"Anywhere but here, man."
-The Wild Angels
I. DRAGONS AND DRAGONFLIES
When did the 70's really begin?
This series is intended to celebrate the 50th anniversaries of, what is in my opinion, the greatest decade in film. Like any era, New Hollywood as it came to be known, doesn't have a cleanly bracketed beginning and end. The end of the road is widely considered to be Heaven's Gate in 1980. As many film historians, critics, directors and actors can attest to. The beginning wasn't strictly in the 70's. But then again, the 60's as we know them didn't really begin until November 22, 1963. And it didn't end as a ball dropped in Times Square on December 31, 1969 but on August 8 of that year in a house on 10050 Cielo Drive.
In his book Pictures At A Revolution, Mark Harris makes a compelling argument that the 70's-or at least the seismic shift in the cinematic landscape- started in 1967. The five Best Picture nominees for that year were: Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Doolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. Let's break them down.
Doctor Doolittle is a representation of the oldest of Old Hollywood. One that was riding the wave of success of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. As a result, a dozen musicals surfaced in the late sixties that nobody wanted to see. Is there anyone pining for a blu ray of Sweet Charity or Thoroughly Modern Millie?
Sidney Poitier stars in two of the five nominated films: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night. He had no competition from his peers because Hollywood during the 50s and 60s had room for exactly ONE black actor. He was a big draw, as Mark Harris puts it: "His drawing power was a shock to an industry that had, until recently, treated his employment in movies as something akin to an act of charity, and Hollywood greeted his new popularity with an orgy of self-congratulation."
The Graduate was turned down by every major studio in town and ended up being financed independently. Bonnie and Clyde was financed by Warner Bros. but loathed by Jack Warner. Both are now considered AFI classics.
The Los Angeles Times looked at this particular list of nominees and called it a battle of dragons against the dragonflies. The dragons were Stanley Kramer, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Rex Harrison, the makers of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Doctor Doolittle and the army of the old guard of technicians who were making movies since the dawn of the sound era. The dragonflies were Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Rod Steiger, Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby, Norman Jewison and Arthur Penn, all newcomers, nontraditionalists or outsiders. "The divide was generational but also aesthetic- these were people who were rejecting what movies had been in favor of what they could be."
Films became darker and edgier. More progressive. This isn't to say, the darker tone was invented in 1967. The B movies and AIP films of the 60s went further than the bigger budget Hollywood films. A film like The Wild Angels existed in a visceral way that was more connected to the zeitgeist of the times that Hollywood movies of the times were not. In Mick Garris' Postmortem podcast, Tarantino made an apt comparison of two films: Three In the Attic and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. The former goes forward with its menage a trois of the women fucking Paxton Quigley until they kill him in a way the latter stops short. It becomes timid. These zeitgeist movies helped nudge Hollywood out of it's Old Hollywood World and into the New Hollywood world.
Together, these movies captured a cultural shift, when the fall of Old Hollywood gave way to New Hollywood. The Hays Code imposed on Hollywood in the 1930s was lifted a year later and everything changed. What the ratings board did was it stopped the sheriff of any county from suing a movie for its obscenity laws. An X rated film like Midnight Cowboy could win Best Picture, Easy Rider could become a counterculture sensation and 2001 could pull curious crowds into it's orbit.
II. ANYWHERE BUT HERE
On May 4, 1970, members of the National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine students. The protest was against the U.S. incursion into Cambodia. 
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The confluence of both a shift in storytelling and the effects from the last few years of trauma brought out a darkness in studio pictures. After World War II, directors like Frank Capra, George Stevens, William Wyler, and John Ford released what are considered some of their best works. Films in general during the post-war period reflected an assurance and optimism.
Hollywood was slouching toward an artistic reckoning. Glen Frankel in his book Shooting Midnight Cowboy asserts that the studio system had been in decline since the end of World War II for a variety of factors: "the landmark 1948 Supreme Court antitrust decision that stripped the studios of the lucrative theater chains; competition from television and other new forms of entertainment; and the flight of urbanites to the suburbs and subsequent decline of downtown movie palaces."
The cultural shift taking place in the 60's in the wake of assassinations, war, and student protests provided context for that era's shift in subject matter. The narrative we were being fed was beginning to be questioned. In between episodes of Hogan's Heroes and Bonanza, news reports of students being shot by the National Guard were being broadcast.
