Films of the '70s: 1975

[Stephan]

You can post a list of anywhere between 5 and 20 films (or more, but only 20 will be counted) from the year we're covering. The deciding factor in terms of release dates is the RYM list and the top 10 of each year will go on to the final top 100 round. The deadline is May 20th.

The points scheme is as follows:
1. 50 points
2. 40
3. 35
4. 30
5. 25
6. 20
7. 18
8. 16
9. 14
10. 12
11. 10
10. 9
...
20. 1
However, these are the maximum amounts of points. If you want to put certain films on your list but don't want to give them too many points, you can choose to give these less points than in this scheme (but never more) to decrease the impact on the overall results. If you don't specifically state that you want to give (some of) your films fewer points, I will assume the standard scheme.

Here are some lists to remind you of the great (and awful) films released in 1975, from a variety of sources:
IMDb
RYM
Films101
RottenTomatoes

[Stephan]

A very interesting year, from which I'd definitely recommend the first Battle of Chile to anyone, fantastic documentary made under extreme circumstances. I also enjoyed Fantozzi quite a bit.

[Greg]

1. Nashville / Robert Altman / U.S.
2. Fox and His Friends / Rainer Werner Fassbinder / West Germany
3. The Passenger / Michelangelo Antonioni / Italy
4. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles / Chantal Akerman / Belgium
5. Hard Times / Walter Hill / U.S.
6. False Movement / Wim Wenders / West Germany
7. Night Moves / Arthur Penn / U.S.
8. Seven Beauties / Lina Wertmüller / Italy
9. Jaws / Steven Spielberg / U.S.
10. Dog Day Afternoon / Sidney Lumet / U.S.
11. Shivers / David Cronenberg / Canada
12. The Mirror / Andrei Tarkovsky / U.S.S.R.
13. Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven / Rainer Werner Fassbinder / West Germany
14. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest / Miloš Forman / U.S.
15. French Connection II / John Frankenheimer / U.S.
16. A Boy and His Dog / L.Q. Jones / U.S.
17. Grey Gardens / Al & David Maysles / U.S.
18. Maitresse / Barbet Schroeder / France
19. Picnic at Hanging Rock / Peter Weir / Australia
20. Dersu Uzala / Akira Kurosawa / U.S.S.R.

21. Deep Red / Dario Argento / Italy
22. Race with the Devil / Jack Starrett / U.S.
23. Shampoo / Hal Ashby / U.S.
24. The Drowning Pool / Stuart Rosenberg / U.S.
25. Xala / Ousmane Sembene / Senegal

[Petri]

1 . One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2 . Picnic at Hanging Rock
3 . Dog Day Afternoon
4 . Barry Lyndon
5 . Дерсу Узала [Dersu Uzala]
6 . The Rocky Horror Picture Show
7 . L'important c'est d'aimer [The Most Important Thing: Love]
8 . The Man Who Would Be King
9 . A Boy and His Dog
10 . Зеркало [The Mirror]
11 . Jaws

[Harold]

1. Barry Lyndon
2. Dog Day Afternoon
3. Nashville
4. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
5. Jaws
6. Night Moves
7. Smile
8. The Man Who Would Be King
9. Love and Death
10. Three Days of the Condor

#1-5 represent what I believe is the single greatest top-to-bottom Best Picture nominee roster in Oscar history. All killer, no filler.

[Gillingham]

01. Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa)
02. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
03. Zerkalo / The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
04. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
05. Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
06. Nashville (Robert Altman)
07. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir)
08. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman)
09. Professione: Reporter (Michelangelo Antonioni)
10. Falsche Bewegung (Wim Wenders)

[Charlie Driggs]

1) O thiasos (Theodoros Angelopoulos)
2) Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
3) Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag (Lino Brocka)
4) The Day Of The Locust (John Schlesinger)
5) The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston)
6) Mutter Küsters Fahrt zum Himmel (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
7) One Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest (Milos Forman)
8) Pasqualino Settebellezze (Lina Wertmüller)
9) The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman)
10) Les innocents aux mains sales (Claude Chabrol)
11) Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
12) Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack)

[Jirin]

1. The Mirror
2. The Travelling Players
3. Barry Lyndon
4. Jeanne Dielman

Dersu Uzala (5 pts)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (5 pts)
Nashville (1 pt)
Salo (1 pt)

Top 4 this year are amazing. If anything, I hope people are willing to give Traveling Players a chance. It has no US release but it was recently released in Europe as part of an Angelopolous retrospective. It's a film about the Nazi occupation of Greece and probably the best by one of the most underrated masters.

