Credit: Gabe
The 1970s were a pretty monumental time for cinema, especially in Hollywood, for the larger landscape of the world was completely changed.
For decades, studio-bound productions had been the norm, with iconic stars signing contracts that would see them appear in dozens of pictures, often partnered up with the same love interests, but the 1960s emergence of the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, and increased visibility in the LGBTQ+ community meant that cinema had to move with these changing times, too.
War had a striking impact on individuals, and in the aftermath of the Second World War in particular, society morphed into something entirely different. This was the only natural conclusion to such an earth-shattering, cataclysmic event. As people changed, so did art, and cinema is one of the most glaring examples of this societal shift.
As the fight for freedom, emancipation, nuclear armistice, and liberation from an old way of living became more prominent among communities, especially in America, where reactionary movements like the drug-infused counterculture were gaining momentum, cinema reflected this shift with the demise of the Hays Code.
This censorial board had enforced rigid rules within Hollywood for decades, prohibiting everything from nudity and profanity to interracial relationships and explicitly queer characters. Everything had to be pretty straight-laced, and happy endings were much preferred, but once this was abolished in 1968, a fresh era of filmmaking emerged in America known as New Hollywood.
Films like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Harold and Maude, and more were all provocative and daring, with violence, sex, drug-taking, and nihilism all playing their part in their narratives. Inspired by the auteurs over in Europe and experimental filmmaking that was happening underground, these directors were more playful, messing around with formal techniques and bringing an utterly new sense of direction to the mainstream.
What movie spent the longest at number one in 1976?
People were largely reactive to these changes, and over the coming years, many of the highest-grossing movies were those considered to be part of this exciting new wave; just look at the success of Jaws and The Godfather. Sure, more traditionally ‘Hollywood’ pictures, like musicals and disaster movies, still shot straight to number one throughout the ‘70s, but now the charts contained many other movies with a more subversive edge nestled among the top, too.
1976 was a great year for cinema, with movies like Taxi Driver, Carrie, The Omen, Mickey and Nicky, Rocky, Network, All The President’s Men, and Marathon Man emerging, and that was just in America. The year started with Dog Day Afternoon in the number one spot at the box office, although it was temporarily bumped from the throne by the family-friendly movie The Adventures of the Wilderness Family.
In February, however, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest reached the number one spot, 12 weeks after it had entered the chart in 1975, and there it remained for the next five weeks, until Taxi Driver beat it to the top for just a week, with Miloš Forman’s film soon returning to reassert its crown.
In the end, the iconic adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel about life in a mental institution, where the terrifyingly abusive Nurse Ratched is in charge, remained at number one the longest, staying there for eight weeks in total. With stellar performances from Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher and a daring and surprisingly humorous vision of mental illness, the film dominated at the Academy Awards that year, and it remains one of the most acclaimed movies of the 1970s.
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