1970’s Film History
The New Decade for Film-Makers:
Although the 1970s opened with Hollywood experiencing a financial and artistic depression, the decade
became a creative high point in the US film industry. Restrictions on language, adult content and
sexuality, and violence had loosened up, and these elements became more widespread. The hippie
movement, the civil rights movement, free love, the growth of rock and roll, changing gender roles and
drug use certainly had an impact. And Hollywood was renewed and reborn with the earlier collapse of the
studio system, and the works of many new and experimental film-makers (nicknamed "Movie Brats")
during a Hollywood New Wave.
The counter-culture of the time had influenced Hollywood to be freer, to take more risks and to
experiment with alternative, young film makers, as old Hollywood professionals and old-style moguls died
out and a new generation of film makers arose. Many of the audiences and movie-makers of the late 60s
had seen a glimpse of new possibilities, new story-telling techniques and more meaningful 'artistic'
options, by the influences of various European "New Wave" movements (French and Italian) and the
original works of other foreign-language film-makers, and by viewing these surprise hits in the previous
decade:











Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966)
Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Nichols' The Graduate (1967)
Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968, UK)
Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Penn's Alice's Restaurant (1969)
Hopper's Easy Rider (1969)
Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969)
Robert Downey Sr.'s Putney Swope (1969)
Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969)
Young viewers and directors, who refused to compromise with mediocre film offerings, supported
stretching the boundaries and conventional standards of film even more in this decade. Although the 50s
and 60s were noted for wide-screen epics on CinemaScopic silver screens (and lighter formulaic,
squeaky-clean fare such as Pillow Talk (1959) or Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)), the 70s decade was
noted for films with creative and memorable subject matter that reflected the questioning spirit and truth of
the times.
Motion picture art seemed to flourish at the same time that the defeat in the Vietnam War, the Kent State
Massacre, the Watergate scandal, President Nixon's fall, the Munich Olympics shoot-out, increasing drug
use, and a growing energy crisis showed tremendous disillusion, a questioning politicized spirit among
the public and a lack of faith in institutions - a comment upon the lunacy of war and the dark side of the
American Dream (documented, for instance, in the bicentennial year's All the President's Men (1976)).
Other films that were backed by the studios reflected the tumultuous times, the discontent toward the
government, lack of US credibility, and hints of conspiracy paranoia, such as in Alan J. Pakula's postWatergate film The Parallax View (1974) with Warren Beatty as a muckraking investigator of a Senator's
death. The Strawberry Statement (1970), derived from James S. Kunen's journal and best-selling
account of the 1968 student strike at Columbia and exploited for its countercultural message by MGM,
echoed support of student campus protests. Even Spielberg's Jaws (1975) could be interpreted as an
allegory for the Watergate conspiracy.
1960s social activism often turned into an inward narcissism, and yet this uncertain age gave rise to some
of the finest, boldest, and most commercially-successful films ever made, such as the instant Oscar-
winning blockbuster The Godfather (1972) by a virtually untested director, William Friedkin's horror
classic The Exorcist (1973), Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977),
and Lucas' Star Wars (1977).
The decade also spawned equally memorable cult films, as diverse as Monte Hellman's Two-Lane
Blacktop (1971) and the quirky Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971).
The Search for a Blockbuster:
The "so-called" Renaissance of Hollywood was built upon perfecting some
of the traditional film genres of Hollywood's successful past - with bigger,
block-buster dimensions. Oftentimes, studios would invest heavily in only a
handful of bankrolled films, hoping that one or two would succeed profitably.
In the 70s, the once-powerful MGM Studios sold off many of its assets,
abandoned the film-making business, and diversified into other areas
(mostly hotels and casinos).
Much of the focus was on box-office receipts and the production of action- and youth-oriented,
blockbuster films with dazzling special effects. But it was becoming increasingly more difficult to predict
what would sell or become a hit. Hollywood's economic crises in the 1950s and 1960s, especially during
the war against the lure of television, were somewhat eased with the emergence in the 70s of summer
"blockbuster" movies or "event films" marketed to mass audiences, especially following the awesome
success of two influential films:


27 year-old Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975)
33 year-old George Lucas' Star Wars (1977)
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. Both Jaws and Star Wars
were the first films to earn more than $100 million in rentals. [The average ticket price for
a film in 1971 was $1.65, and by 1978 cost about two and a half dollars in first-run
theatres. Second-run film theatres could charge less and often dropped their admission price to $1.00.
The average film budget by 1978 was about $5 million - increasing dramatically to $11 million by 1980
due to inflation and rising costs. Therefore, production of Hollywood films decreased precipitously in the
late 70s, e.g., down to 354 releases in 1978 compared to the previous year's total of 560.]
New Markets for Hollywood's Products:
The emergence of ancillary markets for Hollywood's products emerged during this decade:




cable television - the first pay/premium television channel, Home Box Office (HBO), was
founded in 1972; in 1975, HBO demonstrated the popularity of its programming and became the
first in the television industry to use satellites for regular transmission of programming, with its
"Thrilla in Manila" boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier
to maximize profits from weekend audiences, the industry decided to move major film openings
from mid-week to Fridays, in 1973
pay cable television was able to allow profanity and sex beyond what could be offered on
commercial network television - outrageous comedian George Carlin's first comedy special was
aired on HBO as On Location: George Carlin at USC (1977) with cautionary disclaimers about
the use of strong language; it was the first of many HBO comedy concert
broadcasts
multi-plex theaters - the proliferation of multi-screen chain theaters in
suburban areas, replacing big movie palaces, meant that more movies could



be shown to smaller audiences; the world's largest cineplex (with 18 theaters) opened in Toronto
in 1979
publicity/celebrity magazines - after Life Magazine discontinued its weekly publications in 1972,
People Magazine - first published as a weekly magazine in March of 1974 (with Mia Farrow on
its first cover), took over the role of celebrity watching and film promotion for the industry
Hollywood realized that it could increase its profits by advertising its new releases on television first shown to be successful with the massive TV marketing campaign (of $700,000) for Jaws
(1975) - the film was also booked into almost 500 theatres for its opening weekend - a record!
Gone with the Wind (1939) first aired on network TV in 1976 and drew a huge audience over
two nights - about 34 million people - the largest ever film audience to watch a feature film on
television
The Home Video Revolution:









