By the time George Lucas made American Graffiti in 1972 the teenage experience of cars, cruising and rock and roll music was gone. The malls had replaced the downtown strip. The British Invasion had changed the face of music and the country, torn in two by the Vietnam war, had lost it's innocence. American Graffiti is a semi-autobiographical film about coming-of -age and loss of innocence for a group of teenagers and for America.
The film follows four teenagers on the last night of summer. In the morning two of them are leaving for college and starting new chapters in their lives. For the other two, their lives will go on the same, but somehow different. The teenagers are represented by four archetypes:
Steve Bolander (Ron Howard) - Class President, the popular and successful. Dates the most popular girl in school.
Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss) - The smart guy. A fast brain and a quick wit. The class clown. Not as successful with the girls and always looking for the ideal girl.
Terry "the toad" Fields (Charles Martin Smith) - the class nerd. idolizes his friends and always dreaming of having the car and the girl.
John Milner (Paul LeMat) The cool guy. The delinquent. And the boy who doesn't grow up. he is still living in his glory days of high school even though time is passing him by.
The film follows their adventures over the course of a single night, cutting back and forth between them. Steve struggles with his relationship with his girlfriend Laurie. Curt chases an elusive mystery woman around town. Toad, cruising in Steve's car, finally gets the girl but is not sure what to do with her. And John gets tricked into cruising with a teenybopper and faces down yet another challenger to his title as "the fastest car in town". The stories intertwine and ultimately combine when the group comes together for a race on Paradise Road.
The film ends with photographs of the four boys and a notation of how their lives turned out. Two are dead. John in a car crash and Toad in Vietnam. Steve is an insurance salesman in Modesto, suggesting that his dreams and potential were never reached, and Curt is a writer in Canada, suggesting he is hiding out from the draft.
The movies bittersweet ending suggests the ending of America's period of idealism and innocence. These kids are the first of the baby boomers to reach maturity. They grew up in a decade of prosperity and promise. At the turn of the decade America held out hopes of a bright future and exciting new adventures. Instead a year later the President was killed, and the country was plunged into a decade of strife and cultural civil war that still goes on today.
Many director's who grew up in the fifties have chosen to look back at this period. American Graffiti started a wave of nostalgic movies about life in mid-century America. The Wanderer's, Stand By Me, The Flamingo Kid, Cooley High, The Lords Of Flatbush and A Bronx Tale are just a few films that evoke a time when life seemed simpler on the surface, but underneath the same struggles existed.
You can't discuss American Graffiti without talking about the music. The movie does not have an underscore. Lucas used a soundtrack of rock and roll. The film has a non-stop string of pop hits from 1955 thru 1962. Everything from Buddy Holly to the Beach Boys. The music represents the origins of rock and roll in American. And dominating it all is the omnipresent voice of Wolfman Jack. At one point a character mentions that rock and roll has never been the same since Buddy Holly died, not realizing that in just about a year the British Invasion of music would begin, changing rock and roll music for good.
The film was made on a shoe string budget with a cast of unknowns. The most well known star was Ron Howard. All of them went on to some measure of fame and fortune in Hollywood. Howard would act for a few more years and then become a successful director and Dreyfuss would play a variation on the character of Curt Henderson for the rest of his career. Harrison Ford had given up his idea of being an actor, and was working as a carpenter when Lucas cast him. The rest is history. The shortage of money forced Lucas to shoot the films in innovative ways giving the film a sense of realism that would not have been achieved in a studio with a bigger budget. The film was shot in and around the cities of San Rafael and Petaluma in Northern California. Mel's Drive-In was already a fixture in the area. The restaurant featured in the film had already closed by the time the movie was made. It was re-opened for the movie and then it was torn down afterwards.
The studios did not believe in the movie, and at one point Francis Ford Coppola offered to finance it himself, in order to ensure Lucas maintained creative control. But after sneak screenings in NY and LA the studio released the film with only four minor cuts and it was a commercial and critical hit. It made Lucas a wealthy man and allowed him to pursue his dream of making a space opera called Star Wars. When the film was released in 1978 Lucas restored the cuts to his original edit. The movie received five Academy Award nominations and between the two releases grossed $118 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation it is the 43rd highest grossing film in Hollywood history
At The Movie House rating ****
p.s. the poster art was by Mort Drucker who began his career as a popular cartoonist for Mad Magazine in 1956.
