Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23782 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-02-05
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 116 minutes

Synopsis
A documentary that sets out the story of the rising stars of 70s Hollywood cinema. Containing a mixture of archive footage, film clips and newly conducted interviews, the documentary contains contributions from such luminaries as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Dennis Hopper and George Lucas.

Customer Reviews

A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE?
Anyone who has read Peter Biskind's seminal book on what he describes as the 'sex, drugs and rock and roll generation who saved Hollywood,' namely the era which lasted from the late Sixties untill roughly the late Seventies in American film and which is considered to be by many the last golden age of Hollywood, will likely come away from this Documentary film adaptation of the book with mixed feelings.

The documentary gives the viewer the bare outline one who has read the book is familiar with:-

A) The death of the old studio system sometime in the Sixties whose demise was hastened by such ill-considered mega-flops as Cleopatra, Paint Your Wagon and Hello Dolly.

(B) The rise of a burgeoning and untapped youth market eager to see things they could identify with on screen.

(C) The Trojan Horse of the 'Roger Corman Film School' i.e 'King of the B-Movies' Producer/Director Roger Corman who firstly tapped into the hitherto untapped youth market, with B-Movies like The Trip and The Wild Angels, and secondly opened the doors to the untried and untested Film school graduates and harbingers of the 'New Hollywood' Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese and Peter Bogdanovich amongst many others.

D) The rise of the 'movie brats' influenced as they were by the French and Italian 'new wave' brought a much more more realistic approach to story-telling that was evident in European cinema at that time (complete with it's attendant moral and sexual ambiguities) to American film for the very first time.

E) The shift in style and in cultural outlook helped to foster a climate of freedom and creativity which allowed the 'New Hollywood' to flourish and produce such great films as The Last Picture Show, The Godfather, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Mash, Harold and Maude, Network, Deliverance, All the Presidents Men, Dog Day Afternoon and a host of other films which a mere ten years previously would never have been made.

F) The Fall. Starting with Jaws and continued by Star Wars in the mid to late Seventies the era of the Blockbuster is shown as destroying this last era of innocence in Hollywood as commerce and the studio exec's reassert creative control.

All very well and good you might say but why only the three stars? churlish though it might appear it feels as though something is missing, the story is condensed and in the process something is lost.

My recomendation is firstly read the book but secondly watch Ted Demme's excellent documentary 'A Decade under the Influence' which covers this era by primarily focusing on the films rather than (as is the case in this documenary) by focusing too heavily on the personalities involved and their associated drug problems.