American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions by Peter Lev
While the anti-establishment rebels of 1969's Easy Rider were morphing into the nostalgic yuppies of 1983's The Big Chill, Seventies movies brought us everything from killer sharks, blaxploitation, and disco musicals to a loving look at General George S. Patton. Indeed, as Peter Lev persuasively argues in this book, the films of the 1970s constitute a kind of conversation about what American society is and should be-open, diverse, and egalitarian, or stubbornly resistant to change.
Examining forty films thematically, Lev explores the conflicting visions presented in films with the following kinds of subject matter:
- Hippies (Easy Rider, Alice's Restaurant)
- Cops (The French Connection, Dirty Harry)
- Disasters and conspiracies (Jaws, Chinatown)
- End of the Sixties (Nashville, The Big Chill)
- Art, Sex, and Hollywood (Last Tango in Paris)
- Teens (American Graffiti, Animal House)
- War (Patton, Apocalypse Now)
- African-Americans (Shaft, Superfly)
- Feminisms (An Unmarried Woman, The China Syndrome)
- Future visions (Star Wars, Blade Runner)
As accessible to ordinary moviegoers as to film scholars, Lev's book is an essential companion to these familiar, well-loved movies.