1973

The Best Picture winner The Sting had a number of notable aspects:  it was the first Universal Studios film to win the Best Picture Oscar since All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); Edith Head won her 8th and final Best Costume Design Academy Award;  Julia Phillips, one of the film’s producers, became the first woman to be nominated for and to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Groucho Marx received an Honorary Oscar “in recognition of his brilliant creativity and for the unequaled achievements of the Marx Brothers in the art of motion picture comedy”.  Henri Langlois received one “for his devotion to the art of film, his massive contributions in preserving its past and his unswerving faith in its future”.

The science-fiction classic thriller Westworld was the first feature-length movie to make significant use of “digitized image processing,” a primitive term for what has evolved into CGI (computer-generated imagery) in the present day. It marked the first use of 2D computer animation (CGI) in a significant entertainment feature film in a “computer vision” sequence – the ‘android POV’ (infra-red) of Westworld’s malfunctioning robotic-android Gunslinger (portrayed by Yul Brynner) on a killing spree.

“I prefer the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.” — Orson Welles

In negotiations with Fox, George Lucas wisely cut his directing fee for Star Wars (1977) by $500,000 in order to gain ownership of merchandising and sequel rights. In a revolutionary approach to Hollywood film-making and merchandising, Lucas accepted $175,000 in return for a much more lucrative forty percent of merchandising rights. Merchandising of movie paraphernalia associated with the film encouraged an entire marketing industry of Star Wars-related items (i.e., toys, video games, novelty items at fast food restaurants, etc.).

We lost John Ford, Bruce Lee, Edward G. Robinson, Betty Grable, Cecil Kellaway, Robert Siodmak, Noel Coward, Merian C. Cooper, Veronica Lake, Robert Ryan, Jean-Pierre Melville, Anna Magnani, and Laurence Harvey.  John Candy, Laura Dern, Rutger Hauer, Bernadette Peters, and Skellan Skarsgard made their film debuts.  Doesn’t seem like a fair trade somehow.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade ruled states could not outlaw abortion.  Oglala Lakota Native Americans and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) began their occupation of the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota during February.  The group surrendered in May.

The U.S. withdrew its troops from Vietnam.  The five “dirty tricksters” that burglarized Democratic Party headquarters in January 1972 were convicted and sentenced to prison in January.  A Senate Select Committee began investigating the White House connection to the scandal and cover-up attempts in March, with gavel-to-gavel TV coverage.  General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup in Chile.

The Arab-Israel Yom Kippur War was fought in October.  In the same month, the OPEC oil cartel restricted sales to countries that had supported Israel in the war causing gasoline prices to skyrocket and stagflation to roil economies.

“Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn spent four weeks on top of the Billboard charts, making it the number one single of the year in the US.  The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and That Championship Season by Jason Miller won for Drama.  The Washington Post won the Public Service in Journalism Pulitzer for its investigation of the Watergate scandal.  Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” was Judge John Sirica.  In 1973, as Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Sirica ordered President Nixon to turn over Watergate-related recordings of White House conversations.

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Here is the short list I will pick from for the year.

Special Request:  I am inclined to skip a couple of films from the 1001 movie list that I have not seen – Turkish Delight and La maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore).  Anybody, are these worth seeing?  Also I am curious but hesitant about La grande bouffe.  Finally, there are a bunch of “They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?” horror films at the bottom of my list.  Any dogs or gore fests among them?  Suggestions also welcome.