all had this "sharpness" to them as well as being rough around the edges as they were all redefining genres into more gritty versions of themselves (westerns) from the golden age of Hollywood, or building whole new ones from the ground up (sci-fi), and even reviving old favorites with less spectacle and more "frankness" (musicals). So many had no real money compared to today that they improvised all over the place, which also just made them seem more "real".
And most were done on budgets that were close (or less) to some adult films, which were basically now mainstream releases in some cases! I still love how many 70s films just had these moments with no music playing, likely because they didnt have the budget, but it just makes those movies seem more in the moment.
That is why so many of the movies from then became cult classics or all-time defining movies of cinema.
I also want to add that it’s both the end of the Hays Code and the studio system in Hollywood, during the mid 1960’s, that really allowed filmmakers to have more creative control over their movies because they’re no longer restricted to the old system anymore.
The 70's may be my favourite decade for movies, particularly as a fan of crime drama and the horror genre. In addition to some darker themes and brutal reality becoming an inspiration for various filmmakers, I also like the gritty atmosphere captured in some films of the era (which also appears in some genre movies of the early 80's).
Same here. Independent movies, Italian giallo and horror movies, Filipino films, etc...
While 80s is best for action movies
Same, I'll add that the lack of accessibility made them more special as well, you literally had to catch them or you missed them. Maybe I'm sentimental because I was young back then, but I'm glad I'll never shake my love for that era of film making, it just hits different.
@@chizorama I totally agree. I was an 80's kid, so there was VHS of course, but it was still a matter of finding physical copies and still very different to the modern/online era. As I grew up, I dicovered many of my favourite films that were made in the 70's.
I love the graininess of 70s films. One of the things that bothers me about contemporary movies is the lack of grain - how slick it appears. Everything looks washed out whereas in films from the 1960s, colors just pop, especially when Raoul Coutard is the cinematographer.
The 1970s, in terms of fashion covered a great deal, though there was a lot of earth tones, browns, avocado green, rust. It was an interesting decade that not only looked back to an entire 30 year period from the 1920-50s but also another Egyptomania craze swept the fashion world. The late 70s was saw a lot brighter colors in clothing than was the case for most of the decade - it began to feel like the 1980s, especially because of bands like the Talking Heads. Whit Stillman’s film, The Last Days of Disco (1998) was set “in the very early 1980s) - it was the period when people started wearing preppy clothes.
The directors from the 1970s like Scorsese or Coppola are giants who really struggled to bring about a body of mature work.
Could not agree more. CGI has that sheen. It's a dead giveaway. What's cool is when I come across a 70s flick that has all the scratches and what not on the print. Amazingly, many 70s prints look pristine. How is that possible, I wonder. Scorsese struggled for a few years cuz King Of Comedy was such a bomb, but he hit his stride again with Goodfellas. But to me, he didn't struggle at all. King of Comedy, After Hours and Temptation were all sensational, I thought. But Coppola, boy howdy, Apocalypse was his Swan song.
I absolutely love these videos, it helps me to learn more about film history, since I was born in the late 2000's. I can't wait for the next videos. Wishing you the best.
Thank you! We're glad you like them ☺️
You have a lot of catching up to do! Good luck.
@@new-lvivNot really I grew up with the shows and movies of the early 2000s despite being born in the late 2000s and Shrek was just a movie I didn't like.
You will however experience WW3 very likely, sorry for the sad news.
r u a girl
The increase in pace is probably why I haven't liked many movies I've seen in the last decade or two. Nothing but non-stop action, flashing from scene to scene, and not really much of any story.
You forgot shaky-cam.
All substance with little style...
Damn nothing about the blaxploitation films of the 70s?
The first time I actually watched a film on a VHS machine was 1984. NO ONE I knew had a VHS player in the 1970's. They were a luxury item. We weren't poor, but we were not in the class of people who started buying those machines in the LATE 70's. It came in on the tail end of the decade.
Yes, I definitely associate tape machines with the 1980's. I remember renting tapes in that era. Movie rental shops would usually have a section for VHS tapes and a separate one for Beta.
