This month I will be revisiting the Oscars of the seventies in my ongoing series on the Oscars. Before I get to the next entry (1970 - 1974) I thought it might be useful to re-examine the idea that the seventies were a second golden age for American cinema. 1970 saw a major re-awakening of American film that would carry through to the mid-seventies. Finally realizing that it was losing the youth audience to foreign imports Hollywood starting financing films that today would be lucky to get backed at the Sundance Film Festival: Five Easy Pieces, M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, Alex in Wonderland, Gimme Shelter, Husbands, I Never Sang for My Father, A Man Called Horse, Joe, Woodstock, Little Big Man. Okay, Hollywood didn't finance all of those but the studios started to distribute as many as they could while smaller distribution companies were getting into the act as well. Now defunct National General Pictures co-produced and distributed both Little Big Man and A Man Called Horse. The studios themselves continued to put out big movies like Ryan's Daughter, Patton, Catch-22, Tora, Tora, Tora and Airport of which some were successful and some were not. The start of the reputation of the seventies as a second Golden Age of the movies had begun. But the story of the second golden age isn't entirely true.
There were before and have been since just as many good to excellent to great small, intimate films made each year as there were in the seventies. The difference was in the promotion of those films and their box office take. Put it this way: In 2003 Lost in Translation was released to excellent reviews and terrific word of mouth with a limited marketing campaign. That same year Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was also released to excellent reviews with a massive marketing campaign. Lost in Translation pulled in 44 million and Return of the King pulled in 377 million. Thirty years earlier, in 1973, it would have been the other way around (and the special effects for Return of the King would have been considerably worse). That was the difference. The big box office winners were the small character driven dramas and comedies. Going back to 1970 the biggest budgeted, special effects extravaganza was Tora! Tora! Tora!. It cost $25,000,000 to make and pulled in... just $14,500,000. By contrast M*A*S*H cost all of $3,500,000 to make and pulled in... $73,200,000.
The reverse of today was true in the early seventies. Big budget, big special effects, low box-office. Low budget, no special effects, big box-office. And if you're thinking that M*A*S*H grossed much more than Tora! Tora! Tora! due to its considerably higher acclaim consider this: In 2001 Pearl Harbor, based on the same events as Tora! Tora! Tora! and opening to even worse reviews, grossed $450,400,000 worldwide by the end of its run. With an estimated budget of $140,000,000 that's a gross of over three times the cost of the film. In the same year, 2001, Mulholland Dr. opened to near unanimously great reviews. Its worldwide gross was $20,112,339. With an estimated budget of $15,000,000 that's just a 33% take over the cost of the movie.
Mulholland Dr. is exactly the type of movie that would have flourished in the early seventies. As the baby boom moved into adulthood they were interested in seeing more adult themes on the big screen. The studios, always going where the money is, gave them what they wanted. With the success in 1969 of Easy Rider ($340,000 budget, $60,000,000 take by 1972) and Midnight Cowboy ($3,600,000 budget, $44,785,053 take) and the failure of Hello Dolly ($25,000,000 budget, $15,200,000 take) and Sweet Charity ($20,000,000 budget, $4,000,000 take) it was clear where the money was. As an added bonus the movies bringing in the most money cost the least amount to make.
By 1971 the biggest movies with the biggest marketing campaigns starred actors and actresses like Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson and Glenda Jackson. Movies like The French Connection (made for $1,800,000 and taking in more than $51,000,000 - a whopping 28 times the cost of the movie) were winning at the box-office, the critics polls and the Academy Awards. For a short, dreamlike period it seemed that art and business had finally found a way to
sleep in the same bed together. Gone were the days of the little guy being stepped on by the big studios. Gone were the days when the artist would have to struggle to get financing. Now the studios were seeking out the film students and the artists and giving them the keys to the kingdom. Young filmmakers just out of film school found themselves in the same demand that theatrically trained actors and actresses found themselves in at the advent of the sound era. The movies they and other old newcomers (like Don Siegal and Robert Altman and Hal Ashby) who had struggled under studio supervision for years, produced were challenging, engaging, thought-provoking. Titles like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Straw Dogs, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show, The Hospital, Harold and Maude, A Clockwork Orange, Deliverance, The Getaway, Sounder, Fat City, The Heartbreak Kid, Play it Again Sam, American Graffiti, Drive He Said, The Last Detail, Charley Varrick, Don't Look Now, The Long Goodbye, The Exorcist, Scarecrow, Papillon, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Serpico, Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Conversation, Chinatown, Harry and Tonto, The Sugarland Express, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Shampoo, The Man Who Would be King, Hester Street and on and on. I've left out quite a few actually, but you get the point. The bonds of playing to the box-office had been broken. From here on out the writer director could make the movie he wanted and not worry about focus groups or whether or not it would play in Peoria. Of course it would. It's what everyone wanted. It was blue skies as far as the eye could see.
