Films that don't make sense unless you understand the zeitgeist of the time

[ExTank]

@Sitnam

Cool Hand Luke: Without the antiestablishment 60’s the hero is just an obstinate bum prone to destructive drunken rage.

I still like this movie, a lot; but you’re dead on the money.

[Zeldar]

@Maserschmidt

A fine example indeed, and agreed as to its hokeyness.

[tangent]
We also saw this in the theater, and as a group reconstructed from memory this really, really bad bit of dialogue and took to randomly quoting it at each other:

Quote:
Bernard, I want you to know that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I’m supposed to control my violent temper, and be passive and nonviolent like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see this girl of such a beautiful spirit… so degraded… and this boy that I love… sprawled out by this big ape here… and this little girl, who is so special to us we call her “God’s little gift of sunshine”, and I think of the number of years that she’s going to have to carry in her memory the savagery of this idiotic moment of yours… I just go BERSERK!
[/tan]

You nailed it! And wasn’t it pronounced “bee-zerk”? Velveeta puffs!

[Lamia]

@panamajack

In the non-metaphorical camp, I think Cameron Crowe’s films made every few years (Say Anything…,Singles,Jerry Maguire,Elizabethtown) are perfect time capsules of their eras. It’s hard to imagine those films made at any other possible time.

I think all of these movies (never saw Elizabethtown) still make SENSE, but I agree that the earlier ones are almost like period pieces now. I was thinking about Singles the other day, which I haven’t seen in years but watched on video many times in the mid-90s. Aside from things like the clothes being out of style, the then up-and-coming grunge bands featured in the movie are now edging into classic rock territory, Seattle no longer has a basketball team, etc., I remembered that a subplot involved a character who was trying video dating. Video dating! I can imagine a teenager watching the movie now wondering “Why didn’t she just use OKCupid or something?”

[Zeldar]

@In_Winnipeg

Saturday Night Fever.

I don’t think that anyone who didn’t live through the disco era could really understand it, even with the help of recent films regarding Studio 54 and other 70s topics. SNF was, of course, contemporary to the events these more recent movies portray.

Contrary to how much fun SNF may look, disco ***did ***indeed suck.

Believe it or not, I have begun adding to my YouTube Favorites quite a few of the old Disco tunes, especially Boz Scaggs - Lowdown

[gonzomax]

@Lumpy

I’ve always heard that the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a parable of Cold War/ Red Scare paranoia. "Everyone’s secretly turning [del]Red[/del] alien. Um, ok; if you say so. As good a theory as any. My problem is (1). I was born long after the '50s and so never experienced the times. (2). I’d seen any number of “alien infiltration” themed science-fiction movies, TV shows and stories years before I ever saw IotBS, so the meme was cliched and predictable to me. I doubt I will ever “get” IotBS as it was intended to be perceived. So what other movies are lost on anyone who doesn’t understand the times in which they were made?

I don’t buy it. The 50s were a time of front page stories of flying saucer reports. There were fears of nuclear radiation. It was the time of science fiction movies galore. I think it is a stretch to say it was a commie takeover movie. It was an alien takeover movie. That was real enough at the time.

[Munch]

@ExTank

I still like this movie, a lot; but you’re dead on the money.

I disagree. Antiestablishmentism (?) was certainly a much rarer thing in the 60s, but it’s certainly not unheard of today. People rant against the government, corporate culture, or other authority all the time these days, and rant against those who accept that authority without question. Cool Hand Luke is still a powerful movie.

[RealityChuck]

@gonzomax

I don’t buy it. The 50s were a time of front page stories of flying saucer reports. There were fears of nuclear radiation. It was the time of science fiction movies galore. I think it is a stretch to say it was a commie takeover movie. It was an alien takeover movie. That was real enough at the time.

Both explanations are quite glib and superficial. It’s a movie about loss of self and the pressures to conform, an issue both long before and long after the red scare and nuclear bombs. It was a theme in Babbit, for example, as well as in Ionescu’s Rhinoceros. Invasion of the Body Snatchers deals with the fear in a science fiction context.

