American Graffiti - 1973 (dir. George Lucas)

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A supposed American classic that I had never seen, I'd kind of avoided American Graffiti in the past because I don't really enjoy period films all that much, and there just kind of seemed to be something self-satisfied about the nostalgia that films like this offer up. Although this is arguably the first film to do it, I never really appreciated the "trip down memory lane," to the pre-Vietnam, pre-Woodstock era that films like this try to offer, almost trying to convince the audience that it was a purer, sweeter, more innocent time. "Oh, we were so naieve back then - good days, good days..." It bores me. And I guess I was also wary of the fact that Ron Howard is in this film, almost playing a precursor to the Ritchie Cunningham character he played in Happy Days. With Happy Days, and other films like Porkys, Stand By Me (somewhat different but still a period nostalgia film) and a bunch of others I felt as though I'd already seen American Graffiti, and that I knew what to expect.

I was half right. Although it didn't necessarily surprise me in its tone or its plot, I did find this film entertaining in terms of the story arcs that each of its characters undertake over the course of one night. I'm also pretty fond of the late night soujourn film too, so I enjoyed the individual sub-stories of each of the characters in this film, and the random way that they all seemed to spill about, bumping into each other at times, and then detatching and going off for more of their own adventures. In a way this film reminded me structurally of a film of which I'm particularly keen, Richard Linklater's underrated (in my opinion) Suburbia, in that it's about the boredom that youths feel when they know they're on the cusp of finding themselves in the adult world, and yet they're pretty sure they don't really like what that adult world represents to them. They're simultaneously loathe of the small town that they're in, but they're also frightened to leave.

Richard Dreyfus was great in this - he's such a great actor, but I've only ever seen him play greying middle-aged men (perhaps apart from in Jaws), but here he's almost like what those greying middle-aged men are like before they get grey. I also really enjoyed Candy Clark as a party girl who sees the sweetness in the geeky guy, and Mackenzie Phillips as the adolescent girl that John Milner has to drive around with all night. Oh, and speaking of driving, watching this in an environmentally conscious era you're constantly reminded of how, once upon a time, massive gas guzzling road beasts were a sign of progress and man's domination over nature, science and industry. I imagine to younguns watching this film, it would no doubt represent a completely foreign world.

I think the element that I enjoyed most about this was its ensemble nature, the fact that although it had major characters and minor characters, everyone was kind of just there, and they all had something to do. And while I'm pretty over Hollywood's nostalgia for "an earlier, more innocent time", the film did manage, regardless of its setting, to tap into the emotional truth of youth and the desire for something new, something different, something else.

Micky says...

You are getting sleepy...very sleepy...
Well I certainly got sleepy in this film, and again not because it was boring or anything, but because I just find it a bit hard to keep my eyes open while watching a movie on a weeknight, it seems. And thus it seems I am turing into a nanna. Anyhow this is a good movie to get sleepy in because there are like five or six stories and they are not too hard to follow.

So as Ads mentions above this is a film format that we're very familiar with these days, the 'one night before we have to leave this all behind forever' scenario. The stories are interesting though, and often involve gorgeous cars and the drive-in diner. How cool is this diner! I reckon we should get one in Perth and it will be totally packed out all the time - rockabilly waiters on rollerskates could ride up to your old Holden, it'd be fab. But then again rolling up to one of those joints in your Excel or your Getz is just not quite as alluring....which is maybe why we don't have them anymore (plus it'd be quite an OH & S issue with those rollerskates). In general cars are really glamourised in this film and a lot of the plot centres around experiences in cars.

One cheesy thing about this film is at the end it explains to you what happended to each of the characters, and what happens to them is all pretty cliched. Perhaps this film started this convention (I have no idea could be totally wrong!), but it really made me notice that we don't have this in films much anymore, if at all. Basically now when the film ends, it ends. Scriptwriters don't feel the need anymore to tell you what the characters will be doing for the next twenty years of their lives. They (and we) are happy for the film to be a suspended chunk of the characters' lives.

So this film was not at all what I expected as it really is one of those coming of age stories, a teen flick really. I expected swing dancing to rock-around-the-clock, and though there was dancing, it wasn't this. They must have really tapped into the zeitgeist with this because I believe it is still in the top ten profit-making films of al time. And it was good to see it because you could really identify how this film has been a huge influence on filmmaking/scriptwriting trends ever since.