earlier in the previous decade, Ampex in 1963 offered the first consumer version of a videotape
recorder at an exorbitant price of $30,000; other iterations would follow, such as Sony's
introduction of the videocassette recorder (VCR) in 1969, and the introduction of the U-Matic in
1972
in 1972, the AVCO CartriVision system was the first videocassette
recorder to have pre-recorded tapes of popular movies (from
Columbia Pictures) for sale and rental -- three years before Sony's
Betamax system emerged into the market. However, the company
went out of business a year later
the appearance of Sony's Betamax (the first home VCR or
videocassette recorder) in 1975 offered a cheaper sales price of
$2,000 and recording time up to one hour; this led to a boom in sales - it was a technicallysuperior format when compared to the VHS system that was marketed by JVC and Matsushita
beginning in 1976
in 1976, Paramount became the first to authorize the release of its film library onto Betamax
videocassettes. In 1977, 20th Century Fox would follow suit, and begin releasing its films on
videotape
in 1977, RCA introduced the first VCRs in the United States based on JVC's system, capable of
recording up to four hours on 1/2" videotape
by the late 70s, Sony's market share in sales of Betamax VCRs was below that of sales of VHS
machines; consumers chose the VHS' longer tape time and larger tape size, over Sony's smaller
and shorter tape time (of 1 hour)
video sales - the first films on videotape were released by the Magnetic Video Corporation (a
company founded in 1968 by Andre Blay in Detroit, Michigan, the first video distribution company)
- it licensed fifty films for release from 20th Century Fox for $300,000 in October, 1977; it began
to license, market and distribute half-inch videotape cassettes (both Betamax and VHS) to
consumers; it was the first company to sell pre-recorded videos; M*A*S*H (1970) was Magnetic's
most popular title
video rentals - in 1977, George Atkinson of Los Angeles began to advertise the rental of 50
Magnetic Video titles of his own collection in the Los Angeles Times, and launched the first video
rental store, Video Station, on Wilshire Boulevard, renting videos for $10/day; within 5 years, he
franchised more than 400 Video Station stores across the country
in 1978, Philips introduced the video laser disc (aka laserdisc and LD) -- the first optical disc
storage media for the consumer market; Pioneer began selling home LaserDisc players in 1980;
eventually, the laserdisc systems would be replaced by the DVD ("digital versatile disc") format in
the late 1990s
VHS video players, laser disc players and the release of films on videocassette tapes and discs multiplied
as prices plummeted, creating a new industry and adding substantial revenue and profits for the movie
studios. But all of these changes had a down-side too: theater attendance would begin to drastically
decline in the next decade due to the home video invasion.
Changes from Traditional Hollywood Movie Studios:
The established Hollywood movie studios (except for Universal and Walt Disney's Buena Vista) no
longer directly controlled production. Although studios still dominated film distribution, other areas
including production, filming and financing (in whole or part) were increasingly in the hands of
independent studios, producers, and/or agents. A new generation of movie stars, including Jack
Nicholson, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman - were more skilled as "character actors," who
could adapt and mold their screen images to play a number of diverse roles.
In 1975, the Creative Artists Agency was founded by Michael Ovitz and colleagues (from the William
Morris Agency) to become a 'packager' of talent for film projects - resulting in the creation of competition
among agents. And conglomerate investment corporations were buying up many of the studios'
properties as part of their leisure entertainment divisions, with decisive power over decisions about the
number of films and which hopefully-profitable projects to choose. All the elements of a film were brought
together and packaged - the 'properties' of original screenplay, novel, or stage play were combined with
proven box office stars, directors, and marketing strategies.
The cheaper cost of on-location filming (using Cinemobiles or film studios on wheels) encouraged more
location shoots, or filming in rented production facilities. Faster film stock, lightweight cinematographic
equipment, and the influence of the cinema vérité movement brought less formal styles to American
productions. The functions of film makers were beginning to merge - there were actor-producers, directorproducers, writer-producers, actor-writers, and more.
For example, the decade's popular independent hit and Best Picture winner, director
John Avildsen's sports film Rocky (1976) was the first (and best) in a long series of selfparody sequels that featured rags-to-riches actor and unknown scriptwriter Sylvester
Stallone as underdog, inarticulate, Philadelphia boxer Rocky Balboa (inspired by boxer
Chuck Wepner) in a "Cinderella" story. [As an up-and-coming star, Stallone had earlier
co-scripted and starred as leather-jacketed Stanley Rosiello, opposite Henry Winkler as
Butchey Weinstein, in the coming-of-age gang drama The Lords of Flatbush (1974).]
The film's hero actually lost his bout after taking a brutal beating from Apollo Creed
(inspired by Muhammad Ali), but he 'went the distance' and won girlfriend Adrian! The
low-budget boxing film was the first major feature film to utilize the revolutionary
"Steadicam" developed by inventor Garrett Brown. It was a hand-held camera that
produced fluid, unjerky motion shots - during the choreographed bouts and the scene in which the boxer
jogged up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
American International Pictures (AIP) (1956) and Roger Corman:
This low-budget, exploitative, and successful film company, founded in the mid50s (and first named American Releasing Corporation), was largely responsible
for the wave of independently-produced films of varying qualities that lasted into
the decade of the 70s. The studio's executive producers were James Nicholson
and Samuel Arkoff, while its most notable and successful film producer was
Roger Corman. He was one of the most influential film-makers of the 50s and 60s
(he was dubbed the "King of the Drive-In and B-Movie") for his production of a
crop of low-budget exploitation films at the time.
The studio released their first successful "beach party" films (mostly to drive-in theatres) - beginning with
the musical comedy Beach Party (1963) starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon - to appeal to the
lucrative teen market. Teenagers were also Corman's dominant target audience in exploitative films such
as Teenage Doll (1957) (aka The Young Rebels) - about juvenile delinquency, and Sorority Girl (1957).
As was the case with most AIP films, they were aggressively marketed with publicity campaigns and lurid
posters.
Corman's own B-movie horror films included a series of adapted Edgar Allan Poe literary tales featuring
Vincent Price (i.e., House of Usher (1960) and The Raven (1963)), and science-fiction horror films such
as X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963) with Ray Milland. Corman's counter-cultural biker film The
Wild Angels (1966) with a star-making role for Peter Fonda pre-dated the popular Easy Rider (1969) by
three years. AIP also distributed a number of Godzilla (and Gamera) films in the 60s and 70s, while
Corman specialized in other exploitative science-fiction/horror films and dramas, such as It Conquered
the World (1956), Not of This Earth (1957), Naked Paradise (1957), The Saga of the Viking Women
and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957), Teenage Caveman (1958), the
satirical black comedy A Bucket of Blood (1959), The Wasp Woman (1960), The Last Woman on
Earth (1960), and Creature From the Haunted Sea (1961).
Roger Corman ("King of the B's"), and A New Generation of Maverick Directors: "Movie Brats"
With more power now in the hands of producers, directors, and actors, new directors
emerged, many of whom had been specifically and formally trained in film-making
courses/departments at universities such as UCLA, USC, and NYU, or trained in
television. Corman supported this new breed of youthful maverick directors, referred to
by some as "Movie Brats" or "Geeks." The AIP studio (and Corman himself) was
responsible for giving a start and apprenticeship experience to many upcoming
filmmaking cineastes and actors, emphasizing low-budget film-making techniques and
exploitative elements.
Corman hired the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, Peter
Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, Paul Bartel, and Robert Towne. He gave
many of these novices their first career-breaking employment opportunities, as actors, producers,
directors, writers, members of film crews, etc. He encouraged them to produce personally-relevant and
creative works of art, and new genre interpretations. This support revived the notion of auteurism (the
belief that the director was most influential and responsible for creating a film's ultimate form, meaning
and content).
For instance, Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut was for Targets (1968), made for AIP. And Francis
Ford Coppola directed (and scripted) Corman's horror-thriller film Dementia 13 (1963), Coppola's first
mainstream picture. Jack Nicholson appeared in a number of early Corman movies, including his screen
debut in The Cry Baby Killer (1958) and later a small role in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), about a
carnivorous pet plant. One of Martin Scorsese's earliest-directed films (and his first commerciallyconventional film) was Corman's Boxcar Bertha (1972) with Barbara Hershey and David Carradine as
two Depression-era outlaw folk heroes. Writer/director Jonathan Demme's directorial debut was for
Corman's Caged Heat (1974) -- a memorable women-in-prison film with lots of sex, action and violence.
And Monte Hellman's two westerns Ride in the Whirlwind (1965) and The Shooting (1967) both starred
Jack Nicholson (who also co-wrote and produced the first film).
Some of the Prominent Movie Brats (or Geeks) of the 70s
George Lucas (USC)
Robert Altman
John Carpenter (USC)
Francis Ford Coppola (UCLA)
Bob Rafelson
William Friedkin
Alan Pakula
Terrence Malick
Martin Scorsese (NYU)
Michael Ritchie
Brian De Palma (NYU)
Woody Allen
Peter Bogdanovich
Paul Mazursky
Michael Cimino
Hal Ashby
Steven Spielberg
John Cassavetes
Paul Schrader (UCLA)
John Milius (USC)
Dennis Hopper
Mike Nichols
David Lynch
George Romero
Wes Craven
John Milius
James Cameron
Jonathan Demme
Joe Dante
Bruce Dern
Ron Howard
Gale Anne Hurd
John Sayles
Paul Bartel
Corman offered cinematic advice: use a fast-moving camera to provide speedy action, avoid cliches, add
some minor social commentary, use visually-engaging screen compositions, sex (and nudity), tongue-incheek humor, and some sort of gimmick. Some of the new directors excelled with an audio-visual
approach to filmmaking, where style, ear-splitting soundtracks, and action were sometimes more
important in films than content.
The new American wave of film-makers were also influenced by unconventional works from the Italian
Neo-realists, or the French New Wave artists, as stated earlier. Films made outside the traditional
Hollywood mold, with great works of character development, were beginning to win critical praise and
bring in tremendous revenues.
George Lucas
USC graduate George Lucas added his name to the list of new
directors. His first film, produced by American Zoetrope and
executive-produced by Francis Coppola, was a full-length version of a
student science-fiction film he had made earlier - the nightmarish
vision of a dehumanized future in THX 1138 (1971). The numerical
moniker would appear as an 'in-joke' in later Lucas works: as the
license plate of John Milner's car in American Graffiti (1973), as the
number of the cell block holding "Chewbacca" in Star Wars (1977), in
other films of the Star Wars series (except for Jedi), and in numerous
other films (i.e., Swingers (1996), Sky Captain and the World of
Tomorrow (2004)).
His second film that he co-wrote and directed, the low-budget American Graffiti (1973) was a warmhearted, rites-of-passage film about a number of California teenagers (unknowns who became future
stars including Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, and Richard Dreyfuss, among others)
in the early 60s who pointlessly cruised down the main strip of their small town [Modesto, CA] in hot-rods
one long summer night - accompanied by a non-stop soundtrack of rock 'n' roll hits (opening with Bill
Haley and the Comets). The film's tagline or slogan encouraged nostalgia: "Where were you in '62?"
Teenage archetypes included the hot-rod loving delinquent (Paul Le Mat), the brainy student (Richard
Dreyfuss), the stereotypical class president (Ron Howard), and the nerd (Charles Martin Smith).
In 1971, Lucas formed his own film company, Lucasfilm Ltd., in San Rafael, California that soon evolved
into a number of specialized companies. Before his next major hit (Star Wars (1977)), Lucas organized
Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), a post-production facility in Marin County to advance the area of
special effects, modeling, sound design, computer-generated effects, and other ground-breaking
techniques.
John Carpenter
Little-known at first, John Carpenter directed the cult sci-fi film Dark Star (1974) - a
feature length derivative of a student short made while he was studying film at USC. It
was a parody of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). (Carpenter
composed all of the musical scores for his films beginning with Dark Star.) He also
directed the low-budget action thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) (a modernized
remake of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959)).
Carpenter became noticed, especially after his highly-successful, low-budget slasher film
Halloween (1978) - it was his third feature film and the highest-grossing independent
film made in the US up to that time. The hard-to-kill, masked, knife-wielding stalker
Michael Myers suspensefully pursued a young, small-town babysitter Jamie Lee Curtis (later becoming
the 'Queen of Horror') on Halloween night in a small mid-western town. In its wake, the profitable and
stylishly-made film (often seen from the point of view of the killer), with its spooky recognizable
soundtrack, spawned a mini-horror film boom, with many lesser 'psycho-slasher' or teen-scream films
appearing into the 1980s.
Bob Rafelson
Former writer, producer, and director in television (and noted for the Monkees television
series), Bob Rafelson turned to movies in the late 60s. His feature debut was, predictably,
the Monkees film Head (1968), co-written with Jack Nicholson. His second film (which
brought Rafelson a Best Screenplay nomination) was one of the best of the 70s, Five Easy
Pieces (1970), a fascinating, yet shattering 'road movie' story of an emotionally-alienated
concert pianist (Jack Nicholson shortly after his work in Easy Rider) who returned to his
upper-class family after years of exile as an oil-field worker. In the 70s, he also directed a
follow-up film The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) with Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern and
Ellen Burstyn, and the quirky Stay Hungry (1976) with Sally Field and Jeff Bridges (and a
very early performance by Arnold Schwarzenegger). His next notable film was the remake
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Alan Pakula
Another former film producer Alan Pakula directed Liza Minnelli in her second film role
in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) a poignant, oddball comedy/drama about a neurotic and
eccentric college student named Pookie Adams. Pakula's best films in the 70s were
Klute (1971) - a superb detective thriller about the stalking of a tough New York hooker
(Jane Fonda won an Academy Award for her performance), and the compelling
political melodrama All the President's Men (1976) about two young, non-conformist,
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post news reporters Woodward and Bernstein
(Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) who bucked the system and investigated the
1972 Watergate break-in, burglary, and subsequent cover-up. Pakula also directed the
believable and gripping political conspiracy thriller The Parallax View (1974) - casting
Warren Beatty as a journalist investigating a presidential candidate's assassination.
Burt Reynolds starred with Jill Clayburgh in Alan Pakula's popular adult romantic
comedy Starting Over (1979).
Martin Scorsese
Newcomer Martin Scorsese, a graduate of the film school at NYU, first gained
recognition with personal films, including his first low-budget feature Who's That
Knocking At My Door? (1968) with Harvey Keitel, developed from an earlier student
film. The debut film had all the typical Scorsese trademark themes and locales that
would figure prominently in most of his films - New York City, unglamorous violence,
brutality, Italian-Americans, competitiveness, the guilt-inducing impact of Catholicism,
hostility, complex characters, and peer pressure in dark urban settings.
Afterwards, Scorsese served on the film crew for Michael Wadleigh's countercultural,
rock festival documentary Woodstock (1970), with views of drug use and nudity, and coarse
language. His next film, his first commercial film, was a AIP-Roger Corman-produced, characterdriven exploitation film Boxcar Bertha (1972) designed to cash in on the Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
crime film craze (and similar to Corman's own Bloody Mama (1970)), with Barbara Hershey as an
itinerant, orphaned train robber in a Depression-era South cast opposite David Carradine.
After being encouraged to make a personal work outside of mainstream Hollywood by
independent film-maker John Cassavetes, Scorsese decided to co-write a semiautobiographical, character-driven screenplay about the lives of small-time hoods in
mob-dominated Little Italy. The low-budget film ($300,000), with the working title of
Season of the Witch, became his breakthrough, highly-praised Mean Streets (1973) about
four Mafia apprentices, starring his most-favored brooding and intense actor Robert De
Niro (it was the first film of many that De Niro made with Scorsese) as a psychopath, and
Harvey Keitel as Charlie. Surprisingly, it received an unexpected positive response from
all audiences. The film's soundtrack was largely composed of classic rock music, and
used the San Gennaro festival in New York as its backdrop. Scorsese went on to direct
the realistic, semi-feminist melodrama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) with
Ellen Burstyn as a struggling single mother and diner waitress in Phoenix, Arizona. The big-budget
musical New York, New York (1977) was one of Scorsese's more conventionally-commercial films in the
70s decade - a failed attempt to bolster interest in the musical genre.
Scorsese's brutal and unforgettable Taxi Driver (1976) (with a screenplay by Paul
Schrader) again starred De Niro in the decade's most notorious vigilante picture - a film
that helped to spawn the modern American horror film with new extremes of violence and
shock value. It was the story of a disturbed, lonely, psychotic New York City cabbie (and
recent war veteran dischargee who reflected Vietnam War alienation) with a savior
complex intent on rescuing twelve year-old hooker Iris Steensman (Jodie Foster) after
being rejected by blonde campaign worker Cybill Shepherd. Its feverish violence,
ambiguous ending, and showcase of acting talent were unprecedented. The film's realism
and dark presentation of child prostitution and the seedy underworld, exemplified in Robert
De Niro's characterization of Travis Bickle ("You talkin' to me?"), was as startling as
Marlon Brando's performance as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
two and a half decades earlier. [Famed composer Bernard Herrmann, best-known for his screeching
score for Psycho (1960), died shortly after the completion of the score for Taxi Driver.]
Scorsese's grim Raging Bull (1980), with De Niro in an Oscar-winning performance as self-destructive
boxer Jake LaMotta, was considered one of the ten best films of the next decade. The film brought
Scorsese his first Best Director Oscar nomination.
Brian De Palma
Young director Brian De Palma, with film-making roots similar to
Martin Scorsese, started his career with two independent,
underground black comedies about the counter-culture of the 1960s (satirizing free love, the draft,
Vietnam, and the JFK Assassination): the anti-military, anti-war film Greetings (1968) (Robert De Niro's
debut film) and its semi-sequel, the disjointed, provocative and bizarre Hi, Mom! (1970) - both with De
Niro at the start of his film career. In Hi, Mom!, De Niro starred as filmmaker Jon Rubin who at one point
joined a group of radical black activists who wanted to show whites what it was like to be black in
America. [De Palma was responsible for launching the careers of Robert De Niro, Sissy Spacek, and
John Travolta.] However, his first studio film Get To Know Your Rabbit (1972) with Tom Smothers and
Katharine Ross was a major flop.
De Palma's often-gory horror melodramas and Hitchcockian-like thrillers, which mimicked the 'suspense
master's' menacing scare tactics (and themes of voyeurism, obsession, and guilt), brought greater
commercial attention. His first real mainstream film was the low-budget Sisters (1973), with homage to
Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), starring Margot Kidder as a beautiful and tormented 'Siamese twin' and a
score by Bernard Herrmann (Hitchcock's own favorite composer). He often incorporated reconstructions
of famous scenes (from other films) into his own films, although some accused him of direct copying.
He went on to make the musical-horror film Phantom of the Paradise (1974), and then
a Stephen King adaptation (King's debut novel) - the bloody, R-rated teen-drama Carrie
(1976) with Sissy Spacek as a telekinetic, victimized high-school outcast (humiliated at
her prom) who also faced torment from her religiously fanatical mother (Piper Laurie).
The film ended with the memorably-shocking hand-from-the-grave scene. Other films
followed:




