10 Best 1970s Best Picture Nominees, According to Rotten Tomatoes

The 1970s was one of the most creative periods in American cinema, after films like Bonnie & Clyde, Midnight Cowboy, and Easy Rider ushered in the Hollywood New Wave. Throughout the decade, many directors started getting free rein and monetary support from major studios to experiment with form and style. Francis Ford Coppola, for example, went from getting tremendous push-back throughout his production of The Godfather at the start of the decade to infamously having no oversight of Apocalypse Now several years later.

This was an astonishing time for filmmakers around the world, too, as several countries had already gone through New Waves of their own. Such stylistic innovations led to unusually impressive shortlists for the Academy Awards year after year. The following movies may not have won Best Picture, but the very fact that they were nominated during such an impressive decade is a huge accomplishment in itself. Rotten Tomatoes has its opinion on which ten are the best, and almost all of them are considered classics.

10 ‘Star Wars’ (1977)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Star Wars is known today largely as one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, one of the highest grossing films of all time, and one of the first blockbusters. Its Oscar wins for Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, and others aren’t very surprising. So lots of fans probably don’t even know that this juggernaut of summer entertainment was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to Woody Allen’s comedy classic Annie Hall.

George Lucas was also nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, which were a pretty big deal for a sci-fi adventure. Unfortunately, Star Wars is also one of the movies responsible for ending the Hollywood New Wave. Its structure (including its distribution and marketing strategies) gave film studios the idea to make more summer blockbusters with happy endings that appeal to the masses, rather than embrace a director’s unique vision.

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9 ‘The Emigrants’ (1971)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Directed and co-written by Jan Troell, The Emigrants is adapted from a series of novels by Vilhelm Moberg about a low-income Swedish family that eventually moves to Minnesota in the mid-19th century. Based on Moberg’s first two novels, The Emigrants and Unto a Good Land, the result is a 191-minute epic about the hardships this family faces both in their home-country and in America. Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann were praised for their performances as Karl and Kristina Nilsson.

The Emigrants would go on to receive five Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Ullmann). Fun fact: the Best Foreign Language Film nomination was for the 1972 Academy Awards, whereas the other nominations were for the 1973 ceremony. Too bad the Oscar competition was so strong throughout the entire decade.

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8 ‘Z’ (1969)

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

Z is a French political-thriller based on the novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos, which in turn is based on the 1963 public assassination of a Greek politician. Directed by Costa-Gavras, Z was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Film Editing. It won in those last two categories before going on to win the Jury Prize and Best Actor (for Jean-Louis Trintignon) prizes at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival.

This masterpiece may not have won Best Picture, but it inspired another film that would win Best Picture. Once William Friedkin saw this movie, “I realized how I could shoot The French Connection. Because he shot Z like a documentary. It was a fiction film, but it was made like it was actually happening. Like the camera didn’t know what was gonna happen next.” No more information needed: this is a must-watch.

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7 ‘All the President’s Men’ (1976)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

All the President’s Men is based on the 1974 non-fiction work by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who are played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, respectively. Together these journalists unravel the Watergate scandal, one of the defining political moments in United States history. Considered one of the greatest movies about journalism, it’s directed by Alan J. Pakula (also known for To Kill a Mockingbird and Sophie’s Choice). As the sound of cannons combines with clacking typewriters, the audience truly gets the sense that the pen is mightier than the sword. No wonder it won the Oscar for Best Sound.

Other Academy Award wins include Best Supporting Actor (for Jason Robards), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. All the President’s Men lost Best Picture to Rocky, but so did Taxi Driver and Network – so it’s hard to complain there. This film would go on to inspire other journalism-heavy movies, such as future Best Picture winner Spotlight.

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6 ‘American Graffiti’ (1973)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

George Lucas had a good decade, and American Graffiti was the first indication of that. Not only would this coming-of-age comedy become one of Lucas’s highest-grossing movies; the critics loved it, too. The film won so much praise that it wound up next to the likes of William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist and Ingmar Bergman‘s Cries and Whispers as a nominee for Best Picture at the 1974 Academy Awards. It lost to The Sting, but the movie’s profits allowed Lucas to go ahead with a project called Star Wars. That’s a win in itself.

The ensemble cast includes Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, and many more. They all have so many road conversations by calling out their car windows that these interactions come across as quaint five decades later. Everyone knew each other by their cars back in the 60s, and there is so much period detail that it’s no surprise that American Graffiti is loosely based on Lucas’s childhood.

