1970's

Before George Lucas became known as the man who created the Star Wars universe, he made another classic film, "American Graffiti". Francis Ford Coppola helped finance less than one million dollars, to this still somewhat unknown Lucas and his movie, which ended up being one of the top grossing films to this date.

This wonderful homage to the film noir of the 50's contains all the vintage elements. The film is set in Los Angeles during the 1930's. Jack Nicholson plays J.J. Gittes, a somewhat seedy private investigator who takes on a simple sounding case of infidelity. Faye Dunaway is the femme fatale who pulls Gittes into a complex mystery of false identities, investment schemes, controlling of the water supply and incest. Roman Polanski directs a moody picture from Robert Towne's wonderful script inspired by Chandler. Polanski also makes a cameo in the picture as a thug with a knife. The production design perfectly creates L.A. of the 30's and the tempo of the film accelerates as it pulls you deeper into the mystery. Appears on AFI's Best Movies of all time list at 19.

Speilberg's second major release proved to the world that "Jaws" wasn't a one hit wonder for this young director, who also wrote the story for this film. And unlike most directors, Speilberg did not let the amazing special effects take away from the story. Richard Dreyfuss stars as one of many people who begin having strange dreams and sighting of UFO's.

The first film to try and deal with the Vietnam War was groundbreaking. Blasted at first for being over 3 hours long and containing graphic voilence and racial stereotypes, the film ended up winning 5 Oscars including Best Picture.

One of the few horror films to ever receive any form of critical recognition.

This movie probably hasn't held up very well over time. Partly because the inventive way Robert Altman directed this film has been copied many times over the last few decades, but mainly because the movie spawned an extremely popular television series. But when M*A*S*H came out in it's first release it was something quite new. The story follows a medical unit during the Korean War. It graphically showed bloody, war surgery for the first time (tame by present standards), and the crazy antics of the medics who used humor to deal with the horrors of war. This was Altman's first major success. One technique Altman would use throughout his film career was the freedom he would give his actors. Many of the scenes would have realistic dialogue because the actors were allowed to improvise their lines.

Like "A Clockwork Orange", this motion picture was a premonition of the future, but unlike "Orange" the ideas of this film have come to pass. The story is centered around a network, mainly the news department, and a decline in ratings. A change is made in management and a young Faye Dunaway is brought in to improve the network. The old anchor of the news, played by Peter Finch, is asked to leave. He can't take this and explains on air, that he's going to kill himself. This soon becomes a big ratings draw and Dunaway decides to continue with Finch as he begins to rant and rave with his own opinions, including the classic line, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore." Wiliam Holden plays the older News Director who begins to have an affair with Dunaway even though he doesn't like her handling of the network and turning the news into an entertainment event. The ending may have been a little farfetched in the 70's, but seems like everyday fair in today's world of television hype, when an assasination is staged by the network to bring in more ratings. The film had more acting nominations than any other at the time, with an Oscar going to Finch, though he had died a few months before the ceremony. Appears on AFI's Best Movies of all time list at 66.

It was the first motion picture to win the top 5 Oscars (Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, & Screenplay) since "It Happened One Night" in 1934. It took quite some time for this story to make it to the screen. After starring in the play for a short time, Kirk Douglas had bought the rights for this story and asked an unknown, Milos Forman, to direct. Unfortunately, legal problems stopped production for 13 years and Kirk Douglas finally decided to forget about producing and passed the project on to his son, Michael Douglas. Michael got the ball rolling again, and unknown to him, asked the same Milos Forman, now quite successful, to direct. After putting together a wonderful cast of actors the film was finally in production.

An absolutely wonderful comedy from Mel Brooks. During this same year Brooks also brought us "Blazing Saddles", a satire on the western, but where that film's humor was crude, this was intelligent. Brooks choose to satire the old Universal Horror films, specifically "Frankenstein" and "The Bride of Frankenstein". Brooks shot the film in black and white, and used many of the same sets, especially the laboratory, found at the Universal lot.