[Sir_Prize]

@Zeldar

Believe it or not, I have begun adding to my YouTube Favorites quite a few of the old Disco tunes, especially Boz Scaggs - Lowdown

Boz Scaggs is disco?

[Zeldar]

@Sir_Prize

Boz Scaggs is disco?

What then? Funk?

[Walloon]

@Maiira

Any silent or early film. Film was a new medium back then, so the acting (which we consider over-the-top and exaggerated today) was taken directly from theater acting, which we now separate into two different things. (Although theater acting has changed as well.)

You need to watch better silent film acting, and not from the 1910s. Silent film acting evolved by the 1920s, and was more subtle and scaled for the camera instead of the stage. See Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Richard Barthelmess, Lillian Gish, Charles Farrell, and Louise Brooks.

[Walloon]

@Stephe96

Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate seems like an annoying, mopey jackass nowadays.

And Mrs. Robinson, the movie’s object of scorn, was probably the most interesting person in the bunch.

[Fretful_Porpentine]

@John_Mace

Dr. Strangelove is probably hard to appreciate fully w/o understanding Cold War mentalities. Note the “fully” in that sentence-- I doubt that any films make no sense without understanding the current zeitgeist.

Yes to this. I tried showing it in a freshman comp class around 2001. Most of the students really, really didn’t get it. The one who did was a slacker fifth-year senior who was only just getting around to taking freshman comp, and who, unlike the rest of the class, was actually old enough to remember the Cold War.

Generally, I take generational theories with a huge grain of salt, but I do think there’s a fundamental divide between people born in the 1940s-1970s and people born later in this regard.

For what it’s worth, today’s college students usually do get The Graduate when I show it to them; I think it’s one of those movies that captures a particular time of life as much as a particular era.

[Lamia]

Re: The Graduate, see Roger Ebert’s original 1967 review of the movie, and his re-review 30 years later.

From the 1997 review:

@Roger Ebert

Well, here is to you, Mrs. Robinson: You’ve survived your defeat at the hands of that insufferable creep, Benjamin, and emerged as the most sympathetic and intelligent character in "The Graduate.‘’ How could I ever have thought otherwise? What murky generational politics were distorting my view the first time I saw this film? Watching the 30th anniversary revival of "The Graduate’’ is like looking at photos of yourself at an old fraternity dance. You’re gawky and your hair is plastered down with Brylcreem, and your date looks as if you found her behind the counter at the Dairy Queen. But–who’s the babe in the corner? The great-looking brunette with the wide-set eyes and the full lips and the knockout figure? Hey, it’s the chaperone! Great movies remain themselves over the generations; they retain a serene sense of their own identity. Lesser movies are captives of their time. They get dated and lose their original focus and power. "The Graduate’’ (I can see clearly now) is a lesser movie. It comes out of a specific time in the late 1960s when parents stood for stodgy middle-class values, and "the kids’’ were joyous rebels at the cutting edge of the sexual and political revolutions. Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), the clueless hero of "The Graduate,‘’ was swept in on that wave of feeling, even though it is clear today that he was utterly unaware of his generation and existed outside time and space (he seems most at home at the bottom of a swimming pool).

[Don_Draper]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - another 60s counterculture parable - doesn’t look that great in hindsight. It’s depiction of a sanitarium patients as eccentrics who are being punished for non-conformity doesn’t jibe with modern day views on depression, ADD and bi-polar syndrome. Plus, the film is extremely misogynistic. The only real female character is eeeeeeevil, and the hero of the story is a convicted rapist.

[Jim_s_Son]

@Zeldar

I would like to ask those of you in the Thirtysomething range (and others, too) if Rebel Without a Cause (1955) has gotten into this zeitgeist issue zone yet.

There was a time when “The Graduate” was dubbed as Rebel for the 60’s, and I personally never could understand why, having established Rebel as a proper substitute for the Holy Bible in my teens.

I do know my youngest son had posters of the movie hanging in his room in the 80’s and he and I were able to discuss themes and issues in his teen years and they didn’t seem to me to be all that different.

Ten years or so ago, Rebel fell off the IMDB Top 250 list, so I must assume it’s off in limbo now between being a “cult classic” and a “moldy oldie” for the voting crowd these days.

