Have films increased or decreased in quality over the years?

I know it's not a strait line, there are variations. But generally...if you had to pick...

Special effects have increased. Directing? Acting? Storyline? Music?

I agree the peak begun in late 60s and through 70s. Starting with The Graduate maybe? Maybe the most revolutionary modern film? Hollywood took into account what was happenning in the world, caused by the man left above? And then 80s were a drop down...I feel that movies do have a tendency for more violence...they're more and more intense...generally speaking, of course. What happened to the easiness of the 60s?

Does anyone care to respond? Beginning with Lumiere bros until now, is it better or worse?

For me film hit their peak in consistency in the 70's. Since then there have been peaks and valleys since then. But every decade has their share of great films even to this day.

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Have films increased or decreased in quality over the years?

They have increased in length. I know that's not what you meant, but it's true. In the silent era 60 minutes or less was common. From the 1930s till the 1950's 90 minutes was common. Now every single movie I watch seems to be over 2 hours.

Like Gunslinger said every decade has it's great films. Personally for me it's the 1930s-1950s.

Be sure to check out our 60's list. It is a MoFo tradition that we get together and vote on films by decade with each member selecting their top 25 favorite films per decade or special category of film.

Link to 60's list.

Stick around, the documentaries list is next, and after that we do the 50's.

I agree about the 70s...Starting from, say, 67' we had Graduate, Bonnie and clyde, Rosemary's baby, Easy Rider, Midnight cowboy etc, which was unthinkable bf that very same year. And that's what started it all...I guess that Hollywood realised it's not profitable anymore to stay 'traditional'. The world was changing, simple as that. It's unbelievable how imveryho a single man changed the world. Lennon provoqued such a cultural revolution...Of course it wasn't all HIM! But maybe he was a source. A lot of bad things became mainstream, like drugs etc...so he's not entirely innocent...

I must say I find that since the turn of millenium everything's been going downhill...including movies. don't get me wrong, I love modern film, but I do prefer 67-80.(which is the year Lennon was shot...is it a coincidence, idk.

Do you think it's good or bad the length is ever increasing? Everything seems to be increasing!

Well that is the timeline for New Hollywood. Started with Bonnie and Clyde, showed it could be profitable with Easy Rider (plus the shift to target young people), reached new box office heights with The Godfather, then Jaws, and then Star Wars. Then hit the bricks with Heaven's Gate and One from the Heart.

Now a days it seems to be an era of franchises and reboots. The MCU is big, those Harry Potter movies were big, the LOTR films were very successful, etc. Not too many people are interested in a really great stand alone film. Some of it is good ( I LOVE the Marvel movies) but then we get three Alvin and the Chipmunk movies and two for Smurfs.

Thank God people like Scorsese, Fincher, Wes Anderson, and Eastwood are still working.

I'm grateful that today small Indie film producers/directors can make a small budget film, get a limited showing, then unto DVDs. Most of the best new films I've seen have been Indie films.

IMO there've been great films and crappy films in every decade. Nature of the beast.

During the 50s and 60s, there was the whole overhanging oppression of the Hayes code, which imo ****ed **** up a little bit. Granted, there were plenty of brilliant movies made, and some of my favorites, but the censorship imposed could really cramp filmmaker's creativity. At the same time, though, the whole French new wave thing was going on, and masterpieces were being done elsewhere as well. Spaghetti Westerns really got big, Japan was doing some pretty cool **** etc.

The 70s were probably the best years for Hollywood. Things went downhill in the 80s because cinema seemed to become more commercial, and more formulaic. Then, the 90s were awesome as initially independent directors really started to come into their own like Tarantino, Fincher, Jarmusch, Linklater, PTA etc.

I'm not sure the 2000s and 2010s are far enough back to judge them really objectively, but I'm excited for the future because of the increased democratization of filmmaking.

Actually the Hays Code was started in the early 1930s and enforced by the studios themselves starting in 1934. Hence movies made before 1934 are often called precode. But that doesn't always mean their more racy, though sometimes they are.

The Hays Code was a positive factor in many ways as it forced the studios to focus on quality in stories and character development. If the Hays Code never came about, film makers would have followed the trend of selling tickets by showing women in the undies, over the top violence, etc. If titillation is all that we get from a film maker, than a lot of the art of cinema would be lost.

