American Graffiti (1973)

Get in the T-Bird!

I saw this ages ago, and we all grew up with ghosts of Happy Days flitting past us making us nostalgic to a California era (and its music) that occurred ten years before we were born, so it was interesting to see it again now that I too am going through a phase of listening to "golden oldie" bands, although in my case it's the feedback-drenched psychadelia of Blue Cheer and the Yardbirds. American Grafitti is a great film, full of funny characters and good dialogue, fantastic editing, and great tunes - so good, in fact, that it's hard to believe that it came from the mind that produced the screenplay for The Phantom Menace. There's a young pre-fame Harrison Ford driving around prepping for his next role as Han Solo, and also Richard Dreyfuss as a college-bound kid wondering whether he should stick around town or look around a bit. Lots of nuances, which is a word you don't often use when describing George Lucas, such as the scene when Richard Dreyfuss has a talk with his teacher, and a girl comes up at the end of the conversation and says "teach, can I talk with you for a minute?" The scene is pregnant with meaning, but Lucas is subtle (?!?) about it and drops the story and moves on. There's also good fun when Dreyfuss (he seems to get all the best scenes) gets initiated into the local gang, the Pharaohs. It's such a very white white white town, that even the gangsters are white. To inject a bit of colour, though, Wolfman Jack has a great cameo. Suzanne Sommers as "the blonde in the T-bird" is basically unrecognizable, but hey - it's Chrissy! December 25, 2008

No wonder it's a classic!

Well, this past weekend, I sat down and watched American Graffiti (Collector's Edition) yet one more time.

Before Star Wars, before Indiana Jones, before Spielberg and Lucas were household names, we all got a chance to go back to that scary, emotional, momentous time between high school and college. We're transported back to that short period of time, when we are all masters of our own universe... ready to take the world by the horns. At the same time, we're unable to avoid the reality of our nervousness and of being unsure of ourselves. In other words, we're transported back to discover our uniquely American humanity.

That's the message of American Graffiti , and the reason for its success.

We find all the normal ingredients of conflict between:
* good and evil
* beauty and plainness
* "coolness" and "not-so-cool"
* youth and older age (in this case the dividing line is determined by the number of years before or since high school graduation)
* leaving home or staying with the familiar
* fast cars and faster cars
* those successful with the opposite sex and those not so successful

In the end, as the Beach Boys begin to sing and just before the credits begin to scroll down the screen, we're brought back to reality. The main characters are eventually...

* killed by a drunk driver
* missing in action in Vietnam
* selling insurance in California
* writing in Canada

John Cathcart
Author, Delta 7

December 18, 2008

Charming and Unique! It Grows On you! Too Bad About the DVD!

I have to admit that I didn't like this film the first time I watched it as I didn't really appreciate the documentary style layout and it seemed a little slow to develop. Now that I've seen it again after a few years, I've actually come to like this a lot as I realise that this is a very unique film with a very good storyline and good acting as well as it describes the lives of High School graduates/dropouts and their very real sense of loss having to leave the safe/secure comfort zone of school to face the real world with all its uncertainty and callousness.

One character actually manages to take the leap albeit with great reluctance and after great difficulty soul-searching while another doesn't quite make it at least yet. I can actually see myself returning to this film again in the future as I get the feeling as with any classic that I'll pick up something again which I didn't at the previous viewing to make me enjoy this even more; this is the sign of a classic film.

This film is also responsible for launching a whole new genre of nostalgia themed spinoffs like "Happy Days" which ran many many seasons but unlike "M*A*S*H" which was poor compared with the tv series that it launched, "American Graffitti" holds its own as a great film in its own right and is in no way overshadowed by the tv series. This film is also responsible or at least very influential for "Grease" and the "Sha-na-na" tv series that along with "Happy Days" was very popular on tv here in Singapore when I was growing up. For an 80's version of this type of film check out "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" which is also similarly themed.

