Before he destroyed serious American cinema with “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, George Lucas was a director of small movies. Like people such as Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma and William Friedkin, Lucas was a child of early 1970’s American cinema that sought to create more personal movies.
His first hit was an interesting nostalgic look at the rituals of “Pre-Beatle” American youth called “American Graffiti”. It was a movie that basically took place in one night and in it we see the lives of different teenagers cruising the streets in search of fun, booze, romance, sex.
In this movie we see many actors that were later to be pop culture favorites such as Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Ron Howard, Susanne Sommers, McKenzie Phillips, Kathleen Quinlan, Kay Lenz and many others. It is light movie full of great songs. It is a look at the United States before Vietnam. It portrays an era innocence that will never occur again. It is a funny, sad, wonderful film. A small, quiet movie from a director that would never make a small, quiet movie again.
“American Graffiti” played at the old Cinerama theater in San Juan and is now playing on premium cable this month along with its forgotten sequel “More American Graffiti” which takes a look at the late 1960’s and which Lucas did not direct.
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