1979

BREAKING AWAY - Steve Tesich
(Written Directly for the Screen)

KRAMER VS. KRAMER - Robert Benton
(Based on Material Previously Produced or Published)

1978

Midnight Express
Oliver Stone

Coming Home
Nancy Dowd, Waldo Salt & Robert C. Jones

1977

Julia
Alvin Sargent

Annie Hall
Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman
Annie Hall (1977), from director-actor-co-writer Woody Allen, is a quintessential masterpiece of priceless, witty and quotable one-liners within a matured, focused and thoughtful film. It is a bittersweet romantic comedy of modern contemporary love and urban relationships (a great successor to classic Hollywood films such as The Awful Truth (1937) and The Philadelphia Story (1940)), that explores the interaction of past and present, and the rise and fall of Allen's own challenging, ambivalent New York romance with his opposite - an equally-insecure, shy, flighty Midwestern WASP female (who blossoms out in a Pygmalion-like story).
Annie Hall clearly has semi-autobiographical elements - it is the free-wheeling, stream-of-consciousness story of an inept, angst-ridden, pessimistic, Brooklyn-born and Jewish stand-up comedian - much like Allen himself (who started out as a joke writer for The Tonight Show) - who experiences crises related to his relationships and family. His unstable love affair with aspiring singer Annie Hall begins to disintegrate when she moves to Los Angeles and discovers herself - and a new life.
[A real-life relationship and breakup did occur in early 1970 between Allen and co-star Keaton. Keaton's birth name was Diane Hall, her nickname was Annie, and she did have a Grammy Hall. And Woody Allen played a similar role as mentor to Diane Keaton (about New York life, politics, philosophy, and books), as did best friend Tony Roberts to Allen.]

1976

All The President's Men
William Goldman

Network
Paddy Chayefsky
Network (1976) is director Sidney Lumet's brilliant criticism of the hollow, lurid wasteland of television journalism where entertainment value and short-term ratings were more crucial than quality. Paddy Chayefsky's black, prophetic, satirical commentary/criticism of corporate evil (in the tabloid-tainted television industry) is an insightful indictment of the rabid desire for ratings. Indignation toward the network executives by an unbalanced news-anchorman (Finch) ("I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore") is manipulated by ruthless VP programming boss (Dunaway) for further ratings. One of the film's posters correctly proclaimed: "Television will never be the same."
The film had a total of ten Academy Award nominations with four wins. To the film's credit, five cast members were nominated for Oscars (and three won) - Best Actor (posthumously awarded to Peter Finch - Finch became the first and only post-humous winner of an acting Oscar in Academy history), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), and Best Supporting Actress (Beatrice Straight)). Only A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) had as many Academy Awards for acting. The fourth win was for Chayefsky's Best Screenplay. [This was Chayefsky's third Oscar following awards for Marty (1955) and The Hospital (1971).] The other six nominations were for Best Actor (William Holden), Best Cinematography (Owen Roizman), Best Director (Lumet's third directorial nomination without a win), Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actor (Ned Beatty), and Best Picture.

1975

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Lawrence Hauben & Bo Goldman
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) is one of the greatest American films of all time - a $4.4 million dollar effort directed by Czech Milos Forman. Its allegorical theme is set in the world of an authentic mental hospital (Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon), a place of rebellion exhibited by a energetic, flamboyant, wise-guy anti-hero against the Establishment, institutional authority and status-quo attitudes (personified by the patients' supervisory nurse). Expressing his basic human rights and impulses, he protests against heavy-handed rules about watching the World Series, and illegally stages both a fishing trip and a drinking party in the ward - leading to his own paralyzing lobotomy.

Dog Day Afternoon
Frank Pierson

1974

The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola & Mario Puzo
The Godfather, Part II (1974) of the Godfather trilogy continues the saga of the Corleone Family, serving as both a prologue and a sequel, extending over a period of 60 years and three generations. The script was again co-authored by director Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, the author of the popular novel about American organized crime. Many critics believe this film sequel, at a lengthy three hours and twenty minutes, is a superior improvement over the original film, although some of it is confusing and leaves questions unanswered.
The film is masterfully intercut back and forth between two parallel stories: the prologue story (about one-quarter of the entire film) to the sequel, contrasting the two eras and their protagonists.

