{"id":190629,"date":"2025-12-18T04:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T04:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/190629\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T04:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T04:57:08","slug":"morgan-nevilles-netflix-doc-on-1975-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/190629\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan Neville’s Netflix Doc on 1975 Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the opening minutes of Netflix<\/a>\u2018s Breakdown: 1975<\/a>, Oliver Stone<\/a> pulls out a piece of lined paper and begins enthusiastically reading a list of his favorite films, ostensibly from 1975, given the title of Morgan Neville<\/a>\u2018s documentary and the talking points already raised by Jodie Foster\u2019s narration.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s doing OK for a bit, before getting to All the President\u2019s Men and Network.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBreakdown: 1975\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tLots of ideas, little depth.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: Friday, December 19 (Netflix)
Director: Morgan Neville\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s here that film scholars and people with detail-oriented compulsions will notice a very, very obvious problem: Both All the President\u2019s Men and Network were 1976 releases. This is not a blurriness that will be alleviated over the next hour-and-a-half.<\/p>\n

\n\tBreakdown: 1975 is packed with great clips and peppered with solid observations, but it\u2019s truly an odd documentary \u2014 one likely to be enticing for viewers with a casual interest in history or filmmaking, but infuriating for anybody craving even intermediate instruction.<\/p>\n

\n\tHalf of the talking heads and half of Foster\u2019s badly scripted voiceover (\u201cWere we living the American Dream or an American Nightmare?\u201d) operate as if the doc\u2019s focus is actually intended to be 1975 and the impressive assortment of films released in that specific year \u2014 One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest, Dog Day Afternoon<\/a>, Nashville, Jaws and more.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust as often, though, Breakdown: 1975 treats the very concretely defined concept of \u201c1975\u201d \u2014 a year existing between January 1, 1975 and December 31, 1975, if there was any confusion \u2014 as a construct, a nebulous midpoint between the end of Watergate and the American Bicentennial.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a choice that makes sense on a broad thematic level and, more than that, on a cinematic level; as movie years go, 1975 was very good, but it wasn\u2019t necessarily better than 1976 and it can\u2019t come close to 1974, so it behooves Neville and his gang of experts to be able to talk about Network and All the President\u2019s Men and Taxi Driver and The Conversation and Chinatown and Alice Doesn\u2019t Live Here Anymore as a non-1975 bonus.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn a practical level, though, it takes the relatively clean and contained promise of the title and makes it impossible, resulting in an easily distracted project that barely has time to be more than superficially invested in any topic, racing through its biggest ideas in unconvincing (and, at times, questionably accurate) fashion.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe overall thesis \u2014 one that\u2019s hard to dispute on its simple merits \u2014 is that the period between Watergate and the Bicentennial was one of tremendous cynicism and disillusion in the United States (despite the lack of specificity in the title, Breakdown: 1975 defines 1975 as an exclusively American phenomenon). Richard Nixon had resigned but been pardoned. Saigon fell. Oil prices soared.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there were a bunch of other things either happening or on the verge of happening. There were the competing pushes to pass and thwart the Equal Rights Amendment. Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts in a month. We were on the verge of the personal computer revolution and the rise of Ronald Reagan and a new conservatism. It was the end of the counterculture and the birth of the Me Generation.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Foster\u2019s narration puts it, in just one of dozens of cringe-worthy lines, \u201cTo some, the era felt like a disco ball, where hundreds of little me\u2019s swirled around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople were, the documentary tells us, asking, \u201cDoes America still work?\u201d And the movies were too!<\/p>\n

\n\tNeville has assembled a solid group of experts and talking heads, including filmmakers like Martin Scorese \u2014 watch Mr. Scorsese<\/a> on Apple for better Scorsese content \u2014 and Nashville scribe Joan Tewkesbury; period stars like Ellen Burstyn and Albert Brooks; modern stars\/enthusiasts like Seth Rogen<\/a>, Patton Oswalt<\/a> and Josh Brolin; historians like Rick Perlstein; critics like Wesley Morris; academics like USC\u2019s Todd Boyd; and general cultural observers like Frank Rich and Kurt Anderson. Former Variety chief Peter Bart is present, but despite the fact that he was working as a studio executive in that particular period, he and the documentary offer no real industry perspective.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce you accept that according to this doc, a 1975 movie is any movie released in 1975, produced in 1975, influenced by anything that happened between 1974 and 1976, released in 1974 but perhaps seen in second-run movie theaters in 1975, or even pre-dating Watergate but the filmmakers hope you won\u2019t care, Breakdown: 1975 makes some persuasive arguments about why this was an especially fertile time for certain genres, from the conspiracy thriller to the vigilante drama.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s far less convincing making other connections. Did 1975-ish have a bunch of movies with bleak endings, perhaps reflecting the mood of the country? Sure. But once we\u2019re a half-decade past Midnight Cowboy and Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider, what are we saying is particularly \u201c1975\u201d about \u201cpessimism\u201d? And yes, there were a bunch of disaster movies in this period, which definitely reflected some distrust for institutions. But once you talk about The Poseidon Adventure \u2014 released in 1972 and based on a 1969 novel \u2014 the point becomes ahistorical. And while I understand bringing Richard Pryor and blaxploitation into the conversation because, as Morris notes, most of the genres that fit with the time and theme are conspicuously devoid of Black voices, using Cooley High as 1975\u2019s representative blaxploitation movie rather than Sheba, Baby or Dolemite is very odd.<\/p>\n

\n\tI could run through an almost endless list of 1975 favorites that don\u2019t even get referenced or get two clips in a context that makes very little sense. But hey, at least we get several minutes on the 1973 adaptation of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which has relevance, but appears here more in a \u201cHuh, that was an odd thing we made popular back then\u201d way.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith almost nothing receiving the depth it deserves, Breakdown: 1975 gives the impression of working its way down a checklist, even if the connective tissue between ideas is close to nonexistent. Like\u2026sure, let\u2019s acknowledge TV existed by mentioning All in the Family, but absolutely nothing else other than, for some reason, ABC\u2019s Wonder Woman, used for clips of Lynda Carter stopping bullets as a manifestation of feminism, but never discussed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe checklist approach at least gives fleeting notice to a lot of really good films from the period, though it\u2019s hard to know which of those films get tantalizing enough exposure to draw viewers to them. It\u2019s even harder to know how many of those movies, if any, will ever be available on Netflix (at least before a Warner Bros. deal goes through).<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s too bad so many things get treated at such a surface level, because the talking heads are good and a lot of their quick commentary is fun. My favorite bit comes when the experts attempt to tie Jaws in with the themes discussed earlier in the documentary, only to conclude with Sam Wasson\u2019s observation that \u201cIt\u2019s a movie about nothing.\u201d I don\u2019t agree, but I\u2019m not sure he does either, which is part of the joy of analysis.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you didn\u2019t know that Breakdown: 1975 came from an Oscar-winning filmmaker, you might be inclined to think it was a video essay from a film school student with some very well-connected friends. Were I the teaching assistant grading that video essay, I\u2019d probably give it a B-\/C+ with the comment: \u201cEntertaining and engaging, but lacking in focus and substance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the opening minutes of Netflix\u2018s Breakdown: 1975, Oliver Stone pulls out a piece of lined paper and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[109362,109363,146,85,46,7643,67200,397,400,27268,19449,888],"class_list":{"0":"post-190629","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-breakdown-1975","9":"tag-dog-day-afternoon","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-martin-scorsese","14":"tag-morgan-neville","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-netflix","17":"tag-oliver-stone","18":"tag-patton-oswalt","19":"tag-seth-rogen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}