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The 1970s The Last Golden Age of American Cinema (the American "New Wave") and the Advent of the Blockbuster Film Part 4 Film History of the 1970s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 Film History by Decade Index | Pre-1920s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
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John Cassavetes - Independent Auteur
The 'Detective' and Crime Film Genre: Right-Wing Cop Action Films Throughout his impassioned, unrestrained and fanatical search for the killer, the heavy-handed and embittered Callahan was reprimanded by his authoritarian, bureaucratic superiors (the Mayor, the DA, etc.) for not following 'the book' and for illegally overstepping his procedural bounds by ignoring victims' rights. By film's end after killing Scorpio, the heroic Dirty Harry threw away his badge. Critic Pauline Kael labeled the film "fascist" and "deeply immoral" for its strident political views, since the film took a non-PC political stance - the POV of crime victims (rather than criminals) by its endorsement of autonomous vigilantism. Four successors to Dirty Harry (1971) that starred Eastwood were:
Similar to "Dirty Harry," Charles Bronson (as NYC architect Paul Kersey) sought vengeance as an angry, emotionless vigilante in Michael Winner's controversial thriller Death Wish (1974). Kersey was not present in his Manhattan apartment when his wife Joanna (Hope Lange) was lethally assaulted by hoodlums (and his daughter Carol was raped at the hands of one of the thugs, portrayed by Jeff Goldblum). Kersey sought extra-legal street justice for himself when the impotent police failed to solve the case, and he began to take pleasure in punishing muggers and other criminals, sometimes by posing as a vulnerable target but in fact setting up a predatory attack. Kersey soon found himself the target of NYPD Lt. Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) who was in pursuit of the vigilante responsible for numerous killings. The original film led to three similar sequels in the 1980s:
The Start of Clint Eastwood's Growing Influence: Clint Eastwood was transformed when he made an impressive debut as director in the psychologically-shocking, suspenseful, and violent Play Misty for Me (1971) about a KRML Radio disc jockey threatened by an obsessed fan who kept calling for her favorite song. He also starred as easy-going trucker and bare-knuckle fighter Philo Beddoe who was upstaged by an orangutan named Clyde in the C&W comedy Every Which Way But Loose (1978). Its success led to the inevitable sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980). Eastwood also starred in Siegel's suspenseful prison break-out film Escape From Alcatraz (1979). He also began directing, producing, and acting in westerns in the 70s - a career move that he maintained into the 90s, during a time when most directors avoided the unpopular genre:
Urban Crime Thrillers, Militancy and Graphic Violence: Its sequel by director John Frankenheimer - French Connection II (1975) brought back Gene Hackman as the tough-nosed NY cop still in pursuit of international heroin dealers in Marseilles. Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973), based on the book by Peter Maas, was the true story of dedicated, honest New York cop Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) (nicknamed Paco) who fought against vast corruption in the city by blowing the whistle on others who took payoffs. William Friedkin also directed Pacino in Cruising (1980) as an undercover cop investigating grisly murders in NY's gay community. The headlines of a fact-based 1972 story about a defiant folk-hero - a bi-sexual bank robber in a desperate hostage situation, became the basis for Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Its unlikely story pitted nothing-to-lose hustler Sonny Wortzick (Al Pacino again) in a failed NYC bank raid against the authorities - to fund his boyfriend's (Chris Sarandon) sex change operation. Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent Straw Dogs (1971) provoked controversy with charges of gratuitous violence, and The Getaway (1972) with hard-bitten convict Steve McQueen in the lead role, was another typically-violent film. Michael Caine starred in the UK crime film Get Carter (1971) as the title character - a London gangster trying to avenge his murdered brother. Sydney Pollack's suspenseful political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) involved a researcher (Robert Redford) who discovered all of his co-workers dead after lunch - and a conspiracy within the CIA, and decided the only way to survive was to give his story to The New York Times. Walter Hill's gang film set in a surrealistic New York City entitled The Warriors (1979) was worrisome for its instigation of violent gang warfare and feuding. Actual gang violence, including shootings, rumbles, and stabbings occurred during some showings of The Warriors (1979) and Michael Pressman's Boulevard Nights (1979), about East LA gang life in a Latino barrio. The Continuing James Bond Series: There were five additional entries in the Bond series in the decade, with a new actor (Roger Moore) in the role of agent 007 beginning in 1973:
African American Film-Makers in the Early 1970s: Black actors and film-makers had always played a part in early American film history, as either stereotypical or typecast characters (maids or mammy figures, porters, comic-relief characters, "Uncle Toms," etc.), or in the films of black film-makers such as producer/director Oscar Micheaux (with his low-budget, usually all-black "race films") and others. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dorothy Dandridge (the first African American screen siren), Harry Belafonte (the first African American male sex symbol), and Sidney Poitier (the first black superstar) became Hollywood's black superstars. Roles for blacks began to slowly increase in scope and change with the advent of concurrent social changes. A number of black athletes entered the cinematic arena to perform in generic action films, including O.J. Simpson, Jim Brown, and Fred Williamson. African-American film-makers also began to make inroads in the late 60s, beginning with Gordon Parks Sr.'s brilliantly-photographed first directorial film The Learning Tree (1969) - an autobiographical account (or coming-of-age film) of a boy growing up black in 1920s Kansas, and realizing the consequences of race. [Note: Parks was a former photojournalist with Life Magazine, and the first black mainstream Hollywood director. Parks' film was a major milestone - he was the first African-American film-maker to direct a motion picture that was released by a major US studio.] Independent film actor/director/writer Melvin Van Peebles was another of the earliest African Americans to work within the Hollywood studio system. Peebles' second film (and first Hollywood film) was the message movie-comedy Watermelon Man (1970), starring Godfrey Cambridge in a dual role as a Los Angeles insurance agent in 1968 named Jeff Gerber. Originally a suburban white racist and physical fitness enthusiast who became black overnight, he began to experience the hostility toward blacks in America. Then came actor/director Ossie Davis' crime-comedy Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), an action, police detective and buddy film. Two plainclothes Harlem police detectives: Coffin Ed (Raymond St. Jacques) and Grave Digger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge), sought to investigate a fraudulent fund-raising scam on poor Harlem blacks known as "Back to Africa," run by corrupt black nationalist preacher Reverend Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart). The illicit funds were hidden in a bale of cotton. The film ultimately became the precursor to other popular buddy-cop films, such as Lethal Weapon (1987) and its franchise series (1987-1998), and a series of Bad Boys (1995) films. Director Mark Warren's Come Back Charleston Blue (1972) about a vigilante named Charleston Blue in Harlem, served as the sequel to Cotton Comes to Harlem. Actor Sidney Poitier directed the revisionist western Buck and the Preacher (1972), his first Hollywood film. The title characters were: wagon-master Buck (Poitier) who led former African-American slaves (now aspiring homesteaders) from the South to the frontier after the Civil War to become land-owners and farmers. He was partnered with con-man Preacher (Harry Belafonte) to combat bands of white rogue agents led by villainous Deshay (Cameron Mitchell) who attacked the wagon trains and threatened to return the black settlers back to the South. The Rise of Action Blaxploitation Films:
The successful independent film (budgeted at $500,000), with a gospel soundtrack by Earth, Wind & Fire, was released by independent distributor Cinemation, and aimed at urban black audiences, and began its run by playing in only two theatres (in Atlanta and Detroit). It caused tremendous controversy for its militancy, sex, anti-white sentiment, revenge-themes, and violence, although it became one of the most important black American films of the decade (eventually earning revenue of $10 million). Its most controversial scene was the rape of the director's son Mario by a middle-aged prostitute. [Note: Mario Van Peebles' film Baadasssss! (2004) told the story of how his father, Melvin, contributed to modern independent black filmmaking with his 1971 film.]
