In our last installment, we talked about 1974, possibly the best year a single director has ever had: not just Francis Ford Coppola, who released both Godfather II and The Conversation, but also Mel Brooks, who dropped Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles back to back.
Now we head into 1975 – which you could easily argue was the best year ever for movies, period. This is the year of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which swept the Oscars; Jaws, which launched Steven Spielberg’s career and reshaped the film industry; Mirror, perhaps the most acclaimed film in Andrei Tarkovsky’s legendary repertoire; Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, two of the most beloved cult classics ever made; Grey Gardens, in the conversation for best-ever documentary; and of course Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, which just topped Sight & Sound’s prestigious global ranking of the greatest films ever made. And I haven’t even mentioned Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, Barry Lyndon – well, you get the idea. But of all those classics, (and quite a few others) which one film best stands the test of time?
To identify the Best Picture of 1975, we looked at critical rankings and general audience votes - and then we conducted a survey of renowned film scholars. Here’s what we found!
Critics’ Lists
When it comes to critical acclaim, Jeanne Dielman grabbed all the recent headlines with its surprising first-place finish in Sight & Sound’s 2022 poll. But it was hardly out of nowhere: Akerman’s inimitable classic was already high on the S&S list ten years ago, and five years ago it made the BBC’s list of the top 15 foreign-language films ever made.
But 1975 was a stacked year, so Jeanne Dielman is not alone. In fact it’s not even the only 1975 film to make Sight & Sound’s all-time top ten, because the S&S critics (as well as the BBC) also love Tarkovsky’s Mirror. 1975 was also a huge year for Hollywood – most notably Jaws and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which regularly show up on critics’ lists of the “best” movies of all time. (Including Sight & Sound, at least in the case of Jaws.)
Here’s a list of 1975 films that show up in critics’ all-time “best” lists, and where they rank:
Sight & Sound critics (2012): Mirror (19), Jeanne Dielman (T35), Barry Lyndon (T59), Nashville (T73)
Sight & Sound directors (2012): Mirror (9), Barry Lyndon (T19), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (T48), Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (T75), Jaws (T75)
Sight & Sound critics (2022): Jeanne Dielman (1), Mirror (T31), Barry Lyndon (T45)
Sight & Sound directors (2022): Jeanne Dielman (T4), Mirror (8), Barry Lyndon (T12), Jaws (T62), Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (T72)
AFI “100 Years, 100 Movies” (2007): One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (33), Jaws (56), Nashville (59)
Empire’s “100 Greatest Movies” (2017): Jaws (8), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (43)
Leonard Maltin: Jaws, Nashville
National Society of Film Critics: Nashville
The Hollywood Reporter (2014): Jaws (24), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (30), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (68)
BBC American (2015): Nashville (14), Barry Lyndon (27), Jaws (38), Grey Gardens (53), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (59)
BBC Foreign (2018): Jeanne Dielman (14), Mirror (20)
Entertainment Weekly (2013): Nashville (9), Jaws (18), Dog Day Afternoon (77)
How great a year is 1975 for movies? We found ten films from ‘75 that show up on critics’ lists of the best films ever made.
Besides the four we’ve already mentioned, the ’75 film that gets the most “greatest ever” citations is Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking period piece Barry Lyndon, which ranks high on Sight & Sound’s poll as well as the BBC’s ranking of the best American films. Ahead of Barry Lyndon on that BBC list, though, is Robert Altman’s epic ensemble classic Nashville – which also got cited by Entertainment Weekly as one of the ten best films of all time.
And even after all those, we’re only just getting started. Pasolini’s provocative Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom snuck into the top 100 on Sight & Sound’s international poll of directors. Grey Gardens landed on the BBC’s list of the greatest American films of all time – one of five ’75 films on that top 100, along with Nashville, Barry Lyndon, Jaws, and Cuckoo’s Nest. Entertainment Weekly snubbed Cuckoo’s Nest but gave a spot to Al Pacino and Dog Day Afternoon. And the Hollywood Reporter reserved a spot in its top 100 for Monty Python and the Holy Grail – snubbing Nashville and Barry Lyndon in the process. I fart in your general direction.
Most of those “all-time best” lists only rank the top 100 movies, though. The website They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? goes further and ranks the top thousand films of all time, according to critical acclaim. TSPDT’s list includes 24 films from 1975 – more than any other year in history, in case you need any more “best year ever” credentials.
