BLACHEFAN

Jaws (1975) This now-classic thriller opens on a hot summer weekend in a small coastal New England resort community whose safety and financial livelihood are threatened by an apparent shark attack. The town's new sheriff (Roy Scheider) plans to close the beaches but meets opposition from the mayor and local business owners. When a young boy is killed by a shark in full view of a beach full of tourists, the sheriff must take action, joining with an experienced shark hunter, Capt. Quint (Robert Shaw), and an oceanographer (Richard Dreyfus) to pursue the Great White. As Brody adroitly observes after their first encounter with the shark, they're gonna need a bigger boat ... or at least plenty of moxie. Adapted by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb from Benchley's best-selling novel, the film is expertly, if manipulatively, crafted by director Steven Spielberg and an unforgettable score by John Williams to terrify its audience. Fueled by a successful ad campaign and phenomenal word of mouth and repeat business, "Jaws" broke box-office records and fueled sequels and imitators eager to capitalize on audiences willingly seduced by their own fear.

Hester Street (1975) Joan Micklin Silver's first feature-length film, "Hester Street," was an adaption of preeminent Yiddish author Abraham Cahan's 1896 well-received first novel "Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto." In the 1975 film, the writer-director brought to the screen a portrait of Eastern European Jewish life in America that historians have praised for its accuracy of detail and sensitivity to the challenges immigrants faced during their acculturation process. Shot in black-and-white and partly in Yiddish with English subtitles, the independent production, financed with money raised by the filmmaker's husband, was shunned by Hollywood until it established a reputation at the Cannes Film Festival and in European markets. "Hester Street" focuses on stresses that occur when a "greenhorn" wife, played by Carol Kane (nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal), and her young son arrive in New York to join her Americanized husband. Silver, one of the first women directors of American features to emerge during the women's liberation movement, shifted the story's emphasis from the husband, as in the novel, to the wife. Historian Joyce Antler has written admiringly, "In indicating the hardships experienced by women and their resiliency, as well as the deep strains assimilation posed to masculinity, 'Hester Street' touches on a fundamental cultural challenge confronting immigrants." The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/hester street.pdf

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) Director Sidney Lumet balances suspense, violence and humor in Frank Pierson's Oscar-winning adaptation of a true-life bank robbery turned media circus. Al Pacino is the engaging Sonny, a smart yet self-destructive Brooklyn tough guy whose plan to rob the local bank to pay for his lover's sex change goes awry. Lumet artfully conducts his talented cast through machinations that twist and turn from the political to the personal, and inevitably lead to a downward spiral played out before an audience of millions.

The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975) This powerful documentary by the Kentucky-based arts and education center Appalshop represents the finest in regional filmmaking, providing important understanding of the environmental and cultural history of the Appalachian region. The 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood Disaster, caused by the failure of a coal waste dam, killed more than 100 people and left thousands in West Virginia homeless. Local citizens invited Appalshop to come to the area and to film a historical record, fearing that the Pittston Coal Co.'s powerful influence in the state would lead to a whitewash investigation and absolve it of any corporate culpability. Newsweek hailed the film as "a devastating expose of the collusion between state officials and coal executives." The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/buffalo_creek.pdf

Young Frankenstein (1974) Mel Brooks followed up his success with "Blazing Saddles" by directing and co-scripting (with the film's star Gene Wilder) this stylish spoof of the Universal Studios horror franchise. In addition to Wilder, Madeline Kahn also reteamed with Brooks following her unforgetable performance as Lili Von Shtupp in "Blazing Saddles." The director added Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Teri Garr and Kenneth Mars to the cast creating a formidable comedic ensemble. Clever writing and performances aside, the true star of the picture may be its overall look which captured the feel of the 1930s films with its black-and-white cinematography by Gerald Hirschfeld, vintage costumes by Dorothy Jeakins, and gothic set design by Dale Hennesy, complete down to the original creepy laboratory artifacts Brooks rented from former Universal prop master Ken Strickfaden who personally saved the equipment for decades. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/young_frankenstein.pdf

A Woman Under the Influence (1974) Director John Cassavetes pioneered American independent film with his use of cinéma vérité in fictional narrative. By this, his seventh film as director, Cassavetes had developed a distinct style of long takes, desultory lighting, and handheld cinematography which were employed to "convince the audience that what's on the screen is really happening." Often in collaboration with his wife, actress Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes created a series of stark dramas like this tale of a New York housewife slowly losing her grip on reality. As the title character, Rowlands gives an Oscar-nominated performance opposite Peter Falk as her beleaguered husband. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/woman_under_influence.pdf