Too bad the DVD quality isn't as good as the film though as the picture quality has imperfections like white spots on many of the frames and barely rises above VHS quality and the sound quality although THX mastered does not come in DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Options but if you have a Pro Logic setup, you do get to approximate a proper surround sound environment to do some justice to your home theatre setup.

A redeeming factor is the Special Features section which has about an 80 minute making of documentary which I found very entertaining. With the advent of Blu-ray, here's hoping George Lucas will supervise a proper picture and sound quality remastering job that will improve upon what's on this particular dvd version which is just average given what's currently out there.

Great film but wait for a better restored picture and sound quality version to surface either in the standard or Blu-ray format. October 26, 2008

The wonderful 60's

My favorite movie of all time - after Titanic.
I grew up in the 60's, and relate to this wonderful movie. I love everyone in it, and sometimes play it just to have the music playing while I'm doing housework. Great plot, great acting, and love Modesto for the small town set.
Great, great movie!! September 7, 2008

Happy Days

American Graffitti, released in 1974, takes place near Modesto California where George Lucas (the films director and co-writer) spent his high school years. One of Lucas's stated purposes in making this film was to document the practice of "cruising." For those of us that didn't grow up in that era cruising basically consists of driving around town all night looking for something to do. A practice unthinkable for most of us now thanks to gas prices. The whole town seems to revolve around doing everything in a car. The drive in movies, the diner that you eat in your car at (Sonic is the modern equivalent), and the secluded outdoor area where everyone goes to "park." One of the films funniest plots revolves around Terry (Charles Martin Smith) who is usually carless being lent a car by a friend and jumping into a world that he is wholly unprepared for.

The entire film takes place in the space of one night, the night before Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) and Steve (Ron Howard) are supposed to leave for college. The movie takes pains to show us what a solitary figure Curt is. He is shown at the school dance walking in a dark hall by himself, he is sitting alone on a car watching storefront television, he is the only main character to sit in the back seat of a car (usually by himself). Curt has relationships and interactions but they are very brief in nature. Throughout the course of the film the characters are defined by their relationships. Steve is trying to figure out what to do with his girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams) who cannot come to college because she is still a junior in high school. John Milner (Paul Lemat) is the local hot rod legend that accidently picks up Carol (Mackenzie Philips) a girl perhaps 13 or 14 years old. Terry in the course of his only night with a car picks up Debbie (Candy Clark in an Oscar nominated role) who is the cause of most of the "fun" that Terry has to endure.

All of these relationships have their touching moments but none like the unlikely pair of John and Carol. At first very antagonist John reveals himself to be full of empathy and seems to understand that no matter what she says Carol worships the ground he walks on. He condescends to be worshiped and in one moment after she angrily leaves his car, he drives around looking for her worried and arrives to rescue her from a car full of hecklers.

Since everyone is in their cars the whole night and they all have their windows down and their radios blaring, classic rock seems to pulse in every scene. There are several instances of superior sound design one in which a character runs through the streets and "Barbara Ann" flies out cars as they go by, simultaneously sounding exactly as it would in real life but also acting as a comment on the excitement the character is feeling. The music really is the heartbeat of the film and gives the whole story a rhythm. This omnipresence of the radio broadcast lends an almost God like status to the local disc jockey Wolfman Jack. The Wolfman represents everything that teenager's value. He makes prank calls, stays up all night, blasts rock and roll and has worked his way into adolescent mythology as an outlaw who broadcasts variously from Mexico and a plane that flies constantly around the country. In the course of the story the Wolfman will be unveiled as a normal person in a scene that is often compared to the famous "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" scene in the Wizard of Oz.

American Graffitti on the surface is just a teen comedy but the portrayl of adolescence is so blindingly accurate that it touches a cord with many people that see it over the years despite not sharing some of the cultural trappings. For me it inspires a personal longing for days gone by. The ending is bittersweet and the epilogue brings home the feeling that we all have when we learn that friends are mortal and that all things come to an end.
An excellent film and George Lucas's best outing as a director.
August 25, 2008

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