But there were clouds on the horizon.
As much money as the low budget personal films were making there were other movies raking in big bucks too that had nothing to do with artistry. Big time musicals (Sweet Charity and Hello Dolly) and over-inflated dramas (Tora! Tora! Tora! and Ryan's Daughter) were no longer bringing in the big box-office that had always been guaranteed them for decades. But in 1970, by pure chance, Hollywood discovered something that brought the audiences in by the multitudes. In decades prior, disaster films had never done poorly at the box office but they were rarely ever big box-office winners either. Hollywood had even released a couple of airplane based disaster movies, The High and the Mighty (1954) and Zero Hour!(1957) that did middling to good box-office so there was no reason to believe another one would be that 
different. But they were wrong. Very wrong. In 1970 Airport fulfilled an unknown desire of the masses to see has-beens, former Oscar winners and second bananas gather together for an hour and a half of turgid soap-opera followed by twenty minutes of disaster management. It grossed over $60,000,000 in its initial run and went on to gross more than $100,000,000 overall worldwide.
Hollywood being Hollywood, by 1971 they had moved everyone to a ship, sent a rogue wave in its direction and called it The Poseidon Adventure. Big time box-office once again. They were on to something. And the directors that made these films weren't nearly as much a pain in the ass as those young kids making movies the studio heads didn't understand in the first place. And the actors (former stars happy to get work, character actors happy to have leads) were very easy to work with. Willing and cooperative. Hmmm...
By 1974 the disaster genre had become standard. Two big ones were released in that year: Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. Earthquake cost $7,000,000 and took in $79,700,000 worldwide by the end of its run. The Towering Inferno cost $14,000,000 and pulled in $116,000,000 worldwide before its run ended. And with plenty of studio loyalists voting, The Towering Inferno even managed to get a nomination for Best Picture! No film had yet raked in $100,000,000 domestically on its initial run but that wasn't far around the corner.
In 1973 The Exorcist had eschewed the standard distribution technique of opening in the big two, New York and Los Angeles, and then slowly making its way around the country with limited engagements before going into general release. Instead it was released en masse in as many towns and cities and on as many screens as the studios could rent. The result was big box-office as it shattered opening weekend records. By the time its general release ended it had raked in more than $89,000,000 at the box-office domestically. The idea of a wide release in lieu of limited engagements seemed like a possible goldmine. Within two years the studios would strike that gold they had long been mining for: $100,000,000 domestic.
In 1975 it happened. Jaws opened on 465 screens (nothing compared to the thousands of 
screens a big movie opens on today, but there were no multiplexes back then) and by the end of its initial run had pulled in $129,549,242 domestically, more than The Towering Inferno had pulled in worldwide. The Age of the Blockbuster had begun. And that Second Golden Age of low-budget independently made films was rapidly heading for the door.
Of course, there would still be many more low to mid-range budgeted movies coming out of the studios for years to come. Films like Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, Days of Heaven and Kramer vs. Kramer would still be made, still receive acclaim and still do well at the box-office. But the studios had discovered (as they always seem to do) an easy formula for big bucks: Special effects, wide releases, summer openings. It wasn't perfect. For every Star Wars there was a Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, for every Airport 75 there was a Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. But perfect or not, the big box-office takers raked in enough to cover for the failures.
By the late seventies Hollywood had gone back to the business it was used to: Studio directors, churned out scripts, re-hashed ideas, proven formulas. The small movies were still there, they just weren't getting the star treatment they had received in the early to mid-seventies. The Second Golden Age turned out to be more smoke and mirrors than reality. The movies were great, no doubt, and there were probably slightly more of them made due to studio interest than there have been in other years. But it was studio financing and promotion that made it seem bigger than it was.
So was there a second golden age in the seventies? Yes and no. There were many more great independently made "small" films in wide release than ever before but the blockbusters, from Airport through Jaws, were still there and eventually took the attention away from the smaller films. But for a few short, shining years the filmmaker as artist stood at the forefront of American movie making. If that's what it takes to create a golden age, then here's hoping we have many more to come.
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