The earliest 'blaxploitation' films featured smart-ass 'jive' dialogue, street obscenities, muscle-bound black heroes, brutal action and fight scenes, car chases, gun play, some nudity, Afros and snappy duds, and despicable villains. On the down side, the aspirations of blacks were seen within the dregs of society in the inner city - demeaning role models such as pimps, drug dealers, mobsters, hitmen and super-sexual males without much intellectual acuity. Even some black groups such as the NAACP and CORE created backlash by opposing the militant, reprehensible exploitational black movies that glorified negative stereotypes and reinforced white attitudes toward black culture. After the first few of these mostly B-films hit the screens, many other lesser, formulaic, and sometimes edgier, audacious "blaxploitation" films with black actors in stereotypical film roles began to flood the market - designed specifically for the newfound market of African-American film audiences. Some of the films were classic cult favorites, although others were low-budget, very poorly made and of inferior quality, such as The Black 6 (1973) starring six black NFL players who rode around as a motorcycle gang. Starting in the early 1970s, over 200 major films would be released by major and independent studios to profit from the black movie-going audiences. In some cases because of the small number of African-American actors, black athletic superstars (Jim Brown, Rosie Grier, Fred Williamson, and Vida Blue) and others (comedian Richard Pryor got his start in these films as did Antonio Fargas) were recruited and cast in the lead or supporting roles:
Female Blaxploitation Stars: A female version of the action sub-genre developed, often starring a vengeful heroine, notably Pam Grier, Rosie Grier's cousin, who was dubbed the "Queen of Blaxploitation." As a sexy super-mama toting a gun, she appeared in a number of hard-hitting films as the star:
And former October 1969 Playmate Jeannie Bell starred in Roger Corman's and New World Pictures' TNT Jackson (1974) - a merging of kung fu and blaxploitation, in a plot about a karate expert (Diana 'T.N.T.' Jackson) searching for her brother in a section of Hong Kong known as "Yellow Town." Its tagline was: "SHE'S A ONE MAMA MASSACRE SQUAD." In the action thriller's most remembered scene, TNT was captured and confronted by drug-dealing mobster Ming (Max Alvarado), who threatened to burn her bare chest with his cigar, but then changed his mind ("Such a waste! Perhaps this will not be necessary"). She was able to escape, turned off the lights, and - while completely topless with only panties (that changed color) - fought off a darkened room full of male criminals after taunting them: "You want it black? You got it black." The Lasting Influence of Blaxploitation Films: The success of blaxploitation films brought some opportunities for blacks in the industry to work in Hollywood, although the vast majority of these films were still distributed, produced, and controlled by non-blacks. It also led to an onslaught of other black exploitation genres, blending the black urban tales with other genres. In the horror genre in particular, blaxploitation films in the 70s set the stage for "urban horror" in the ‘90s, with films such as Def by Temptation (1990), Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs (1991), Candyman (1992), and Tales from the Hood (1995). What also followed were numerous remakes or lesser imitations ranging from black westerns to martial arts/kung fu films to horror, drama and gangster films.
The cinematic blaxploitation craze weakened and substantially died in the mid-to-late 1970s, but then experienced a slight revival in the 1990s, with Keenen Ivory Wayan's parody film I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), star/director Eddie Murphy's Harlem Nights (1989), Mario Van Peebles' New Jack City (1991) and black western Posse (1993), and Larry Cohen's Original Gangstas (1996), reuniting stars from the earlier era including Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Ron O'Neal, and Richard Roundtree. Grier also starred in Quentin Tarantino's homage to the period - Jackie Brown (1998), and Samuel Jackson appeared in black director John Singleton's remake Shaft (2000). In retrospect, all of the blaxploitation films set the stage for future directors such as Spike Lee, John Singleton, and F. Gary Gray, and future stars such as Richard Pryor. For example, director Michael Schultz' entertaining urban comedy Car Wash (1976), with a script by Joel Schumacher, was a look at a day-in-the-life of the Los Angeles Dee-Lux car wash, starring Richard Pryor and other rising black stars. It was followed by Schultz' similar farce Which Way is Up? (1977) also with Richard Pryor (in a triple role). The movement also contributed to the rise of Hip Hop music, influenced fashion, aided the development of the rap subculture, and produced other movies like the Beverly Hills Cop series and Pulp Fiction (1994). Other Offshoots: Inevitably, as blaxploitation films disappeared, alternative African-American films emerged, including other kinds of action films, comedy, and social dramas. Two black films more in the mainstream included 20th Century Fox's and blacklisted director John Berry's romantic drama Claudine (1974), starring Best Actress Oscar-nominated Diahann Carroll as the 36 year-old title character Claudine Price - an unwed and poor Harlem resident in the early 1970s who was on welfare with six children - and illegally on the side was a domestic maid. Her romance with garbage collector Roop (a young James Earl Jones) turned problematic for many reasons. Also popular was Paramount's Mahogany (1975), directed by Motown music chief Berry Gordy. It was the perfect cinematic vehicle for The Supremes' singer Diana Ross as an aspiring fashion designer named Tracy living on the South side of Chicago. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song ("Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)"). Changes in the Ratings System: The Dawn of the X Rating Major changes in the Production Code had already occurred
