The 10 Best Performances of the 1970s

This is something a little different. Contrary to what it might seem given how few I’ve made these past couple years, I like movie themed lists and I’d like to get back into making them more often. I also realize I tend to like to talk about directors more than other artists involved in the filmmaking process, which is a bit of a crutch in film discourse just in general. Sometimes it even gets lost what actors bring to a movie, despite them being the ones front and centre of any film.

And seeing as the 1970s are now fifty years ago and that decade produced a lot of the most interesting movies, I thought I’d look it over on my Letterboxd list and determine what I think are the best performances from that period (it was a great decade, there are a lot to choose from). This is going to be a challenge, to talk about just acting craft and quality, but the performances I’m singling out have such depth and interest I think I can do them justice. Each of these I love a great deal, and if you haven’t seen some of the movies that these performances are showcased in, I highly recommend doing so.

I don’t know that I can confidently rank them on a proper numbered scale, so I’m just going to list them starting from the top of the decade and working my way down. Otherwise I could find myself regretting each placement even a month from now. After all there’s truth to what George C. Scott held, that each individual performance is particular and unique and can’t be rightly judged against one another. A powerful sentiment. But speaking of…
 
George C. Scott in Patton (1970)

Nobody thinks about the real man when they hear the name General George S. Patton. They think of a lone figure in uniform in front of an American flag, they think of that gruff voice telling recruits to “kick (the Nazis) in the ass”, they think of “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your BOOK!” George C. Scott’s portrait of the contentious World War II commander is one of cinema’s best impressions of unhinged authority and the military mindset. He plays Patton true to life but it is his innate grasp of that gruffness and temperament, that crass attitude and ego that gives the performance its’ power. Scott excels so well at that side of the character, he makes it fun; and yet he allows for a certain pathos to seep in. Of all things he takes Pattons’ reincarnation delusions seriously, his great sense of the weight of history. Few scenes in war films are as striking as when he admits over a field of dead bodies his addictive love of war. Patton is not a good or nice man by any means, but Scott with measured subtlety finds essence there and it is transfixing.
 
Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude (1971)

What a career Ruth Gordon had! She started out on Broadway, transitioned to screenwriting during Hollywood’s Golden Age and then in her late years finally became a big star. She won an Oscar in 1969 for Rosemary’s Baby, but I think that should have held off at least a couple more years to recognize the most important role of her career. In Harold and Maude, she plays Maude, an elderly woman with a boundless enthusiasm and vigorous lust for life. Gordon seems to understand this character deeply, someone who has lived long, seen a lot, and experienced more than her share of tragedy -all of which is reflected in subtle ways. That she can come out of it with such a buoyant optimism and with the spirit of someone more than half her age is genuinely inspiring. And all of it is down to Gordon encapsulating these virtues with unmatched warmth and unbridled spontaneity -and also a sharp, radical humour. As lovably wicked and wickedly lovable as Miriam Margolyes or Betty White, Ruth Gordon’s Maude is a true original –patron saint of delightful old ladies.
 
David Gulpilil in Walkabout (1971)

Sometimes the best performance is the one that comes from the non-actor plucked out of obscurity for a role that a professional simply cannot play. As is the case with David Gulpilil, an Indigenous Australian teenager selected by Nicolas Roeg to be the heart and soul of his coming-of-age survival drama Walkabout. Playing the nameless boy on a ritual exercise who meets and befriends two British children lost in the outback, Gulpilil immediately and naturally embodies that direct contrast to the strictures of far-off civilization in image alone: a tall, almost naked black youth with shaggy hair and wild, piercing eyes. He carries himself with such discipline and strength –every traditional skill he had been brought up with is on display. But it’s in his ability to amplify the pathos of this character that makes him most riveting. That communication disconnect, particularly as he struggles to articulate his sexual feelings for the girl, is felt with immense weight and tragedy. Perhaps without even trying to, Gulpilil gets to the heart of the primal themes being expressed by the film –it would not at all work without him.
 
Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972)

Much is made of “transformational” performances, and yet few seem to appreciate how much of a transformation elder patriarch Vito Corleone was for the forty-seven year old Marlon Brando. This of course is not why the performance is so memorably iconic. Brando’s choices beyond those jowls, that accent, are such that they redefined forever the image of the gangster in American pop culture; James Cagney’s impulsive low-life thugs went out the window in favour of this more sophisticated, more cultured, more wealthy creation. But still, that look is incredible! Mario Puzo deserves credit for Vito Corleone, so does Francis Ford Coppola. But without Brando and his grandiose air of power and conviction, it would not have lasted. His credibility informs the rest of the cast, the rest of the movie –he plays everything so softly and yet so direct. And I don’t know that anyone else could get away with the particular kind of acting he’s pulling off, that can emphasize menace and earnestness and an enigmatic kind of reverence in equal measure. Never once do you doubt that he is the Godfather!
 
Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

What can be said about Gena Rowlands that hasn’t been said already? Among actors she is a titan, consistently rated one of the best, her body of work with partner John Cassavetes a crash course in great film performance. A Woman Under the Influence is her most famous role and perhaps her greatest showcase, in which she plumes the depths of mental illness to create a stirring, sometimes uncomfortable, but persistently captivating character. A Los Angeles housewife with an uncaring husband and a drinking problem, Mabel Longhetti is one of the most layered characters to come out of the 1970s –so specific and detailed are her troubles, so brazenly real is her every action. It is what you think of when you think of a tour de force, Rowlands is in full command as she takes Mabel in varied, even contradictory directions as her life crumbles around her. Perhaps the first great spousal fight in cinema comes from this movie, and Rowlands dominates it. I don’t know exactly what the movie’s statement is on Mabel’s behaviour, but Rowlands is a revelation –still immensely underrated in the pantheon of great movie actresses.
 
Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976)

Method acting had been a known phenomenon by the time Taxi Driver came out, but it could be argued this was the movie that made it ubiquitous. And to this day, Robert De Niro may still be the first face that comes to mind when discussing this approach -Travis Bickle the first character. Because the depths that De Niro pulls from in his portrayal of this alienated and uniquely disturbed individual are unlike anything that had ever been seen before. He finds a way to make sense of this person, to convey the precise way Travis’ mind works -every opinion and attitude and action justified in some sense by how he grants us access into his perspective. It’s one of those performances that is scarily good, and has only aged better with time -De Niro’s subtleties tapping into the subtexts of similarly radicalized young men who maybe don’t pick up on context cues or maintain introverted demeanours that mask violent thoughts. His whole body language around women, around minorities, it is chillingly on point. De Niro lives this part and knows exactly what he is doing, rightfully an acting achievement for the ages!
 
Peter Finch in Network (1976)

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

In fairness, all of the performances in Network are extremely great! Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall and William Holden; Beatrice Straight and Ned Beatty give Oscar-worthy performances for just a single scene each! But at the centre of the film is Peter Finch and it’s him who we most remember as the unfortunate Howard Beal, news anchor whose mental breakdown is exploited for profit and media ratings. Finch is so aptly attuned to the confused desperation of this man, the unrestrained anger that takes the form of gloriously constructed rants against media, society, and politics that eerily predict the rage cycles of modern media pundits. But for as brash as he gets, he never lets go of the sadness that is a permanent facet of this man -and it can be heartbreaking to see him try to emotionally grapple with it on some subconscious level. Finch also exerts himself to exceptional degree in every tirade, the exhaustion of the performance palpable in his reddened sweaty face, yet he never falters in his dedication. What a thing it is to watch!
 
Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata (1978)

No actor has delivered a finer swansong than Ingrid Bergman when she at long last teamed up with Ingmar Bergman for what would be her last movie role, Autumn Sonata. Even in a career as magnificent as hers, she had new talents to prove, and in this quiet drama about the estranged relationship between a famous mother and her reserved daughter, she brings forth new profundities of human emotion and the weight of remorse as her Charlotte grapples with the unkind perceptions and reality her daughter presents her about their history. This is just about the height of cinematic drama, this interplay between Bergman and Liv Ullmann -also giving a phenomenal performance. That empathetic sadness that Charlotte tries to repress, preventing us from ever condemning her wholeheartedly, shows through in her every feature -it is magnetic!. I suspect Bergman felt a certain kinship with this character, who like herself is an international Swedish star, and it may account for how she gives so much to the part. But it may also just be that Ingrid Bergman has always been one of the very best actresses, and here she went to the effort to prove it definitively one last time. Anyone who watches the movie will surely not disagree.
 
Christopher Reeve in Superman (1978)

Yes, seriously. Sometimes the role already exists and is just waiting for the right person to fill it. And there are few instances in Hollywood where a character and an actor have been so perfectly married as when Christopher Reeve put on the tights to play Superman. Reeve may not have been the most versatile actor, the most accredited or the most acclaimed, but few would deny he wasn’t born to play this part. As Clark Kent, he is timid, awkward, and clumsy, and as Superman he is bold, noble, and charming -striking that balance between god and man better than any a like saviour allegory, in both the religious and comic book movie sense. Both personas exist in harmony, Reeve can transition between the two with ease; and he imbues in each an unwavering earnestness all his own, without which the character wouldn’t be so fittingly larger-than-life, so powerful and empowering, so aspirational. It becomes hard to imagine Superman ever existing before Reeve and as the superhero genre has come to dominate pop culture in the decades since, it has still yet to produce another performance of this calibre and immortality.
 
Roy Scheider in All That Jazz (1979)

Since I first watched All That Jazz a year ago, I’ve thought a lot about Roy Scheider’s performance -a turn that made me completely reevaluate an actor I’d liked fine, but was never wowed by before. His realization of director Bob Fosse’s alter ego Joe Gideon blew me away though. You rarely see such deeply flawed characters given such soulful consideration. Joe is a workaholic, womanizing, alcoholic, drugged up, egomaniacal mess of a person speeding towards visceral burnout due to the stress of staging a musical and editing a film simultaneously, but we understand him intimately, the reasons for his vices and insecurities, his self-awareness and his subconscious death wish. A goateed Scheider spends so much of the film in the least healthy state imaginable, until he is a walking corpse. But he is effortlessly charismatic, frenetically energetic, and every toxic impulse and self-aware conviction alike is played with unbelievable potency. It is an irresistible character and an irresistible performance -every scene showing some compelling nuance to Scheider’s understanding of this man, what drives him, and what holds him back. And the body language he brings out is flawless. A performance that only grows in my estimation the more I reflect on it!

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