Here’s the next installment of my decade by decade Top 50s. Today, the greatest movies of the 1970s.
- Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
- The Godfather Parts I and II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972/4)
- Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
- Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, 1977)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
- Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison, 1971)
- Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1973)
- Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975)
- The Muppet Movie (James Frawley, 1979)
- Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
- Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971)
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
- The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard, 1979)
- Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
- Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
- Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975)
- The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
- Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
- Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978)
- 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
- The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)
- Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, 1975)
- All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
- The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
- Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
- The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
- Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977)
- Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974)
- The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi, 1978)
- Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
- The Magic Flute (Ingmar Bergman, 1975)
- Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
- The Rose (Mark Rydell, 1979)
- Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (Woody Allen, 1972)
- The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
- Rocky (John G. Avildsen, 1976)
- The Fury (Brian De Palma, 1978)
- THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971)
- Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978)
- The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
- Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
- Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978)
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975)
- Lacombe, Lucien (Louis Malle, 1974)
- Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974)
- Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
- California Split (Robert Altman, 1974)