BLACHEFAN

Superman (1978) Director Richard Donner's treatment of the famous superhero was not the first time the character had been on the big screen. Kirk Alyn played the role back in a 1948 serial and George Reeves appeared in both theatrical and TV versions in the 1950s. However, for many, Christopher Reeve remains the definitive Man of Steel. This film, an "origins" story, recounts Superman's journey to Earth as a boy, his move from Smallville to Metropolis and his emergence as a true American hero. Beautiful in its sweep, score and special effects, which create a sense of awe and wonder, "Superman" — as the tag line reads — makes you "believe a man can fly."

The Last Waltz (1978) Martin Scorsese's documentary is a homage to the epic 1976 Thanksgiving farewell concert by The Band at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Performances include Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, the Staple Singers, Emmylou Harris and others. As Robertson recounts: "We had to play 21 songs with other artists, going from Muddy Waters to Joni Mitchell. …We played this five-hour concert and we didn't make a mistake." Some believe this concert marked the beginning of the end of the classic rock era.

Girlfriends (1978) On its release, Stanley Kubrick described Claudia Weill's "Girlfriends" as "one of the most interesting American films he had seen in a long time." A fiercely independent, single New York photographer (in a marvelous performance by Melanie Mayron) aspires beyond doing bar mitzvahs and weddings and struggles with relationships and city life after her best friend and roommate moves out to get married. Weill critiques the historically prevalent notions of women, marriage and motherhood, and the difficulties in pursuing an alternative lifestyle. The film uses deft observation of minor intimate vignettes (one has Mayron making a boyfriend pass the "mumps" test) to capture the life of a single woman trying to make a career during the Gloria Steinem-esque era of sexual freedom and the responsibilities and dangers that entails.

Star Wars (1977) A legendarily expansive and ambitious start to the saga set in a galaxy far, far away, director George Lucas opened audiences' eyes to the possibilities of successful science fiction movies using special effects that are effective and intelligently integrated with the story. Young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is thrust into the struggle of the Rebel Alliance when he meets the wise Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness). Obi-Wan begins training Luke as a Jedi knight to combat the opposition, and the two head off and join mercenary Han Solo (Harrison Ford) on a daring mission to rescue the beautiful Rebel leader Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) from the clutches of the evil Empire. Luke proves that he does indeed possess mystical powers known as the Force which he invokes to destroy the Empire's dreaded Death Star.

Saturday Night Fever (1977) Young Brooklynite Tony Manero (John Travolta) has a dead-end job and lives at home with his parents but escapes his tedious existence each night on the disco dance floor where he reigns supreme. As the soundtrack plays one Bee Gees hit after another (including "Stayin' Alive"), we watch white-suited Tony strut his stuff amidst flashing lights and pulsating bodies. Tony's class aspirations are reflected in his relationship with his dance partner, Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney), a secretary struggling to make it to the dazzling splendor of Manhattan. Travolta graduated from a minor television presence to a superstar with this film. This crossover between music and movies set the pace for many films to follow.

Killer of Sheep (1977) Charles Burnett was one of the "LA School" of African American filmmakers that emerged from the UCLA film department in the 1970s, and "Killer of Sheep" was his thesis film. It is simultaneously naturalistic and poetic, witty and heartbreaking. The story centers on Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a blue-collar worker from the Watts area of Los Angeles, whose job in a slaughterhouse barely keeps his family above water. It documents his struggle to retain dignity in the face of grinding deprivation and disquieting temptations, and the alienation that threatens to break him away from his family. It also provides a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of a community assaulted by poverty and lack of opportunity, yet it manages to remain hopeful.

I, an Actress (1977) Underground filmmaker George Kuchar and his twin brother Mike began making 8mm films as 12-year-old kids in the Bronx, often on their family's apartment rooftop. Before his death in 2011, George created over 200 outlandish low-budget films filled with absurdist melodrama, crazed dialogue and plots, and affection for Hollywood film conventions and genres. A professor at the San Francisco Art Institute, Kuchar documented his directing techniques in the hilarious "I, an Actress" as he encourages an acting student to embellish a melodramatic monologue with increasingly excessive gestures and emotions. Like most of Kuchar's films, "I, an Actress" embodies a "camp" sensibility, defined by the cultural critic Susan Sontag as deriving from an aesthetics that valorizes not beauty but "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration." Filmmaker John Waters has cited the Kuchars as "my first inspiration" and credited them with giving him "the self-confidence to believe in my own tawdry vision." The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/i_actress.pdf

