Directed and produced by Morgan Neville, the Netflix documentary Breakdown: 1975 focuses on that yr, within the 199th one for America, within the thick of political chicanery and cultural trauma, and in the midst of an ideological upheaval in Hollywood filmmaking, because the time the nation modified eternally. Prepare for a parade of well-known faces. Breakdown options Martin Scorsese, Seth Rogen, Josh Brolin, Ellen Burstyn, and Oliver Stone; writers and critics like Wesley Morris and Rick Perlstein; and narration from Jodie Foster. But additionally prepare for perhaps the entire thing to really feel a bit riff-ish, moderately than substantive. Right here’s a soundbite from Patton Oswalt: “1975 was the closest America got here to saying, ‘Hey, I bought flaws, too.’ And for a short second, cinema and popular culture was ready to take a look at that. However it was an excessive amount of, and we turned away.”
The Gist: A picture of The Hollywood Register Breakdown: 1975, dilapidated and crumbly, sort of speaks to the state of the American dream because it was in that decade. “Crime was up, tensions have been greater, paranoia was rampant,” Jodie Foster’s voiceover tells us. “So what the fuck was occurring?” And responding to that cultural clamor for context have been a brand new era of younger and hungry filmmakers, prepared to tear into American life and change the outdated, dying modes of Tinsel City. “Every thing was wiped away,” Martin Scorsese says of conference within the period that turned referred to as New Hollywood. “We have been creating a brand new world.”
The movies being made in the midst of that decade, by guys like Scorsese (Taxi Driver), a 29-year-old Steven Spielberg (Jaws), and Robert Altman (Nashville), and that includes actors like Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and Warren Beatty, have been consultant not solely of a daring, particular person path in moviemaking, however as snapshots of what was actually occurring within the nation. (Consider Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, grousing about an actual rain that will wipe the scum off the streets.) In Breakdown, American life because it flailed and reacted to the tumult of the time is depicted in a relentless stream of eyelids-propped-open clips and performances. A turning to motion pictures to throw again at and attempt to make sense of the anger, discord, and darkness most each citizen was seeing and feeling.
Certain, conspiracy theories are dangerous now, however they’re additionally nowhere close to new. The mid-70s have been when Watergate, and Redford and Hoffman in All of the President’s Males, revealed how fetid the political swamp actually was. Breakdown hits beat after beat like this, mixing discontent with authorities, the financial disasters of New York Metropolis and the vitality disaster with the rise of New Hollywood voices – Seth Rogen says Chinatown’s grim message was “The dangerous guys are likely to win” – and large hit catastrophe motion pictures like Towering Inferno. Tom Wolfe’s “Me” Technology? The start of the pc age? Ladies’s lib, Blacksploitation movies, and Individuals’ cultural mind fog over Vietnam? Breakdown: 1975 mixes all of it in, just like the altering patterns inside a twirly tin Kaleidoscope, and finds the movie inventory to match.
What Films Will It Remind You Of? With so many lasting seventies movies featured by way of clip kind in Breakdown: 1975, let Decider hit you with a concise, “for additional streaming” sampler pack: The Dialog (Prime Video), Chinatown (Paramount+), Canine Day Afternoon (Hulu), Alice Doesn’t Stay Right here Anymore (Apple TV), Rollerball (Tubi), Jaws (Prime Video).
And in the meantime, Breakdown filmmaker Morgan Neville is in every single place within the streaming world. In 2024,the 20 Toes from Stardom director made a documentary in Lego about Pharrell Williams, and his movie about Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles Seventies period hits Prime Video in early 2026.
Structurally, we additionally suggest testing 1971: The Yr That Music Modified Every thing, a 2021 Apple TV docuseries that exhaustively dives into the tales of John Lennon, Marvin Gaye, and extra.
Efficiency Price Watching: The clips, they’re flying at you furiously. The selection picks and intelligent modifying in Breakdown create an virtually manic price of data launch. Each time you assume, “Wait, I need to hear extra about that,” it’s on to the following section. A really spectacular fashion, if a bit wanting.
Memorable Dialogue: Among the many many well-known faces and commentators in Breakdown, an archival quote from US Senator Frank Church may be essentially the most chilling, as utilized to our time. “If a dictator ever took cost on this nation, the technological capability that the intelligence group has given the federal government might allow it to impose complete tyranny. And there can be no solution to struggle again.”
Our Take: As narrator of Breakdown: 1975, Jodie Foster is available to offer connecting moments between the documentary’s voluminous stream of movie footage and its choice of name-brand speaking heads. However is it bizarre to anybody else that a number of the motion pictures being mentioned as touchstones of that yr have been launched plus-or-minus a yr or two round it? Or that Foster will drop a salient quote – “The period was post-everything and pre-nothing” – however transfer on to the following section with out attribution, past a obscure “as one writer theorized?” The movie clips featured in Breakdown are all nice, and infrequently incisively matched to the commentary overlay. Its feel and appear is tremendous dialed-in, together with the doc’s use of graphics and juxtaposition, like when it reveals Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle watching TV in Taxi Driver because the audio we hear – that it’s imagined Bickle hears – is Peter Finch, as Howard Beale in Community, screaming his legendary mantra. “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
There’s a slight drawback with that slick setup, although. Each Taxi Driver and Community have been launched in 1976.
It’s quiet, unexplained assumptions like this that make us declare Breakdown: 1975 a hangout documentary. Its imagery grabs you, its artful continuity retains you, the speaking celebs are there with you, and a part of its subtext – in our period of tech bros, CEOs, LLMs, and megacorp consolidation, the New Hollywood movies’ auterish and daring individuality is rarely, ever coming again – will stick with you. However ultimately, Breakdown looks like a gloss. Watchable, recognizable, filled with podcast visitor immediate nuggets, and finally kinda shallow. A Netflixian survey of movie and cultural historical past.
Our Name: Stream It. Very considerate if not all the time desirous about depth, Breakdown: 1975 ought to definitely encourage an additional dig into the movies it options, which outlined a robust period in Hollywood and America.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based author. A veteran of the choice weekly trenches, his work has additionally appeared in Leisure Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Information, and The Village Voice.