In the year of 1970, some of the best films are foreign. There's a long, long, long, list of things I love about this decade. One of my favorites is how the directors taking uncompromising risk wasn't just relegated to US productions. The New Hollywood directors took their cue from the French New Wave, Kurosawa and many other foreign auteurs to be sure. But if anyone thought the arthouse flicks of the 60's were all these directors had to say, the 70's proved them to be profoundly wrong.
Along with the powerhouse foreign flicks there are strong character pieces, cult classics from Russ Meyer and Alejandro Jodorowsky and strong early works from De Palma and Friedkin.
So without further ado, here is the list. If it isn't to your liking or if the kitchen is just out of what you desire then you can take these movies and, in the ever so eloquent words of Jack Nicholson, I want you to hold them between your knees.
1. The Conformist
Few characters in fiction are this unsure or cowardly. Few films are this good looking. Jean Louis Trintignant can be thanked for the portrayl of the former. Vittorio Storaro can be thanked for the latter.
Bertolucci is over the top here. There are surreal sequences, dark humor, the architecture is abstract. It revels in its opulence. So do I.
2. Investigation of A Citizen Above Suspicion
As much as I hate to say it and as much as I loathe American remakes of foreign films, I can't help but think how an Americanized version of this film would play in 2024. Movies about police corruption don't get any better. This is an angry film. One whose mentality is: every politician and billionaire should eat shit and die.
Elio Petri was a left wing Italian director in the same vein of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Gillo Pontecervo. Having seen first hand what fascism could do to their country, these filmmakers rebelled politically and funneled that rage the only way they knew how: by making films.
Kafka once said, "Whatever he may seem to us, he is yet a servant of the Law; that is, he belongs to the Law and as such is set beyond human judgment." I often think about this quote when watching this film about the true nature of how power corrupts.
3. Le Cercle Rouge
Jean- Pierre Melville is the answer I would give if asked "who is your favorite French director?"
He isn't part of the French New Wave and if I'm being honest I enjoy his films more than anything from Godard or Truffaut. There is a clear cut line from Melville to John Woo in terms of his characters adhering to a code. Only instead of having his preferred leading man (Alain Delon) donning a trench coat, his leading man (Chow Yun Fat) dons a suit. It's their armor in a sense. You can see his influence all over Mann's filmography.
Le Cercle Rouge is a compelling heist film preceded by a compelling gangster film where the two halves mesh together to elevate both. It excels as the best heist films because you can back the people conducting the heist as they are trying to course correct their lives and exact justice on an unjust world.
4. Gimme Shelter
The music was good. The sex satisfying. The look on Mick Jagger seeing the freeze frames of a murder captured on film, unforgettable. If the Manson Murders signaled the end of the 60s, the Altamont incident was the nail in the coffin. And the Maysles got it all on film.
5. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
It's hard to overestimate just how fun Russ Meyer pictures can be. Here's one written by Roger Ebert. It has everything you could ever want. Drugs? Check. All female rock band? Check. Lesbians? Check. Tits? This is Russ Meyer we're talkin' about. John Lazar as Z-Man Barzell gives one of the weirdest performances I have seen of this or any year. It's a giant smorgasboard of parties, sex, death, drugs, prostitution, wheelchairs, the beach and an incredible cameo by Charles Napier.
Out of all the films on this list, this one is the most fun.
6. Five Easy Pieces
A character study dealing in isolation and society spiraling out of control. Between Nicholson's stunning performance and Laszlo Kovacs cinematography, this has earned its reputation as an iconic achievement of 70s cinema. It's also a portrait of a group of people we don't often see in movies anymore- the working class.
7. Wanda
"If you don't have anything then you're nothing. You may as well be dead. You're not even a citizen of the United States."
Wanda drifts into malls without buying anything. She falls asleep at matinees. She drinks at the corner of a bar in silence. She eventually runs into a bank robber and they strike out on the road together. There's no romance between the two. These are lost people who drift in an out of other lives. Loden wrote and directed this with a crew of four people on a budget of $100,000.
