Turning Point
Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
Flashback to ’69 PICTURELUX/THE HOLLYWOOD ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
It’s been 50 years since Hollywood underwent seismic changes that can still be felt today. BY PETER CROOKS QUENTIN TARANTINO’S LATEST FILM , Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, takes us back
in time to the entertainment world of 1969, when Tinseltown was in transition. This was nothing new in the film industry — the movies have always been constantly evolving as audience tastes, technological inventions and the creative talent of the new blood meshes with that of the old guard to push things in a (mostly) forward direction. Tarantino’s movie fantasizes that the old guard and new blood of Hollywood ’69 might have moved into the 1970s with more congruity than the real history allowed. While events in real life may have played out a bit differently than in Tarantino’s fairy tale, the truth is that 1969 was a remarkable year at the movies, one with many films worth reflecting on, both for timelessness and for how they documented their particular time in such a fascinating way. There have been many great years in Hollywood, frequently with peaks at the end of each decade. In 1939, audiences were just 10 years past the invention of talkies and had just been introduced to Technicolor when Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gunga Din and Stagecoach were released in what many consider to be Hollywood’s greatest year.
More recently, 1999 saw Hollywood producing films by then-new directors, such as Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, Sam Mendes’ American Beauty and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, and by veteran filmmakers at the top of their game: David Lynch’s The Straight Story, Michael Mann’s The Insider and Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. For its combination of classic Hollywood and exciting new talent, though, 1969 takes the cake. It was a time when the formulas from cinema’s golden age were still working. Gene Kelly directed Barbra Streisand to an
MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL GUIDE 2019 MARIN MAGAZINE
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