1975 was one of those years where cinema didn’t just show off—it reshaped the landscape. Spielberg invented the modern blockbuster with Jaws. Kubrick made aristocratic dystopia look gorgeous with Barry Lyndon. Altman wrangled chaos into brilliance with Nashville. And if you wanted something stranger, sleazier, or more politically charged, you had Pasolini, Herzog, and a wave of international filmmakers pushing boundaries that still feel shocking today. It was a year where Hollywood muscle met arthouse audacity, where pulp sat comfortably beside prestige, and where nearly every corner of film (from horror to melodrama to political documentary) delivered something unforgettable. So here it is: the best movies of 1975, a lineup that proves one year can hold multitudes, and that cinema in the mid-70s was firing on every cylinder imaginable.
These are the 50 Greatest Movies Turning 50 in 2025.
20. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is a movie people talk about more than they actually watch. And when they do watch it, many don’t finish. That reaction isn’t accidental; Pasolini designed it to be unendurable. Based on the Marquis de Sade’s infamous text and transplanted into the final days of Mussolini’s regime, Salò stages a world where power has stripped humanity from every interaction. Four fascist elites kidnap youths and subject them to a cycle of humiliation, degradation, and cruelty. That’s it. That’s the entire movie. It’s less a narrative than an experiment: how long can you look before turning away? Pasolini isn’t interested in titillation. The nudity and obscenity aren’t meant to arouse but to sicken.
What lingers is the coldness of the camera. The way suffering is presented clinically, without melodrama. It feels like a documentary of hell, and that’s the point. Pasolini wanted to show fascism not as speeches or banners but as the total commodification of flesh and spirit. This is what happens when the wrong people have all the power in the world. It isn’t a film to enjoy, and it isn’t one that most audiences will find bearable. But as a statement about the corruption of power, the obliteration of empathy, and the dangers of authoritarianism, it is undeniable. Pasolini paid for that statement with his life, he was murdered shortly after completing it. Salò remains one of the bleakest films ever made, and one of the hardest to forget.
19. The Stepford Wives
When you think of horror from the 1970s, titles like Alien, Halloween, Jaws, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Exorcist immediately come to mind. The average horror fan will rattle off about twenty or so titles before getting to The Stepford Wives. For some reason, it never quite reached the same heights as its contemporaries, despite everyone seemingly loving it. You can see its fingerprints in everything from Get Out to Don’t Worry Darling, and yet, its influence is still not enough to garner it any more popularity. It’s too well known to be considered a hidden gem and too beloved to be a cult classic. But it’s also not discussed enough to be an actual classic.
Criterion needs to add it to their collection in order for it to finally get the love it deserves. Bryan Forbes directs what looks like a glossy suburban drama, but the dread creeps in so slowly you don’t realize the trap until it’s snapped shut. Joanna (Katharine Ross) moves to Stepford with her family and notices something off: the women are too perfect, too domestic, too eager to please. The movie’s brilliance is how mundane the horror feels. There are no monsters in the closet, no masked killers in the dark—just men quietly replacing their wives with robotic doppelgängers.
That’s scarier than a ghost; it’s a blueprint for oppression disguised as “traditional values.” And while later versions turned the premise into camp or satire, the original plays it straight. That seriousness is what makes it sting. Every smile, every casserole, every submissive “Yes, dear” lands like a hammer blow. By the time the ending rolls around, it’s less a twist than a confirmation of the nightmare you’ve been dreading the whole time. It’s not loud, it’s not flashy, but The Stepford Wives is horror boiled down to its sharpest point: the terror of being erased, remade, and forced to fit a mold you never asked for.
18. Dersu Uzala
Akira Kurosawa’s late-career masterpiece tracks the evolving friendship between a Russian soldier and a Goldi trapper who repeatedly cross paths in the wilderness. Kurosawa quickly identifies the heart of what’s interesting about this story of exploration and survival – the relationship between these two men and the bond that’s formed despite differences of country, religion, and outlook on life. This is Kurosawa in a different mode than many of his classics, but a very effective one. Here, he works at a slower pace with more naturalistic performances and focuses on the natural beauty and muted colors of the locations.
–Bryan Loomis
17. Three Days of the Condor
Ask most people who hate their jobs if they feel as though it is killing them, whether mentally, physically, emotionally, or all three, and most would probably say yes. It’s a relatable feeling most have, but their jobs aren’t literally trying to kill them. Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor is one of the only people who could answer yes and actually mean it. In the film, he plays Turner, a low-level CIA analyst whose job is reading books for potential coded messages—a job so boring it could only exist in the ‘70s.
