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Posted: |
Aug 8, 2020 - 7:49 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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Last night, Ms. Birri and I watched - for at least the third time - John Boorman's "Point Blank" (1967), which must be considered an early example of 1970s American New Wave cinema, or at least a precursor.
The thing that really struck me on this viewing was the decor. It was absolutely hideous, and it is kind of amazing to me that by 1967 design had gone to hell so quickly in just a few years. You can imagine what these interior spaces would have looked like only five years earlier. There were only a few vestiges of what I would consider mid-century modernism.
Among the more hideous examples were the mirrored walls, the cream-colored sofa with the gold embroidery, and the office interior with the austere leather desk chair. Everything is big and bulky; gone are the clean lines, the smooth curves, and eye-catching angles. You can already see hints of what would become bad decor trends of the 70s, such as French Provincial and Mediterranean.
I did like the airport walkway, and I also liked the Brutalist interior wall of the office, but early Brutalism goes with MCM much better than its late-1960s/70s incarnation, IMO.
While it may have been purely accidental, I think the ugly decor contributes to the overall urban decay mood that seems to pervade the film. It is as if the Lee Marvin character is still in 1957, but the world had moved onto 1967.
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I'm so glad you mention this. I've always considered Point Blank to be a significant transition film of that burgeoning "New Hollywood" movement even though Boorman himself is more in line with English Eccentric directors such as Michael Powell and Ken Russell.
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Posted: |
Aug 18, 2020 - 10:11 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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This is the kind of discussion I love, bit it's also one that kicks up my obsession with overlapping decades. Many of us are in the habit of associating certain trends with specific decades, but decades do not respond to our penchant for assigning cultural trends to a nice orderly little box. I find the same sort of thing happens when discussing the 1910s and nineteen teens, the late 1920s and early 1930s, the late 1940s and early 1950s, the late 1950s and early 1960s, late 1960s and early 1970s, and late 1970s and early 1980s.
Anything after that I don't care about at all.
But usually the overlapping decades trend works in reverse, e.g., that you would see more leftovers from the 1950s and early 1960s in 1967, just by virtue of old stuff being around. I found it really surprising that there was almost no cool design in "Point Blank."
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