In the changing times of American cinema — mainly influenced by the work of European filmmakers like Godard, Fellini, and countless others — 1972 was a year that emerged with tremendous work from around the world of cinema. Classics like The Godfather and Cabaret hit theaters, forever changing the landscape and our relationship to films lionized by pop culture. Arthouse directors like Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky continued to grow their filmography with masterpieces. It was a rich year for all moviegoers and left a treasure trove of films for young cinema lovers to look at and harken back. 1972 was a year to remember — here are 10 movies that illustrate why.
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10 Deliverance
Warner Bros.
John Boorman’s nightmarish run through the back woods of the south was a classic genre blend of exploitation, survival, and the horrors a group of friends goes through to survive the torture. Though one scene in particular lives in infamy — the banjo dueling scene and the long wind down the river that leads to Burt Reynolds’s heroic turn with a longbow — Deliverance is one of those films you never forget. Rounded out by a stellar cast of Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, Boorman’s visceral plunge into the hellish depths of survival and masculinity broke new ground for a Hollywood film, marking a change for the kinds of cinema a mass audience would be receptive to.
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9 The Hot Rock
20th Century Fox
A dynamite script from legendary screenwriter William Goldman, The Hot Rock is a crime film that sets an elaborate heist in motion and then continues to evolve from one daring rescue and theft to the next. Starring Robert Redford at his coolest, he elects to rob a bank with his loyal crew of misfits to obtain a rare diamond. However, after one member gets arrested, the film proceeds into a prison escape film, then they have to retrieve the diamond all over again. It’s incredibly fast-paced, and laid the foundation for many heist films to come like Ocean’s 11.
8 What’s Up Doc?
The late Peter Bogdanovich broke new ground in Hollywood with his masterpiece The Last Picture Show. His followup, dissimilar in tone but just as finest crafted, What’s Up Doc? is a comic gem. With a putz of a lead performance from Ryan O’Neal as a musician who makes music out of rocks, he stumbles into a romance with the lovely Barbra Streisand as a slew of mix-ups occurs at a San Francisco hotel. Bogdanovich keeps the sight gags and slapstick comedy flowing from scene to scene, putting together a hilarious screwball comedy mixed with a heartfelt romance between O’Neal and Streisand. What’s Up Doc? is a perfect blend of the craft necessary to create a set-piece heavy comedy and two strong lead performances.
7 Across 110th Street
Film Guarantors
One of the better Blaxploitation films to come out during the early-70s, and an indelible piece of Harlem crime cinema about dirty cops, drug dealers, and innocent bystanders caught in the wrong place, Across 110th Street is brutal in its depiction of the criminal life and begins with a massacre after the iconic opening song title sequence to set the tone for the rest of the film. The script, with expertise, shows the racial and class tensions between the Black community in Harlem and the racist police who assume all their suspects are guilty before talking. Across 110th Street is as depressing as it is compelling to see so many innocent bodies fall victim to the violence of a racist institution.
6 Cabaret
ABC Pictures
Having gone toe-to-toe with The Godfather at the 1973 Academy Awards, Cabaret is rightly recognized as one of the great American musicals ever made. From the master choreographer and director Bob Fosse, Cabaret explores the club scene in 1931 Berlin as the backdrop of the Nazi party begins to take shape. Fosse captures the loneliness of staring oblivion in the face as the politics of a brutal force drive relationships apart. All expertly crafted by Fosse, no shot is wasted.
5 Fat City
Columbia Pictures
John Huston makes films in the vein of his persona. Rough, mean, nasty films ripe with alcohol abuse. Fat City was the perfect vessel to tell a story of two fighters, living from flight to fight and bar to bar, slugging it out for a shot at glory. Jeff Bridges and Stacy Keach play the two lowly fighters who are always taking one step forward and another two backward. Laying into the miserable and marginalized conditions many boxers live in, Huston created a humane portrait of how pulling punches can keep your life on the low-end trajectory.
4 Superfly
Directed by Gordon Parks Jr. — the son of the legendary and prolific Gordon Parks — Superfly is the iconic staple of the Blaxploitation genre. Scored by Curtis Mayfield who created a soundtrack of bangers and starring the man himself, Ron O’Neal, as Priest, Parks’ film explores the art of the hustle and the damaging conditions of living in poor neighborhoods that become infested by crime. Hoping to make one last score on the cocaine trade before leaving the game for good, Superfly is an action-packed but gritty ride through the streets of Harlem.
3 Aguirre, Wrath of God
Filmverlag der Autoren
Werner Herzog is a director known for taking himself and others to the depths of hell to get the authenticity and truth he desires to tell his story. A renegade by nature, Herzog was the perfect artist to make Aguirre, The Wrath of God. By sticking to his documentary-like style, Herzog creates a hellscape that plunges the Klaus Kinski character (Don Lope de Aquirre) into violence worse than man. It’s an epic look at the destruction of the Inca Empire while focusing on the aftermath of a near-sighted and disaster-laced expedition.
2 Solaris
Mosfilm
Plunging the outer rims of the galaxy and the depths of space to reconnect with a loved one is the conception of Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaption of Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same name, Solaris. Tarkovsky takes the usual artifice of space travel and turns the machinations into something far more junky, primal, and dirty. Following a psychologist who is sent to space to investigate the mental problems of the astronauts losing their minds on the mysterious titular planet, Solaris, the film explores the concept of love, memory, and losing touch with reality. Done in the subtle nodes of Tarkovsky’s poetic cinema, the film is one of the greats about space travel.
1 The Godfather
Paramount Pictures
Every other crime epic made will live in The Godfather’s shadow. It’s perhaps the most influential film and the most artful piece of pop cinema ever to touch the big screen. A mafia film about powers corruption in America’s model of becoming your boss, AKA, capitalism. A king (Marlon Brando) with his three sons Michael (Al Pacino), Sonita (James Caan), and Fredo (John Cazale) all vying for their father’s throne as the future of the business closes in on him. The Godfather is an epochal tale that thrived in the darkness, where the best of crime lives.