8. Hi Mom!
Toward the beginning of his career, Brian DePalma did a trio of flicks with a young Robert DeNiro- Greetings, The Wedding Party and Hi Mom!. Of the three, this is the most complete and shows the promise of a true auteur. The film is good but it gets into masterful territory with the Be Black Baby sequence. I'd go so far as to say this is top 5 DePalma.
9. Husbands
Cassavetes films guys being guys. Or to be more to the point, guys being bastards. It's one his most aggressive indictments of his characters's humanity.
This one's all about the performances of Falk, Gazzara and Cassavetes and the immediacy of their minute actions and reactions.
10. Catch-22
Mike Nichols said of this movie "Catch-22 was a nightmare to make, physically. And everybody on it was unhappy except me. All the actors kept bitching because they couldn't leave. I was as happy as a clam." The production of the follow up to The Graduate was notoriously difficult.Then there was the arrival and the on set antics of Orson Welles. To top it off, this came out in the same year as MASH, which when it premiered was what Catch-22 intended to be- a depiction of the madness of Vietnam refracted through another war.
All that being said, this is one of the mostt technically impressive films he's made. The long takes, deep space, staging, sound design, non linear storytelling, Sam O'Steen's brilliant editing. It doesn't hurt the first half is gut bustingly hilarious.
11. Diary of A Mad Housewife
Frank Perry's scathing look at domesticity has no brakes. A full speed downhill slide into gaslighting where Carrie Snodgrass gives the performance of the year.
12. M*A*S*H
It may have depicted the Korean War, but Altman made it with the intention of a commentary on the absurdity of the Vietnam War. Bringing humor into it and juxtaposing it with operation scenes. Altman has voiced his dislike of the television show. While I haven't seen enough episodes to call myself a fan, I can definitely call myself a fan of this film.
13. Deep End
Take Rushmore and submerge it in 70s sleaze. Add Can, Cat Stevens, hotdogs and nightmares. Tweak it to make it be weirder and more unpredictable. It perfectly captures the writhing pains of adolescence.
14. The Nude Vampire
My favorite Rollin flick is in constant rotation. Tomorrow it could be Lips of Blood. Today it's The Nude Vampire. Rollin plays with genre conventions he hadn't done prior, delivering a genre concoction that is freewheeling. It's subjects bop around from nude vampires to devious science experiments, cults and criminal elements. It's messy but Rollin is such a singular visionary that it feels be design.
Like all of his films, don't you dare watch it before at least midnight.
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15. El Topo
The first true Midnight movie. Jodorowsky doesn't let loose like he does with The Holy Mountain three years later but he doesn't have to. It's still unlike any other western released during this time.
16. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
This film came in at the tail end of the Czech New Wave which flourished in the mid to late 60's. This may be the most gorgeous looking film on the list. Visuals loaded with symbolism in regards to a girl transitioning into womanhood. Vampiric nightmares.
17. The Boys In the Band
Friedkin adapts Pinter. There's a letterboxd review that describes this as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf but everybody is Elizabeth Taylor and I think that nails this. An intricate and veracious study of American homosexual archetypes.
18. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage
The first giallo was Bava's Girl Who Knew Too Much in 1963. But if you were to look at the one that synthesized all of the tropes and opened the floodgates, it would be Dario's first feature.
It's kind of like Scorsese flicks. Yes his first film was Who's That Knocking, but his first captial F Film was Mean Streets.
Dario had a leg up on everyone with Vitorrio Storaro as the DP and Ennio Morricone as the composer. So it would be nigh impossible to fuck up.
19. Companeros
Leone may be preferred Sergio, but anyone who counts out Corbucci doesn't know what they are missing. He may not have the epic scope of Leone but what he lacks in that department he makes up for in spades in other departments.
It basically a remake of his own The Mercenary as far as characters and plot structure go. Yet where The Mercenary almost borders on satire, Companeros is a lot less playful about revolutionary anarchy. Corbucci's left wing messaging in both films puts him as a more political prescient filmmaker than his spaghetti western contemporaries.
20. The Lickerish Quartet
The 70's were the era where the line between art and erotica and pornography blurred. No other director, except Gerard Damiano, achieved such alchemy as Radley Metzger.
The viewing audience within the film become just as trapped within the enveloping Borgesian labyrinth as the viewer. The plot is less for structure and more of a connective tissue for dream sequences, flash forwards and flashbacks.
