In 1968, the Hayes Code was discontinued in favor of the MPAA rating system. The Hayes Code began around 1930 as a self-imposed form of censorship, and it was very restrictive:
Specifically, you could not have nudity; suggestive dance; drug use; alcohol (except when required by the plot); sexual perversions; venereal disease; depictions of childbirth; offensive language; miscegenation; excessive and lustful kissing; or vulgarity. In addition, you could not depict religion or even ministers in a bad light (as comic figures or villains). You could not depict how to commit a crime, or show murder in any detail that would inspire duplication. The sanctity of marriage was to be upheld. Adultery could not be explicit or presented as an attractive alternative to marriage. The flag of the U.S. was to be treated with respect.
You look at a list like that and say, “Wow, that looks like the movie marquee from any studio in the 1970s.” Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Harold and Maude, Shaft, Willard, The Last of the Red-Hot Lovers, The Godfather, The Exorcist, The Sting, High Plains Drifter, Magnum Force, Blazing Saddles, Chinatown, Death Wish, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, The Story of O, Marathon Man, Rocky, Taxi Driver.
Of course, the Hayes Code was deteriorating by that time; movies were released without Hayes certification that were nevertheless box-office hits [such as Some Like It Hot (1959) and Psycho (1960)], and as the 1960s wore on, Hayes became increasingly unenforceable in the face of profits to be made. November 1968 was when the floodgates opened.
Yep, that was pretty much the 'Seventies in a nutshell; all you missed were the bug-ugly hideously overchromed cars and the ever-present Coors and Olympia beer. (Believe it or not, Coors was considerd some pretty high falutin beer in that era.)
Filmmakers in the 'Seventies went for a more naturalistic style that got caught between the snappy dialogue of the Golden Age of Cinema and the quick cutting of the 'Eighties; as a result, you get a lot of what the o.p. describes; guys sitting around in drab clothes in dark paneled rooms smoking. As an example, take a look at Bullitt; the film is the archetype for the maverick cop movie and stars the era’s leading action hero icon, but the bulk of the movie is slower than a bassett hound on Qualuudes and with dialogue so stilted it was cliched before there was a cliche to compare it to. If not for the awesome but geographically impossible car chase scene and the final airport showdown, it would be a completely unmemorable entry in McQueen’s c.v.
You just listed four of my favorite films. Movies like these would be considered “art house” films and likely given limited distribution. You might be able to salvage Chinatown for a major studio release–it isn’t too dissimilar from L.A. Confidential in theme and pacing–but you’d have to replace Polanski with a more action oriented director and have him rescue Fay Dunaway by gunning down John Huston in the end (which is more-or-less the end of the film as originally drafted).
Star Wars did good and bad things for cinema; it dramatically increased the scale of promotion and accelerated audience expectations for special effects (watching film like Logan’s Run today gives an idea of how utterly laughable “award winning” SFX was pre-Star Wars) and spurred a renewed interest in cinematic space opera; on the other hand, it undercut real science fiction and sold Hollywood on the notion of patching together influences from a bunch of different sources into a creaky story with canned dialogue. (To be fair, The Empire Strikes Back was a superior film in every way, multi-layered and complex; if the rest of the series, and cinematic sci-fi in general could meet that standard there would be little to complain about.)
Star Wars was a turning point, but it was hardly the only one; the Bond films in the 'Sixties, and the Schwartenegger and Stallone movies in the 'Eighties also redefined cinema pretty assuredly in terms of the portrayal of violence and the complexity (or lack thereof) of story. And Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Blowup broke the Production Code for better or worse. And you could do things in major studio release films between the collapse of the Production Code and the rise of simplistic films in 'Eightes that you couldn’t get away with now, like the metaphysical noodling in Point Blank (pointlessly remade as a straight actioneer as Payback).
Still, I think movies in the 'Eighties were worse, and hold up more poorly. Rewatching Beverly Hills Cop–a massive hit in its day–is just kind of painful in its crudity of editing and humor. And anything involving special effects generally looks bad; not humorously bad like Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, but just as if nobody really cared to try to make it look good; a rare film like Star Wars II: The Wrath of Khan stands out by having merely competent SFX.
I’d wager that most pre-'Seventies era movies you find on DVD today have been remastered, often from something other than the original prints. The technology to digitally remaster films today is relatively mature and (mostly) automated, and film master prints of those eras are so badly degraded that taking the image directly from the master would give nothing useable. (See the restoration of Rear Window, which has a short feature on the DVD that compares the pre- and post-restoration images. Heck, watch it anyway; it’s a great, great movie.) It is also the case that color films of those eras commonly used a two or three strip color process such as Technicolor (see an explanation here) whereas most films after that era use a monopack film negative like the Kodachrome-based Eastmancolor film, which was much cheaper to process and used lighter, less complex cameras, but didn’t offer as much saturation and doesn’t hold up to age nearly as well.
It is also the case that in the late 'Seventies or early 'Eighties that film emulsions using tabular crystals (which gives a finer and more distinct “grain” to the image) were used, resulting in a better defined, higher resolution image. Misguided efforts have been made in some hidef transfers to correct for the graininess of older films, which paradoxically results in a more bland, scrubbed-looking image, like anti-aliasing a font until all you have is a blurred shape.
Most of what you give Star Wars credit for was actually accomplished slightly earlier by Jaws. But it is a crucial point, I agree.
Stranger beat me to it by bringing up Technicolor, but also it’s important to remember that it was just an overall trend by 1970 or so to downplay the use of studio sets with their perfectible lighting & to film on location as much as possible, even when the filmstock of the day was imperfect for that purpose. Also the concept of “naturalism” was triumphant over “artifice” in that era & whereas you might consider today’s movies more realistic-looking, I would assert that in many ways they are more artificial (obviously more digital).
Incidental point: I do not think that movies today sound much better than they did in the '70s. They sound louder, yes, but in a contrived way, with every little paper crinkle & background noise amplified to unnatural effect.
People wore a lot of cream, beige, tan, brown, burnt orange, umber, powder blue and navy blue clothes in the 70’s. Cars and carpets were also neutral brown colors too. And we had ghastly avocado-colored refrigerators. Earth-tones were definitely in fashion. There were a lot of colors used in the 70’s, but often they were muted and muddied.
And women wore way more eye makeup (and big ol’ false eyelashes) in the 60’s and 70’s. Maybe it was to compensate for the drab colors.
Nowadays, eye makeup isn’t noticeable unless the character is a hooker or a barfly.
I think we’re seeing more cleavage now too. Breastseses were emphasized in the old days but it was done using push-up bras and padding, dresses with tight bodices, and tight shirts and sweaters (tucked in to show off a tiny waist). Now there’s cleavage everywhere, even on women wearing business attire. And the cleavage area where there isn’t any cleavage – just ribs.
After WWII, Italian filmmakers like Rossellini and Visconti took there filmmaking to the rubble filled streets in the chaos of war torn Italy, inventing neorealism along the way. The French New Wave took the new openness even further and completely shook up the stuffy establisment style of studio filmmaking. Then in the US, the Hays code and studio system ended in 1967-68, and suddenly the field was wide open and even somewhat leveled, leading to an explosion of more “outsiderey” American filmmakers. I think the style the OP describes can find its American roots in movies like *The Wild Bunch *(1969) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which were probably the earliest mainstream successes in this new American “school” of post-New Wave, post-Neorealist, post-Studio, post-Hays filmmaking. This was also, of course, a time of great social upheaval in the US–hippies, Viet Nam, etc.–so the entire esthetic context of pretty much everything was changing too.
[ETA: the above is cite free and offered in the spirit of talking out of my ass; just my vague understanding of the subject.]
Who said anything about porno? As Ranchoth there wasn’t as big an emphasise on casting “pretty” people (or at least pretty men) and male actors didn’t shave most of their body hair off if they showed skin. Metrosexuals weren’t in fashion then.
Films really did die during broadcasts in the 70’s. Sometimes the sound went sometimes the video, and the blotches covered the screen at times. A few years after release they could be quite messed up. Newer movies don’t have the problem too much.