The Godfather Part II (1974) Both sequel and prequel to "The Godfather," Part II fleshes out the back story of the Corleone origins in Sicily with Robert De Niro portraying the young Don Vito, then moves forward as Don Michael (Al Pacino) wrestles with the changing identity of organized crime in the second half of the 20th century. As he realizes that allies are trying to kill him, the increasingly paranoid Michael also discovers that his ambition has crippled his marriage and turned his brother, Fredo (John Cazale), against him. Critics and viewers often suggest that "Godfather II" is one of the few examples in American film history where the sequel is as good or better than the original. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/godfather.pdf

Fuji (1974) After abandoning his studies as an engineer at Stanford, Robert Breer developed a career as artist and animator that spanned 50 years and made him an international figure. He began his artistic pursuits as a painter while living in Paris in the 1950s, and not long after, started tinkering with an old 16mm Bolex camera to create simple stop motion studies based on his abstract paintings. Among several artists invited to exhibit at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, Breer presented "Floats" – large, movable, whimsical sculptures he called "motorised molluscs. While in Japan, he experimented with rotoscoping – tracing live-action movement frame by frame against a projected image, and created "Fuji," a nine-minute stylized depiction of a train journey past Mt. Fuji. Avant-garde film scholar Amos Vogel called the film, "A poetic, rhythmic, riveting achievement in which fragments of landscapes, passengers, and train interiors blend into a magical color dream of a voyage."

Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974) Created over the course of a decade by Thom Andersen, a onetime UCLA film student, this documentary delves into the work of the man whose pioneering studies and concept of persistence of vision led to the development of motion pictures. The film looks at Eadweard Muybridge's personal and professional struggles, and examines the philosophical implications of his sequential photographs, or zoopraxographs, as he called his studies of animal locomotion. Andersen re-animates the images Muybridge originally presented on a zoopraxoscope, a predecessor of the projector. The documentary features cinematography by Morgan Fisher, a script by Fay Andersen, music by Mike Cohen, biographical research by Robert Bartlett Haas and narration by Dean Stockwell. When the PBS affiliate set to broadcast the film declined the completed piece, Andersen ultimately sold his work to New Yorker Films, which recognized Andersen's unique voice as a cultural commentator and helped launch his career. In the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum described the production as "One of the best essay films ever made on a cinematic subject." The UCLA Film & Television Archive, in consultation with Thom Andersen, did the preservation work on the film.

The Conversation (1974) Produced in between "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II," and in part an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up," this film represented a return to small-scale art films for director Francis Ford Coppola. Sound surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired to track a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest), taping their conversation as they walk through San Francisco's crowded Union Square, but he soon suspects that his client plans to murder the couple. "The Conversation" earned Coppola Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, but lost out in both categories to his own "The Godfather Part II." A critical but not commercial success, "The Conversation" has since earned the reputation as one of the artistic high points of the decade and of Coppola's career. Its atmosphere of paranoia and loner protagonist reflected a movement in the early '70s toward darker movies, and its audiotape storyline reflects an era rocked the Watergate scandal. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/conversation.pdf

Chinatown (1974) A compelling whodunit reminiscent of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, "Chinatown" was among the most renowned films of the '70s and holds up impeccably today, thanks to am Oscar-winning script by Robert Towne, flawless direction by the unconventional Roman Polanski, and gorgeous cinematography by John A. Alonzo. A Los Angeles private detective (Jack Nicholson), hired to investigate an adultery case, stumbles onto a labyrinthine plot of a murder involving incest and the privatization of water through government corruption and shady real estate deals that incriminate some of the city's most powerful tycoons. Ultra-glamorous Faye Dunaway is the widow of the murdered water commissioner Nicholson's investigating, and John Huston is her father with more than his share of secrets. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/chinatown.pdf

Blazing Saddles (1974) This riotously funny, raunchy, no-holds-barred Western spoof by Mel Brooks is universally considered one of the funniest American films of all time. The movie features a civil-rights theme (the man in the white hat (Cleavon Little ) turns out to be an African-American who has to defend a bigoted town), and its furiously paced gags and rapid-fire dialogue were scripted by Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg and Alan Unger. Little as the sheriff and Gene Wilder as his recovering alcoholic deputy have great chemistry, and the delightful supporting cast includes Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, and Madeline Kahn as a chanteuse modelled on Marlene Dietrich. As in "Young Frankenstein," "Silent Movie," and "High Anxiety," director/writer Brooks gives a burlesque spin to a classic Hollywood movie genre. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/blazing_saddles.pdf