(12) Jeanne Dielman
(23) Mirror
(45) Barry Lyndon
(89) Nashville
(94) Jaws
(155) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(163) The Passenger
(198) Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
(227) The Travelling Players
(289) India Song
(353) Dog Day Afternoon
(468) Dersu Uzala
(535) Picnic at Hanging Rock
(611) Grey Gardens
(638) Xala
(750) The Man Who Would Be King
(862) The Seasons
(882) Welfare
(901) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(913) Deep Red
(929) Seven Beauties
(946) Numéro Deux
(984) Fox and His Friends
(996) Sholay
And just for good measure, TSPDT’s list also puts five ’75 films in the top 100 – also more than any other year.
Not too many surprises near the top: there’s Jeanne Dielman in the lead, having gotten a boost from that recent Sight & Sound poll, followed closely by Tarkovsky’s Mirror. Barry Lyndon, Nashville, and Jaws all make the top 100 as well, with Cuckoo’s Nest not too far behind in sixth. Further back are the other four films we’ve seen: Salò, Dog Day Afternoon, Grey Gardens, and Monty Python. (No critics’ love for Rocky Horror, sadly.)
General Audiences
But which films from 1975 do general audiences still watch?
There’s no scientific survey that currently exists to determine how many people have seen this or that film, so we look at user rankings on IMDB.com: generally speaking, the more rankings a film gets, the more people are likely to have seen it. You do have to take IMDB data with a grain of salt: among other things, IMDB users tend to be younger than average and more likely male, and that can skew the numbers quite a bit. (Films with male protagonists tend to get more votes, for one thing.) Also, IMDB is an American website, so we’ve noted a clear bias toward English-language films: most IMDB users are English speakers, so naturally they’ll tend to gravitate toward movies in their own language.
Having said all that, here are the ten most-viewed films from 1975, according to IMDB (as of April 17, 2023):
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1,023,514 votes)
Jaws (619,808)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (549,487)
Dog Day Afternoon (262,409)
Barry Lyndon (172,668)
Rocky Horror Picture Show (156,978)
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (62,394)
Three Days of the Condor (58,358)
Sholay (56,884)
The Man Who Would Be King (50,325)
As usual – contrary to conventional wisdom – we find a lot of overlap between critics and general audiences when it comes to the films they gravitate toward. Cuckoo’s Nest and Jaws are the runaway leaders here, with Holy Grail not too far behind and Dog Day Afternoon and Barry Lyndon rounding out the top five. You can clearly see IMDB voters’ English-language bias here, but Salò overcomes that to make the top ten – as does the Indian classic Sholay, which also snuck into TSPDT’s top 1000. And just outside the top ten is another foreign-language film: Tarkovsky’s Mirror, a handful of votes behind Man Who Would Be King in eleventh.
But not every critically-beloved film hits with general audiences. Nashville, for instance, trails well back in nineteenth place, and Grey Gardens is further back in twenty-ninth. And while this may change in the future after Sight & Sound’s seal of approval, ordinary moviegoers haven’t yet discovered Jeanne Dielman, which lands in 34th place – between the True Grit sequel Rooster Cogburn and the Indian film Deewaar.
Scholarly Acclaim
So that’s where general audiences stand. How about film scholars?
We gave our panel of scholars a list of 18 films from 1975 – more than usual, but as we’ve said, it was that kind of year – and asked them to rank their favorites. (We also encouraged write-in votes, if there were any films they thought we’d missed.)
We used a ranked-choice system to tally the votes: 10 points for their top-ranked film, 9 points for their #2 choice, and so on down.
Here are the results, with the number of first-place votes in parentheses. (Write-in votes are in italics.)
Jeanne Dielman (6) 111
Nashville (4) 110
Dog Day Afternoon (1) 104
Barry Lyndon (2) 101
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (3) 96
Jaws (2) 93
Grey Gardens (1) 63
The Passenger (1) 53
Picnic at Hanging Rock 49
Dersu Uzala 41
Mirror (1) 39
Monty Python and the Holy Grail 33
Rocky Horror Picture Show 33
The Man Who Would Be King 24
Xala 23
Deep Red 19
Shampoo (1) 18
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom 14
Hester Street 12
Fox and His Friends 9
Shivers 9
Death Race 2000 7
Sholay 7
Cooley High 2
Seven Beauties 1
Ten films got first-place votes, nearly an all-time record – including Shampoo, which didn’t hit with critics or general audiences but turned out to be one of our panel’s most popular write-in votes of the decade. Shampoo actually outscored two films that made our shortlist, the divisive Salò and the not-as-well-known-among-Americans Sholay.
