Wednesday, 30 July 2008
My Favourite Year, and Yours...
posted @11:20 p.m. by Richard Kelly
A few years ago after the success of Peter Biskind's book on 1970s cinema and a minor rash of imitators, a reputable film-scholar friend of mine told me she was minded to write a tome called 'F&!k Off With Your F&!king Decades', so as to counter the trend toward boxing movies up in this 10-year allotment. A useful suggestion, since a historian such as Eric Hobsbawn has shown us how "the 19th century" was probably longer than 100 years, the 20th probably shorter. Paul Schrader once wondered quite appositely whether his AMERICAN GIGOLO was the first film of the 1980s or the last of the 1970s. If however one confines oneself to the virtues of a single year's releases, that's maybe a purer criterion. It suits the Academy. In the list that follows RAVI HOLY offers a chronological Ten of what he considers to be the outstanding single years in the history of movie production. Clearly his choices suggest larger preferences of time-period, pre-WW2 and most of the 80s and 90s not getting a look in. But the jury's still out, right? As the Chinaman declared on the question of the worth of the French Revolution, 'Too early to tell...'
