1970s Movies

It inspired fainting and vomiting; it made people think they were possessed; it became the first horror film nominated for Best Picture; it made Ellen Burstyn a star. It was fitting that as Old Hollywood faded away, an up-and-coming filmmaker like Peter Bogdanovich would make something set in the past, shot in nostalgic black-and-white, that depicted a town where the old ways were dying. Roger Ebert observed that The Last Picture Show “is above all an evocation of mood,” full of lovely melancholy as its young, restless characters in a moribund Texas town struggle with where to go and what to do next.

Other new directors were rising from the realm of low budget moviemaking, often beginning their careers working for B-movie maverick Roger Corman. Francis Ford Coppola would direct horror filmDementia 13for Corman, before moving to the major studios. Coppola became a leading figure in the “New Hollywood” movement, directing the mafia epicThe Godfatherand the chilling, conspiracy thrillerThe Conversation. Master the art of visual storytelling with our FREE video series on directing and filmmaking techniques. Hollywood was going in a direction where directors would be given final control over their films.

What Is New Hollywood? The Revolution Of 1960s And 70s Hollywood

Despite this, the 1970s proved to be a benchmark decade in the development of cinema, both as an art form and as a business. With young filmmakers taking greater risks and restrictions regarding language and sexuality lifting, Hollywood produced some of its most critically acclaimed and financially successful films since its “golden era.” In European cinema, the failure of the Prague Spring brought about nostalgic motion pictures reminiscent of the ones that celebrate the 1970s itself. These films expressed a yearning and as a premonition to the decade and its dreams. The Hungarian director István Szabó made the motion picture Szerelmesfilm , which is a nostalgic portrayal and a premonition of the fading of the young 1970s ethos of change and a friendlier social structure.

The end of the decade saw two epic Vietnam War films, from directors Michael Cimino and Coppola . The decade closed with two films chronicling the Vietnam War, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Both films focused on the horrors of war and the psychological damage caused by such horrors. Christopher Walken and director Michael Cimino earned Oscars for their work on the film, which earned a Best Picture Academy Award. Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep were also nominated for their work in The Deer Hunter.

• After another non-successful hunt, a father steals some ham for his children and is jailed and sent to a chain gang and his wife and eldest son repeatedly hear from the shopkeeper, sheriff and local women who send them their laundry, how they “went out on a limb” for them as a family.
• After cable deregulation in the early ’70s, one of the earliest subscription-based cable networks was The Green Channel.
• One of the most insightful films of the decade came from the mind of a Hollywood outsider, Czechoslovakian director Miloš Forman, whose Taking Off became a bold reflection of life at the beginning of the 1970s.
• If your favorite ’70s film isn’t on the list, please feel free to add it to the list of the best ’70s films yourself.
• The first of five Benji films debuted in 1974 and introduced the world to a beloved, scrappy stray dog who lives in a small town.
• Although the budget for Jaws grew from $4 million to $9 million during production, it became the highest grossing film in history – until Star Wars.

As such, it’s easy to see why it’s overlong, as Russell probably just needed some shiny joy in his life. Ken Russell gives Sandy Wilson’s Broadway smash The Boy Friend some movie razzle-dazzle. The play itself is about the roaring twenties and two young people falling in love against their parent’s wishes. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is the rare masterpiece that I’d also love to see an updated remake of.

American Films Of The 70s

Nostalgic fans bid on merchandise and collectibles ranging from Judy Garland’s sparkling red shoes to MGM’s own back lots. McGraw and O’Neal wereawfullypretty, and those Irish knit sweaters looked wonderfully cozy in the snow. While attitudes about race and gender have progressed since the Corleones first ruled movie theaters, old-world values of home cooking, family loyalty, and loan-sharking still captivate. Decades later, the film still looks spectacular, but its reductive attitudes about mental illness haven’t aged well, nor has its strongly Freudian misogynistic streak. Louise Fletcher may have nabbed an Oscar for her sadistic Nurse Ratched but it’s a hateful portrayal of female power.