I agree. Gotta say, this kid totally got that part wrong. Even among the families I knew who were wealthy - one of them whose father was even in the home entertainment business - didn't own video players yet. Wasn't a thing at all til the early 80s.
... and in the early 80s, you still also rented the VHS or BETA machines along with the movie cassettes at the video rental.
You’re absolutely right. My best friends dad was a big ophthalmologist in NJ/NYC. He used get gifts from optometrists because he would send his patients there for glasses. One year in was a VCR another year the full arcade game Asteroids you would see in an arcade. Free sunglasses of course.
Right on .no one had vcrs in The 70s .
Method acting. People did it in the 50s and 60s, but films like the Godfather and Kramer vs Kramer were really defined by it. A lot of the pacing is about letting an actor be the character, and letting interactions play out at a natural pace, as opposed to thinking about keeping the audience entertained. Making the characters and their interactions seem real and complex.
"Earthtone" colors were popular. I even had an early Rockwell calculator in earthtone colors. Browns, tans, amber, dull greens.
Yeah who can forget all the appliances in harvest gold, rust, and avocado green! I always wore the brighter colored clothes because they looked better on me.
You should do one as to why 70s music albums feel and sound different.
70s fashion pieces I recall were T-shirts with iron-on decals, usually from favorite films (Star Wars, Grease) or TV shows (Charlie's Angels/Farrah Fawcett).
this video is not even touching the surface - it´s only clickbait randomly name dropping movies
I remember in one of my film classes we had a whole lesson on how the Steadicam changed moviemaking forever
It still took a long time to catch on though. The inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown, was also the camera operator, and he thought he'd get a ton of work. But aside from The Shining and Rocky, and a few sequences or shots in other movies, so he could barely find a job for about a decade. But eventually by the late-80s, it took off. Garret talked at length in an audio commentary that I listened to, maybe from the Shining Blu-ray.
One of my favourite Spielberg movies is the relatively little-celebrated Munich.
Set in the early seventies, of course, part of its genius is that it looks like a thriller from that era even though it was made in 2005. Most noticeable are lots of big zoom and dolly shots, but there's also filming of actors through car windows, vintage blocking techniques and even old-looking film stock.
It really helps to sell the movie.
I have said this for a while, most current day videos and movies have a cut about every 3 to 5 seconds, and it can get annoying after a while, hell this video does it.
My brother loved the martial arts movies back in the 70s. The local channels used to run them every weekend, badly edited and scratchy copies, but he still watched. Miss you brother ❤
The 70s is one of my fav eras of movies. Especially blaxploitation movies like superfly, shaft, cotton comes to harlem etc
Cleopatra Jones, Blackula, Black Momma, White Momma, Sugar Hill, Coffy, Foxy Brown, etc...
@@jamesbrice6619The Mack.
Stanley Kubrick was filming in the 70s so that was better. Barry Lyndon or the Shining would never win over modern audiences. I'm glad I was there.
11:18 'Betamax was technologically superior'.
It certaninly was. Under laboratory conditions its picture & sound were 20% better than VHS...
But that’s just the beginning of the tragic story of Beta!
I love slowe paced movies - it makes me think more. As someone who grew up in the 70s i like the slowe paces mivies as they are more thought provoking. Most of todays movies seem boring & shallow with too much action and not thoughtful.
My favorite 70s movies were the Godfather JAWS anything Woody Allen
Maybe because the 70's and 80 movies were not all sequels, prequels and remakes???? Maybe they had an actual stories and scripts that were performed by actors instead of plot holes with pretty sparkly people standing around pretending they know how to act. Maybe because you could actually HEAR the dialogue and not have your ears blow out but explosions every other second. Maybe because in the 70's and 80 they made sets and props, and did not depend on CGI and green screening every thing.
Women always pretty
Some 70 film makers were known for documentaries before doing features which had an influence on the look.
VHS man those were great and I hate to be that guy being that I was only born in 2001 but most kids today wouldn’t understand how a VHS tape works.
