In 1972,
Kurt Waldheim became Secretary General of the United Nations;
President Nixon visited China and met with Mao Zedong;
Pioneer 10 became the first man-made spacecraft to leave the solar system;
Five White House operatives were arrested for breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee;
On Bloody Friday, twenty-two bombs planted by the Provisional IRA exploded in Belfast;
Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky to become the first American world chess champion;
Eleven Israeli athletes were murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics;
Richard Nixon was reelected as President of the United States;
Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex was published;
The last manned Moon mission was launched;
Amanda Peet, Amy Coney Barrett, The Big Show, Rob Thomas, Jaromír Jágr, Billie Joe Armstrong, Taylor Hawkins, Ralphie May, Michael Chang, Shaquille O’Neal, Timbaland, Common, Mia Hamm, Dane Cook, Shawn Bradley, Leslie Mann, Nick Frost, Jennie Garth, Jennifer Garner, Dwayne Johnson, Busta Rhymes, The Notorious B.I.G., Max Brooks, Octavia Spencer, Laverne Cox, Manny Ramirez, Wayne Brady, Wentworth Miller, Karl Urban, John Cho, Jean Dujardin, Zinedine Zidane, Molly Parker, Lisa Leslie, Sofía Vergara, Michael Rosenbaum, Keyshawn Johnson, Marlon Wayans, Maya Rudolph, Elizabeth Berkley, Wil Wheaton, Geri Halliwell, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz, Idris Elba, Goran Višnjić, Liam Gallagher, Beto O’Rourke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Grant Hill, Eminem, Tracee Ellis Ross, Gabrielle Union, Toni Collette, Jenny McCarthy, Thandie Newton, Rebecca Romijn, Gretchen Mol, Eric Dane, Josh Duhamel, Jonny Lee Miller, Missi Pyle, Brian Baumgartner, Lee Jing-Jae, Stuart Townsend, Alyssa Milano, Vanessa Paradis, and Jude Law were born;
While Maurice Chevalier, Wesley Ruggles, Mahalia Jackson, Walter Lang, Walter Winchell, M.C. Escher, George Sanders, J. Edgar Hoover, Bruce Cabot, Frank Tashlin, Dan Blocker, Margaret Rutherford, King Edward VIII, Saul Alinsky, Edmund Wilson, Brandon de Wilde, Oscar Levant, Max Fleischer, Leo G. Carroll, Jackie Robinson, Ezra Pound, Reginald Owen, Louella Parsons, Charles Atlas, Harry Truman, Lester Pearson, and Roberto Clemento died.
The following is a list of my ten favorite films released in 1972:
10. Deliverance
Four Atlanta area friends go on a canoe trip: Lewis (Burt Reynolds), Ed (Jon Voight), Bobby (Ned Beatty) and Drew. Unexpectedly encountering hostile locals during the trip, it becomes a brutal game of survivor.
This is peak Burt Reynolds, dripping with sweaty machismo. Voight is a poor man’s Reynolds. Beatty is utterly believable as an overconfident weekend warrior.
This film turned Burt Reynolds into a household name and Jon Voight into a superstar.
The sodomy scene is still a pop culture touchstone.
Fifty years later and it’s still one of the best survivor horror films.
Pier Paolo Pasolini adapts Chaucer’s famous collection of tales as the second part of his “Trilogy of Life.” He previously adapted the Italian The Decameraon and would soon adapt Arabian Nights.
He obviously liked this format: a number of short stories loosely connected by a through line. This allowed him to develop the ideas of a story without worrying about characterization. The characters became little more than plot devices.
He loved drawing parallels between ribald sexual stories of the past and sexual mores of today. I think his point was we are just as stuck in hypocrisy as they were and would rather us embrace sexuality and the earthier nature of our lives.
I love Chaucer and he’s in good hands. While I’m not a fan of everything Pasolini does (I hate Salo), I generally I find him a capable filmmaker whose passions closely align with my own.
Sisters, Karin and Maria arrive at their childhood home to care for their dying sister Agnes, but are not as close to her as the family maid, Anna.
The quartet ponders the meaning of their lives and reassess their relationships.
After Agnes dies, she’s briefly resurrected (perhaps in a dream) and aids her sisters in reconciliation.
This is vintage Bergman, focused on the suffering of life, the gnawing, unrelenting feeling something is missing. The desire for purpose and the search for cosmic significance.
Unusual for a Bergman film, this is in glorious color and Sven Nykvist rightly won an Oscar for his sumptuous use of red. It is the most colorful melancholy in the world.
I love Bergman. Few filmmakers seem to speak my exact language, concerned with the same topics which stalk the hallways of my mind. If you want to understand who I am, watch Bergman.
7. Solaris
Psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to an old space station observing the oceanic planet Solaris to determine if it should be decommissioned.
When he arrives, he inexplicably finds his deceased ex-wife onboard (ten years after her suicide). The planet has created a replica from his memories.
The plot is a pretext for a philosophical discussion about life, love, the nature of memory, and the idealization of the past as a safe haven of perfection before we were “spoiled” by some event we have retroactively used as a line of demarcation. We collectively pretend our lives are distributed as events transpiring before and after this personal event.
