OLARIZING political
rhetoric, culture wars,
fiercely divided opinions
about the moral fiber
of the president, troops
dying far from home
in a war most citizens
question, debates about racial and gender
equality...
Anything sound familiar? Welcome
to 1969, a chaotic year when the evolution
of film reflected a rapidly fracturing soci-
etal landscape... a year that in many ways
mirrors 2019.
On the 50th anniversary of this water-
shed year for cinema, we take another
look at nine seminal films that shaped
America’s cinematic future. (Of course,
we couldn’t capture all the worthy films in
this limited list. Could-have-been-included
films include Z, The Sorrow and the Pity,
Army of Shadows, among others.)
What’s notably missing from our listare happy endings. At least one protago-
nist dies in six of our nine films—including
both protagonists in the “feel-good”
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
In the other three, a broken child’s pet
is killed, a broken salesman is on the edge
of an existential abyss, and, in the only
comedy, the inept criminal protagonist
is sentenced to 800 years in prison.
The zeitgeist seems to have been a rather
dark place.
What these films do share is innovation.
For starters, they expanded what could
be put on a screen (Midnight Cowboy);
created new ways to tell stories (Salesman
and Medium Cool); reimagined tired genres
(Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
The Wild Bunch); and compellingly showed
the cost of economic despair and inequality
(Kes and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?).
Here is a look at films that continue
to resonate and influence—films worth
celebrating on their 50th birthdays.P
Salesman
(Albert and David Maysles)Self-funded for $100,000, the Maysles
brothers’ documentary follows a group
of salesmen on their door-to-door rounds
selling expensive Bibles to blue-collar
leads generated through local church
officials. Thanks in large part to their
direct-cinema approach, the grainy,
raw results are intimate and unnerving,
especially as missed quotas loom,
desperation sets in and sales pitches
become increasingly predatory—with
the prey being people barely making
ends meet. Noticeably absent is camera
awareness of the subjects, a function
of the Maysles fly-on-the wall aesthetic
and those innocent days before the flood
of selfies. Paul Brennan (“The Badger”)
stands at the lonely heart of the film.EASY DOES IT: WRITER-DIRECTOR/STAR DENNIS HOPPER (L) AND STARS PETER FONDA (C) AND JACK NICHOLSON (R)
UPENDED THE HOLLYWOOD ESTABLISHMENT WITH THEIR TRIPPY TOUR-DE-FORCE EASY RIDER