Same here I’m only 3 years younger than you and I remember when we were still using those heavy box tvs with a built in vhs player and that was when flat screens were still expensive
@@LethalForceEngaged1700 yeah but do you remember the floppy disks ?
@@gmg9010 yeah
@@LethalForceEngaged1700lmao you may remember it but you're an exception for people your age, not the norm. By the late 2000's the vasssttttt majority of household living rooms had flat screens
@@surfingbrrrd they remember it so they know how it works that’s good enough for me.
I was born in 75 after Bruce Lee passed away. My dad introduced me to Bruce when I was 3 or 4. My neighbor was Chinese and had all his movies. I watched them all back to back in the order they came out. I loved them. I remember watching game of death and even then so young I could tell something was off with the movie. Afterwards I asked my dad what was next. He said there were no more movies and that he passed away. That bummed me out. What an icon that over 40 years later and it's one of my youngest memories.
this is my favorite era, I've seen more 70s films than any era, I've you looked closely at a lot of my reviews I typically review more 70s films, this era just speaks to me, everything about this time fits me, the music, the cinema, the culture, the beautiful fashion, why did I have to be born in 2003?..
My favorite films are the foreign and independent movies of the 70s.
I was a teenager in the 70s, it was a fantastic time.
There were so many more individuals and characters then; not so homogenous as today.
Because then you would've been dead by now and wouldn't've watched whatever 70s movies you like with a simple click and have all the movies of history in your computer.
If anything, I would have loved to be born in the 2100s so I could finally play a complete version of Cyberpunk 2077 and many other games that came out broken and every movie from this century.
Well, it wasn't all good. At least you don't reek of cigarette smoke every time you walk into a restaurant like we all did back then. But the cars were cooler, at least the early 70s pre-gas crunch cars. No stupid electronic shit although they did rust out quicker.
If you had lived through the 70s, you wouldn't be so fond of them. You're only familiar with the sanitized version.
Great stuff, thanks!
I would also add the fact that foreign directors/movie-makers had more access to older movies (many American ones) much more than ever before, while growing up and whatnot… and what’s funny is that they ended up influencing American directors/movie-makers that we’re doing their stuff in the 70’s (like you’ve stated)!
Anyway, the 1970’s, really that whole New Hollywood era.. is definitely the best ever for film! Everything culminated into it and it peaked right there.
You also had the highest combination between popularity and quality. Plus, the variety was also crazy; a vast majority of genres, styles, higher or lower budgets… and SO MUCH amazing stuff being made!
What I love about them:1) their artictic honesty 2) rarely "happy endings" (probably because life rarely "ends" in a happy way.)
They went for the other extreme, though. That was another way Star Wars changed Hollywood - up until then 70s SF was incredibly bleak and depressing. Our vision of the future was Clockwork Orange, Rollerball, Soylent Green, Silent Running... the future was going to be a nightmare of overpopulation, pollution, crime, and repression. In other words, like the real world 70s but more so.
@@brucetucker4847 soylent green ws set lst yr
I can't believe that no one mentions (not just the video, the comments too) the holy grail of the 70s.
DISASTER MOVIES.
With an all-star ensemble cast.
They were the same thing Marvel movies do now.
And almost all of them had a bleak or outright sad ending.
A really good overview, however, you left out Blaxploitation and Grindhouse films.
Yep
they used actual practical FX, unlike how all movies are made now.
"we could build a contraption that would be significantly cheaper, but naaaaaaaa id rather spend 28 million for cgi artist to do it instead, and make it look worse" - every single director from the 80's onward.
I would also add several additional things regarding 70s fashion and lifestyle differences vs today. Different or less makeup, more facial and body hair, different nutrition and exercise standards, resulting in different body types and more mature skin appearances. People also tend to speak more seriously in older movies. I believe at least some of the listed factors made people look and appear more mature in 70s movies (and in general). Apologies for my bad English...
