JONATHAN ROSENBAUM'S 1000 ESSENTIAL FILMS- 1970s

Originally published in Essential Cinema, copyright 2004 Jonathan Rosenbaum

Below are Rosenbaum's 127 favorite films from the 1970s:

1970
Le cochon (Jean Eustache / Jean-Michel Barjol)
Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray)
L'enfant sauvage (Truffaut)
Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog)
The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle)
Performance (Nicolas Roeg / Donald Cammell)
Le petit theatre de Jean Renoir (Renoir)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Wilder)
Scenes from Under Childhood (Stan Brakhage)
The Spider's Strategem (Bertolucci)
Tristana (Bunuel)
Vampir (Pedro Portabella)
Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh)
Zabriskie Point (Antoinioni)

1971
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Brakhage)
The Death of Maria Malibrun (Werner Schroeter)
Deux fois (Jackie Raynal)
Four Nights of a Dreamer (Bresson)
How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Nelson Pereira Dos Santos)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
A New Leaf (Elaine May)
Nostalgia (Hollis Frampton)
Out 1 (Rivette)
Petit a petit (Rouch)
Red Psalm (Jancso)
La region centrale (Snow)
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas)
Trafic (Tati)
Two Lane Blacktop (Hellman)
Walkabout (Roeg)
Wanda (Barbara Loden)
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (Makavejev)

1972
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog)
Avanti! (Wilder)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel)
Fat City (Huston)
Fellini Roma (Fellini)
The Heartbreak Kid (May)
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci)
Out 1: Spectre (Rivette)
Solaris (Tarkovsky)

1973
Badlands (Terrence Malick)
F for Fake (Welles)
The Long Goodbye (Altman)
Martha (Fassbinder)
The Mongols (Parviz Kimiavi)
The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
Narita: Heta Village (Shinsuke Ogawa)
Nathalie Granger (Marguerite Duras)
Parade (Tati)
Salome (Carmelo Bene)
Some Call It Loving (James B. Harris)
Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mamberty)
What? (Polanski)

1974
Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders)
Benilde ou a virgem-mae (Manoel de Oliveira)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette)
Cockfighter (Hellman)
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola)
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (Thom Andersen)
La gueule ouverte (Maurice Pialat)
Lancelot du lac (Bresson)
Occasional Work of a Female Slave (Alexander Kluge)
The Phantom of Liberty (Bunuel)
Reason, Debate and a Tale (Ghatak)
Stavitsky... (Resnais)
The Traveler (Kiarostami)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes)

1975
Anatomie d'un rapport (Luc Mollet)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
India Song (Duras)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes)
Mandingo (Richard Fleischer)
Mikey and Nicky (May)
Night Moves (Penn)
Numero deux (Godard)
The Passenger (Antonioni)
Two Solutions for One Problem (Kiarostami)
Welfare (Frederick Wiseman)

1976
Breakfast (Snow)
Edvard Munch (Watkins)
11 x 14 (James Benning)
Family Plot (Hitchcock)
Ici et ailleurs (Godard / Anne-Marie Mieville)
L'Innocente (Visconti)
In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
Obsession (Brian De Palma)
Wide Angle Saxon (George Landow)

1977
Annie Hall (Allen)
Le camion (Duras)
Citizen's Band (Jonathan Demme)
Colloque de chiens (Dog's Dialogue) (Raul Ruiz)
The Devil, Probably (Bresson)
Eraserhead (Lynch)
Hitler, a Film from Germany (Hans-Jurgen Syberberg)
Last Chants for a Slow Dance (Jon Jost)
One Way Boogie Woogie (Benning)
Passing Through (Larry Clark)
Providence (Resnais)
That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel)
Valse Triste (Conner)

1978
La chambre verte (Truffaut)
The Discipline of DE (Gus Van Sant)
Doomed Love (de Oliveira)
Filming Othello (Welles)
France / tour / detour / deux / enfants (Godard / Mieville)
From the Cloud to the Resistance (Straub / Huillet)
Genese d'un repas (Moullet)
Incontinence (Manuel De Landa)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
LMNO (Robert Breer)
Martin (George Romero)
Mongoloid (Conner)
Les rendez-vous d'Anna (Akerman)
The Scenic Route (Mark Rappaport)

1979
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (Russ Meyer)
1941 (Spielberg)
Percival de gallois (Rohmer)
Real Life (Albert Brooks)
Richard Pryor - Live in Concert (Jeff Margolis)
Stalker (Tarkovsky)
Ticket of No Return (Ulrike Ottinger)
Wise Blood (Huston)

So who ruled the '70s? Rosenbaum's auteur scorecard:

Bunuel - 4 Bresson - 3 Duras - 3 Godard - 3 May - 3 Rivette - 3 Akerman - 2 Altman - 2 Antonioni - 2 Benning - 2 Bertolucci - 2 Brakhage - 2 Cassavetes - 2 Conner - 2 Coppola - 2 de Oliveira - 2 Eustache - 2 Hellman - 2 Herzog - 2 Huston - 2 Kiarostami - 2 Moullet - 2 Oshima - 2 Resnais - 2 Roeg -2 Snow - 2 Tarkovsky - 2 Tati - 2 Welles - 2 Wilder - 2