The Year in Film: 1974

Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown - the best film of 1974, or almost any year

My Top 20:

1. Chinatown
2. The Godfather Part II
3. Day for Night
4. The Conversation
5. Scenes from a Marriage
6. Badlands
7. Young Frankenstein
8. Blazing Saddles
9. Don’t Look Now
10. The Parallax View
11. Lenny
12. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
13. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
14. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
15. Murder on the Orient Express
16. The Phantom of Liberty
17. Sanshiro Sugata
18. Thieves Like Us
19. The Front Page
20. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 1972

A collage of many great scenes from The Godfather (1972)

The 45th Academy Awards for the film year 1972.  The nominations were announced on February 12, 1973 and the awards were held on March 27, 1973.

Best Picture:  The Godfather

• Cabaret
• Deliverance
• The Emigrants
• Sounder

Most Surprising Omission:  Sleuth

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Best English Language Film Not Nominated:  Sleuth

Rank (out of 82) Among Best Picture Years:  #18

 

The Year in Film: 1972

the brilliant restaurant scene in The Godfather

My Top 20:

1. The Godfather
2. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
3. Cabaret
4. Sleuth
5. Deliverance
6. The Emigrants
7. Play It Again Sam
8. Murmur of the Heart
9. Tokyo Story
10. Limelight
11. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (* But Were Afraid to Ask)
12. Fat City
13. Travels with My Aunt
14. Frenzy
15. The Heartbreak Kid
16. Jeremiah Johnson
17. Fellini’s Roma
18. The Hot Rock
19. Early Summer
20. Mon Oncle Antoine

 

Great Director #24: Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola

Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) explains to his girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton) what his father does for a living in Coppola’s The Godfather (1972)

• Born: 1939
• Rank: 24
• Score: 663.70
• Awards: Oscar / 2 DGA / BAFTA / 2 Golden Globes / NSFC / NBR
• Nominations: 4 Oscars / 5 DGA / 2 BAFTA / 5 Golden Globes
• Feature Films: 24
• Best: The Godfather
• Worst: Tonight for Sure

Top 5 Feature Films:

1. The Godfather – 1972
2. Apocalypse Now – 1979
3. The Godfather Part II – 1974
4. The Conversation – 1974
5. The Cotton Club – 1984

Top 10 Director Finishes (Nighthawk Awards):

• 1966 – 7th – You’re a Big Boy Now
• 1969 – 10th – Rain People
• 1972 – 1st – The Godfather
• 1974 – 2nd – The Godfather Part II
• 1974 – 3rd – The Conversation
• 1979 – 2nd – Apocalypse Now
• 1984 – 4th – The Cotton Club
• 1990 – 8th – The Godfather Part III

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Director (Part III)

Francis Ford Coppola with his three Oscars from The Godfather Part II (1974)

Best Director: The Film School Kids

Of course, I could point people to Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, the pre-eminent book about this era, but there is the caveat: he is known for twisting things around as can be seen here. Still, it is fascinating, if nothing else.

This was the era where the kids from film school made their mark on Hollywood and film history, though the two most prominent of them (Spielberg and Scorsese) would wait quite a while for their actual Oscars. In fact, oddly enough for two people whose films bear their mark, both Spielberg and Scorsese got their first Best Picture nominations in the mid-70’s (Jaws in 75 and Taxi Driver in 76) and both of them were passed over for Best Director nominations for foreign directors (Spielberg for Fellini, Scorsese for Bergman).

 

Not Done With AFI Yet: The 10 Best Mystery and Suspense Films

Alfred Hitchcock

These are actually two different genres of film that are often combined.  I will be separating them out and giving a top 10 for each.  The essential difference is that in a Mystery, the audience (and characters) are trying to find out what has happened, while in a Suspense, you are trying to find out what will happen next.  In other words, in a Mystery, you chase someone and in a Suspense film you get chased.

Of course the bald man to the left was the master of suspense films.  He’s got four in the top 10 and four more in the next 10.  The other 16 films are by 16 different directors (unless you believe the rumor that Orson Welles directed a lot of The Third Man), and surprisingly, Stanley Kubrick is not one of them.

 

Explaining Things to AFI: The 25 Best Crime Films (Not Just Gangster)

Can Fargo (1996) be classified in many genres? You betcha!

The American Film Institute seems to have trouble telling the difference between a genre and a subgenre. A genre encompasses a type of film with a number of distinguishing traits (in this case, a Crime film, a film which focuses on criminals, whether a specific one, or a group of them). A subgenre is one specific group of genre films (in this case, a Gangster film, which is a Crime film that focuses on gangsters, as opposed to other subgenres of crimes films which include True Crime, like In Cold Blood, or a Heist film, which I think is fairly self-explanatory). When AFI did their lists of the top 10 in 10 Genres, they kept using subgenres. My goal is to include the genre as a whole. Thus, I give you the 25 best Crime films.

With a slight caveat. My spreadsheet uses on genre for each film, and all Foreign films get swept up in Foreign. So these are really the 25 best English Language Crime films. The Foreign films that would have probably found a spot on this list would be Shoot the Piano Player, City of God and M. But I’ll cover them all in Foreign Film.

There are a few films that AFI put in the Gangster genre that are good enough for this list but I don’t consider Crime films. If the primary focus is on the cop, rather than the criminal I don’t consider it a crime film (eliminating The Big Heat and Touch of Evil). Bullets over Broadway and Some Like It Hot are comedies that happen to have gangsters. And On the Waterfront is a drama.

 

Tell AFI What the Genres Really Are: The Top 10 War Films (Doubled)

Memorial to 54th Mass Regiment on Beacon Hill - immortalized in Glory (1989)

While it’s true that a lot of War films fell into the Epic ballot that AFI sent out, it really should have had its own list. In fact, all War films can be broken down into sub-genre, depending on which war they are depicting.

As the title say, I’m putting forth my list of the top 10 War films. The “Doubled” refers to the fact that so many great war films have been Foreign films and since AFI ignores Foreign films, I’m including a separate top 10 list of War films that are non-English language.

For my scope of what constitutes a War film, it means a film that deals mostly with the aspects of a war itself, mostly on the battlefield (so, no Schindler’s List or other films focusing mostly on the Holocaust, or films that focus on the home front).

The interesting thing is that even though over half the War films I have seen are World War II films, the English language list is much more representative of other wars.

The final note is that in spite of having seen over 140 War films, only two of them do I consider to be truly bad: The Patriot and Pearl Harbor. Utter dreck, both of them. But for the most part, War films are usually well made, and if not too harrowing, decent entertainment.