/tv/ - Movies and Television

Dividing eras of film into conventional decades is mistaken and inaccurate. I've found, and I think you will too, that the latter half of any given decade is more like the first half of the following decade than the first half of its own. For example, films made between 1945 and 1955 are far more similar to each other than they are to either the more optimistic films of 1935-1945 or the more subversive films of 1955-1965. 1965-1975 also forms a rather distinct epoch of aggressive experimentation and aggressive left-wing propaganda. 1995-2005 is the era with the last bit of soul in film while 2005-2015 is completely soulless but not completely unwatchable. 2015-2025, which we're in right now, is the age of pozzed loads and nostalgia bait.

The biggest possible holes in this theory, I suppose, would be the 20's and 80's, which had consistent styles and philosophies throughout. In the first case, I think that if you take a closer look, the late 1910's are more like the early 1920's than the late 20's are and that the films of the early 30's are extremely similar to those of the late 20's, with the only real difference being the presence of sound and the absence of caption cards. In the second case, the 80's, I think there's a pretty consistent style and look running about 1975 all the way through to about 1992 or 93 (the "long 80's" as I like to call it.) That was the mostly free of both the politicized experimentation of the early 70's and the cynical edginess that permeated most the 90's. It was also when they finally figured out how to make pretty much anything look good on film but before they began deliberately trying to make everything look ugly. That's probably why there's more nostalgia for that era than any other.

pic unrelated.