Best decade for movies

:thumbsup:

:patriot:

:popcorn:

Never thought I would think anything about the 1970s was the best for anything, but I've been noticing that I gravitate toward movies made between 1970 and 1977, when I'm really in the mood for a great, satisfying movie.

This weekend for example, I watched And Now For Something Completely Different (1971), Sleeper (1973), and Death in Venice (1970)--all very much worth seeing again.

Gone with the Wind
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Wizard of Oz
Stagecoach
Rules of the Game
Ninotchka
Gunga Din
Dark Victory
Of Mice & Men
Wuthering Heights
Goodbye Mr. Chips
Love Affair

is one of my favorites from that year. The next two or three years were great for cinema as well: Citizen Kane, The Great Dictator, Casablanca, The Grapes of Wrath, The Maltese Falcon...

Chaplin and Buster Keaton were pure genius

:loveya:

Its theory is that the golden age of movies was in between Easy Rider and Star Wars. Easy Rider convinced the suits that there was money to be made from independent voices. Star Wars got them back in the blockbuster mentality.

Patton
The Godfather
MASH
Billy Jack
Deliverance
The Exorcist
Chinatown
Jaws
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Taxi Driver
Rocky
Annie Hall
The Goodbye Girl
Heaven Can Wait
Animal House
Kramer vs. Kramer

And this phenomenon was nowhere as visible as it was in films made all the more remarkable in that they were **crafted by major studios as mainstream fare**: Lawrence of Arabia, The Graduate, Psycho, Inherit the Wind, Cool-Hand Luke, Lolita, The Manchurian Candidate, In the Heat of the Night, The Wild Bunch, In Cold Blood, Midnight Cowboy, Dr. Strangelove, Bonnie and Clyde, A Hard Day's Night, The Apartment, Judgment at Nuremberg, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Faces, The Hill, Bullit, Birdman of Alcatraz, Doctor Zhivago, Lilies of the Field, West Side Story, The Pink Panther, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Hud, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Haunting, Elmer Gantry, Planet of the Apes, The Pawnbroker, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, The Ipcress File, The Hustler ...on goes the jaw-dropping list, one bona-fide classic after another.

Foreign films were at a peak, also. Consider: Breathless, Jules and Jim, L'Avventura, 8 1/2, The Virgin Spring, Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Yojimbo, La Dolce Vita, Shoot the Piano Player, Last Year at Marienbad, The Red Desert, Knife in the Water, Repulsion, If..., Persona, Blow-Up, Fistful of Dollars, Playtime, Z, Whistle Down the Wind, Darling, Shop on Main Street...to mention but a mere few.

The 1960s were, IMO, a creative zenith, the likes of which we haven't seen since. Many of the perceptions of 1960s art were coming at the public for the first time -- hence, a film like Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff or Midnight Cowboy carried a shocking gravitas that, comparatively, seemed dissipated in later films. The films of the day also had a potency that held a longer shelf-life; a picture such as Blow-Up, for example, which opened in the U.S. in late 1966-early 1967, would lose very little if it were viewed it in, say 1968-69.

:toast:

I know what you mean about that shelf-life bit and how short it is now compared to then. And it's not as though films are any more innovative now, it's just that our memories are shorter--maybe because the films are less memorable?

I think this burst of creativity you're describing lasted into the seventies, when the films became darker as history, too, became darker. That was a generation of film-making when the movies grew up.

What the hell has happened since then? :wtf:

Psycho (1960)
The Apartment (1960)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Breathless (1960)
L'avventura (1960)
Yojimbo (1961)
The Hustler (1961)
West Side Story (1961)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
8 1/2 (1963)
The Great Escape (1963)
Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) (1964)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
My Fair Lady (1964)
Goldfinger (1964)
A Patch of Blue (1965)
Lilies of the Field (1965)
To Sir, With Love (1965)
Ship of Fools (1965)
The Loved One (1965)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966)
Au Hasard, Balthazar (1966)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Born Free (1966)
Closely Watched Trains (1966)
The Graduate (1967)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Belle De Jour (1967)
Mouchette (1967)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
The Lion in Winter (1968)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Once Upon A Time in The West (1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Easy Rider (1969)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Z (1969)

... I rest my case.

1970

M*A*S*H
Little Big Man
Woodstock
Hearts and Minds
Patton
Women in Love
The Conformist
Death in Venice

1971
A Clockwork Orange
Bananas
Carnal Knowledge
Dirty Harry
The French Connection
The Last Picture Show
Shaft
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Walkabout
Murmur of the Heart

1972
Cabaret
Deliverance
Frenzy
The Godfather
Sounder
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Deep Throat
The Getaway
The Last House on the Left
Slaughterhouse Five
Superfly


1973
The Sting
Mean Streets
Sleeper
American Graffiti
Last Tango in Paris
Paper Moon
The Last Detail
Save the Tiger
The Exorcist

1974
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Chinatown
Blazing Saddles
The Godfather Part II
The Conversation
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Young Frankenstein

1975
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
Monthy Python and the Holy Grail
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Nashville
The Magic Flute

1976
All the President's Men
Bound for Glory
Carrie
Network
Rockie
Taxi Driver
Love and Death
The Man Who Fell to Earth

1977
Annie Hall
Saturday Night Fever
Star Wars
Despair
The American Friend
That Obscure Object of Desire

1978
Days of Heaven
Animal House
The Deer Hunter
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
The Last Waltz
Pretty Baby

1979
Alien
Apocalypse Now
Being There
Manhattan
Nosferatu
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Rock 'n' Roll High School
Tess
The Tin Drum

But then I didn't see quite all of the films listed here either.

But that's just me.

:thumbsup:

and let me add:

Two-Lane Blacktop-1971
Vanishing Point-1971
Electra Glide in Blue-1973
Serpico-1973
A Bridge Too Far-1977

and there are others which i'll try to think of later...Even though I must say that I'll put the 60s and 70s up against any other two decades anyone else can name...they are by far my favorite


EDIT: holy shit! how did i forget Soylent Green from 1973???

some personal faves

Le Mans - 1971
Smokey and the Bandit - 1977
Superman - 1978
Get Carter - 1971
And Now for Something Completely Different - 1971
Bang the Drum Slowly - 1973
Slap Shot - 1977
The Bad News Bears - 1976
C'était un Rendezvous - 1976

been mentioned. i have seen a lot of them but not ALL of them by far. i love this poll and the dialogue it has created and because i do i am giving it the good ole wilhorses kick :P

:kick:

"The Bicycle Thief" (1948)
"Tokyo Story" (1953)
"Au Hasard Balthazar" (1966)

Once you have seen those three, nearly all other films seem trivial and silly by comparison.

thanks for the rcommendations and for a really nice thread:)

well, you contributed over and above the call of duty, sir:patriot: