Saturday Night Fever - 1977

Badham's melodramatic, out-dated film was the biggest musical sensation and blockbuster of the late 1970's (from co-producer Robert Stigwood) - adapted by screenwriter Norman Wexler from Nik Cohn's New York Magazine story "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night." It features one of the most famous song soundtracks in film history, and was responsible for the Disco Craze phenomenon, launching hot disco clubs (like Studio 54) and the film super-stardom of 19-year old John Travolta, previously best known as one of the Sweathogs of the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter. The film's soundtrack is the most recognizable, with a slew of high-pitched Bee Gees songs from the Gibbs: "Night Fever," "How Deep is Your Love," "More Than a Woman," "You Should Be Dancin'," and "Stayin' Alive" (which accompanies a memorable opening scene when the working-class protagonist struts down the sidewalk to the lyrics: "Oh, you can tell by the way I walk / I'm a woman's man, no time to talk").

In the classic coming-of-age tale, a conflicted, teenaged Italian-American anti-hero from Brooklyn, Tony Manero (Travolta with the film's sole Oscar nomination) works in a dead-end job as a clerk in a local hardware store and lives at home with his oppressive, verbally-abusive blue-collar family. But after dark, he becomes the dynamic, white polyester-clad stud (with platform shoes, flared pants, and a wide-collared shirt) and undisputed dancing legend of a local nightclub (the 2001 Odyssey), with dancing partner Stephanie (Gorney) for a dance contest. The uneducated macho Manero seeks escape from his desperate plight of a staid home life and unambitious friends by finding recognition on the dance floor. However, his swaggering, troubled character also expresses arrogance, racism, immaturity, obnoxiousness, and misogyny (he sexually abuses and disregards girlfriend Annette (Pescow).

Additional popular songs on the soundtrack included Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You" and the Trammps' "Disco Inferno." Unbelievably, the soundtrack was completely ignored by the Academy, causing a critical outcry and leading to the extremely unlikely Oscar win by the next year's inferior disco film Thank God It's Friday (1978)'s for "Last Dance" (sung by Donna Summer). An inferior sequel, director Sylvester Stallone's Staying Alive (1983) also starred Travolta reprising his Tony Manero role.

Rocky - 1976

Rocky Framed Poster
24.9374 in. x 36.9374 in.

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The phenomenally successful, uplifting, "sleeper" film that was filmed in a record twenty-eight days with a paltry budget of about $1 million, and ultimately grossed well over $100 million. (This low-budget film was positioned between two early "blockbusters" - Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and Lucas' Star Wars (1977).) Its screenwriter and major star, Sylvester Stallone, was an unbankable unknown at the time - an underdog actor/writer in the film industry (with 32 previously-rejected scripts) similar to the boxing 'bum' in the film. Stallone supposedly wrote the script for the sports comeback film over a three-day period.

The action-packed, 'feel-good' crowd-pleasing story, shot mostly on location, tells of the rise of a small-time, has-been, underdog Philadelphia boxer against insurmountable odds in a big-time bout with Apollo Creed (Weathers), with the emotional support of a shy, hesitant, loving girlfriend named Adrian (Shire) and wily fight manager Mickey (Meredith). The low-key film was a combination of On the Waterfront (1954), Marty (1955), and a fairy-tale, Cinderella rags-to-riches story. The original Rocky film, from Oscar-winning director John G. Avildsen, packed movie houses, and beat out formidable competition for Best Picture: All the President's Men, Bound For Glory, Network, and Taxi Driver. It was followed by four inferior sequels: Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982), Rocky IV (1985), Rocky V (1990) and another entry titled Rocky Balboa (2006).

Patton - 1970

Patton, 1970 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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The epic film biography, shot in 70 mm. widescreen color, of the controversial, bombastic, multi-dimensional World War II general and hero George S. Patton. The larger-than-life, flamboyant, maverick, pugnacious military figure, nicknamed "Old Blood and Guts," was well-known for his fierce love of America, his temperamental battlefield commanding, his arrogant power-lust ("I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life"), his poetry writing, his belief in reincarnation, his verbal abuse and slapping of a battle-fatigued soldier, his anti-diplomatic criticism of the Soviet Union, and his firing of pistols at strafing fighter planes. The bigger-than-life screen biography is most noted for its brilliant opening monologue by Patton (Scott), delivered before a gigantic American flag to the off-screen troops of the Allied Third Army ("No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country").

The story was based on two books: Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and A Soldier's Story by General Omar Bradley (portrayed by Malden). As a result of Francis Ford Coppola's breakthrough win for Best Adapted Screenplay as co-screen writer, he went on to write and direct The Godfather (1972). Although Scott portrayed the famous general perfectly and it became his archetypal film, the role was also considered by Burt Lancaster, Rod Steiger, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum and John Wayne. The subject matter was remade as a TV-movie entitled The Last Days of Patton (1986), also with Scott in the lead role.

