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A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE

One thing this documentary from Robert LaGravanese and Ted Demme reminds us of is that Jack Nicholson was in a lot of good movies — The Last Detail (1973), Chinatown (1974), One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) — during the 1970s. This collection of talking heads (Jack not among them) and film clips doesn’t shed much light on why that should have been so, or why those years were among the most prolific and inventive in the history of American film. Or, more important, why the renaissance so abruptly ended.

Directors Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, and Robert Altman and the impressive cast of screenwriters, producers, and actors (Julie Christie is particularly insightful) don’t take much credit for their success; they ascribe it to a rare confluence of historical events (Vietnam, Watergate, etc.), economic trends (the near-collapse of the traditional studios), and audience attitude (for once, people wanted something "real"). But they don’t take much credit for their failure, either. True, the country grew more conservative as the decade wound down, and blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars made a mint for the studios’ new corporate owners without their having to bother with messy artists. But the waste, megalomania, and other self-destructive indulgences of the latter-day auteurs barely get a mention (despite Decade’s title), and neither does the production nightmare of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), the debacle of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980), or the devastating effect of drugs on many of the brightest lights of the era.

Demme himself died of a possibly cocaine-related heart attack before this film was released. Although Decade acknowledges his death, it doesn’t mention the cause. Maybe a movie had to be made in the ’70s to broach such uncomfortable truths. (108 minutes)

BY PETER KEOUGH

Issue Date: May 23 - 29, 2003
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