*** ILE Best Films of the 1970s REVEALED ***

xpost: Hoo-fucking-ray for that movie. And Hooray for Sissy Spacek.

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22. McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Robert Altman, 1971

Points: 109
Total Votes: 10
First Place Votes: 0

Comments?

ah, i came to the movie a Chandler novice, so just appreciated Gould's laconically charismatic turn for what it was...

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21. A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick, 1972

Points: 113
Total Votes: 10
First Place Votes: 2

Tracer Hand: I watched "Clockwork Orange" with my skateboarding friends about 3,479,089 times in high school.

Sterling Clover: penetrating and harrowing examination of violence and the reprecussions of its suppression.

nathalie: Clockwork Orange is also about violence. But also how wrong it is to completely erase it. That the governement is playing with a life. You can't just take things away from said person unless you destroy him completely. I think it's a... very interesting movie. Although I don't really agree with some of the points - it feels as though Kubrick approves of violence - I do think it makes some valid points So I guess both films are more or less about the same thing (violence).

Pete: A Clockwork Orange is a film about violence but also about being a voyeur to violence and our responses to it. The excitement in the film is initially watching the violence of Alex, and then the violence of the State (ie us) against Alex. Are we excited by the rape scene, are we excited by the conditioning against him Is this what happens when we punish someone, is this why society punishes / rehabilitates via aversion therapy.

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20. Eraserhead

David Lynch, 1977

Points: 113
Total Votes: 11
First Place Votes: 0

K-reg: on Eraserhead gave sound designers a whole new box of tricks. His editing and use of sound create almost visual poetry, playing with silence and darkness, it's refined the grammar of cinema, in my opinion.

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19. Star Wars
George Lucas, 1977

Points: 114
Total Votes: 7
First Place Votes: 2

Pete Scholtes: I was 8 years old when it came out, and it's the greatest 8-year-old-boy movie ever made. But my adult self still think Star Wars is damn funny. The overblown size and mercilessness of the Empire coming up against a few mystics and rebels, and stumbling--it's like a slapstick satire of militarism. The rebels are just joy-riders, really. They let computer-brains do the heavy lifting, and place as much emphasis on spiritual oneness as on bravery. It's as if hippies had replaced the Viet Cong.

The opening shot of the spaceships passing overhead, a satiric homage to Kubrick's similar shot in 2001: A Space Odyssey, goes on much longer, and is much faster and more visually exciting. The mechanics of how the ships are operated couldn't be more different from Star Trek, and yet it's the only other myth-franchise where I care.

I don't get the Star Wars haters. The dialogue is dumb-immortal in the same way Casablanca's is, and the rip-off from other films are inspired. Han Solo is fucking classic. And I love the junkiness of the Millenium Falcon; the fact that Chewie seems about to kill everybody; Solo trying to convince the guy on the radio that there's nothing going on in the Death Star cell block; the fact that it's called the Death Star (nice PR job!); the way all the action within the Death Star turns out to be just a ruse to let the Empire track the Falcon to the rebels (is Darth Vader controling everything psychically, or what?). I imagine a scenario in which these guys squat in the Death Star for months, stealing food from the cafeteria to survive. This movie is just fun to think about, though I haven't for years...

Jimmy the Mod: We'd better be counting the original version and not the cheapened, showy, Jabba-steppping-Han-Shoots-First version.

Justyn Dillingham: Even if it does get more undeserved attention than any other movie on this list, Star Wars is a more subtle film than most people remember, managing to suggest an enormous, awe-inspiring backstory - references to the "Clone Wars," Darth Vader's past, et al - in one quiet scene of exposition, with Alec Guinness bringing all of his considerable dignity to the role of Ben Kenobi. Unfortunately, Lucas has no faith in the imagination of his audience; hence his decision to waste nine more hours on a near-worthless second trilogy which told us nothing worth knowing that we couldn't have surmised from the first one. While its genuine quality as a film will always be overshadowed by what followed, Star Wars remains a pretty riveting experience, more eloquently and powerfully filmed than almost any blockbuster action film since.

I for one appreciate this effort, Jeff. Once and once only I had an argument with someone MY OWN AGE who maintained that Star Wars had always been called "A New Hope", and I couldn't convince them of the truth. After that I decided I had better things to do with my time than argue over things like that.

It's interesting to me that the seventies films that made the biggest impression on me are not the ones that are currently available on lovely remastered DVDs, but the ones they used to show late at night on Channel Four when it first started and telly started to carry on past midnight. There was a golden period before The Hitman and Her-style rubbish when late night babysitting meant watching something like Badlands or Freebie and the Bean at two in the morning.

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18. Dawn of the Dead

George A. Romero, 1979

Points: 114
Total Votes: 11
First Place Votes: 1

Comments?

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17. News From Home

Chantal Akerman, 1977

Points: 118
Total Votes: 7
First Place Votes: 1

Comments?

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16. Dog Day Afternoon
Sidney Lumet, 1975

Points: 118
Total Votes: 9
First Place Votes: 0

57 7th: Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon= BEST PERFORMANCE EVER

Pete Scholtes: How many more great movies would Pacino and John Cazale (Michael and Fredo Corleone) have made together if Cazale hadn't died of bone cancer? Both are so good in Dog Day Afternoon that it doesn't even occur to you that it's the same two actors doing their dance as in The Godfather.