in the previous decade when the Motion Picture Production Code was
replaced by a ratings system in 1968. This
Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971) was declared obscene by a 1971 Georgia ruling and banned in some areas of the country for its frank exploration of the sexual attitudes and problems of two modern Americans (Jack Nicholson as Jonathan and Art Garfunkel as Sandy), from their days as college roommates through middle-age. The Supreme Court overturned the state's ruling in 1974. William Friedkin's The Boys in the Band (1970) broke a Hollywood film barrier by honestly dealing with the subject of homosexuality. Jane Fonda won the Best Actress Oscar for Klute (1971) for her performance as Bree, a prostitute who was stalked by a psychopath. The last name of a small-town detective (Donald Sutherland) who investigated the disappearance of a friend and became involved with Bree, was Klute! Pornography became a mainstream, legitimate curiosity with the screening of Gerard Damiano's exploitation fantasy Deep Throat (1972) with Linda Lovelace, although the film generated legal actions and challenges in many localities. Its initial, low-budget investment of $24,000 brought in receipts totalling at least $20 million (before the rental and video markets' profits), easily making it the most successful pornographic film of all-time. A soft-core X (or R)-rated series of films with abundant erotic nudity also came to US screens from France, beginning with Just Jaeckin's Emmanuelle (1974), starring Dutch-born actress Sylvia Kristel, and followed by the equally provocative, well-photographed sequel by Francis Giacobetti titled Emmanuelle, The Joys of a Woman (1975). British director Stanley Kubrick faithfully adapted Anthony Burgess' novel for his X-rated A Clockwork Orange (1971, UK) about juvenile droogs (led by Malcolm McDowell as Alex) on a rampage. The Warner Bros. film was a violent, perceptive dark satire of the future that juxtaposed rape and brutality to classical music and the euphoric tune Singin' in the Rain. Kubrick was forced to re-edit the controversial film in order to receive an R-rating. Soon after the film's release, Kubrick withdrew it from distribution in the UK to effectively suppress its exhibition after copycat violence. Woody Allen's Comedic Era:
His next three films were also comedies. Turning more serious and introspective, Allen directed the somber Interiors (1978) - a film with Bergman-esque qualities. The film, a portrait of a family's disintegration, was less well-received. At the conclusion of the decade, Allen directed and starred in another of his best, most accomplished and deepest films, Manhattan (1979) - one of his biggest hits to date. It was a beautifully-photographed black-and-white, sardonic comedy about a group of sophisticated but neurotic Manhattanites with their attendant foibles, loves, angsts, and frustrations in the search for happiness and fulfillment. The film, filled with George Gershwin music, featured Allen as a 42 year-old comedy writer in a relationship with a 17 year-old high-school student (Mariel Hemingway) in his most favorite hometown. At the end of the decade, he directed the autobiographical Stardust Memories (1980), about a successful director who suffered a mid-life crisis.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 
 
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After his first feature film, the crudely-improvised Shadows (1959),
independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, dubbed "the father of American independent cinema", turned to studio films for a few
years, but then after finding studio films too restrictive, he resumed
low-budget, independent filmmaking stretching into the 70s with his highly
individualistic style and realistic, stark cinema verité
(with unscripted and often inaudible dialogue, poor lighting, and improvisational character studies in overlong,
amateurish and ragged films made with a hand-held camera). He used his
actor's salary (in films like The Dirty Dozen (1967) and 
Following
the success of Bullitt (1968), a cycle of "lone wolf" or "rogue
cop" 
Graphic,
realisitc violence in urban America was a major element of a number
of 70s dramatic films starring police characters. The urban crime thriller
based on a true story was Best Director-winning William Friedkin's
Best Picture winner 
In
the early 70s, a series of so-called 'blaxploitation' films emerged,
either as a reflection of black anger at whites, as potential empowerment
for blacks, or as a new marketing angle from Hollywood. Melvin Van Peebles
abandoned his contract at Columbia to direct the X-rated, confrontational
cult film Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) - the
first true blaxploitation film. It was specifically designed to upset white
audiences (advertised with "Rated X by an All-White
Jury"),
with Peebles himself playing the part of the sex-hungry, violent
anti-hero - a black prostitute and fugitive on the run from racist cops. 
