The Top Ten Films of 1975
At the end of the year, as we do every year, we’ll be counting down the Top Ten Films of 2015 according to Flickchart’s global rankings. In the months leading up to that, we’re going to be taking a look back and seeing what Flickchart users think are the best movies of ten, twenty, thirty years ago and so on.
The previous entry in this series was The Top Ten Films of 2005. This time, the Flickchart DeLorean took us past 1995 and 1985 and deposited us in the groovy year of 1975, but don’t worry! We’ll keep jumping back and forth until we’ve hit all the great decades. For now let’s see what’s happening at the midway point of the 1970s.
1975 was radically different from 1965, in film and in society. American involvement in Vietnam ended in April, but defeat had long been a foregone conclusion. The baby boomers were becoming parents and learning the hard way that the economy could fall as well as rise. An irreverent new TV program, Saturday Night Live, promised to pull no punches, and millions watched Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier beat each other up in the “Thrilla in Manila.” Fewer people caught the first episode of Sneak Peak, a film review show featuring a couple of apparently mismatched misanthropes from Chicago named Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Although filmmakers continued to revel in their post-censorship freedom to depict frank sex, exaggerated violence, and to let the bad guys win, a number also turned to technology in search of new storytelling avenues. Steven Spielberg broke into the mainstream in a big way with Jaws, and a young director named George Lucas opened the doors on a startup he called Industrial Light and Magic. Nobody knew it yet, but this creation would help make cinema in 1985 as different from 1975 as the latter had been from 1965.
Those other decades will come in good time. For now, here are Flickchart users’ top ten titles from 1975:
#10. Picnic at Hanging Rock
Hanging Rock is a real-life Australian geological feature. Though far less famous than Uluru (Ayers Rock), it is well-known locally as an outdoor venue for globetrotting musicians like Bruce Springsteen, who played two sold-out shows there in 2013. But in Aussie Joan Lindsey’s 1967 novella Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the 1975 Australian New Wave film of the same name by Peter Wier (best known outside Australia for The Truman Show), it is something far less innocuous — the rock is an eerie, primeval place, an ancient puncture on a wild landscape that British immigrants attempt to tame. Lindsey’s story follows a group of students and instructors from an all-women boarding school on a field trip to Hanging Rock in the year 1900. A few of the girls and teachers become mesmerized by the place and go missing while exploring the hill-sized rock’s crags and clefts. Suspicion falls on a pair of local boys, but the mystery itself takes a backseat to its social and financial ramifications inside the school. The book and movie are ambiguous, psychological works, and when the film won a BAFTA for cinematographer Russell Boyd it helped raise the bar for Australian cinema going forward. – David Conrad
- Currently ranked #566 of all time
- Ranked 15856 times by 924 users
- Wins 49% of matchups
#9. Three Days of the Condor
A well-crafted and gripping thriller that springs from the paranoia of the post-Watergate era that brought us such films as The Parallax View (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976). Robert Redford stars as a CIA analyst who finds himself on the run when he unknowingly stumbles onto a clandestine conspiracy. Through a combination of luck and quick thinking, he manages to outsmart his would-be killers long enough to keep his head above water. Running out of people he can trust, in desperation he is forced to connect with a stranger, played by Faye Dunaway, relying on her kindness to stay alive. With her assistance, he works to peel back the layers of intrigue without getting either of them killed. Their only chance for survival is to find the truth – but it carries a costly trade-off: knowledge gained is innocence lost. The direction from Sydney Pollack is taut and spare, highlighting the emotional and honest performances by Redford and Dunaway who are both endearing and sympathetic. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film Editing. – Ben Shoemaker
- Currently ranked #508 of all time
- Ranked 18343 times by 1336 users
- Wins 50% of matchups
#8. The Man Who Would Be King
