FRwL

Which movie decade of those two do you like most? I picked these two since they seem to be when cinema was at its most creative, the totem poles, the 60s being the peak of foreign cinema while the 70s being the peak of American cinema. So of the two which do you like more?

Some directors who gained popularity for each:

60s
Kubrick
Fellini
Godard
Truffaut
Bergman
Leone
Bava
Franco
Antonioni

70s
Coppola
Spielberg
Lucas
Scorsese
Carpenter
Friedkin
Altman
Milius

JumpCutz

Two great decades but I voted 70's

Even though he started his career earlier, Kubrick should be on the 1960's list IMHO.

TomOpus

I might be biased because it's when I really started watching movies but I voted 70's.

Ash Ketchum

1960s:
You still had a few great works from the old masters:
Hitchcock: PSYCHO, THE BIRDS, MARNIE
Hawks: EL DORADO
Ford: THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
Billy Wilder: THE APARTMENT, KISS ME STUPID, THE FORTUNE COOKIE
David Lean: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, DR. ZHIVAGO

And then the generation that came after them:
Anthony Mann: EL CID
Robert Aldrich: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?, THE DIRTY DOZEN
Don Siegel: THE KILLERS, MADIGAN, COOGAN'S BLUFF
John Sturges: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GREAT ESCAPE
Sam Fuller: UNDERGROUND USA, MERRILL'S MARAUDERS, SHOCK CORRIDOR, THE NAKED KISS.

And then you had an incredible group of younger directors who got their start in the late '50s:
Stanley Kubrick: SPARTACUS, LOLITA, DR. STRANGELOVE, 2001
John Frankenheimer: BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, THE TRAIN, SECONDS
Arthur Penn: THE CHASE, BONNIE AND CLYDE
Sidney Lumet: FAIL-SAFE, THE PAWNBROKER

And two who made a splash almost immediately in the '60s:
Mike Nichols: WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, THE GRADUATE
Sam Peckinpah: RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, MAJOR DUNDEE, THE WILD BUNCH

And, in a class by himself:
Roger Corman: the Poe cycle (HOUSE OF USHER, et al), X-THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE, THE WILD ANGELS, THE TRIP

And the '60s gave us the directing debuts of:
Woody Allen: TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN
Mel Brooks: THE PRODUCERS
Paul Mazursky: BOB AND CAROL AND TED AND ALICE
Francis Coppola: DEMENTIA 13
Martin Scorsese: WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR?
Brian De Palma: MURDER A LA MOD, although it was GREETINGS in 1968 that made a name for him.

And let's not forget such foreign directors as Kurosawa (YOJIMBO), Chang Cheh (ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN), King Hu (A TOUCH OF ZEN), Ishiro Honda (KING KONG VS. GODZILLA), Mario Bava (BLACK SUNDAY), Sergio Leone (A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS), Sergio Corbucci (THE MERCENARY), Kinji Fukasaku (THE GREEN SLIME), Dario Argento (THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE), etc. Most of their films played theaters in the U.S.

All in the '60s.

And I got to see the majority of these on the big screen, either when they came out or at revival theaters in the years afterwards.

Supermallet

As much as I love 70's cinema, I really can't argue with Ash's breakdown, and that's not even including the French New Wave (for some reason).

Finisher

70s produced more masterpieces because more auteurs had more freedom. But the groundwork was laid in the 60s.

FRwL

Why you lucky sonova... Your breakdown sums it up really, and i'll add that Jesus Franco did his best works in the 60s.

Trevor

The 60s of course.

Ash Ketchum

And the admission price at neighborhood theaters for children for much of the decade was 50 cents.
When I was 14 I wanted to pay adult admission so I wouldn't have to sit in the children's section anymore. But then the theater raised the adult price from 75 cents to 99 cents for the 5th James Bond film, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, so I went back to being a kid again (I was very short and didn't look anywhere near 14). And we sat in the children's section and it was one of the best times I ever had at the movies.

Sean O'Hara

Movie eras don't break down easily by decade.

You have the late '50s/early '60s, which was the nadir of Old Hollywood as the Studio System completed its collapse, the money-men pushed out the moguls, and the Hayes Code faded to irrelevancy. Sure, there are several classics from the era, mostly from established directors like Hitchcock, Hawks and Ford at the height of their creativity, or up and comers like Frankenheimer and Lumet trying to break out of the television ghetto, but mostly the era is characterized by studios making awkward attempts to capture Boomer audiences -- "Hey, kids like Fabian, right? Let's cast him in this otherwise forgettable comedy with a bunch of older stars that kids have no interest in!"

Then around '66/'67 we see the emergence of the Hollywood New Wave, an era of greater directorial freedom and relaxed censor standards under the new ratings system. This is one of the greatest periods in Hollywood history, arguably the equal of the Golden Age of the 1930s and '40s.

Then Jaws and Rocky come along, heralding the Blockbuster era that got into full swing with Star Wars. Depending upon your view, this is either a period as great as the New Wave, or as dark as the early '60s.

Trying to view the '60s and '70s as unified units of time that can be judged on their own makes no sense.

Solid Snake

60s.

The 70s may have brought a more "shocking" or "provocative" or "gritty" cinema in comparison to the 60s. But....the 60s had better flicks. And again...Ash broke it down amazingly.

Maxflier

Well 2 of my top 3 favorite movies of all-time are from the 60's, so I know which way I'm voting.

Numanoid

How can the '60s and '70s be two different peaks in cinema? They're consecutive decades. They would be in the same single peak.

Mondo Kane

The posts favor the 60's. The poll favors the 70's.

