Great Moments From Cinema - 11

One More Night
Movie: American Graffiti (Lucasfilm, Coppola Company & Universal Pictures; 1973)
Director: George Lucas
Screenplay: George Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck
Major Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams and Harrison Ford

Film Synopsis: Four teenage friends (Dreyfuss, Howard, Le Mat, and Smith) and their one last night before Dreyfuss and Howard leave for college.

My Favorite Moment: Their night of adventure while the radio plays ‘Wolfman Jack’.

Why I Like It: Alright I admit to cheating. I have to mention the movie and that night in entirety without singling out one moment. It is the mood of the film which makes it so special. It is set in early 60’s; before JFK and before Vietnam. It was a time of innocence, a time of joy, a time to be free and a time when the road ahead was waiting with endless possibilities; in short it is a lovely film of a lovely era. It doesn’t matter to what place or to what period the audience member belongs, each one of them will be nostalgic after seeing this one. It will leave you with that yearning for something which was once there. Forget “Star Wars”, for me, this is Lucas’s greatest film.

Dreyfuss and Howard are fresh high-school graduates and are suppose to leave for college in the morning. Dreyfuss has second thoughts about going while Howard tries to convince him otherwise. Howard himself is sad at leaving his sweetheart (Williams) behind and with whom he spends the entire night fighting, as they try to figure out their future and contemplate breaking-up. Le Mat is a young hot-shot who is the best car racer in town and who unfortunately ends up spending the night chaperoning a little girl in his hot-rod. Smith is a geeky guy who wants to be cool and borrows Howard’s car to show-off. He picks up a girl walking on the main street and they spend the night trying to buy liquor and later searching for the car which gets stolen. A very young Harrison Ford is the brash new guy in town who is looking for Le Mat, to race against him. Dreyfuss sees an elusive blonde at an intersection, driving a T-bird and spends the entire night searching for her while getting mixed up with a street gang and at the same time wondering about his future. Through all of these separate story lines, which intersect periodically, the radio keeps playing the show by a mysterious DJ, ‘Wolfman Jack’. As the night winds down, all of them learn something about themselves and life in general. It all comes down to the dawn where Le Mat and Ford race against each other, Howard realizes that he is too much in love with Williams to leave town, and Dreyfuss finally tracks down the blonde woman but chooses to go to college instead.

The film was nominated for several Academy awards including ‘Best Picture’. It is one of those movies which can never age. I suspect 50 years from now people will still like it and identify with those boys, even though they are from an era which can never exist again. I envy them for that time in their lives. Where the nights were filled with people cruising the streets without a care in the world, where there was always a drive-in diner to go in case you got hungry, where you could run into your friends at different times throughout the night and have something new to share each time and where ‘Wolfman Jack’ played those memorable tunes to keep you company as you lived your youth.