1971: 100 Films from Cinema's Greatest Year

by Robert Sellers

Featuring a host of unpublished interviews, this is the first book to explore the greatest year in Hollywood's history - 1971

By anyone’s estimate 1971 was a great year for cinema. Has any other year boasted such a mass of talented filmmakers plying their trade? Polanski, Woody Allen, Spielberg, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, Robert Altman, George Lucas, Dario Argento, Nicolas Roeg and Ingmar Bergman, among many others, were behind the camera, while the stars were out in force, too. Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Gene Hackman, Paul Newman, Raquel Welch, Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro, Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty all had films come out in 1971.

This remarkable artistic flowering that came from the ‘New Hollywood’ of the '70s was just beginning in 1971. The old guard was fading away and the new guard was taking over. With a decline in box office attendances by the end of the '60s, along with a genuine inability to come up with a reliable barometer of box office success, studio heads gave unprecedented freedom to younger filmmakers to lead the way. Featuring interviews with some of Hollywood's biggest names, bestselling author Robert Sellers explores this landmark year in Hollywood and in Britain, when this new age was at its freshest, and where the transfer of power was felt most exhilaratingly.

Genres: Media Tie In, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

Published April 23, 2024

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great idea for a book, choose your favourite year in movies and write three chatty funny undull pages about 100 movies from your favourite year stuffed with anecdotes from original interviews with players or crew on these movies. When I checked my own detailed records, I found that I almost agreed with Robert Sellers, 1971 WAS far and away the best year in movies up to then. Truly! (It was later beaten (imho) by 1994 and 1995.) But 14 of my favourite movies were made in this remarkable year*. That’s a lot for me.

In total I have seen 54 of his 100 movies. I must say that as well as the good stuff (Vanishing Point, The Panic in Needle Park, Klute) he loves to include ultra cheesy horror (The Abominable Dr Phibes, Blood on Satan’s Claw, Hands of the Ripper - not my thing) and some off the wall weird stuff (200 Motels, WR Mysteries of the Organism, Johnny Got his Gun) so all in all it’s a great selection.



*Walkabout


Harold and Maude
The Beguiled
Wake in Fright


A Clockwork Orange
Straw Dogs
The Devils
Dirty Harry
Blanche

Get Carter
The Last Picture Show
The Decameron
The French Connection
10 Rillington Place

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book from the ever reliable Robert Sellers. This time he selects 100 films (& a few more!) from the year 1971.
Sellars conducts extensive interviews & offers new insights into some classic (& not so classic) 1971 film releases. It really was an incredible year for new films & I was amazed how many of the films he duscusses here are in my own collection....A Clockwork Orange, Get Carter, Dirty Harry, Diamonds Are Forever, Shaft, The Devils & many more!
This is a great book that makes me want to rewtach some of the films I've just read about-but where the hell do I start ?!

[Sunbern · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was (and still am) a movie buff in the ‘70s but forgot how many iconic films came out in 1971. Clockwork Orange, Summer of ‘42, THREE Clint Eastwood films, Andromeda Strain, Fiddler on the Roof, Kłute, French Connection, Last Picture Show, Billy Jack, Shaft, etc, etc, etc. These and many more are thoroughly researched with many interesting details of things that happened during production. A truly amazing time for film making.

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m such a List guy. I can’t get enough of them. It started with lists of recommended books in different genres, and that went so well that I decided to trust the process of picking movies to watch also based on “100 Best” lists. This approach to choosing and absorbing books and movies cannot help but make one well-read, and also a bit of a film buff. I had such a wonderful time with this book that the only thing keeping me from watching a whole slew of films listed here, is that I’m committed to watching 100 Spy movies in a row, as culled from a Spy movie list in a magazine from 2009 (with a few substitutions for movies I don’t have easy or cheap access to, and those subs will mainly be pulled from an alternate Spy movie list)!

I said this before - in one of my Comment/Updates while I devoured this book - but I have to say it once in my actual review: somewhere in my Goodreads history, in a comment or a review to do with some book - I mentioned that I thought 1971 was in fact the best year for movies. I said it long before I knew Sellers’s book existed, and I’m pretty sure it was before this book came out. But it’s a very personal thing, and debatable thing, to pick a “best year” for films. So, it was very odd to see a book called 1971: 100 Films from Cinema’s Greatest Year show up in my Goodreads updates feed, not too long ago. It’s a weird thing to have someone else endorse; someone picked the year I feel very strongly about, and did a whole book making the case for 1971. I don’t actually think it’s a provable position, and for all I know, it will spawn rival books that make the same pronouncement about any other year, along with a list of movies as strong evidence. (1939, anyone?). But for a moment I was all, like, “I’m not crazy! I didn’t pick the year no one else would pick! I have some legitimate sense of how incredible the roster of films is, from 1971.”.

