Bonnie and Clyde, 1967

"This is Bonnie. This is Clyde. They're young. They're in love. They kill people. Their paths crossed like two hot wires. They roared off on what could have easily been a wild romantic lark. But almost before they knew it, with the giggles still in their ears, they had bloodied up four states." 

So states the original trailer of what is heralded as the most significant example of the New Hollywood movement. All of the characteristics of are there: graphic violence, sex humor, disaffected youth, moral ambiguity, the shock ending. Before it won Academy Awards for Cinematography and Best Supporting Actress, critics didn't know how to feel about it. Time Magazine initially wrote a scathing review, and in response received letters from fans arguing against it. A positive review in The New Yorker led others to agree and reevaluate the film, most notably Time and Newsweek. 

Dec. 8. 1967

3 Women, 1977

Sissy Spacek, Shelley Duvall and another woman I hadn't recognized are the three women in Robert Altman's film interpretations of some dreams he had. This is notable when considering that Altman was insistent that he make the film without a screenplay and without a definite ending in mind, instead using a 50 page treatment as supplementation. Spacek plays Pinky, an awkward teenager who's first job is at a day spa in California. She grows attached to one of the spa attendants, and the two become roommates. They pass the time at a bar owned by an odd pregnant woman and her has-been country artist husband. The girls that played the twins were not professional actors. Altman cast them after spotting them as waitresses in California. 

Altman intended the film to be a nod to Ingmar Bergman's Persona, but when watching the film one draws connections to Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore due to the cinematography and nature of the characters. 

Marathon Man, 1976

"Is it safe?"

Dustin Hoffman plays the role of a guy struggling with his past pretty well. In Marathon Man, he's got a lot of skeletons he's gotta deal with. As a history Ph.D. candidate, he runs to cope with his father's suicide, an act that took place after being investigated in the McCarthy era. His problems increase when he is entangled with secret government operations and a paranoid Nazi geezer played by Laurence Olivier. Olivier's performance was a particular success, being nominated for Best Supporting Actor and later landing at villain #34 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains" list. Stay for the dental torture scene-it's particularly nasty.

The Panic in Needle Park, 1971

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975

Try to forget that the residents housed in the asylum act no stranger than your goofiest friends. Because this movie isn't about crazy people, it's about the reaction to establishment and conformity, and the ability to escape from oppression. Racial tension still defined much of the decade, and the nature of the film helped in winning five academy awards in 1975, including best picture, director and actor. The inmate roles include a younger Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd. You almost can't recognize DeVito, what with the unibrow. Actually, I think Lloyd might have sported a unibrow, too. Nicholson reportedly improvised a lot on the set. Much of the conversation he has between the director upon arriving is improvised, including the comments about the fishing photo and discussing his rape conviction. The reactions come out incredibly authentic.

The Long Goodbye, 1973

"But if you wanna make me a couple of yankee doodles..."

Robert Altman takes on his own deconstructed version of film noir. Raymond Chandler wrote a number of novels about a detective named Philip Marlowe, the first of those be adapted to films being The Big Sleep. Here, we have Marlowe again, played by Elliott Gould-a sarcastic cat-loving private eye trying to prove his friend’s innocence. Throughout Altman fills the screen with interesting goings-on; there’s always something to keep your eyes interested.

After I first saw it, however, the only thing I could recall was a drunken Gould walking around urbanized parts of desert, fruitlessly searching for something to slow, saucy jazz numbers. It’s true what Ebert says: It tries to be all genre and no story, and it almost works. I had entirely lost the plot, but retained the imagery.

Serpico, 1973

This was one of the two movies filmed between the two Godfather films that featured Al Pacino, the other being the buddy film Scarecrow (Gene Hackman being the buddy). It’s no coincidence that Pacino looks like the Messiah. A NYC cop refusing to go bad in the face of corruption by his partners shares parallels with Christ’s incorruptible character in the face of the dissenting disciples. Director Sidney Lumet later used Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.

Dirty Money, 1972

None of the various titles denominated for this film by Jean-Pierre Melville (who directed the are very unique, and can prove problematic when searching it on the web. Known first in France as Un Flic and as both Dirty Money and A Cop in English-speaking countries, a small town bank robbery is exposed as just part of a much bigger heist. 

Charley Varrick, 1973

“Cropdusters don’t wave guns.”

Maybe Walter Matthau isn’t a name with which you’re familiar. Dennis the Menace probably is. Before Matthau claimed all the grandpa roles like the one on Dennis, he was already known as a guy in Hollywood who could treat dialogues with just the right touch of comedic undertoning, which isn’t much unlike Harry Callahan, come to think of it. After first bringing us Dirty Harry, Don Siegel takes his old broom and makes the sweep again, walking on familiar ground in this director/actor collab. The rigid comedian Matthau plays “one man against the mafia,” and drives the comedy on home as he (nearly) takes flight in a cropduster’s airplane.  

