TOP TEN FAVORITE 1970's MOVIES.

[MudInYerEye]

Howdy Folks,
I think the 1970's were a decade so ripe with quality film-making that perhaps only the the 1940's can favorably compare.
My current ten favorties of the period are:
(in no particular order)
PAPER MOON
THE LAST DETAIL
NIGHT MOVES
FAT CITY
AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3
BADLANDS
BARRY LYNDON
STRAW DOGS
Gee whiz, putting this list down was an excrutiatingly process! When you really sit down and think about all the great, memorable movies made during this period it's absolutely staggering. To be fair I could compose three different versions of this list and never repeat a title.
What's your current Top Ten?

 

[Quigley Brown]

I like those. I'd also add

The Converstation
Saturday Night Fever
Clockwork Orange
Cuckoo's Nest
All That Jazz
Apocalypse Now
Annie Hall
Last Picture Show
Amarcord
Deliverance

 

[Harry Lime]

Okay, I'll bite.

Harold and Maude
The Sting
All The President's Men
Young Frankenstein
The Godfather 1 and 2
Dog Day Afternoon
Paper Moon
Serpico
Taxi Driver
Mean Streets
American Graffitti
The French Connection
Barry Lyndon
Annie Hall
Manhattan
Five Easy Pieces
Patton
Saturday Night Fever
Chinatown
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Death of a Chinese Bookie
Rocky 1 (yes, it was a good movie despite the others)
And I'll throw in Midnight Cowboy, though I believe it was made in 1969 and released in 1970.
I love the movies of the 30's through 50's but cinema was really exciting and gritty and different in the 70's (probably my favorite movie decade.)

Harry Lime

 

[Salv]

I'll add

Vanishing Point
Two Lane Blacktop
The Warriors (come out to play-ay...)
The Wanderers (great original novel by Richard Price too)
Duel

...and some more comedies
The Jerk
Blazing Saddles
Bananas
Monty Python & The Holy Grail

 

[jake_fink]

I think that the 70s was the greatest decade for film, closely followed by the 30s.

My top ten would be:

1) Chinatown. Just the best film in American cinema.
2&3) A tie! Godfather I & II. A truly awesome achievment. If Coppola had done nothing else, these two films woulld have been enough.
4&5) Another tie!! The Last Picture Show & Paper Moon. Bogdanovich brilliantly captures the period he's working in, both as naturalism and as a reference to the films of the time, and yet he's doing something fresh and exciting within these. Two brilliantly crafted films, even the clouds seem to be arranged.
6&7) Another tie!!! Five Easy Pieces & Last Detail. Two great screenplays and two of the three great - really great, as in indispensible - performances that Jack Nicholson gave.
8) Fat City. The best boxing movie ever made. Yes, even better (as a boxing movie) than Raging Bull (which would be in my 80s top ten).
9) Bound for Glory. A passionate remembrance of the Great Depression told through the story of Woody Guthrie. A great looking film, and an honest, serious, entertaining one with great preformances all around.
10) I'm Canadian, so I'm putting the best Candian film ever on this list: Goin' Down the Road is the story of two New Brunswickers who drive all the way out to the big city of Toronto for jobs. Brilliantly spoofed on SCTV ("We're looking for doctorin' and lawyerin' jobs." "Do you think they have jobs for a nuclear physicist?")

Okay, that was hard. There's still about a dozen films I'd like to include, and I haven't even touched foreign films like The Conformist or Swept Away...

So far no Star Wars! My heart is warmed. Thank you.

PS: Harry, your top ten is twenty-two films long. :beer: <watch this smiley 22 times as penance

 

[Harry Lime]

I know - 22 films and could have been longer. I can't quantify worth a darn. So I just list the ones that i think are great. (And I missed a few - I love Last Picture Show, for example.) And, to throw fuel on a fire...

I hate Star Wars. The first one was okay (when I was a child) the rest suck worse than Rocky 2-19.

I know, right about now a 35 year old man who still lives in his parent's basement wishes he could pierce my heart with his light sabre.

Harry Lime

 

[Salv]

And, to throw fuel on a fire...

I hate Star Wars. The first one was okay (when I was a child) the rest suck worse than Rocky 2-19.

Harry Lime

I couldn't agree more...

 

[Doctor Strange]

Lots of great movies have been mentioned on this thread. The only really outstanding American film of the 70s that jumps out at me in its absence is Altman's "Nashville".

I'm not going to add more... I gave up on trying to make lists of favorites/bests years ago. Let's just say that I love *hundreds* (if not *thousands*!) of films, and lots of them are from the 70s.