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15. In A Year of 13 Moons

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978

Points: 118
Total Votes: 9
First Place Votes: 1

Comments?

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14. Jaws
Steven Spielberg, 1975

Points: 119
Total Votes: 10
First Place Votes: 0

Pete Scholtes: Jaws gets a bad rap for inaugerating the blockbuster, but come on, it's so much better than the films it supposedly killed off. Besides being the finest use of John Williams, it's unsentimental about kids, suspicious of authority, mocking of machismo, and drawn to the visceral appeal of boats and the ocean. Oh, and it's really scary.

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13. The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman, 1973

Points: 122
Total Votes: 12
First Place Votes: 0

Nordicskillz: I love the Long Goodbye. Especially for those weird yoga girls that live next door to him. Plus it's the best film to start with a man buying cat food ever.

Theodore Fogelsanger: "The Long Goodbye." Robert Altman's 1970's take on Raymond Chandler is all sorts of messy fun. Elliot Gould, in the best performance of his I've ever seen, is detective Phillip Marlowe. I saw this a few years ago and it didn't leave much of an impression on me except seeming a bit too self conciously cynical but I'm very glad to have had a second viewing.

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12. Manhattan
Woody Allen, 1979

Points: 129
Total Votes: 13
First Place Votes: 1

Pete Scholtes: It's darker than you remember, maybe, and predicts some of Allen's downfalls. But, man, is Muriel Hemmingway good.

Jimmy the Mod: a sign of things to come in the personal life of WA and his last great film (Crimes and Misdemeanors is BORING. ADMIT IT)

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11. F For Fake
Orson Welles, 1973

Points: 131
Total Votes: 9
First Place Votes: 2

Geoff: I'm watching F for Fake right now. it's really great, slurry and embarrassing and overcooked, and the art = lying conceit, well: no shit. i can't for the life of me imagine what the original venue or reception of this was supposed to be! it's like welles said: "i will make a shitty documentary that will blow minds when broadcast on the late night television of a compressed and unhappy future" it feels like it's been on for six hours; i could watch it for another twelve.

Kenan: I saw F for Fake for the first time last week, and I'm still thinking about it. The way it's edited is so goddamn brilliant. I keep remebering the sequence when the painter is denying that he ever signed a painting, and instead of just cutting to the biographer saying that he did, he lets the camera sit for a long moment on the biographers expression, purse-lipped, not even wanting to comment on a fact so obvious. "Of course they were signed."

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10. Female Trouble
John Waters, 1974

Points: 132
Total Votes: 10
First Place Votes: 1

Arthur: Female Trouble covers the same ground as Natural Born Killers, only it's a million times better and it came out twenty years earlier.

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9. Nashville
Robert Altman, 1975

Points: 198
Total Votes: 13
First Place Votes: 2

eddie hurt: I grew up in Nashville, and people here hate the film, which only proves its power as a commentary on what this town has always been--and just in the last few years has the city become self-conscious enough to see how the movie is about politics, not music. There's talk afoot of doing a 30th-anniv. thing about the movie, with the usual panel discussions, etc. As a look at the California-ization of Nashville, it fits perfectly into Altman's other work, too, and there are lots of transplanted Californians and New Yorkers here now who get the movie, too. It's lost a bit of its power for me over the years--I prefer Altman's Chandler film to "Nashville" these days--but it's still pretty great.

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8. Chinatown
Roman Polanski, 1974

Points: 225
Total Votes: 16
First Place Votes: 3

Absolute Skittles: Truth is: "Chinatown" is a proud member of my DVD family, but I made the mistake of reading the script before I saw the film, and there were too many snappy lil' one-liners and comebacks that were totally left out. In the opening scene with Curly (script), after Curly mentions to Jake that he thinks he'll ice his cheatin' wife, I kinda liked how Jake said something to the effect of, "you dumb son-of-a-bitch, you think you got that kinda class? That kinda DOUGH? You gotta be rich to kill anybody in this town". Polanski probably felt it was TOO on-the-nose, though... the foreshadowing way too obvious.

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7. The Conversation
Francis Ford Coppola, 1974

Points: 227
Total Votes: 14
First Place Votes: 0

Jedidiah: “An underrated gem from Coppola, the greatest director of the 70s”

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5. Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola, 1979

Points: 235
Total Votes: 18
First Place Votes: 2

Pete Scholtes: America didn't get lost in the jungle, Francis; we bombed the jungle.

Jimmy the Mod: Overlong w/o restoration; indulgent and nowhere NEAR his best work. But Duvall steals the show as Comic Book Hero and infinetly quotable Kilgore. This war's gonna end someday.

Justyn Dillingham: I often feel like the only person on Earth who likes Brando's performance in this film. It's ridiculous, sure, but I can't think of another way to end it, can you?

Jedidiah: Coppola's fourth masterpiece in a row, and his last truly great film. Who cares if half of the lines have become a part of pop culture? It's well deserved.