Among military and history buffs, the aphorisms “Don’t get into a land war in Asia” and “Afghanistan is where empires go to die” date back much further than the latest conflicts in the region. As long ago as 1888, when Rudyard Kipling wrote the story The Man Who Would Be King, observers recognized that Westerners’ reach frequently exceeded their grasp when it came to Asian adventurism. In the film version by the great American director John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon) Michael Caine and Sean Connery play a cocksure pair of pith-helmeted Brits who tell Kipling (Christopher Plummer) of their plan to become kings in the high Hindu Kush hinterland. What starts as a dryly funny buddy adventure soon turns into a character study, and finally into a cautionary illustration of the hubris of those who seek to conquer. Connery and Caine seldom delivered better performances. – David
- Currently ranked #394 of all time
- Ranked 19915 times by 1484 users
- Wins 48% of matchups
#7. Love and Death
Love and Death sometimes gets overlooked in the light of Woody Allen‘s later work, such as Manhattan, Annie Hall, or Hannah and Her Sisters, but this goofy send-up of heavy Russian literature and films is one of his funniest comedies. Even for those mostly unfamiliar with what he’s parodying, the end result is so absurdly funny that you won’t feel like you’ve missed out on the joke. Allen himself and frequent leading lady Diane Keaton are both hilarious here, switching effortlessly between silly wordplay and over-the-top philosophical ponderings. Not only is this one of Flickchart’s top films from 1975, but it’s also Woody Allen’s top-ranked pure comedy without a hint of drama. If you like Allen’s sense of humor, this movie is a must-see. – Hannah Keefer
- Currently ranked #391 of all time
- Ranked 21564 times by 1333 users
- Wins 52% of matchups
#6. Nashville
Nobody did ensemble casts like Robert Altman, and he never did it better than in Nashville. A confluence of political, personal, and performative events brings no fewer than 24 separate major characters to Nashville, each of which both fulfills a stereotype to some degree (the folk trio, the solo superstar with depression, the wannabe who can’t sing, the wannabe who can, the groupie, the clueless journalist, etc.), but also transcends those stereotypes to surprise and move you. Some of the cast is more memorable than others (Lily Tomlin in particular is a revelation), but all of them create believable character with very limited screen time, and the screenplay by Joan Tewkesbury brings them all in and out of each others’ lives in often remarkable ways. Best of all, you don’t have to care about either politics (embodied by the omnipresent but never seen grassroots candidate Hal Phillip Walker) or country music to get something great out of Nashville. – Jandy Hardesty
- Currently ranked #274 of all time
- Ranked 27768 times by 1321 users
- Wins 53% of matchups
#5. Barry Lyndon
Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon has deep roots. Artistically, it owes as much to Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hogarth, and other 17th– and 18th-century visual chroniclers of European society as it does to anything in the history of film. Each shot is exquisitely staged, naturalistically and angularly lit, and held in suspension: still-life and portraiture as moving image. The film, based on a 19th-century picaresque novel, also draws on the extensive body of research that Kubrick gathered for a biopic of Napoleon that never came to fruition. The character of Redmond Barry, who has military adventures on the continent before acquiring the title Lord Lyndon, lives the Napoleonic pattern of rise, fall, rise, and fall on a more modest, human scale than the French emperor. Ryan O’Neal gives his best performance as Barry, an inarticulate, tactless, discontented soul in a world where sensitivity is genteelly coded as “sensibility” and disputes are resolved in the gentlemanly fashion: with dueling pistols. Barry Lyndon tells a meticulous and thoughtful period story, but Kubrick’s famously cold appraisal of characters was never colder, even in the dead of space or at a snowbound hotel. – David
- Currently ranked #259 of all time
- Ranked 62910 times by 4207 users
- Wins 44% of matchups
#4. Dog Day Afternoon
I’ve seen movies starring Al Pacino that I prefer to Dog Day Afternoon, but the actor himself may never have been better than he is in Sidney Lumet‘s chronicle of a bank heist gone so horribly, comically wrong, one almost can’t believe it was inspired by true events. There’s an inevitably to the course of events that rears its head from the very first minor setback. Yet Sonny (Pacino) plows ahead, dragging his cohort, Sal (John Cazale), along on a single-minded, self-destructive course that becomes the very definition of “media circus”, and ends with resignation total and complete. For the audience, it’s like watching a train wreck unfold: You can’t possibly look away. – Nigel Druitt
- Currently ranked #147 of all time
- Ranked 154270 times by 12656 users
- Wins 53% of matchups
#3. Jaws
Thank goodness the shark failed. If “Bruce” had performed to expectations, he would have had entirely too much screen time, and Hollywood’s first blockbuster would have jumped the shark before it had even reached the halfway mark. And it wouldn’t have worked. It’s the not knowing – the uncertainty – that makes Jaws so effective. By the time he finally rears his ugly head, you’ve heard Robert Shaw‘s blood-curdling tale, you’ve seen the carnage this man-eater hath wrought, and you already know you’ll never go in the water, because you’re terrified. In the end, it doesn’t matter how fake the shark looks, because you know no boat, no matter how big, will save you. – Nigel
- Currently ranked #60 of all time
- Ranked 685920 times by 68635 users
- Wins 58% of matchups
#2. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python’s first feature film (unless you count And Now for Something Completely Different which is composed entirely of skits from their TV series) is widely considered their best film. And for good reason. Monty Python and the Holy Grail encapsulates everything loved about the comedy troupe. Outlandish humor, snarky and witty dialogue, and perfect comedic timing are all qualities that make Holy Grail a great success and the epitome of British humor. One of the most widely quoted films of all time, its many scenes are all widely remembered decades later. Opening with “Swedish” credits, which are hilariously subtitled, the viewer knows from the start they are in for a hilarious 91 minutes. Whether it’s John Cleese‘s relentless Black Knight (“Tis but a scratch”), Terry Gilliam‘s hilariously mysterious Bridgekeeper, Sir Robin’s minstrels or the many other memorable roles throughout the film, they all showcase the comedic genius and acting of the Pythons. What makes the film even more remarkable is the extremely low budget it was made on. Made on an estimated budget of $365,274, the troupe had to use all of their film-making knowledge to produce the film and its effects. Yet as the line goes, from adversity comes art. The low budget resulted in the now unforgettable use of coconuts for horses among other jokes making the film all the better for it. The film now stands as an icon of British art and as one of the best films in all of cinema. – Connor Ryan Adamson
- Currently ranked #19 of all time
- Ranked 636331 times by 67272 users
- Wins 63% of matchups
#1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Jack Nicholson is at his very best in this Best Picture-winning drama about a charismatic but unpredictable patient shaking things up at a mental institution with his passion for life. There have been many, many movies following that general trope, but what makes this movie rise to the top is the complexity of its characters. While the initial assumption is that Nicholson’s McMurphy is the good guy, and Louise Fletcher‘s Nurse Ratched is the villain, it’s not nearly as clear-cut as that. When McMurphy shakes up the routine and the other patients are left scrambling to adjust, there are moments where you wonder if Nurse Ratched really is just trying to do what is best for everyone in the face of the new guy’s determination to do things his way. Other times, you loathe her furiously and can’t wait for our protagonist to push back. In the end, that’s what makes the film so compelling and eternally rewatchable: the characters are not obvious villains and heroes. What could have been relegated to a mediocre inspirational story with a heartwarming soundtrack becomes instead a brilliant look at the subtlety of abusive power. – Hannah
- Currently ranked #16 of all time
- Ranked 489422 times by 47139 users
- Wins 65% of matchups
Bloggers’ Picks
The above list is Flickchart’s Global Top 10 for 1975, calculated based on the rankings of all users. We wanted to showcase some of our own personal favorites, so each of us picked a favorite film of 1975 NOT included in the Global Top 10.