Obsession (1976) (similar to Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)) with Cliff Robertson
and Genevieve Bujold
The Fury (1978) about another telekinetic child
Dressed to Kill (1980) (also similar to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)) with Michael
Caine as a Manhattan psychiatrist attending to a sexually-unsatisfied Angie
Dickinson; the film was labeled misogynistic
Blow Out (1981) with John Travolta as a sound-effects man who witnessed a car accident (and
murder?) - a film that was a cross between Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Antonioni's
Blow-Up (1966)
De Palma would continue his streak of film-making into the 1980s, with his violent Cuban drug lord saga
Scarface (1983) with Al Pacino (from an Oliver Stone script), Body Double (1984) - with homage to
Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), The Untouchables (1987) (from a script by David Mamet) - an epic
about Al Capone crusader Eliot Ness and noted for its train station sequence that recreated the scene of
a runaway baby carriage during a gunfight (similar to Battleship Potemkin's (1925) Odessa Steps
sequence), and the Vietnam War film Casualties of War (1989) with Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox. By
the end of the decade, he had scored both hits and failures (i.e., The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)).
Peter Bogdanovich
After his first feature Targets (1968) (Boris Karloff's final film with approximately 30
minutes of screen time, including stock footage from The Terror (1963)), a low-budget
cult classic (produced by Roger Corman at American International Pictures) about a
young middle-class mass murderer-sniper (similar to the real-life shooting rampage of
Charles Whitman at the Univ. of Texas at Austin in 1966), 31 year-old former film critic
Peter Bogdanovich became one of the hottest new directors at the start of the decade.
[He was the first critic to become a Hollywood writer-director, and deliberately revered
past American directors in his own work.]
His beautifully-photographed black and white The Last Picture Show (1971) was
another melancholic rites-of-passage film. Larry McMurtry's 1966 novel about two
aimless, high-school seniors from blue-collar families in the small northern Texas town of Anarene in the
early 50s. It also served as an elegy for a dying town and its way of life. [Although it became more
commonplace, the deliberate use of black and white was considered unusual at the time.] Bogdanovich
used a cast of promising young actors including Timothy Bottoms as Sonny and 20 year-old Jeff Bridges
as Duane (as two football heroes), and Cybill Shepherd as the flirtatious town beauty Jacy.
Bogdanovich's next two films were equally successful. The first one was the frenetic
screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972) scripted by Buck Henry. It deliberately paid
homage to one of Hollywood's past classics -- Howard Hawks' archetypal screwball
comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938).
He also directed Paper Moon (1973) - an engaging off-beat comedy of a wily, Depression
Era con-man named Moses Pray (who sold Bibles to mourning widows) with his scheming
and tough accomplice daughter (pairing real-life father-actor Ryan O'Neal and his nineyear old daughter Tatum O'Neal - who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her
substantial role). Tatum smoked non-tobacco 'lettuce cigarettes' in her role as the young
grifter named Addie. Bogdanovich was assisted by Orson Welles who suggested that the
black and white photography be shot through a red filter, adding higher contrast to the images.
But then, critical and financial failures abounded for Bogdanovich in the mid-70s and after - Daisy Miller
(1974), At Long Last Love (1975), Nickelodeon (1976), Saint Jack (1979), They All Laughed (1981),
Mask (1985), and The Last Picture Show's unsuccessful sequel Texasville (1990).
Robert Altman
One of the most free-spirited, innovative, idiosyncratic cinema verité film-makers,
Robert Altman, known for overlapping dialogue, huge ensemble casts with
intermingled storylines, episodic structure, subjective sound and improvised
performances delivered a prolific string of erratic, inventive, irreverent films in the
seventies. He became well-known for reworking and subverting all the various
genres, upending traditional narratives, and providing ambiguous conclusions to his
films. His most-used performers included Shelley Duvall, George Segal, and Elliott
Gould.
Although he had been a director since the early 50s, his first profitable and artistically
successful, breakthrough film was the trend-setting, savagely irreverent black comedy M*A*S*H (1970),
an adaptation of Richard Hooker's best-selling book. (It was released at the same time as two traditional
war films: Patton (1970), and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).) This great and daring farce satirized the war
movie genre (and the Vietnam War itself) with its story of a group of doctors (including Elliott Gould as
Trapper John and Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye) during the Korean War at a Mobile Army Surgical
Hospital. Altman's anti-authoritarian, cynical film was the Grand Prix winning film at Cannes, and he
received a nomination as Best Director - his first of five Academy Awards nominations. The popularity of
M*A*S*H spawned the long-running TV series with hip characters "Hawkeye" Pierce and "Trapper" John
McIntyre.
To skewer the western genre the next year and present an unglamorous,
deconstructed, realistic depiction of a Western hero/gambler and
entrepreneur, Altman filmed the revisionistic classic McCabe and Mrs.
Miller (1971) with Warren Beatty as a bumbling entrepreneur in a frontier
town and Julie Christie as the tough, opium-addicted brothel madam. The
Long Goodbye (1973) re-fashioned the detective noir film, with Elliott
Gould as the laid-back Raymond Chandler hero Philip Marlowe.
Altman's greatest over-all masterpiece, shot in under 45 days, was the low-
budget, Oscar-nominated ensemble Nashville (1975) - a complex, scathing, dark satire on American life
and values in the post-Watergate 70s and the obsession with fame. America's state-of-the-union is seen
metaphorically through Altman's trademark style - the interlocking lives of a huge eclectic cast of twentyfour main characters including politicians, performers and their groupies, and others (all of whom want to
be star-struck) in the country-music capital setting during a presidential-campaign rally. (Singer Ronee
Blakely and comedian Lily Tomlin received supporting Oscar nominations for their roles as a fragile singer
and a sign-language-using unfaithful wife.) Gwen Welles' also improvised with a memorable,
embarrassing striptease.
Francis Ford Coppola
All of Francis Ford Coppola's earlier 60s films were flops. He made his first film at UCLA (Tonight For
Sure (1961)), served an apprenticeship with famed B-film director Roger Corman (e.g., The Terror
(1963), Dementia 13 (1963), and Battle Beyond the Sun (1963)), made his commercial directorial debut
with You're a Big Boy Now (1966), co-scripted Is Paris Burning? (1966), directed the entertaining,
fanciful musical comedy Finian's Rainbow (1968) with Fred Astaire, and then from his own script
directed his fourth feature film - the dramatic road film The Rain People (1969). In 1969, Coppola
established his own production company, American Zoetrope - used for the production of George Lucas'
THX 1138 (1971) and American Graffiti (1971). Coppola's Oscar win as co-screenwriter of the script for
Patton (1970) gave him the break he needed for future, big-budgeted opportunities.
The first biggest hit of the early 70s was Paramount's and Francis Ford Coppola's overpowering and
absorbing, grand-scale gangster film - the Best Picture winner The Godfather (1972). The explicitly
violent, complex, and majestic saga of the Brooklyn-located Corleone crime family that was based on
Mario Puzo's pulpish best-seller presented so many memorable scenes and mythic overtones: the
opening wedding sequence, the horse's head in a bed, the "I believe in America" speech, the Don's
collapse in the garden, and Sonny's (James Caan) death at a tollbooth. This first film of the three-part
epic became the first film to gross $100 million domestically, although its arrival was denounced by
Italian-Americans protesting its violence and the association of the 'Mafia' with their ethnic group. Brando,
who won his second Oscar, had shrewdly negotiated for only $100,000 and a percentage of the film. The
influential film also brought Al Pacino to film stardom as boyish war hero and mob boss Michael propelling the Lee Strasberg-trained actor from off-Broadway obscurity to prominence.
It was followed two years later by an even more remarkable and impressive, criticallyacclaimed sequel The Godfather, Part II (1974), expanding, deepening and improving
the original with richer characters and a split narrative storyline. After losing in 1972 as
Best Director, Coppola won the Oscar the second time around. And his film was the first
sequel ever to win a Best Picture Academy Award. The film deepened the saga with
multiple flashbacks and a fratricide. Between the two Godfather films, Coppola also
filmed the critically-acclaimed The Conversation (1974), a box-office failure (but with
the Palme d'Or win at the Cannes Film Festival) and a more personal film that studied
the paranoia of post-Watergate wiretapping by an account of a surveillance expert
(Gene Hackman). Ironically, Coppola competed against himself when nominated as Best
Director in 1974 for both films.
At the end of the decade, Coppola made Apocalypse Now (1979) - a powerful, brilliant
but hallucinatory statement about the harrowing Vietnam experience that was adapted
from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The film chronicled the upriver journey-odyssey
of a disparate group of Vietnam soldiers led by Martin Sheen on a mission to kill jungle
renegade colonel Marlon Brando. It was told through a series of amazing set-pieces,
including Robert Duvall's memorable scene on a napalm-bombed beach where his GIs
surf (and his confession: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning.") The film's production
was plagued by a typhoon, Brando's late arrival and overweight condition, and a life-
threatening heart attack for Martin Sheen - and it was so financially beleaguered that Coppola put up his
home's mortgage in 1977 as collateral on a loan.
William Friedkin
A former network television director, young film director William Friedkin found recognition for his early
films The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970). He then had two of
the biggest hits of the early 70s - first, the hard-hitting, urban crime/cop thriller The French Connection
(1971) - with Gene Hackman cast as a brutal and racist 'good' cop (Doyle) with cop-partner Russo (Roy
Scheider) pursuing a ruthless but refined drug dealer (Fernando Rey). Friedkin's film featured a tense
subway chase culminating in one of the most exciting, hair-raising 90 mph car chases ever filmed through
busy New York streets.
Friedkin also directed Warner Bros.' first major blockbuster - the sensationally-repellent,
R-rated drama-horror film The Exorcist (1973), adapted from William Peter Blatty's
novel and featuring an atmospheric soundtrack with Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells". The
bold and controversial movie about devil possession in a teenage girl (14 year old Linda
Blair) with a Ouija board provided numerous scare tricks, including projectile vomit and
360 degree head swivel.
Friedkin's unnerving film spawned two sequels and quickly encouraged an entire cycle of
similar occult-horror films (with more sequels), such as:


The Omen (1976)
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Friedkin's over-budget suspense-thriller Sorcerer (1977) was a box-office failure. He ran into more
difficulty during the filming of the controversial Cruising (1980), a film starring Al Pacino.
Michael Cimino
Two of the earliest films to deal with the struggles of returning Vietnam veterans went
head to head for Academy Awards in 1978, only a few years after the end of the
conflict. Best Director winning Michael Cimino's first major production, after the buddy
film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) (with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges), was
the audacious The Deer Hunter (1978), a long, provocative Best Picture epic film with
the guitar instrumental "Cavatina" as its theme tune. It portrayed the disastrous effects
of the Vietnam War on a group of three close friends (Pennsylvania steelworkers), first
introduced at a wedding (similar to the opening of The Godfather (1972)). They were
later sent to the war, captured by the Viet Cong and forced to endure a deadly game of
Russian roulette (the film's most controversial scene). Early in the 80s, Michael
Cimino's next financially-risky project was the colossal failure Heaven's Gate (1980) - it was a signal of
the end of Hollywood's New Wave of auteur film-making.
Steven Spielberg
A student from California State College, Steven Spielberg's first theatrically-released film
Duel (1971) appeared at the start of the decade. The paranoic, nightmarish tale was
originally an ABC made-for-TV movie about a mild-mannered, middle-class
businessman named David Mann (Dennis Weaver) who suddenly and mysteriously
found himself the unwitting prey of a big, menacing diesel oil tanker with an unseen
maniacal driver on desert roads in California - this 'road movie' foreshadowed the plot of
another of Spielberg's upcoming hits. Goldie Hawn and Ben Johnson starred in his first
true theatrical feature film, an entertaining fugitive tale entitled The Sugarland Express (1974).
Spielberg's over-budget, crowd-pleasing Jaws (1975), a successful "horror" and
"disaster" movie of awesome proportions that was adapted from Peter Benchley's
novel - was the most lucrative film (and the first summer blockbuster) ever made up to
that time (with a record soon to be broken). It was the first film to earn more than $100
million for its producers. Rather than opening small in a few metropolitan centers, it
opened - after a three-day TV advertising blitz (that cost $700,000) - in "wide release"
on 460 screens around the country at the same time - a revolutionary strategy.
Although the film was plagued by production problems and a lengthy behind-schedule
shoot, and no big-name stars, Jaws cleverly jolted the audience (of young and old
alike) with its ominous music and unseen, stalking monster of the deep in the waters
off a resort community named Amity Island (filmed off Martha's Vineyard), with a mayor who wished to
hush up the shark-related deaths. The actual monster shark (a mechanical great white named Bruce)
wasn't visible until over an hour into the film.
Spielberg's next epic film, a reverential, wide-eyed view of alien life modeled after 50s'
science-fiction films, was Columbia Studios' Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(1977). The film told of a mother's search for her little boy, aided by Devils Towerobsessed Richard Dreyfuss. It was another risk-taking blockbuster and the film for which
Spielberg received his first Oscar nomination as Best Director. The special effects work
of Douglas Trumbull, especially in the final UFO contact scene with friendly bulbousheaded aliens who brought a musical message, still awe-inspires. Spielberg's last film of
the decade, 1941 (1979), was an exhausting, multi-million dollar comedy about a "whatif" invasion of Los Angeles, California by the Japanese during World War II. Spielberg
would soon recover and return with the spectacular hit Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) in the next
decade.
George Lucas in the Late 70s
Spielberg's Close Encounters was soon surpassed by writer/director George Lucas' third
film: the dazzling sci-fi fantasy swashbuckler Star Wars (1977), with memorable
characters including Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2D2, and many others.
Interestingly, the good-guy heroes in the film were considered rebels against the morallyevil Establishment. In addition to an innovative Dolby Stereo sound, spectacular special
effects, and borrowings from fantasy comic-book heroes from the past in the Flash Gordon
(created by Alex Raymond) and Buck Rogers serials, from the James Bond series, from
Errol Flynn swashbucklers, and from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958), it broke
box-office records to become the biggest money-maker up to that time - and it was the
second biggest money maker in all of film history. It brought in $127 million in rental
earnings in the year of its release. It also earned six Academy Awards, mostly in technical
categories. After the initial impact of the first blockbuster - Jaws (1975), Lucas' Star Wars would again
reshape the nature of the blockbuster phenomenon in the years to come.
[In a revolutionary approach to Hollywood film-making and merchandising, Lucas
wisely accepted only $175,000 as his writer's/director's fee in return for the much
more lucrative forty percent of merchandising rights for his Star Wars Corporation.
He set up a licensing company, Lucas Licensing LTD (part of Lucasfilm Ltd., a
leading film and entertainment company), responsible for the merchandising of all
of Lucasfilm's film and television properties. It coordinated sales of ancillary,
mass-produced, tie-in products (comic books, confectionary, board games, toys,
clothes, video and computer games, drinks, etc.). Ultimately, licensed Lucas film
merchandise in additional sequels brought in $2.5 billion by the late 1990s. Other
film-makers soon followed suit by marketing their own products - for Batman, Rambo, Superman, etc.
After Star Wars, the first in a scheduled nine (now six) films in the entire epic, Lucas gave up the
director's chair to executive-produce and script-write the first sequel The Empire Strikes Back (1980) by
director Irvin Kershner, and to executive-produce and co-author the screenplay for the third in the trilogy,
Return of the Jedi (1983) by director Richard Marquand.
Through his company Lucasfilm, Ltd., Lucas also executive-produced Steven Spielberg's "Indiana
Jones" series of three adventure movies, beginning in 1981 and lasting through the end of the decade:



Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with eight nominations and four Academy Awards
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), with two nominations and one Academy Award
(Best Visual Effects)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), with three nominations and one Academy Award
(Best Sound Effects Editing) - the number one worldwide box office hit for 1989
The 'Detective' and Crime Film Genre - and Clint Eastwood:
Following the success of Bullitt (1968), a cycle of "rogue cop" and detective films
appeared, such as Don Siegel's bold Dirty Harry (1971) with emerging star Clint
Eastwood as maverick, rule-breaking, .44 Magnum-wielding San Francisco cop
Detective "Dirty Harry" Callahan with his famous signature line toward a black bank
robber: "...You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?"
Critic Pauline Kael labeled the film "fascist" and "deeply immoral" for its strident political
views, since the film took a political stance - the point of view of crime victims. In the
same year, Michael Caine starred in the UK crime film Get Carter (1971) as the title
character - a London gangster trying to avenge his murdered brother.
Four successors to Dirty Harry (1971) that starred Eastwood were:




director Ted Post's more violent but less stylistic Magnum Force (1973)
James Fargo's The Enforcer (1976)
Clint Eastwood's own Sudden Impact (1983) - with the star reprising his formulaic role as an
independent cop
The Dead Pool (1988), d. Buddy Van Horn
Clint Eastwood was transformed when he made an impressive debut as director in the psychologicallyshocking, suspenseful, and violent Play Misty for Me (1971) about a threatened KRML Radio disc jockey
threatened by an obsessed fan. He also starred as easy-going trucker and bare-knuckle fighter Philo
Beddoe who was upstaged by an orangutan named Clyde in the C&W comedy Every Which Way But
Loose (1978). Its success led to the inevitable sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980). Eastwood also
starred in Siegel's suspenseful prison break-out film Escape From Alcatraz (1979). He also began
directing, producing, and acting in westerns in the 70s - a career move that he maintained into the 90s,
during a time when most directors avoided the unpopular genre:





High Plains Drifter (1973)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Bronco Billy (1980)
Pale Rider (1985)
Unforgiven (1992)
Urban Crime Thrillers, Militancy and Graphic Violence:
Graphic violence in urban America was a major element of a number of 70s films.
The urban crime thriller - William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) echoed
the brutal vigilante mentality of Eastwood's films. Its sequel by director John Frankenheimer - French
Connection II (1975) brought back Gene Hackman as the tough-nosed NY cop still in pursuit of
international heroin dealers in Marseilles. Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973), based on the book by Peter
Maas, was the true story of dedicated, honest New York cop Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) (nicknamed Paco)
who fought against vast corruption in the city by blowing the whistle on others who took payoffs. William
Friedkin also directed Pacino in Cruising (1980) as an undercover cop investigating grisly murders in NY.
The headlines of a fact-based 1972 story about a defiant folk-hero in a desperate hostage situation,
became the basis for Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Its unlikely story pitted nothing-to-lose
hustler Sonny Wortzick (Al Pacino again) in a failed NYC bank raid against the authorities.
Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent Straw Dogs (1971) provoked controversy with charges of gratuitous
violence, and The Getaway (1972) with hard-bitten convict Steve McQueen in the lead role, was another
typically-violent film. Charles Bronson (as Paul Kersey) sought vengeance as a vigilante when his wife
was killed (and daughter was raped by Jeff Goldblum) in Michael Winner's revenge thriller Death Wish
(1974). Sydney Pollack's suspenseful political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) involved a
researcher (Robert Redford) who discovered all of his co-workers dead after lunch - and a conspiracy
within the CIA, and decided the only way to survive was to give his story to The New York Times.
Actual gang violence, including shootings, rumbles, and stabbings, was instigated during the showings of
Walter Hill's NYC gang film The Warriors (1979) and Michael Pressman's Boulevard Nights (1979),
about East LA gang life in a Latino barrio.
The Continuing James Bond Series:
There were five additional entries in the Bond series in the decade, with a new actor in the role of agent
007 beginning in 1973:





Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the 7th Bond film in the series, again with Sean Connery as
Bond (his 6th appearance, and last Bond film for 12 years), and Jill St. John and Lana Wood as
the 'Bond Girls,' and Charles Gray as the villain (Ernst Stavro Blofeld); directed by Guy Hamilton
Live and Let Die (1973), the 8th film, and the first with Roger Moore as the special agent; fastpaced, entertaining, and violent; also with Jane Seymour as the 'Bond Girl' and Yaphet Kotto as
the villain, Mr. Big [Moore was selected for the role of Bond because of two previous roles: as
Robin Hood-like Simon Templar in the mid-1960s British TV series The Saint, based on the Leslie
Charteris books, and as international playboy Lord Brett Sinclair in the early 70s British TV series
The Persuaders]
The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), the 9th film, again with Roger Moore; also with Britt
Ekland and Maud Adams as the 'Bond Girls' and Christopher Lee as the villain, Scaramanga;
directed by Guy Hamilton
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), the 10th film, and Roger Moore's third Bond film; with Barbara
Bach as the 'Bond Girl', Curt Jurgens as the villain (Karl Stromberg) and Richard Kiel as Jaws
Moonraker (1979), the 11th film, an expensive one with an outer-space theme, also with Roger
Moore; with Lois Chiles as the 'Bond Girl', Michel Lonsdale as the villain (Drax) and Richard Kiel
as Jaws
African American Film-Makers, and Action Blaxploitation Films:
African-American film-makers began to make inroads in the late 60s, with Gordon Parks' brilliantlyphotographed first film The Learning Tree (1969) - an autobiographical account of a boy growing up
black in 1920s Kansas, and Ossie Davis' Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970). [Parks' film was a major
milestone - he was the first African-American film-maker to direct a motion picture that was released by a
major US studio.]
In the early 70s, a series of so-called 'blaxploitation' films emerged, either as a reflection of
black anger at whites, or as a new marketing angle from Hollywood. Actor/director/writer
Melvin Van Peebles' X-rated, confrontational cult film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss
Song (1971), noted to be the first true blaxploitation film, was specifically designed to
upset white audiences (advertised with "Rated X by an All-White Jury"), with Peebles
himself playing the part of the sex-hungry, violent anti-hero. The successful independent
film (budgeted at $150,000) was released by independent distributor Cinemation, and
aimed at urban black audiences. It caused tremendous controversy for its militancy, antiwhite sentiment, revenge-themes, and violence, although it was one of the most important
black American films of the decade. [Mario Van Peebles' film Baadasssss! (2004) told the
story of how his father, Melvin, contributed to modern independent black filmmaking with
his 1971 film.]
The first major, commercial crime film with a black hero appeared at the same time - the
colorful, action-packed, slightly tongue-in-cheek film Shaft (1971) by esteemed black
director Gordon Parks, a former photojournalist with Life Magazine. Shaft starred
Richard Roundtree as the ultra-hip, handsome police detective John Shaft (the black
version of Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" Callahan) who worked in Harlem against the
Mafia. Shaft won an Oscar for Isaac Hayes' memorable theme song for the film. It
spawned two lesser sequels: Shaft's Big Score (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973), as
well as a TV series.
Unfortunately, these B-films heralded the beginning of many other lesser, formulaic, and
sometimes edgier, audacious "blaxploitation" films with black actors in stereotypical film roles designed
for African-American film audiences. Starting in the early 1970s, over 200 films would be released by
major and independent studios to profit from the black movie-going audiences. In some cases because of
the small number of African-American actors, black athletic superstars (Jim Brown, Rosie Grier, Fred
Williamson, and Vida Blue) and others (comedian Richard Pryor got his start in these films as did Antonio
Fargas) were recruited and cast in the lead or supporting roles:









Gordon Parks, Jr.'s' Superfly (1972) with Ron O'Neal as a cocaine drug-dealer named
Youngblood Priest who's out to complete one last job; with a funky Curtis Mayfield score including
the hit singles Pusherman and Freddy's Dead
Slaughter (1972), an excessively-violent glorification of Harlem drug trafficking
Hit Man (1972)
Trouble Man (1972)
R-rated (for violence) Blacula (1972) - the first black horror film
The Mack (1973), about a Bay Area pimp and drug dealer, with Richard Pryor in a minor role
Truck Turner (1974) starring Isaac Hayes
The Black Six (1974), with lots of pro-football stars including "Mean" Joe Greene, Carl Eller,
Gene Washington, Willie Lanier, Ben Davidson and Mercury Morris
Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin (1975) (aka Streetfight), animated, about a black rabbit from the
South who became a drug-dealer on the streets of Harlem
A female version of the action sub-genre developed, often starring a vengeful heroine (Pam Grier, Rosie
Grier's cousin, dubbed the "Queen of Blaxploitation"), as in Black Mama, White Mama (1972) - a violent
female subversion of The Defiant Ones (1958), Coffy (1973) - her biggest hit, AIP's Foxy Brown (1974)
- a remake of Coffy, and Sheba Baby (1975). Tamara Dobson starred as a female James Bond agent in
Jack Starrett's blaxploitation film Cleopatra Jones (1973). Walter Hill's gang film set in a surrealistic New
York City entitled The Warriors (1979) was worrisome for its instigation of violent gang warfare and
feuding.
The success of blaxploitation films brought some opportunities for blacks in the industry to work in
Hollywood, although the vast majority of these films were still distributed, produced, and controlled by
non-blacks. It also led to an onslaught of other black exploitation genres, with numerous remakes or
lesser imitations ranging from westerns to martial arts kung fu films to horror and gangster films.
BlaxPloitation Film
Imitated or Remade
Hit Man (1972)
Get Carter (1972)
Blacula (1972)
Dracula (1931)
Buck and the Preacher (1972) - black
western directed by Sidney Poitier (his
directorial debut)
Black Mama, White Mama (1972)
The Defiant Ones (1958)
Blackenstein (1973)
Frankenstein (1931)
Black Caesar (1973)
Little Caesar (1931)
Cleopatra Jones (1973)
James Bond series
Thomasine and Bushrod (1974) western directed by Gordon Parks, Jr.
- imitated Bonnie and Clyde
(1967)
- remade as Posse (1993) - d.
Mario Van Peebles, in homage to
"spaghetti" westerns
The blaxploitation cinema experienced a revival in the late 1990s, with Larry Cohen's Original Gangstas
(1996), reuniting stars from the earlier era including Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Ron O'Neal,
and Richard Roundtree. Grier also starred in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1998), and Samuel
Jackson in black director John Singleton's remake Shaft (2000). In retrospect, all of the blaxploitation
films set the stage for future directors such as Spike Lee and John Singleton, the Hip Hop music and
subculture and movies like Harlem Nights (1989), Posse (1993), the Beverly Hills Cop series, and
Pulp Fiction (1994).
Woody Allen's Comedic Era:
Brooklyn-born, stand-up comedian Woody Allen joined the ranks of the young new
directors of the 'New Hollywood', beginning his rise as a screenwriter on What's New,
Pussycat? (1965) and work as an actor in What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) and Casino
Royale (1967). His directorial debut was as writer and director in the makeshift Take the
Money and Run (1969), a mad-cap mock-documentary spoof of traditional gangster
films, with Allen portraying an inept, would-be thief. His second uninhibited, satirical
political comedy, Bananas (1971) was about a meek products tester in a factory who
departed for South America and accidentally became a heroic revolutionary dictator.
Two of his best early films, with his typical collection of sight gags and witty jokes were Play it Again,
Sam (1972), a film version of Allen's own play about a crushed film critic who took romantic advice from
an imaginary Humphrey Bogart, and the futuristic, wacky sci-fi spoof and Rip Van Winkle tale set in the
year 2173, Sleeper (1973) - his first film with real-life love interest (at the time) Diane Keaton. Love and
Death (1975) spoofed Tolstoy's Russian novel War and Peace.
As the decade progressed, Woody Allen's major breakthrough triumph was a semiautobiographical, bittersweet and poignant love story/comedy Annie Hall (1977), with
Oscar-winning Best Actress Diane Keaton as the tomboyish, kooky, and nervous title
character (noted for saying: "La-di-da, la-di-da") in a relationship with the urban neurotic
Allen (as New York Jewish comedian Alvy Singer). The ditzy ingenue's impromptu, man-
tailored wardrobe costumes influenced fashion trends, and the self-reflexive, kaleidoscopic film contained
a variety of innovative strategies and narrative techniques, including animation, subtitles, split-screens,
direct addresses to the camera breaking the 4th wall, the instant appearance of Marshall McLuhan to
refute a statement ("If life were only like this"), etc. The influential film awarded Allen with top accolades
including the year's Best Picture (defeating Star Wars (1977)), Best Director and Best Original
Screenplay (Marshall Brickman and Woody Allen) Awards. Originally titled Anhedonia, it was severely
edited down from a 2.5 hour rough cut to its present 93-minute length.
Turning more serious and introspective, Allen directed the somber Interiors (1978) - a film with Bergmanesque qualities. The film, a portrait of a family's disintegration, was less well-received. At the conclusion
of the decade, Allen directed and starred in another of his best, most accomplished and deepest films,
Manhattan (1979) - his biggest hit to date. It was a beautifully-photographed black-and-white, sardonic
comedy about a group of sophisticated but neurotic Manhattanites with their attendant foibles, loves,
angsts, and frustrations in the search for happiness and fulfillment. The film, filled with Gershwin music,
featured Allen as a 42 year-old man in a relationship with a 17 year-old girlfriend (Mariel Hemingway) in
his most favorite hometown. At the end of the decade, he directed the autobiographical Stardust
Memories (1980), about a successful director who suffered a mid-life crisis.
Mel Brooks:
In some cases, comedy reached new lows of vulgarity and tasteless jokes in this
decade. After his breakthrough film in the previous decade, The Producers (1968),
about Nazis and Broadway musicals, Mel Brooks further used comic stars Gene
Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn and Cloris Leachman in two films in 1974.
Brooks' first in a series of satirizing parodies of classic movie genres (often as star,
scripter and director) was his lewd and raunchy western comedy Blazing Saddles
(1974) - his first commercial hit. It told the story of the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) and
Black Bart (Cleavon Little) - a black sheriff recruited to clean up a white frontier town.
It was most remembered for its famous campfire scene with
gaseous cowboys.
Next, Brooks spoofed Universal's mad-scientist, Frankenstein cycle of horror films
with Young Frankenstein (1974) - one of his best films, with Gene Wilder as the
brain surgeon, Peter Boyle as the Monster, and Marty Feldman as Igor. Brooks'
follow-up parody was the self-indulgent Silent Movie (1976), a tribute to the early
slapstick days of Hollywood with Mel Funn (Mel Brooks) as a film producer who
tried to recruit Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Anne Bancroft, and others. It was
noted for only one spoken word delivered by mime Marcel Marceau. And the shallow and obvious High
Anxiety (1977) spoofed scenes and themes from various Alfred Hitchcock films, notably Psycho's (1960)
shower scene. Brooks' influence on comedy films extended from Airplane! (1980), a lampoon of disaster
flicks, to the randy teenage sex comedy American Pie (1999) and beyond.
Absurdist Monty Python Films:
The decade was also assaulted with the irreverent, absurdist, off-beat British film
comedies from BBC-TV's early 70s Monty Python's Flying Circus mad-cap gang
including:



And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), a series of TV
vignettes and comedy sketches
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) (their first feature film) - a spoof of
Arthurian legends, with Knights who Say 'Ni' and a carnivorous rabbit
the satirical (and sacrilegious to some viewers) Monty Python's Life of
Brian (1979), with a reluctant Messiah in ancient Palestine named Brian

Cohen (Graham Chapman) and his misled disciples, and noted for the line of dialogue: "Blessed
are the cheese-makers"
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Other Comedies:
Playwright Neil Simon wrote the original screenplay for Murder By Death (1976) as a lightweight spoof of
fictional film detectives and sleuths such as Miss Marple, Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade, Hercule
Poirot and Charlie Chan. Director Robert Mulligan's Same Time, Next Year (1978) was an adult-themed
romantic comedy about a long-running marital affair (once annually) between Alan Alda and Ellen
Burstyn. And another comedy House Calls (1978) told of a hospital romance between widowed doctor
Walter Matthau and recent-divorcee Glenda Jackson.
Outrageousness prevailed in the Delta fraternity house (at Faber College) in director
John Landis' gross-out comedy National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), with
Saturday Night Live TV comedian John Belushi in his film debut as Bluto Blutarsky
(memorable for instigating a gross food fight and for the comic line: "Was it over when
the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"). Other TV stars were crossing over into films in
the decade: Chevy Chase (from SNL) and Goldie Hawn (from TV's Laugh-In) starred in
the funny murder mystery Foul Play (1978). Youth-oriented stars Bill Murray, Dan
Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, and Michael J. Fox would all find stardom in
Hollywood. Stand-up comic Steve Martin, another cross-over following performances
on TV's SNL, scored big with The Jerk (1979), the first starring role for the comedian. He starred as
Navin Johnson, a white man who found out that his adoptive parents were black.
In the religious fantasy comedy Oh, God! (1977), a store clerk (singer John Denver)
was divinely chosen (through messages on the radio) by old man George Burns. The
film was reprised by two sequels in 1980 and 1984.
Traditional comedies also did well. Blake Edwards revived his original The Pink
Panther (1964) in a series of 70s-80s Inspector Clouseau/Pink Panther films.
Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) reappeared in two sequels: The Return of the Pink
Panther (1975) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) 




The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
The Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
Audiences also enjoyed Edwards' sexy comedy 10 (1979) about the mid-life crisis of
a successful songwriter named George Webber (Dudley Moore) who was torn
between lady friend Julie Andrews and an unknown fantasy blonde, corn-row-haired
beauty (Bo Derek in her screen debut) on the beach. The film generated the catchphrase for the perfect woman ("She's a 10") and popularized Ravel's Bolero due to its
infamous bedroom scene. Love At First Bite (1979) spoofed the Dracula films, with
George Hamilton as the vampirish East European count who moved to New York
(with servant Renfield played by Arte Johnson) and strove to make Susan Saint
James his bride.
Genre Films Refashioned for the 70s: Westerns
Widening cracks in the American dream after the 60s were reflected in a number of disturbing, skeptical,
pessimistic and provocative revisionist westerns, that questioned the mythical vision of the Old West.
Traditional western films in the 1970s were being transformed -- classic frontier heroes of the past were
being replaced by more realistic visions of the frontier, by more violent depictions, by more authentic
portrayals of racism and prejudice against Native Americans, and by "urban" cowboys who could take the
law into their own hands (such as Clint Eastwood's detective Dirty Harry (1971)). Symbolically, this was
evidenced, in part, by the deaths in this decade of two influential directors who had placed their personal
imprint upon the western genre during Hollywood's classic past:


John Ford (d. 1973): Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), the "cavalry trilogy"
(Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950)), The
Searchers (1956), The Horse Soldiers (1959), Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
Howard Hawks (d. 1977): Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959)
John Wayne, the genre's greatest icon, gave his final feature film performance after almost 50 years in
cinema (mostly in westerns) in over 140 lead roles, with his last lead role as aging/dying Western
gunslinger John Bernard Books in director Don Siegel's The Shootist (1976). 72 year-old Wayne died
shortly thereafter of lung and stomach cancer in June, 1979. The western also starred Lauren Bacall as
fiesty widow Mrs. Rogers, and future director Ron Howard as the hero-worshipping son. Wayne had won
his sole career Oscar at an Oscars ceremony in the spring of 1970 for his Best Actor-nominated
performance in True Grit (1969), defeating "urban" cowboys Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman for their
nominated roles in John Schlesinger's X-rated Midnight Cowboy (1969).
After his landmark film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), director Arthur Penn filmed Thomas
Berger's novel Little Big Man (1970), an episodic, revisionist western tale of the
picaresque (and fictional) adventures of 121-year old frontier drifter Jack Crabb (Dustin
Hoffman) in a series of historical events told in flashback (he was the last survivor of
Custer's Last Stand) - a telling film about hero worship and the abuse and slaughter of
minority groups, with relevant parallels between the Indian wars and America's military
involvement in Vietnam. Ralph Nelson's anti-racist western Soldier Blue (1972)
dramatized the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre tragedy and brutal mistreatment of Indians.
After his success with the ultra-violent The Wild Bunch (1969), interpreted as an
allegory of the Vietnam War conflict, Sam Peckinpah directed other unusual westerns in
the 70s:



his lyrical and atypically offbeat The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) with Jason
Robards and Stella Stevens
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Peckinpah's revisionist elegy for the oldstyle western, ending with a duel between the legendary western heroes and
one-time partners - James Coburn as Pat Garrett and Kris Kristofferson as Billy
the Kid
the bizarre, grim and nihilistic Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) about a bloody,
bounty-hunting odyssey through Mexico for the head of a two-timing Mexican gigolo
Other film-makers that produced revisionistic westerns during this decade included Robert Altman
(McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976)), and Clint Eastwood (The Outlaw
Josey Wales (1976)).
Genre Films Refashioned for the 70s: War Films and Dramas
Joseph Heller's novel served as the basis for Buck Henry's adaptation for Mike Nichols'
absurdist anti-war satire Catch-22 (1970) with Alan Arkin as bomber pilot Yossarian
caught in the insanity of war. Director Franklin J. Schaffner's superb screen biography of
WWII General George S. Patton in Best Picture-winning Patton (1970) (also titled Patton - Lust for
Glory) was essentially a war picture that could be viewed two ways - it was either a larger-than-life
praiseworthy portrayal of the heroic American general by Oscar-winning George C. Scott (who refused to
be present at the Academy Awards to accept his Best Actor Oscar), or it was a subversive view of the
flawed military figure noted for ivory-handled pistols and verbal/physical abuse of a battle-fatigued soldier.
[Francis Ford Coppola co-wrote the screenplay for Patton before his Godfather fame!]
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) was an excellent documentary examination of the attack on Pearl Harbor from
both the Japanese and American points of view. Midway (1976) re-created the famous sea battle of
World War II - enhanced with "Sensurround." Ted Post's Go Tell the Spartans (1978) was one of the
earliest US anti-war films to realistically confront the reality of the Vietnam War - in a story set in Vietnam
in 1964 about a doomed platoon and its leader (Burt Lancaster). After his great successes with both
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Graduate (1967), Mike Nichols' surrealistic black
comedy Catch-22 (1970), based on the best-selling novel by Joseph Heller, observed the absurdity and
idiocy of war.
John Avildsen's violent revenge tale Joe (1970) presented an ugly view of
countercultural life with Peter Boyle as the angry, bigoted, intolerant, narrow-minded title
character, a factory worker who spouted his racist views (typical of blue-collar
reactionaries in the early unsettled times of the 70s regarding the counterculture) about
drug users, hippies in communes, and liberals.
Scriptwriter Paddy Chayefsky's provocative black satire on the shallowness of TV news,
Network (1976), directed by Sidney Lumet, created the decade's catch-phrase shouted
by demented USB anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch who won a posthumous Oscar):
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Charlie Chaplin's 1957
over-indulgent, anti-American film A King in New York (1957) was first screened in the
United States in 1973, sixteen years after its European premiere. Martin Ritt's socialproblem drama Norma Rae (1979), about a widowed mother and cotton mill worker who struggled for
decent working conditions, brought a first Oscar win to Sally Field (famous for lighter film fare such as
TV's The Flying Nun).
Coincidentally, James Bridges' topical thriller film The China Syndrome (1979) about a narrowlyavoided global disaster, starred Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda (the third highest box-office star of the
year) as a TV news team and Jack Lemmon as a nuclear power plant employee. It opened about two
weeks before the potentially-deadly 'melt-down' accident at the nuclear power plant Three Mile Island
(near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) on March 28, 1979 - and benefited from the unexpected publicity.
Genre Films Refashioned for the 70s: Film Noirs and Crime Films
Although film noir was traditionally a genre limited to the 1940s and 50s, it re-emerged in
the disillusioned, post-Watergate era with emigre Polish director Roman Polanski's
latter-day brilliant, neo-noir contribution in homage to the detective melodramas of the
past. His film was the colorful Chinatown (1974) - about political corruption, scandal
(and incest) surrounding a water conspiracy set in 1930s Los Angeles. It featured a
beautifully-constructed original screenplay written by the film's sole Oscar-winner Robert
Towne, Jack Nicholson as private gumshoe Jake Gittes searching in a tangled plot of
deceptive and perverse double-crosses, and Faye Dunaway as an alluring and
mysterious vamp. Gittes suffered a painful nose injury (inflicted by knife-wielding
Polanski), and heard co-star Faye Dunaway's famous wrenching line: "She's my
sister...she's my daughter." In the film's final line, Jake was told: "Forget it, Jake. It's
Chinatown."
Polanski was arrested for statutory rape in 1977 on charges of luring a 13-year-old girl (later revealed to
be Samantha Geimer) to the home of actor Jack Nicholson under the pretext of photographing her for a
French fashion magazine, and then drugging her with a Quaalude tranquilizer, and raping her. In early
1978, Polanski fled the country to France just hours before he was to have been sentenced in a California
court for his admitted unlawful sexual relations, and has remained a 'fugitive' ever since.
Arthur Penn's enigmatic thriller Night Moves (1975) with Gene Hackman and Melanie Griffith (in an early
role) also captured the mood of the post-Watergate era - a time of America's lost innocence.
Writer/director Paul Schrader's Hardcore (1979) was a variation of John Ford's western The Searchers
(1956) (and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976))
Buddy Films:
One of the best-loved, award-winning, box-office champs of the 70s was Universal
Pictures' entertaining, plot-twisting, Best Picture-winning film The Sting (1973),
reviving the buddy team of Paul Newman and Robert Redford (as two small-time
Chicago con artists famous for the "Set-Up," the "Hook," the "Tale," the "Wire," the
"Shut-Out," and the "Sting" - all inter-titles) and featuring the piano ragtime of turn-ofthe-century black composer Scott Joplin. The stars were first successfully paired in
George Roy Hill's earlier Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) (also
successfully re-released in 1974).
Other buddy films in the 70s (and later decades) included some spin-offs:




