The differences between 1970s cinema and the cinema of today

Cafe Society
41

Well, Del Toro is a great actor because he’s able to vary his appearance wildly, similar to Jon Voight - a great 70s star who had the ability to be a leading man and a character actor at the same time. I think Heath Ledger will be remembered the same way, after Dark Night. Del Toro was a fat slob in Fear and Loathing, and back to a “hunk” physique the next year. He could look great if he tried to - and he could look ugly if he tried to. The attributes of a true actor.

I mean, I’m straight, but shit - the guy can look pretty damn good when he wants to.

Even if he’s not conventionally handsome he still has, as I’ve heard girls say, a “raw” or “passionate” sex appeal. The same could not ever be said of Charles Bronson.

42

I think you’re looking at this comparison a little sideways. Benicio Del Toro hit it big for the first time in 1995 (The Usual Suspects), he was 28. He continued to do medium to large sized roles until 2000 (Traffic), where he won an Oscar and was 33. From then on, he’s become very well known.

Charles Bronson’s breakout role was in 1960 (The Magnificent Seven), has was 40. His next memorable role was 1967 (The Dirty Dozen), when he would have been 47. It wasn’t until the 70s, when Bronson was in his early to mid-50s, that he became well known.

Comparing the “sex appeal” of a man who’s most iconic appearances were in his late 20/early 30s with a man who’s most iconic appearances were in his 50s is a bit of a cheat.

EDIT: I just found a picture of Bronson in his 30s:

I think your Bronson argument is done for.

43

The groundbreaking 70s directors–Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg–represented a very specific movement of Young Turks (Roger Corman proteges, not sure if that’s relevant) who wanted to throw out everything they thought was hokey about “Old Hollywood.” The drab earth tone colors were specifically a reaction against the excesses of early Technicolor movies. Most movies in the early 50s were still B&W. To compete with television, they had to do things TV could not yet do, like dazzle the audiences with freakishly bright colors. I remember a western from around 1956 where everyone had bright blue eyes and one of the cowboys had a tangerine-colored vest. I could see a kid in the audience thinking “Give me a camera and I’ll show you what movies should be like–the opposite of this!”

44

Not all color films were made the same way, and not all that you now see in color were filmed on a single color frame, but filmed (and archived) on 2 or 3 monochrome strips, much less susceptable to deterioration over time.

From Technicolor.

45

I either read in a book, or heard on a DVD commentary, that bright colours and patterns were popular in Old Western towns. I couldn’t find an online cite though.

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Hi there, an interesting topic, I have often wondered that as well, however I really have to disagree.
I found that most cinema movies and even series looked great and far better than they look today.
I really don’t like any of the modern cinematic movies, I find them unrealistic, and unnatural, the actors look paler, the surroundings look either darkish, blueish or silverish, I love old movies, I think they looked great compared to those of today.
I stopped watching movies or going to the cinema for this matter since 2000
I nostalgically watch old movies made in the 50s, '60s and '70s, the '80s didn’t look all that good, then they kind of picked up again in the '90s until early 2000 then everything became just boring, background noise is horrible, everything is synthetic nothing organic is left. So, I gave up watching movies, I don’t even know what movie is out.
Give old movies any time lol

47

In a thread a year or so ago, I posted after watching an episode of a '70s cop show. They took forever for the detective to say “I’ll be right there!”… then hang up his phone… and take his jacket off his chair and put it on and take out his keys, then put some paperwork back in his IN box, then walk through the station, say goodbye to the desk sergeant, and walk out… only to switch to a wide shot of the station, where they showed him carefully walking down every step of the big granite stairway. Then he strolls 30 feet to his car, unlocks it, gets in… and then we wait while he starts it up, adjusts the mirrors, puts on his seat belt, signals, looks over his shoulder, waits for a '69 station wagon to pass, and finally pulls out.

Did I say I watched an episode? I watched a quarter of an episode. It was either change the channel or slip into catatonia…

48

This thread definitely looked better sixteen years ago…

Stranger

49

The greater prevalence of facial hair is noticeable, especially sideburns. Always makes me think of the music video for the Beastie Boys song Sabotage, which was a parody of 1970s cop shows and featured lots of sideburns.

50

Have you seen a movie or a TV show from the past 15 years? All the men have stubble or beards. We’re living in the most heavily bearded period since the Civil War.

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Stranger

52

A lot of this thread is about the quality of the film as it ages itself. I knew (classic) Technicolor had huge cameras (was there ever a steadicam for technicolor) yet had the most vivid colours.

I often see the National Archives has deemed this film worthy of preserving. I presumed that means some kind of digital remastering that should outlive the heat death of the universe. Or at least a million years, whichever comes first.

On youtube I found “Dog Day Afternoon”. Looked fine in hue and quality and reminded me how Al Pacino used to talk.

