This is an excellent documentary with fabulous original footage and excellent historical research that raises many salient points about the origins of teenage culture. It gets a little lost along the way when the story veers towards racial tension and unemployment protests in the 1930s as these are not exclusively youth issues and did not originate from youthful protest. There were also some elements played down, such as the studied attention to market products to teenage tastes - a trend that grew rapidly in America during the 1920s and 1930s. When the documentary ends, in 1945, the world is set for the deluge of teenage culture to descend, and I wanted to see more of this - perhaps in another documentary...
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cekadah8 June 2014I'm only giving 8 stars because I feel this documentary didn't quite achieve it's purpose. It's intention is to show the growth of the youth culture in the 20th Century and it does show this but it seems to get lost in the telling.
It shows youth at labor, youth in politics, youth at war. And that became a problem for me because I see the youth culture as a targeted element for merchandising and capitalist profits. Well this documentary does show that element but it is so overshadowed by historical events it's easy to lose focus on it's growth while also showing the social & political changes in the western world from 1900 to 1950. Plus the youth at leisure is limited almost exclusively to the 'moneyed class'!
Otherwise this is a fine documentary and well told. -
AtRise202014 March 2024Nearly seamless cuts between archival footage and simulations of teenage social activity using actors, while various narrators give voice to a universal teenager and their trials and tribulations. The archival footage is quite amazing. The film disappoints in its portrayal of teens by ignoring some of the background of the events it covers. It tells of the exploitation of youth without delving deep enough into psychological aspects of young people and what drives them. They are just victims faulted for just wanting to have fun. Some footage of dissident youth, including anti-Nazi groups, but its not true that the political movements of the 1960s were totally engineered by the young. Of course, the draft mobilized many, but at the helm were adults with the needed maturity to bring understanding and run the show. But this is not to say the youth culture was not innovative and important in the 1960s antiwar movement. Many of these "radical" youths went for the money in the 1980s and became "Yuppies" on Wall Street. This film, purporting to be a documentary on teens, ends up being another young adult novel or creature feature where the teenagers save the world. Those tales are fun but life is more complicated than that.
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TxMike1 September 2014The film, a documentary of sorts, is based on the book which covers teenagers from 1875 to 1945. The summary says teenagers did NOT exist before the 20th century, but of course teenagers always existed, perhaps they were not given the "teenage" label until the 20th century.
The film draws from dozens of archival sources, film clips, newsreels, movies, newspapers, magazines, and photographs. It tells the story of how teenagers came to prominence and changed over the years. A lot of it was during wartime, showing contrasts among American, British, and Nazi German teenagers. And the cross-cultural influences.
A very nice film for those of us interested in the subject, but it stops about 1945, with the post WW2 blossoming of teenagers, their rights, their role in society. And of course if we look at a typical college, about half the students are teenagers, they have clubs, fraternities, sororities, student government.
I was a teenager in the 1950s and early 1960s, it brought back mostly good memories. -
gbill-7487724 March 2024Interesting concept and through its combination of archival footage and reenactments, this documentary gets across the point that life for teenagers was very different at various points of the 20th century, in case that that wasn't understood already. Maybe this was geared for teenagers, and I was simply not the target audience. To me, the way the overall film was executed was quite frustrating, as it was like a structure-less blob that didn't go into meaningful depth anywhere. It gives us insipid, banal commentary on everything it touches, and didn't even have a clear objective as it meandered along.
Voiceover narration is often provided over the images, apparently quoting from various source texts, but they're never attributed, so it's impossible to know whether we're listening to someone from the past or a scripted imagining. It's the same with the lack of a distinction between archival footage and reenactment. Additionally, the film tells us history from the perspective of the young without filling in any of the larger context, or providing any other type of knowledgeable commentary, even from these youths from the past now as older people. Lastly, it's truncated in every possible way, for example, historical era covered, race, culture, or even the broader gamut of teenage emotions.
Sure, seeing some of the old footage was enjoyable, but good lord that can and should be done elsewhere, it's not that hard to find. Watching this incomplete drivel for 77 minutes was a chore.