American Graffiti

The film that launched a thousand careers. Star Wars inventor Lucas got together a bunch of young actors who later went on to make it big in one way or another, and used them to populate his celluloid memoirs of what it was like cruising the strip back in small town California '62. Too full of incident to reflect a typical night in reality, it's nevertheless funny, perceptive, pepped up by a great soundtrack, and also something of a text-book lesson in parallel editing as it follows a multitude of adolescents through their various adventures with sex, booze, music and cars. Its enormous success guaranteed a surfeit of imitations, only a few of which (Big Wednesday, Diner) match its glowing, controlled nostalgia.