David – The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show a good movie or a bad movie? It’s bad enough that it inspired theaters full of gleeful riffers and toast-throwers years before MST3K began pillorying B-movies on public access TV. Yet it’s entertaining enough that people are still dressing up as their favorite characters and memorizing the script (and the scripted riff) 40 years on. Tim Curry’s scenery-chewing performance as a drag diva (or transsexual transvestite, or space alien) is willfully, ingeniously hammy, while writer Richard O’Brien steals his scenes as the Igor-esque Riff-Raff. Say what you will about its production quality, but the songs of Rocky Horror are as clever and catchy as anything from Sondheim, Rodgers, Hammerstein, Gilbert, or Sullivan. And they’re arguably more accessible: Hot Patootie — Bless My Soul is a pastiche of early Rock ‘n Roll, and Science Fiction/Double Feature, There’s a Light, and other numbers are naked tributes to movie stars, superheroes,and pulp entertainment. Whether you like it for real or just ironically, a midnight Rocky Horror screening is practically a rite of passage.
- Currently ranked #977 of all time
- Ranked 157785 times by 19231 users
- Wins 39% of matchups
Ben – Night Moves
With a labyrinthine plot and complex characters, Night Moves has much in common with Chinatown (1974), although it lacks that film’s more sophisticated visual style. Gene Hackman is in peak form following The French Connection (1971) and The Conversation (1974). He plays Harry Moseby, a retired football player turned private investigator with enough problems of his own that he prefers to solve those of others. As Harry stumbles along from clue to clue, he struggles to determine black and white amidst shades of gray. The mystery unravels, along with Harry’s life, and both twist and turn in unexpected ways. The dialogue crackles with moments of wry honesty. Directed by Arthur Penn, he doesn’t quite match the brilliance of his earlier film, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) but there is much to like in this superbly written neo-noir.
- Currently ranked #1389 of all time
- Ranked 7207 times by 368 users
- Wins 51% of matchups
Hannah – The Sunshine Boys
One of Neil Simon’s funniest scripts makes it to the screen in this adaptation of his 1972 play, which could be described as The Odd Couple with 70-year-olds. George Burns and Walter Matthau play Al Lewis and Willy Clark, two aging comedians who used to have a vaudeville act together. 11 years ago they split, unpleasantly, and now they don’t speak to each other at all, until Clark’s nephew persuades them to reunite for one show, with predictably chaotic results. The dialogue is witty, the characters are entertaining, and Burns and Matthau play off each other brilliantly. (Both were Oscar-nominated for this role, and Burns won.) It’s a delightful movie, and well worth seeing.
- Currently ranked #3336 of all time
- Ranked 3553 times by 216 users
- Wins 43% of matchups
Jandy – Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
A woman takes care of her house, prepares dinner, watches the neighbor’s child, has nearly silent dinners with her son, and does the dishes. We watch her do these things from a nearly static camera, and many of the events (especially her cooking) play out in just about real time. We see three days of her life, going through the same mind-numbing chores in silence. There is a catch — each day she also has a man come into her home and sleep with her. He leaves money for her. Even that is routine, though — just another mundane chore in a mundane life. When a shocking bit of action comes on the third day, it’s all the more shocking because of everything that has (or more correctly, hasn’t) come before. But waiting for that is not even the point of the movie. It’s not boring for some three hours merely to provide contrast; it is boring because Jeanne’s life is boring. The lives of many women like Jeanne are boring. This is considered a great feminist film because it powerfully shows a world you rarely see in fiction of any sort, but especially in film. It’s easy to consider this a “vegetable” film that you watch because it’s good for you, but though I zoned in and out a few times (really, I think the film intends for this to some degree), I found myself profoundly affected by Jeanne.
- Currently ranked #2820 of all time
- Ranked 2190 times by 134 users
- Wins 57% of matchups
I have seen the top 3. Now I am interested in seeing the rest of the list. But really more interested in watching the top 3 again.