 

[StraightRazor]

How can anyone hate the 1st Star Wars? Do you also hate kittens, sunshine and love?? I agree, the prequels were tripe, but A New Hope is the original, the one and only! Cinematically, it is the only one out of all 6 that could be considered a real achievement. It is so kinetic. It is so derivitive, (in a good way). It's so...good! Say what you will about Lucas today, but in 76-77, he was really at the top of his game. A New Hope has that feel of a young director, struggling but brilliant, striving to create something fresh and new. Like Welles and Citizen Kane. Welles broke all the rules, technically and artistically. The same with Lucas and A New Hope. He did with westerns, Samurai films, Flash Gordon, and classical mythology, what the Wachowski brothers did with Hong Kong cinema, Anime, and graphic novels for the 1sr Matrix. Just my opinion.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Oh, puleeze!

I loved Star Wars (I refuse to call it "A New Hope"!) when it came out, and saw it multiple times. But I was already a college grad who had studied myth/literature, and a lifelong film buff who had seen the old Flash Gordon serials, the Kurosawa films, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Wizard of Oz, and all of the other influences that Lucas synthesized in Star Wars. I had read the SF novels and the 60s Marvel comics - and Joseph Campbell too, and I have never had a doubt which was a bigger influence on Lucas!

Star Wars is enormous fun. Star Wars brought forth a new era of movie effects technology. Star Wars created the modern summer blockbuster mentality. But Star Wars is *not* in any sense original, nor is Lucas in any sense (apart from moneymaking) a genius. The dialog and acting are stilted (but boy, do they look good compared to the recent SW films!), and while this was easy to overlook when the country was reeling from Watergate (etc.) and was desperately in need of a good, old-fashioned fun flick, it's hard to overlook now. Star Wars is fun, but only somebody young enough not to remember what came before it first-hand would consider it a work of genius.

Lucas has done some good stuff - THX 1138, American Graffiti, the first SW trilogy, the Indiana Jones films - but he was never a great idea man, and he ran out of ideas decades ago. Star Wars is certainly an important film of the 70s, but it marks the decisive turn *away* from the smarter, more introspective and critical films we've been listing here, and the start of the dumbing down of the American audience...

 

[Feraud]

This is a hard process. O.k., let's see. In no particular order..
1- Chinatown. I like this film a lot! Complicated plot and all.
2 - Godfather I & II. I am counting this as one great film!
3 -The Man Who Would Be King. I had to swipe this one from MudInYerEye's list. I love this film! I had it on VHS and wore my copy out! I must get it on dvd.
4 - The Duellists.
5 - Alien, another Ridley Scott film. I saw this when I was young (too young?) and it scared the heck out of me!.
6 - Taxi Driver
7 - The Sting
8 - The Great Waldo Pepper. Redford as a WWI "ace" who missed the action!
9 - Murphy's War. A good little film.
10 - Young Frankenstein. I tend to forget this was made in the 70's. It is timeless. A true "homage" comedy. Not like the silly ones I see today..
12 - The Outlaw Josey Wales. Love a good Western.
o.k. I went a bit over 10...

 

[Jake]

Vanishing Point

I'll add

Vanishing Point
Two Lane Blacktop
The Warriors (come out to play-ay...)
The Wanderers (great original novel by Richard Price too)
Duel

...and some more comedies
The Jerk
Blazing Saddles
Bananas
Monty Python & The Holy Grail

Vanishing Point...one of the reasons my handle is Jake...also led me to buy a 1970 challenger in my youth, even had it repainted white...sold it for my first airplane...Jake

 

[Harry Lime]

How can anyone hate the 1st Star Wars? Do you also hate kittens, sunshine and love??

No. Because I'm not silly enough to equate Star Wars with kittens, puppies and love. I hate Star Wars because it's been over-agrandized to death six times. It was a borrowed idea put in a different time period with some great effects for the time. But it's not a film, it's just a big popcorn movie that encouraged a big collection of dorks to band together and mythologize it and perpetuate it ad nauseum. In that sense it has few peers (maybe Star Trek, but that's a lot of the same dorks in its fan base.)

Harry Lime

 

[Mr. 'H']

Chinatown. Chinatown....

And Chinatown, of course.

:icon_smil

 

[MudInYerEye]

Alternate Top Ten #1

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE
DAYS OF HEAVEN
THE GODFATHER II
DAY OF THE LOCUST
STRAIGHT TIME
SAVE THE TIGER
THE CONVERSATION
DOG DAY AFTERNOON
BEING THERE
THE CONFORMIST
There are just so many great ones from this period...

