ILX Best Films of the 1970s

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (325 of them)

He's a joke except when he's very still, or clowning with the grandkid. When he shakes Al Martino and tells him to ACT LIKE A MAN, just bad hamming. Same when hearing of Sonny's death -- slump shoulders, furrow brow...

I prefer him in The Freshman, and Harry Belafonte in Uptown Saturday Night.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 11 August 2005 17:46 (eighteen years ago) link

If you can track down a version of The Godfather Saga with all of Coppola's deleted footage, you'll find an alternate take of the scene where Brando learns of Sonny's death: he high-fives Duvall, says "Finally, that hothead bastard's out of the way," and then the two of them dance a celebratory Tarantella together. So I sort of see where you're coming from.

― Phil Dellio (j.j. hunsecker), Thursday, 11 August 2005 19:51 (eighteen years ago) link

I see you're coming down Snotnose Bullshit Boulevard.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:07 (eighteen years ago) link

films that are on my ballot but havent been mentioned yet:

Fist of Fury (1972)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Juggernaut (1974)
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972)
Mr. Majestyk (1974)
New One-Armed Swordsman (1971)
Turkish Delight (1973)

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Thursday, 11 August 2005 20:53 (eighteen years ago) link

Uh, "Dr. Morbius"--if you want to dismiss Brando in The Godfather with such sweeping authority ("He's a joke"?), you maybe shouldn't react so petulantly if someone wants to suggest that such a dismissal is absurd. Did you really think that no one would strongly disagree with you?

― Phil Dellio (j.j. hunsecker), Thursday, 11 August 2005 21:09 (eighteen years ago) link

My favorite deleted scene in The Godfather Saga is where they show those guys actually sneaking the horse's head into the mansion.

― Pete Scholtes, Thursday, 11 August 2005 22:37 (eighteen years ago) link

Oh, but no way that should have made the final cut. It ruins the punchline.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Thursday, 11 August 2005 22:38 (eighteen years ago) link

Cause the scene builds like, "Blood? What is this blood? Did they cut his legs off or something?" And then you find out it's so much better than that.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Thursday, 11 August 2005 22:39 (eighteen years ago) link

Pete, yes, I can do that. I'm away from my home computer right now, but if you can emailed me again to remind me, that would be great. Thanks.

Yes, vote early, vote often.

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Friday, 12 August 2005 21:21 (eighteen years ago) link

I made that up, Paunchy Stratego, sorry.

Like the deleted scene after the door closes on Kay at the end of the movie, which shows her throwing a glass at the door, shattering it, and screaming, "Noooooooooooo!" It ends with a freeze frame of her face with her mouth open, and the credits roll over that.

― Pete Scholtes, Friday, 12 August 2005 23:44 (eighteen years ago) link

http://www.gonemovies.com/WWW/TopFilms/Godfather/kay1.jpg NooooooOOOO!

― richardk (Richard K), Friday, 12 August 2005 23:59 (eighteen years ago) link

http://www.outchy.com/images/vader_02.jpg NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

― richardk (Richard K), Saturday, 13 August 2005 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link

Good job folks, 18 ballots received.

9 MORE DAYS LEFT TO VOTE

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Saturday, 13 August 2005 20:38 (eighteen years ago) link

bump, hooray new answers!

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Saturday, 13 August 2005 21:27 (eighteen years ago) link

1) Dawn of the Dead
2) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
3) Mean Streets
4) Taxi Driver
5) Two-Lane Blacktop
6) Lancelot Du Lac
7) Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
8) Stalker
9) Jaws
10) The Long Goodbye
11) Apocalypse Now
12) Get Carter
13) Deep Red
14) High Plains Drifter
15) M*A*S*H
16) Young Frankenstein
17) Straw Dogs
18) The Getaway
19) The Ballad of Cable Hogue
20) The Last Detail

― gear (gear), Saturday, 13 August 2005 21:30 (eighteen years ago) link

Like blood much, Gear? Then you'll love Eric Rohmer!

