Netflix movie of the day: American Graffiti is a classic coming of age tale with a killer soundtrack

What George Lucas did before a galaxy far, far away

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Let’s be honest. Not every movie onNetflixis a classic. ButAmerican Graffitiis deserving of the label: while George Lucas' later movies may be more famous – you may have heard of them; something about space battles and then a historian with a hat – it’s a wonderful period piece about the end of teenage innocence. And it’s got a great soundtrack too.

Why American Graffiti is a classic movie

Lucas' 1973 movie is deceptively simple: it follows a group of teenagers over the course of a single night in 1962 in Modesto, California. They cruise the main street, they go to the drive-through, they listen to Wolfman Jack on the radio and they do the kinds of things you do when you’re a teenager with nothing to do. But asRoger Ebertexplained, “the film’s buried structure shows an innocence in the process of being lost, and as its symbol Lucas provides the elusive blonde in the white Thunderbird – the vision of beauty always glimpsed at the next intersection, the end of the next street.”

The film was already nostalgic for a disappearing age when it was made in the early 70s, and it’s even more of a period piece now. But time hasn’t lessened its considerable charm, and while the soundtrack seems awfully polite – the setting predates the more raucous rock era that came later in the decade – it’s still packed with great songs.

This was the 1960s before the Kennedy assassination and US troops in Vietnam, and forMovie Nationit was Lucas’The Great Gatsby: “his statement on his generation, and looking back that as popular as his later works became, this was his masterpiece.”

One of the things aboutAmerican Graffitiis that it can make you nostalgic for an era you didn’t live through, and a life that not everyone of that age at that time lived. As theChicago Daily Newswrote, “I’m not sure I would have enjoyed their way of life, but it’s a great one to remember, even if you didn’t live it yourself, and it makesAmerican Graffitithe ultimate nostalgia movie – certainly the best teen-myth movie sinceRebel Without a Cause.”

As a film from a certain era, with a different kind of pace and look, not everyone might put it among thebest Netflix movies, but it’s an iconic piece of movie history that everyone should see once.

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Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir,Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock bandUnquiet Mind.

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