The Best Films of 1971

After leaving prison, master thief Corey crosses paths with a notorious escapee and an alcoholic former policeman. The trio proceed to plot an elaborate heist.

In a French forest in 1798, a child is found who cannot walk, speak, read or write. A doctor becomes interested in the child and patiently attempts to civilize him.

Young, rich, and obsessed with death, Harold finds himself changed forever when he meets lively septuagenarian Maude at a funeral.

A business commuter is pursued and terrorized by the malevolent driver of a massive tractor-trailer.

A dropout from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest.

While recovering in Venice, sickly composer Gustav von Aschenbach becomes dangerously fixated with teenager Tadzio.

"Punishment Park" is a pseudo-documentary purporting to be a film crews's news coverage of the team of soldiers escorting a group of hippies, draft dodgers, and anti-establishment types across the desert in a type of capture the flag game. The soldiers vow not to interfere with the rebels' progress and merely shepherd them along to their destination. At that point, having obtained their goal, they will be released. The film crew's coverage is meant to insure that the military's intentions are honorable. As the representatives of the 60's counter-culture get nearer to passing this arbitrary test, the soldiers become increasingly hostile, attempting to force the hippies out of their pacifist behavior. A lot of this film appears improvised and in several scenes real tempers seem to flare as some of the "acting" got overaggressive. This is a interesting exercise in situational ethics. The cinéma vérité style, hand-held camera, and ambiguous demands of the director - would the actors be able to maintain their roles given the hazing they were taking - pushed some to the brink. The cast's emotions are clearly on the surface. Unfortunately this film has gone completely underground and is next to impossible to find. It would offer a captivating document of the distrust that existed between soldiers willfully serving in the military and those persons who opposed the war peacefully.

An adaptation of nine stories from Boccaccio's "Decameron".

When three hundred thousand members of the Love Generation collided with a few dozen Hells Angels at San Francisco's Altamont Speedway, the bloody slash that transformed a decade's dreams into disillusionment was immortalized on this film.

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

On a film set there are two things missing, the film material and the director. So the actors and actresses as well as the crew try to make the best out of the situation. When the director arrives the material is still missing and so they still wait and try to make the best out of the situation. When the material finally arrives all folks involved into the film find themselves in a weird situation. Jealousy, competition and despair are ruling. Nobody seems to be able to break through this atmosphere, so they all still try to make the best out of the situation, but this is probably not the way to finish the film.

Charles Masson, an advertising executive, is having an affair with Laura, the wife of his best friend, the architect François Tellier. Charles strangles Laura when one of their S&M games goes too far. Dazed, Charles walks out of the borrowed apartment in Paris and soon bumps into François in a nearby bistro. They drive back together to Versailles, where they have beautiful neighboring houses designed by François. The owner of the apartment had seen Laura and Charles together two months earlier, but she does not tell the police on the advice of François. Even though the police do not seem to have any clues to the crime, Charles has a difficult time coping with the situation, and trying to live a normal life with his two children and loving wife Hélène.

Mr. Hulot drives a recreational vehicle from Paris to Amsterdam in his usual comical, disastrous style.

An architect jailed for a traffic violation discovers the grim reality of life behind bars, including corrupt staff and inmates, an inhuman judicial system, and the power of the Mafia.

When a bumbling New Yorker is dumped by his activist girlfriend, he travels to a tiny Latin American nation and becomes involved in its latest rebellion.

In 1970s Athens a group of professional burglars plans an emerald heist from the home of a gem collector, but corrupt Greek police inspector Abel Zacharia is on their trail.

After a film production wraps in Peru, an American wrangler decides to stay behind to witness the ways that filmmaking affects the locals.

A reporter and a blind puzzle writer investigate a series of murders connected to a pharmaceutical company conducting secret genetic experiments, finding themselves targeted by the killer.

A crime lord hires black private eye, John Shaft, to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.

With the help of a smooth talking tomcat, a family of Parisian felines set to inherit a fortune from their owner try to make it back home after a jealous butler kidnaps them and leaves them in the country.

Blanche is the young, pure, beautiful wife of the Master of the castle, in a secluded land. Every man is in love with her, including the King and his servant Bartolomeo, visiting the Master.