Every decade has one of two years that generate an extraordinary output of films. These are years that produce a plethora of titles that are influential and beloved, early works by important filmmakers, and pictures that redefine the possibilities of cinema. The decade of the 1970s is unique because virtually every year is like that. But 1974 had some especially notable films and so today’s program surveyed the titles released that year.
Francis Ford Coppola
1972’s The Godfather was about the Corleone crime family with the duties of running the family business passing from the father Vito to the son Michael. The Godfather Part II continued the story with a dual narrative. Half the film is an immigrant narrative telling the backstory of Vito Corleone and the other half is Michael’s reign as family patriarch and his descent into villainy. The movie is renowned for its performances and its cinematography but also its scope and ambition. The Godfather was quickly deemed one of the best films ever made and Part II managed to equal its predecessor.
The Godfather Part II was the major critical success of 1974. The original Godfather was a box office hit and the winner of numerous Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Francis Ford Coppola. The sequel repeated its predecessor’s award wins; The Godfather Part II and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are the only sequels to win the Academy’s top prize. Today, The Godfather Part II is cited alongside The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight among the greatest sequels ever made.
The Godfather Part II was one of two movies filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola released in 1974. The other was The Conversation, a drama starring Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who surreptitiously records an exchange between two people. He suspects that the client intends to murder these people, leading Hackman’s character to an ethical crisis. Hackman’s subtle performance is terrific and The Conversation is one of Coppola’s best movies. Some would say it is even better than The Godfather Part II. I don’t share that view but the fact that the argument can be made credibly speaks to The Conversation’s greatness.
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks also released dual movies in 1974 and in fact they were two of his best: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Both films are satires with Blazing Saddles sending up westerns and Young Frankenstein lampooning the classic Universal monster films.
Young Frankenstein reiterates the familiar scenario with Gene Wilder playing the descendent of the mad doctor who created a monster out of dead body parts. Young Frankenstein is an exemplary parody. It recreates the look and style of the classic Universal horror pictures and even includes some of the same props. It has fun with the genre and viewers who know and love the classic Universal monster films will have fun spotting the references. But the story and characters are self-contained enough and funny enough for Young Frankenstein to work on its own. Years later, Mel Brooks adapted this film into a popular stage musical.
Blazing Saddles imagined a Black sheriff taking up duties in a small frontier town where he’s joined by the gunslinger The Waco Kid. The writing credits on Blazing Saddles include Richard Pryor and in fact Pryor was the first choice to play the sherif with John Wayne as The Waco Kid. Those roles went to Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, respectively. The casting worked out in the film’s favor. Little’s silly but earnest performance is one of the film’s greatest assets.
Blazing Saddles had provocatively progressive politics. The movie’s sense of humor is very blue ranging from flatulence jokes to edgy racial humor. Cultural critics often point to this movie bemoaningly to proclaim that “You can’t make Blazing Saddles today.” That’s probably wrong given the humor of the movie Tropic Thunder and the television series South Park. But that complaint also misses the point. Blazing Saddles was made for an audience that had been raised on classic westerns and it was released shortly after that genre had gone out of style. It was also released in a period of racial tension following the civil rights movement. Today’s audience has a different point of reference. The commentator Lindsay Ellis has examined the Blazing Saddles question in an excellent video essay about Mel Brooks’ movies.
Movies About Women and Couples
1974 had two movies with extraordinary female performances: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore starring Ellen Burstyn and A Woman Under the Influence starring Gina Rowlands. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is about a newly widowed mother. Her only work experience is as a singer which she had given up to be a housewife. The film is about Alice finding a path forward while raising her ungovernable son. Hollywood tends to idealize motherhood, especially in films prior to the 1970s, but Alice is a complicated and flawed character who is brought to life by Ellen Burstyn. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was directed by Martin Scorsese and co-stars Harvey Keitel and Kris Kristofferson.
A Woman Under the Influence is a character study of Mabel, a woman struggling with substance abuse and mental illness. It’s a very contained movie with most of it taking place inside of Mabel’s house as she is joined by her family for dinner. A Woman Under the Influence is a John Cassavetes film and it is one of the essential titles in director’s filmography. Gena Rowlands’ performance has been often cited as one of the greatest performances by an actress in a motion picture.
1974 also included a couple of dramatic films about couples that are worth mentioning. One of these was Scenes from a Marriage directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film is about a couple who appear happy from the outside but whose marriage is crumbling behind closed doors. Scenes from a Marriage was originally broadcast on Swedish television as a miniseries. It was later cut into a 167-minute version that was shown theatrically in the United States. Scenes from a Marriage was remade in 2021 as a miniseries starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain.
