Cinema's Best Decade?

[nathan detroit]

Simple - which decade produced the best movies EVER?

Discussion and arguments are prefered.

[Melonballer]

The first Star wars came out in the 70s so they get the nod. However, there are lots of other great movies like Jaws, the Godfather, and One Who flew Over the Cuckoos Nest too.

[nathan detroit]

No offence to you Melonballer, but I wondered how long it would be before someone mentioned Star Wars! I was surprised it was within the first reply though!

[Retrocool]

I'm really torn by this, because I'm appreciative of several decades of cinema.

My favorite overall decades for cinema are the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1990s, all for vastly different reasons (and it's funny that I'm not including the 1980s, since that's my "coming-of-age" decade; it's not that there weren't good films made then; of course there were. It's just that, overall, as full decades go, creatively speaking, the 1980s, don't QUITE match up to the other ones, mostly due to the increasing corporatization of the major studios. By the '80s, this was ramped up BIG TIME).

If I had to pick just one decade out of all those, though, I'd say the 1970s were the absolute best decade, because, despite the increasing levels of corporate ownership at the studios, writers, producers, and directors were given unprecedented freedom in filmmaking, so much so, that it simply enriched the decade's incredibly diverse output to a degree not seen before or since. For me, it's not just Star Wars, Jaws, The Godfather, etc. Sure, those are part of it, but it's also other films (yes, including other films from Lucas, Spielberg, and Coppola), such as Network, Taxi Driver, Young Frankenstein, Chinatown, Dog Day Afternoon, All The President's Men, Deliverance, Serpico, Grease, Nashville, The Omen, A Clockwork Orange, Patton, Airport, Rocky, Carrie, National Lampoon's Animal House, The Deer Hunter, The Getaway, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Smokey and the Bandit, The Shootist, Halloween, The China Syndrome, Breaking Away, Soylent Green, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Going In Style, The Boys from Brazil, Three Days of the Condor, Shampoo, Enter the Dragon, Time After Time, The End, Barry Lyndon, Norma Rae, The Outlaw Josey Wales...

OK, I think you get the point.

Oh, not to mention a good amount of really enjoyable Disney films, both live action and animated. They might not have been up to the same level as a lot of those other films, but they were fun and memorable nonetheless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<obje...mbed></object>

[GhostHost2]

I know it's not the 1990s or the 2000s. The 70s and 80s were awesome. The 30s were really good too. A lot of landmark films came out in the 30s such as King Kong, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, the Universal monster flicks, and of course Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I haven't really decided which decade I would pick as the best though, but I will say that the 80s were the last great decade for movies. The 90s might be the worst decade for movies, and what sucks is that most of my childhood was in the 90s.

[krystledm]

I said 30's for the same reason as above

[tassie]

I was a young teen in the 70s (13 - 16) so that was the peak of my movie days, and before video. i remember you wanted to see a movie you had to line up about at least an hour before showing time, and sometimes even then the line was up teh street and around the corner. All the big blockbusters came from the 70s!!

[Pirate Lover 68]

The golden age of Hollywood was pretty great, but all the rules changed with the films of the 70's. I picked the 70's.

[ALIASd]

'Bonnie and Clyde' in 1967 set up the real change for the 70's.

The sheer volume and many of the standards for quality filmmaking came out of the 20's, 30's and 40's. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, just to name two, alone have emulated and mined so much from what came before them. Adding more money, time and technology along the way hasn't hurt either.

[aimster]

Most of the movies I like are from the 80's, so.....

[Maverick]

80's Hands Down

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Friday the 13th, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Rocky III, Poltergeist, Fast times at Ridgemount High, Return of the Jedi, Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Temple of Doom, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, Nightmare on Elm Street, Sixteen Candles, Back to the Future, The Goonies, The Breakfast Club, Top Gun, Platoon, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Beverly Hills Cop II, Good Morning Vietnam, RoboCop, Rain Man, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Die Hard, Batman, The Last Crusade, Back to the Future, Part II, Driving Ms. Daisy. Thats right i took it there.

The 80's have spoken!!!

[Goofy Daddy]

Simple - which decade produced the best movies EVER?

Discussion and arguments are prefered.

Actually, for me anyway, it isn't that simple. I break down movie releases by genre (Horror, SciFi, Fantasy, Drama...ect) so it would be different depending on what Genre you meant. Just movies in general? I'm not sure...the 70s and 80s are high up there on my list...but the 60s and early 90s were no slouches either.

[kirbilicious]

I think this is so difficult to choose just because when you think about the past, particularly the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, you generally only know the good movies because they're the only ones still given any recognition. It also doesn't help that so many people here weren't alive then so very few people could probably even name a "bad" movie from these time periods. Contrast this to the 90's and 00's where all of the bad movies are still fresh in our minds. I think it also doesn't help that nowadays, what are considered the "best" movies are generally smaller, low-grossing, independent films, whereas the "best" films from earlier decades were big hits at the box office.

[All4dISNEY]

Bladerunner....cinematic perfection.

[MsSarah]

This is difficult...