'mazing how one person's opinion is indicted for 'sweeping authority' when it's phrased like 5000 others. Ah, the $ of challenging Conventional Wisdom.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 14 August 2005 13:19 (eighteen years ago) link

Jeff, can I amend my ballot to include a few (one?) omission?

― Leeeeeeee (Leee), Sunday, 14 August 2005 17:59 (eighteen years ago) link

email it to me

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Sunday, 14 August 2005 18:15 (eighteen years ago) link

1)The Getaway
2) The Godfather II
3) The President's Analyst
4) Nashville
5) Dog Day Afternoon
6) Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia
7) Love On The Run
8) The Harder They Come
9) Love and Death
10) Blazing Saddles
12) Cross of Iron
13) Manhattan
14) Celine and Julie Go Boating
15) Sweet Sweetback's Badassssss Song
16) Stalker
17) Up in Smoke
18) Phantasm
19) Junior Bonner
20) The Hot Rock

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, 14 August 2005 19:07 (eighteen years ago) link

will someone please explain the appeal of nashville to me?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 14 August 2005 20:04 (eighteen years ago) link

explain the NOT appeal first, plz.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, 14 August 2005 20:13 (eighteen years ago) link

it's boring and none of the characters are interesting?

it also seems kind of snide and condescending, like altman wanted to make a renoir-style ensemble film but completely lacked renoir's wit and generosity.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 14 August 2005 20:23 (eighteen years ago) link

blood! blood!!

― gear (gear), Sunday, 14 August 2005 20:27 (eighteen years ago) link

i always thought it had enormous respect for all the characters. i mean, i guess if you don't find them and that sort of americana a strangely noble thing, then it'll do nothing for you.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, 14 August 2005 20:49 (eighteen years ago) link

I'll vote in this before the 22nd, if only to get "The Optimists of Nine Elms" in there; a sorely overlooked film...

― Tom May (Tom May), Sunday, 14 August 2005 22:21 (eighteen years ago) link

Dr. Morpheus: this war stops now. I'm not sure how it is that my last post reaches the level of an indictment. You ridiculed Brando in The Godfather, I defended him in a rather calm and measured way--conceding that he probably does get too much credit for his performance--you ridiculed him some more, I recounted with with what was intended as a humorous shrug of the shoulders as to how exactly you wanted him to play the scene where he learns of his son's death, at which point you really turned thoughtful: you called me a "snotnose." I have no problem at all with challenging conventional wisdom, but I've encountered this kind of back-and-forth before in another context: it seems to me you want to challenge conventional wisdom without having your unconventional wisdom questioned, and as soon as it is, you get very defensive.

― Phil Dellio (j.j. hunsecker), Sunday, 14 August 2005 22:49 (eighteen years ago) link

Well, it all comes down to whether we think his perf is bad or not, right? I'll grant you that. I just think his playing was obvious, gimmicky (let me stuff tissues in my mouth to look a dozen years older -- or "grotesque in an absurd makeup," as Leslie Halliwell put it) and vastly improved upon by deNiro in GPII. Diane Keaton's hair also gets multiple laughs in theater showings, as does Tessio's line about the good food in the place where Michael whacks Sollozzo and the cop. And the Corleones are generally sentimentalized, compared with II.

>The President's Analyst

late '60s.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 15 August 2005 13:59 (eighteen years ago) link

Let me say that I swear--on the souls of my grandchildren--that I will not be the one to break the peace that we have made here today. We're at an impasse on Brando, but no argument that Keaton is often terrible in both films. I think it's only partly her fault--it's the usual woman-as-accessory role, very poorly written, like Sissy Spacek's in JFK. I've probably seen the first Godfather 15-20 times in a theatre, and I've never heard Tessio's line about the food get an unintentional laugh, though. The one line that always turns the theatre upside down is John Marley's Kraut-Mick rant.