The Sugarland Express was also released in 1974. Goldie Hawn and William Atherton star as a couple who take a police officer hostage and lead law enforcement on a lengthy pursuit. The Sugarland Express was Steven Spielberg’s feature directorial debut. Spielberg had previously worked in television and directed the made-for-TV movie Duel but The Sugarland Express was his first theatrical feature. It is very un-Spielbergian. This film doesn’t have the fun and optimism that we usually associate with the director’s work. It was the first collaboration between Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams and The Sugarland Express was produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown who would also produce Jaws.
Documentaries and Political Dramas
The early 1970s were a politically fraught time which was reflected in many of the films released in that period. Two documentaries released in 1974 have become important historical artifacts. General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait was a documentary by French director Barbet Schroeder that profiled the Ugandan dictator. It’s a fascinating documentary. Schroeder was given considerable access to Amin who was charismatic but also regularly executed cabinet ministers and political rivals. There were two versions of the documentary: one that was highly edited and released in Uganda and a second that was released around the world. Amin demanded that Schroeder make additional cuts to the international version and when the director refused Amin held hostages until Schroeder relented. The version of the documentary available today is Schroeder’s cut.
Also released in 1974, Hearts and Minds is a documentary about the Vietnam War. The film is styled as an observational documentary. It doesn’t have narration but creates meaning through the juxtaposition of images. The picture features a wide range of commentators, including General William Westmoreland, Daniel Ellsberg, Bobby Muller, and George Thomas Coker, and it includes footage of napalm dropped on a Vietnamese village. Hearts and Minds is an extraordinary film and one of the most important documentaries about the Vietnam War.
Politics also made their way into dramatic films. The Trial of Billy Jack is the third film in that series. The story incorporates a wide range of issues including the massacre of civilians during the Vietnam War and the struggle of native people to defend their land against the encroachments of developers and the government.
1974’s political dramas included two thrillers about investigative reporters. The Odessa File is about a reporter who learns of a West German organization that protected the identities of former Nazi SS officers in the decades after World War II. The film implied that the West Berlin police force was full for former Nazis and collaborators. The Parallax View is about a journalist investigating a private organization that coordinates political assassinations. The film mixed the paranoia thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock with the style of 1970s filmmaking and it played for an audience had been through the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and others.
Disaster Movies
One of the most popular cinematic trends of the 1970s was disaster movies. Starting with 1970’s Airport and 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, these movies typically featured large casts with recognizable actors. It is a formula that would be replicated decades later in movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012. Three disaster movies released in 1974. The Towering Inferno starred Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and O.J. Simpson in a story of a skyscraper that catches fire. Earthquake starred Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, Goerge Kennedy, and Richard Roundtree. As the title implies, Earthquake was about a huge seismic event devastating Los Angeles. The film was the basis for a popular attraction at the Universal Studios theme park. Also released in 1974, Airport 1975 starred Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Karen Black, Linda Blair, and Sid Caesar. This was the second film in the Airport series and probably the most influential on the 1980 parody Airplane!
Blaxploitation
Following the release of Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, the 1970s saw a surge of Blaxploitation movies. These were films that primarily featured Black actors and a lot of them were genre films, often depicting a hero who fights back against organized crime and corrupt cops. Several Blaxploitation films were released in 1974, among them Foxy Brown starring Pam Grier. She plays a woman whose informant boyfriend is murdered by drug dealers and she sets out on a revenge spree. 1974 also saw the release of Black Fist starring Richard Lawson, Truck Turner starring Isaac Hayes, and TNT Jackson starring Jeannie Bell.
Also worth mentioning here are Uptown Saturday Night and Claudine. Uptown Saturday Night is an action comedy directed by and starring Sidney Poitier. The cast includes Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte, and Richard Pryor. Uptown Saturday Night is a bit more polished than other Blaxploitation titles and although the story had a criminal element some of those qualities were softened. The film inspired two sequels: Let’s Do It Again and A Piece of the Action.
Claudine is a love story of a single mother living on welfare with six children who falls for a garbage collector. Writing for the New York Times, Vincent Canby called Claudine, “the first major film about black life to consider the hopes, struggles, defeats and frustrations of blacks who aren’t either supercops, supermusicians, superstuds, superpimps or superpushers.” Claudine stars Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones.
