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The Best Films of the 1970s
The greatest films of the 1970s, from the American New Wave to Europe’s existential surrealism.
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Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)
Shūji Terayama may cast his rural childhood in an array of surreal, kaleidoscopic motifs, yet this memory piece does not yield easily to nostalgia or repression, as Pastoral: To Die in the Country contemplates the unstable, self-reflexive act of reminiscence and its sublimation into art.
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A Touch of Zen (1971)
As King Hu edges towards a spiritual transcendence in A Touch of Zen, wuxia spectacle dissolves into a meditative, cosmic stillness, revealing its worldly struggles between imperial authorities and persecuted fugitives as fleeting dramas within a transient world.
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The Travelling Players (1975)
Against the political turmoil of mid-century Greece in The Travelling Players, Theo Angelopoulos’ theatrical microcosm captures a fragmented nation caught between competing powers, dissolving time through long takes that conjure a swirling, ceaseless nightmare.
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Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Through Pier Paolo Pasolini’s formal severity and exacting aesthetic, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom stares unflinchingly into the repellent darkness of humanity’s soul, tracing the systematic torture of young captives subjected to the relentlessly sadistic games orchestrated by four fascist overlords.
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Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
Perhaps the only thing longer than the title Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is the film itself, as Chantal Akerman forces us to feel every passing minute of one homemaker’s fastidious routine, along with its gradual, psychological decay into exasperating chaos.
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Carrie (1976)
Coming of age is quite literally a horror show in Carrie, and one that Brian de Palma conducts with spectacular tension, brewing a lethal combination of hormones, trauma, and telekinetic powers within a lonely, abused teenager.