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4. The Godfather
Francis Ford Coppola, 1972

Points: 244
Total Votes: 15
First Place Votes: 3

Jimmy the Mod: Only narrowly bested by Annie Hall in ways that I can't really quantify. Classic if only for the cinematography of Gordon Willis -- daring and groundbraking even to this day.

Pete Scholtes: The Godfather's flaws are those of its deeply conflicted audience. The family is evil, but we want in. We know our leaders kill in cold blood, but isn't that the price of security? Like Apocalypse Now, the movie is about steeling yourself past the point of no return. But Coppola steels himself, too. He stacks the moral deck in favor of conformism: Michael doesn't accidentally kill an innocent bystander at the restaurant, for example. And the rival family is so bad, you find yourself thinking Carlo gets what he deserves.

Maybe the second film colors the first, so that I can enjoy The Godfather's look and pace without guilt, the changing seasons and period details, the performances (even the minor ones), the reliance on narrative, the father-son tragedy, and all the great lines. "They're animals, anyway, so let them lose their souls."

The Godfather is the opposite of Lawrence of Arabia, which sent its mystery of a character through incomprehensible world history, and didn't make sense of either. The Godfather indulges in everything that made it the defining Rated R movie, but Pacino's Michael is more modern than its sex and violence. He's probably the most realized monster in movies.

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4. Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Werner Herzog, 1973

Points: 262
Total Votes: 19
First Place Votes: 1

Jed_: I just saw Aguirre and it's insane. watching it made me hate all those widescreen pretty-beautiful epics that are ten a penny. it's so fucking real-looking. anthony minghella please watch a Herzong film then give up or kill yourself. obviously Aguirre is astonishing to look at but makes you realise, to an extent, that most films are just cinematography and lightning with actual direction and vision and depth waaaaaaay down the list. films are too beautiful now. all surface no feeling.

Jeff-PTTL: Where to begin? I find it almost impossible to talk about my favorite film of all time. The opening shot just kills me everytime, it's the start of a constant barrage of goosebumps that don't end untill Kinski is surrounded by monkeys.

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3. The Godfather, Part II
Francis Ford Coppola, 1974

Points: 285
Total Votes: 19
First Place Votes: 2

Pete Scholtes: The Fredo drama and the Cuban sequences redeem the lackluster killings, the romanticized De Niro Corleone, and one very shaky plot point: What exactly is Fredo's complicity in the attempt on Michael's life? Did he tell his enemies what bedroom Michael was sleeping in? Open the gate to let the gunmen in? What?

Jimmy the Mod: overlong but an appropriate end to the saga, III notwithsanding.

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2. Annie Hall
Woody Allen, 1977

Points: 316
Total Votes: 22
First Place Votes: 3

Pete Scholtes: I don't even want to use the phrase "romantic comedy." This is best comedy about love that I can think of. How did Allen pull it off? By remembering a great relationship. By establishing right off that his view of his life is skewed. By recognizing his foibles (he's bigoted, pseudo-intellectual, snobbish, schtick-prone, mildly self-hating, and roundly and passively hostile). By still making you care about him, and by making his great love stand in for all relationships remembered with fondness. By going about it all with the playfulness of a filmmaker just discovering what he can do, and finding he's willing to try anything.

Jimmy the Mod: makes New York the most romantic place in the world, Diane Keaton an oddball ideal, and proves that Los Angeles really DOESN'T have anything going for it. Woody never got better.

Jedidiah: Woody Allen's greatest moment. He has been both funnier and more poignant, but never in the same film

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1. Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese, 1976

Points: 317
Total Votes: 22
First Place Votes: 1

Pete Scholtes: It's all about the long stare into that glass of Alcaseltzer.

DG: Right at the end, after Travis drops Cybil Shephard's character off, there's this odd moment where he catches himself in the mirror, and well, it's just odd. I've always taken it to mean everything from him being dumped up till then is just some bizarre power fantasy, which would explain how he gets off scot-free for the shootings. If this is correct, this would make the second half just a 'dream', and therefore a bit of a GCSE drama project ending - and therefore dud. But I could be wrong...

Jonathan: The strange ending only adds to it's uniqueness. Robert de Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel and a sick cameo from Scorcese himself. What more could a boy want?

Michael G Breece: 'Taxi Driver': earnest portrayal (basically, based on the writer Schrader himself - is why it is earnest) of a loser/loner type in America. Sure, it goes far overboard at the end with the "cool anarchist mohawk" bullshit and the shoot-em-ups and all that jazz, but...it's a Hollywood type of thing. It should've been left to a more earnest ending, fitting to the realistic loner/loser portrayal built-up. In reality, that character (a frayed coward at hear) would have just stayed in his crappy little apartment more as he spent the rest of his time driving the taxi. Nothing less/nothing more than that, basically. Until some other little "hottie" turned his eye, then it would all go round and round again.

Joe: Actually, one of my favorite little moments in the movie is when the dispatcher asks Travis: "Education?" and Travis responds blankly, "Oh...some...here and there...", and then it cuts back to the dispatcher's reaction.

Who's doing the '60s?