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

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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?

The Conversation is the Garret Anderson of '70s films: most overrated
"underrated."

How did News From Home sneak in there? I don't think I've even read about it.

Apocalypse Now would have a shot at being one of the 5 best films of the decade if Coppola cut it down to a short about Kilgore and the Air Cavalry titled "Charlie Don't Surf."

>morbius = pwnd<

Happily, I am still Luddite enough to have no fuckin idea what that means.

I was Gene Hackman from The Conversation a few years ago for Halloween, so I like it enough for that.

But I rented it a few days ago and my problem with it (once again) is that it just doesn't make sense (spoilers to follow): So the Harrison Ford character hired Hackman to record a conversation Ford knew was going to happen, and which the murderers knew was going to be overheard? Why not just record the conversation without Hackman?

I love the film so much, and get so caught up in it, I've never even stopped to ponder the logic. I guess I've always assumed that while Hackman is technically hired by Ford, it's with Duvall's knowledge; we hear Duvall say "You want it to be true" to Ford, which I take to mean that Ford initiated Hackman's hiring as a way to prove to Duvall that there's a plot against him, that Duvall approved the project, and that now they're sitting around weighing the evidence. I don't think Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest were aware they were being taped. That would make Ford the really shadowy and unknowable figure--aligned with Duvall at the beginning, but keeping quiet and keeping his own proximity to the company's seat of power intact when the plot to kill the emperor succeeds and power is transferred.

I don't know, maybe that's wrong. But with The Conversation so steeped in the Watergate moment (accidentally; it's well known that Coppola wrote the script years earlier), I think a little mystery concerning the film's internal logic works well. The real-life parallel is why Nixon never burned the tapes, something that continues to puzzle everyone.

You mean "Gredo-shoots-first," right? On a related note, I also notice that the Jaws swimmer's breasts are less visible on the DVD art than they were in the original 1975 poster. These things matter.

I seem to remember Gene Wilder regreting that he made the film because it was "anti-child," but can't place the source...

But then, you know, "Looney Toons" is pretty fucked up, moralitywise, too (how many times does Bugs torture his foes in a manner of total overkill that isn't at all justified by the small infraction that they've made? That's without mentioning the times when it's entirely unprovoked), and I wouldn't want that erased from my childhood.

"Taxi Driver" is a good movie.