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5 ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

Dog Day Afternoon is one of the best Al Pacino movies and landed him another nomination for Best Actor at the Oscars. The film was nominated for several other awards, too, but only won for Best Original Screenplay. On the surface, that’s difficult to believe – but one look at its competition will immediately explain what happened. Other films nominated in 1976 include Federico Fellini‘s Amarcord, Milos Forman‘s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon, Robert Altman‘s Nashville, and Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws. This has to be one of the most intimidating Best Picture shortlists in the Academy’s history.

One of the best crime movies of all time, Dog Day Afternoon takes place over the course of one day. A married man robs a bank to pay for his boyfriend to get sex reassignment surgery, a topic that seems ahead of its time. Sidney Lumet had recently used Pacino to great effect in Serpico, but the constant tension, unpredictability, iconic chant (“Attica!”), and rapidly-beating heart behind Dog Day Afternoon makes it even better. No doubt this is one of Sidney Lumet‘s greatest works, but okay—Cuckoo’s Nest was great, too.

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4 ‘The Conversation’

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Director Francis Ford Coppola won the Palme d’Or twice in the 70s, and 1974’s The Conversation was the first of those victories. This film was also nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, but Coppola inevitably lost to himself when The Godfather Part II was given that trophy. No surprises there, but thankfully, the auteur’s crime-thriller starring a fantastic Gene Hackman has been given well-deserved recognition.

The film is about the best wiretapper in the country, who is plagued by guilt and paranoia that stem from his profession. His passion, really, of secretly taping others. Now he has been tasked with recording a conversation for reasons he wishes he did not know. Coppola makes the process of transcribing muffled conversations with impressive yet limited technology look like an art form, as the protagonist surely views it. Meanwhile, this man’s own paranoia about being recorded by someone else is so skillfully expressed that it makes the viewer wonder how much more uncomfortable he would be today, with technology the way it is now….

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3 ‘Jaws’ (1975)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Jaws was such an enormous hit that it showed studio executives the power of a summer blockbuster. It’s one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, and it launched relative-newcomer Steven Spielberg into the stratosphere. So people often forget that his thriller on the ocean was also nominated for Best Picture in a year marked by such already-established legends as Fellini, Kubrick, Altman, and Lumet.

Based on the novel by Peter Benchley, Jaws is about three men – a sheriff, a marine biologist, and a ship captain – who pursue a killer shark that’s been ravaging a local beach. The film takes a simple plot and uses expert craftsmanship to relay the terror, tension, and difficulty involved in tracking this big fish down. One should note that the movie’s depiction of Great Whites is inaccurate and sparked condemnation from animal activist groups, who claimed the demonization of the species led to harmful hunting practices. With that in mind, though, the informed viewer can still suspend disbelief and enjoy this classic.

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2 ‘The Last Picture Show’ (1971)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Former film critic and Orson Welles-protégé Peter Bogdanovich directed one of the most acclaimed feature debuts of all time with 1971’s The Last Picture Show. This may be a coming-of-age story about high school seniors on the verge of adulthood, but this is no American Graffiti. While George Lucas’s vision is vibrant with color and comedy, Bogdanovich’s film is largely a black-and-white drama about the loss of innocence. The bleak color scheme mirrors the limited life promised to everyone who stays in this small Texas town, and the love affairs are quietly devastating.

Jeff Bridges offers a wonderful debut to a legendary career that’s still going strong. He and Ellen Burstyn were nominated for their supporting roles, while Ben Johnson won for his. Another star this film discovered was Cybill Shepherd, who gave a great performance of her own. This film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards in total.

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1 ‘Chinatown’ (1974)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson as a detective in Depression-era Los Angeles, Faye Dunawaye as the woman who hires him to investigate her husband, and director John Huston in arguably his greatest acting performance. Influenced by the California water wars, this movie explores corruption in devastating fashion. The ending is famously dark. As Slant put it: “It’s the kind of ending Hollywood was able to do at one time without fear, where they could upset the moral compass of the hero in order for the audience to think about their own.”

Director Roman Polanski had proved himself a master of horror with 1969’s Rosemary’s Baby, and so this work proved that he was just as good at neo-noir. Chinatown was nominated for a whopping 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Nicholson, Best Actress for Dunawaye, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and more. It only took home one, though: Best Original Screenplay. Better than nothing, especially since Robert Towne‘s screenplay is widely considered one of the greatest scripts of all time.

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NEXT: ‘The 10 Best Movies That Won the Oscar for Best Director, but Not Best Picture’