The
first major, commercial blaxploitation crime film with a black hero
appeared at the same time - the colorful, action-packed, slightly tongue-in-cheek
MGM film Shaft
(1971) - again by esteemed black director Gordon Parks
Sr. Shaft starred
Richard Roundtree as the ultra-hip, handsome police detective
John Shaft (the black version of Clint Eastwood's "Dirty
Harry" Callahan, and similar to the hard-boiled detectives
of the 1940s) who worked in Harlem against the Mafia. He was
hired by a Harlem racketeer to find the mobster's kidnapped
daughter, and became involved in a Harlem criminal gang war
between two opposing groups over drug trade. Shaft won
an Oscar for Isaac Hayes' memorable theme song for the title
credits of the film (proclaiming that Shaft was 'a private
dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks'). The film brought ‘blaxploitation’ cinema
to mainstream audiences, and emphasized a proud and tall black hero with
multiple bed partners who was effective against crime. It spawned two
lesser sequels: Shaft's
Big Score! (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973), as
well as a TV series.
Another major female blaxploitation star was voluptuous
Tamara Dobson, who portrayed a female, undercover 'James Bond-like'
US narcotics agent in Jack Starrett's blaxploitation crime thriller Cleopatra
Jones (1973), combating poppy fields and the heroin trade run
by an over-the-top female crime-lord "Mommy" (Shelley Winters),
aided by
"Doodlebug" (Antonio Fargas). [Note:
The sequel was
Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975).]
culminated
in the X-rated Best Picture win for 
Italian
director Bernardo Bertolucci released the controversial, landmark X-rated
It
has often been falsely claimed that the producers of an R-rated sex
comedy, The Happy Hooker
(1975), based on the book of memoirs by legendary New York madam
Xaviera Hollander (portrayed by Lynn Redgrave), were sued by the Walt
Disney Company for using the Mickey Mouse Club theme song during
a group sex scene. In fact, a hard-core X-rated porn film titled The
Life and Times of Xaviera Hollander (1974) (aka The Life and Times of
a Happy Hooker) (starring Xaviera Hollander as the narrator,
and also the notorious John Holmes) was the one whose makers were sued
- they used the Mickey Mouse Club theme song in an explicit orgy scene.
It was set in a game room with a pool table, where three nude males wearing
Mickey Mouse ear-hats first sang the theme song, and then the redhaired
Happy Hooker (Samatha (sic) McClearn) had sex atop the pool table with
one of the men, to the slow, guitar-strummed tune of the theme song.
Then, she engaged with all three - "a triple trick" -
a birthday present bought by a rich father for his son and two friends.
Brooklyn-born,
stand-up comedian Woody Allen joined the ranks of the young new directors
of the 'New Hollywood', beginning his rise as a screenwriter on What's
New, Pussycat? (1965) and work as an actor in What's Up, Tiger
Lily? (1966) (his first film) - the redubbing of a James
Bond-like Japanese action film. He also acted as Bond's nephew in Casino
Royale (1967), plus took an acting and writing role in 
Humorous
sketches in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But
Were Afraid to Ask (1972) dramatized the contents of David Reuben's
popular sex manual, covering topics such as public sex, perversion,
and ejaculation. Two of his best early films, with his typical collection
of sight gags and witty jokes were 
As
the decade progressed, Woody Allen's major breakthrough triumph was a
semi-autobiographical, bittersweet and poignant love story/comedy