National Film Registry Year by Year

[BLACHEFAN]

I am Somebody (1970)

Madeline Anderson’s documentary brings viewers to the front lines of the civil rights movement during the 1969 Charleston hospital workers’ strike, when black female workers marched for fair pay and union recognition. Anderson personally participated in the strike, along with such notable figures as Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young, all affiliated with Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Anderson’s film shows the courage and resiliency of the strikers and the support they received from the local black community. It is an essential filmed record of this important moment in the history of civil and women’s rights.

[BLACHEFAN]

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Jack Nicholson coaches Susan Anspach as she plays a Mozart piece on the piano. Library of Congress Collection.

In director Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces," gifted pianist and musical prodigy Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) turns his back on his upper-class roots and potential to live the life of an oil rig worker with a pregnant waitress girlfriend (Karen Black). An intense character study, the film exudes the themes of alienation and self-destruction that often appeared in films of the 1970s. The release of "Five Easy Pieces," closely following that of "Easy Rider" (1969), helped solidify Nicholson's position as an A-list star. "Five Easy Pieces" was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Jack Nicholson, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Karen Black, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay.

[BLACHEFAN]

Hospital (1970)

Not to be confused with Arthur Hiller's narrative fiction film "The Hospital" starring George C. Scott, 1970's "Hospital" was another of documentarian Frederick Wiseman's forays into public institutions; he had previously made "Titticut Follies (1967) and "High School" (1968). On assignment for NY public TV station WNET, Wiseman takes his cameras into New York's Metropolitan Hospital and, literally, focuses on life and death. Paying special attention to the hospital's Emergency Room, Wiseman's film highlights doctors and patients and the legal and ethical decisions both must face.

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/hospital.pdf

[BLACHEFAN]

King: A Filmed Record ... Montgomery to Memphis (1970)

As one of the first public figures to have his entire career documented, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., became an astute judge of the media and knew how to exploit his celebrity to further his cause. After King was assassinated, television pioneer Ely Landau envisioned producing a 10-minute film tribute to the slain leader. Landau and his colleague Richard Kaplan assembled thousands of reels of film and rebuilt events from a variety of sources in their effort to condense King's life without losing his message. The first edit ran 10 hours, but the team eventually pared it down to 185 minutes. The resulting documentary illustrates King's development as one of the preeminent champions of the civil rights movement, while demonstrating how he became a media sensation.

[BLACHEFAN]

Little Big Man (1970)

In this Arthur Penn-directed Western, Dustin Hoffman (with exceptional assistance from make-up artist Dick Smith) plays a 121-year-old man looking back at his life as a pioneer in America's Old West. The film is ambitious, both in its historical scope and narrative approach, which interweaves fact and myth, historical figures and events and fanciful tall tales. "Little Big Man" has been called an epic reinvented as a yarn, and the Western reimagined for a post-1960s audience, one already well-versed in the white hat-black hat tradition of the typical Hollywood Western saga. Against a backdrop that includes the cavalry, old-time medicine shows, life on the frontier and a climax at Custer's Last Stand, Penn, Hoffman and scriptwriter Calder Willingham (from the novel by Thomas Berger) upend Western motifs while also still skillfully telling a series of remarkable human stories filled with tragedy and humor.

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/little_big_man.pdf

[BLACHEFAN]

M*A*S*H (1970)

This film, which deftly combined black comedy with sophomoric gags, made director Robert Altman famous for his signature overlapping dialogue -- from Ring Lardner Jr.'s Oscar-winning screenplay -- and stylishly gritty presentation. Its story of an irreverent U.S. medical unit during the Korean war attempting to thwart authority figures at every turn spawned a folksier television sitcom two years later. Spirited ensemble acting helped launch the careers of Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Sally Kellerman and Robert Duvall.

[BLACHEFAN]

Multiple SIDosis (1970)

Former vaudevillian and amateur filmmaker Sid Laverents wrote, directed and starred in this short film that features a dozen split-screens of him playing a variety of musical instruments simultaneously. Each of Laverents's musicians displays a different character withs its own costume and hairstyle as they unite to perform the song "Nola," a novelty ragtime number popularized in the 1920s. Coupling his own ingratiating persona, painstaking in-camera multiple exposures and complex overdubbing, Laverents created a film that may be amateur but not amateurish.

[BLACHEFAN]

Patton (1970)

Franklin Schaffner directed one of Hollywood's most enduring screen biographies, brought to life with great flair by George C. Scott as the larger-than-life World War II general whose personality dictated history. The screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North depicts Patton as both megalomaniac and genius, occasionally even sympathetic. Karl Malden is memorable as General Omar Bradley. The film won several Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for Scott, which he famously refused to accept.

[BLACHEFAN]

Woodstock (1970)

This documentary by Michael Wadleigh, with editor/assistant director Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker (Scorsese's longtime editor), covers the historic rock "happening" in Woodstock, NY, and includes performances by Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who and another dozen performers. It's official slogan was "three Days of Peace and Music ... An Aquarian Exposition." The film is distinguished by its innovative use of split frame visuals and a sound track that integrated and overlapped recordings from several sources at once.