Its governmental concerns are so timeless, so ripe, so woven into the past and future fabric of corrupted governing society. Donald Trump once boasted that he was so popular with his base that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and never suffer any consequences. Well, that’s this https://moviecorner.net as a movie, except far more intelligent, curious, and concerned by what that open admission actually means. While his contemporaries like Russ Meyer and Tinto Brass spent the 70s highlighting specific female features , Metzger was making art that occasionally featured fornication.

Don’t just take my word for it, Andy Warhol called The Lickerish Quartet “an outrageously kinky masterpiece” and UCLA has restored his film prints and held retrospectives to highlight his work. The 70s gifted us some all-time great cinema, but the deep cuts are just as good as the greatest hits. It is structured with the best film at number one and the 100th best film at 100. Throughout the 1970s, the horror film developed into a lucrative genre of film. It began in 1973 with the terrifying The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin and starring the young Linda Blair.

Mahogany was Diana Ross’ follow-up film to the successful Lady Sings the Blues. In it, she plays Tracy Chambers, a struggling fashion design student who finds fame in Rome, Italy. The movie’s theme song was sung by Ross and become a number-one hit on the Billboard charts. If you love to get the bejeezus scared out of you, Alien is the right choice for you. It stars Sigourney Weaver and follows her character, Ellen Ripley, and other crew members of the commercial space tug Nostromo as they fight for their lives after they encounter a deadly and aggressive extraterrestrial running loose on the ship. Let’s just say there’s reason why 40 years later, Alien is still one of the best sci-fi movies ever.

There is a nostalgic and escapist element to Chinatown after all, and in this regard it is something like American Graffiti. This second level of criticism is not meant to nullify Chinatown’s status as a film of incisive social criticism. Instead, it points to contradictory levels of meaning in a very complex film. After he scored with The French Connection, William Friedkin cemented his place in movie history with this colossally popular and monumentally frightening horror film about a girl with a demon inside her.

That never stopped critics from sniffing their noses at it, though, and today the film seems even sillier. Think stilted banter, soppy montages, and kaleidoscopic cinematography, not to mention a catchphrase—“Love means never having to say you’re sorry”—that Oprah would promptly discard along with last season’s pashmina. All neon reds and yellows, Martin Scorsese’s ode to the underbelly of 1970s New York City persists as the gold standard of films about urban indifference and modern loneliness. Sure, Paul Schrader’s screenplay, very loosely adapted from Dostoevsky’sNotes from the Underground, introduces the basest attitudes about race, women, and sexuality. When John Landis made this box office bonanza of a frat-boy comedy, he didn’t break the mold. Hemadethe mold for dozens of films about the antics of hard-drinking college dudes with secret hearts of gold.

And for anyone reading this list, that’s a must look for, because Ashby is perhaps the most forgotten major auteur of the 70s. While the anti-establishment rebels of 1969’sEasy Riderwere morphing into the nostalgic yuppies of 1983’sThe Big Chill,Seventies movies brought us everything from killer sharks, blaxploitation, and disco musicals to a loving look at General George S. Patton. Indeed, as Peter Lev persuasively argues in this book, the films of the 1970s constitute a kind of conversation about what American society is and should be-open, diverse, and egalitarian, or stubbornly resistant to change. One of the most insightful films of the decade came from the mind of a Hollywood outsider, Czechoslovakian director Miloš Forman, whose Taking Off became a bold reflection of life at the beginning of the 1970s. The 1971 film satirized the American middle class, following a young girl who runs away from home, leaving her parents free to explore life for the first time in years.

Asian Cinema

The African-American filmmaker was finally earning the respect that was long overdue. Now that we’ve looked at the history and characteristics of the Hollywood New Wave, why don’t we break down a cinema movement that inspired it? The French New Wave of cinema is widely known for its long takes and location shooting, but there’s so much more to explore that makes it one of the most influential film movements of all time. became the blueprint for Hollywood blockbuster cinema and one of the most financially successful films of all-time. To understand New Hollywood, we have to look at what inspired the filmmakers. By 1968, New Wave cinema movements had already been underway all around the world and newly established distribution companies were regularly bringing these foreign films to U.S. to be devoured by the Film School Generation.