American GraffitiLike The Wonder Years, I've made frequent reference to this film recently. I was surprised, when I started doing that, that I'd never reviewed it.
American Graffiti takes place on a single night in Modesto, California in 1962. It's the late summer and the subject, all teenagers, are about to head back to school or already have, depending upon whether they're going to high school or college. Some are going to work or already working. They're spending the summer night cruising the town. That's used as a vehicle to get them into dramatic situations.
The story lines, and there are more than one, in the film are really simple. One character, played by Richard Dreyfus, is about to leave for college and develops a mad crush, in a single night, for a young woman driving a T-bird played by a young Suzanne Summers. Another plot involves a young couple, played by Ron Howard and Cindy Williams, who are struggling with his plan to leave for college while she has one more year of school. Another involves an already graduated figure whose life is dedicated to cars, even though it's apparent that he knows that dedication can't last forever. The cast, as some of these names would indicate, was excellent, with many actors and actresses making their first really notable appearances in the film.
What's of interest here is the films' portrayal of the automobile culture of American youth after World War Two. This has really passed now, but it's accurately portrayed in the film. Gasoline was relatively cheap and access to automobiles was pretty wide, which created a culture in which adolescents spent a lot of time doing just what is depicted in this movie, driving around fairly aimlessly, with the opposite sex on their minds, on Friday and Saturday nights. This really existed in the 1960s, when this film takes place, it dated back at least to the 1950s, and it continued on into the very early 1980s. At some point after that, gasoline prices, and car prices, basically forced it out of existence.
For those growing up in the era, this was a feature of Fridays and Saturdays, either to their amusement or irritation. As a kid, coming into town on a Friday or Saturday evening from anything was bizarre and irritating, with racing automobiles packed with teenagers pretty much everywhere. Grocery store parking lots were packed with parked cars belonging to them as well. "Cruising" was a major feature of teenage life, and nearly every teenager participated in it at least a little big, even if they disavowed doing it. While they did this, in later years they listened to FM radio somewhat, but more likely probably cassette tape players installed after market in their cars. In the mid 1970s, it was 8 track tape players. In the 50s and 60s, it was the radio.
So, as odd as it may seem to later generations, this movie is pretty accurate in terms of what it displays historically. And, given that the film was released in 1973, a mere decade after the era it depicts, it should be. The amazing thing here is that by 1973 American culture had changed so much that a 1973 film looking back on 1962 could actually invoke a sense of nostalgia and an era long past.
The music and clothing are certainly correct, as is the cruising culture. I somewhat question the automobiles in the movie, as most of those driven by the protagonists are late 1950s cars that wouldn't have been terribly old at the time the movie portrays, but a person knowledgeable on that topic informed me once that vehicles wore out so fast at the time that people replaced them fairly rapidly, which meant that younger people were driving fairly recent models. Indeed, looking back on myself, I was driving early 1970s vintage vehicles in the late 1970s.
The music, which is a big feature of the movie, is also correct, which ironically often causes people to view this as a movie about the 1950s, rather than the early 1960s. The music of the early 60s was the same as that of the late 50s, and music from the 50s was still current in the early 1960s, so this too is correct.
This movie was a huge hit, and it remained very popular for a very long time. It's justifiably regarded as a classic. More than that, however, it's one of the few movies that influences its own times.
Already by the 1970s, there was some nostalgia regarding the 1950s. Sha Na Na, the 50s reprisal do wop band, actually preformed at Woodstock, as amazing as that seems now. By the late 1960s, seems felt like such a mess that people were looking back towards an earlier era which they regarded as safer, ignoring its problems. American Graffiti tapped into that feeling intentionally, although it has some subtle dark elements suggesting that not all is right with the world it portrays (the film clearly hints that a returned college graduate student is involved with his teenage female students). George Lucas, when he made the film, couldn't have guess however that it would fuel a nostalgia boom for the 1950s like none other.
Happy Days
The first filmed progeny of American Graffiti was televisions Happy Days, which even featured Ron Howard, who had featured in American Graffiti. Happy Days took the nostalgia boosted by American Graffiti and really ran with it in a super sanitized fashion. Set in the mid 1950s through the mid 1960s, that ran from 1974 until 1983. It was hugely popular.
Many of the same themes portrayed in American Graffiti were again portrayed in Happy Days, but in a lighter manner. The show picked up the nostalgia for cars and music and ran with it. No really serious themes were portrayed, which isn't to say that American Graffiti did much with serious themes. They are different, however, in that American Graffiti is a warm, but somewhat sad, look back at a lost era with some longing, whereas Happy Days is an outright televised sock hop. In American Graffiti, some characters really are edgy. In Happy Days, none of them are, not even the leather clad motorcycle riding Arthur Fonzerelli, "the Fonz".
Happy Days was a beloved series, so I hate to criticize it too much, but it fails in terms of a realistic portrayal of its era. If American Graffiti succeeds, it's because it portrays such a narrow slice of it. Even American Graffiti, however, brings home the era in its concluding shot, which summarizes the fates of the characters. In contrast, we'd never know that Happy Days takes place during an era when concerns about a war with the Soviet Union were constant and that many of the male figures would have been drafted and served a hitch in the Army. Where the series succeeds is probably in its minor material detail elements, such as in clothing and music.
Laverne and Shirley
Laverne and Shirley was a spinoff of Happy Days, which also featured one of the actors from American Graffiti, Penny Marshall. Running from 1976 to 1983, thereby concluding in the same year that Happy Days did, it portrayed two single women working as blue-collar bottle cappers in Milwaukee.
The interesting thing about Laverne and Shirley is that probably more accurately portrayed the lives of figures of the 50s than Happy Days did. The two young women share an apartment, they hope to get married and leave their blue-collar lives, and they're working a blue-collar job. The series, while set in the 50s, feels like it's set in the 1950s of Marty, not Happy Days, and not American Graffiti. That's actually the world a lot of young people lived in.
Other Efforts
It's probably worth noting that the success of American Graffiti followed by Happy Days spawned a large number of filmed efforts, most of which were pretty bad. Indeed, I can't think of any others that are actually worth mentioning, except for one, which was made much later and which clearly wasn't inspired by American Graffiti, that being That Thing You Do. Among the worst is one that bills itself as a "Rock and Roll Fable", Streets Of Fire, which had some notable cast members who must wish that the film would be forever forgotten.