[BLACHEFAN]

A New Leaf (1971)

Elaine May became the first woman to write, direct and star in a major American studio feature with "A New Leaf." Critics loved the comedic confrontations of the film's two cartoon-like eccentrics, played with uncommon understatement by May, as a socially inept but wealthy botanist heiress, and Walter Matthau as a conniving and murderous misanthrope in pursuit of her fortune. Their encounters reminded reviewers of the droll sensibility that made the legendary Mike Nichols and Elaine May satiric sketches created years earlier for nightclubs and records so appealing. For "A New Leaf," May drew on classic Hollywood comedy traditions of Depression-era screwball comedy and slapstick. Despite a failed lawsuit by May to have her name removed from the credits because the released version did not match her vision of the film, audiences flocked to it and the film has become a cult classic. May's conflicts with Hollywood studios continued, eventually ending her career as a feature film director in 1987. After recently winning a 2019 Tony Award for best actress in a play, she has been slated to direct a new feature film at age 87.

[BLACHEFAN]

Wanda (1971)

Film and TV actress Barbara Loden wrote and directed this affecting and insightful character study about an uneducated, passive woman from the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania, where the cinema verite-like film was shot. The title character possesses critically low self-esteem, leaves her kids and husband and then drifts aimlessly into a series of one-night stands and a dangerous relationship with a bank robber. Today, many consider this low-budget study of loneliness and personal isolation one of the finest works of independent cinema during the 1970s.

[BLACHEFAN]

Dirty Harry (1971)

Clint Eastwood's role as rogue police officer Harry Callahan in director Don Siegel's action-packed, controversial paean to vigilante justice marked a major turning point in Eastwood's career. A top 10 box-office hit after its release, "Dirty Harry" struck a nerve in the era's politically polarized atmosphere with those who believed that concern over suspects' rights had gone too far. While a number of critics characterized the film as "fascistic," Eastwood countered that Harry, who disregards police procedure and disobeys his superiors, represents "a fantasy character" who "does all the things people would like to do in real life but can't." "Dirty Harry," he stated later, was ahead of its time, putting the "rights of the victim" above those of the accused. The film's kinesthetic direction and editing laid the aesthetic groundwork for many of the 1970s' gritty, realistic police dramas.

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/dirty_harry.pdf

[BLACHEFAN]

The French Connection (1971)

In this fast-paced police drama directed by William Friedkin, detective Gene Hackman and his partner (Roy Scheider) are New York City cops on narcotics detail who discover a French drug kingpin (Fernando Rey) as the key source of heroin from Europe. The film's high point, a high-speed car chase with Hackman tailing an elevated train, was one of the most viscerally exciting screen moments of its day and set the stage for dozens of action sequences to follow. The film's gritty realism, captured by cinematographer Owen Roizman, and downbeat ending were a clear departure from the glossy heroics of most previous detective stories. It earned five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (by Ernest Tidyman), and Best Actor for Hackman.

[BLACHEFAN]

Growing Up Female (1971)

Among the first films to emerge from the women's liberation movement, "Growing Up Female" is a documentary portrait of America on the brink of profound change in its attitudes toward women. Filmed in spring 1970 by Ohio college students Julia Reichert and Jim Klein, "Growing Up Female" focuses on six girls and women aged 4 to 34 and the home, school, work and advertising environments that have impacted their identities. Through open-ended interviews and lyrical documentation of their surroundings, the film strived, in Reichert's words, to "give women a new lens through which to see their own lives." Widely distributed to libraries, universities, churches and youth groups, the film launched a cooperative of female filmmakers that bypassed traditional distribution mechanisms to get its message communicated.

[BLACHEFAN]

The Hospital (1971)

Paddy Chayefsky, who would later write "Network" (1976), penned an Oscar-winning script for this satire set in a Manhattan teaching hospital whose façade and staff both seem to be crumbling. George C. Scott portrays a beleaguered physician, a character far less in control than the five-star general he portrayed in "Patton" the year before. That earlier role had earned him a Best Actor Oscar, which he famously declined, and "The Hospital" earned him another nomination. Director Arthur Hiller toggles between comedy and tragedy, the real and the surreal to depict, in Chayefsky's words, "a microcosm for all the ills of contemporary society" and a vision of health care that looks frighteningly prescient.

[BLACHEFAN]

Harold and Maude (1971)

Most critics were less than impressed and some were downright turned off by this black comedy starring Bud Cort as a young man obsessed with death who meets and eventually falls in love with Ruth Gordon as an eccentric, wisecracking elderly woman. Directed by Hal Ashby and written by Colin Higgins (as his UCLA masters thesis), the film became popular on college campuses in its day and continues to attract a cult following, embracing the warm humor and big heart that lies beneath the darkness. The film's music was composed and performed by Cat Stevens.