The 70’s were just before everything sped up and electronics made big leaps, taking time away from activities you did, because you were bored. The 70’s films drag out and include mundane boring hobbies everybody had back then. The horror movies were big on anticipation, and really dark locations. You saw a heart boiling in the pot of hot dogs and the results of attacks. Today they show the monster ripping the people to shreds. Technical abilities define the difference in most of the movie contents. One thing I liked was the use of models from films like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.
Early 80’s movies started to show off the newest electronic gadgets, which isn’t unique to that period, but the gadgets are.
Decor and dress really influence the fell for the films too. The 70’s long hair and laid back movies with not taboo on drinking or smoking. The 80’s went faster pace, with big hair, fashion and the new trend of the 80’s flashy musical movies, though some hit the end of the 70’s.
1978 is more of a start point for the musicals like Grease. Olivia Newton John and John Travolta.
For instance, there’s absolutely no way that Charles Bronson could be a star now. Even Clint Eastwood, in his Dirty Harry years, wouldn’t be able to make it today - he wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t good looking. There was nothing sexy or romantic about his character. Same deal with Gene Hackman. Dustin Hoffman? He might be able to get romantic-comedy roles, but nowadays he’d never get cast in an intense thriller like Marathon Man or Straw Dogs if he was in his twenties or thirties. It’s like there’s a requirement that the male lead either be a pretty boy or a muscle-bound stud like Daniel Craig, if he’s going to be in a “serious” movie. All those guys I listed, and other action heroes from the 70s, it’s not like they were out-of-shape, but they also didn’t spend time toning their muscles and deliberately trying to achieve a Brad Pitt type figure. Charles Bronson was ripped as all hell, but it’s the kind of ripped that you get from working on a construction site and getting into street fights, not the kind of ripped that you get from a personal trainer.
No, I’m not gay, but I still contend that Eastwood doesn’t have the looks to make it nowadays. I should have worded it differently though, so let me take that back. Eastwood is good looking. But I don’t think he’s good looking in the way that a Hollywood male lead is considered good-looking nowadays. Which isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion, because I think Eastwood looks like a man. He looks like a tough guy. He’s got symmetrical facial features that add up to a handsome face, but he’s lean and lanky and doesn’t have a personal-trained body.
Eastman was handsome the way Steve McQueen was handsome - he looked like a legitimate tough guy. Not a metrosexual.
Color movies up to about the mid-fifties used the Technicolor process. This meant bulky cameras (they were really shooting on three strips of film at once) and expensive, slow prints, using a dye transfer process. The colors achieved, though, were gorgeous and stable.
Starting in thirties, with big improvements in the early fifties, Eastman Kodak developed a color reversal film stock that could be used to strike Technicolor prints from only one strip in the camera, and later on quickly strike prints directly, avoiding the expensive dye-transfer method Technicolor used. There was much rejoicing; the last American film using the dye-transfer process for prints was The Godfather, Part 2 in 1974. The problem was, the Kodak-process prints fade quickly, as soon as five years for the cyan and yellow layers. Unless someone is willing to pay for major restoration, those faded prints are the source material for digitization onto your DVD.
Now, this is strictly conjecture on my part, but Technicolor sound stages were incredibly brightly lit. The light reaching the film had to be divvied three ways and too much was better than not enough. I’d be willing to bet the lighting directors who cut their teeth on Technicolor were slow to change when the Kodak stock became prevalent, and this accounts to the extremely flat lighting of movies shot during that period – especially television. The folks who made Trials and Tribble-ations commented they had to change their habits to match the lighting of The Trouble with Tribbles shot some thirty years earlier.
Obviously this is very subjective, but the young to middle aged Eastwood is one of the best looking men of the last century, up there with Gary Cooper IMO.
That would last year’s Things We Lost in the Fire. And I gotta say, I’ve never heard Benicio Del Toro described as a “pretty boy.” In fact, I think the man is downright hideous (and may secretly be a troll in disguise).
Can you point me to roles he won solely because he was a “pretty boy”?