Eraserhead (1977) A visually stunning portrayal of a man facing fatherhood in a nightmarish industrial world, this film introduced American audiences to David Lynch's unique, surrealistic style of sparse dialogue, unsettling characters, horrific imagery and a paradoxically abstract narrative. "Eraserhead" secured Lynch's place as a hero for fans craving unorthodox filmmaking. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/Eraserhead.pdf

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Steven Spielberg's follow-up to "Jaws" substitutes creatures from the sky for creatures from the sea, but these beings are more mysterious than a killer shark, and the quest is more about discovery than destruction. The quest, as taken up by Everyman Richard Dreyfuss involves extraterrestrial life and a recurring vision of a shape eventually revealed as Devil's Tower National Monument. The five-tone musical motif used for communication with the aliens has become as memorable as any line of movie dialogue. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/close_encounters.pdf

Annie Hall (1977) Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) stroll the sidewalks of New York. Library of Congress Collection. Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. "Annie Hall" blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as "Sleeper" and "Bananas" with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, "Annie Hall" beat out "Star Wars" for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/anniehall2.pdf

To Fly! (1976) This documentary, which pioneered the ultra-wide IMAX format, follows the history of flight from the earliest hot air balloons to manned space missions. Commissioned by the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. for its grand opening, the film captures aerial panoramas of Niagara Falls, aerobatic maneuvers by the Blue Angels, the excitement of a rocket lift-off, and the serenity of hang gliding. Directed and co-written by Jim Freeman and Greg MacGillivray, the film is among the most popular diocumentaries ever produced and has garnered awards domestically and internationally.

Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese packed an assortment of urban fears into this story of New York taxi driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) and his rampage against the "scum" of the earth. Scorsese, aided by cinematographer Michael Chapman, composer Bernard Herrmann and art director Charles Rosen, transforms the city into the personification of Bickle's twisted mind. Paul Schrader's screenplay, with its buried themes of sin and redemption, borrows heavily from French writer-director Robert Bresson's 1959 film "Pickpocket" to create one of American cinema's most European in artistic style. With Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, and Harvey Keitel.

Rocky (1976) This stirring tale of a million-to-one-shot underdog has become part of the American psyche. According to legend, Sylvester Stallone, then a down-on-his-luck actor, hurriedly wrote a brilliant script after watching the Muhammad Ali/Chuck Wepner fight. Stallone shopped the script to studios, who loved the plot but not Stallone's take-it-or-leave-it demand that he star in the film. Eventually, Stallone and United Artists crafted a deal, and the film became a top-grossing cultural sensation in 1976. One of the truly iconic moments in American cinema is when Stallone runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the strains of Bill Conti's pulsating score.

Please Don't Bury Me Alive! (1976) The San Antonio barrio in the early 1970s is the setting for writer, director and star Efraín Gutiérrez's independent piece, considered by historians to be the first Chicano feature film. A self-taught filmmaker, Gutiérrez not only created the film from top to bottom on a shoestring, he also acted as its initial distributor and chief promoter, negotiating bookings throughout the Southwest where it filled theaters in Chicano neighborhoods. He tells his story in the turbulent days near the end of the Vietnam War, as a young Chicano man questioning his and his people's place in society as thousands of his Latino brethren return from the war in coffins. Chon Noriega, director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, wrote, "The film is important as an instance of regional filmmaking, as a bicultural and bilingual narrative, and as a precedent that expanded the way that films got made. ..." Cultural historians often compare Gutiérrez to Oscar Micheaux, the pioneering African-American filmmaker who came to prominence in the 1920s.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) By the time he made this film, his fifth as a director, Clint Eastwood was successfully synthesizing the talents of his two mentors, Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. As the title character, a Confederate radical out to avenge the murder of his family by Union soldiers, Eastwood blends the stoic realism of a Leone hero with the earnest morality of a Siegel leading man. Eastwood's character possesses a touching emotional vulnerability uncharacteristic of Eastwood's much-criticized "macho" image. Chief Dan George is his memorable self as the wise and understated Indian elder, funny yet always dignified.

Network (1976) Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning script and Sidney Lumet's deft direction paint a piercing and vitriolic satire of television news. In an inspired final performance that earned him a best actor Oscar, Peter Finch plays news commentator Howard Beale who loses his perspective when he's fired by his faltering network. Flooding the airwaves with delusional rantings of self-empowerment, he becomes a messiah to an audience equally fed up with the establishment. In one impassioned tirade, Beale incites viewers to shout "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" William Holden portrays the fading TV executive and Faye Dunaway (Oscar winner for best actress) is the cutthroat program director who'll do anything for ratings. Chayefsky's script won an Academy Award, as did best supporting actress Beatrice Straight, who plays Holden's wife. On screen for five minutes and two seconds, Straight's is the briefest performance ever to win an Oscar. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/network.pdf

Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) An apprentice of Albert and David Maysles, director Barbara Kopple came into her own with this unvarnished examination of a labor strike by 180 coal miners against the Duke Power Company in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1973. Bypassing narration for real sound and dialogue, and evocative music, Kopple produces a film that does not shy away from the harsh working conditions of the strikers or the heated emotions that surround their battle for better wages and working conditions. Her approach to the film's production was an important digression from "direct cinema" toward a more personal filmmaking style. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/harlan_county.pdf

Grey Gardens (1976) An influential cinema verité documentary by Albert and David Maysles, "Grey Gardens" has provided inspiration for creative works on the stage and in film. It is absorbing sometimes disturbing look at "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Beale (the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) who live in a world of their own in their decaying 28-room East Hampton mansion known as "Grey Gardens," a place so far gone that the local authorities once threatened to evict them for violating building and sanitation codes. "Little Edie," was a once-beautiful aspiring actress who put her glamorous New York City life on hold to care for her mother, and together they descended into a strange life of eccentricity and co-dependence.

Chulas Fronteras (1976) Accomplished documentarian Les Blank directed this complex, insightful look at the Chicano experience as mirrored in the lives and music of the most acclaimed Norteño musicians of the Texas-Mexican border, including Flaco Jimenez and Lydia Mendoza. Much of "Chulas Fronteras" features no dialog, and this lack of narration allows for more focus on the sights and sounds of the local music and culture. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/chulas fronteras.pdf

All the President's Men (1976) Based on the memoir by "Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about uncovering the Watergate break-in and cover up, "All the President's Men" is a rare example of a best-selling book transformed into a hit film and a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, the film stars Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, and features an Oscar-winning performance by Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee. Nominated for numerous awards, it took home an Oscar for best screenplay by William Goldman (known prior to this for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and after for "The Princess Bride"). Pakula's taut directing plays up the emotional roller coaster of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage, without ignoring the tedium and tireless digging, and elevating it to noble determination. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/AllThePresidentsMen.pdf

Time and Dreams (1976) Created in 1976 by Mort Jordan, a student at Temple University, "Time and Dreams" is a unique and personal elegiac approach to the civil rights movement. The filmmaker has described "Time and Dreams" as a personal journey back to his Alabama home, where he contrasts two societies: the nostalgia some residents have for past values versus the deferred dreams of those who are well past waiting for their time to fully participate in the promise of their own dreams. Through vignettes and personal testimonies, the film portrays Greene County, Alabama, as its people move toward understanding and cooperation in a time of social change.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) This low-budget cult classic centers on the misadventures of a young couple (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) who find themselves inside a strange mansion when their car breaks down on a rainy night. There they encounter a wild party hosted by a lingerie-clad transvestite and mad scientist (Tim Curry). Richard O'Brien (who also plays the butler) wrote the catchy songs, with John Barry and Richard Hartley composing the score.

Quasi at the Quackadero (1975) Sally Cruikshank's wildly imaginative tale of odd creatures visiting a psychedelic amusement park careens creatively from strange to truly wacky scenes. It became a favorite of the Midnight Movie circuit in the 1970s. Influenced by the animation produced by the Fleischer Studios and the Van Beuren Studios, as well as the early work of Bob Clampett, Cruikshank spent more than two years working on the 10-minute "Quasi." She later created animation sequences for "Sesame Street," the 1986 film "Ruthless People" and the "Cartoon Land" sequence in the 1983 film "Twilight Zone: The Movie."

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman masterfully adapted Ken Kesey's novel, earning themselves Oscars for Best Screenplay, and providing director Milos Forman with a platform for a hard-hitting and wry condemnation of the Establishment and its ethos of conformity. Jack Nicholson is a ne'er do well who plays crazy to avoid prison work detail and is sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation. There he encounters an assortment of mostly harmless inmates presided over by the icy Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Nicholson leads the inmates to challenge Nurse Ratched, incurring her wrath and setting up their eventual showdown. Nicholson's and Fletcher's Academy-Award winning turns are bolstered by outstanding performances from Brad Dourif and Will Sampson as two of the more memorable inmates. The cast also includes Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd on their way to starring roles in the TV series "Taxi."

Nashville (1975) Robert Altman directed this funny and poignant series of vignettes following more than 20 characters, including several who are country music performers, as they gather at a Nashville political rally. The film's power lies in its ability to be sarcastic, hopeful, and revelatory all at once as it manages to skewer and honor its subject simultaneously. Stars include Henry Gibson, Ronee Blakley, Karen Black, Lily Tomlin and Keith Carradine, who sings the haunting "I'm Easy." The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/nashville.pdf