So I had to buy the book, and get the list of one hundred films that make the case. There is a bit of irony here: my feelings on the best movie year ever, and my instant interest in any book appearing that says the same thing, came from all those earlier lists I relied on. Slowly, as I viewed films in various genres, I started thinking in terms of what film came out when. Two things occurred to me: a lot of interesting movies in almost every genre came out in 1971; and the list of movies that I liked a lot, or loved, that came out in 1971, was long. This second realization - the films from 1971, as a group I kept adding to as I bought lists and watched a wide variety of movies, becoming, becoming a grouping I loved more than any other year I could think of - is the realization that would likely keep me from writing a whole book. How could one pick a year as the best year of movies, if one didn’t have a personal fondness for the bulk of the films involved? Couldn’t you take any year, and list all the great films, and say, at the very least, no one year is any more impressive than any other - especially in terms of the old rallying cry “Everyone’s taste is different!”. Also: could I not be ignoring a more deserving year, simply because I didn’t personally like enough truly great movies? Put it this way: if The Princess Bride, The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, Heathers, Forrest Gump, The Graduate, Inception, Our Man in Havana, The English Patient, Arsenic and Old Lace, Rear Window, Goldfinger, and Duck Soup had all come out in the same year…many people would pick that as the best year for movies; but I either dislike those films, or at least find some of them overrated - so where the hell would that leave me?!

My fledgling notion that 1971 was the great year for film was based on seeing about 30 movies, and knowing the reputations of a few others; I really should’ve seen Klute - and especially The Last Picture Show by now. Of course, Robert Sellers has gone way beyond a mere 30 pieces of celluloid evidence for his position, which means I now have a whole bunch of 1971 films I didn’t even know about…especially because he wraps up the book with a big section of Honourable Mentions!

But my love for this book goes beyond silly personal validation, and being handed yet another list of “100 Best” choices (and more!) to obsessively pursue, like the list fanatic I am; he has made a strong, and well-reasoned case for 1971 as winner. He does not do this with one all-powerful chapter that sums everything up - no, the case is made over many, many pages. A slow accumulation of wonderful essays discussing just how ground-breaking so many of these films were, what trends they started, what careers started with creative directors coming up with a splendid first film. Films that flopped - so many of them! - and just as many getting poor reviews when first shown…but so many films slowly garnering new respect over time. Big stars, fresh stars, movies scratched out with almost no money and ending up unique or wonderfully intimate because of that….

Sure, maybe this fits ANY year. Maybe it’s all subjective. Robert Sellers says this very thing in the first lines of his fascinating book…and then dares to pick one year and take a position anyway. Obviously, I’m biased; I picked 1971 about ten years ago. And I think the film round-up for 1971 will always say a bit more than “Well, if we could pick any year, 1971 is as good as any, and better than many…”. I think, personally, it’s even a better year than that. Here’s the case I could not make, but Sellers certainly does.

There is an odd feature to the book: because the movies are listed in the order they were released in theatres, this has a rather chaotic effect on the personal and professional lives of the people who worked on the films…or rather, the reader’s perception of those lives. For example: Peter Cushing. He shows up quite a bit in this book - Hammer films, and beyond - and as one movie is discussed, we learn he was very sad on-set, though friendly, because this was the year he lost his beloved wife. Later, another film with Peter Cushing cast to appear in it is discussed, and it is was during that movie’s production that Cushing first got the news that his wife was about to pass away and so he quit the film. A jumbled order, when it comes to dealing with Peter Cushing, but arranging the films in release order is the priority, and so this side effect crops up several times; George C. Scott’s situation in 1971 is another case in point. The slowly-accumulating perception of Clint Eastwood’s version of 1971 is a little more straight-forward; The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, Play Misty For Me…this was maybe Eastwood’s year more than anyone else’s…George Lucas’s and Steven Spielberg’s arrivals notwithstanding.

So. I’ve patted myself on the back, for picking 1971 and seeing one other person bother to do it. I’ve hinted at why the book makes the valid case I could never make. I need to see if The Last Movie is actually available - finally. I need to see Murphy’s War, and maybe the 13 hour film, and the Godzilla movie that sounds very weird…

So many movies from one frigging amazing year, and not enough time. Not enough time for 1970…

[John Schorg · Rating 4 out of 5]

You won't find many books about years in movies that include everything from The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange, and The Last Picture Show to Blood on Satan's Claw, The Big Doll House, and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, but you'll find them in this review of 1971. There is a lot of fun stuff here, but I'm not sure anything tops Debbie Reynolds turning a fire hose on Shelley Winters...

[Richard Luck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always thought that 1971 was a great year for cinema. After all it's the year in which I was born. This book, though, proves it beyond any doubt.