If you have an opinion on the movie itself, and where it fits in the zeitgeist issue, I’d love to know.

The only time I saw “Rebel without a Cause” was 35 years ago in a theater with horrible sound. I thought it was an overwrought piece of bad soap-opera. But my main memory was the 1960s TV actors that had roles: Jim Backus (Gilligan’s Island) as the father. William Hopper (Perry Mason) as Natalie Wood’s father. Edward Platt (Get Smart) as the police chief.

[Jim_s_Son]

This may be an oddball choice but wasn’t “Love Story” a huge hit in the early 1970s, both as a novel and movie with Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. When I lived in Buffalo in the mid70s, people said the movie on television was the highest-rated show in Buffalo history (number two was a Buffalo vs Montreal hockey game). Make of that what you will. You never see it on cable today. Perhaps an overly dramatic movie about a young woman’s death isn’t the type movie reviewers write about for 40 yeaqrs. They will go for “Godfather”, “Sting” and “French Connection” and so would I. But in its time, it was popular.

[Zeldar]

@Jim_s_Son

The only time I saw “Rebel without a Cause” was 35 years ago in a theater with horrible sound. I thought it was an overwrought piece of bad soap-opera. But my main memory was the 1960s TV actors that had roles: Jim Backus (Gilligan’s Island) as the father. William Hopper (Perry Mason) as Natalie Wood’s father. Edward Platt (Get Smart) as the police chief.

Thanks for that analysis. The fact that all of the principals (Dean, Wood, Mineo) died violently and even some of the support cast like Nick Adams (OD) had untimely deaths, made it a topic of conversation for a while, too.

The fact that it was done in CinemaScope color was a big departure from the hotrod juvenile delinquent genre (which included The Wild One as another model for the period’s teen fare), and I suppose that added to its reputation for decades. I suspect by 1975 the luster had begun to peel off.

I have begun to refrain from watching the reruns which appear at least once a year, because even for me the ranting and posturing and angst has worn thin.

[SecretaryofEvil]

@BMax

Absolutely. I’m in my 40’s, grew up and served in the army during the last half of the Cold War. I know the paranoia was not as bad during the Reagan years as the Kennedy years when the film was made, but I still remember it. I’ve watched Dr. Strangelove with people in their 20’s who were small children when the Berlin wall fell. They wonder why we were flying planes around the arctic loaded with atomic bombs, and I explain that the Soviets were doing the same thing at the time. One girl’s response was “Well, that was stupid”. Yes, it was stupid. I think Kubrick said that with a little more eloquence and nuance.

Well I’m in my 20s and a was small child when the Berlin wall fell and Dr. Strangelove is pretty popular with my crowd. My best friend even wrote his history thesis on Stanley Kubrick. I suppose I must concede that if one literally knew nothing of the Cold War the film would lose a lot of its pizazz. I just wanted to reassure you old folks that some amongst my generation know a little about history and film.

[Hello_Again]

@Jim_s_Son

This may be an oddball choice but wasn’t “Love Story” a huge hit in the early 1970s, both as a novel and movie with Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. When I lived in Buffalo in the mid70s, people said the movie on television was the highest-rated show in Buffalo history (number two was a Buffalo vs Montreal hockey game). Make of that what you will. You never see it on cable today. Perhaps an overly dramatic movie about a young woman’s death isn’t the type movie reviewers write about for 40 yeaqrs. They will go for “Godfather”, “Sting” and “French Connection” and so would I. But in its time, it was popular.

No, this is a really good choice. It was supposed to be all feminist with the uppity, edumacated heroine. But what actually happens is, she gives up all her dreams then dies. This is romance? Watching it now, it feels like the last gasp of movies trying to glorify women giving up everything for marriage.

I always thought that if Jenny, the girl in “Love Story” had lived, she would be the suicidal narrarator of “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”, by Marianne Faithful.
*
At the age of 37
she realized she’d never ride
through Paris in a sports car
with the warm wind in her hair
*

[FordTaurusSHO94]

I don’t see why The Dark Knight was mentioned. Most of that story came from a 90’s comic book story that still feels fresh today.