THE decade for cinema (70s)

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	70s
Date:	18/10/00 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 10 Classy Films

Disadvantages: I could have done 10 completely different classy films

I think most of the best American films (with a few exceptions like 'Bonnie and Clyde') were made in the Seventies. Blame Nixon, blame Vietnam, blame the movie brats like Scorsese and De Palma, but this was a time when Hollywood got all adult and intelligent. Shame it didn't last...

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

1) Taxi Driver
Bernard Herrman's jazzy, sleazy score, a superbly acute and witty script by Paul Schrader, grand, operative direction from Scorsese and the electricity of Robert De Niro pretty much in his prime: this is cinema. With New York as an annex of Hell, Travis Bickle as an insane avenging angel, and the world collapsing in front of our eyes at the end, this is a superb evocation of 70s paranoia and unease.

2) The Parallax View
By no means as paranoid as it might seem, this is one of a trio of masterful conspiracy movies that Alan J. Pakula made in the seventies (along with 'Klute' and 'All The President's Men'), describing an America where the whole political system is run by plots, conspiracies and cold men in suits. Says everything you need to know about the assassination of JFK and the plots of
Nixon in one streamlined, absolutely gripping thriller. Superb performance from Warren Beatty, dynamite ending which will leave you numb.

3)Network
Where 'Parallax' is focused and controlled, 'Network' is enraged, confused and incoherent. It's an old man's film, written by a hugely respected TV scriptwriter who obviously despises the way TV is going, and seeing conspirators and psychos at every turn. A Patty Hearst-style kidnapping is exploited for the ratings, a lunatic newsreader is manipulated to deliver a fundamentalist message, and cynicism rules the airwaves. It's enough to give you a headache, but it's everything that 'Natural Born Killers' wanted to be and wasn't, and the message of 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm no
t going to take it any more' will stay with you.

4) Chinatown
'Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown'. Had Sharon Tate not been murdered, this film would have had a happy ending, but Polanski couldn't see a world where the good guys win, and so you get this deeply unhappy, immensely stylish film noir. It's about the way in which money and power can do anything, triumph over anything (and reflects real LA history to a frightening degree). Nicholson is superb, Dunaway at her best and John Huston the personification of evil. Virtually every attempt at film noir since has been a pale imitation.

5) Annie Hall
It's a toss-up between this and 'Manhattan' - this is funnier, and 'Manhattan' is more beautiful, and both were made in Woody Allen's heyday. The difference between this and rough little movies like 'Take the Money and Run' is astonishing; stylish, assured, painfully funny and astonishingly autobigraphical, this is a superb film, with Allen's best performance and Keaton
amazingly willing to go along with it. Fab Chris Walken cameo, and my favourite Allen sight gag: Annie's bigot Grandma seeing Alvy as an orthodox jew.

6) Dawn of the Dead
Not destined to be shown in a double bill with 'Annie Hall', this is probably not as good as either of the other films in the 'Dead' series, but it is still a superb, almost Swiftian satire on a society gradually consumed by its own consumer attitudes. Excellent performances, brilliant editing and direction, and more than enough gore to keep the horror fans happy. The only slapstick splatter movie worth its salt.

7) The Brood
A real contrast to 'Dawn of the Dead', this is just terrifying, both as a monster movie, and as a brittle assault on family values. Reflecting on his ugly divorce, Cronenberg's tale of a woman trained to make her rage into solid, violent creatures who act out her anger is
a morbid and bleak assessment of where family break-ups can lead. It's also a damned scary piece of work with a superb performance from Samantha Eggar as the brood's mother, and Oliver Reed surprisingly sharp as the doctor who taught her how to externalise her anger. Should be required viewing for anyone who believed the more optimistic view of divorce presented by that other seventies classic 'Kramer versus Kramer'.

8) The Towering Inferno
The rich bastards crowding onto the breecher's buoy and sending it toppling down is a perfect example of the deep and appealling cynicism which dominates this cheesy masterpiece. Some of it (the wheelbarrow full of cement which blocks the stairs, the dismal wrinkly romance) is just cack, and it does have all the hallmarks of a big mechanical Hollywood production. But the effects are excellent, the big cast (Newman, McQueen, Dunaway, Holden) is classy and there's much fun to be had at the endless disasters. Moreover, Robert Vaughn and Richard Chamberlain embody everything that was wrong with seventies America - evil scheming suits, lying and covering everything up.

9) Dirty Harry
A reactionary slice of right-wing propaganda? A subtle deconstruction of vigilante law and order? 'Dirty Harry' is very devious, as you could read it either way. Callaghan is a law-breaking cop whose violence lets the villain out to do more killing, but the film equally glorifies violence and demonises hippies. Make your mind up in style though, as Eastwood's presence, brilliant location filming and a sassy score make this widescreen crime classic a real challenge to left and right-wing viewers.

10) Don't Look Now
From start to finish, the only Nicolas Roeg movie that really works, his kaleidoscopic style and fleshy concerns melding perfectly in a tale of ghosts and memories intermixed. A bereaved couple take their dwindling marriage to wintry Venice, he to be be taunted by th
e belief that his dead daughter is with them, she to be haunted by visions of funerals. Gorgeous and menacing in equal measure, this is a masterpiece and the ending is, literally, a killer.

So, no 'Nashville', no 'Obsession', no 'Exorcist', no 'Raging Bull', no 'Deliverance'... I could easily have picked ten other movies, but this list should at least indicate how good the seventies were.

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