Ben Affleck On 1970s Films That Influenced ARGO
Ben Affleck's thriller, ARGO, opens with uncanny parallels to the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya last fall that ended in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other three other Americans. But the director/actor firmly rooted this true story of the hostage crisis in 1979 through careful production design. Affleck knew that if the film looked like others from that era, he'd add to the film's realism and relevance, saying: "If you’re looking at a movie that looks like it was made in the 1970s, it’s more easy for the brain to subconsciously accept the events they’re watching are taking place during that period. Now, you can’t do that if you’re doing a movie about the revolutionary war. We had an interesting advantage: the era I was trying to replicate was a really great era for filmmaking. I got to copy these really great filmmakers: Sidney Lumet, Scorsese, and so on."
One of the biggest influences Affleck cites in terms of getting the look just right of shaggy hair and a 1970s beard was ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Affleck also credits his costume designer, Jaqui West, with getting the right look: "She didn't want to do SHAFT, with the fur coats and bell-bottoms and stuff. It was going to be the true '70s clothes and hairdos and everything, but they would be part of the texture of the background, not the foreground telling the story, going, 'Oh, isn't it cute, isn't it funny, the '70s are so crazy.'"
Filmmaking in the 1970s is a great model for any creative filmmaker. LA Times' reviewer Kenneth Turan confirms that ARGO recalls a time "when Hollywood regularly turned out smart and engaging films that crackled with energy and purpose." We've selected a few from the Film Fresh collection that are worth another look, especially those 1970s films that focused on Americans trapped in foreign, hostile territory -- THE PASSENGER (1975), an existential film from Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni, and MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (dir. Alan Parker, 1978), a cautionary tale about young Americans imprisoned after caught trying to smuggle drugs out of Turkey. Both films reveal the hubris that can be brought by Americans to other countries, where they naively assume that freedom and justice are inalienable rights.
The era's preoccupation with the theme of escape is also expressed powerfully in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975), Milos Forman's award-winning film also starring Jack Nicholson as a patient in a mental institution. (All of Nicholson's characters from this era are rebelling against the constrictions of class, marriage, and career -- parts that he played like no one else could.) We also think the politics represented in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1976) and THE CONVERSATION (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) reveal 1970s anxieties about surveillance and subterfuge, topics still significant today.
