Golden Age?

[segagamer12]

In the are movies better thread the author suggested today might be a golden age of film. I got the impression in that thread the consensus was mixed.


SO, in the interest of being impartial but also giving everyone a chance to share their thoughts, what period would you consider the Golden Age, if not today?


For me I am mostly leaning towards the 80's but my period stretches from 1975 to about 2004 I think that is the best period for cinema from my own experiences. A lot of what came before was still trying to figure it out or just too old world for my tastes. A lot of what is out today just doesn't interest me much.

But the question isn't what is my personal preference in films that period would be it. The question is what is considered the "Golden Age" which to me is kind of a loaded question anyways but to the best of my understanding I consider it a time when cinema experienced real revolutionary movies.

I could find films from any period that are good and films from any period that are not so good, but I think all my top 100 favorite films of all time fall between those dates, with very few outliers. Thoughts?

[Thomas Guycott]

The silent era.

[Foggy]

Golden age to me would be the rise if the Cinema brats in the 70's and American New Wave. There's films from various years that I love, but something about that period just clicks for me.

[jacobsever]

Late 90's/early 2000's Disney Channel Original Movies

[BagheeraMcGee]

I'm partial to the '70s being my favorite decade, but the '90s with the Sundance Festival filmmakers and the independent film boom (Miramax, etc.) was quite good, too.

[oildude]

1945 through the 1960s. An incredible number of superb actors and directors came to the forefront of film in these decades. All those actors and directors who carried with them the anguish and life lessons of two world wars, a depression, and all the momentous events of the first half of the 20th Century. There would be no 1970s reinvention of cinema if not for the 1950s and 60s. Modern cinema begins there. What makes the classic films so classic, what sets the creative energy of those mid-to-late decades of the 20th Century so strikingly apart from the output of today's directors and actors, is those earlier generations had a period in history to draw on for inspiration and life experience that has not been equaled since (and thank God for that).

How could any period that saw so much turmoil in world events - post-WWII alienation and readjustment, the Cold War gone hot, Stalin with the bomb, the threat of WWIII and global nuclear holocaust, duck and cover air raid drills in the schools, wars of colonial liberation, the very real fear of Communist infiltration and subversion of Western ideals and society, great leaps in societal change, social unrest, twenty-five years of debates about who we are and where we are going as a people, and the birth of rock and roll - be anything but impressive?

Proof? How about this list just for starters:

Billy Wilder, Samuel Fuller, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Anthony Mann, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant, Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, James Stewart, John Ford, John Huston, John Wayne, William Holden, Katherine Hepburn, Betty Davis, Kim Novak, Rita Hayworth, Jean Simmons, Glenn Ford, Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Fred Zinnemann, Bernard Herrmann, William Wyler, Ray Harryhausen, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Charlton Heston, Shirley McClaine, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day, Shirley Jones, Natalie Wood, Ava Gardner, Ruth Roman, Alec Guinness, James Mason, Joanne Woodward, Martha Hyer, Jeanne Moreau, David Niven, Eva Marie Saint, Anne Baxter, Yul Brenner, Alan Ladd, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Judy Holliday, Sterling Hayden, Lee Van Cleef, Peter Sellers, Paul Newman, Robert Ryan, Van Heflin, Lee Marvin, Hope Lange, Geraldine Page, Mercedes McCambridge, Simone Signoret, Bibi Andersson, Gloria Grahame, Sidney Poitier, David Lean, Otto Preminger, Nicholas Ray, Stanley Kubrick, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Omar Sharif, Robert Shaw, Robert Wise, Clint Eastwood, George Stevens, George Pal, Paul Scofield, Alain Delon, Henry Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Raquel Welch, Catherine Deneuve, Diana Rigg, Nancy Kwan, Peter O'Toole, Anthony Quinn, Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Jack Hill, Curtis Harrington, John Cassavetes, Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, Gene Kelly, Rex Harrison, Dick Van Dyke, Ann Margret, Julie Andrews, Blake Edwards, Gary Cooper, Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Max von Sydow, Ingmar Bergman, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Jean Pierre Melville, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Alain Resnais, Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, Jacques Demy, Jacques Tati, Mikhail Kalatozov, Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Masaki Kobayashi, Nagisa Oshima, Kinuyo Tanaka, Tatsuya Nakadai, and the great Toshiro Mifune...... etc, etc, etc

