The 70's followed by the 40's.

The 80's are hands down my least favorite, what a crappy decade for intelligent, adult film.

my favorite decade is the current one so i didn't vote. i'm always more interested in what today's international collective of filmmakers have to offer than those of decades past. if I had to choose, it would late 50's - early 60's.

80's, I think of teen movies.

70's

Coppola: The Godfather films, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now
Spielberg: Jaws, Close Encouters
Depalma: Sisters, Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill
Bogdanovich: The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What's Up, Doc?
Kubrick: A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon
Penn: Alice's Restaurant, Little Big Man, Night Moves
Altman: M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, California Split, The Long Goodbye, Nashville
Forman: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair
Lucas: American Graffiti, Star Wars
Scorsese: Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live.., Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz
Friedkin: Boys in the Band, French Connection, The Exorcist
Lumet: Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network
Pakula: Klute, All the President's Men
Malick: Badlands, Days of Heaven
Polanski: Chinatown, Tess
Fosse: Cabaret, Lenny, All That Jazz
Cassavetes: Husbands, Woman Under the Influence
Allen: Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan
Ashby: Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory,
Coming Home, Being There
Brooks: Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles

Others: Carnal Knowledge, Woodstock, Five Easy Pieces, The Sting, Fat City, Across 110th Street, Marathon Man, An Unmarried Woman, Two Lane Blacktop, ...And Justice For All

More: The Deer Hunter, Midnight Express, Panic in Needle Park, Who'll Stop the Rain, Dirty Harry, Animal House, Patton

Oh yeah, and: Three Days of the Condor, Deliverance, Saturday Night Fever, The Rose, Rollerball, The Longest Yard, Breaking Away, Straight Time, Alien

..and that's just American films. Fellini, Bergman, Truffaut, Antonioni, Malle, Kurosawa, Chabrol, Rohmer were all going strong during this decade as well.

Another 70's vote, here.

-JP

...1930s and 1940s - because people smoked (e.g. just about every 'film noir' movie I've ever seen,
The Snake Pit, Wing And A Prayer and other WW2 movies, etc....

. . . . . .

might it be that in the 70s, the 'balls-y' films stood out like a sore thumb? but today they're a dime a dozen?

i don't mean to say the 70s wasn't a good decade, but i certainly think we're becoming only more desensitized to things like violence and sex.

80's because it was the period of the big bad action movie

Had to pick, each decade had it's own flavor. The 90's brought us great SciFi, 80's adventure, 70's sowed the seeds for all the great movies in the 80s & 90s.

I picked the 50's, but it's pretty close for me between the 50's, 40's and 70's.

The '50's

Vertigo
Rear Window
Strangers on a Train
North by Northwest
Singin' in the Rain
East of Eden
Rebel without a Cause
All About Eve
Sunset Boulevard
Some Like It Hot
From Here to Eternity
Ben-Hur
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Paths of Glory
The Killing

So on and so forth.

Just so many highly entertaining, classy movies. Of course I think every decade so far has offered many fantastic films.

right on me12321! Folks like Hitchcock and Kurosawa were in their prime! Not to mention the prime of classic scifi, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc. Russo-Finnish fantasy films, i could go on.

The '80s are the clear winner for me, for pure entertainment as opposed to high art.

You were just missing a "/" fixed below.

Thanks. What a rookie mistake.

I've since picked up the 60's book



example of the inside look:





and was going to grab the 80's book at a Borders but I didn't have my 25 percent off coupon with me.





A book of the 50's movies will be out in April.

So the post-cultural revolution movies have an unbelievable 74%? Can't believe this people... i personally can start watching any movie pre-70s and like it no matter how bad, heck i love watching old swords n sandals, fantasy movies, my favorite forever.. 50s! with 60s very closely behind. 40s coming in close 3rd.

I'm takin' the '90s. Because that decade of movies I can watch over and over again. The classic decades are great, but I enjoyed the '90s more.

Silence of the Lambs
A Few Good Men
Unforgiven
Jurassic Park
Schindler's List
Forrest Gump
Pulp Fiction
Braveheart
Mission: Impossible
Fargo
Titanic
Saving Private Ryan
Being John Malkovich
The Insider
The Matrix
Austin Powers
Election
Magnolia

etc.

Probably the '70s.

70's is a clear standout for me.

alright, who voted for 1900??????

Those pretty much make up my DVD collection as do the '70s exploitation era of films.

Runner-up deacade of interest: 1930s. Classic era of horror, Universal of some good poverty row films like White Zombie.

Aslo, I was born in 1981, so its not like those films are nostagic for me.

I like the 90's the best but 70's was the best overall when it come's to director's.

I've got to vote for the 1970s.....
It was a special decade for films as the films that were more bold and daring were also the films that did well at the box office. I suppose this says more about it being the best decade of movie-goers than the best decade of films (anything even hinting of daring and originality these days tanks at the box office), but all the same, I gota vote for the 1970s.

You're exactly right! Young people back in the late 60's & early 70's actively sought out films that were daring, original & controversial. Can you even think of films such as 2001:A Space Odyssey, Last Tango in Paris, BlowUp or Easy Rider becoming hits let alone getting made today?

The 1970's for all the incredible directors it gave us who were to influence filmaking throughout the 80's, 90's, to today. At the time though, most people were not aware of these films and the impact they would eventually have.
It wasn't until the 90's that more independent (and foreign films) became a real force in popular culture and why we revere the great directors of the 70's with such awe.


So in the end I have to give it up to the 70's directors who dared when they had little to no mainstream support.