How do we decide?

Solid Snake

Maybe if more people voted.

Coral

The 60's without a doubt. You had some cinematic gods pushing out masterpiece after masterpiece. As already mentioned in the first post, Antonioni, Bergman, Godard, Fellini, etc.

The first half of the 70s were amazing, but the 2nd half started to get commercial.

GenPion

This is too hard. Why even vote for which one was better? Both decades introduced us to so many amazing film-makers and their work.

In any case, I'll go with the 60's, for Truffaut and the rest of the French New Wave.

Travis McClain

First of all, I refute the "auteur" theory. I think William Goldman is right, that a film is a collaborative work. For starters, few movies are written by their directors. How can a director claim a film is his or her vision, if it started with someone else? So, for me, breaking the decades into which directors emerged during them is a non-issue.

I cast my vote for the 70s, because that decade is more interesting historically to me. The 60s began clean-cut and patriotic and wound up mired in social upheaval. That interests me, but the 70s emerged from the civil rights movement, the women's liberation movement and the aftermath of Viet Nam and Watergate, and tried to respond to that environment. In many ways, we're still trying to make sense of all those things. I think this is why 70s movies strike me as more honest, and more relevant.

It doesn't even have to be a movie that even consciously addresses any of these issues. Take Roger Moore's run as James Bond, for instance. There you had a franchise deeply rooted in the mistrust of the Cold War 60s, when Bond being a playboy was controversial. George Lazenby thought when he was cast in '69 that the whole world was on the verge of discounting Bond as relevant at all. Moore managed to adapt the character to the times, though, somehow making being a womanizer not offensive to liberated women, and making it still possible to cheer for the government agent after Watergate.

Drop

I'll refute your refutation (with one exception: not all directors are auteurs). Yes films are collaborative, but the director exists for a reason. They are the single guiding force for a film. You need someone(s) with a strong vision and incredible management skills to create a true masterpiece. They have to make sure the crew is working at their best to create the best picture. How often do people bitch about studio interference? Who tends to get us here at DVDtalk the most excited or unexcited about a new film? Directors are the ones, or should be, that ultimately decide how the film turns out.

I voted for the 60s. For me the best of that decade beats the best of 70s.

Ash Ketchum

That could be part of the reason why Moore's Bond was the most boring of all. I stopped making a point of seeing Bond films in theaters after FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981). I've only seen four Bond films in theaters in the last 21 years.

Ash Ketchum

Good point. Many critics prefer to cite the ten-year period from 1965-75 as the best decade in Hollywood's history. Pauline Kael was one.

(Gore Vidal, Parker Tyler, and Camille Paglia, on the other hand, go with 1935-45. That would work for me if it was 1935-49. Hard to beat that period.)

Sean O'Hara

Also, I don't believe auteur theory requires the director be the auteur. David O. Selznick is pretty clearly the auteur of Gone with the Wind, not Victor Fleming -- and I'd argue that the problem with Rebecca is that Selznick and Hitchcock were struggling over who would be the auteur of that film. I'd also argue that certain comedians -- Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Bros (up to A Day at the Races) -- are auteurs due to the degree to which their films were tailored to them.

Travis McClain

I like to think I'm pretty skillful at articulating my arguments, but I'm also wise enough to know when to defer to someone with more talent...to say nothing of meaningful qualifications. I borrow from the aforementioned Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade:

"The word auteur has come to mean this: It is the director who creates the film. (None of any of this is meant in any way to denigrate directors, by the way. They serve an important function in the making of a film, and the best of them do it well.)

But creator?

Look at it logically. Studio executives are not stupid, and they are, believe it or not, aware of costs. If the director creates the film, why does a studio pay three thousand dollars a week for a top editor? Or four thousand dollars for an equivalent production designer. Or ten thousand plus a percentage of the profits to the finest cinematographers?

It's not because they're cute.

And it's not because they want to. They have to. Because that's how crucial top technicians are. Crucial and creative."

Ash Ketchum

Yeah, but William Goldman had an agenda. He was a very powerful screenwriter, at one time in the '70s or '80s the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood. He had the clout to fight directors over how they filmed his work. Most screenwriters don't. And, besides, Goldman was an enormous hack whose screenplays were generally just commercial tripe. For me his only truly memorable screenplays are THE HOT ROCK (1972), ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976), and THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987).

Sure, BUTCH CASSIDY and MARATHON MAN are memorable movies, but I would argue that other elements aside from the scripts were responsible.

All I'm saying is that Goldman had a vested interest in attacking the "auteur theory," so I would take his arguments with a grain of salt. And, besides, when he wrote them, there were few real "auteurs" of any note left in Hollywood.

Travis McClain

Well, I won't re-type his entire five page chapter on auteurs, but I will borrow his list of the seven most crucial roles in a movie, listed alphabetically:

the actor
the cameraman
the director
the editor
the producer
the production designer
the writer

Why the ad hominem attack on Goldman?

Sounds like a combination of sour grapes and rationalization to me. The book was first published in 1983, and his agenda was to pull aside the curtain and offer a firsthand account of his experience working on movies. Was he the hero of his own book? Of course he was. But in this, I find he makes a sound case entirely devoid of any self-aggrandizing. As for there being any "real auteurs of note left in Hollywood" by '83, I suppose it's a matter of perspective whether there were ever any in the first place. I don't believe there were.

Incidentally, Goldman makes clear that he wrote exclusively about Hollywood, and that he had no firsthand knowledge how movies were made overseas, so you Akira Kurosawa fans can keep your slings and arrows to yourselves!