Fittingly for such a strong year, there’s no consensus among our panelists, with six films in a virtual first-place tie. Jeanne Dielman is in first, but by just a single point over Nashville, and Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon, Cuckoo’s Nest and Jaws trail just slightly behind. After those six, though, there’s a very large gap: seventh-place Grey Gardens is a full 30 points behind sixth-place Jaws.
And while our panelists don’t give us much direction when it comes to picking the top film of the year, they can definitely help us narrow the field. Perhaps the most striking result here: a major snub for Mirror, which may be one of Sight & Sound’s all-time top ten but doesn’t even make our panel’s top ten for the year. (With apologies to the one panelist who put it in first.)
Choosing Five Nominees
So with all that in mind, what are our five Best Picture nominees?
This one’s going to be tough. 1975 was arguably the most stacked year ever in movie history; even a top ten list will leave off several worthy contenders. But we can narrow the field pretty quickly with the help of our panelists, who identify a clear top six: Jeanne Dielman, Nashville, Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon, Cuckoo’s Nest, and Jaws. You can make a case for several of the films they snubbed – most notably Grey Gardens, Mirror, Salò, and Monty Python – but are their other metrics strong enough to overcome the panel vote? Not really: Grey Gardens doesn’t hit with general audiences, Monty Python and Salò get limited love from critics, and while Mirror is a strong contender otherwise, it’s not so far ahead of those other six to ignore the panel’s snub. So we’re down to six.
Of those six, then, which one gets left out?
Four of the six films score highly across all three of our metrics: Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon and Barry Lyndon are beloved with critics, film scholars, and general audiences alike. The other two, Jeanne Dielman and Nashville, are big hits with critics and scholars – first and second place with our panelists, in fact, separated by a single point – but general audiences tend to pass them by. So which of those two is more deserving of a nomination?
Maybe last October, you could have made a case for Nashville, but in this case that Sight & Sound poll has to be decisive. You may or may not love Jeanne Dielman – we love it, in case you’re curious – but either way, it’s hard to justify leaving it off a list of the top five films of 1975, when a massive international survey just ranked it as the greatest film ever.
Thus, our five Best Picture nominees for 1975 are:
BARRY LYNDON
DOG DAY AFTERNOON JAWS JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
It’s fashionable to rib the Oscars for making poor choices, but you can’t say that about this year: their five Best Picture nominees were Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Cuckoo’s Nest…and Nashville, which just barely missed our cut. (Much to my chagrin, incidentally: Nashville is my personal favorite of these six.)
Steven Spielberg and Milos Forman get their first nominations for Jaws and Cuckoo’s Nest, respectively, though of course we’ll see them again later on – ad nauseam, in the case of Spielberg. Chantal Akerman is our other first-time nominee – and our fifth female nominee, along with Leni Riefenstahl, Maya Deren, Agnès Varda, and Charlotte Zwerin. On the flip side, Barry Lyndon is Kubrick’s fifth nominated film; he’s now tied for second with Luis Buñuel and Orson Welles, behind only 13-time nominee Alfred Hitchcock. Our other repeat nominee is Dog Day Afternoon’s Sidney Lumet, who got his first nomination for 12 Angry Men in 1957 – the same year Kubrick got his first, for Paths of Glory.
While 1975 gives us three first-time directing nominees, it also features a number of actors who are racking up the Moonlight accolades. Dog Day Afternoon’s Al Pacino and John Cazale are now three-time nominees (along with the two Godfather films) – as is Jaws’ Richard Dreyfuss (American Graffiti and The Graduate), Jeanne Dielman’s Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad and Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), and Barry Lyndon’s Marisa Berenson (Death in Venice and Cabaret). Jack Nicholson has them all beat, though: Cuckoo’s Nest is his fourth nominated film, along with Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and Chinatown.
And when all is said and done, how good a year was 1975? Tarkovsky’s Mirror just got ranked by a massive international poll as the eighth-greatest film of all time – but according to our metrics, it’s only the seventh-best film of its own year.
And The Winner Is…
So after all that, who wins?
From here on out, our panel’s no help: all five of these films are practically tied for first in our panel’s vote, with just a slight gap between first-place Jeanne Dielman and sixth-place Jaws. We can get some assistance from critics’ lists, but only a little: Dog Day Afternoon is highly acclaimed, but still trails the other four films pretty distantly on TSPDT’s critical aggregate, so we can rule that one out, for starters.
