Chapter Seven - The 70's: The Return of Film Noir
Chapter Seven
In the 70's, the paranoia that had defined 60's politics deepened into an atmosphere in films where satire was buried and film noir returned framed within political thrillers like The Parallax View and Winter Kills.
Films made in the more traditional noir genre like Chinatown, Night Moves, Klute, and Three Days Of The Condor were suffused with political awareness bordering on hopelessness. And All The President's Men was history as noir!
Two films took the media to task: Capricorn One, about the disastrous fabrication of the first manned landing on Mars, and Network. Network was Sidney Lumet's wake-up call that media itself was spinning out of control. The prophetic film centers on an anchorman gone mad, who is kept on the air to bolster ratings. Network defined an era and is a clear predecessor to Wag The Dog.
When the film's refrain, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," is shouted from the rooftops, it is the last time for years that movies make such an overt statement.
Watergate created a political void in America. Hal Ashby's Being There recognized that void in a brilliant send-up of the media's and public's ability to distinguish a bona fide president from a simple gardener. We had lost our ability to challenge preconceptions once those preconceptions became "news."
In the 70's, the paranoia that had defined 60's politics deepened into an atmosphere in films where satire was buried and film noir returned framed within political thrillers like The Parallax View and Winter Kills.
Films made in the more traditional noir genre like Chinatown, Night Moves, Klute, and Three Days Of The Condor were suffused with political awareness bordering on hopelessness. And All The President's Men was history as noir!
Two films took the media to task: Capricorn One, about the disastrous fabrication of the first manned landing on Mars, and Network. Network was Sidney Lumet's wake-up call that media itself was spinning out of control. The prophetic film centers on an anchorman gone mad, who is kept on the air to bolster ratings. Network defined an era and is a clear predecessor to Wag The Dog.
When the film's refrain, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," is shouted from the rooftops, it is the last time for years that movies make such an overt statement.
Watergate created a political void in America. Hal Ashby's Being There recognized that void in a brilliant send-up of the media's and public's ability to distinguish a bona fide president from a simple gardener. We had lost our ability to challenge preconceptions once those preconceptions became "news."
posted by Xavier Casto | 01:00
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