Cinema: THE BEST OF THE SEVENTIES

AMERICAN Five Easy Pieces (1970). A man searches for continuity between his serene, middle-class past and his chaotic present in Bob Rafelson’s cool, eccentric comedy.

M*A*S*H (1970). A lacerating black comedy about Army surgeons in the Korean War by Robert Altman.

Godfather I and II (1972, 1974). Francis Ford Coppola’s phenomenal one-two punch.Crime melodrama first as family saga, then as historical epic.

American Graffiti (1973). A band of young stars led by Director George Lucas creates a moving and funny portrait of high school life in the early ’60s.

Badlands (1974). Terrence Malick’s lean, poetic fable about a murderer and his girl on a rampage through lonely rural America in the 1950s.

Barry Lyndon (1975). Stanley Kubrick proves that landscape (also costume, decor and the play of light) can substitute for plot and dialogue to reveal the character of a man and an age.

Nashville (1975). In this style-setting comedy, Robert Altman captures the good times, cultural confusions and tragedies of contemporary America.

Annie Hall (1977). Woody Allen’s rueful, touching answer to Freud’s immortal question about what women want.

Star Wars (1977). A space opera by George Lucas, redolent of yesteryear’s comic books and movie serials, that is also Jung-at-heart in its cheerful evocations of basic, mythic stuff.

Manhattan (1979). That rarest of contemporary film phenomena—an American comedy of manners—by Woody Allen.

FOREIGN* My Night at Maud’s (1970). Eric Rohmer’s elegant, intellectual comedy is the era’s great all-talking picture.

Murmur of the Heart (1971). Louis Malle’s comedy about incest in a middle-class French family is sexy and unfailingly wise.

Last Tango in Paris (1972). Fictive character and a great star (Marlon Brando) illuminate each other in Bernardo Bertolucci’s gaudy portrait of the aging male at bay.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). As Luis Buñuel’s eccentric characters roam the French countryside in search of a good meal, a hilarious dream world comes to life.

The Sorrow and the Pity (1972). Marcel Ophuls re-examines the ambiguous moral dilemmas of the World War II era in this searing documentary about Occupied France.

Day for Night (1973). The best movie about moviemaking ever made—wry, funny,yet filled with Director Francois Truffaut’s romantic feeling for his medium.

Amarcord (1974). Federico Fellini’s festive, nostalgic return to the small town of his youth.

Distant Thunder (1975). The ravages of a famine as seen through the pointillist vision of Indian Director Satyajit Ray.

Just Before Nightfall (1975). Melodramas about polite middle-class murderers are Claude Chabrol’s specialty, and this study of sin and forgiveness is among his best.

That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Buñuel again, poignantly returning to his great subject, sexual obsession.

* Dated by U.S. release.