Science Fiction
Science fiction was not a popular genre in the mid-1970s. However, there are a few titles from 1974 that are worth mentioning. Dark Star was the feature film directorial debut of John Carpenter and it was written by Dan O’Bannon. A spaceship is boarded by an extraterrestrial that kills the crew. Dark Star is deliberately silly and it plays as a farcical take on movies like Forbidden Planet; the alien creature is an inflatable beach ball. Dark Star is also the root of later films such as John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing and Dan O’Bannon’s script to the original Alien.
1974 saw the release of two notable sci-fi adaptations. The Terminal Man was based on Michael Crichton’s novel about a computer scientist who tries to cure his seizures with an electric implant. The procedure makes him violent. The Land That Time Forgot was an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel about a group of people who discover a hidden island populated by dinosaurs. The Land That Time Forgot was a success that inspired a couple of sequels. The film was later shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Also released in 1974, Zardoz is a dystopian fantasy film in which an elite society controls the peasants with a giant stone head that resembles a god. The movie was directed by John Boorman and stars Sean Connery. It’s a bizarre film that has attracted a cult audience. A couple of Halloweens ago I encountered a group dressed as characters from Zardoz, with one of them costumed as the giant stone head.
Cult and Exploitation
A couple of car movies were released in 1974. The original Gone in 60 Seconds was about a group of thieves who must steal fifty cars within a few days. The movie has a legendary car chase scene that goes on for forty minutes. Also released in 1974, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is about two aspiring racecar drivers who link up with an unstable woman and all three of them are on the run from the law. These movies were influential on Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright who paid tribute to them in Death Proof and Baby Driver.
The 1970s gave us a lot of cult and exploitation films. These low budget pictures were on-the-job training for many filmmakers who made a name for themselves. Caged Heat was a women-in-prison movie directed by Johnathan Demme who went to direct The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. Female Trouble was one of John Waters early movies and it’s about a runaway who becomes part of a female gang. Female Trouble shows the influence of the Manson Family which was frequently referenced in Waters’ movies.
Phantom of the Paradise is one of Brian De Palma’s early movies. It’s a glam rock interpretation of The Phantom of the Opera with elements of Faust and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Like a lot of De Palma’s films, Phantom of the Paradise is highly stylized. The cast includes Paul Williams, William Finley, and Jessica Harper and the soundtrack is fun. Phantom of the Paradise has a cult following and some musicians have cited it as influential, among them Daft Punk.
Horror
The 1970s saw an impressive output in the horror genre and a few horror gems were released in 1974. By far the most significant title was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. One of the original slasher films, the movie imagined a group of hippies traveling into rural Texas and encountering a cannibalistic family that includes Leatherface, a large mentally impaired man who wears a mask of human flesh. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the great American horror films. It’s not nearly as bloody as the title implies but it is superbly made and incredibly intense.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein who famously robbed graves, killed women, and used body parts to make furniture. Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released the same year as Deranged which was a fictionalized dramatization of Gein’s life. The names were changed but most relevant details were retained. Deranged had special effects by Tom Savini who would go on to work on Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th and Maniac.
In addition to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974’s other seminal slasher release was the original Black Christmas. This movie told the story of a college sorority house in which the women are stalked by a killer. It’s very well made and very creepy. We never actually see the killer and the young women are well characterized. The cast includes Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder and Black Christmas was directed by Bob Clark who later helmed A Christmas Story. Black Christmas was remade twice, first in 2006 and again in 2019.
It’s Alive was a Larry Cohen film about a mutant infant who murders those around him. It’s a ludicrous premise but the film manages to sell it with some crafty filmmaking and good performances. The baby was designed by Rick Baker who later did effects for An American Werewolf in London and Videodrome. The movie did respectable business in 1974 but it was re-released in 1977 with a new advertising campaign that resonated with audiences. It’s Alive had a couple of sequels and a remake was released in 2009.
The Exorcist was released in 1973 and it became one of the most popular and most successful movies ever made. Imitators were released the next year, among them Beyond the Door and Abby. Warner Bros. filed lawsuits against both films for copyright infringement. The Beyond the Door case was settled in 1979 and the movie is generally available. A couple of sequels followed. Abby, a Blaxploitation film, never really recovered from the legal injunction. It’s become a cult title and not widely available.
Sugar Hill was another relevant Blaxploitation horror film of 1974. The film imagines that zombies are the preserved bodies of slaves brought to the United States and the lead character uses voodoo to get revenge on the people responsible for her boyfriend’s death. The film is also sometimes titled The Zombies of Sugar Hill. This is an underappreciated title but in recent years Sugar Hill has been recognized as an important film in horror history.