[robgmun]

Late 70's-Mid to late 80's

Bladerunner
Star Wars movies
Indiana Jones movies
Great Spielberg movies (ET, Jaws, CEOTTK)
Back to the Future movies
Superman movies
Alien and Aliens
Terminator
The Thing (and in general a golden era for horror)

I could go on and on

[Abby is Q]

If I were going to make a list of hundreds of movies that I consider my favorites, most of the list would likely fall between 1975-1988 (at the very latest). I am however, a horror fan and this is probably the absolute best period of time for the genre.

[42041]

For my tastes - late 60s to late 70s.
Bit of a dip in the 80s.
Back to normal starting in the 90s.

Most films made before the mid-late 60s tend to be incredibly overrated.

[willtopower]

Originally Posted by jacobsever

Late 90's/early 2000's Disney Channel Original Movies

Perfection was reach with Brink. None have come close since.

[AaronJ]

I think this is the best era for film, from the audience perspective, because cinema of all kinds, from all over the world is available in a way that was never true before.

OTOH, if I had to choose an era where I believe the very best films were being made, I would say between the mid 50s and mid-to-late 60s. If I had to choose the era that had the very best 5%-3% of films each year, it would be that era.

But like I said, everything is available to everyone now. And that's never really been true. So it depends on how you look at it.

[Rodney-2187]

The advent of PG-13 was when I noticed a big decline.

When I list my favorite movies they are all over the place, so I can't really pick a certain period.

I will say technology has made this a golden age for me. The pictures and sound in theaters and at home are better than ever. I can stream just about anything imaginable anytime I want. If all this quality access isn't some sort of golden age, I don't know what is. Whatever you like, you can find it.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by AaronJ

I think this is the best era for film, from the audience perspective, because cinema of all kinds, from all over the world is available in a way that was never true before.

OTOH, if I had to choose an era where I believe the very best films were being made, I would say between the mid 50s and mid-to-late 60s. If I had to choose the era that had the very best 5%-3% of films each year, it would be that era.

But like I said, everything is available to everyone now. And that's never really been true. So it depends on how you look at it.

This (current) is the weakest. 70's was the strongest IMO.

[Popcorn_Bliss]

I suppose it could define a number of things, depending on the criteria one chooses.

I always assumed the true golden era to be a popular term used to describe the generally blooming quality of Hollywood stars and pictures from around 1930 through the 1950's perhaps?

Yet, as many have done, we all could list our own personal "golden eras".

In trying to determine mine, I realize I'm very scattered. I truly find great periods of film in the silent era, the 30's, the 40's, the 50's, the birth of innovative foreign films in the 60's, the rush of free-spirited, envelope-pushing films in the 70's. And while I generally have more favorites in my "AFI 100" from these classic eras, there are still great films from the 80's, 90's, 2000's and beyond.

I probably could do a count of which decade has the most films in my Top 100, but long story short, my golden era is probably fairly spread out.

[grape_jelly]

There is no time better than the present... except for the future.

[BobbyMcGee]

Hollywood's Golden Age: http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/

[Hucksta G]

Probably the 70s or 90s for me.

[Talleyrand]

1966-1980

More specifically the early 70s.

[imsounoriginal]

In terms of decades, I'd go 40s, 70s, and 90s, with the first half of the 60s definitely making some noise.

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

This (current) is the weakest. 70's was the strongest IMO.

See, I can't call any era that has Fincher, Jonze, Tarantino, Malick, Park, Hou, Zhang, Coppola, Linklater, Eastwood, Refn, Coen Bros., Godard (STILL!), Anderson (both), Wong, Almodovar, Kaufman, The Romanian New Wave, McQueen, Von Trier, Aronofsky, Nichols,

... and about 100 others if I wanted to spend time thinking about it ...

Can possibly be considered the worst era ever.