Decade Under The Influence

The 1970's was an extraordinary time of rebellion, of questioning every accepted idea. Every standard by which we set our cultural clocks was either turned inside out or thrown away completely and reinvented. For American cinema, the 1970s was an era during which a new generation of filmmakers created work for a new kind of audience - moviegoers who were hungry for stories that reflected their own experiences and who were turning their backs on the age-old formulas of the Hollywood studios.

As a result, emerging filmmakers influenced by foreign directors such as Godard, Fellini and Kurosawa and by the changing social climate and struggling studio system, converged to create a new kind of moviemaking. Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Julie Christie, Peter Bogdanovich, William Friedkin, Roger Corman, Paul Schrader, Hal Ashby: all revolutionised moviemaking with their personal visions and all are brought together in A Decade Under The Influence. In this excellent documentary by the late Ted Demme (Director of Beautiful Girls, Blow and others before his tragic death in 2002) and Richard LaGravenese (acclaimed for his screenplays of The Fisher King, Beloved and The Bridges Of Madison County), all the key players in what became known as the Second Hollywood golden Age talk about their colleagues, films and memories of that extraordinary era. The result is a fantastic celebration of the artists and films that left a vital and lasting stamp on America's national cinema and identity.