I really enjoyed the 80s, 90s, and 2000s videos, and I liked this one a lot too, but I found it distracting and unfortunate that the vid showed so many modern films rather than actual period films. Especially that last section that spoke about the fashion -- there were almost exclusively modern period films that took place in the 70s and were designed to look that way. But the video is about actual 70s films, so why not show the examples in the actual films of the era, instead of showing clips from Good Fellas, Boogie Nights, et all? Sure, the video mentioned modern period films that emulated the old ones -- that would be the only time to show modern films. Shame that the rest of it had so many missed opportunities to show real 70s film clips. That aside, I did think the information and overall structure of this vid was well-done. Looking forward to when you get to the 60s and 50s. (:
Hey! I'm glad you enjoyed the videos and thank you for the feedback. Our goal is to make each video better than the last and this kind of feedback is amazing for us! Cheers!
He did
A lot of 70's films, and even some early 80's films, both American and UK make me feel like I'm in a school/hospital corridor/room on a damp morning. Sort of cold and stark? Porridge is an example of this.
You guys are absolutely terrible at choosing the right clip to illustrate what you're talking about.
Love how you included shots from Boogie Nights (1997) in this as illustrating the look of the 70's. Just goes to show they did a good job on that film.
7:08 - quick cuts and hectic camerawork in action films are TERRIBLE. It's only purpose is to hide the fact that nothing is going on.
70s is my favorite era. From Sting to Superman the Movie; from the French Connection to Jaws; from 3 days of the Condor to Star Wars. It was awesomeness. Frankenheimer, Spielberg, Friedkin, Donner, Lucas, Pollack, Lumet….entertained, intrigued, awed, edutained
There is FAR TOO MUCH fast paced action editing in modern cinema of course.
AND not just in the current trend of Super hero films, this also goes for the modern action thrillers (which date back as far as 1971) they're really nothing new, it's reached a point now, where you can't keep up with the pacing of the story any more & your left with a noisy soulless mess of a film, oh for the old days of character development (so that you get time to care for the characters) i.e- SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, GLADIATOR etc, where scenes were longer & not looking like music videos and advertisments. with flickering primary colours flickering at you constantly
Don't forget some amazing underrated, "flew under the radar" gems that we got from this decade too. Some small 70s films like, The Late Show, The Turning Point, Three Women, Badlands, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, etc. The 70s is one of my favorite retro decades for film and music. Plus, the 70s didn't just have earth tones and suits. There were also some softer and more pastel colors and tones too. It's kind of interesting to see how everything looked so washed out and grainy compared to today's super clear and sharp/crisp films
Everything is upside down today, alas. Modern movies make a mockery of the cinematic holiness of the Steadicam by all their silly shakycam stuff when the Seadicam was actually invented to avoid that so you could see what's going on, say during a chase sequence, today the lazy filmmakers embrace the shakes and thus more visual ugliness. But movies weren't necessarily slower in the '70s, funnily enough US cinema would sometimes tend to be that whereas European cinema would actually be pretty fast-paced at times.
Ofc you enjoyed researching for this vid, you just watch movies💀
Will you do 60s next?
The big city Cops & Robbers Crime Dramas of the '70s were very topical, as Urban street Crime was way up in those days.
Also, that then-new genre mostly replaced the Western, which had been very popular in movies (& TV) since the Silent Era of film (c. pre-1930s).
Best films of this decade are the paranoia ones. The newtwork, parallax view, three days of the condor, marathon man...
What I notice about style in the 70s is the hair: early-mid 70s had some holdovers from the “hippie” look. A lot of long hair. Guys had “mop heads”, for lack of a better term. Girls had typically shoulder-length hair that curled inwards at the end. Then of course there’s the iconic Afro in the disco scene. There’s most likely more iconic hairstyles from the 70s, but the point remains that hair is a big indicator of the style of the decade
70s hairstyles were a lot more styled than 60s hippies. Long hair wasn't anti-establishment any more, the only point was to be cool. The extremely authentic hairstyles in Dazed and Confused are a great example - no actual hippie would have put 1/4 the care into his hair that Wooderson did. Political consciousness of any kind was out and life being about nothing more than being cool and getting high and laid was in.
you should do the 60s or 2010s next!
