I'm talking about this one and the Godfather, but there's also something about Taxi Driver, a film, like the Last Detail, shot by Michael Chapman. Does anybody else see what I mean? Especially when you watch an old video of these films, before it gets remastered. The shadows, etc. Is it the film stock they used, or the cameras? I just love the look of them, which is another reason why the 70's was such a great decade for movies.
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Hal Ashby was a very visual director because all of his films had a great look. I think he deserves some of the credit for the look. Haskell Wexler, John Alonzo, Gordon Willis, and Lazlo Kovaks were all great cinematographers from the 70s that really contributed to that look on other films.
Ashby used Wexler for his later films. I don't think his work in COMING HOME gets the credit it deserves.
I agree that the cinematography of the 70s is top notch.
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Excellent points by vmf-1.
However, we *do* see and *will* see the like of these films again. The trace elements of their social realism have never gone away in European, Asian and Latin American film.
For instance, look at Almodovar's films which eagerly cling to the street and its bruised, renegade culture. Check out Michael Haneke's movies. Takishi Miike in Japan has shot work, such as his Black Society Trilogy, which visually and thematically owes much to 70s American films, and they'll appeal to anyone who likes early Scorsese.
And not all working American directors have been forced to make brain dead strobe-lit crap for Hollywood or pretty twee navel-gazing for the Sundance circuit.
One gifted U.S. director continuing the onto-the-street approach is Jarmusch, whose movies continue to paint the U.S. street just as it looks: grimy, despairing and struggling (except, of course, where the hands of Disney and the right wing have been felt). See the mean streets of Ghost Dog or the backwoods rust of Broken Flowers.
The 70s tradition isn't completely dead, it's just a minority aesthetic holding its lonely own against the octoplex assembly line. It may make a comeback here yet. War and social upheaval helped give birth to 70s film. As the Wal-Marts multiply, the American Dream runs low on credit and believers and Hollywood continues to lose piles of money, better, botox-free American cinema may be around the corner.
<<<<Ashby used Wexler for his later films. I don't think his work in COMING HOME gets the credit it deserves. >>>>
Why his work in "Coming Home" is great? I am not professional, CH is a great film, but, compared with Wexler's other films, such as "Who's Afaid of Virginia Woolf?", its cinematography really disappointed me. There is only one shot looks interesing to me: Luke rode his wheelchair, rushing to the camera, made a sharp turn right before he hit the camera.
In addition to great maverick directors like Ashby, we also have the renaissance of outstanding European cinematographers coming to work in America. A lot of them had been shooting low budget films for awhile, but then go their chance to do more respectable work when Easy Rider broke. That European way of looking at the world, that's what Robert Evans wanted when he hired Polanski for Chinatown. It's an outsider's perspective, one focused on characters.
You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.
I don't suppose there's any reason for younger viewers to understand the archaic world of film. Film as in Kodak product and process. Until the late 90s Kodak was the world's largest consumer of silver, bigger than the US Mint. There's a couple of few things that contribute to the 'look'.
Fundamentally color transparency of this period had poor resolution and little latitude. Out of the studio on 'available light' (watch the train scene as the porter walks past them and you see his reflection in the window) the film is pushed to the limit. High speed film is grainy to begin with and 'push processed' (see 'Zone System') the halides clump worse yet. The ultimate in available light was Kubrick's "Barry Lindon" shot with candle light and a monstrous lens.
There were a few reasons directors went for this way aside from being cheaper. It gave a 'gritty' effect that made them distinct from the perfection of studio Technicolor and presumably more authentic. Too, the technical excellence of B&W of the same period left photographers both still and 'continuous' as it was called in an identity crises. Properly done film left the the photographer a documentarian without art. The reaction was an explosion of techniques: solarization, gauze scrims, push processing, under/over developement, anything to obscure what Kodak went so hard to produce.
I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed!share
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The 70s is the best! (I wish I was born 20 years earlier...)
sharepj, I came of age in the 70's and I know exactly what you mean. To me, the 70's was the greatest decade ever for films, and the look...you just know it when you see it.
sharethe sound always stands out in 70's moviesWhen there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...
'Specially in a film like the Conversation. Another famous film with great sound is A Man Escaped. It's not from the 70's but it is a tense film that I think won some major award at Cannes in the '50's.
You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.
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The 70's was a great decade and I have to say most of my favorite movies come from that decade: Three Women, the Conversation, Straight Time, Harry and Tonto, Play Misty for Me, The Beguiled, Scarecrow, Panic In Needle Park....
Too many to list. The decade was the best for myself and I was a teenager in the 70's -- man I'm getting old!
You can't emphasize the importance of the film stock enough. It's amazing the difference of the look between films like Last Detail and 60's films. They had their own look but I prefer the 70's :)
You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.
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