When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1973, it gave its Best Picture award to a comedy called The Sting. That one made it into my list of honorable mentions, but it didn't crack the top 10:
1. F for Fake
Directed by Orson Welles
Written by Welles and Oja Kodar
A deliberately deceitful documentary, bordering on a mockumentary, about storytelling, filmmaking, forgery, and other forms of fakery.
2. The Long Goodbye
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Leigh Brackett, from a novel by Raymond Chandler
I have heard this anti-noir condemned on the grounds that no one is less suited to play Philip Marlowe than Elliott Gould. I say that's part of the point.
3. Badlands
Written and directed by Terrence Malick
"Loooooove...love is strange."
4. The Last Detail
Directed by Hal Ashby
Written by Robert Towne, from a novel by Darryl Ponicsan
Part of that amazing streak Jack Nicholson had in the early to mid 1970s, when it must have seemed like he was incapable of starring in a bad movie.
5. Charley Varrick
Directed by Don Siegel
Written by Dean Riesner and Howard Rodman, from a novel by John Reese
An elegy for individualism, delivered by one of Hollywood's most individualistic directors.
6. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Directed by Peter Yates
Written by Paul Monash, from a novel by George V. Higgins
The book is great too, but it doesn't have Robert Mitchum.
7. Mean Streets
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin
An ur-movie whose influence echoes from The Bad Lieutenant to The Wire.
8. Paper Moon
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Written by Alvin Sargent, from a novel by Joe David Brown
"We just have to keep on veering, that's all."
9. Day for Night
Directed by François Truffaut
Written by Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, and Suzanne Schiffman
There's this whole genre of movies about making movies, from The Cameraman to 8 1/2 to Ed Wood to, um, Hardbodies 2, which isn't any good but it's the first specimen of the genre I ever saw, watching cable one night in my teens, so I'll mention it too. Anyway, this is one of the better ones.
10. Sleeper
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Marshall Brickman
They saved Hitler's nose.
Honorable mentions:
11. Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman)
12. Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
13. Wattstax (Mel Stuart)
14. Serpico (Sidney Lumet)
15. Juvenile Court (Frederick Wiseman)
16. Frank Film (Frank Mouris)
17. High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood)
18. The Sting (George Roy Hill)
19. My Name is Nobody (Tonino Valerii, Sergio Leone)
20. Hell Up in Harlem (Larry Cohen)
Best montage: It's about an hour into John Milius' Dillinger. You'll know it when you see it.
Of the films of 1973 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in The Mother and the Whore.
