These five best picture winners from the 1970s include a satire, a feel-good boxing story, a tale of social angst, a Vietnam study, and a look at divorce.
The decade of the 1970s was a good one for filmmaking. These five movies help show why.
1975 Best Picture: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Based on the book by Ken Kesey, this film is a parable of society and the role of the non-conformist within it. Jack Nicholson plays an anti-establishment figure who connives to be sent to a mental institution rather than prison. While there, he leads an inmate “revolt” against the institute’s policies which are often implemented by the cruel Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).
- Funny and sad by turns, the film doesn’t always fire on all cylinders, but still became the first movie since It Happened One Night (1935) to win all five major Oscars – best picture, lead actor and actress (Nicholson and Fletcher), best director (Milos Forman), and best screen adaptation.
1976 Best Picture: Rocky
- Rocky was a labor of love for a then unknown actor and screenwriter named Sylvester Stallone. His rags-to-riches script about an obscure Philadelphia boxer getting a chance to fight for the world championship paralleled Stallone’s own life. Turned down by over thirty studios before being made, the film became the sleeper hit of 1975 and is still popular today.
- Criticized by some as manipulative, syrupy, and unbelievable, the movie won the hearts of audiences and won out over a strong field that included All the President’s Men, Network, Taxi Driver and Bound for Glory. The film led to five commercially successful sequels that, nevertheless, did not have the same magic as the original.
1977 Best Picture: Annie Hall
- A small budget film directed by and starring Woody Allen, this picture beat the highly favored Star Wars, as well as Julia, The Turning Point, and The Goodbye Girl. Whether it is worth viewing or not depends almost entirely upon on how much one likes Allen’s films.
- In the movie, Allen plays his usual character – an angst-ridden, pessimistic, Jewish New Yorker who is concerned with his relationships with the opposite sex. Dianne Keaton, in an Oscar winning role as Annie, plays his love interest. Unlike Woody’s character, she is a gentile mid-westerner who longs to be a singer. Like Woody, however, she too is neurotic.
1978 Best Picture: The Deer Hunter
- This film is the story of three Pennsylvania friends and the effect that a tour of duty during the Vietnam War has on them. It is divided into three parts: pre-war, the war itself, and the post-war. In the first part, the film is slow moving as the characters are carefully developed. The middle part shows the war in all of its hellish aspects. The last shows how the war has changed all three men – one mentally, one physically, and the third whose change is not revealed until his first post-war hunting trip.
- Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage all give fine performances as the three friends, Walken winning an Oscar as best supporting actor. De Niro was nominated for best actor, but lost to Jon Voight for his role in another Vietnam film, Coming Home.
1979 Best Picture: Kramer vs. Kramer
- This film of a young boy caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle has been criticized by some as being nothing more than a ‘70s version of a Lifetime movie. This is not completely fair. The movie is a carefully wrought story of two self-centered persons, who, at first concerned only with their own superficial needs, slowly begin to realize their own inadequacies as adults and parents.
- In the hands of lesser actors, this might have been a trivial film; but, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as the divorcees give strong Oscar winning performances, as does Jane Alexander as a family friend. Equal to all three is eight year-old Justin Henry as the son. Henry is still the youngest actor to receive an Oscar acting nomination.
Although these five films are not as strong as the best pictures from the early half of the decade, they are still worth viewing.
The copyright of the article Oscar Winning Movies from the Late 1970s in Classic Films is owned by John K. Davis. Permission to republish Oscar Winning Movies from the Late 1970s in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