Antonia: Portrait of the Woman (1974) Musician-conductor Antonia Brica is the subject of this documentary. Library of Congress Collection. Directed by Jill Godmillow and Judy Collins, this Oscar-nominated documentary chronicles the life of musician-conductor Antonia Brica and her struggle to become a symphony director despite her gender. Told by many that it was ridiculous for a woman to think of conducting, she admits, "I felt that I'd never forgive myself if I didn't try." And the pain and deprivation which she has known all her life are over-shadowed in this film by her ebullient, forthright warmth. The narrative of her life alternates with glimpses of her at work—rehearsing or teaching. She also reflects on the emotional experience of conducting— including the acute separation pangs that follow a concert.

Hearts and Minds (1974) Courtesy of Warner Bros. Director Peter Davis describes his Academy Award-winning documentary "Hearts and Minds" (1974) as "an attempt to examine why we went to Vietnam, what we did there and what the experience did to us." Compared by critics at the time to Marcel Ophuls' acclaimed documentary "The Sorrow and the Pity" (1971), "Hearts and Minds," similarly addressed the wartime effects of national myths and prejudices by juxtaposing interviews of government officials, soldiers, peasants and parents, cinéma vérité scenes shot on the home front and in South Vietnam, clips from ideological Cold War movies, and horrific archival footage. Author Frances FitzGerald praised the documentary as "the most moving film I've ever seen on Vietnam, because, for the first time, the camera lingers on the faces of Vietnamese and one hears their voices." Author David Halberstam said it "brilliantly catches … the hidden, unconscious racism of the war." Others from both ends of the political spectrum chided it as manipulative propaganda that oversimplified complexities.

The Sting (1973) Four years after the box office hit "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill re-teamed with similar success for "The Sting." Redford plays a Depression-era conman seeking revenge on the racketeer (Robert Shaw) responsible for the murder of his mentor. He enlists the aid of con artist extraordinaire Paul Newman to gather together an impressive array of con men eager to settle the score with Shaw. "The Sting" became one of the biggest hits of the early '70s and picked up seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Adapted Score for Marvin Hamlisch's unforgettable setting of Scott Joplin's ragtime music. The film boasts a strong supporting cast including Eileen Brennan, Charles Durning, Harold Gould and Ray Walston.

The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973) When "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" was restored for DVD release in 2004, the New York Times called it "a story of black insurrection too strong for 1973. "Based on a controversial best-selling 1969 novel by Sam Greenlee and with a subtly effective score by jazz legend Herbie Hancock, the film presents the story of a black man hired to integrate the CIA who uses his counter-revolutionary training to spark a black nationalist revolution in America's urban streets. Financed mostly by individual African-American investors, some commentators lambasted the film for its sanctioning of violence and distributor United Artists pulled the movie from theaters after a successful three-week run. Others appreciated its significance. Washington Post journalist Adrienne Manns, a former spokesperson in the black student movement, argued that the film "lends humanity to persons who are usually portrayed as vicious, savage, sub-humans – the street gangs, the young people who have in many cities terrorized the communities they live in." New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby commented, "The rage it projects is real." Ivan Dixon, the film's director known for his roles in "Hogan's Heroes" and as the lead in "Nothing But a Man" (1964), believed that the film did not offer "a real solution" to racial injustice, but projected instead "a fantasy that everybody felt, every black male particularly." The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/spook sat door.pdf

No Lies (1973) Done in faux cinéma vérité style, Mitchell Block's 16-minute New York University student film begins on a note of insouciant amateurism and then convincingly moves into darker, deeper waters. Opening with a scene of a girl getting ready for a date, the camera-wielding protagonist adroitly orchestrates a mood shift from goofiness to raw pain as an interviewer tears down the girl's emotional defenses after being raped. One of the first films to deal with the way rape victims are treated when they seek professional help for sexual assault, "No Lies" still possesses a searing resonance and has been widely viewed by nurses, therapists and police officers.

