Okay, I'll just be blunt here. There are a ton of films I just do not like in the history of cinema, so trying to figure out the Worst Decade of Filmmaking of All-Time has actually been way harder than my deciphering what I deem the best. Getting right down to it, every decade has its sore losers, so I've just decided to go with my gut on this one.
I at first had an immediate gut response to say the '60s, but I figured I'd weigh my options at first, so I started modern. While the '90s would be an obvious choice, same as the first decade of the New Millenium, for the studio's obsessive drive of selling action figures rather than making good movies, these two decades still have their moments that shine that greatly outweigh any of their negatives. I briefly considered labeling some of the older decades like the '20s or '30s, cause I don't feel it was till the '40s that cinema was refined, but then I thought about all the great films from the silent film era and the early era of the "talkies" and I shied away from it, cause no matter how crude most of the efforts were from back then, there's no denying something like Metropolis, The Passion of Joan of Arc, or City Lights. Now, I sit here and I've gone back to my initial gut decision as to what I feel to be the Worst Decade of Filmmaking of All-Time... The 1960s!
No other decade in the history of filmmaking underwhelmed quite like the 1960s did, but then again the decade politically, is often considered one of the most violent and tumultuous decades ever in general and I think the cinema reflected that uncertainty in the older generations (the studios) unwillingness to change. Seriously, do the guys who went off and fought in Vietnam wanna come home and watch Rock Hudson or Elvis Presley wooing girls in Hawaii or on the beaches of California? Not only that, the studios had just gotten out of control, producing large scale epics and showy musicals that could never recuperate their costs like Cleopatra, still considered by many to be the biggest waste of money to ever be produced.
As it is, it took till nearly the end of the decade for the studios and Hollywood folk to finally catch on to the new baby boomer culture that had arisen with stuff like The Graduate, Bonnie & Clyde, and Easy Rider, but a few films so late in the decade can't really change the whole outlook of one decade. We're talking about a decade here where Dr. Dolittle was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Enough said.
While film was booming overseas in the '60s with the rise of the French New Wave, to be honest, I've never cared much for the works of Jean Luc Godard, and only have a small affinity for Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows, so it's kind of a craphsoot there. Going to England, there was the highly overrated film Blow-Up, and then over to the East, at least you get some films from the '60s that I greatly enjoy. In Japan, Akira Kurosawa and his fellows continued to do their thing, furthering the arts of Japanese animation that would later yield to the masterworks of Hayao Miyazaki, and Kurosawa delivering two of his finer masterpieces: Yojimbo and Redbeard. But one country can't redeem the rest of the world for a pretty uninteresting decade of film for me. For these reasons and these reasons alone, the 1960s are the Worst Decade of Filmmaking of All-Time!
P.S. As a simple reminder, series finale of LOST on ABC tonight at 9/8 central. Also, Family Guy will finally be airing its spoof of The Empire Strikes Back on TV tonight, so it's an exciting night of television all around.
yeah I could agree with that. About the only decent studio thing that ever came out in this decade were the bond films and "the sound of music." The problem is that, hollywood wanted to make 100 "Sounds of Music" and 100 knock-offs of james bond. Or there were a hundred versions of "A hard days Night" made with a lot of bands that weren't "The Beatles." However one key thing you overlooked that I just thought of was the rise of documentary film due to the work of the maysel brothers, though, truly only "Gimme Shelter" and "Salesman" would come out in the 60's with the rest coming in the 70s and later, so yeah even though documentary really hit in the late 60s, it still isn't enough to really warrant taking this decade off your list. Honestly though, with the way things are in the industry now, I'm wondering if the tweens are going to be the worst decade ever. Indie film is for real dead, studios only want to do big franchise films, and 3d is a real threat to everything. Things were never looking as bad as they do now. Interesting post though, I can't wait to see what you think is the best!
ReplyDeleteEh, I see a lot of parallels between our current situation in 2010 and much how things were back around 1960. The '30s were good, followed by the '40s, then the '50s, but steam kind of ran out when they got to the '60s and Hollywood crumbled apart, losing touch with the times. That's sort of happening again. It's not that independent film is dead, nor that 3-D is the biggest threat to filmmaking of all-time, it's that too many people are nowadays so obsessed with either mimicking their favorite director or either playing with the latest movie gadgetry, that they are first and foremost forgetting to tell, good, original stories. To borrow a line from "Batman Begins", things are gonna have to get worse before they can get better. Much like with the '60s, the film industry will have to come to a complete stand still and do some course correction if it wants to stay alive.
ReplyDeleteI get the parallels but you're forgetting that the studios got out of their slump because of the auction block. They were sold from their previous positions as large independent sole proprietorships to become assets of corporations and conglomerates in the 70's. It was this sale that allowed Hollywood to reboot and reinvent itself in the 70's and if it weren't for these corporations and their utter lack of knowledge in running a studio the golden 70's would never have happened. But as soon as those corporations realized the massive power of blockbusters they swooped in, kicked the old execs out and replaced them with corporate goons. This is essentially where we still are now. The difference is that the goons still manage to turn a profit so there's no need to auction them off--except MGM -although its intersting to suggest the parallels the reality is much different. Much, much different.
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