1971: Top 20 USA Movies
by flavio-p-faria | created - 23 Aug 2020 | updated - 02 Oct 2021 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. The French Connection (1971)
R | 104 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.
Director: William Friedkin | Stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco
Votes: 135,640 | Gross: $15.63M
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
R | 136 min | Crime, Sci-Fi
In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn't go as planned.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke
Votes: 881,136 | Gross: $6.21M
3. Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
G | 181 min | Drama, Family, Musical
In pre-revolutionary Russia, a Jewish peasant with traditional values contends with marrying off three of his daughters with modern romantic ideals while growing anti-Semitic sentiment threatens his village.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Molly Picon
Votes: 47,853 | Gross: $80.50M
4. The Last Picture Show (1971)
R | 118 min | Drama, Romance
In 1951, a group of high schoolers come of age in a bleak, isolated, atrophied North Texas town that is slowly dying, both culturally and economically.
Director: Peter Bogdanovich | Stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson
Votes: 52,370 | Gross: $29.13M
5. Kotch (1971)
GP | 113 min | Comedy, Drama
Wanting to avoid settling in a nursing home, Joseph Kotcher, a retired salesman, is obliged to leave his son's family. He embarks on a road trip during which he strikes up a friendship with... See full summary »
Director: Jack Lemmon | Stars: Walter Matthau, Deborah Winters, Felicia Farr, Charles Aidman
Votes: 1,627 | Gross: $1.33M
6. The Hospital (1971)
PG-13 | 103 min | Comedy, Drama, Mystery
A hospital's chief-of-staff struggles to find meaning in his life during a spate of staff deaths.
Director: Arthur Hiller | Stars: George C. Scott, Diana Rigg, Barnard Hughes, Richard Dysart
Votes: 7,326 | Gross: $19.71M
7. Klute (1971)
R | 114 min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
A small-town detective searching for a missing man has only one lead: a connection with a New York prostitute.
Director: Alan J. Pakula | Stars: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi, Roy Scheider
Votes: 29,616 | Gross: $17.44M
8. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
R | 120 min | Drama, Western
A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Old West mining town, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.
Director: Robert Altman | Stars: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane
Votes: 27,636 | Gross: $8.20M
9. Summer of '42 (1971)
PG | 104 min | Drama, Romance
During his summer vacation on Nantucket Island in 1942, a youth eagerly awaiting his first sexual encounter finds himself developing an innocent love for a young woman awaiting news on her soldier husband's fate in WWII.
Director: Robert Mulligan | Stars: Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, Oliver Conant
Votes: 9,120 | Gross: $7.38M
10. Shaft (1971)
R | 100 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
A crime lord hires black private eye, John Shaft, to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.
Director: Gordon Parks | Stars: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John
Votes: 21,021 | Gross: $16.69M
11. Harold and Maude (1971)
PG | 91 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Young, rich, and obsessed with death, Harold finds himself changed forever when he meets lively septuagenarian Maude at a funeral.
Director: Hal Ashby | Stars: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack
Votes: 81,836
12. Vanishing Point (1971)
R | 99 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
During the 1970s, car-delivery driver Kowalski delivers hot rods in record time, but always runs into trouble.
Director: Richard C. Sarafian | Stars: Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, Charlotte Rampling, Dean Jagger
Votes: 30,528
13. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
R | 97 min | Action, Crime, Drama
After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black male prostitute goes on the run from "the man" with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.
Director: Melvin Van Peebles | Stars: Melvin Van Peebles, Hubert Scales, John Dullaghan, Simon Chuckster
Votes: 5,862 | Gross: $15.18M
14. Bananas (1971)
PG-13 | 82 min | Comedy
When a bumbling New Yorker is dumped by his activist girlfriend, he travels to a tiny Latin American nation and becomes involved in its latest rebellion.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalbán, Nati Abascal
Votes: 37,787 | Gross: $11.80M
15. Dirty Harry (1971)
R | 102 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
When a man calling himself "the Scorpio Killer" menaces San Francisco, tough-as-nails Police Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan is assigned to track down the crazed psychopath.
Directors: Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood | Stars: Clint Eastwood, Andrew Robinson, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni
Votes: 168,266 | Gross: $35.90M
16. Duel (1971 TV Movie)
PG | 90 min | Action, Thriller
A business commuter is pursued and terrorized by the malevolent driver of a massive tractor-trailer.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell
Votes: 78,372
17. Carnal Knowledge (1971)
R | 98 min | Comedy, Drama
Chronicling the lifelong sexual development of two men who meet and become friends in college.
Director: Mike Nichols | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Candice Bergen, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret
Votes: 14,892 | Gross: $28.62M
18. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
G | 100 min | Family, Fantasy, Musical
A poor but hopeful boy seeks one of the five coveted golden tickets that will send him on a tour of Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory.
Director: Mel Stuart | Stars: Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Roy Kinnear
Votes: 227,260 | Gross: $4.00M
19. Straw Dogs (1971)
R | 113 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A young American and his English wife come to rural England and face increasingly vicious local harassment.
Director: Sam Peckinpah | Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna
Votes: 64,488
20. Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
R | 102 min | Drama
While drag-racing through the American Southwest in a Chevrolet 150, a driver and his mechanic cross paths with an enigmatic hitchhiker and the tall-tale-spinning driver of a GTO.
Director: Monte Hellman | Stars: James Taylor, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, Dennis Wilson
Votes: 13,418
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