[BLACHEFAN]

The Last Picture Show (1971)

From a novel by Larry McMurtry, director Peter Bogdanovich and McMurtry adapted the story into a visceral reflection of life in a small West Texas town in the early 1950s. The film boasts a cast of young actors, many of whom went on to stardom in film and television, including Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms, as well as seasoned veterans including Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman and Ellen Burstyn. The black and white cinematography by Robert Surtees suggests the innocence of a simpler time and the bleak uncertainty as those simpler times begin to fade away. Johnson and Leachman won supporting actor Oscars for their subtly moving performances.

[BLACHEFAN]

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

"McCabe & Mrs. Miller" demonstrates why the Western genre, especially when reinvented by the acclaimed Robert Altman, endured in the 20th century as a useful model for critically examining the realities of contemporary American culture. In a small American frontier village, a stranger named McCabe (Warren Beatty) builds a brothel with the help of experienced madame Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie). The town soon prospers, and success brings the jealous -- and potentially deadly -- attentions of a wealthy mining company. The film's credits include evocative cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond and a music score by Leonard Cohen.

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/mccabe.pdf

[BLACHEFAN]

Nostalgia (1971)

This avant-garde classic by Hollis Frampton is considered eloquent and evocative in its exploration of memory and family.

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/nostalgia.pdf

[BLACHEFAN]

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-72)

Jonas Mekas' "Reminiscences" is an elegiac diary film of a trip that he took back to his birthplace of Semeniskiai, Lithuania. In addition to his own exceptional body of avant-garde films, Mekas also is a legendary member of that community through his work as spokesperson, archivist and theoretician of the avant-garde movement. Often called the godfather of American experimental cinema, his writings in "Film Culture" and "The Village Voice" helped spur public interest. His founding of the Film-Makers Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives also made avant-garde films more accessible and aided their preservation.

[BLACHEFAN]

Shaft (1971)

In this prime example of the "blackploitation" film (one made specifically for urban black moviegoers but whose appeal attracted a broader audience), Richard Roundtree stars as John Shaft, the coolest of cool private eyes. Moses Gunn is the dope-dealing racketeer who hires Shaft to track down his kidnapped daughter. Adapted by Ernest Tidyman from his novel, the movie comes to vibrant life whenever director Gordon Parks hits the streets of New York. The soul and funk-styled theme song by Isaac Hayes topped the music charts and won an Oscar for best original song.

[BLACHEFAN]

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

In the late 1960s, following the success of such youth-oriented fare as "Easy Rider," Hollywood executives greenlighted a spate of innovative, low-budget films by young filmmakers influenced by European directors like Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni. One such film was the minimalist "Two-Lane Blacktop," which follows two "gearhads" (singer-songwriter James Taylor and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson) in their souped-up '55 Chevy as they're challenged to a cross-country race by a middle-aged driver (Warren Oates) in a Pontiac GTO. The leisurely pace set by director Monte Hellman and screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer bathes audiences in spare landscapes and car culture rituals that engender a myth of freedom promised by life on the road.

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/blacktop.pdf

[BLACHEFAN]

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Author Roald Dahl adapted his own novel, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley wrote a memorable musical score, and producer David Wolper wisely cast Gene Wilder as Wonka in this film musical about a contest put on by an often-sadistic candymaker. Harkening back to the classic Hollywood musicals, "Willy Wonka" is surreal, yet playful at the same time, and suffused with Harper Goff's jaw-dropping color sets, which richly live up to the fanciful world found in one of the film's signature songs, "Pure Imagination." Wilder's brilliant portrayal of the enigmatic Wonka caused theatergoers to like and fear Wonka at the same time, while the hallucinogenic tunnel sequence has traumatized children (and adults) for decades, their nightmares indelibly emblazoned in memory like the scariest scenes from "The Wizard of Oz."

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/willy_wonka.pdf

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Lives of Performers (1972)

Yvonne Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. At a very young age, Rainer's father introduced her to films and her mother introduced her to ballet. She moved to New York in 1956, where she studied dance at the Martha Graham School while also learning ballet at Ballet Arts. Much like other choreographers of her era, Rainer sought to blur the stark line separating dancers from non-dancers. Her work has been described as "foundational across multiple disciplines and movements: dance, cinema, feminism, minimalism, conceptual art and postmodernism." "Lives of Performers" has been characterized as "a stark and revealing examination of romantic alliances ... the dilemma of a man who can't choose between two women and makes them both suffer."

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Cabaret (1972)

Bob Fosse, who earned a Best Director Oscar, translated a highly successful Broadway musical into a film that maintains the vivacity of the stage version while creating an intimacy seldom found in such stage-to-cinema adaptations. Liza Minnelli won an Oscar as Best Actress for her portrayal of the unabashedly amoral, disarmingly mercurial cabaret performer Sally Boles living it up in 1930s Berlin. Her co-star Joel Grey, who played the worldwise Emcee, took home the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film was also recognized for its score, cinematography and art direction.

The expanded essay is below this description.

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/cabaret.pdf