Many director's who grew up in the fifties have chosen to look back at this period. American Graffiti started a wave of nostalgic movies about life in mid-century America. The Wanderer's, Stand By Me, The Flamingo Kid, Cooley High, The Lords Of Flatbush and A Bronx Tale are just a few films that evoke a time when life seemed simpler on the surface, but underneath the same struggles existed.
You can't discuss American Graffiti without talking about the music. The movie does not have an underscore. Lucas used a soundtrack of rock and roll. The film has a non-stop string of pop hits from 1955 thru 1962. Everything from Buddy Holly to the Beach Boys. The music represents the origins of rock and roll in American. And dominating it all is the omnipresent voice of Wolfman Jack. At one point a character mentions that rock and roll has never been the same since Buddy Holly died, not realizing that in just about a year the British Invasion of music would begin, changing rock and roll music for good.
The film was made on a shoe string budget with a cast of unknowns. The most well known star was Ron Howard. All of them went on to some measure of fame and fortune in Hollywood. Howard would act for a few more years and then become a successful director and Dreyfuss would play a variation on the character of Curt Henderson for the rest of his career. Harrison Ford had given up his idea of being an actor, and was working as a carpenter when Lucas cast him. The rest is history. The shortage of money forced Lucas to shoot the films in innovative ways giving the film a sense of realism that would not have been achieved in a studio with a bigger budget. The film was shot in and around the cities of San Rafael and Petaluma in Northern California. Mel's Drive-In was already a fixture in the area. The restaurant featured in the film had already closed by the time the movie was made. It was re-opened for the movie and then it was torn down afterwards.
The studios did not believe in the movie, and at one point Francis Ford Coppola offered to finance it himself, in order to ensure Lucas maintained creative control. But after sneak screenings in NY and LA the studio released the film with only four minor cuts and it was a commercial and critical hit. It made Lucas a wealthy man and allowed him to pursue his dream of making a space opera called Star Wars. When the film was released in 1978 Lucas restored the cuts to his original edit. The movie received five Academy Award nominations and between the two releases grossed $118 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation it is the 43rd highest grossing film in Hollywood history
At The Movie House rating ****
p.s. the poster art was by Mort Drucker who began his career as a popular cartoonist for Mad Magazine in 1956.
2 comments:
Masterful review of a truly great movie...A couple of notes...i think it is important to point out how funny this movie was, while at the same time evoking a tremendous sense of sentimentality...The movie start out with the excitement and plans for a weekend evening in the summer getting underway and as it progresses you feel that you are right there hour for hour up until dawn...It even goes into those deep hours of the night when many are asleep but there are still the bleary eyed searchers out in the shadows (ie, when Dryfuss visits the wolfman, great p[oignant scene)....Also,sidenote, Susan Forgot Her last Name was in it as the elusive girl...Wolfman Jack himself played in it..and another sidenote,,,the great Country singer/writer Jerry Reed played a neat role as the head of the Pharohs...One of my favorite movies of all time...Lucas was brilliant in leaving the movie goer with such a strong sense of a bygone time at the end of the movie...as a viewer, you do not want the time period or the movie to end...the soundtrack is trememndous and you make a great point about the oncoming British invasion...Very few movies get my famous American Classic Rating...American Graffiti earns it big time (Only 10 movies hgave earned the ACR, and in no special office...Amer. Grafitti, Patton, Godfather 1 and 2, Paths of Glory, Silence of the Lambs, Saving Pvt Ryan, The Natural, Goodfellas, The French Connection (quite a good bunch you must admit)
Dear Anonymous,
Thanks for the comments. I agree the movie is funny. But it was not written to be and out and out comedy like. Instead the comedy comes from events the characters expreince and is carefully woven into the drama and romance aspects of the film.
The movie does feel like you are there as a voyuer for the entire evening. As the hours go by there is a sense of soemthing ending bigger than just a summer night. This feeling is waht makes the film so evocative.
Susanne Sommers played the mystery woman in the T-Bird.
That is quite a bunch of ACR ratings. I would add a few others. Vertigo, Jaws, Psycho, Casablance, Sunset Blvd., All About Eve, On the waterfront, Singin' In the Rain, To Kill A Mockinbird, West Side Story, Some Like It Hot, Goodfellas, Fargo, North By Northwest and Network to name just a few.
maybe if you opened yourself up to experiencing more movies you would discover the riches out there and award more films the coveted ACR.
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