What Era had the best movies ?

Wedwood

Which era did we have the best movies ?

The Silent Era: They had the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, not to mention the first Westerns, Gangster Movies etc.. Basically, they got the originals of everything!

30s/40s: the likes of Humphrey Borgart, epic westerns like Stagecoach and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, not forgetting the likes of King Kong and the Wizard of Oz.

50s/60s: All those Monster and Sci Fi B movies in the 50s, biblical epics like Ben Hur, plus David Lean's epics like Lawrence of Arabia, as well as 2001 and Planet of the Apes, not forgetting Connery as James Bond.

70s/80s: Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Blade Runner, Indiana Jones, basically Spielberg/Lucas with a John Williams soundtrack, with Stallone and Schwarzenegger top of the pile.

90s/00s: Spiderman, Harry Potter, Marvel taking over the summers, the likes of Julia Roberts and Will Smith in the blockbusters like Pretty Woman, Independence Day.

So, if you had the choice, which cinema going era would you most like to be a part of.

SCOOP 64

70/80's I think.

Dirty Dingus McGee

50's and 60's I'd say.

Hitchcock was at his peak in the 50's early 60's and you still had great Westerns and Epics being made in those decades.

Harry Palmr

1966-1976

The crumbling and then collapse of the self imposed "Hays Code" in the USA combined with the exciting film movements in many countries and the social upheaval that they sprang from. Equally important was the folding of the contract bound studio system which help free up resources for new talents who were emerging from the film schools.

The result was a decade that started with Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and Blow Up and ended with Taxi Driver and In the Realm of the Senses. A golden era of daring boundry pushing cinema that was then booted aside by the triple whammy of Jaws, Star Wars and Superman. Suddenly comic books, big budgets and mechandising were the future and things were not quite the same again.

johnny_ultimate

A very Hollywood-centric condensed history of cinema there OP!

While I have a soft spot for the silent era, the two decades between 1950 and 1970 were beyond compare. Cinema grew more experimental, political, challenging, provocative. The New Waves of France, Japan and later America were pushing boundaries (not to mention the many lesser known movements around the globe). Many major directors were working at the height of their creative power - Ozu, Mizoguchi, Tati, Ray, Truffaut, Marker, Bergman, Wilder and many, many others. New voices were emerging from everywhere, with plenty to say, from Cassavates, Leone and Polanski to Imamura, Godard and Oshima.

It marked a period of transition and interaction between classical and 'new' cinema, and produced many of the enduring masterworks of both paradigms. Boundaries were being broken while they were concurrently being perfected. Every era in cinema has something important to offer (although the 80s pushed patience a bit ) but the 50s and 60s were extra special.

agent graves

80's action were the best.. plenty of blood and gore and impossible feats... my fav is robocop.. action movies these days are a bit ****e.. Hollywood's influence has made them bland..

e_e

I have a real soft-spot for the revolutions that happened with cinema all over the world in the 1960s (2001 A Space Odyssey, Red Desert, Persona, 8 1/2, Harakiri and Play Time to just name a few!) but that's not to dismiss this era of films either.

What the OP defines as 90s/00s (or any of the decades really) is really reductive, it's a bit like basing all food available today off of burgers and chips. The box office trends of the time don't even tell half of the story.

biketard

70s/80s, especially late 70s/early 80s.

mini homer

Have to say 1999 was the best for me movies like the matrix,fight club etc is was a great year

marienbad

Late 60's early 70's - just in the USA alone we The Godfather, The Parallax View ,Bonnie & Clyde, The Conversation, The Wild Bunch, The Last Picture Show, Chinatown, Faces and A Woman Under the Influence.

I could go on , it seemed we had a masterpiece every month . Alas few cinemas showed foreign movies so we had to wait for the advent of the VCR to discover Bertolucci,Melville,Chabrol,Visconti,fasssbender etc.

FaulknersFav

70's for me, both Badlands and Days of Heaven introduced Malick, Apocalypse Now in '79, the Deerhunter. That's from the US alone, The Ascent (1977), a Russian movie, is my 2nd favourite war movie ever. Small sample but what a time for film

Simon2015

The 80s without a doubt. I think more franchises came out of the 80s than any other decade.

Harry Palmr

You say that like its a good thing.

arcticmonkeys

Have to go for the 70s myself exorcist sevens up Halloween Chinatown Harold and Maude.

Wedwood

e_e wrote: »

What the OP defines as 90s/00s (or any of the decades really) is really reductive, it's a bit like basing all food available today off of burgers and chips. The box office trends of the time don't even tell half of the story.

Dont take my examples of movies in the OP as the guide to this discussion, they're just to give a flavour. If you watch a movie (of any genre/nationality), you can usually guess to within a few years when it was made.

Every era has its own masterpieces and classics, maybe a better way of phrasing the question was which era scored the best collection movies across all the genres.

Tony EH

1970's.

/thread