The Seven-Ups, 1973

Roy Scheider is most remembered for the not-too-sea savvy copper in Jaws, but before that, he honed in on the streetcop persona in The French Connection. In The Seven-Ups, released two years after, his same character inConnection is reapplied (I love it when they do that!) to match a cop hellbent on finding his deceased partner’s murderers. I recommend that you go for this one if you’re feeling a good car chase scene. WHAMMY!

Dillinger, 1973

J. Edgar Hoover protested the making of this film for its depiction of the FBI (apparently just before he died in 1972). The casting of Warren Oates as John Dillinger was decided because turns out they were a split image. Judge for yourself:

Thieves Like Us, 1974

Like Chinatown, this is another period piece. As in, filmed in the seventies but set in the 30s (odd how period pieces age with time-a period piece set within another period…) It’s Louise Fletcher’s first movie role and an adaptation from the Edward Anderson novel. Director Robert Altman had taken to adapting it without realizing it had already been done-in the 1949 cult classic They Live by Night (not available on Netflix instant)

Dirty Harry, 1971

Who doesn’t love Dirty Harry? For many, this is the definitive Clint Eastwood role. I had already had the man with no name braingrained good and well before watching people kick Harry around. The two personalities are about as opposite as they can get, at least until justice is rightfully served in the end.

There's no question that Callahan uses heavy-handed tactics to get his man (he carries a .44 magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world"), but he's gotta be when he's up against psychopaths like the man called Scorpio, who's gotta be one of the most sadistically characterized bad guys I've seen on camera.

"Please. I scare easy."

The Long Good Friday, 1980

I recognize it too. This film was released the year that disco broke (or punk broke, however you want to look at it), and therefore ought not be categorized as seventies cinema. But woah there! Hey now! Let’s break it down a bit first, lest we jump to any more conclusions.

Bob Hoskins, leading man. Bob Hoskins? Leading man? Hoskins is most often recognized as that suit in Roger Rabbit whose deviant desires target a cartoon woman. He was also Smee from Hook.  I was introduced to this film a year ago, when I was taking what’ll prolly prove to be the ballinest class of my total college career:  David Lavery’s English 4860: Gangster Films. Apparently the film company had planned to have Hoskins’ thick Cockney accent dubbed over by an American one, and Hoskins threatened to sue. Luckily, Hoskins won and we now have one of the greatest testaments of the gangster genre canon. And it’s not even American!

(Stick around for a young Pierce Brosnan, who plays a deadly IRA assassin!)

Busting, 1974

I went through a huge Elliott Gould phase after first watching The Long Goodbye,which also happened to be my introduction to Robert Altman films (see below for more on that one.) Elliott Gould dons an IMPRESSIVE handlebar stache and ambles about like a stand-up comedian behind stage waiting for his queue to go on. While watching, keep in mind to love it for what it is-a directorial debut and a seventies gem that bears the qualities we love about that era of filmmaking: a couple of detectives getting on everybody’s case, whether its call girls, massage parlour employees, and homosexuals, and a soundtrack by Billy Goldenberg, one of the most under appreciated film composers around.

Chinatown, 1974

The “color noir” brilliance of Chinatown is just about enough to let you forgive all those terrible things you heard in the news about its director Roman Polanski, somehow despite the fact that sexual deviance plays a central part in the film. Let’s face it, the man knew his craft well enough to divert our attention from the searchlight to the stagelight and keep it there. The script has been heralded as the benchmark in Hollywood screenwriting, which ought to tell you that things get dicey and things get convoluted, and yet, by the credits, all of our questions have somehow been abated.

How many movies do people see and dismiss because of their predictability? The writing of Chinatown is nothing if not unpredictable, yet remarkably it succeeds in maintaining the time-honored and time-tested formula of a hard-boiled thriller. Monsieur Ebert explains it better, who I picture stepping out of a quiet theater and into the night of 1974 Chicago, walking the block or two to his flat, where he sits down at his typewriter immediately and pounds out his dead-on review. He claims there are two indispensable qualities of a traditional private eye. “He is deeply cynical about human nature, and he has a personal code and sticks to it.” Yet Nicholson’s Jake Gittes comes off less fatalistic and somehow more impressionable than the genre’s previous inductees. 

The cast is great, the direction is great, the writing is great…there’s just not a fallible element to this film. Somewhere in its two-plus hours I thought back to the days-which oddly weren’t at all long ago-when I would spend around fifteen dollars for a good four or five Blockbuster rentals and end up watching maybe two of them, opting to return them beforehand so that I wouldn’t accrue a late charge. Just streaming one film like Chinatown is enough to make the cinephile raise a glass-while staying seated on the couch, of course-to the modern age of quality movie watching.