The '70s in film

[Jaicee]

HigHurtenflurst said:

70s is probably the earliest decade of film I will generally consider, earlier films the acting in particular seems alien to me, like the difference between a play & pantomime

The only pre-70s films I might watch are things I've seen because they were on TV as a child so they have a nostialgia factor (Disney & Bond films, Mary Poppins & Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), plus a few standout classics like 2001:ASO, Planet of the Apes, The Time Machine, The Great Escape.

That said I haven't really looked into films as far back as the 20s, though I have been meaning to watch Metropolis just based on its reputation.

For the 70s my watched list is still fairly small, but its an era I can go back to and watch without finding the acting style odd (for the most part)... In fact I put Solaris in my "to watch" list a while back (along with Silent Running) and this has reminded me to look it up.

Bugsy Malone is a standout 70s classic for me, not sure if it fits the "distinguishing dynamics" of the era but it's definitely a unique film, and one that I hope never gets remade as I don't see how they could do it justice.

Haven't looked into '20s pictures? Like not even well-known ones like Nosferatu (by far the best film adaptation of Dracula)? Well there's a LOT to discover! And Metropolis is among the very, very best movies ever made, IMO. I find lots of the oldest movies, like A Florida Enchantment (1914) to be really creative and daring, especially considering like all the mores of their time, and lots of German films in particular from the pre-Nazi era, like Metropolis of course, but also like Madchen in Uniform (1931), which I consider to be like the second or third-best lesbian picture ever made, which is probably owed to the fact that the writer was herself same-sex attracted. (Madchen in Uniform was also the first German movie to be produced cooperatively, with the cast and crew receiving shares of the film's profits instead of a salary. It briefly circulated in the United States as well before the Hays Code came in thanks to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt putting in a good word for it. And of course in Germany the Third Reich banned it and destroyed most copies of the film, permanently eliminating some footage.)

Well anyway, some of my personal favorites from the 1970s include, ordered by year of release...

1970: Patton OR Wanda (can't really decide)
1971: Harold and Maude
1972: Solaris
1973: Enter the Dragon
1974: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
1975: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1976: Taxi Driver
1977: Annie Hall
1978: An Unmarried Woman
1979: Alien

Others personal favorites from the era include such examples as...

Dawn of the Dead
Apocalypse Now
The Last Picture Show
Manhattan
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
The Network
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Norma Rae
Terror of Mechagodzilla (yes)
Escape to Witch Mountain
Rollerball
The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Though they were released in 1980, I also kinda think of 9 to 5 and The Empire Strikes Back as spiritually '70s movies. The Empire Strikes Back was much more like how the average film worked in the 1970s than its more simplistic, straightforward predecessor, with twists like...

Spoiler!

...Darth Vader turning out to be Luke's father!!...

...the absence of a happy ending, and so forth. Audiences didn't seem to like it as much as the original film contemporaneously, but it has gone on to become regarded as the best entry in that trilogy and, to many, the best movie in the entire franchise.

There are also a lot of movies from like the late 1960s that sorta have this same sort of vibe going for them and feel like revolutionary movies for their times, like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Midnight Cowboy (1969), for example.

Last edited by Jaicee - on 18 April 2021