Yes!!!
Well then... we know what we're going to work on in a coming video 😊
@@FilmStack Dude, you've got to put the name of the films on screen though! I'm glad to say I know most of these films, but there are a few I'd love to look up. Like the ones from 5:11 to 5:27.
I've no idea why people don't try to replicate this look, modern movies are really terrible looking, like giant budget movies look like they were shot on an iphone.
I don't know about that this whole "myth" I would say about a grey 70s my mother would totally contest differently she remembers everything been psychedelic colourful I believe that it's just the quality of camera but didn't really capture the sheer vividness of the 70's but if this video proves anything it proves how underrated and how game-changing the 70s were
It's honestly the most colourful decade. The 80s don't even come close.
Was hoping for a video about the 70s, not a bunch of random Breaking Bad and Paul Blartt clips.
Some of the best movies EVER were made in the seventies, I think these days they have run out of new ideas hence all the remakes & superhero w**k, hence I have no interest in so called new movies;
I'm surprised that American Graffiti didn't come up. I see it as being pivotal in opening the doors for later-70s sentimentality and more "old fashioned" filmmaking. Lucas recognized early on (probably due to THX flopping) that audiences were getting burned out on cynicism. Grafitti made rose-tinted nostalgia cool, and in some ways, Star Wars was an extension of that core idea: escapism through nostalgia.
(And then the hugely popular TV show Happy Days, partially inspired by it, kept that nostalgic flame burning for years.)
True but compared to the later decade's movies American Graffiti still had a very 1970's gritty look, an era-specific meandering plot and naturalistic dialogue.
@C45rpm Yep, even as a little kid, I was listening to 50s rock. They sold collections on TV, and I got one for Christmas. You mention PotP (one of my faves!), in which Swan was said to be responsible for kicking off "the nostalgia wave of the 70s." It was a thing!
THX could be interpreted as having an optimistic outlook, at least because Thex escaped at the end. So the individual triumphed over the collective. Didn't destroy or alter the whole system, but SEN set out to do that and failed. In the commentary, George mentions that the society of that world is so far gone into the domain of oppression that it can't be changed for the better, only surrendered to or escaped from. I guess that could be interpreted as defeatist and fatalistic. But if an individual succeeds in escaping, as Thex did, then that's at least a little bit optimistic.
Death to slave morality!
@@judsongaiden9878 It's not clear that THX survives though. To me it appears he winds up in the wilderness with no way to provide for himself and no human contact. If it is a "happy" ending, it's still pretty bleak.
@@RCAvhstape No argument there. Maybe he became like Robert Neville from 'The Omega Man'.
Because in the 70's we weren't a bunch of over sensitive wimps being offended by everything.
VHS vs Betamax was mostly an 80s thing.
Why did you use more modern films to talk about 70s fashion? More attention to details, please.
Some of the crime films from the 60s and 50s had a dark tine to them, they didn't always show it but it was implied
In the 70s movies still had actual costume & wardrobe designers. Film influenced fashion for that reason. Period films like Bonnie & Clyde or even 2001 & Saturday Night Fever had a huge impact on the street fashions of the day at the same time as the technological innovations in fabric manufacturing. Soooo, yeah, a lot of synthetic fibres in 70s clothing that didn't exist in the decades before (polyester mostly) that allowed more variety/less expensive clothing options.
Nice work. One thing, though: Home video systems dudn't actually become ubiquitous until the 80s; they existed, but were quite expensive, in the 70s - very rarely seen in homes. However, cable TV, which played fairly recently-released movies, did start becoming popular by the late 70s, and exploded in popularity beginning in the early 80s - with channels like MTV and ESPN, and also movie channels - which cost extra - like HBO, becoming mainstream staples, until by the mid-late 80s practically everyone had cable (and home VCR machines).
Movies of the 70s look far better than those of the 80s. In the 1970s, movie genres went through revolutionary development, but in 80s movies seemed to stay still or go backward, with no dynamics at all.
I think you're wrong about pacing in modern movies, I think it's the opposite. I get far more bored with modern pacing. There may be quicker edits, but scenes seem to go on way too long and the structure seems to be more clunky. Pre 2010 everything felt more methodical ans economical. Now it just feels that just put everything they shot in screen. Movies have also gotten longer, or at least feel longer.
I love slow pace. A24 films incorporate a more slower pace and it works
movies from this era are the best
I was adopted by parents in their 30's, so my 80's experience was actually pretty 70's when I look back. I got snapped into the present day when I went off to school in the 90's, and even then was the weird 60's music listening kid. It wasn't until i was older that I really discovered the 80's properly. Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. The 70's. Burnt orange tiles in the kitchen, playing records in the lounge and crock pot dinners.
Watching films set in the 1970s always feels exactly that, a modern film set in the 1970s. What those films do not have is the actual feel of a film in the 1970s. Now if you could recreate that you’d add an extra dimension to a film set in that time.
To me films from the 70s look the way music from the 70s sound. Sort of soft. Analog. I really like it!
VCRs were nowhere near as common in the 70s as they were in the 80s & later. Aside from coming late in the decade, both the machines & tapes were expensive, and rental tapes far less common. People would've bought them overwhelmingly only to record TV shows - albeit that was still the most common use throughout the life of VHS, but meant most people already had a compatible machine for rental tapes.
While Betamax was somewhat superior initially, that didn't last very long, and there was little to no difference as time moved on. The perpetual myth of Betamax heavily exaggerates its superiority.
Perhaps part of the reason is due to Betacam, which was used for news reporting etc, which was a similarly named but higher quality system.
Because they are better movies than current. Simples.
There are quite a few 70's movies that don't have the typical happy ending that we are used to. I think this goes back to the less decisions by committee that was mentioned in the video. Individual directors/screenwriters were willing to take bigger risks.
I was a teenager in the 70s and even though I regularly went to the drive-in (cinemas or ‘pictures’ as we called them were too far away), I hardly saw any of these films mentioned.
Ones I do remember are: airport, Poseidon adventure, grease, rocky horror picture show, Monty python and the holy grail, women in love, apocalypse now (as a young child I saw this- no ratings in those days) I remember seeing Star Wars and my mother asked me to take my 9 year old brother- I hated that movie.
70s fashions were amazing; yes guys mostly wore open necked shirts, jeans and t - shirts, some wore tweed type jackets and ankle leather boots.
It was a fantastic time to be a teenager- much less pressure on girls to fit a beauty standard; there was more individualism.
Culture then had a texture and rawness that marks the beginning of the end of Modernism: once you get to the late 80s, Postmodernism is full-blown and surface became depth. Before that, you needed actual depth. And incidentally, 'A Clockwork Orange' is not a Crime film, it's a Science Fiction film and shot in Britain, with British actors based on a novel by a British author. It has very little to do with the US 'Crime' films you cite.
ironically, action sequences are sequences where nothing happens. They just fill in empty space with angst filled eye motion and noise. So .. modern movies, chock-a-block with action sequences, are movies where nothing happens - ie. no substance.
70's movies looked different because with rare exception they pointed cameras at actual people that did things people can do. Bruce Lee wasn't special because he was born that way... he was special because he put in the hard work to be that way, he was a real person. In Alien the protagonists were not space wizard and astro-marines they were tired overworked space truckers. Star Wars (where there were space wizards but darned few at the time)so big because it put in the hard work to show something original (at the time).
You're wrong. It was Italian Neorealism, not the French New Wave, that introduced gritty realism to film that directly influenced 70's Hollywood, as well as more modern indie film. French New Wave, as amazing and influential as it was, was more dreamy and fantastic. Every character had an air of coolness. Older men with young beautiful women. If you take the films of Godard and Truffaut especially, they were heavily influenced by Hitchcock. Whereas if we look at the movies of Martin Scorsese in the 70's, to his own admission, he was influenced by Fellini and Rosselini.
Tarintino owes his career to the ‘70s.
man i've been on a real 70s movie kick. i can't watch anything that isn't from that decade and i feel like it'll be a 70s summer all around for me. this video couldn't have come at a better time
I wonder why they had jettisonable ION Sails on the TIE Fighter toy?
