Children of the 70s

[MasterAndCommander]

Debbie Does Dallas

 

[Hankerton]

Taxi Driver
The Deer Hunter
Serpico

 

[Coalfax]

Poltergeist
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Jaws
American Grafitti

 

[badmouse]

Funny, the one I thought of perfectly captures the 70's for me. The 1170's, that is.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Rocky Horror Picture Show :thumbsup:

 

[phantom309]

I graduated HS in 1979, and "Dazed and Confused" absolutely nailed the experience. "Breaking Away" was released in 1980 IIRC but it is very emblematic of the time. "Saturday Night Fever" is probably what you want - but that's really not what life was like on the ground.

But you don't see many 70s movies that captured their time in the same way as, say, "Sixteen Candles" or "Wall Street" captured the 80's. On the whole, I think moviemakers in the 70s were aware that their era's pop culture was ugly, shallow and disposable...and that's why their films tended to be escapist (like Star Wars or the disaster films), or heavily stylized (like the Scorsese or Cimino films) or nostalgic (American Grafitti, Chinatown). Reality was a shapeless sweaty drunk chick in smeared green eyeshadow and lbs of hairspray, stuffed into brown corderoys that came up to her rib cage - dancing with some hairy beer-gut clown in a sticky ban-lon shirt and tight overalls. You went to the movies to get to a galaxy far, far away from that.