Chinatown
Robert Towne
Chinatown (1974) is a superb, private eye mystery and modern-day film noir thriller. Its original, award-winning screenplay by Robert Towne is a throwback that pays homage to the best Hollywood film noirs from the pens of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in the 30s and 40s. The film declined to provide a tagline, instead choosing imagery over words on its poster, which featured in 40's art deco, the detective - his back facing the viewer, smoking a cigarette, with the smoke emanating from it forming the visage of the heroine, signifying the setting, the mood, and symbolism of the film without uttering a single phrase.
The film is a skillful blend of mystery, romance, suspense, and hard boiled detective/film noir genre elements - especially embodied in The Maltese Falcon (1941) (by director John Huston who acts in this film) and The Big Sleep (1946). This revisionist noir film was the first production of legendary Paramount Studios head (and ex-actor) Robert Evans, a flamboyant Hollywood figure who later in 1994 published a juicy autobiography, The Kid Stays in the Picture that was made into a documentary film in 2002.
The film marked director Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood five years after the gruesome 1969 Manson murders that took the life of his actress wife Sharon Tate. Polanski opted to use a bleak ending rather than the more hopeful finale in the original screenplay, presumably because of his life's tragedies. Only a few years later, in 1978, he would be indicted and convicted with the 1977 statuatory rape (and drugging) of a 13 year-old girl (later identified as Samantha Geimer) while at the home of star/actor Jack Nicholson (absent at the time), and had to flee to Europe as a fugitive. Writer Robert Towne's screenplay was partially based on a true Los Angeles scandal in the early part of the 20th century (the story of the nefarious 1908 Owens Valley 'Rape' and scandalous San Fernando Valley land-grab by speculators). The film's character, Hollis Mulwray, was loosely derived from LA's water engineer William Mulholland, who orchestrated the purchase of water rights and the piping of water from the High Sierras into Los Angeles by an aqueduct that flowed through the now-valuable San Fernando Valley north of LA.

1973

The Exorcist
William Peter Blatty
The Exorcist (1973) is the sensational, shocking horror story about devil possession and the subsequent exorcism of the demonic spirits from a young, innocent girl (of a divorced family). The Exorcist was notable for being one of the biggest box-office successes (and one of the first 'blockbusters' in film history, predating Jaws (1975)), and surpassed The Godfather (1972) as the biggest money-maker of its time. And it remains one of the few horror films nominated for Best Picture. However, it was also one of the most opposed films for its controversial content. Roman Polanski's successful Rosemary's Baby (1968) played upon similar fears of devil possession.
The film's screenplay - a horror-tinged western (and tale of good vs. evil), was faithfully based upon author William Peter Blatty's 1971 best-selling theological-horror novel of the same name. Academy-Award winning director William Friedkin (previously known for The French Connection (1971)) created a frightening, horror film masterpiece, with sensational, nauseating, horrendous special effects (360 degree head-rotation, self-mutilation/masturbation with a crucifix, the projectile spewing of green puke, a mixture of split-pea soup and outmeal, etc.). The film also featured the terrific acting debut of 12-year old actress Linda Blair, who played the helpless girl possessed by demons. The recognizable opening instrumental tune, titled Tubular Bells (by Mike Oldfield), eventually became a #1 single on the Billboard charts - and the first big seller for Virgin Records.

The Sting
David S. Ward

1972

The Godfather
Mario Puzo & Francis Ford Coppola
The superb, three-part gangster saga was inaugurated with this film from Italian-American director Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather (1972). The first two parts of the lush and grand saga are among the most celebrated, landmark films of all time. Many film reviewers consider the second part equal or superior to the original, although the first part was a tremendous critical and commercial success - and the highest grossing film of its time. This mythic, tragic film contributed to a resurgence in the American film industry, after a decade of competition from cinema abroad.
One of the original "Movie Brats" who had not had a hit after seven films, director Coppola collaborated on the epic film's screenplay with Mario Puzo who had written a best-selling novel of the same name about a Mafia dynasty (the Corleones). The Godfather catapulted Francis Ford Coppola to directorial superstardom, and popularized the following euphemistic phrase (of brutal coercion): "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

The Candidate
Jeremy Larner

1971

The French Connection
Ernest Tidyman
The French Connection (1971) is director William Friedkin's brilliant, fast-paced, brutally-realistic police/crime film - his commercial break-through film. The true-to-life film about the largest narcotics seizure of all time in 1962 - with an innovative semi-documentary-style technique that conveys the story with very few words, was produced by Phillip D'Antoni who had made the exciting police film Bullitt (1968).

Hospital
Paddy Chayefsky

1970

M*A*S*H
Ring Lardner, Jr.

Patton
Francis Ford Coppola & Edmund H. North
Patton (1970) is the epic film biography 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 slapping of a battle-fatigued soldier, his anti-diplomatic criticism of the Soviet Union, and his firing of pistols at fighter planes. The film, shot in 70 mm. widescreen color, received a phenomenal ten Academy Awards nominations and won seven major awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Scott refused to accept the honor), Best Director (Franklin J. Schaffner), Best Story and Screenplay (Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Sound, and Best Film Editing. Its other three nominations were: Best Cinematography, Best Original Score (Jerry Goldsmith), and Best Special Visual Effects. 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 Karl Malden). As a result of Coppola's breakthrough win in 1970, he went on to write and direct The Godfather (1972). ..