― Phil Dellio (j.j. hunsecker), Monday, 15 August 2005 16:57 (eighteen years ago) link

6 DAYS PEOPLE!!!

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 17:55 (eighteen years ago) link

I thought Part II had many, many worse lines. "If history has taught us anything... it's that you can kill anyone." Then again, maybe Michael turning into an idiot was a subtext there. I think both Keaton and Brando are great, by the way, but I've heard otherwise before. To me, this is the result of them both taking chances. I was utterly convinced when I was 12...

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 16 August 2005 21:55 (eighteen years ago) link

I received my 20th ballot today. The top 7 are very closely grouped, and it could really go any way. Keep them coming.

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 23:17 (eighteen years ago) link

don't feel i've seen enough of the contenders to submit a ballot but just from browsing i think "Network" is being hosed...i have an unending amount of admiration for that movie; dear god, it's impeccable.

― Jimmy_tango, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:00 (eighteen years ago) link

Well, no. It's a brilliant mess. My #4.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:02 (eighteen years ago) link

Just sent mine.

(Network is my #6.)

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:09 (eighteen years ago) link

Ok, not a mess, but not perfect. The way it switches between and mixes tones can leave you a bit dizzy. Some of the characters work better as ideas than performances, like the angry black Communist turned angry raving Capitalist once she gets a TV deal. Given that the movie tries to juggle so much, and so much of the responsibility for keeping it all in the air falls to the Diana character, Faye Dunaway's performance is one of the all-time stunners. Best actress of 1976, of course, and maybe one of the best damn performances of the decade. She's a complete and total looney, and completely and totally serious about being so. She's so sincere about being histrionic. She's funny and dangerous and amazing. And not everyone will agree with me on this, but the scene with Ned Beatty is one of my favorite in the movie. It's so broad, so over the top that it becomes something more than that. And he, too, is completely, totally serious about what he is saying, which is given extra weight because it makes perfect sense.

Yeah, this is one of my favorite movies.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:13 (eighteen years ago) link

Long before we had a word for "globalizaation," Network gave us "the philosophy of Nathan Jensen." And long before we had a disdain for TV news, Mr. Chayefsky saw what was coming. The movie is great speculative fiction, really.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:17 (eighteen years ago) link

So, what I'm saying is, watch it again, and think of it as you vote. Thank you and goodnight.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Network was so ahead of its time that I never even think of it as a '70s movie. It seems more '80s to me.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Sorry, Arthur Jensen. Who the fuck's Nathan Jensen?

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 00:22 (eighteen years ago) link

^taking shots in the first post and then *completely* making my point in the next few...Faye Dunaway is really, profoundly incredible and i'd even defend the choppiness as purposeful in light of the whole idea of a 30-minute network news show w/ its canned 1m30s stories, etc.

The speculative fiction line i totally agree w/ also, though it's brilliant (to me) b/c it never verges on impossibility or the territory that sci-fi works with...honestly, i am again and again hard-pressed to come up with a smarter screenplay ever written (hyperbole, but you get the idea).

― Jimmy_tango, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 01:43 (eighteen years ago) link

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars. It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions, just like we do. The world is a business, Mr. Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock - all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 02:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Just wanted to clarify something Pete Scholtes responded to a few posts up: when I said that John Marley's Kraut-Mick tirade in The Godfather gets a huge response every time I see the film with an audience, I meant that in a good way--I think it's one of the funniest movie speeches ever. My original post may have implied that the scene gets unintentional laughs, which is not what I meant.

― Phil Dellio (j.j. hunsecker), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 03:55 (eighteen years ago) link

My enthusiasm for "Network" -- I loved it at 15 -- is tempered somewhat by its Chayefskian speechifying, and that it's truly a REACTIONARY piece of social commentary (ie, ppl are much stupider than when they got their news from Ed Murrow & CBS in the '50s) for all its anti-corporatism beloved by liberals. (It was Paddy C who quickly damned Vanessa Redgrave on-camera at the Oscars for calling those who wanted her work boycotted "Zionist hoodlums.") A great film? No way (the Beatrice Straight wronged-wife speech alone should disqualify it).

