70s Fever Part 2: Forget About Life for a While

Are you pumped? Because I'm pumped.  Let's talk about how 70s film mirrored the societal and political atmosphere of 1970s USA.

But first, an observation:
Most, if not all, movies have heroes and villains.  After all, it is these polarizing characters that are most often credited with giving plot motion and meaning.  And in this way, movies mirror real life; modern culture, in all of its intricacies and subsets, often begins with a simple conflict of interests between two politicians, entertainers, or other public figures.  And from these conflicts, a hero and villain often emerge.

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In the 1970s, the lines between the "good" and "bad" public figures were not so clearly drawn.  In the United States, the public had become largely disillusioned with President Nixon, the war in Vietnam, and the American Dream as a whole.  This nationwide confusion and pessimism was not lost on Hollywood, and the iconic films of the 1970s are now most clearly defined as either "hyper-heroic" or ultra ambiguous to the point that the main characters could be viewed as villains or heroes.  While the 70s certainly produced their fair share of classics, I've picked four to discuss in detail: Rocky, Star Wars, and the Godfather films (parts I and II).

The Godfather movies, released in 1972 and 1974, are dark and brooding films, in which the hero(es) are not obvious and possibly nonexistent, depending on one's view. This ambiguity of character, applied mainly to Michael Corleone, perfectly mirrored the uncertainty of the early 1970s.  1972-1974 marked the years at which the Watergate Scandal was at its peak, and the years when President Nixon's reputation quickly began to deteriorate.  All of a sudden, it seemed to the American public that the man who had been leading them- a "good guy" if you will, was now an insecure criminal, and a villain to American ideals.

 Fittingly, the Godfather movies are made in such a way that it is- at varying parts of the films- difficult to determine who is the hero and who is the villain.  In the Godfather Part II, for example, we are kept in the dark about the intentions of two major characters, Roth and Pentangeli, for much of the movie.

Rocky and Star Wars are films of the latter 1970s, produced at a time when American citizens were still weary from the recent Vietnam War, and soured by the Nixon conspiracy.  At a time when it seemed there were no real-life heroes to balance the real-life villains, Rocky and Star Wars stepped in with grandiose plots about overcoming adversity and rooted by heroic characters to compensate.

Both Rocky Balboa and Luke Skywalker embody the idea of "finding oneself" and "discovering greatness"- both concepts that America struggled with at a time when our nation was unsure of what side of morality it was actually on.  Rocky and Star Wars are films of hope, where the main characters start in the dark and end in the light.  They are the very manifestation of the journey the United States was about to take to right the wrongs of the villains of the past decade, and become heroes once again.

The Godfather films of the early 1970s begged the question (in relation to the Watergate Scandal and the Vietnam War) who are our heroes? And are we still heroes to the world? Then, in the late 1970s, after those questions had been answered with raw brutality, Rocky and Star Wars imbued Americans with the idea that heroes could still exist, and that greatness could come from darkness.
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photo credit: 
Michael Corleone- http://fsustudentlifecinema.tumblr.com/post/110087564394/5-facts-about-the-godfather-part-ii
Luke Skywalker- http://starwarsgroup.tumblr.com/post/64722026782