Salo...eh. Interesting analogy to fascism, but I turned it off the moment poop came into the equation.

I admire Nashville for its historical value, for its use of multiple storylines in the same scene and characters talking over each other. It gets called a 'Portrait of America'. I see it as more of a portrait of a portrait of America. Specifically, the portrait of everybody in America who you've never met, the absent stereotyped masses. One thing I hate about Altman is the way the camera condescends his characters, but it's not as bad in Nashville as in Short Cuts.

[Stephan]

The reviews I've read on The Travelling Players have made me decide that it's not for me, but if it makes it to the next round I'll try and make it through.

[Henrik]

The reviews I've read on The Travelling Players have made me decide that it's not for me, but if it makes it to the next round I'll try and make it through.

But you know that long and slow is always good, don't you?

[Stephan]

The reviews I've read on The Travelling Players have made me decide that it's not for me, but if it makes it to the next round I'll try and make it through.

But you know that long and slow is always good, don't you?

Haha, it's funny you should say that. One of the reviews on Criticker that convinced me not to watch it starts off like this:

Great movies can be long, and great movies can be slow, but when it's long AND slow, you better have a damn good reason for it. And Angelopolous does not have a good reason.

[Henrik]

Jirin and others will probably go hunting after me for that sentence, but let me change it to the following:

"When a long and slow movie is great, it is always better than a short and fast movie"

In RYM's top 14 all-time, the only movie under 2 hours is Taxi Driver (113 mins). Why? There were only a few years during the '70s when people thought the same thing about music.

[Jirin]

Sunrise is one of my favorite movies of all time and also one of the most critically praised, and it's short and simple. I think RYM voters gravitate more toward the plot-heavy epics.

All combinations of speed and length have their gems and their turds, but I think Angelopolous is one of those filmmakers like Tarr or Rocha who is overlooked because his films are about the history and politics of smaller, poorer countries. (In this case Greece).

If you're not from the US, a rich European country, or Japan, it's very hard to get anybody to take your film seriously unless you're famous enough to premiere it at Cannes. (In the last 20 years maybe China enters that group).

What's wrong with being long and slow? Must filmmakers cater to digital-era attention spans? Are contemplative films outmoded just because less of the audience has the patience to contemplate?

[Henrik]

Sunrise is one of my favorite movies of all time and also one of the most critically praised, and it's short and simple. I think RYM voters gravitate more toward the plot-heavy epics.

All combinations of speed and length have their gems and their turds, but I think Angelopolous is one of those filmmakers like Tarr or Rocha who is overlooked because his films are about the history and politics of smaller, poorer countries. (In this case Greece).

If you're not from the US, a rich European country, or Japan, it's very hard to get anybody to take your film seriously unless you're famous enough to premiere it at Cannes. (In the last 20 years maybe China enters that group).

What's wrong with being long and slow? Must filmmakers cater to digital-era attention spans? Are contemplative films outmoded just because less of the audience has the patience to contemplate?

I'm probably the one in this forum who likes action least, so slow movies are fine with me. Movies that are very slow and very long are usually not for me though, but they always get a lot of praise. Anyway, let's leave speed out of the discussion.

But my question remains why acclaimed movies are much longer than the average movie (it's not only on the RYM charts), while acclaimed songs are not longer than the average song.

[Stephan]

All combinations of speed and length have their gems and their turds, but I think Angelopolous is one of those filmmakers like Tarr or Rocha who is overlooked because his films are about the history and politics of smaller, poorer countries. (In this case Greece).

I also read that it's extremely hard to follow unless you have a good grasp on the politics and history of Greece. Is that true? I know my ancient Greece, but more recent times are mostly a mystery to me.

If you're not from the US, a rich European country, or Japan, it's very hard to get anybody to take your film seriously unless you're famous enough to premiere it at Cannes. (In the last 20 years maybe China enters that group).

I'm not judging O Thiasos on being a foreign film but on the characteristics of the film itself, it's just very hard to make me love a slow and long film. I do love, for example, Stalker, The Human Condition and Les Enfants Du Paradis though, despite the fact that they're relatively long and slow, but the film has to have something special.

What's wrong with being long and slow? Must filmmakers cater to digital-era attention spans?

Certainly not, filmmakers can make their films however long and however slow they want, I, personally, just might not enjoy watching them all.

But my question remains why acclaimed movies are much longer than the average movie (it's not only on the RYM charts), while acclaimed songs are not longer than the average song.

