Favourite Films of 1973

Monday is about movies. And sometimes TV. I've started this ongoing series around favourite films of each year. Here we are with 1973...

Okay, 1973 is a big year. And I’m not going to pick The Wicker Man, Live And Let Die, The Last Detail, Coffy, Magnum Force, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Soylent Green, The Sting or the Ziggy Stardust concert film. I’m not even going to pick Mean Streets. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like all of those choices. I love 1973 in cinema. I feel like that’s the first year I went way back to…a couple of key martial arts films in that year, one very big horror film (that’s not The Wicker Man) and a few great dramas. I probably first dipped back into 1973 some 30 years ago. It would have been early 1990s when I started watching films from 1973. It is now of course the 50th Anniversary of many of these films. And so, without further delay, I’m going to build a list of the ones that have mean the most to me.

You’ll remember I’ve done this already with 1972 and with 1971. And I’ll soon attempt it with 1974, 75, and so on…But today, is about 1973. Let’s go…

The Exorcist

I feel like I should start with the most obvious choice. You lot know me as a horror junkie too - and this might be where it starts. Both The Exorcist and The Omen terrified and intrigued me as a teenager. They, um, compelled me…I love how rich with story this is, how brilliantly acted it is (I’ll watch anything with Ellen Burstyn in the lead) and how strong William Friedkin was at the helm of his film. Tight but loose, much like the band Led Zeppelin in 1973. The Exorcist is the real start of modern horror for me. Everything before it owes a debt to Frankenstein and Dracula. Everything after it owes a debt to The Exorcist.

Paper Moon

I became obsessed with Peter Bogdanovich after reading the book, Easy Riders Raging Bulls, and I started ploughing through the films of his I’d missed. As a kid, I’d loved Mask - without knowing who had made it. And as a young teen I’d watched The Last Picture Show and its sequel Texasville - probably because of reading about Larry McMurtry I guess. Anyway, Paper Moon evaded me, and it wasn’t until Katy told me it was one of her favourite ‘old’ movies - so we watched it. And I loved it instantly. Obviously watching it with that on my mind, wanting to connect to something that had made an impact on my wife. But it’s such a truly charming film, with brilliant performances. To this day, its ending is one of my favourites in all of cinema. The completion of a journey.

Serpico

A heavyweight director (Sidney Lumet) and actor (Al Pacino) and story (based on truth), Serpico is the film that made Al Pacino my favourite actor. (Dog Day Afternoon confirmed this). When I was getting big time into cinema I had pitted Pacino and Robert De Niro against each other - I can’t have been the first. But that’s like arguing for Bob Dylan over Neil Young. Why not both? Why not each of them offering different things? Serpico had all the grit of the early Dirty Harry movies, and The French Connection, and things like that. But Al took it deeper. He all but disappeared down deep into that role. It also made me a lover of the Sidney Lumet film catalogue.

Enter The Dragon

Bruce Lee fans might bristle about this one - it’s very much the perceived One Hit Wonder/Albatross but it’s also one of the most influential martial arts/action films of its era, and perhaps of all time. And it has that killer Lalo Schifrin score. (I once got to see the film screened live with Karsh Kale performing a version of the score live; amazing). I’ve watched this film so many times - it’s one of those movies I just like to kinda hang out with. I feel like I have introduced a lot of people to this film over the years, back in high school it was the ‘deep cut’ for a bunch of us raised on Van Damme and Seagal, and/or coming off the Stallone/Schwarzenegger dominance.

Badlands

Terence Malick is another name that I learned from reading about film - and Badlands was one of only two films available by him when I first learned about his work. After a 20 year break/down he returned to cinema in the late 1990s with a compelling war film (The Thin Red Line) and in recent years he has pumped up some experimental, arty tosh - but his debut is where it is at. I watched it after seeing films like Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers and True Romance - they all owed an obvious debt (True Romance even slyly borrowed bits of its soundtrack). This movie also feels like the best of Bruce Springsteen’s narratives in one (un)easy place. Amazing performances that burn into the screen. An absolute classic road movie.

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And here’s five notable mentions – again in no particular order:

Sisters

I only caught up with this creepy, weird, wonderful horror recently. It says 1972, but it was widely released to the world in ‘73. A must-see for anyone into bizarre. I should also just say “an early Brian De Palma” as that might help…

Papillon

My favourite prison film - certainly my favourite prison escape film - and one of my favourite roles by Steve McQueen. I feel he was different here, better. And of course anything back then with Dustin Hoffman in was worth watching.

The Long Goodbye

Robert Altman, from a Raymond Chandler novel, with Elliott Gould in the lead for a bit of classic noir? Yes please!

The Candy Snatchers

Not quite a Video Nasty but certainly a cult film, living at the intersection of crime and horror. This is bread and butter for me!

American Graffiti

I just have to include this - the Fast Times at Ridgemont High of its day? - the start of Happy Days, the end of innocence. A classic music-movie (its soundtrack volumes brought 50s rock’n’roll back into a lot of households), and the collaboration between George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola is crucial to the development of the New Cinema across the decade; the rise of the auteur/s.

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So that’s 1973 in cinema, through my eyes. And as I said at the top, a lot of great movies that I absolutely adore which I couldn’t quite include on this list. That’s always going to be the way. See anything there you like and agree with? Anything you couldn’t stand? Stuff there you’ve yet to see? What would be on your list of movies released 50 years ago?