When he returned to Hong Kong, Lee starred in three films that shot him to stardom all over Asia, The Big Boss (1971), Fist of Fury (1972) and Way of the Dragon (1972).
[1] The latter trend eventually ended in 1978 when Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung popularized the kung fu comedy subgenre with Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Enter the Fat Dragon, and Drunken Master; finally allowing the industry to move on and evolve again.
[4] The women on the other hand were shown as ones who have adopted western values and outfits especially by heroines like Parveen Babi (who was featured on the cover of Time magazine for a story on Bollywood's success) and Zeenat Aman.
The Hungarian director István Szabó made the motion picture Szerelmesfilm (1970), which is a nostalgic portrayal and a premonition of the fading of the young 1970s ethos of change and a friendlier social structure.
With young filmmakers taking greater risks and restrictions regarding language and sexuality lifting, New Hollywood produced some of the most critically acclaimed and financially successful films since the "golden era" of classical American cinema.
Nostalgic fans bid on merchandise and collectibles ranging from Judy Garland's sparkling red shoes to MGM's own back lots.
One of the most insightful films of the decade[citation needed] came from the mind of a Hollywood outsider, Czechoslovakian director Miloš Forman, whose Taking Off became a bold reflection of life at the beginning of the 1970s.
The 1971 film satirized the American middle class, following a young girl who runs away from home, leaving her parents free to explore life for the first time in years.
[citation needed] Live and Let Die was followed by an adaptation of The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974, which at the time garnered the lowest box office taking of any Bond film before it.
The series picked up again in 1977 with The Spy Who Loved Me and ended the decade with Moonraker in 1979, which was the highest grossing Bond film (not adjusting for inflation) of all time until GoldenEye in 1995.
[citation needed] 1972 brought The Poseidon Adventure, which starred a young Gene Hackman leading an all-star cast to safety in a capsized luxury liner.
The film earned an Academy Award for visual effects (and Best Original Song for "The Morning After"), as well as numerous nominations, including one for its notable supporting star, Shelley Winters, but its sequel in 1979 was far less successful.
Its director Francis Ford Coppola was passed over in favor of Bob Fosse and his musical, Cabaret, which also earned an Oscar for its star, Liza Minnelli.
Inaugurated by the 1969 release of Andy Warhol's Blue Movie, the phenomenon of adult erotic films being publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope),[5] and taken seriously by critics (like Roger Ebert),[6][7] a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times, as "porno chic", and later known as the Golden Age of Porn, began, for the first time, in modern American culture.
[5][8][9] According to award-winning author Toni Bentley, Radley Metzger's 1976 film The Opening of Misty Beethoven, based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady), and due to attaining a mainstream level in storyline and sets,[10] is considered the "crown jewel" of this 'Golden Age'.
A deeply unsettling look at alienation and city life, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver earned international praise, first at the Cannes Film Festival and then at the Academy Awards, where it was nominated for Best Leading Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Score (Bernard Herrmann), and Best Picture.
All the President's Men dealt with the impeachment of Richard Nixon, while Lumet's Network portrayed greed and narcissism in both American society and television media.
Another film, Rocky, about a clubhouse boxer (played by Sylvester Stallone) who is granted a world championship title fight won the Best Picture Academy Award that year.
Released on June 20, the film about a series of horrific deaths related to a massive great white shark was director Steven Spielberg's first big-budget Hollywood production, coming in at $9 million in cost.
It was also nominated for Best Picture that year, though it lost to Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which also won acting awards for Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher).
Another success in visual effects came the same year as Star Wars, with Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, another blockbuster and alien contact set in the wilderness.
[citation needed] Annie Hall, a love story about a depressed comedian and a free-spirited woman, was followed with more sentimental films, including Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl, An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Clayburgh, the autobiographical Lillian Hellman story, Julia, starring Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, and 1978's Heaven Can Wait and International Velvet.
John Travolta became popular in the pop-culture landmark films, Saturday Night Fever, which introduced Disco to middle America, and Grease, which recalled the world of the 1950s.
The new television comedy program, "Saturday Night Live", launched the careers of several of its comedians, such as Chevy Chase, who co-starred in the 1978 hit Foul Play with Goldie Hawn.
The decade closed with two films chronicling the Vietnam War, Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.
In this decade there was also an emergence of B-movies featuring Vietnam veterans with an emphasis on action, violence, and revenge, which belong to the exploitation subgenre called "vetsploitation.
Alien scared summer film-going audiences of 1979 with its horrible monster from outer space, achieving similar success that Jaws had seen four years earlier.
The year ended with Hal Ashby's subtle black comedy Being There and The Muppet Movie, a family film based on the Jim Henson puppet characters.