Photo Credit (Freepik)

Fifty years ago, following the end of the 1960s, a lot of the globe was still experiencing social, cultural, and political upheaval. Even though it wasn’t as spoken about or celebrated as 1968—the year riots swept throughout France, the United States, Poland, and other countries—a more disillusioned but nonetheless significant decade began in 1970.

Even if the Vietnam War hadn’t ended yet and a harsh reaction to the Prague Spring had started, 1970 was a turbulent year for the arts and movies. Let It Be by the Beatles and Loaded by the Velvet Underground were both released that year; MASH, directed by Robert Altman, took home the Palme d’Or.

Inspired by the counterculture’s meteoric rise and the resurgence of artistic freedom in countries formerly ruled by totalitarian regimes, American filmmakers absorbed and reimagined the techniques and ideas of the many new waves that had emerged in Europe. The results ranged from surrealist political thrillers to full-on, symbolically dense films with minimal plot.

The outcome was a jam-packed international film festival, with works from a wide range of directors such as Luis Buñuel, Barbara Loden, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, and countless more. In no particular order, here are ten of 1970’s most notable and, dare I say it, bizarre films.

The Red Circle (1970)

Alain Delon, a regular on Jean-Pierre Melville’s shows, plays Corey, a moustachioed, monosyllabic ex-con, in Le Cercle rouge, the third and last installment of the French director’s sloppy trilogy of monochromatic, superb crime pictures. He quickly becomes involved in a scheme to loot a jewelry store after his release from prison, teaming up with Yves Montand and Gian Maria Volonté.

The film was a smashing success in France despite the now-famous 30-minute silent scene that occurs during the heist and pushes the limits of narrative genre film. Although its deliberate pace and minimalistic design are at odds with what audiences have grown to anticipate from heist films, filmmakers such as John Woo and Michael Mann have acknowledged Le Cercle Rouge as an influential work.

1970’s Claire’s Knee

Even with a synopsis, it’s hard to imagine the sensual, evocative atmosphere of Claire’s Knee, one of the most lauded of Eric Rohmer’s hazy cinematic explorations of midsummer boredom.

A man named Bearded Jerome, who is getting ready to be married, is played by Jean-Claude Brialy. He is on vacation at Lake Annecy. Aurora, an old flame who is now enjoying life on the lake with her two lovely teenage girls, happens to be here when he runs into her. As a result of his attraction to Laura, the younger and shyer daughter, the older man becomes hopelessly infatuated with Claire, the older and more confident sister. Plus, Claire’s tanned knee peeks out from under her sundress as she climbs a ladder, and Jerome finds himself oddly captivated by this tiny, non-sexual aspect of her body.

Rohmer delicately questions Jerome’s feelings for Claire, an adolescent who appears unremarkable aside from her appearance. His usual boisterous approach allows him to make astute insights on male libido and the strength of female bonds that endure it.

When People Conform (1970)
Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Marcello, a repressed fascist with a background of sexual assault in Bernardo Bertolucci’s seminal work of Italian art film. He does his job for Mussolini’s secret police in front of an ornate art deco setting in Italy during the 1930s. Marcello is betrayed by the professor’s wife, Dominique Sanda, an attractive blonde, despite being assigned to kill the professor, who has become a notable anti-fascist.

The Conformist, shot by the legendary Vittorio Storaro—whose visually striking films greatly impacted the aesthetic of The Godfather (1972)—discusses the moral and spiritual decline that results from an individual’s perverted allegiance to Mussolini’s party. Although Bertolucci has subsequently become a divisive character in cinematic history, his depiction of the mentality underlying the philosophy remains pertinent to this day; the film paints a terrifying picture of brutality and timidity.

A Citizen’s Investigation Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1970)

The protagonist of Elio Petri’s savage political crime drama is a police officer, but the film is light years ahead of the ‘poliziotteschi’ subgenre of police thrillers that dominated Italian cinema in the 1970s. Here Petri created his magnum opus, drawing on an overtly left-wing upbringing as he sought to expose the intricate web of state and police corruption in ancient Italy.

The protagonist, a psychopathic high-ranking investigator, reveals an absurdist nightmare of corruption and bureaucracy as he does all in his power to avoid being convicted of a murder. The role of this mysterious, horrific villain is nailed by Gian Maria Volonté, a seasoned actor who has starred in spaghetti westerns, crime films, and Melville’s Le Cercle rouge, and whose eyes dart all over the place. In essence, he is a fascist savage.

