American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions
by Peter Lev
UT Press, 248 pp., $40 (hard)/$19.95 (paper)
The Seventies weren’t all that great in a lot of ways. The naive, hippie idealism of the previous decade gave way to cynicism, uncertainty, and aimlessness in the wake of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam era. The Seventies also signaled transitions in Hollywood. Older stars and directors were at the ends of their careers, while new talents were ascendant. The Production Code was history, and the studio system was crumbling. In light of all this, Hollywood was more willing to take chances on movies, without the dependence on focus groups and marketing that drives the movie industry today. The result was what some are now calling a latter-day Golden Age for films. Peter Lev’s American Films of the 70s looks at several genres of films (cop movies, disaster films, teen movies, war films, blaxploitation, sci-fi, and feminist films) and puts examples of each genre into the context of the times. His observations split the difference between scholarly and popular approaches to film criticism, dissecting hit movies like Apocalypse Now, Dirty Harry, Star Wars, and The China Syndrome, among others. With each chapter covering several films, Lev concentrates more on the politics, ideology, and theory of each film rather than a scene-by-scene analysis. Of particular interest is Lev’s chapter on disaster movies. He puts forth the idea that movies like Jaws, Airport, and The Poseidon Adventure were, if not outright allegories of the times, at least ways of reframing and reflecting the issues of the day. For all of the author’s insight, though, there are some problems. Lev discusses a couple of mediocre movies (Shampoo, Cooley High, An Unmarried Woman), ones which don’t loom large in the decade’s film history and seem almost too shallow to analyze. On the other hand, he skips over landmarks like Taxi Driver and The Godfather (both of which are, admittedly, done-to-death by critics). The most glaring omission, though, may be the fact that he never even touches on Seventies horror, much of which can stand up to the same deconstruction to which he subjects other films. Still, this is a didactic-but-still-readable look at a decade that wasn’t all platform shoes and disco, a period in Hollywood history which has yet to come into its own.
This article appears in December 15 • 2000.