‘Breakdown: 1975’ Review: Revisiting the Last Wild Moment of American Cinema

The early 1970s were a fascinating period: chaotic, unpredictable, complex, and deeply contradictory. The cinema of those years reflected that sense of confusion with remarkable precision, standing apart both from the 1960s—or more accurately, the latter half of that decade—and from what would follow later. Breakdown: 1975 is a documentary that attempts to capture that tense year through the lens of film, tracing conflicts that ranged from the political to the cultural, from the social to the deeply personal. Like the era it portrays, the result is intriguing and often striking, though also riddled with tricks and shortcuts that ultimately undercut some of its achievements.

Directed by Morgan Neville, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind 20 Feet from Stardom, the documentary effectively evokes the period through archival footage, clips from key films, and testimony from many of its central figures. The problem, however, lies in the film’s somewhat misleading notion of its own “moment.” What Neville presents as an overview of culture, cinema, and politics in 1975 is, in reality, a broader survey spanning several years—reaching back to 1972 or 1973 and extending forward to 1976. As a result, what is framed as a single, decisive year in the history of American cinema, television, and society actually represents nearly half a decade.

This sleight of hand diminishes the film’s impact. Neville could have limited the scope to what the title promises without significantly altering the conceptual thrust of the documentary. Forcing Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men, Chinatown, Carrie, The Godfather Part II, Rocky, The Conversation, and Network—films released in 1974 or 1976—into a documentary ostensibly about 1975 feels unnecessary. The year itself offers more than enough material. Not only was 1975 the year of Jaws, whose unprecedented success began to signal the end of the New Hollywood era, but it also saw the release of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Shampoo, Grey Gardens, Night Moves, Three Days of the Condor, Rollerball, as well as titles like Barry Lyndon and Love and Death, not to mention numerous international films that receive little to no attention.

A similar issue arises with the political context. While the central events are specific to the year—Gerald Ford was president following Nixon’s resignation, and the most significant news was the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam—many of Neville’s analyses blur together a three- or four-year stretch. Even so, the documentary clearly conveys the intensity and volatility of the era, marked by shifting conflicts that included the rise of the so-called “Me Decade,” which saw the disillusioned youth of the 1960s turn inward toward personal exploration, alongside the growing influence of conservative movements that would increasingly shape the country’s political core.

Beyond the space Neville devotes—understandably, given the context—to Ronald Reagan and the expansion of conservative organizations that viewed Ford, a Republican, as almost left-wing, the film revisits ideas, events, and interpretations familiar to anyone with a basic interest in American culture of the period: political assassinations, Watergate, the oil crisis, racial tensions, economic hardship, and a widespread sense that the American Dream had begun to resemble a long, unending nightmare.

Setting those debates aside, the documentary’s strongest material lies in its treatment of the films themselves, discussed by some of their creators and by informed commentators. Appearances include Martin Scorsese (whose films fall in 1974 and 1976 rather than 1975), Oliver Stone, Ellen Burstyn, and Albert Brooks, alongside producers, screenwriters, journalists, and cultural critics such as Frank Rich, Wesley Morris, and Kurt Andersen. Contemporary actor-cinéphiles like Seth Rogen, Patton Oswalt, and Josh Brolin also weigh in, while a cameo by Bill Gates gestures toward the dawn of the home computer era. Appropriately, the narration is provided by the unmistakable voice of Jodie Foster.

The oft-repeated—but no less valid—idea that American cinema during this period enjoyed an uncommon degree of creative freedom and risk-taking serves as the organizing principle of Breakdown: 1975. A glance at scenes from the canonical films of 1973–76 cited here makes the case undeniable. Taking advantage of the decline of the traditional studio system, the so-called “young Turks” of American filmmaking seized control of the mainstream, pushing Hollywood toward adult, complex, strange, and challenging films. That moment would come to an end with the one-two punch of Jaws and Star Wars—ironically directed by filmmakers who emerged from that same generation. Since then, filmmakers and cinephiles alike have regarded that era with deep nostalgia, even if many never experienced it firsthand. What remains are the films themselves, overwhelming proof that in 1975 and the surrounding years, American cinema was unlike anything that came before—or after.

P.S.: When Netflix gets around to buying Warner Bros., one can only hope it also remembers to stream at least some of these movies.