Crime Movies
Violent crime rose precipitously in the 1970s and continued to rise throughout the 1980s. This was reflected in a lot of Blaxploitation films but there were plenty of other street crime films released at this time. One of the most significant and influential of these titles was 1974’s Death Wish. Charles Bronson stars as a mild-mannered architect whose wife and daughter are assaulted by muggers. He begins patrolling the New York City streets and shooting criminals. Death Wish was an extremely controversial film at the time. It was a hit that inspired sequels and imitators but also some copycat vigilantes.
Crime was also a subject of some prestige cinema. Murder on the Orient Express was an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot as well as Lauren Becall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins, and Vanessa Redgrave. As a film of 1974, Murder on the Orient Express is a curious release. It feels like a throwback to the studio era at a time when American cinema was distancing itself from that sort of filmmaking. In that respect, Murder on the Orient Express makes an interesting comparison to Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston. The movie was a detective drama set in 1930s Los Angeles but it was also attuned with the filmmaking styles of the 1970s.
Thieves Like Us is also set in the 1930s. Based on Edward Anderson’s novel They Live by Night, the film is about a pair of criminals who abscond from prison. Thieves Like Us was directed by Robert Altman and starred Keith Carridine, Shelley Duvall, and John Schuck.
Some other crime films of 1974 include Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Gambler, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Bring Me the Head of Alfred Garcia was directed by Sam Peckinpah and it was one of the director’s favorite projects. Peckinpah is generally associated with the western genre and while Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was a contemporary story it definitely had western influences. The Gambler is about an English professor whose betting habits get out hand and he owes large to a mafioso. 1974’s The Gambler starred James Caan and Paul Sorvino. A remake starring Mark Wahlberg was released in 2014. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a comedic crime story starring Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges as a bank robber and a car thief.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a thriller about criminals who hijack a subway car and demand a ransom. It’s a tense and smart thriller directed by Joseph Sargent and starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. The criminals of this film have color coded nicknames like Mr. Blue and Mr. Green, which Quentin Tarantino repurposed in Reservoir Dogs. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was remade twice, first as a 1998 television film and in 2009 as a theatrical feature.
Erotica
In the 1970s filmmakers took bold strides in the depiction of sexuality. This came about in part because of changes in the culture as well as changes in the filmmaking industry as Hollywood abandoned the highly restrictive Production Code and transitioned to the contemporary ratings system. The cultural and industrial shifts were partly driven by competition from European filmmakers whose works were more sexual and had started to be shown in American theaters. Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini had previously directed The Canterbury Tales and The Decameron and in 1974 he released Arabian Nights which was an adaptation of Middle Eastern folktales. All three of those pictures had liberal depictions of sexuality.
The French film Emmanuelle was a softcore erotic film starring Sylvia Kristel. It was an adaptation of the novel by Emmanuelle Arsan and the film was a success in many international markets. This is perhaps the most significant and influential erotic film of its kind. 1974’s Emmanuelle shaped the softcore erotica market and kicked off a succession of sequels and imitators including the Black Emanuelle series which had over two dozen installments. A remake of Emmanuelle was released in 2024.
In a much darker vein, The Night Porter is about a Holocaust survivor who enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with her former Nazi concentration camp officer. The film was understandably controversial but it deals with the connection between trauma and eroticism in a provocative but interesting way.
Other Notable Films
The Longest Yard is a drama about an imprisoned former professional football player. The warden forces him to assemble to team of prisoners for an exhibition game against the guards. The film starred Burt Reynolds and former NFL players Ray Nitschke, Mike Henry, and Joe Kapp. The Longest Yard has been remade three times: the 2001 British film Mean Machine, the 2005 remake starring Adam Sandler, and the 2015 Egyptian film Captain Masr.
Lords of Flatbush is a period piece set in 1958 about the misadventures of a group of Brooklyn teenagers. It’s adjacent to American Graffiti and Diner, taking place in the same time period and featuring several actors who went on to major success, namely Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler.
Harry and Tonto is a Paul Mazursky film about a senior citizen whose New York City apartment building is torn down and he sets out on a road trip with his cat. The cast includes Art Carney and Ellen Burstyn.
Lenny is a biopic of groundbreaking comic Lenny Bruce, whose standup act was considered obscene. While the film has a lot of comedy it’s primarily a tragedy. Lenny Bruce is played brilliantly by Dustin Hoffman who is paired with the equally terrific Valerie Perrine as his wife.
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