“I love Lumet but Treat Williams? Seriously? After I saw Prince in the City I understood why Lumet thought Vin Diesel was a good actor.”
Widgets?
I’d take Hill—Hard Times, The Warriors, The Driver—during this period over Kaufman by a large margin.
For a while (75-90) Hill was king of the hill. And he produced Alien!
He also wrote The Getaway for Peckinpah and The Mackintosh Man, for John Huston, and The Drowning Pool for Stuart Rosenberg during this period.
For me there’s only one director for the 70s, the prolific: Kinji Fukasaku
There’s at least 10 films he made in the 70s that i’d rate highly, a major influence on the crime genre.
Completing my 15 greatest directors of the 70s – 3 or more films I rate highly: [ a-z ]
Robert Altman
Hal Ashby
Francis Ford Coppola
Clint Eastwood
Werner Herzog
George Lucas
Sidney Lumet
Kenji Misumi
Sam Peckinpah
Sydney Pollack
Nicolas Roeg
George A. Romero
Steven Spielberg
Andrei Tarkovsky
…oh and a special mention to Alejandro Jodorowsky, only 2 films in the 70s but they’re both in my Top 75
Chang Cheh
John Milius- Dillinger, The Wind and the Lion and Big Wednesday. Very diverse.
“Chang Cheh”
This—Five Deadly Venoms, The New One-Armed Swordsmen are some of the greatest action films ever.
And then there’s King Hu—The Valiant Ones, and A Touch of Zen I’d argue has an ending as experimental as 2001.
…
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I’ve got to go with Altman here, for variety alone. Though Werner Herzog (Land of Silence and Darkness, Even Dwarfs Started Small, Fata Morgana, Aguirre The Wrath of God, Everyman for Himself, La Soufiere, Stroszek, Noferatu) comes damn close.
Both Bergman (The Touch, Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage) and Bunuel (Tristana, Discrete Charm, Phantom of Liberty, Obscure Object of Desire) were still at the top of their game.
If he’d been more consistent, Claude Chabrol would also be a contender.
While I think Coppola’s films in the 70s are of higher average quality (if such a thing can be defined), I think Altman should be the director of the 70s. His films seem to capture the tone and the times of the 70s in a way that few directors have ever done and he did it consistently.
Fassbinder: The Marriage of Maria Braun, Despair, Fox and His Friends, Effi Briest, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, World on a Wire, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? . . . just to name a few.
1.) Alejandro Jodorowsky
2.) Bob Rafelson
3.) Nick Zedd
4.) Francis Ford Coppola
6.) Jess Franco
7.) Lucio Fulci
8.) Rainer Werner Fassbinder
9.) Hal Ashby
10.) Derek Jarman
In random order…
What Parks said.
^Man, I need to see more Fassbinder.
Tarkovsy, Coppola and Herzog tower over everyone imo.
I’m just going to keep mentioning Pakula until someone listens.
Lino Brocka, Mario O’Hara, Celso Ad. Castillo—their work in this decade ain’t exactly chopped liver…
@ Santino
All the President’s Men was a masterpiece. I don’t think he has any others.
Klute was pretty good. Sophie’s Choice was decently directed (I have problems with the Styron material). And Pelican Brief was okay (I have problems with Grisham and Eric—sorry, Julia, they look so alike—there).
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Coppola, with Altman not far behind, and I suspect he may surpass Coppola as I see more of his films. I didn’t even like The Conversation.
Filmy
I want to nominate Tarkovsky above all.
surprised Coppola is mentioned fewer times than I expected.
Scorsese, Altman, Herzog, Eustache, Cassavetes made fucking beaties as well.