Time passes so damn quickly.
It seems completely bizarre to me that I look at what was essentially the last golden age in Hollywood — before everything became special effects, CGI and comic books — and realize that it was nearly 50 years ago.
If you look at the ’70s just before “Jaws” and “Star Wars” made everything about blockbusters, there were dozens of amazing movies that have held up well. Movies like Francis Ford Coppola’s first two “Godfather” movies, like Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” and “Nashville,” like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Sting” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
They were the years Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman became huge stars, with Robert DeNiro just a few years behind.
Even Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who did so much later to change Hollywood for the worse, started with wonderful movies, Spielberg with “The Sugarland Express” and Lucas with “American Graffiti.”
One terrific director who made wonderful films for a while was Michael Ritchie, who started with “Downhill Racer” and “The Candidate” –two really good Robert Redford films — and later made the insanely funny “Bad News Bears.”
Those movies are remembered, but the one that was Ritchie’s best has been all but forgotten.
“Smile” was an amazingly satiric look at life in California in the mid ’70s, following in the tradition of “Lord Love a Duck” and “The Loved One” and presaging “Serial” a few years later..
It was a movie almost without stars. The two biggest names at the time were Bruce Dern, coming off a supporting role in “The Great Gatsby” and Barbara Feldon, Agent 99 in TV’s “Get Smart.”
A number of the Young American Misses went on to have fairly solid careers, with Melanie Griffith and Annette O’Toole probably the biggest names. Griffith was just 17 when the movie was released and O’Toole was 23. The one I thought would have a better career than she did was Joan Prather, who was essentially the lead among the pageant contestants, but she did mostly television and quit acting in 1989.
People have likened “Smile” to “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” a late ’90s pageant movie, but the films are nothing alike at all. The later film probably should be best remembered as Amy Adams’ film debut in a small role.
It almost breaks my heart to realize it has been 46 years since “Smile” was released. To compare, in 1975 most of the films that were 46 years old were silent movies.
But “Smile” isn’t ridiculously old, and it still has a lot to say.
Give it a chance. You won’t regret it.