Like many before and after, director Andrei Tarkovsky uses the structure and trappings of science fiction to create an affecting personal essay. He is a deeply spiritual filmmaker concerned about identity, individual and corporate. Despite producing only six feature films in his too short life, he left an indelible mark. Cinephiles are, of course, familiar with his contribution. Perhaps because he died so young and certainly because he was a Soviet filmmaker, he didn’t break through into the mainstream consciousness like Fellini and Bergman. Non English filmmakers need the exposure of Academy Award success for that sort of breakthrough. General audiences rely on the imprimatur of critical success to ascertain what is worthy of their attention. With the advent of Netflix as a global, democratized option and its emphasis on English dubbing, this is changing, but it remains to be seen if it will lead to a renewed interest in older artists like Tarkovsky. For all our sakes, I hope so.
Struggling to break free from his domineering mother (Eileen Heckart), blind Don Baker (Eddie Albert) gets an apartment and begins a tentative relationship with his free spirit neighbor Jill Tanner (Goldie Hawn).
Goldie is cute, charming, and irrepressible, while Eileen Heckart rightly won an Oscar for her work as the well meaning but overbearing mother.
It’s a fine examination of when protection becomes oppression and suggests pain and suffering are an integral part of life we have to encourage our loved ones to deal with it, not avoid.
Film critic Allan Felix (Woody Allen) is going through a difficult divorce. He loves Casablanca and fantasizes about Bogart giving him dating advice, turning the iconic actor into a sort of romantic guardian angel.
In one of Woody Allen’s few forays into acting for another director (even though he adapted the script from his own original play), he teams with Diane Keaton a few years before their defining work in Annie Hall (1977).
Allen is wonderful, Keaton is great. Warhol superstar Viva has a small role.
It’s fun and frothy, although not very deep.
I love Keaton and Allen together, so I loved this.
4. Cabaret
Based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories (his account of life in the 1930s Weimar Republic), this is a frenetic look at the Germany which produced Hitler by the end of the decade. Liza Minnelli is electric as Sally Bowles, rightly winning an Oscar in a career defining performance.
Michael York is serviceable as Brian Roberts, and Joel Grey is delightful as the impish, anonymous Master of Ceremonies. The movie wisely structures itself around the cabaret performances and almost all of the music is seen in performance which makes the film seem less fantastical and the one scene outside of the club with music (a singing Hitler Youth) more powerful.
Bob Fosse’s inventive choreography makes every song sensual and erotic. His vision of the Kit Kat Club is charged with hedonistic sex devoid of a moral center or guiding principle. Sadly, this ethos has a limited shelf life and left a giant hole for someone like Hitler to fill.
1972 was a miracle year for Fosse, winning an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy. This whirlwind experience inspired him to create his other masterpiece, All that Jazz. Unfortunately, this frenzied pace led to his early death.
Jack Gurney becomes the 14th Earl of Gurney following the death of his father. A paranoid schizophrenic who believes he’s Christ, Jack is manipulated by his scheming uncle, Sir Charles, to protect himself and his mistress, Grace.
The plot is incidental. The main attraction is Peter O’Toole’s jaw dropping performance. He inhabits the manic highs and lows of mental illness superbly. This movie is one of the crowning jewels of his illustrious career.
![What's Up, Doc? [DVD] [1972] - Best Buy](https://i0.wp.com/pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/BestBuy_US/images/products/5591/5591861_so.jpg?resize=280%2C401&ssl=1)
While Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal) is in San Francisco with his fiancée Eunice (Madeline Kahn) to compete for a prestigious grant, he meets free spirit Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand). Although their mutual attraction is instantaneous, Howard is reluctant, but Judy is not the type who takes no for an answer.
It’s a screwball comedy on steroids, and despite my best efforts, I found Streisand to be charming and alluring.
It’s effortlessly funny, silly and chaotic, like a sexier version of the Marx Brothers.
Peter Bogdonavich’s work in the 1970s is vibrant and important. Unfortunately, ego and a questionable personal life (including a brief affair with playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten prior to her murder), derailed him from something truly special.
Ryan O’Neal is a similar story. In addition to this, his 1970s output includes Love Story, Paper Moon, and Barry Lyndon. He was a busy, in demand actor until his mercurial personal life derailed him.
Madeline Kahn is a semi-forgotten comedic genius, who doesn’t got the credit she deserves. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad performance from her and she always makes the film around her better.
Before she became a semi-parody of herself, Barbra Streisand was an interesting actress. This was a revelation for me. She showed a side of herself I wasn’t expecting and I’m forced to slightly reconfigure my prior opinion of her.
Despite pressure from the other mafia families to enter the drug smuggling business, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) steadfastly refuses. In retaliation, the other dons kill his most trusted associate, Luca Brassi, and convince one of his capos, Tossi (Abe Vigoda) to betray the family.
After Vito’s son Sonny (James Caan) is killed in an ambush, he sends his oldest son Michael (Al Pacino) to Italy for protection, but when Michael’s Italian wife is killed in a car bomb, he returns home to the join the family business. Becoming the new don after Vito’s death, Michael’s first order is the execution of Tossi and the dons of the five families
Francis Ford Coppola elevated Puzo’s popular, middlebrow novel into a sublime commentary on American capitalism and love of violence.
There’s so much to love: the horse head, Robert Duvall as consigliere Tom Hagen, Abe Vigoda.
I’m sure the actual mafia is more Goodfellas (1990) and Bugsy (1991), but when I think of the mob, I see a mumbling Brando lurking in the shadows.
Much like the mobster succeeded the western outlaw in the beginning of the 20th century; the mobster movie succeeded the western in the late 1960s, and with this film, the cowboys of John Ford finally gave way to the mobsters of Martin Scorsese.