POLL: What Are Your Favorite Decades For Movies?

30s and 70s.

The 30s because it's Hollywood coming to terms with the visual language and technique of the moving picture, which produced an incredible number of great movies.

The 70s because it's a Hollywood coming to terms with a paradigm shift where independent and personal films by an exciting new wave of filmmakers ruled the day, which produced an incredible number of great movies. And many of those films still resonate today.

I could make a case for the 40s, where the best films built on the lessons of the 30s and advanced the art of movies considerably.

 

1970s.

 

Most of my favorites are from the 70's, 80's and 90's. I like some movies from the 60's but only really the later half of the decade. I like movies from the 2000's and 2010's too but not many of my all time favorite movies come from those decades.

 

40s
50s
70s
80s

 

No particular decade for me. Only great films.

 

1920s-1970s prefer movies pre 1969


sean

 

80's were my prime movie watching years.

 

Yep!

 

a good movie is a good movie, it is irrelevant when it was made. my favorite movies span the decades.

 

Well said, sir, although I still think the 1960's were the greatest musically.

 

I voted 30s thru the 80s (But I do like some 90s and 2000s movies (But not many))

 

I share Solaris's opinion of 30s and 70s at least for US films. Foreign films may have a different trajectory. I like them most in the post WW 2 period of late 40s to 1960.

 

The 70's is my favorite decade. I'll watch anything that came from the 70's. I'm still discovering new films from that decade all the time. But so many huge favorites of mine from that decade... 'Jaws', 'Rocky', 'Taxi Driver', "Foul Play", 'Chinatown, 'Carrie', 'Badlands', 'Apocalypse Now', "Smokey and The Bandit", " Hot Stuff", "Bad News Bears", "Five Easy Pieces", "The French Connection", "Marathon Man", "Cuckoo's Nest", "Poseidon Adventure", "Paper Moon", "Mad Max", "Phantom of the Paradise", "The Longest Yard", "Saturday Night Fever", "Grease", "Sisters", "Silent Movie", "Superman", 'The Warriors", "Three Days of the Goddamn Condor", "Serpico", "Dog Day Afternoon", "Rolling Thunder", "Rock and Roll High School", "Taking Pelham 123", "Deliverence", "Death Wish", "The Conversation", "Harold and Maude", "Harry and Tonto", "Close Encounters", "All The President's Men", "The Parallax View", "Shampoo", "Alice Don't Live Here No More", "Alien", "Buddy Holly Story", "Eraserhead", "Halloween", "The Exorcist", "Silver Streak", "Gator", "The Last Picture Show", "Network", "Oh God!", 'Papillion", "Scrooge", "Family Plot", "Star Trek The Motion Picture", not to mention any movie starring Clint Eastwood....you get the idea. It was a golden age!

I also vote for the 80's due to nostalgia ("Indy Jones", "Goonies", "Road Warrior" etc). And the 20's because I seldom see a silent movie I don't like.

 

Well, I'll stick my neck out and disagree with the general consensus once again. I realize that there were a lot of fine films made in the 1970's (The Exorcist, The French Connection, The Godfather series, Close Encounters, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, etc.), but there are just too many dated, independently produced, low budget stinkers and big budget studio fiascos to ignore. As good as Easy Rider, The Wild Bunch and MASH were at pointing the new way in the late 60's, it set in motion events that would end up costing Hollywood dearly for over a decade.

The seventies was an era where nose candy ruled in Hollywood and the tell-tale white was often reflected in pointless meandering filmfare. Too often lines of coke and rolled bills told the unresolved story. It was the seventies ...and Sam Peckinpah... that pretty much killed the western genre (except for Clint Eastwood's efforts). Post-hippy new age sensitivities quickly replaced traditional Hollywood fare as young filmmakers were afforded too much control. By the time the excesses were reined in ...after the Michael Cimeno Heaven's Gate fiasco... major studios were on the financial ropes and ready for another shake-up.

