We’re now officially a half-century beyond one of the greatest film years in Hollywood history — 1973.
I came upon a 12.28.22 stacker.com article called “Best Films Turning 50 in 2023,” and figured “okay, but why not just list the best and leave it at that?”
I was surprised to realize that HE’s 1973 roster — 10 stone-cold classics, 12 creme de la cremes, 13 good to very good — is almost as strong as my 1971 rundown, which I first posted in 2015.
Compare the top 22 of ’73 with HE’s best of 2022. Both were highly respectable years, but compare 1973’s top ten with the likeliest Best Picture contenders on Gold Derby (Elvis, The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Woman King, Glass Onion, The Fabelmans, TAR, Avatar: The Way of Water, RRR)…it’s almost embarassing.
1973 stone-cold classics (10):
1. Badlands (d: Terrence Malick)
2. The Long Goodbye (d: Robert Altman)
3. The Exorcist (d: William Friedkin)
4. The Outfit (d: John Flynn)
5. Mean Streets (d: Martin Scorsese)
6. The Last Detail (d: Hal Ashby)
7. The Sting (d: George Roy Hill)
8. Last Tango in Paris (d: Bernardo Bertolucci)
9. American Graffiti (d: George Lucas)
10. The Last American Hero (d: Lamont Johnson)
1973 creme de la creme (12):
11. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (d: Peter Yates)
12. Blume in Love (d: Paul Mazursky)
13. O Lucky Man! (d: Lindsay Anderson)
14. Charley Varrick (d: Don Siegel)
15. Serpico (d: Sidney Lumet)
16. The Way We Were (d: Sydney Pollack)
17. Papillon (d: Franklin J. Schaffner)
18. Paper Moon (d: Peter Bogdanovich)
19. The Laughing Policeman (d: Stuart Rosenberg)
20. The Three Musketeers (d: Richard Lester)
21. Don’t Look Now (d: Nicolas Roeg)
22. Westworld (d: Michael Crichton)
1973 very good, highly respectable or at least enjoyable (13):
23. Amarcord (d: Federico Fellini)
24. The Last of Sheila (d: Herbert Ross)
25. The Paper Chase (d: James Bridges)
26. Save the Tiger (d: John G. Avildsen)
27. Scarecrow (d: Jerry Schatzberg
28. Sleeper (d: Woody Allen)
29. Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (d: Sam Peckinpah)
30. Day For Night (d: Francois Truffaut)
31. La Grande Bouffe (d: Marco Ferreri)
32. The Holy Mountain (d: Alejandro Jodorowsky)
33. Emperor of the North Pole (d: Robert Aldrich)
34. Live and Let Die (d: Guy Hamilton)
35. Extreme Close-up (d: Jeannot Szwarc)
1971: They Won’t Forget (3.20.15): Until a couple of days ago I’d never quite thought of 1971 as one of the truly legendary years in American cinema, or at least not along the lines of 1939 or ’62 or ’99. But on 3.18 a longish piece by a guy whose name might be Cole Brax (a vague echo of Cole Trickle, Tom Cruise‘s character in Days of Thunder) suggested this very thing. He didn’t make a complete-enough case for ’71’s lasting glory, but he definitely began the conversation. Key quote: “What I do know is that in 1971 many of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived released some of their best work. At the time, most of my favorite directors in film history were still active or just getting started. I don’t know what was in the water or the air that year (probably drugs), but the films that came out of that annum created a ripple effect that is felt to this very day.”
As noted Brax only lists a portion of the finest so here’s a more complete rundown, and listed in order of my personal preference:
Top 27 1971 Films: (1) The French Connection; (2) The Last Picture Show; (3) A Clockwork Orange (4) The Hospital, (5) McCabe & Mrs. Miller, (6) Sunday Bloody Sunday, (7) Get Carter, (8) Straw Dogs, (9) Murmur of the Heart, (10) Dirty Harry, (11) Klute, (12) Walkabout, (13) Two English Girls, (14) Death in Venice, (15) Two-Lane Blacktop, (16) Taking Off, (17) Carnal Knowledge, (18) Harold and Maude, (19) Roman Polanski’s Macbeth, (20) The Emigrants, (21) The Devils, (22) Play Misty for Me, (23) The Panic in Needle Park, (24) THX 1138, (25) Duel, (26) Little Murders, (27) Le Mans.
Special, Stand-Alone, Non-Numerical: The Music Lovers (1970 British release that opened in the U.S. in January ’71)
Second Tier: (28) Shaft, (29) WR — Mysteries of the Organism, (30) Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, (31) A New Leaf, (32) Fiddler on the Roof, (33) Bananas, (34) Minnie and Moskowitz, (35) Diamonds Are Forever, (36) $, (37) The Boy Friend, (38) Family Life (d: Ken Loach), (39) Summer of ’42, (40) Wake in Fright, (41) The Wild Rovers, (42) The Clowns (d: Federico Fellini), (43) Four Nights of a Dreamer (d: Robert Bresson), (44) Plaza Suite, (45) The Ceremony (d: Nagisa Oshima), (46) Nicholas and Alexandra, (47) Mon Oncle Antoine, (48) Skin Game, (49) Johnny Got His Gun, (50) The Anderson Tapes.
Third Tier: (51) The Last Movie, (52) And Now for Something Completely Different, (53) The Andromeda Strain, (54) Billy Jack, (55) Bless the Beasts & Children, (56 The Omega Man, (57) Support Your Local Gunfighter, (58) 10 Rillington Place, (59) Vanishing Point, (60) Such Good Friends (61) Kotch, (62) Mary, Queen of Scots, (63) Fata Morgana, (64) Doc, (65) Made for Each Other, (66) Duck, You Sucker, (67) The Grissom Gang, (68) Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.