 

[Quigley Brown]

Let me add:

Muppet Movie & Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

 

[jake_fink]

There are just so many great ones from this period...

Hah ha ha. That is true, too true. None of us can comfortably pick just ten.

Now, if I try to name ten excellent, or even my ten favourite, films of the last ten (or even fifteen years) I have too few, not too many to choose from. I think films of the 70s were better because the audience was better. Films were made for intelligent, mostly educated grown-ups, but now films seeem to be made for audiences of semiliterate massive head trauma sufferers and hyperactive children.* I guess the smart audience has moved off to television for shows like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Shield, DaVinci's City Hall and Law & Order.

Afterthought: *God, that sounds snobby.

 

[StraightRazor]

No. Because I'm not silly enough to equate Star Wars with kittens, puppies and love. I hate Star Wars because it's been over-agrandized to death six times. It was a borrowed idea put in a different time period with some great effects for the time. But it's not a film, it's just a big popcorn movie that encouraged a big collection of dorks to band together and mythologize it and perpetuate it ad nauseum. In that sense it has few peers (maybe Star Trek, but that's a lot of the same dorks in its fan base.)

Wow, your bitter! Yes, they were mostly borrowed ideas, but they were strung together so effectively, thats what made it great. Coppola once said of Lucas something to the effect of,

"He has few notions about creating great film or great art. Consequently he comes closer than most."

High praise from someone you have all previously mentioned as creating 3 of the best films of the 70's.

Hitchcock said, "You have to design your films just as Shakespeare did his plays-for an audience." Lucas designed SW to be a fun escape film to be enjoyed by people of all ages. Since its release, there have been snobbish blowhards like yourself who have tried to blow it off as fluff, all to no avail. Annie Hall stole the best picture Oscar from SW in 77, but I dont see any Annie Hall fan clubs, magazines, toys, tatoos, conventions, books, ect., 30 years later. The initial impact of that 1st SW is still being felt today, like it or not.

But it's not a film

I'm curious what you consider to be 'film'.

Star Wars is certainly an important film of the 70s, but it marks the decisive turn *away* from the smarter, more introspective and critical films we've been listing here, and the start of the dumbing down of the American audience...

Oh, you mean boring films! Like what Hitchcock would have called, "Pictures of people talking." The cardinal rule of cinema: Whatever is being said instead of being shown is lost upon the viewer. Star Wars didnt "dumb down" the American audience. 'Jaws' was actually the 1st big blockbuster of postmodern age, so why not blame Spielberg? Hollywood alone is responsible for "dumbing down" modern cinema by following in the wake of filmmakers like Lucas and Spielberg, and churning out crap meant to reproduce the big $$$$ of films like SW and 'Jaws'

And as for fans of SW or Indy being dorks? That seems like your hang-up, HarryLime. The same could be said of most of the people here, who play dress-up trying to emulate the Bogart/Grant/Gable look of the 30's-40's.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Godfather I
Godfather II
Chinatown
Cabaret
All the President's Men
Alien
M.A.S.H.
Annie Hall
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Also: Saturday Night Fever, Star Wars, American Graffitti, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, Jaws, I Never Sang for my Father

karol

 

[jake_fink]

Hitchcock said, "You have to design your films just as Shakespeare did his plays-for an audience." Lucas designed SW to be a fun escape film to be enjoyed by people of all ages. Since its release, there have been snobbish blowhards like yourself who have tried to blow it off as fluff, all to no avail. Annie Hall stole the best picture Oscar from SW in 77, but I dont see any Annie Hall fan clubs, magazines, toys, tatoos, conventions, books, ect., 30 years later. The initial impact of that 1st SW is still being felt today, like it or not.

I can't stand Star Wars, but you dig it, StraightRazor and that's cool, however, let's not confuse popularity with quality. McDonalds sells a lot of burgers. So what? I don't think the Academy gets it right every time, or even very often (they gave awards to Ordinary People and Braveheart afterall), but Annie Hall is a better film than Star Wars in every way. Also, Hitchcock can say what he likes, he made a lot of films for us snobs too (ie: not children's movies), and Shakespeare pretty much invented modernity and reinvented the English language. Putting Lucas in that kind of company is... well... a little grand.

And as for fans of SW or Indy being dorks? That seems like your hang-up, HarryLime. The same could be said of most of the people here, who play dress-up trying to emulate the Bogart/Grant/Gable look of the 30's-40's.

And now you're just being mean.
*runs home crying, "Momma!"*