In 2003 the Independent Film Channel produced a nearly three hour long three part documentary called A Decade Under The Influence (a nod to the 1974 John Cassavetes film A Woman Under The Influence), about American cinema during the 1970s. The general posit of the film, co-directed by Ted Demme and Richard LaGravenese, is that the 1970s were a 'tweener period between the collapse of the old Hollywood film studio system and the rise of the Lowest Common Denominator summer blockbuster mentality, ushered in by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, that destroyed the template of directors having control and authorship of their works.
Now, anyone that has even a passing interest in film- American or otherwise, cannot disagree with this premise. The problem is that the documentary itself is all style (including a great opening musical track) and no substance. In short, it's an MTV-like hyperreal and scattershot take on the films from that decade which were anything but hyperreal and scattershot. Imagine Steven Spielberg bemoaning the loss of Orson Welles when his career is the utter antithesis of that man's. Hypocrisy is a word that floats to mind. That or an ironic streak beyond sharp. Go with the former, people!
The film starts out with an homage to the European greats of the 1960s, who helped inspire the younger Americans. It also has the usual 1970s crowd of filmmakers- from greats like Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese to once-greats like Francis Ford Coppola and Hal Ashby, to has-beens like Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin, to never weres like Monte Hellman. And there are some classic clips from Easy Rider, The Godfather, Bonnie And Clyde, Chinatown, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, The Graduate, Annie Hall, Network, and others, but it's all perfunctory, surface, and vain. Not a single film nor scene is really looked at, analyzed, put into a blender and studied for why it worked, why it worked in the context it did, nor why such scenes are absent from the films of the Peter Jacksons and Michael Bays .This film lacks any real insight and is too fawning, as if a study of a small group of adepts who have a secret they don't want others to know. The problem is that their secret is well known and their acting like they can keep it is just plain silly .A critic like Kenneth Turan or Roger Ebert would likely have remedied those sorts of shortcomings, but, as with many possible fruitful avenues it could have gone down- such as viewing the decade through the lens of a dozen or two key films, and analyzing scenes for what they meant and how they expressed their points, the whole film fails. It lacks the substance and edginess that it claims for its very subject matter, even though some good insight is provided by, of all people, the British actress Julie Christie.
Then there is the smugness. Don't get me wrong- guys like Coppola and Scorsese made great films in that decade, and while Scorsese's only gone downhill in the last decade, Coppola's artistic drought is nearing thirty years since Apocalypse Now. And while Scorsese is not totally condemnatory of modern Hollywood, Coppola seems to buy in to the 'Evil Suits' theory of American film destruction. No doubt that that is mostly to blame, but many of these young directors got big egos and vanity took over, resulting in critical and financial disasters like Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, or the crash and burn personal lives of filmmakers like Peter Bogdanovich (whose career never recovered) and Roman Polanski (whose career did). The only person in the film who even comes close to telling these truths is a production designer from Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show- Polly Platt, who blames the loss of the edginess that the 1970s films had on just this fatness and sassiness, claiming that the young auteurs, especially, got old, rich and lost touch with the very things they and their films once were icons for .
A Decade Under The Influence is a so-so attempt to reveal the depths of a subject better left for a ten or twelve hour PBS documentary by one of the Burns brothers. That's because the two directors of this film are too soft and intimately related to the subject matter (as example, Ted Demme's uncle- Jonathan Demme, was one of the young 1960s auteurs). A more objective approach to the film was needed, and this lack of objectivity is the underlying problem that results in all the film's aforementioned problems. In short, while they are the symptoms, a lack of objectivity is the cause, and the best documentaries always strive for objectivity, lest they become Michael Moorean agitprop. And that's a fate and storyline as bad as any lame Hollywood suit could brainstorm.
Now, anyone that has even a passing interest in film- American or otherwise, cannot disagree with this premise. The problem is that the documentary itself is all style (including a great opening musical track) and no substance. In short, it's an MTV-like hyperreal and scattershot take on the films from that decade which were anything but hyperreal and scattershot. Imagine Steven Spielberg bemoaning the loss of Orson Welles when his career is the utter antithesis of that man's. Hypocrisy is a word that floats to mind. That or an ironic streak beyond sharp. Go with the former, people!
The film starts out with an homage to the European greats of the 1960s, who helped inspire the younger Americans. It also has the usual 1970s crowd of filmmakers- from greats like Woody Allen, Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese to once-greats like Francis Ford Coppola and Hal Ashby, to has-beens like Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin, to never weres like Monte Hellman. And there are some classic clips from Easy Rider, The Godfather, Bonnie And Clyde, Chinatown, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, The Graduate, Annie Hall, Network, and others, but it's all perfunctory, surface, and vain. Not a single film nor scene is really looked at, analyzed, put into a blender and studied for why it worked, why it worked in the context it did, nor why such scenes are absent from the films of the Peter Jacksons and Michael Bays .This film lacks any real insight and is too fawning, as if a study of a small group of adepts who have a secret they don't want others to know. The problem is that their secret is well known and their acting like they can keep it is just plain silly .A critic like Kenneth Turan or Roger Ebert would likely have remedied those sorts of shortcomings, but, as with many possible fruitful avenues it could have gone down- such as viewing the decade through the lens of a dozen or two key films, and analyzing scenes for what they meant and how they expressed their points, the whole film fails. It lacks the substance and edginess that it claims for its very subject matter, even though some good insight is provided by, of all people, the British actress Julie Christie.
Then there is the smugness. Don't get me wrong- guys like Coppola and Scorsese made great films in that decade, and while Scorsese's only gone downhill in the last decade, Coppola's artistic drought is nearing thirty years since Apocalypse Now. And while Scorsese is not totally condemnatory of modern Hollywood, Coppola seems to buy in to the 'Evil Suits' theory of American film destruction. No doubt that that is mostly to blame, but many of these young directors got big egos and vanity took over, resulting in critical and financial disasters like Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, or the crash and burn personal lives of filmmakers like Peter Bogdanovich (whose career never recovered) and Roman Polanski (whose career did). The only person in the film who even comes close to telling these truths is a production designer from Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show- Polly Platt, who blames the loss of the edginess that the 1970s films had on just this fatness and sassiness, claiming that the young auteurs, especially, got old, rich and lost touch with the very things they and their films once were icons for .
A Decade Under The Influence is a so-so attempt to reveal the depths of a subject better left for a ten or twelve hour PBS documentary by one of the Burns brothers. That's because the two directors of this film are too soft and intimately related to the subject matter (as example, Ted Demme's uncle- Jonathan Demme, was one of the young 1960s auteurs). A more objective approach to the film was needed, and this lack of objectivity is the underlying problem that results in all the film's aforementioned problems. In short, while they are the symptoms, a lack of objectivity is the cause, and the best documentaries always strive for objectivity, lest they become Michael Moorean agitprop. And that's a fate and storyline as bad as any lame Hollywood suit could brainstorm.