1970s

Relative to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s great masterpieces of the 80s and 90s, The Scar is a modest piece of social realism, grounded in the details of Communist Poland’s bureaucracy and its controversial small-town development of a chemical factory that challenges one sympathetic Party member’s hopeful ideals.

Nature has never been so frightening nor humanity so stubbornly delusional as they are in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, as Werner Herzog’s disorientating camerawork and breath-taking cinematography of the Peruvian wilderness loses us in the absurd quest of 17th century Spanish conquistadors to find the fabled country of El Dorado.

In transposing classical storytelling traditions onto a 1940s New York crime family in The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola effectively crafts an epic piece of American mythology for the twentieth century, unravelling one of the greatest pure narratives put to film with monumental ambition in its sheer economy and compellingly tragic characters.

In its organic progression between its sprawling narrative threads, Nashville carries the sense that Robert Altman could point his camera in any direction and discover a new set of characters as equally as intriguing as the rest of his ensemble, constructing a satirical image of this musical city that is pervaded by a defiantly bright-eyed…

There is something of Lenny Bruce’s rebellious, unorthodox style in Bob Fosse’s 1974 biopic of the comedian’s life which mirrors his own unruly manner, cutting between moments from all across his life and death to confront the difficult legacies left behind in the fight for free speech.

Around the hair-raising cat-and-mouse chase between detective Popeye Doyle and French mobster Charnier, William Friedkin constructs a gritty vision of New York City flooded with stagnant puddles and coated in at least a few layers of grime, melding narrative and setting to deliver a biting, authentically cynical crime thriller in The French Connection.