I doubt that I'll convince anyone to reconsider their 70's votes because there were great films and series produced in that decade in spite of the stinkers. It's just that other decades have ...in my estimation... produced more consistently good films and series that stand the test of time. For instance, the best Bond series films were Sean Connery's 60's films. The best gritty detective film noir productions were in the 40's and 50's. The 30's and 40's produced most of the eternal classics (Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, etc.). The greatest roadshow epics and musicals were produced in the 50's and 60's. The return of epic storytelling and fantasy film series arrived around 2000 (Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, etc.) as well as action genre films (Bourne series, Mission Impossible, Jack Reacher, etc. ) and is still going strong.

Of coarse, as always, mileage varies and everyone has their own opinions.


Cat

 

Probably the 90s.

 

Same here, although I voted 1930s, '40s, '50s, and '60s.
Rather than decade, my favorite era would be '40s-'50s film noir.

 

'70s, '80s, and '90s.

 

There is a selection bias since these old films have to be rescued and restored. So only the ones that really interest the restorers or have a perceived potential audience get the necessary treatment to be shown.

 

What you're omitting is that every single period of filmmaking is filled with a large percentage of stinkers. Hollywood is a factory, and the ratio of trash to treasure is pretty big, skewing to the trash side, no matter what decade you're talking about. The stinkers of the 70s aren't so far in the rear view as the ones in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, and because 70s movies get so much attention maybe the stinkers of that decade seem more prominent. We tend to filter out the failures of earlier decades because they're less available to us, but remember that the 30s through the early 50s were the heyday of the B-movie, and while some of those films have grown into cult classics, most were considered pretty bad for decades after their release (and many still stink).

As for large scale commercial failures resulting from poor timing, ego, or creative overreach, pick a decade. Intolerance (1916) had a non-linear story and was wildly ambitious, but it bombed because it had a non-linear story and was wildly ambitious (and arguably too long for the story it was telling). Metropolis (1926) bankrupted its studio, in spite of the fact that it was such a visionary film that it influenced filmmakers for decades even in severely compromised form. The Big Trail (1930) was the first 70mm widescreen film, and it bombed because most theatres weren't equipped to show it. The Blue Bird (1940) was supposed to be Fox's answer to The Wizard of Oz, but it didn't recoup its large budget because its star, Shirley Temple, seemed unpleasant and charmless, and it's still not much fun to watch. Cleopatra (1963) is equally if not more notorious a disaster than Heaven's Gate.

I can't argue with your point that cocaine ran mid-to-late 70s Hollywood, and played no small part in steering the lo-fi indie zeitgeist into a creative iceberg. But I will contend that, while the particulars of that narrative are unique to the 70s, broadly speaking, Hollywood seems to regularly go through cycles of rise and fall.

My point is not to try to sway your opinion -- we're all going to like what we like, no shame in that -- but I disagree with your historical analysis.

 

1930s-1950s....maybe even up to 1965.

Mostly black and white. Some hard to classify. Musicals. Comedies. Drama. Film noir. Universal's classic monsters. A film has to intrigue me. I prefer subtlety over sledgehammers.

I'm also re-kindling my interest in silent films. I haven't been 'to the movies' in years; nothing interests me.

 

The 90's. Just like with music the 90's is massively underrated.

Examples

Goodfellas
The Scent Of A Woman
Fargo
Usual Suspects
Th Last Of The Mohicans
Seven
The Matrix
Sleepers
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs
The Silence Of The Lambs
Schindler's List
A Bronx Tale
American History X
JFK
The Remains Of The Day
The Firm
Boyz N the Hood
Trainspotting
Primal Fear
The Talented Mr Ripley
Nil By Mouth
The Green Mile
Good Will Hunting
Fight Club
The Shawshank Redemption
Misery
A Time To Kill
Cape Fear
The Rainmaker
Casino
In The Line Of Fire
The Game

There are many missing but that is a seriously good number of films. Great variety as well. I think the 90's beats most decades hands down.

 

Good thread! Interesting, a lot of folks dig what I dig.....

 

I voted 70s

 

50's & 60's &70's TCM