The Movie And Its Style Are More Important Than The Actors

Sequels to classic movies are always a dicey proposition. We have a few sequels that matched or bettered their originals: Godfather II(with a Best Picture win like the original); Aliens; Silence of the Lambs.

But more often than not , a sequel proves that there was something unique and final about the original that cannot be duplicated.

More American Graffiti(1979) proved that about American Graffiti(1973.)

American Graffiti was famously set in the "last year of innocence" in the sixties: 1962. The year before JFK got shot and ushered in Vietnam and tumult and counterculture reaction.

More American Graffiti elected to split up its various characters into four progressive New Year's Eves: 1964, 1965, 1966, and 1967. At once , the film elected to take its characters from "the innocence of the early 60's and into the change and darkness of the late 60's"(which was no fun at all) and to do something rather disastrous: splltting the characters up and giving them too much individual weight.

Richard Dreyfuss(Curt) refused to do More American Graffiti , but everybody else showed up -- even Now a Big Star Harrison Ford in a cameo as Bob Falfa, now a San Francisco cop.

The characters had been "split" up as well in American Graffiti -- but all in the same town, on the same night -- and most of them began and ended the film together.

But "split up" across YEARS in More American Graffiti, the characters were revealed to be: pretty shallow actually, not much to them, and certainly not enough to make us care individually about them as we had in the original.

But that begs the question. My point here is that the original American Graffiti was not so much about its teenage characters as it was about a TIME(1962 and the end of the 50s; high school and the end of the final summer after it; and dusk til dawn) and its own STYLE(incredible, what with the discordant ambient sounds of the night and its wall-to-wall 50s/60's rock and roll.)

The power of American Graffiti was to impose upon its small group of somewhat interesting teen characters the much larger universe of "the sixties" AND of "coming of age" AND of "70's movie brat ingenuity" (precision photography, sound effects, musical tracks.)

A movie to compare American Graffiti to is: Alfred Hitchocck's "Rear Window"(1954) in which the cinematic technique overcomes the people in the story(and in which, just like in American Graffiti, distant ambient SOUNDS are all over the soundtrack.)

This is not to say that the characters in American Graffiti are meaningless. The Ron Howard-Cindy Williams teenage romance about to be dashed by college separation is a very real thing; Richard Dreyfuss does what he can to make Curt the most thoughtful and sensitive of the kids, and Candy Clark nails the tough sexuality and borderline empathy of a "bad girl who isn't really all that bad." But none of the characters are really given a chance to do much on too large a scale; its the last night of innocence, that's powerful enough.

Note in passing: everybody in American Graffiti seems cast just right except one, to me: Ron Howard as Steve Bolander. He's supposed to be "the Big Man on Campus" and the rather sultry older carhop comes on to him but -- he seems way too boyish and "Opie-esque" to be such a campus leader. (Howard was also already starting to get the slightly strange features of a child star growing into adulthood "wrong.") That said, it was probably appropriate to cast the then-girlish and sort of bookish Cindy Williams as the BMOC's girlfriend. It suggests that in Modesto, these ARE the coolest kids in class -- no beauty queen cheerleader type for Bolander.

In any event, American Graffiti hit, and hit big, I'd say, for three reasons: (1) 50's/60's nostalgia; (2) the feelings EVERYBODY has about the end of high school and the beginning of adulthood; and (3) its incredibly cinematic and creative technical dazzle(see also: Rear Window.)

The characters --as More American Graffiti proved -- were merely secondary.