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DVD A Decade Under the Influence
How did Hollywood make so many great, challenging, offbeat films in the 1970s? A Decade Under the Influence lists the reasons--or rather, lets the people who did the filmmaking list the reasons. The decade-shaping interviewees include Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Francis Coppola, et al. The film's argument has actually been conventional wisdom for at least 10 years, but it's well-supported by an abundance of clips, which should inspire even hardcore film buffs to seek out rarities such as Thunderbolt and Lightfoot or The King of Marvin Gardens. One might observe that the scarcity of women directors or black filmmakers suggests that the decade was not entirely golden, and the memories may be burnished a bit by nostalgia. But there's no question that the big studios were far more adventurous back then, and this briskly moving survey gives a lively Film 101 lecture in exactly why. --Robert Horton
It is apparent to me that those that don't appreciate this documentary are missing out, and misleading potential buyers, on a great piece of filmmaking. How many films include Coppola, Hopper, Scorsese, Lumet, Christie, among others in a documentary?
The film illuminates on the profound and revolutionary techniques by these "student mentality" (meaning innovative) filmmakers and actors. It is such an interesting and hip documentary handled with care, with a great soundtrack and cool, and surprising, clips.
Those that want to grow as a filmmaker should watch and heed the words of these film icons. Sure, it's nostalgic, but it should be; a film involving the free-ing spirit of '70s films.
It'd be interesting if it included more nudity from the various influential films. Regardless, it is a wonderful companion to any aspiring filmmaker, and much better than Easy Riders Raging Bulls, which focuses too much on the excess of the era.
A Decade Under the Influence shows even the artistry of the money-making Corman, along the next generation of filmmakers! Great film! Deserves more praise from Amazon!
Puff piece
While this film might be moderately interesting to those who don't know much about '70's American cinema, it's a dud to anyone who has seen most of the landmark films of that decade. Coppola,Scorsese, etc. are revered in this Docu, and you have to wonder if the interviewers intentionally skipped over some of the problems of a directors having too much freedom. Only Scorsese gives some mention of 'New York, New York' being a dud, while there's no mention of half the insanity that went on during Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now', although it's been well documented in the film "Hearts of Darkness".
If you want to watch something better, buy "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls". If you want something that involves just as much selective memory, but a heck of a lot more fun to watch, get "The Kid Stays in the Picture".
Shallow & self-serving & disappointing.
I can only agree with those other viewers who found major gaps & omissions in the "documentary". No mention of Michael Ritchie or John Boorman that I could see. But lots of footage of "hot" & "trendy" folks like Mazursky, Avildsen & Hopper. Even the bit of commentary from Friedkin, Altman & Coppola that might have given this effort some real substance is too slight & superficial to matter. It's stuff you've read or heard a thousand times before.
This BBC production is a companion to Peter Biskind's 1998 book by the same name, an excellent dish on the 1970s American movie scene. It roughly follows the same path, tracing how maverick filmmakers revitalized Hollywood, from Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider to the triumphant quartet of Coppola/Lucas/Spielberg/Scorsese. Any fan will want to listen in as nearly 50 actors and artists remember the day. However, the star meter is on low wattage, with today's most successful directors only talked about, and seen in often bemusingly vintage clips. The better-produced, higher-star-wattage A Decade Under the Influence covers much of the same ground. An on-screen Biskind would have helped matters, but he is nowhere to be seen. Yet there are moments from the book that come to life, be it... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Kenneth Bowser DVD Release Date: Released the 11 May 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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"I can only talk about what has moved me or intrigued me," says filmmaker Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull) at the beginning of this four-hour documentary about his passion for U.S. cinema. "I can't really be objective here." Hallelujah! A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies is the perfect antidote to the forced and artificial doctrine of the American Film Institute's so-called 100 best films. The AFI's English cousin, the British Film Institute, did a brilliant thing in enlisting Scorsese--probably the most famous student of cinema in the U.S.--to open up and speak at length for this project about the history of artistic survival among Hollywood directors. Working with cowriter and codirector Michael Henry Wilson, Scorsese takes a highly intuitive and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Martin Scorsese Director(s): Michael Henry Wilson - Martin Scorsese DVD Release Date: Released the 12 September 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Not only did movie mogul Robert Evans produce some of the greatest movies ever made--Chinatown, The Godfather, and Rosemary's Baby, as well as huge hits like Love Story and Urban Cowboy--but he defined Hollywood high life, dating models and movie stars and, eventually, succumbing to cocaine addiction and scandal. You don't live like this without having a huge ego, and that ego is gloriously on display in The Kid Stays in the Picture, a brilliantly dishy documentary on Evans. What puts this cunning compilation of movie clips and digitally manipulated photos over the top is that Evans himself narrates the movie with a riveting mix of narcissistic self-aggrandizement and cool self-assessment. There are no interviews with other people to give any... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Evans Director(s): Brett Morgen - Nanette Burstein DVD Release Date: Released the 01 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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An epic in length and breadth, this documentary aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Mark Achbar - Jennifer Abbott DVD Release Date: Released the 05 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Visions of Light is not just for film buffs. In fact, if the presentation of the Oscar for Best Cinematography is your cue to take a bathroom break from the Academy Awards, then this exhilarating documentary will help you see movies in a whole new light. Named Best Documentary by the National Society of Film Critics as well as several film-critic associations, Visions of Light traces the history and illuminates the art of cinematography. It profiles the cameramen who pioneered the visual language of cinema (such as D.W. Griffith's cameraman Billy Bitzer and Gregg Toland, who shot Orson Welles's Citizen Kane), as well as the masters they influenced, among them Néstor Alemendros (Days of Heaven), Vilmos Zsigmond (McCabe and Mrs. Miller), and Gordon... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Conrad L. Hall - John Bailey - Vilmos Zsigmond - Charles Lang - Sven Nykvist Director(s): Arnold Glassman - Todd McCarthy - Stuart Samuels DVD Release Date: Released the 09 May 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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