Is that true? The average popular song is between 3 and 4 minutes and I would bet the average of the top 25 on AM is higher than that.

[Henrik]

Is that true? The average popular song is between 3 and 4 minutes and I would bet the average of the top 25 on AM is higher than that.

Maybe you're right. But at least here in Sweden words like "progressive rock" and "pretentious" are as unhip as they can be.

[Gillingham]

I'm probably the one in this forum who likes action least

I wouldn't say that too easily if I were you.

[(TheNew)Guy]

1. Grey Gardens
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
4. The Great Waldo Pepper
5. Jaws

[Stephan]

While we have in the meanwhile determined that Monty Python was from 1975, we have voted for it in 1974 because it was initially listed as such on RYM. Could you add a #5 Guy?

[(TheNew)Guy]

Ok, 5. Barry Lyndon

[Miguel]

1. The Man Who Would Be King - John Huston
2. Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick
3. Дерсу Узала (Dersu Uzala) - Akira Kurosawa
4. Jaws - Steven Spielberg
5. Dog Day Afternoon - Sidney Lumet
6. The Return of the Pink Panther - Blake Edwards
7. Love and Death - Woody Allen
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Milos Forman
9. Les innocents aux mains sales (Innocents With Dirty Hands) - Claude Chabrol
10. Furtivos (Poachers) - José Luis Borau
11. Galileo - Joseph Losey
12. L'important c'est d'aimer (The Most Important Thing: Love) - Andrzej Żuławski

[Michel]

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Miloš Forman)
2. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
3. Professione: reporter [The Passenger] (Michelangelo Antonioni)
4. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman)
5. The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)
6. Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum [The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum] (Volker Schlöndorff / Margarethe von Trotta)
7. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
8. Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma [Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom] (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
9. L'histoire d'Adèle H. [The Story of Adele H] (François Truffaut)
10. Les Galettes de Pont-Aven (Joël Séria)
11. Que la fête commence... [Let Joy Reign Supreme] (Bertrand Tavernier)
12. Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa)
13. Amici miei [My Friends] (Mario Monicelli)
14. Dupont Lajoie (Yves Boisset)
15. Profondo rosso [Deep Red] (Dario Argento)
16. Libera, amore mio (Mauro Bolognini)
17. Jaws (Steven Spielberg)

[Henrik]

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2. Jaws
3. Dog Day Afternoon
4. Barry Lyndon
5. Love and Death
6. Дерсу Узала [Dersu Uzala]
7. Flåklypa Grand Prix [Pinchcliffe Grand Prix]
8. Picnic at Hanging Rock

[Gillingham]

I saw The Man Who Would Be King about two weeks ago, after I posted my list. It wasn't bad, but I didn't think very much of it, so I won't award it any points.

[antonius]

1.One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2.Barry Lyndon
3.Dog Day Afternoon
4.Jaws
5.Nashville
6.Picnic at Hanging Rock
7.Night Moves
8.A Boy and His Dog
9.Three Days of the Condor
10.The Man Who Would Be King
11.Hard Times
12.French Connection II
13.Shampoo
14.The Sunshine Boys
15.Farewell My Lovely
16.The Return of the Pink Panther
17.Bite The Bullet
18.Posse
19.Rollerball
20.Tommy

[Stephan]

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman)
2. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
3. The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston)
4. Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
5. Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa)
6. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
7. Nashville (Robert Altman)
8. The Battle of Chile: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (Patricio Guzmán)
9. Fantozzi (Luciano Salce)

Just 1 day remaining!

[Stephan]

#. Title (Director) - Points/Voters/#1s
1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Miloš Forman) - 382/12/5
2. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick) - 350/10/1
3. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet) - 280/10/0
4. Jaws (Steven Spielberg) - 238/10/0
5. Дерсу Узала [Dersu Uzala] (Akira Kurosawa) - 170/8/1
6. The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston) - 154/6/1
7. Nashville (Robert Altman) - 149/6/1
8. Zerkalo [The Mirror] (Andrei Tarkovsky) - 131/5/1
9. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir) - 96/5/0
10. O thiasos [The Travelling Players] (Theodoros Angelopoulos) - 90/2/1

Close:
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (90, but O thiasos had a first-place vote)
Professione: Reporter [The Passenger] (84)

Robert Altman gets a third film through, but after first and second place in '70 and '71, his arguably most acclaimed film gets seventh place. Kubrick, Spielberg and Tarkovsky all get a second film through.