Love Story - 1970

Love Story, 1970 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Love Story, 1970 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Love Story is a 1970 romantic drama film written by Erich Segal and directed by Arthur Hiller. The film, well known as a tragedy, is considered one of the most romantic of all time by the American Film Institute (#9 on the list), and was followed by a sequel, Oliver's Story during 1978. Love Story starred Ryan O'Neal, Ali MacGraw, and Ray Milland and is also the film debut of Tommy Lee Jones with a minor role.

The film tells of Oliver Barrett IV, who comes from a family of wealthy and well-respected Harvard University graduates. At Radcliffe library, the Harvard student meets and falls in love with Jennifer Cavelleri, a working-class, quick-witted Radcliffe College student. Upon graduation from college, the two decide to marry against the wishes of Oliver's father, who thereupon severs ties with his son.

Without his father's financial support, the couple struggles to pay Oliver's way through Harvard Law School with Jenny working as a private school teacher. They rent the top floor of a house near the Law School at 119 Oxford Street, in the Agassiz neighborhood of Cambridge, adjacent to a local laundromat. Graduating third in his class at Harvard Law, Oliver takes a position at a respectable New York law firm.

With Oliver's new income, the pair of 24-year-olds decide to have a child. After failing, they consult a medical specialist, who after repeated tests, informs Oliver that Jenny is ill and will soon die. Oliver then tries again. While this is not stated explicitly, she appears to have leukemia.

As instructed by his doctor, Oliver attempts to live a "normal life" without telling Jenny of her condition. Jenny nevertheless discovers her ailment after confronting her doctor about her recent illness. With their days together numbered, Jenny begins costly cancer therapy, and Oliver soon becomes unable to afford the multiplying hospital expenses. Desperate, he seeks financial relief from his father. When the senior Barrett asks if he needs the money because he got some girl "in trouble," Oliver says yes instead of telling his father the truth about Jenny's condition.

From her hospital bed, Jenny speaks with her father about funeral arrangements, then asks for Oliver. She tells him to avoid blaming himself, and asks him to embrace her tightly before she dies. They lie together on the hospital bed.

The novel also includes the double meaning of a love story between Oliver and his father, highlighted by the scene between Oliver and his father at the end of the book. When Mr. Barrett realizes that Jenny is ill and that his son borrowed the money for her, he immediately sets out for New York. By the time he reaches the hospital, Jenny is dead. Mr. Barrett apologizes to his son, who replies with something Jenny once told him: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Last Tango in Paris - 1972

Starring: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial, landmark X-rated film initiated a trend for arthouse films to include explicit erotic content. It told about a primal sexual affair between middle-aged, bitter and grieving hotel owner Paul (Brando in his seventh and last Best Actor-nominated role) whose wife had committed suicide and a 20-year old French student Jeanne (Schneider) who was engaged to be married to Tom (Léaud), a film director who was making a cinema verite film about her.

Upon meeting in an apartment both are looking to rent, Paul forces himself violently on Jeanne sexually, bordering on rape, and begins a torrid, sexually perverse but anonymous 'no questions asked' affair with her (they don't know each other's names) that becomes increasingly vile, unromantic and scatological. His set of rules was notable for the time: "We are going to forget everything we knew - everything". The pure sexual nature of their relationship included the bathtub washing scene and the infamous, disturbing, and explicit sodomy (butter-lubricated anal sex) scene on the floor ("Get the butter").

Later, Paul reciprocated by letting Jeanne penetrate him anally with her fingers - part of his objective to "look death right in the face...go right up into the ass of death... till you find the womb of fear." Predictably, the film ended with his violent death on the balcony when she shot him with her father's gun. The film remains the sole still-mature rated (X, NC-17) film to earn Oscar nominations, alongside Ellen Burstyn's Oscar nomination for Requiem for a Dream (2000). (Midnight Cowboy (1969) and The Exorcist (1973) were subsequently re-rated as R.)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind - 1977

Close Encounters of the Third Kind Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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A science-fiction epic and adventure story about the mysteries of UFO and extra-terrestrial appearances. A Middle-American from Indiana Roy Neary (Dreyfuss), a utilities lineman, is confronted by a UFO on a deserted road at night as he investigates a power outage - a near-religious, life-transforming experience. Afterwards, he becomes obsessed with unexplained, mountainous shapes, and five musical notes. By piecing together clues, he is ultimately led to a rendezvous on Devils Tower in Wyoming with Jillian (Dillon), a mother whose young boy Barry (Guffey) was kidnapped by the aliens. There in the exhilarating climax, they witness an arriving spacecraft, the dazzling mother-ship, greeted by a top-secret scientific establishment led by Claude Lacombe (Truffaut).

