ILX Best Films of the 1970s

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).

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.

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.

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

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

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

he's the most annoying film critic in america. i can't think of anyone else who's so utterly humorless about the movies he doesn't like.

Basically, Kay is just The Girl. All the women get more spine in II (FFC even turns 'his' sister into a Borgia by III), but Molly Haskell remarked on the movie's chavinist appeal at the time.

Critics who are offended by films that are mistaken for good / great impress me. (Another disser of The Godfather: Stanley Kauffmann.)

"When The Godfather measured its grand finale of murder against the liturgy of baptism, Coppola seemed mesmerized by the trick, and its nihilism. A Bunuel, by contrast, might have made that sequence ironic and hilarious. But Coppola is not long on those qualities and he could not extricate himself from the engineering of scenes. The identiication with Michael was complete and stricken."

The baptism/slaughter sequence is sledgehammer-obvious, but brilliantly edited. If you're looking for irony (tho not Bunuelian), that's where "Goodfellas" comes in.

Kauffmann was particularly dismissive of Brando tho ("pudding in his cheeks... moves stiffly... hailed as great acting").

Anyway, I don't think of multi-Oscared movies like these when I think of '70s cinema (Godfather II aside).

1. The Creeping Flesh (dir. Freddie Francis, 1973)
2. The Optimists of Nine Elms (dir. Anthony Simmons, 1974)
3. Chinatown (dir. Roman Polanski, 1974)
4. House of Mortal Sin (dir. Pete Walker, 1975)
5. Radio On (dir. Christopher Petit, 1979)
6. The Shout (dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978)
7. The Wicker Man (dir. Robin Hardy, 1973)
8. Breaking Away (dir. Peter Yates, 1979)
9. Death Line (dir. Gary Sherman, 1972)
10. Get Carter (dir. Mike Hodges, 1971)
11. Picnic at Hanging Rock (dir. Peter Weir, 1975)
12. O Lucky Man! (dir. Lindsay Anderson, 1973)
13. Eskimo Nell (dir. Martin Campbell, 1974)
14. Sweeney! (dir. David Wickes, 1976)
15. Jubilee (dir. Derek Jarman, 1977)
16. 10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1970)
17. Walkabout (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
18. House of Whipcord (dir. Pete Walker, 1974)
19. The Conversation (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
20. Eraserhead (dir. David Lynch, 1977)

You will note something of an anglocentric bias (I am at the moment working on a dissertation on British cinema of the seventies), and an attempt to broaden the sort of films getting in. It's more of a favourite than necessarily a 'best' list, but certainly strongly felt. There are some very underrated films, awaiting rediscovery, in this decade... and plenty of emphasis in the twenty above upon corruption and collapse. The 'devil's decade', indeed. Something of an Indian Summer for British horror, I would argue... which very sadly petered out mid-way through the 1970s.

"Network"... good film, certainly, but rather flawed. I mainly remember it for Peter Finch, who is marvellous; reminds me, I need to see "Sunday Bloody Sunday".

1. Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalker
2. Marco Ferreri: La Grande bouffe (aka The Grande Bouffe)
3. Woody Allen: Annie Hall
4. François Truffaut: L'Argent de poche (aka Pocket Money)
5. Sam Peckinpah: Cross of Iron
6. Emile de Antonio: Millhouse
7. Tage Danielsson: Picassos äventyr (aka The Adventures of Picasso)
8. Stanley Kubrick: A Clockwork Orange
9. Woody Allen: Manhattan
10. Roman Polanski: Le Locataire (aka The Tenant)
11. Robert Altman: MASH
12. Milos Forman: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
13. Stanley Kubrick: Barry Lyndon
14. Roman Polanski: Chinatown
15. Steven Spielberg: 1941
16. Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Cercle rouge (aka The Red Circle)
17. Robert Benton: Kramer vs. Kramer
18. John Huston: The Man Who Would Be King
19. Terry Jones: Life of Brian
20. Francis Ford Coppola: Apocalypse Now

The seventies is a kinda difficult decade for me: having been born in 1979, I haven't really seen enough of the classics (especially those made outside the States) to give a comprehensive vote. Also, a lot of the classics, like Godfather, simply don't move me... Like Morbius said, the Godfathers are men's films, with lots of style and violence and honour and paternal/fraternal drama, but personally I find their world so removed from my own that there's simply nothing for me to root for. Admittedly, I did vote for The Red Circle, but that film is about pure style only, and it doesn't claim to be anything more. I also had lots of trouble deciding whether or not I should include Apocalypse Now, but in the end I thought that Brando's mumblings at the end don't ruin an otherwise good film.

1. The Godfather Part II
2. Aguirre the Wrath of God
3. Taxi Driver
4. Eraserhead
5. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
6. Cabaret
7. Badlands
8. Hearts & Minds
9. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
10. Annie Hall
11. Little Big Man
12. Star Wars
13. Walkabout
14. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
15. The Last Picture Show
16. In the Realm of the Senses
17. The Spirit of the Beehive
18. Alien
19. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
20. Over the Edge

4 films have received over 200 points
17 have received over 100 points
The most first place votes for any one film is 2
29 films have received first place votes

(1) Annie Hall
(2) The Warriors
(3) Chinatown
(4) Harold & Maude
(5) All The President's Men
(6) The Conversation
(7) The French Connection
(8) Five Easy Pieces
(9) Capricorn One
(10) Save The Tiger
(11) The Sting
(12) Dog Day Afternoon
(13) The Godfather Part Two
(14) Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory
(15) Barry Lyndon
(16) Sleeper
(17) High Plains Drifter
(18) Time After Time
(19) The Man Who Fell To Earth
(20) M*A*S*H

I've received 6 this morning, for a whopping 42 overall.

1. Amarcord
2. The Godfather
3. The Godfather Part II
4. Annie Hall
5. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
6. Cries and Whispers
7. Le Cercle Rouge
8. Play It Again Sam
9. That Obscure Object of Desire
10. Manhattan
11. Chinatown
12. The Conversation
13. Apocalypse Now
14. A Clockwork Orange
15. Taxi Driver
16. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
17. Marathon Man
18. Being There
19. Straw Dogs
20. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I'd say it's pretty useless to vote for any foreign films, notwithstanding the tokenish-feeling votes for Fellini, Fassbinder, Herzog etc. That can't compete with all-English-lang ballots that include Capricorn One.

xpost Dr Morbius, you'd be surprised, several foreign films are doing extremely well.