The period between 1969's Easy Rider and 1977's Star Wars has come to be recognised as a golden age of American cinema. A complex range of social, economic and cultural factors – the 60s counter-culture, Vietnam, Watergate, civil, women's and gay rights, the oil crisis, the final death rattle of the old studio system and the rise of film school and/or Roger Corman-trained film-makers with artistic aspirations are only the most significant – came together to give rise to films like M*A*S*H , The French Connection , The Godfather , Mean Streets , The Exorcist Chinatown , Nashville , Taxi Driver and Network that would have been impossible a few years previous.
There are two big problems with all this, as presented in A Decade Under the Influence . The first is that the story is, by now, an oft-told, stale one. Can the likes of Martin Scorsese, Francis (Ford) Coppola, William Friedkin, Dennis Hopper, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader – in other words the usual roll-call – really have anything new to say after all these years and interviews? The second is that film-makers Richard LaGravenese and Ted Demme are too in awe of their subjects to ask the difficult questions that might have given them something new – like why none of their interviewees has managed to consistently match their early 70s form since.
The overall result is a simplified, generalising, best-of compilation version of Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls that omits the rampant egos and cocaine habits and writes history squarely from the perspectives of the (surviving, still active) victors.
Worth watching on television – where it will undoubtedly turn up sooner or later – but not going out of your way to see in the cinema.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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