New Hollywood and the director as author

The 1970s are the decade when the American studio system briefly handed creative control to filmmakers who had grown up on European cinema, and the result was a run of films that are still the reference point for what a serious mainstream picture can be. Our single entry from the decade is the most consequential of them.

The Godfather is a family story wearing a crime story's clothes, and its influence has been so thorough that it is easy to forget how strange its structure is: nearly thirty minutes of exposition delivered as a wedding, and a three-hour arc that turns on one man's decision to stop being the person he said he was. It is the decade's definitive statement about inheritance and the cost of American success, and it remains the film every subsequent gangster picture is measured against.