Sean Connery and Michael Caine in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
George Burns (in his first film in decades) and Walter Matthau as two old-time vaudevillians who
hated each other (Lewis and Clark) in Herbert Ross' The Sunshine Boys (1975), an adaptation
of Neil Simon's play
Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Washington Post reporters uncovering Watergate in All
the President's Men (1976)
Arthur Hiller's buddy film comedy Silver Streak (1976) with Gene Wilder as a harmless book
editor who witnessed a murder during a cross-country train trip (and then pretended to be black)
and Richard Pryor as a petty thief; its success led to the equally-successful sequel Stir Crazy
(1980)
Musicals and Dance Films:
Musicals were also big hits - Fiddler on the Roof (1971) was a successful box-office hit faithful to the
long-running Broadway play, with Chaim Topol as Tevye - a Jewish dairyman in a small Czarist Russian
village (in a role that Zero Mostel made famous). In the same year, an unconventional remake of an
earlier musical, The Wiz (1971) starred Richard Pryor as the Wizard of Oz, Michael Jackson as the
Scarecrow, and Diana Ross as Dorothy.
Director Bob Fosse's great revolutionary musical Cabaret (1972) was quite a contrast to
the sugary musicals of the 60s like Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music
(1965). It was an impressive look at life in pre-War Weimer Germany between the wars,
featuring stylish choreography and Minnelli's show-stopping performance as Berlin
showgirl Sally Bowles. Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey (as the androgynous Master of
Ceremonies) were both awarded Oscars for their performances, in addition to a statuette
for the director (among its eight wins). As previously mentioned, Martin Scorsese
attempted to capitalize on Liza Minnelli's star-glamour and classic musicals of the past,
and cast her in his failed expressionistic musical New York, New York (1977).
Fosse's largely semi-autobiographical, Best Picture-nominated All That Jazz (1979),
which won only the Best Art Direction Oscar from its six nominations, was a frenzied combination of
choreography, flashbacks, and surrealism, with Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon (based on Fosse himself
working on the production of the musical Chicago in 1975) - a work-obsessed, self-destructive Broadway
choreographer and director. Many of the characters were either based on people in Fosse's life or
characters who essentially played themselves. It was notable for Gideon's early-morning greeting in front
of a mirror: "It's show time!", and for his by-pass surgery scene. [Rob Marshall's version of Fosse's play,
Chicago (2002) won the Best Picture Oscar.]
Bette Midler starred in the lead role (based on rock star singer Janis Joplin) in The Rose (1979). The
successful theatrical re-release of The Sound of Music (1965) in 1973 demonstrated its tremendous
long-term popularity. The hit Broadway rock opera from Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jesus
Christ, Superstar (1973) came to the screen in 1973 and modernized segments of Jesus Christ's (Ted
Neeley) life - coincidentally it was released to the screen the same year as David Schwartz's Godspell
(1973). Another rock opera Tommy (1975), by controversial director Ken Russell, featured the Who.
Milos Forman followed up his remarkable Oscar sweep for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
about a rabble-rousing inmate (Jack Nicholson) in a mental hospital battling an icy and repressive nurse
(Louise Fletcher), with Hair (1979) - an adaptation of the Broadway hit musical about the hippie
generation. One of the most celebrated concert films was director Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz
(1978) - the final live performance by The Band, and guest performers Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Joni
Mitchell.
Two teen-oriented films with rock soundtracks (and both with John
Travolta) were produced by Robert Stigwood, and marked a semicomeback for the musical genre:
(1) director John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977) that
combined disco fever, the hit music of the Bee Gees, and a star-making
vehicle for John Travolta in his first film role (he had been a TV star on
Welcome Back, Kotter) as Brooklyn-dwelling Tony Manero - with tight
white polyester pants dancing to You Should Be Dancing and other
dance songs; Travolta's dance instructor Deney Terrio would go on to host a popular TV
series titled Dance Fever (from 1979-85); the film was based on an article by rock journalist Nik Cohn
(2) Grease (1978), a zesty, nostalgic musical spoof of the 50s, developed from a long-running Broadway
hit, was the highest grossing film of its year, and again starred Travolta (as Danny Zuko) and pop singer
Olivia Newton-John (as Sandy)
The Buddy Holly Story (1978), another popular music-related film, starred a convincing Gary Busey as
the rock & roll star from Lubbock, Texas who became famous for the song "Peggy Sue," and who
tragically died in a 1959 plane crash.
Sequels and Re-Makes Fever:
Early foreshadowings of things to come surfaced in the 70s - the popular sequel or re-make. Buena
Vista's Herbie Rides Again (1973) followed The Love Bug (1969). Disney's Benji (1974) also
encouraged the follow-up film For the Love of Benji (1977).
The successor to Billy Jack (1971), starring Tom Laughlin (who both produced and directed) was The
Trial of Billy Jack (1973). The original Death Wish (1974) with vengeance-seeking Charles Bronson led
to three sequels in the 1980s: Death Wish 2 (1982), Death Wish 3 (1985), and Death Wish 4: The
Crackdown (1987). The western adventure film A Man Called Horse (1970), noted for its gruesome Sun
Vow initiation ceremony, starred Richard Harris as English aristocrat Lord John Morgan who lived among
the Sioux. It led to two sequels: The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976) and Triumphs of a Man
Called Horse (1983).
Barbra Streisand's role as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1968) was brought back in Funny Lady (1975).
Hitchcock's 1935 espionage classic, remade with Kenneth More in 1959, was again remade as The
Thirty-Nine Steps (1978) and closely based on the original John Buchan novel, with Robert Powell
replacing Robert Donat as on-the-run Richard Hannay character. Jack Clayton's period drama The Great
Gatsby (1974), with Robert Redford in the lead role as the self-made millionaire and Mia Farrow as
socialite Daisy, was the third film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel. [The second version
in 1949 starred Alan Ladd in the title role.]
The suspenseful Agatha Christie who-dun-it Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was
set on a luxurious train, with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot. It was a sequel to And Then
There Were None (1945) and brought a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and career
comeback to Ingrid Bergman. The effective occult horror film The Omen (1976) with
Gregory Peck as diplomat Robert Thorn and Lee Remick as his wife - who both adopt
Lucifer's son, was sequeled with a trilogy of films: Damien: Omen II (1978), and The Final
Conflict (1981).
Major sequels of much earlier classics included the following:




producer Dino de Laurentiis' $24 million inferior remake of the 1933 classic, King Kong (1976)
with Jessica Lange in the Fay Wray role and Charles Grodin as the Robert Armstrong character
Barbra Streisand with Kris Kristofferson (as a fading star) in a rock version of A Star is Born
(1976) - the third version of the film
the H.G. Wells mad-scientist classic, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1976), starred Burt Lancaster as
the eponymous scientist engaged in genetic research; it was earlier filmed as The Island of Lost
Souls (1933) with Charles Laughton, and later remade by director John Frankenheimer as The
Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) with Marlon Brando
Heaven Can Wait (1978), a re-make of the comedy/drama Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
The success of outer space-oriented films, such as Star Wars (1977), generated the 11th James Bond
space-motif adventure Moonraker (1979) (with Roger Moore). MGM brought back twenty-nine years of
its past glory in That's Entertainment (1974) with documentary-style screen highlights of its greatest
musicals. (A sequel quickly followed in 1976.)
Literary-Based Films:
As in all decades, films were developed from best-selling novels and literature: Papillon
(1973) was adapted from Henri "Papillon (butterfly)" Charriere's book - an
autobiographical account with Steve McQueen (with a butterfly tattooed on his chest)
and Dustin Hoffman (as swindler Louis Dega) - fellow prisoners in the infamous penal
colony Devil's Island in French Guyana, and the third film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby (1974) was the third film of Robert Redford on the top-ten list for the
year. Ken Kesey's 1962 counter-cultural novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(1975) was the basis for Milos Forman's acclaimed film about mental hospital inmates
(filmed in the Oregon State Mental Institution) and a repressive Nurse - it was the first
film since It Happened One Night (1934) to sweep the top five Academy Awards, giving
four-time losing nominee Jack Nicholson his first Oscar win.
British and Australian Directors:
A number of British directors, such as John Schlesinger, John Boorman, and Peter
Yates had migrated to Hollywood and were continuing to produce taut, criticallysuccessful films. Following his earlier success with Midnight Cowboy (1969), one of
Schlesinger's best films of the decade was the adult drama Sunday, Bloody Sunday
(1971) starring Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch as lovers of the same man (Murray
Head) in a complex romantic triangle. He also directed The Day of the Locust (1975) - a dark view of
1930s Hollywood, and the chase-thriller Marathon Man (1976) with Laurence Olivier as a tooth-extracting
Nazi.
English filmmaker John Boorman's Deliverance (1972), a rites-of-passage drama adapted from James
Dickey's novel, was about a group of four civilized Atlanta businessmen (with Burt Reynolds as a macho,
cross-bow-wielding member of the group named Lewis) who canoed into the Appalachian wilderness and
found themselves threatened and assaulted by backwoodsmen. (Its theme song "Dueling Banjos"
became a huge hit, and its tagline asked: "What Did Happen on the Cahulawassee River?")
Big-Budget, Escapist Entertainment:
A number of films of the 70s commented little about the political and social scene - they were just sheer
escapist entertainment on a large scale. The trend was toward bigger, more expensive films - with no
guarantee of quality. These youth-oriented films and their sequels were aimed at less discriminating and
demanding younger audiences - juveniles roughly between ages 12 and 24. Amazingly, some of the
record-breaking films of the 70s relied more on special effects than leading stars:






William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) with a head-revolving, demonicallypossessed Linda Blair
Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) with a mechanical great white shark
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) with a giant alien spaceship
George Lucas' Star Wars (1977) - the fourth episode subtitled 'A New Hope,'
with James Earl Jones as the voice for David Prowse's character, and Peter
Cushing as the Grand Moff Tarkin
Richard Donner's big screen, British-made Superman (1978) was the most
expensive film of the 70s decade, at $55 million - lead star Christopher Reeve
brought back the popular DC comic-book character and hero of the 50s TV series, and Gene
Hackman starred as Lex Luthor. [Marlon Brando's 10-minute appearance for his role as Jor-El
cost a record fee of about $3.5 million and earned him top billing in the credits - it was the most
expensive cameo in film history to date.]
emerging British director Ridley Scott, after his earlier war drama and debut feature film The
Duellists (1977), directed the very scary monster film Alien (1979) - it was publicized with a
chest-bursting scene and the line: "In space, no one can hear you scream" and featured a part
cockroach/part shark alien creature designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger, that terrorized the crew
of the Nostromo spacecraft
Hollywood's Disaster and Calamity Films: Famed Producer/Director Irwin Allen
A commercially-inspired subgenre of adventure films developed in the 70's to thrill audiences with megadisaster, big-budget extravaganzas (and subsequent spoofs) filled with magnificent special effects,
perilous situations, outlandish rescues, laughable gimmicks, and large star-studded casts. Disasters
could be either man-made or natural. They would often receive numerous special/visual effects Oscar
nominations, but were often neglected for their acting performances. See this section on disaster films for
more information.
The first major disaster film was director/writer George Seaton's Airport (1970)
- a Grand Hotel-type film with a suspenseful plot derived from an Arthur Hailey
novel about a damaged plane (with pilot Dean Martin) and a busy snowbound
Midwest airport. Helen Hayes won a supporting Oscar (her second) for her role
as an old lady stowaway. [Airport was sequeled three times in the same
decade: Airport 1975 (1974), Airport '77 (1977), and Airport '79: Concorde
(1979).] The saturated, over-played disaster genre was vulnerable to spoofs that first began to appear in
the 1980s - led by the popular comedy Airplane! (1980).
The disaster movie craze was also triggered by producer Irwin Allen's incredibly-successful The
Poseidon Adventure (1972) with a gross of $93 million - an exciting tale (with many stars including Gene
Hackman and Shelley Winters) about a capsized luxury liner from a tidal wave - the SS Poseidon. A
sequel followed: Allen's Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). Producer Irwin Allen also exploited
the popular subgenre with The Towering Inferno (1974) about a high-rise skyscraper fire (a feature film
uniquely co-created by two rival studios: 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.). From its eight Oscar
nominations (including Best Picture!), it won three awards: Cinematography, Film Editing, and Song, and
starred Steve McQueen as the fire-chief.
Another spectacular disaster film from director Irwin Allen was The Swarm (1978), about threatening killer
bees arriving in the US from South America. Allen also produced the disaster dud When Time Ran Out...
(1980) about the eruption of a resort island volcano, with Jacqueline Bisset, William Holden, and Paul
Newman - it was Allen's final feature film production.
Other films followed the trend:






a Los Angeles quake magnified by low-frequency tremors termed "Sensurround" in Universal's
Earthquake (1974), starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, among others [Rollercoaster
(1977) was also screened in Sensurround]
Richard Lester's thrilling Juggernaut (1974)
Robert Wise's widescreen drama The Hindenburg (1975)
Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) - about the dangers lurking beneath the surface
John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday (1977) - with a plot involving the Super Bowl Stadium and
a Goodyear blimp
Meteor (1979), about a gigantic meteorite hurtling toward Earth
Science-Fiction Films of the 70s:
Besides the splashy, big-budget Spielberg-Lucas sci-films of the decade, there were other speculative,
innovative, and thought-provoking examples in the genre:










a popular, clever, mostly successful and serious five-film series of classic simian films (spanning
1968 to 1973) about apes that have evolved into an intelligent society, derived from Pierre
Boule's novel Monkey Planet, originating with Planet of the Apes (1968)
director Robert Wise's tense The Andromeda Strain (1971) adapted from Michael Crichton's
best-selling novel about a strange bacterial agent
the sci-fi disaster film The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston as the sole survivor of germ
warfare unleashed on Earth, who struggled to survive in the city of LA over-run by mutant
scavengers
special-effects genius Douglas Trumbull's directorial debut film - the speculative Silent Running
(1972)
Richard Fleischer's dark futuristic Soylent Green (1973) in which Charlton Heston as an
investigating cop revealed the source of people's food in the year 2022 in Manhattan
Michael Crichton's Westworld (1973) told about a holiday resort where androids malfunctioned
(Yul Brynner starred as a deadly robotic gunslinger)
John Boorman's visually surreal Zardoz (1974) with Sean Connery
the satirical sci-fi thriller The Stepford Wives (1975) told of women who were replaced by perfect
homemaker robots (who wore flowery dresses and cooked gourmet meals) in order to please
their husbands
Norman Jewison's ultra-violent Rollerball (1975) with James Caan as brutal sports champion
Jonathan E.
Michael Anderson's dystopic view of society in the year 2274, Logan's Run (1976), starring
Michael York (as a Sandman) and Jenny Agutter who flee the city to Sanctuary (the ruins of




Washington DC inhabited by Peter Ustinov) after learning about the after-30 euthanistic policies
of their society
Peter Hyams' Capricorn One (1978) about a faked NASA
Mars landing and mission (with OJ Simpson as one of the
astronauts!)
Disney's dark sci-fi adventure film The Black Hole (1979), one of the studio's earliest PG films,
was an attempt at challenging or duplicating Lucas' Star Wars, although it only succeeded with its
dazzling special effects and John Barry score
a TV and Star Wars-inspired Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979) - the first adaptation of the
successful TV show, with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) now an Admiral, reunited with Spock
(Leonard Nimoy) and "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) on the starship Enterprise
legendary director Stanley Donen's and John Barry's Saturn 3 (1980), a serious science-fiction
film that was ignored and bombed at the box office, starring Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett (at
the height of her popularity from the TV series Charlie's Angels, and with a brief topless scene
that brought the film most of its attention) located on a research space station near Saturn where
they are developing hydroponics-grown food for a struggling Earth
The Biggest Stars of the 70s Decade:
Stars in the 1970s that continued to be popular or rose in star power included Paul Newman, Clint
Eastwood, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, Elliott Gould (due to his appearance in M*A*S*H (1970)),
Dustin Hoffman, Lee Marvin, Jack Lemmon, Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, George C. Scott, Ali
MacGraw, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, Goldie Hawn, Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds,
Robert Redford, Charles Bronson, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Tatum O'Neal,
Sylvester Stallone, Diane Keaton, Robert DeNiro, John Travolta, Richard Dreyfuss, Warren Beatty, Jane
Fonda, Peter Sellers, Roger Moore, and Jill Clayburgh.
An Unusual Decade:
This was a most interesting decade, beginning with the sappy saccharine romance of the much-talked
about Love Story (1970), directed by Arthur Hiller - a phenomenally successful film at the box office, but
universally panned by critics for its manipulative, melodramatic appeal ("Love means never having to say
you're sorry") between the two stars Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw. This was also the decade in which
the world's first eight-plex theatres began to open - as in Atlanta in 1974, and the decade in which rock 'n
roll icon Elvis Presley died -- August 16, 1977.
And the decade was filled with such surprise winners and oddities, such as:





Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock (1970) - a documentary-style chronicling (with some split-screen
effects) of the 1969 rock concert held in up-state New York, and including Jimi Hendrix's famous
guitar solo; with a film crew including a young Martin Scorsese and his future trusted editor
Thelma Schoonmaker
The Great White Hope (1970) - loosely based on the story of Jack Johnson (Jack Jefferson in
the film, portrayed by James Earl Jones), about the first black boxer to become
world heavyweight champion
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971), Roald Dahl's adaptation of his
own novel about an eccentric candy-maker (Gene Wilder) who held a contest
involving five golden tickets
the horror film Willard (1971) with Bruce Davison starring as the repressed title
character who trained and used rats (named Ben and Socrates) to kill his
enemies; its sequel Ben (1972) featured a Michael Jackson title song hit
John Waters' gross-out cult film Pink Flamingoes (1972), with cross-dressing
Divine starring as Babs Johnson
















the overlooked - and slightly overbaked police drama Electra Glide in Blue (1973), James
William Guercio's sole directorial effort with Robert Blake as an Arizona motorcycle cop
the big-budget version of the popular Chinese genre of martial arts, the fast-paced action/thriller
Enter the Dragon (1973) propelled kung fu artist Bruce Lee to major posthumous American
stardom shortly after his tragic and mysterious death in July, 1973 - it was Lee's biggest US
success and last fully-completed role
the romantic comedy of a politically-mismatched couple (Robert Redford as a rich and
conservative writer and Barbra Streisand as a supporter of those blacklisted in Hollywood) in
Sydney Pollack's The Way We Were (1973) - its popularity was enhanced by Streisand's hit
version of the title song
the gimmicky horror film Wicked, Wicked (1973), filmed entirely (except for the credits) in
distracting split-screen "Duo-Vision", to allow the audience to see both the hunted (a resort's
guests) and the hunter (a serial killer); with Tiffany Bolling
the notorious, low-budget, backwoods cult horror film classic of the decade The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - a popular slasher film by Tobe
Hooper about a group of Texans that encountered a family of cannibals,
with Gunnar Hansen in the role of serial killer Leatherface; this film was an
indication of the increasing violence in films [the film's title was immortalized
in an early song by the Ramones, heard on the radio during the film]
the socially-satirical portrait of a hedonistic Beverly Hills hairdresser (Warren
Beatty) in Shampoo (1975) who was romancing three women (Lee Grant,
Carrie Fisher, and Goldie Hawn) during the Nixon election period
The Sunshine Boys (1975) marked a film career comeback for comedian
George Burns (who came out of retirement and hadn't been in a feature film
since Honolulu (1939)) - the role gave Burns a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and re-energized his
career
the madcap musical comedy The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) was the story of a
stranded couple (Brad and Janet - Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) who encounter mad
scientist Dr. Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry) and his "Time Warp" - it would become a cultish
audience phenomenon in midnight shows after its first midnight showing in the
spring of 1976
Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) based on a Thackeray novel, with Ryan
O'Neal in the lead role as an 18th century gambler
the hyper-active stunts and fast car chases in Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
director Herbert Ross' romantic comedy The Goodbye Girl (1977), with a script
by Neil Simon, was an unexpected hit and brought an Oscar to Richard Dreyfuss
the first Muppet feature film aptly titled The Muppet Movie (1979), one of the
highest grossing live-action children's films ever made, noted for its disparate
collection of characters such as Kermit (frog), Miss Piggy (pig), and Fozzie
(bear)
director Robert Benton's Best Picture-winning drama Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) about a messy
custody battle between stars Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep for a child and the challenges of
single fatherhood
stars Jane Fonda and Robert Redford paired again in The Electric Horseman (1979)
director Ted Ketcheff's North Dallas Forty (1979) showcased the dark side of professional
football, involving drug use and alcohol, with stars Mac Davis (as a quarterback) and Nick Nolte
(as a wide-receiver)
...and former B-movie actor, good-guy cowboy star and New Right champion in politics Ronald
Reagan would soon rise in Presidential politics and become the first movie star ever elected
President
Future star (and California governor) Arnold Schwarzenegger made his screen debut in a minor film in
1970 and later starred in Pumping Iron (1977), a documentary about professional body-building in
preparation for the Mr. Universe contest.
Film Critics on Television:
Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Roger Ebert and Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel began to co-host and
present their quarrelsome film reviews on public television (Chicago's local PBS station WTTW) in 1978,
with a series called Sneak Previews. The hugely successful show, with "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs
Down" trademarked ratings, was immediately syndicated nationwide. It soon became the highest-rated
series in the history of public broadcasting.
New Independent Studios:
In 1978, five disgruntled United Artists executives left the studio over a disagreement about lack of
control, and formed Orion Pictures. (The group of executives are represented by the five stars depicted
in the constellation of Orion - the new corporation's logo.) At the end of the decade in 1979, brothers
Harvey and Bob Weinstein, first finding success as rock concert promoters in the early 70s while students
at the Univ. of Buffalo, became film distributors and formed the independent studio Miramax (derived
from the combination of their parents' names: Miriam and Max), after purchasing and renovating a rundown, second-run movie theater in Buffalo, N.Y., and turning it into a profitable college art house. The
brothers launched Miramax in 1979 with its headquarters in Tribeca.
The first hit film distributed by the newly-launched studio was the British comedy The Secret
Policeman's Other Ball (1982) directed by John Cleese. Bought at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, it was
a collection of footage from benefit rock concerts in London (with comedy provided by the Monty Python
Flying Circus troupe) to support the human rights organization Amnesty International. The film, including
Rowan "Mr. Bean" Atkinson’s hilarious headmaster skit, Billy Connelly singing country music, and Pete
Townshend's acoustic versions of "Pinball Wizard" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," grossed $6 million.
[Note: Since 1993, Miramax (and Dimension, one of its subsidiaries to produce and distribute innovative
genre films, that was headed by Bob Weinstein) had become a part of the Walt Disney Company. And
Orion was sold to MGM in 1997.]