The 70s are in full flex mode in 1974. Francis Ford Coppola, Mel Brooks, and Gene Wilder, fresh off earlier successes, pull double duty which means double the films in top 10s for the year. Plus you get some great titled films this year that just ooze importance or entertainment value. Also, the gritty thriller had taken hold, with lots of great options this year to find people in perilous situations.
A great Mel Brooks comedy, as he says, rises below vulgarity. This one certainly does, mocking the Western genre with appalling and funny racial jokes, silly sight gags, and pure nonsense as only Brooks can pull off in a non smarmy way, culminating in one of the silliest endings the Monty Python team would have applauded.
The Nixon Administration created paranoid stories and directors everywhere. This was one of them, putting Warren Beatty’s journalist in the middle of a corporate espionage plot, with all sorts of large set pieces to scare the bejesus out of everyone. Alan Pakula’s movie isn’t perfect, but it gives us a taste of what he will achieve a couple years later when he takes on Watergate.
Burt Reynolds is one of the few who could play Paul Crewe, disgraced quarterback sent to prison, forced to rally the prison inmates to play the guards. Eddie Albert makes Warden Hazen into a sadistic power hungry man, trying everything to keep the Mean Machine from becoming anything important. The football sequences hold up extremely well, looking like real plays on a real football field.
Sydney Lumet is in the middle of an amazing run of films. This one sees him channeling Agatha Christie, taking her great novel and turning it into an all star cast whodunit, with Albert Finney playing Hercule Poirot, her famous Belgian detective.
Before Martin Scorcese became organized crime’s official photographer, he made this light drama about Ellen Burstyn’s Alice forced to leave place after place, in hopes to find a singing career. Yes there’s lots of real world shaky cams, but it’s the script that wins the day here along with Burstyn’s performance, crafting an incredible trailblazing modern woman, warts and all.
More Mel Brooks, why of course! This one’s got the longer legs, using the affection for Mary Shelley’s novel to lightly lampoon the monster movie, while Gene Wilder gives a gleefully over the top spin on Victor Frankenstein…but make sure to pronounce it in its pure German: Frankensteen. The movie finds that perfect lampooning sweet spot: mocking the genre tropes while also making a great genre movie at the same time.
One of the better heist movies made. That’s in part because of how much New York City is infused into this story of 4 gunmen taking a city transit train and its passengers hostage. The exasperation from Walter Matthau down from how this kidnapping is mostly irritating because it messes up New Yorkers day to day lives gives the high stakes a wonderful layer of dark humor. The movie finds the perfect tone all the way through its entertaining plot, culminating in a brilliant Walter Matthau side eye cut to credits.
While making the most important cinema in American History, Francis Ford Coppola also pulled out this gem. Gene Hackman plays one of many antiheroes in his career, as a man who uses technology to spy on people. As he is spying on others, he grows more paranoid himself that others are spying on him, leading to him maybe dropping that work/personal life barrier he put up to his own detriment maybe…
In a career of great performances, this might be Jack Nicholson’s best. Douchily, innocently playing a private eye getting money to spy on an adulterer, Nicholson’s JJ Gittes wades into a vast underbelly of cruel and downright evil machinations. Roman Polanski makes you feel like Nicholson is the smartest guy in the room, and slowly pulls the rug from his unknowing eyes with traumatic, potent results in a climax we don’t see in movies too often anymore.
For many, Francis Ford Coppola’s follow up to The Godfather not only improves upon the original, but elevates the story to biblical, Shakespearean levels of tragedy, making it one of the most important pieces of American filmmaking ever. Coppola pulls out all the tricks, paralleling Vito Corleone’s (Robert De Niro) rise to power to Michael’s (Al Pacino) quest to maintain it, throwing in deception, betrayal, paranoia, and desolation into one epic tale.
