Morgan Neville’s Netflix Doc on the 1975 Movies

In the first minutes of Netflix Distribution: 1975Oliver Stone pulls out a piece of lined paper and begins excitedly reading a list of his favorite films, apparently from 1975, given the title of Morgan Neville’s documentary and the talking points already raised by Jodie Foster’s narration.

He’s fine for a while, before he arrives All the President’s Men And Network.

This is where film scholars and detail-oriented people will notice a very, very obvious problem: both All the President’s Men And Network were releases from 1976. This isn’t a blur that’s going to fade over the next hour and a half.

Distribution: 1975 is filled with great clips and peppered with solid observations, but it’s really an odd documentary – likely to be appealing to viewers with a casual interest in history or cinema, but exasperating to anyone with an appetite for even intermediate education.

Half the talking heads and half Foster’s poorly scripted voiceover (“Are we living the American dream or an American nightmare?”) function as if the documentary was actually focusing on 1975 and the impressive assortment of films released that year – We flew over a cuckoo’s nest, Dog afternoon, Nashville, Jaws and more.

But just as often, Distribution: 1975 treats the very concretely defined concept of “1975” – a year existing between January 1, 1975 and December 31, 1975, if there was any confusion – as a construct, a nebulous midpoint between the end of Watergate and the American bicentennial.

It’s a choice that makes sense on a thematic level and, even more so, on a cinematic level; As cinema years go, 1975 was very good, but it wasn’t necessarily better than 1976 and you can’t get close to 1974, so it’s up to Neville and his gang of experts to be able to talk about it. Network And All the President’s Men And Taxi driver And The conversation And Chinatown And Alice no longer lives here as a non-1975 bonus.

On a practical level, however, it takes the relatively clear and contained promise of the title and renders it impossible, resulting in an easily distracted project that barely has time to be more than superficially invested in any subject, racing through its biggest ideas in an unconvincing (and, at times, dubiously accurate) manner.

The general thesis – difficult to dispute on its simple merits – is that the period between Watergate and the bicentennial was a period of immense cynicism and disillusionment in the United States (despite the lack of precision of the title, Distribution: 1975 defines 1975 as an exclusively American phenomenon). Richard Nixon resigned but was pardoned. Saigon has fallen. Oil prices have soared.

Then there were a bunch of other things that happened or were about to happen. There have been competing pressures to pass and thwart the Equal Rights Amendment. Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts in one month. We were at the dawn of the personal computer revolution, the rise of Ronald Reagan, and a new conservatism. It was the end of the counterculture and the birth of the Me Generation.

As Foster’s narration puts it, in just one of dozens of cringe-worthy lines, “To some, the era was like a disco ball, where hundreds of little selves swirled around.”

People were wondering, the documentary tells us: “Is America still working?” And the movies were too!

Neville has assembled a strong group of experts and talking heads, including filmmakers like Martin Scorese – watch Mr. Scorsese on Apple for better Scorsese content – ​​and Nashville scribe Joan Tewkesbury; vintage stars like Ellen Burstyn and Albert Brooks; modern stars/enthusiasts like Seth Rogen, Patton Oswalt, and Josh Brolin; historians like Rick Perlstein; critics like Wesley Morris; academics like Todd Boyd of USC; and general cultural observers like Frank Rich and Kurt Anderson. Ancient Variety Chef Peter Bart is present, but despite working as a studio executive during this particular era, he and the documentary offer no real perspective of the industry.

Once you accept that according to this document, a 1975 film is any film released in 1975, produced in 1975, influenced by anything that happened between 1974 and 1976, released in 1974 but perhaps seen in second-run theaters in 1975, or even pre-Watergate but the filmmakers hope you won’t care, Distribution: 1975 makes a compelling case for why it was a particularly fertile time for certain genres, from conspiracy thrillers to vigilante dramas.

It is much less convincing to make other connections. Did the 1975s have a bunch of films with dark endings, perhaps reflecting the mood of the country? Of course. But once we have passed half a decade Midnight Cowboy And Bonnie and Clyde And Easy riderwhat do we particularly say about “1975” about “pessimism”? And yes, there were quite a few disaster films at that time, which certainly reflected a certain distrust of institutions. But once you talk about it The Poseidon Adventure – released in 1972 and based on a 1969 novel – the subject becomes ahistorical. And while I understand bringing Richard Pryor and blaxploitation into the conversation, because, as Morris notes, most genres that fit the era and theme are conspicuously devoid of black voices, using Cooley High School as the representative film of 1975 blaxploitation rather than Saba, baby Or Dolemite is very strange.

I could go through an almost endless list of favorites from 1975 that aren’t even referenced or get two clips in a context that makes very little sense. But hey, we at least have a few minutes of the 1973 adaptation of Jonathan Livingston Seagullwhich is relevant, but appears here more as “Huh, that was a weird thing we made popular back in the day.”

With almost nothing given the depth it deserves, Distribution: 1975 feels like going through a checklist, even though the connective tissue between the ideas is almost non-existent. Like… sure, let’s acknowledge that television existed by mentioning All in familybut absolutely nothing other than, for some reason, ABC Wonder Womanused for clips of Lynda Carter stopping bullets as a manifestation of feminism, but never discussed.

The checklist approach gives at least a fleeting glimpse of many very good films from this period, although it’s unclear which of these films get enough enticing exposure to attract viewers. It’s even harder to know how many of these films, if any, will ever be available on Netflix (at least before a deal with Warner Bros. is struck).

It’s a shame that so much is handled at such a superficial level, because the talking heads are good and many of their rapid-fire comments are amusing. My favorite thing is when the experts try to equalize Jaws let’s return to the themes covered earlier in the documentary, concluding with Sam Wasson’s observation that “it’s a film about nothing.” I don’t agree, but I’m not sure he does either, which is part of the fun of analysis.

If you didn’t know Distribution: 1975 comes from an Oscar-winning filmmaker, you might be inclined to think it’s a video essay from a film school student with some very well-connected friends. If I were the teaching assistant grading this video essay, I would probably give it a B-/C+ with the comment: “Entertaining and engaging, but lacking focus and substance.” »