Teeth gritted, I inserted the DVD last week and settled in to watch The Conformist for the first time since 2008. Bernardo Bertolucci’s adaptation of Alberto Moravia’s novel still suffers from a post-Freudian hangover: the title character played with feral exquisiteness by Jean-Louis Trintignant, to suppress bisexual longings, yearns to be a mediocrity, a flunkie, so he marries an intellectual inferior and joins the Italian fascists as Mussolini takes power.
Synthesizing Max Ophuls, Luchino Visconti, and Jean-Luc Godard but imbuing his compositions with a sensuousness beyond their imaginings, Bertolucci created the film that ended an era, began a new one, and forestalled successors. Vittorio Storaro’s restless camera tries to avoid reveling in beauty for its own sake, although occasionally the picture does pose as if Bertolucci wanted to hang sequences in Le Louvre. Thinking like novelists, he and Storaro use two-shots, deep focus, dollies, and washed-out earth tones to reflect Marcello’s tortured mind.
It’s clear to me Robert Altman and Rainer Werner Fassbinder — erratic, mercurial, restless — were the decade’s key filmmakers, hence their many appearances on this list. I restore Elaine May to her rightful place in the canon. Since her death and Criterion’s ministrations, the work of Chantal Akerman has gotten the second look (and in many cases first look) she deserves. If readers haven’t watched Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970), here’s a decent YouTube upload.
1. The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)
2. Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman)
3. Suspiria (Dario Argento)
4. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)
5. The Emigrants/The New Land (Jan Troell)
6. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
7. A New Leaf (Elaine May)
8. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel)
9. The Merchant of Four Seasons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
10. Dawn of the Dead (George Romero)
11. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
12. The Landlord (Hal Ashby)
13. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
14. Vengeance Is Mine (Shohei Imamura)
15. Badlands (Terrence Malick)
16. The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston)
17. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio de Sica)
18. Thieves Like Us (Robert Altman)
19. The Butcher (Claude Chabrol)
20. Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
21. Wanda (Barbara Loden)
22. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog)
23. McCabe and Mrs Miller (Robert Altman)
24. Wise Blood (John Huston)
25. Night Moves (Arthur Penn)
26. All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
27. Carrie (Brian De Palma)
28. Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple)
29. The Tenant (Roman Polanski)
30. Xala (Ousmane Sembène)
31. Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May)
32. Next Stop, Greenwich Village (Paul Mazursky)
33. Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer)
34. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
35. Ali–Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
36. The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood)
37. 3 Women (Robert Altman)
38. Sorcerer (William Friedkin)
39. Opening Night (John Cassavetes)
40. Mean Streets (Martin Scoarsese)
41. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
42. The Late Show (Robert Benton)
43. Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
44. The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni)
45. Sunday, Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger)
46. Beware of a Holy Whore (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
47. The Story of Adele H (Francois Truffaut)
48. Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
49. Man of Marble (Andrzej Wajda)
50. Star Wars (George Lucas)
51. In a Year of 13 Moons (Rainer Marie Fassbinder)
52. Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman)
53. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
54. Chinatown (Roman Polanski)
55. Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (Chantal Akerman)
56. The Duellists (Ridley Scott),
57. Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris)
58. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman)
59. The Green Room (François Truffaut)
60. Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks)
61. The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi)
62. An Unmarried Woman (Paul Mazursky)
63. Fox and His Friends (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
64. Love and Death (Woody Allen)
65. Lacombe, Lucien (Louis Malle)
66. F For Fake (Orson Welles)
67. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
68. Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Bertrand Blier)
69. The Driver (Walter Hill)
70. Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
71. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
72. Ulzana’s Raid (Robert Aldrich)
73. Sounder (Martin Ritt)
74. Deliverance (John Boorman)
75. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola)
76. Alien (Ridley Scott)
77. Hearts and Minds (Peter Davis)
78. Life of Brian (Terry Jones)
79. Amarcord (Federico Fellini)
80. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates)
81. Breaking Away (Peter Yates)
82. Shampoo (Hal Ashby)
83. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
84. Norma Rae (Martin Ritt)
85. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio de Sica)
86. Winter Kills (William Richert)
87. Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson)
88. Illustrious Corpses (Francesco Rosi)
89. 10 (Blake Edwards)
90. Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Micklin Silver)
Humanizing The Vacuum 
No place for The Exorcist?
A worthy list with no clinkers except for the Martin Ritt films. The Exorcist and Last Tango were overhyped at the time. I am fond of: Out 1, Martin, Straight Time, The Mother and the Whore, La Rapture, Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Brood, The Ascent, Charley Varrick, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, The Spider’s Stratagem, The Marriage of Maria Braun, etc. Maybe one of them can replace Finzi Continis at 17 and 85. What a decade!
These I’ve seen.
6. The Godfather, Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
13. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
18. Thieves Like Us (Robert Altman)
26. All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
29. The Tenant (Roman Polanski)
34. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
40. Mean Streets (Martin Scoarsese)
43. Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
50. Star Wars (George Lucas)
54. Chinatown (Roman Polanski)
56. The Duellists (Ridley Scott),
58. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman)
60. Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks)
67. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
70. Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
71. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
75. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola)
76. Alien (Ridley Scott)
78. Life of Brian (Terry Jones)
81. Breaking Away (Peter Yates)
86. Winter Kills (William Richert)
87. Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson)
89. 10 (Blake Edwards)
The 70s were not my cinematic decade. As I grew up in the 70s, I saw mostly movies from the 60s, on TV. The on.y means by which Youthful Monk saw movies. In the 80s I was a cinema goer as an adult. I’ve probably seen all of these only on video, save for “Star Wars” and “Alien” which were among the first films I saw in the theaters as a teen. I have a real warm spot for “The Conversation;” my favorite Coppola movie. I would probably put that and the vicious satire “Winter Kills” in my #2/3 positions under Lumet’s “Network,” which is my favorite 70s film [but obviously not yours]. Sure, sure. It’s heavy handed satire. But it was…
On.
The.
Money.
I also liked Ridley Scott’s “The Duellists.” So interesting to see Harvey Keitel outside of the usual urban milieu [yet not in outer space]. Never too much of a Mel Brooks fan, but ghod is “Young Frankenstein” meta-hilarious on every level you’d care to slice it. Just stunning work. The only of these I really couldn’t stand was “10,” but it’s a Blake Edwards film. What else is new? I had to watch that in a popular culture class I took as an elective. So tragic, as I’d easily avoided it in its commercial heyday three-four years earlier.