This question is partly inspired by watching Elliot Gould in Robert Altman’s “The Last Goodbye.” I was born in the last 60s and was a child in the 70s.
When I watch movies from the 60s or before, I guess I feel like I’m just learning about a new and unfamiliar place. But when I watch movies from the 70s, e.g. Bad News Bears, or Dog Day Afternoon, or Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, I guess I think a few things at once (1) wow, I remember when cars looked like that, and haircuts looked like that, and (2) wow that looks really funny to me now, that looks like it was FOREVER ago. And then I think wow, it’s been a long time since I was a kid.
Any other forty something types have this feeling?
Sure. I like some old series because of the what I think are still neat styles of the time.
It’s always a nice surprise when you see somebody you used to think hot and have written off over the years as they couldn’t have looked that good. You see them in an old movie and think my memory wasn’t wrong they were super hot.
You should buy yourself a season or two of The Rockford Files and Hawaii Five-O. They’re like little visits back to when ties were wide and shirts were ribbed and princess phones plugged into the wall. I get all misty, too.
Yes, Rockford Files. It’s funny as someone who lives in Los Angeles–but who did not grow up in LA–to see how LA looked back then. And yes, those phones. Princess phones plugged into the wall. Wow.
Definitely. I always notice how thin everyone is. Was it because we didn’t have high fructose corn syrup in everything then, or because we didn’t have easily-microwaveable convenience food, or was it because all actors were on drugs and the drugs took their minds off eating? I know that many of the actresses were anorexic.
It’s a kick to see people riding bikes without helmets, rolling around in the backs of stations wagons, hitchhiking.
I’m thinking it’s the latter, but it’s also because kids in the 70s didn’t have much in the way of video games or computers or TV stations to keep them inside all day, so a lot of them were playing outside and not sitting around getting fat.
I lived in the 60s, I know what kids did then. You were lucky if there was an hour’s worth of anything to watch on broadcast television at night, much less in the afternoon when you were out playing.
I get nostalgic when I watch B&W Universal or color Hammer and AIP horror films.
It was a family activity to gather round the TV on Friday nights or go to the drive-in for those.
Notice that I said “great movies”. Obviously, there were movies in the '70s that had special effects, explosions, were based on comic book characters, or were sequels to other movies. I am talking about a subset of great movies that didn’t fit any of those criteria. Go to your multiplex today and see how many movies do.
It’s amusing to see people getting shot but there’s no visible wounding. They guy grabs his chest or stomach, bends over and falls to the ground dead… but there’s no blood, no entry or exit, nothing. Were we really that naive?
Also quite dating to see someone make an anonymous phone call from their house. “If you want to see your kid alive, bring $10,000 (woooo!) to the Midtown Bridge at noon”, then they hang up the phone on their bedside table.
Movie criminals had it pretty easy back then. Every country sherriff was on a pie diet and drove a squad car with abysmal steering.