Taxi Driver - 1976

Taxi Driver Framed Sign
19 in. x 22 in.

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Taxi Driver (1976) is director Martin Scorsese's and screenwriter Paul Schrader's gritty, disturbing, nightmarish modern film classic, that examines alienation in urban society. Scorsese's fourth film, combining elements of film noir, the western, horror and urban melodrama film genres. Historically, the film appeared after a decade of war in Vietnam, and after the disgraceful Watergate crisis and President Nixon's resignation.

It explores the psychological madness within an obsessed, twisted, inarticulate, lonely, anti-hero cab driver and war vet (De Niro), who misdirectedly lashes out with frustrated anger and power like an exploding time bomb at the world that has alienated him. His assaultive unhinging is first paired with a longing to connect with a blonde goddess office worker (Shepherd), and then with an attempt to rescue/liberate a young 12-year old prostitute named Iris (Foster) from her predatory pimp "Sport" (Keitel) and her tawdry, streetwalking life. [The young Foster, who had previously acted for Scorsese in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), was required to undergo psychological tests to see if she would bear up during filming.]

Taxi Driver has been acknowledged as consciously influenced by John Ford's The Searchers (1956) - the story of another angry war veteran and social outcast who becomes obsessed during a search and rescue of his young niece from a long-haired Comanche chief named Scar. Ford's film was about his fanatical quest to liberate the young girl, restore her virtue, and return her to society, in order to purify his own soul, although he remains an outsider.

Nashville - 1975

Nashville (1975) Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.
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Nashville (1975) is maverick director/producer Robert Altman's classic, multi-level, original, two and a half-hour epic study of American culture, show-business, leadership and politics - and one of the great American films of the 1970s. Its emergence at the end of two troubling eras (Watergate and the Vietnam War) and on the eve of the country's Bicentennial celebrations signaled that it was commenting upon the confused state of American society. Its free-flowing narrative (from a screenplay by screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury) revealed the shallowness of American life - political emptiness and show-business commercialism are equated.

Underneath the drama about the country-western music business and the election campaign of an unseen, independent (populist) party candidate, the multi-faceted, beautifully-structured film is an ensemble piece, a rich mosaic and a complex tapestry. It tells the free-form, explosive tragic-comedic tale of the inter-twined (and colliding) lives of twenty-four protagonists during a five day (long weekend) period in Nashville, Tennessee (the "Athens of the South") - the capital of country music and a microcosmic representation of all society. The fund-raising rally is to be held at the Parthenon in Nashville [the replica of the Greek Parthenon, a symbol of democracy, was erected in 1876 for the nation's first centenary].

Chinatown - 1974

Chinatown, Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicholson, 1974 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.
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Chinatown (1974) is a superb mystery thriller detective private and modern film noir. His original screenplay by Robert Towne is winning a survival which honors the best of Hollywood film noir from the pen of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in the '30s and '40s. The film has refused to provide a slogan, instead of choosing images with words on his poster, which featured in the Art Deco of the 40s, the detective - his back facing the viewer, to smoke a cigarette, the smoke from to form the face of heroin, meaning creation, mood, and symbolism of the film without uttering a single sentence.

The film is a blend of mystery, romance, suspense and hard boiled detective / film noir genre elements - especially embodied in The Maltese Falcon (1941) (by director John Huston acting in this film) and The Big Sleep (1946 ). This revisionist film noir was the first production from the legendary Paramount Studios head (and former actor), Robert Evans, a flamboyant Hollywood figure who later in 1994 published an autobiography, juicy, stays for children in the photo that been made in a documentary film in 2002.

The film marks the return of French Polish director Roman Polanski in Hollywood five years after the gruesome murders Manson 1969 that claimed the life of his wife, actress Sharon Tate. Polanski chose to use a dark end rather than the final with more hope in the original script, probably because of the tragedies of his life. Only a few years later, in 1978 he would be charged and convicted of statutory rape in 1977 (and drugged) of a young girl of 13 years (later identified as Samantha Geimer), while for star / actor Jack Nicholson (absent at the time), and had to flee to Europe as a fugitive. This was the last film Polanski made on site in the United States.

Screenwriter Robert Towne was founded in part on a real scandal Los Angeles in the early 20th century (the story of the infamous 1908 Owens Valley "rape" scandal and Land San Fernando Valley-grab by speculators). The character of the film, Hollis Mulwray was loosely from the Los Angeles real life water engineer William Mulholland (Director General of the Los Angeles Water Works and Supply), which has orchestrated the purchase of water rights and water piping in the Sierra Nevada in Los Angeles by an aqueduct which crosses the north-precious now San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. The character's name was an anagram Hollis Mulwray clever for "Mulholland". The bad character of Noah Cross was a reference to the Bible, Noah.