That sentimental era at the end cumulated in On Golden Pond in the 80's I guess.
Movies and TV were our Culture, the best of the best writing stories to tell around the campfire. I hated when the "we have no culture" BS started in the mid/late 80's. We had the most unified Culture across the largest swath of land in the history of the World. Four time zones all waited for the "Dallas Grand Finale" as one example of a Community sharing a event.
There was a lot more freedom of expression than any other era before plus a more films trying to be more artsy.
The definitive car chase decade 😎
I visited San Francisco in 2002. Got a big deja vu feeling looking at those hills
Things were dirtier and grimy in the 70’s. Everything was a little darker. Not just in the movies, it actually was that way.
The 70s were in my opinion the best decade ever
Society's attention span has ruined Cinema.
With the slow vs past debate. I feel that action scenes are meant to be fast past however when there need to be standout part in the action that’s when you slow it down because you’re literally looking at that shot for longer.
The 70's is the greatest film era (probably expand from 1968 to 1982) for me. There are other great eras in their own way with great movies from every era the the 70s are the best. I think that the end of the Hays Code and creation of the MPAA rating system had a major affect.
The hair styles scream 70’s. No fades or blending, just sharp bowl cuts. Same with the beards. I call em Just-For-Men beards cause 70’s beards look like the guy on the box.
I'm taking it you forgot about feathered hair, which which was totally late 1970s.
@@mournblade1066 yea. That’s what I was trying to describe. How’d they get their hair to do that!? Lol
@@Drakemiser Everyone (including me) had feathered hair in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I don't know how they did it--probably fanning out the hair and cutting it so it has a layered effect?
@@mournblade1066 I still catch a feathered mullet every so often and I’m like, “respect”👍🏿
@@mournblade1066 can’t forget the Flobee of the late 80’s. Perfect mullet every time….all the time.😎
Loved growing up in that decade
I like the foreign and independent films of the 70s. There were some good Hollywood pix as well, like The Exorcist, The Sting, Jaws, etc... but it was the independent and foreign movies that really rocked.
Coming after civil rights and the Sexual Revolution, the 70s explored these topics freely, but nobody was worried about hurting feelings because everyone wanted to learn about the topics. The Mafia, Urban Black America, vigilantes, Nam, etc. Now these topics are off limits. The main thing is, in the 70's, the country wasn't as litigious as it is now.
Home video didn’t become a facet of most people’s lives until the 80s. During the 70s, the vhs vs beta wars were still largely confined to professional use (tv stations and such), vcr’s were very expensive, costing upwards of a thousand dollars when they first came out ($4,000 today), and studios were hesitant to release movies on tape. The first U.S. movies released on VHS didn’t come out until 1977 and sold for a hundred bucks a tape. As such, home video didn’t take off until the early 80s, when vcr prices dropped and there were finally enough movies available to kick off the first video rental stores. With the exception of the rich, home video wasn’t part of 70s culture at all.
For me, the 70s were the blossoming of the counterculture. Everything became disputable. Without questioning everything, nothing would ever change. No other decade captured this confluence of angst, adventure, newness, openness, danger and horror. Things weren't working and the prior stories told often lies; something had to change and one thing the powers that be hate is change.
Life had to find a way, and the films reflected the longing, the successes and the failures. The "box" was killing us, and we had to break the mold.
Too many films to name. The era quickly left with only the fear that our new stories too would need to eventually be questioned and reinvented. Stories both free us and imprison us anew. The one thing we did learn though: there is always another way.
One thing about 1970s and 1980s films had going for them is the lack of steering commitees putting their 2 cents in.
The writers and producers could tell actual stories.
Since the Robocop and Terminator movies came out, you got at least 5-10 steering commitees ruining every movie that comes out today.
You think Demolition Man could get made today ???
We need the grittiness of the 70s, the action of the 80s, the anti-pc of the 90s, and the CGI of the 2020s to make movies great again.