Achievement in 1970

As an experiment in rock and roll craziness that involves shapeshifting and identity swapping, performance is unlike anything that has come before or subsequently. It follows Mick Jagger as he takes a vacation from the limelight in an avatar form, hiding out in a basement flat in West London adorned in Far Eastern garb with two groupie females. James Fox, who plays a true-blue Cockney gangster on the run from his own gang, is more subdued but no less powerful as he tries to blend in with the hippies he openly despises while hiding in their apartment.

The two develop an unhealthy obsession with each other, which causes them to experiment with hallucinogens and, in the end, suffer mental breakdowns, despite or perhaps because of their original animosity. Fox lets her hair grow out in a hippie style, and Jagger goes all macho with smooth hair. Despite its muddled ending, Performance is nonetheless an intriguing, surreal look at a deep cultural divide and a scathing critique of masculinity.

In 1970, Safar

The epic Hindi romance by Asit Sen is both devastating and tender at the same time, delivered in a sweeping melodramatic manner with performances so nuanced that the term’melodrama’ sounds completely inappropriate. Neela, played by Sharmila Tagore, narrates the story from a more mature perspective, using flashbacks. She meets the poetic, homeless, working-class young man Avinash (Rajesh Khanna), who she will lust after forever, while she is a medical student at the beginning of her journey. Even though Avinash and Neela love each other deeply, he refuses to marry Neela. She thinks it’s because of his financial situation at first, but then she learns he has a fatal illness. Then a different guy shows up…

Safar blends poetic, sad love songs with realistic depictions of economic and emotional realities, and it stars Bollywood superstar Khanna in a stunning performance.

Delinquent Girl Boss is a Stray Cat Rock song from 1970.

Mei (Meiko Kaji), a leader of a girl-power gang, teams up with a mystery gunslinger-style motorcycle girl (Akiko Wada) to fend off an all-male band of right-wing thugs in this pop-art-inflected, flamboyant adventure that draws inspiration from the work of Jean-Luc Godard and Seijun Suzuki.

If the story weren’t intriguing enough, director Yasuharu Hasebe uses every artistic device at his disposal, including split screens, LSD-inspired color pops, freeze frames, and an apparently never-static camera. A wild plot unfolds as a result, with some fierce women in miniskirts taking the stage and the macho, nationalist yakuza taking a back seat.

In 1970, Tristana

Tristana is a period work of profoundly felt beauty and radical impetus, and it was a literary adaptation that surrealist artist Luis Buñuel had wanted to produce for years. However, he finally got around to making it after a battle with the censors of the Franco administration. An naïve young woman residing in 1920s and 1930s Spain is the protagonist of the film, played by Catherine Deneuve—her stop-light eyes and distant beauty are utilized to delightfully infantile effect. Despite her attempts at rebellion, she finds herself in a terrible bind after losing her parents and being subjected to the patriarchal and self-serving brutality of her guardian, Don Lope (Fernando Rey).

Despite the formal austerity, Buñuel’s touches remain, even though the material and setting make his sometimes-madcap manner more restrained than normal. In Tristana’s rigid society, her crush on Franco Nero, a young artist, could spell her downfall. However, according to Buñuel, it’s preferable to have crossed the line and savored the experience than to have never crossed it at all.

The Week of Wonders with Valerie (1970)
Unparalleled among sexual horror films, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders has an odd start and gets progressively more bizarre as the plot unfolds. Stepping into the gloomiest corners of surrealism nightmares, replete with a terrifying villain in black who pursues Valerie, a 13-year-old girl played by Jaroslava Schallerová.

In this picture, which emerged from Czechoslovakia during the 1960s as part of the Czech New Wave, we see the teenage girls’ inner lives unraveled, from fears of men’s sexual advances and semi-incestuous impulses to questions about faith and coming of age. Be warned that you will not be provided with any answers regarding the film’s overall meaning or summary. Nothing is black and white in Jires’s dreamscape, which is reminiscent of a gloomy fable.

In 1970, Wanda

The picture Wanda, which was directed and starred in by Barbara Loden but was mostly forgotten until its impassioned restoration and subsequent programming brought it back into the spotlight a decade or so ago. Tragically, Loden passed away at the age of 48, leaving Wanda as a tribute to her extraordinary talent as a filmmaker and her sole feature picture. As the protagonist, a housewife whose existential angst and misery pull her into a robbery plot, she finds that the excitement of the crime is overshadowed by her feelings of isolation and hopelessness. As if she were completely numb to the reality that she couldn’t possibly manage her life, Wanda just lets things happen to her.

Wanda conjures vivid images of the 1970s with its gritty aesthetic and second-wave feminist urges; the story is captivating and depicts tired womanhood in all its glory. Additionally, the research on the consequences of male aggression and female isolation is quite relevant to the present.