Mean Streets (1973) Martin Scorsese had made two films before "Mean Streets": "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (1967) and "Boxcar Bertha," but this was the film that proved to the world that Scorsese was a special breed of filmmaker: original, volatile, personal, and brilliant. "Mean Streets" was heavily inspired by events he saw growing up in Little Italy, but the style of filmmaking on display is a kinetic fusion of Scorsese's biggest influences: Powell & Pressburger, Kenneth Anger, John Cassavetes, but with a speed and assurance that would ultimately define Scorsese as a filmmaker. Harvey Keitel shines as Charlie Cappa, but Robert De Niro is the true breakout start as Johnny Boy, a frequently careless low-level gangster who Charlie remains loyal to, in spite of all the trouble he causes.

Frank Film (1973) This animated short features two soundtracks: on one, Frank narrates an autobiography, on the other, he reads off a list of words beginning with the letter "f." Tying the two soundtracks together and influencing their subject matter is the animated collage of photos collected from magazines — all arranged by theme and each theme merging into the next. The brainchild of Frank and Caroline Mouris, with soundtrack by Tony Schwartz, the film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1974.

The Exorcist (1973) "The Exorcist" is one of the most successful and influential horror films of all time. Its influence, both stylistically and in narrative, continues to be seen in many movies of the 21st century. Adapted from the popular novel by William Peter Blatty inspired by an actual case from the 1940s, the film version centers on a young girl (14-year-old Linda Blair) who falls victim to fits and bizarre behavior. The girl's actress-mother (Ellen Burstyn) calls in a young priest (Jason Miller) who becomes convinced that the girl is possessed by the Devil. They summon a veteran exorcist (Max von Sydow) and both the priest and the girl suffer numerous horrors during their struggles with the demon (voiced by Mercedes McCambridge). The sound work earned Robert Knudson and Christopher Newman an Oscar, and the opening piano solo of Mike Oldfield's debut album "Tubular Bells" became forever associated with the film.

Enter the Dragon (1973) Bruce Lee burst onto the American scene in this martial arts extravaganza with its dazzling "Hall of Mirrors" climax. Film lore has it that during one fight scene, Lee performed a flying kick so fast that the camera operator was unable to capture it at the standard 24 frames a second, forcing him to shoot in slow motion to make sure the stunt looked authentic and not as if it had been faked. Although Lee unexpectedly died shortly before the film was released, "Enter the Dragon" became a huge hit and Lee became a pop culture legend. The expanded essay is below this description. https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/enter_dragon.pdf

Badlands (1973) Stark, brutal story based on the Charles Starkweather-Carol Fugate murder spree through the Midwest in 1958, with Martin Sheen as the killer lashing out against a society that ignores his existence and Sissy Spacek as his naive teenage consort. Sheen is forceful and properly weird as the mass murderer, strutting around pretending to be James Dean, while Spacek doesn't quite understand what he's all about, but goes along anyway. Director Terrence Malick neither romanticizes nor condemns his subjects, maintaining a low-key approach to the story that results in a fascinating character study. The film did scant box office business, but it remains one of the most impressive of directorial debuts.

American Graffiti (1973) Fresh off the success of "The Godfather," producer Francis Ford Coppola weilded the clout to tackle a project pitched to him by his friend, George Lucas. The film captured the flavor of the 1950s with ironic candor and a latent foreboding that helped spark a nostalgia craze. Despite technical obstacles, and having to shoot at night, cinematographer Haskell Wexler gave the film a neon glare to match its rock-n-roll soundscape. Lucas' period detail, co-writers Willard Huyck's and Gloria Katz's realistic dialogue, and the film's wistfulness for pre-Vietnam simplicity appealed to audiences amidst cultural upheaval. The film also established the reputations of Lucas (whose next film would be "Star Wars") and his young cast, and furthered the onset of soundtrack-driven, youth-oriented movies.

Peege (1972) Director Randal Kleiser ("Grease") crafted this renowned, extremely moving student film while at the University of Southern California. Members of a family visit their blind, dying grandmother Peege at a nursing home, but leave in despair at her condition. Remaining behind, the grandson recounts memories to Peege and manages to connect emotionally with the lonely woman and bring a smile to her face.

Hot Dogs for Gauguin (1972) This hilarious New York University student film (with a cast including Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman in her film debut) was written and directed by Martin Brest who later went on to direct "Beverly Hills Cop," "Midnight Run," and "Scent of a Woman." In the film, DeVito plays a down-on-his-luck photographer determined to capture visual magic and fame. He concocts an intricate plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty and sets his camera to record the exact moment of its destruction.