How about general audiences? There, at least, we do start to see some more separation: Jeanne Dielman doesn’t hit at all with ordinary moviegoers, so we can set that one aside in spite of its Sight & Sound recognition – and while Barry Lyndon does get a lot of general-audience love, it still trails Jaws and Cuckoo’s Nest by a fair bit.
So: Jaws, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? They’re virtually tied with our panel. They’re first and second with general audiences, though Cuckoo’s Nest has an edge. But among critics, Jaws comes out on top: not only does it beat Cuckoo’s Nest on TSPDT’s aggregate, it also leads on Sight & Sound’s most recent directors’ poll, as well as the rankings from Empire, the BBC, the Hollywood Reporter, and Entertainment Weekly. Cuckoo’s Nest leads Jaws on the AFI’s top-100 list, but that’s all we found where Cuckoo’s Nest is ahead. Beyond that, Jaws has one additional advantage: compared to Cuckoo’s Nest, Spielberg’s classic has had a far greater influence on the movie industry writ large, launching the era of the summer blockbuster and the first-weekend wide release. (And the era of the franchise, though James Bond and The Godfather came first there.) They’re both eminently worthy – but if you have to choose, it’s easier to choose the shark.
And so: congratulations to Jaws, the Moonlight Award winner for Best Picture of 1975!
Milos Forman is now 0-for-1, but he’ll have another good shot when Amadeus comes out in 1984. More notably, Jack Nicholson is now 0-for-4 as an actor, with runner-up status in each of the last two years. (Chinatown took second in 1974.) Will Nicholson ever win? His best shot going forward may be 1980’s The Shining – but 1980 is also the year of Raging Bull and The Empire Strikes Back, so that’s going to be a tough fight.
Some notable facts about Jaws’ win:
First, it’s Moonlight number one for Spielberg, but almost certainly not his last. He’s also going to have good chances in 1981 (Raiders of the Lost Ark), 1982 (E.T.), 1985 (The Color Purple), 1993 (Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park), and 1998 (Saving Private Ryan).
Second, Jaws becomes the first film ever to win the Moonlight without finishing first on any of our three primary metrics. Jaws ranks fifth for the year on They Shoot Pictures’ critical aggregate, though it made TSPDT’s all-time top 100; it’s second behind Cuckoo’s Nest on IMDB’s count of general-audience votes; and it was only sixth with our panelists, though only narrowly behind the other five. Prior to this year, the film that came closest to winning a Moonlight without winning any individual category was 1955’s Night of the Hunter, which narrowly lost out to Pather Panchali.
Third, Jaws wins the Moonlight despite finishing sixth with our panel – not a surprise because our top six were virtually tied this year, but that’s still easily the worst showing ever for a Moonlight winner in our panel’s vote. The previous record holder? It’s A Wonderful Life, which finished fourth with our panel but won the Moonlight in 1946. Every other Moonlight winner has at least made our panel’s top three; in fact only a handful failed to make the top two. (That handful: 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, 1945’s Children of Paradise, and our last two Moonlight winners, 1973’s The Exorcist and 1974’s Godfather II, all of which finished third.)
Jaws also finished fifth for the year on TSPDT’s aggregate, making it only the fifth Moonlight winner to finish outside TSPDT’s top four for the year. (The other four: 1961’s Yojimbo, 1967’s The Graduate, 1969’s Midnight Cowboy, and – again – 1973’s The Exorcist.)
And while Jaws wins despite not winning any of our three individual categories, Jeanne Dielman loses despite finishing first on two of them: They Shoot Pictures’ critical aggregate and (narrowly) our panel vote. The only other films to win two categories but not the Moonlight: 1931’s City Lights, 1939’s Rules of the Game, and 1954’s Rear Window. (They lost to M, The Wizard of Oz, and The Seven Samurai, respectively.)
Moving on, here are our nominees for Best Picture of 1975:
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN
CARRIE
NETWORK
ROCKY
TAXI DRIVER
Another year the Academy got right: other than Carrie, all of those were Oscar Best Picture nominees as well. (Sorry, Bound for Glory.)
With Network, Sidney Lumet gets his third nomination – and his second in a row, after Dog Day Afternoon. Martin Scorsese also becomes a multiple nominee, as Taxi Driver joins 1973’s Mean Streets. 1976 also continues the U.S. domination in the film world: all five of our 1976 nominees are American, marking the eighth time in the last nine years that the U.S. produced at least four of our five nominees. (The U.S. also produced our honorable-mention film for 1976: Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA, my personal choice for best documentary of all time.)
What do you think? Did we get it right for 1975? Who should win the Moonlight for 1976? Join our community and weigh in!
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