Joan Blondell in her undies in the precode film Night Nurse (1931). After 1934 such scenes would not be allowed for 2 decades.

On a similar line as everyone else here... but for me it's the 80s that the peak was hit. Early 1990s too.


Before around 1975 and then after about 1995, those movies don't really have much in them for me. The gold years were 1975-1995.
I will say though, the movies from 95 to modern day, are of a much lower quality than those before 75. Modern movies are hollow, shallow and lack any sort of character.


Sure every decade has its gold, but the majority of movies from past 20 years have been abysmal.

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What movies are you watching? Everything that I seem to watch nowadays seems to be under 2 hours. 1 hour and 48 minutes is very common for the majority of the movies that I have watched for quite awhile now. I, of course, am all for longer movies. Then I feel like I am getting my money's worth. Even the free ones from the library.

Anyway, I agree with what you said about the Hays Code being a positive in regards to the quality of films. Basically, quality as in not everything having to be "scandalous" to sell a ticket. At the same time, I have always had a little bit of an issue with the Hays Code. For example, to not be able to say something like "damn" is absolutely ridiculous. I can see "controlling" what was happening in the pictures, but not censoring it.


I really don't think the quality of film has changed all that much because every decade has good and bad (sometimes horrendous) movies. I haven't been the biggest fan of the movies in the past 15 years or so, but then there are some that I absolutely loved. Some that I would even put on an all-time favorites list. But if I had to choose the best time for film, for me, it has always been the 1940's and 1980's.

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Actually my initial question was if you took that train with which Lumiere drove people out of the caffe, and compare it with The Force Awakens..ok that's not possible...Jurrasic World, then, is it better or worse? Those very early films -Griffith made the 1st one, Birth of a nation, right? Take that, then and compare...

I was wondering about that too. Most are still under 2h. Have been for decades. But there are also more megalomaniac-2-3-4h, which i also prefer...there's a correlation between lenght and quality.

Censorship, dictated by very specific examples of the only ways to depict things, is never a good thing. Preston Sturges concocting a racy and even blasphemous plot to bamboozle the censors in his The Miracle of Morgan's Creek was a good thing though.

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I disagree. To wit, no censorship > censorship, almost always. There will always be people who are only in it for a buck, and if they can't use sex they'll use something else. And it's not as if sex wasn't used to sell movies during the Hayes code, they just had to be a little bit more covert. See: any number of cheesy sci fi b movies.

At the same time, there will always be people who are interested in telling a good story and treating cinema like an art. The content that should make it into a piece of art should always be the decision of the artist. Some artists will make tripe that relies on smut, sure, but artists who know what they are doing will be able to make the decision on what content to include, and how to bring their vision to fruition in the best way possible. Sometimes, that will include sex and violence. I don't think that sex and violence on their own are indicative of bad art either. See: my top ten. Whenever the government tries moralize art, they make a step towards killing creativity, and **** gets ****ed up.

Also, if you want to actually look at the rules of the code, they were pretty ****ed up and racist/a lot of other things.

For instance, under the Hayes code, these were either not allowed or specified as "Be Careful".

White slavery (you could show black people being enslaved, but not white ones)
Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races)
Ridicule of the clergy

etcetera.

Furthermore, if it took removing offending content from American cinema to drive people towards good storytelling, why was French cinema so fruitful during the period? I mean, there are some pretty racy 60s films from the country, and some of them are masterpieces. Of course, this is subjective, but foreign film is much more interesting than American cinema from the 30s-60s, with a few exceptions.

At the same time, some of the best American films of the period were the ones that pushed the boundaries (see: Psycho). And, a lot of really great films were made just after the Hayes code was abolished (see: A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather).

I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, and I certainly don't condone the Hayes Code, but they were very strict about banning racist content, particularly racist slurs. Obviously a lot of racist overtones exist in movies from this era, but we see that more clearly with hindsight and an enlightened mentality. There's a reason we don't see the n-word being thrown about in movies from the 40s, because it wasn't allowed.

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Thank God we no longer use the Hays Code, I would never get to enjoy the cinema I like!!!

Actually, in 1949, the n-word was used in Home of the Brave and Intruder in the Dust, and then used more-often in many other movies, but usually in what was called a social drama, highlighting problems with society.

They've clearly sideways-creased.