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The 1970s The Last Golden Age of American Cinema (the American "New Wave") and the Advent of the Blockbuster Film Part 6 Film History of the 1970s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 Film History by Decade Index | Pre-1920s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
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Literary-Based Films: British and Australian Directors: 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?")
From Australia, Gillian Armstrong created the period piece My Brilliant Career (1979) - a feminist tale in turn-of-the-century Australia. Peter Weir directed the mysterious, beautiful and moody Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and the unsettling The Last Wave (1977). And Bruce Beresford directed The Getting of Wisdom (1977) set in a Melbourne girls' boarding school, and the riveting Boer War-South Africa courtroom drama Breaker Morant (1980). Finally, Mel Gibson was propelled into stardom in George Miller's post-nuclear, action-adventure film Mad Max (1979) as a vengeful policeman whose family was attacked by a motorcycle gang. 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:
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 mega-disaster, 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 Filmsite's section on disaster films for more information.
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:
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:
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 - 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:
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 were 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 run-down, 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.] Looking Ahead: Many reviewers and historians have concluded that the 70s was a very complex, pluralistic and unique era in film-making, due to its many socially-conscious themed films, lots of conflicting viewpoints and visions about America from distinctive auteur-directors, and the questioning of norms and what had come before. A new era was dawning that would emphasize the marketing, advertising and budgeting of films, the search for blockbusters, the dominance of the powerful studios over independent film-makers, and the prominence of "high concept" - the idea that a film should be able to be pitched with a succinctly stated premise. This idea took hold most clearly in the 70s with the novel approach taken by Jaws (1975) - with its visual-ad poster (a shark poised to attack swimmers above with the tagline: "Don't go in the water!"). The premise of 'high-concept' was to easily convey the film's main premise (with the broadest appeal possible) so that it could be easily sold to the marketplace. However, many films in the 1970s couldn't easily be reduced to one sentence or image, since it was difficult to compress rich character development, cinematography, acting, or other artistic qualities of a film into a short phrase. Trends would be changing with the rise of test-marketing, expensive ad campaigns, more bottom-line predictability, and the massive release of first-run films nationwide - accompanied by concentrated TV and print ads. By the early 1980s, the 60's era of music, free love, youthful idealism, and friendship that had extended into the 70s was clearly over. By now, the hippies (a baby boomer generation) of the 60s had become a new crop of angst-ridden, suburban-dwelling yuppies. They could only nostalgically look back to the 60s and ask what had happened to their lives. Audiences clearly identified with and revered films such as The Big Chill (1983), by writer/director Lawrence Kasdan. It featured a catchy Motown soundtrack of hit songs (by The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles) celebrated by successful, upwardly-mobile, thirty-something college grads from their days 15 years earlier at the University of Michigan, who gathered together for a weekend funeral-reunion in a summer vacation house in South Carolina. The many stars of the ensemble film - Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Kline, Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Mary Kay Place, Jo-Beth Williams, Meg Tilly and William Hurt reflected upon the good ol' days (and the promise of what might have been but hadn't materialized), smoked dope, cooked together and paired up for sex in unpredictable ways. The film's two taglines were highly appropriate: "In a cold world you need your friends to keep you warm," and "How much love, sex, fun and friendship can a person take?"
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 
 
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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 as Henri 'Papillon'
(butterfly) Charriere) and Dustin Hoffman (as swindler-counterfeiter
Louis Dega) - fellow prisoners in the infamous penal colony in French
Guiana. Also, 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
A
number of British directors, such as John Schlesinger, John Boorman, and
Peter Yates had migrated to Hollywood and were continuing to produce taut,
critically-successful films. Following his earlier success with 
UK
director Nicolas Roeg directed some of his best films during this decade,
including co-directing Performance (1970) with Rolling Stones singer
Mick Jagger playing a pop star who lived with a sadistic gangster (James
Fox) in Swingin' 60s London. He also helmed the visually-stylized, semi-mystical
and beautiful adventure film Walkabout (1971) about the contrast
of aboriginal and modern culture in the Australian outback through a rites
of passage journey taken by a young teenaged girl (Jenny Agutter) and
an aboriginal boy. He then directed the brooding and psychological thriller
The
experimental, controversial and sensational Ken Russell directed a number
of films in the 1970s: 
Highly-regarded
British director David Lean's only film of the decade was the overlong
Irish romantic melodrama Ryan's Daughter (1970). After his thrilling
Bullitt (1968), Peter Yates also directed Mother, Jugs and Speed
(1976), a black comedy about rival ambulance drivers named Mother
(Bill Cosby), Jugs (Raquel Welch), and Speed (Harvey Keitel). His best
film of the 70s was the insightful, bicycle-racing, coming-of-age youth
film Breaking Away (1979). 
William
Friedkin's 
The
first major disaster film was director/writer George Seaton's Airport
(1970) - a 
Peter
Hyams' Capricorn One (1977) about a faked NASA Mars landing and
mission (with OJ Simpson as one of the astronauts!)
Robert
Mulligan's teenage coming-of-age film Summer of '42 (1971) about
three boys in a New England resort, including 15 year-old Gary Grimes
who came of age by engaging in an affair with the pretty wife (Jennifer
O'Neill) of a pilot in WWII
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]
Stanley
Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) based on a Thackeray novel, with
Ryan O'Neal in the lead role as an 18th century gambler