Yes, all the women in the first "Godfather" -- Kay, Mama, the topless Sicilian bride -- are pretty much stick figures, which is one reason men love the movie so much.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 12:32 (eighteen years ago) link

>I never even think of it as a '70s movie. It seems more '80s to me.<

Because ppl were just so damn shallow til Reagan was elected?

>long before we had a disdain for TV news<

Sorry, TV news was held in contempt by many literate folk loooong before Network.

Jonathan Rosenbaum hits about the right median, I think, esp re its misogyny:

Good campy fun from the combined talents of Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet; Chayefsky was apparently serious about much of this shrill, self-important 1976 satire about television, interlaced with bile about radicals and pushy career women, and so were some critics at the time.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 12:41 (eighteen years ago) link

Just when I thought I was out, Dr. Morbius pulls me back in...I think the Sicilian bride in The Godfather is quite justifiably presented as a paragon of beauty, virtue, innocence, etc., like Claudia Cardinale in 8-1/2, the flower-girl in City Lights, or Cybill Shepherd in Taxi Driver. It's an archetype as old as the movies, used various ways--in the case of The Godfather, it's like she's standing in for the old-world purity of the Don long before he was corrupted, a contrast to the rot from which Michael's in hiding. (I know that's a simplification, as we simultaneously learn that vendettas have been part of Sicilian life forever.) That Michael's mother is kept in the background also seems right according to the film's internal logic; whatever one thinks about the code of conduct that guides the film's principals, obviously one of the key rules is that family and Family are supposed to be kept separate. I have a specific problem with the awkwardness of some of Keaton's lines (and I was too harsh earlier; much of the time, she's fine), but I don't think it's fair to generalize that one reason men love The Godfather is because the women are stick figures. I'm someone who loves the film who wishes Keaton's role were more, not less complex.

― Phil Dellio (j.j. hunsecker), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 14:55 (eighteen years ago) link

xpost I find Jonathan Rosenbaum shrill and self-important.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 14:58 (eighteen years ago) link

a prominent if idiosyncratic film review guide lists these as it's top-rated (four star) films in the 1970s:

1970
M*A*S*H
Tristana
Walkabout

1971
Death in Venice
The Last Picture Show

1972
Aguirre, Wrath of God
Cabaret
Deliverance
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Godfather
Solaris
Viskningar och Rop

1973
Badlands
Day for Night
Don’t Look Now
Mean Streets

1974
Chinatown
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
The Godfather Part II
Lacombe, Lucien

1975
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Picnic at Hanging Rock

1976
All the President’s Men
Network
Taxi Driver

1977
Annie Hall
Star Wars

1978
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
Days of Heaven
The Driver
The Marriage of Maria Braun

1979
Alien
Being There
Manhattan
The Tin Drum

― >myjobsworth, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 15:09 (eighteen years ago) link

Kay is the conscience of The Godfather movies, but she's so easily dismissed by viewers caught up in Corleone logic. I love the Mad Magazine satire where Michael takes a contract out on her.

― Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 17 August 2005 15:12 (eighteen years ago) link

Yes, but she's a conscience more than a character. I remember the MAD spoofs of I & II very well!

Quite an idiosyncratic list there -- the only Altman being MASH? (which is a dumb football comedy for most of its last third)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 15:20 (eighteen years ago) link

the Beatrice Straight wronged-wife speech alone should disqualify it

i don't want to privilege the CW too much, but when you're contrarian about the most C of the CW and without any attendant explanatory content, you appear to disrespect criticism and audience.

I think Rosenbaum is usually otm (though I'm not quite in the same place as him politically or aesthetically), and I don't completely discount the criticisms of Network - an adolescent favorite that I never regarded as taking itself more seriously than it does on its face (hello? "sybil the soothsayer"?) - but those who are quick to criticize its misogyny I think are missing that 1) Faye Dunaway's gender is not the second or even the third most important element of her character (but what, they should add another man to the cast? and write out the love interest?), and 2) the movie spends a fair amount of time viewing her through the eyes of an older man with whom it does not entirely sympathize

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Wednesday, 17 August 2005 15:33 (eighteen years ago) link

Skipping 225 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.