The Best Decade Of Film
 

What do you think the best decade of film was? In my opinion it was the 70's considering this list.

Godfather Part 1 & 2
Mean Streets
Annie Hall
Manhattan
The Deer Hunter
Taxi Driver
Star Wars
Alien
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Jaws
Apocalypse Now

Really need to think about this but every film you've listed is a classic. I'd be hard pressed to put them in order but Apocolypse Now might just get it.

The '70's are a hard one to beat given the whole "crisis = opportunity" where filmmakers were given so much freedom by desperate film studios. It was also the first decade that wasn't infringed upon by the Hayes Code so it could allow more graphic attention to detail and create more immersible stories. While I will concede that my opinion is also going to say that the 1970's is my personal favourite decade of cinema, I think there was a real trade off for cursing, nudity, and gore with script. It's kind of hard to describe, but when I watch pre-1968 movies I really notice a lot more effort into the script, like a higher syntax and diction or something. Maybe this was because of the visual restrictions, but a lot of the really stand out movies like The Magnificent Seven or 12 Angry Men have fantastic scripts.

And because you can't end a post like this without it, here's my favourite movies from the 1970's in order

01. Straw Dogs (1971)
02. Chinatown (1974)
03. Star Wars (1977)
04. Alien (1979)
05. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
06. Eraserhead (1977)
07. Stalker (1979)
08. Network (1976)
09. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
10. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Gonna also go with the 1970's with Apocalypse Now being my favourite of the decade. A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist trail closely behind.

70s for me as well

the directorial freedom was incredible

money put into projects, which wouldn't even see the light of day as "indie" films these days

I'm still undecided even as I type this. The 70's and 80's both were pretty even when I go back and look.

Of course the 70's movies listed are awesome but the 80's has a pretty damn good list in its own right.

Brazil
Amadeus
Raging Bull
Blade Runner
Raiders of the lost ark
Das Boot
The Empire Strikes Back
The Blues Brothers
Spinal Tap
Caddyshack
Ghostbusters
Scarface
The Terminator
Platoon
The Killing Fields
Glory

Tough call for me but 2/3rds of my top ten movies of alltime are from the 70's so I guess i'm inclined to agree. Loathsome Pete made a good point, dialogue was on a better level in earlier movies because special effects/graphic violence/nudity were not included.

The 70's were pretty awesome, but I do love the 90's. Most of my favourites came from the 90's:

Schindler's List
GoodFellas
Saving Private Ryan
Pulp Fiction
The Silence of the Lambs
Fargo
Unforgiven
Shawshank Redemption
Malcolm X
American Beauty
Forrest Gump
Reservoir Dogs
Fight Club
Casino
Jerry Maguire
Before Sunrise

I agree, the 90's were the best. Pulp Fiction, nuff said.

My brain will explode if I try to answer this question.

The 1750s. Nuff said.

No way man, 180 A.D., the zoetrope was the pinnacle of visual storytelling. Nuff said.

Impossible to answer for me. Sure we have the recognised classics from the 70's (No Taxi Driver Loathsome? shocking!), the 80's gave us the age of the blockbuster and video nasties the 90's a return to more character based films and the ago of CGI but the 20's gave us cinematic language, the thirties ushered in sound, the 40's gave us Film Noir, the 50's gave us paranoia and Sci Fi, the 60's gave us kitchen sink drama and the emergence of the auteur and the 00's onwards gave us a right load of old crap ;)

If really pushed I would say that the 70's really was a great time for movies with theatre fillers that possessed intelligence and boundary pushing films in terms of taste and decency where even mainstream directors were given more free reign to fulfill their ambitions (for better or worse, usually the latter - Heavens Gate New York, New York etc) but the 80's for anyone over the age of 30 is much more defining in terms of cinematic appreciation due to VHS.

Members here such as myself, bob, Janszoon etc were exposed to so many films due to VHS but also had to sit through an insane amount of crap due to the lax laws (at that time) that we can happily watch a B movie and appreciate it's merits as much as a bona fide classic, because we were not always fed a diet of well produced/financed films and so the expectation levels are lower and much the better for it. *

I have said on here many times that I would much rather watch a film that cost $3 million where a filmmaker has to use his imagination and challenge himself than a $30 million film that looks like every other film.

I waffled a little in this post didn't I? Sorry!

*Apologies Jans and bob if it isn't so but I know it is!

yeah it's true :)

by the way while looking at movies made in the 70s i came across the fact that the Suspiria remake is cast and in pre-production with a release date in 2013

fuck i hope the world ends on December 21st

after looking through stuff i would say 1975-1985 :)

I would agree with that, except for the fact that Big Trouble in Little China came out in 1986 and Raising Arizona in 1987. :)

FUCK!

can we just say that in this parallel universe a decade could if it wants to equal 12-15 years?

in the VHS era, Malaysia had abundant illegal taping and rental was only USD25 cents

the amount of crap I saw!!!!!!!

Taxi Driver really did use to be one of my all time favourite movies, and I still feel a tangible connection to Travis Bickle in our desire to wipe the filth off the streets, although I doubt I'd go quite as overboard as him. I've definitely had fantasies about being a taxi driver though, I'm a good driver and I know my way all over town using shortcuts and back streets, so I'd probably be good at it.

That said though, over the last few years I've really started to take a serious look at cinema of the '70's and what I found just blew me away. Straw Dogs still sends shivers down my spine every time I watch it, and Chinatown is easily one of the best neo-noir movies at a time when the style was still relatively new. The newest one on there is Assault on Precinct 13, but holy crap what a movie! I actually just gained a new appreciation for the original Star Wars after watching a Mr. Plinkett audio commentary that highlighed how awesome the movie was in 1977, and how much George Lucas fucked it up in 1997. Alien is still the quintessential sci-fi horror movie which every other one must be judged by, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre has some really trippy scenes that I totally don't remember when I was 13 and watching it for the first time. Eraserhead and Stalker are there to keep up my pretentious film-buff cred, while also being great examples of foreign cinema from "the enemy" and something that was just... bizarre... Network has one of the best written scripts of all time, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was one of the films from my childhood that I love.

After all that, Taxi Driver still holds a special place in my heart, but I would watch any movie on my list before it, if given the option.

For the people who voted 1970's, what year within that decade do you think is the best?

73 - 75

a lot of the films tend to ramble

and not the late 70s

the popcorn blockbusters were coming into force

Movies become so crap lately is all about boxoffice

Absolutely, that was a time of great cinema. Nuff said.

Ye olde nuff said.

Zed's dead.

You know what, this decade ain't too bad either. This decade might go down as one of the best too.

Oh man, you're so avant-garde lik omg.

The 60s thru the 80s topped it.......

That's three decades.