Decade Of Success

Recently I've been reading a very revealing book entitled Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by a guy named Peter Biskind. It's all about Hollywood in the 1970s and the big filmmakers who emerged in that decade - Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, and so on. If you're at all interested in the inner workings of Hollywood studios at this time I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is incredibly open and honest about the goings on that took place behind the scenes of some of the greatest movies ever made: copious drug abuse, lots of bed-hopping, much, much swearing.

Today on the IMDB's daily poll they list a large chunck of the 70s films of a selection of films that the famous critic Roger Ebert lists as the Greatest Movies ever. It's an incredible chunk if you think about it. Some of these films are the most timeless, exciting, re-watchable films. Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, Chinatown, The Godfather, Star Wars, Taxi Driver, etc.

Which leads me to wonder - was the 70s the greatest film decade? It seems to me that the decades after haven't exactly thrown up as large an impressive list as the 70s did. Don't get me wrong, there were some great films made in the 80s, but for some reason I feel that most of them are incredibly dated, something you don't really notice in the 70s films. And, yeah, thanks to the technology boom of the 90s we've had some incredible blockbusters to rival films like Jaws or Alien, but they don't have the same atmosphere as these films still constantly do.

Maybe its just a time thing - not enough time has passed by to recognise the true merits of the 80s. Maybe we need to wait another decade. In a way it would be quite interesting to find out which of the films that have been made in this decade will be remembered as well as the movies Ebert lists. Only problem is I have to grow older to see it. Dang.

Laters.