Rockford Files, first episode opening credits. I see a pretty clear James Garner and the colour of that Pontiac Firebird is as “Sierra Gold” as I recall from the old CRT days in the 1890’s.

Police Squad (In Color) - it’s not vivid HDTV but actually looks a whole lot better on my 4K.

“Dirty Mary. Crazy Larry” -an iconic, classic, waste-no-time Peter Fonda’s second finest movie from 1974. It looks like it has retained its colour. If it only had the magenta colour I’d likely notice.

Excepting that bicycle ride stuff in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was that movie slow paced? And who are those guys?

Can some AI restore “The Graduate” if there’s no extant coloured copies lying around?

So some cop procedural movies were slow.

“I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question:
“Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”

I’m Hetero yet will say neither Clint nor any off the Magnificent Seven (including Bronson chopping wood) were anything less than good looking men.

Can we not preserve more films than some handful a year? Weren’t the old nitrate stock films done ASAP because they go on fire?

53

just to add: neither would Roger Moore as Bond

54

If Charles Bronson was working today and he needed to take his shirt off, then believe me, he’d get a personal trainer too. It’s wrong to say that actors in the past didn’t have the bodies of actors today, because most actors TODAY don’t have the bodies of “actors today” unless they’re specifically training for a role, and have dehydrated themselves for a full day before the shot. Benedict Cumberbatch did not look like this a month before shooting Doctor Strange, and didn’t still look like this a month after shooting ended.

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I’m not sure how much he’d need one:

With Jill Ireland in 1971 (50 years old)

In Hard Times (52 years old)

56

Actually, it was M Squad, starring Lee Marvin as Leslie Nielsen.

57

Should this thread be renamed “The differences between 1970s cinema, 2000s cinema, and the cinema of today”?

Some of the obvious differences such as cinematography, editing, and pacing are often the result of the technical limitations of the time. A lot of these are noticeable if you look at the works of Quinten Tarantino who often emulates that style or films like Rogue One or Mad Max Fury Road that on some level try to fit in with the aesthetics of earlier works made in the 70s and 80s.

If you wanted wide, sweeping, dramatic Lawrence of Arabia shots, you needed to film in Super Panavision 70 with tons of extras. They didn’t have the technology for rapid MTV era editing or splicing drone footage and CGI into complex continuous shots. A lot more “talking” as well.

58

One aspect of film production that is unseen by the general public but is a massive change is the use of digital editing technology. Up until the late ‘Eighties the only real option for movie editing was to physically splice film prints together, a laborious process in which editors would work 18+ hour days for weeks on end leading up to the striking of a master print and distribution of film reels for opening weekend. Directors would provide a list of shots in a scene that they wanted to use based upon reviewing the ‘dailies’ (low quality prints or later video taken in parallel with the film projector) but rarely had time (or interest) in sitting side-by-side with the editor to select the actual takes, so the editor had significant creative input on the back end about how the story was told. It also meant that making a bunch of quick cuts or trying to make the transitions between cuts of different takes seamless was time-consuming, so long cuts are more efficient for the editing process and generally just looked more consistent.

Even before the use of high definition digital cameras, in the mid-Nineties the technology was rapidly adopted to transfer images from film into 2K and then 4K uncompressed video and edited using a media composer (AVID was the first and most common system used) which permitted non-linear editing, i.e. you could easily interspace different cuts of scenes together, make a series of alternative branches to chose from, insert ‘working’ graphics shots while more polished work is being completed, et cetera. This allowed directors and producers to be more readily involved in the editing process (for better or worse, depending on your view) as well as to interject more extensive graphic effects within a reasonable production timeline; if final editing had to wait until CGI effects were completely, it would add months to the post-production phase, and they would be completely locked in even if there were story changes, corrections, or improvisations that occurred during filming.

Using digital transfers and now digital film ‘masters’ allows easily adding or replacing dialogue via ADR (‘looping’) and getting it to mesh within the soundtrack of the film instead of overlaying or replacing the soundtrack so it sounds more natural; in fact, a surprising amount of dialogue is actually recorded separately and looped in later, and much of what appears to be diegetic sound collected during filming is actually heavily scrubbed or replaced with post-production synthetic sound design, especially for action scenes, but sounds more ‘natural’ than audio mixing in films from earlier eras.

Of course, this means that many directors and editors now opt for a lot of quick cuts and crosss-cutting rather than to carefully plan out and shoot long, continuous scenes, which is a hacky way of covering up poor preparation and inconsistent acting and directing, i.e. “We’ll fix it in post.”. And doubtless generative “AI” will be used to ‘fix’ issues in the future during editing, or perhaps in pre-editing during review of dailies to ‘speed up’ film production, which I’m sure will be fantastic.

Stranger