One coffee run later, everyone he works with is dead, and suddenly he’s hunted by the very agency that signed his paychecks. The conspiracy he finds himself in the middle of makes less sense the deeper he digs, but that’s part of the point. The film isn’t about airtight plotting; it’s about the post-Watergate mood: no one can be trusted, institutions are corrupt, and paranoia isn’t paranoia if they’re actually out to get you.
Faye Dunaway shows up as the reluctant hostage-turned-love interest, and while her arc is rushed to the point of absurdity, she adds a chilly elegance that fits the tone. While her performance is great, it’s a subplot that easily could’ve been removed. Max von Sydow, meanwhile, steals the show as a polite hitman who is as professional and methodical as he is creepily calm. It’s not the sharpest of the ‘70s paranoia thrillers, but it’s one of the most iconic. Redford running around in that turtleneck, Von Sydow’s ice-cold efficiency, and that gut-punch ending where trust in the system is revealed to be the dumbest bet of all—that’s why this one stuck around. RIP Redford, your movie star swagger will be missed.
16. The Story of Adèle H.
The Story of Adèle H. is François Truffaut proving that obsession isn’t romantic. It’s pathetic, exhausting, and eventually tragic. Based on the real diaries of Victor Hugo’s daughter, the film follows Adèle (Isabelle Adjani, in a performance so good, it should’ve made her a star) as she chases after a man who doesn’t love her. And that’s the whole movie: she follows him, she begs him, she humiliates herself, and she can’t stop. Truffaut isn’t building toward a happy ending because there isn’t one. The spiral is the point.
If the movie were about a man this singularly obsessed with the woman of his affections, it would 100% be a horror film. But the fact that it’s a woman makes it that much more interesting. Adjani is the reason this works. She doesn’t play Adèle as a simple lovesick girl. She plays her as a woman who can’t let go, even when reality keeps smacking her in the face. She’s magnetic, heartbreaking, and more terrifying than most horror villains because we know people like her exist. Truffaut takes what could’ve been a melodrama and makes it into a study of delusion so precise it feels like surgery. The Story of Adèle H. is not a date movie. It’s not even really a romance. It’s a warning: love can curdle into madness, and madness can and will destroy you if you let it.
15. The Passenger
The Passenger is a thriller drained of every ounce of thrill until all that’s left is pure existential drift. Jack Nicholson plays a journalist who decides he’s had enough of his own life, so when a man conveniently dies in the room next to him, he just…borrows it. New passport, new identity, new purpose. Or at least that’s the plan. In Antonioni’s hands, it’s less a spy story and more a study of how running away doesn’t actually get you anywhere. The Passenger is an odd duck of a film that will leave most frustrated. The plot is a suggestion, not a priority. It’s a thriller that immediately loses interest in thrills. Nicholson’s character finds himself inheriting a mess he doesn’t understand. Guns, spies, danger—all these things suggest a more action-packed or suspenseful film, but Antonioni barely acknowledges them.
And he isn’t the only one not interested in giving you what you want. Nicholson, usually the loudest guy in the room, is stripped of his tricks. No grin, no mania, just a man drowning in ennui. He has one goal: escape, but escape to where? The film never answers, and Antonioni doesn’t care. He keeps the camera at a distance, observing without judgment, until it lands on that legendary seven-minute tracking shot through a barred window. The scene is hypnotic, a flex of pure filmmaking muscle that turns a hotel courtyard into a grave. Nicholson fades into the background, literally and metaphorically, as if the movie itself has lost interest in him. The Passenger isn’t about crime, or adventure, or even Nicholson’s midlife crisis. It’s about the futility of trying to outrun yourself. The borders may change, the names may shift, but you’re still the same passenger, staring out the window, waiting for the next stop that never comes.
14. The Man Who Would Be King
John Huston spent decades trying to get The Man Who Would Be King made. At various points, it was going to star Bogart and Gable, then Lancaster and Douglas, then Burton and O’Toole. What we ended up with was Sean Connery and Michael Caine, two swaggering bastards who strut through the movie like they own the joint—which is fitting, since that’s literally the plot. The story’s simple but mythic: two British ex-soldiers decide to head off to a remote corner of Afghanistan, con the locals, and crown themselves kings. If that sounds familiar, you’ve most likely seen the remake without even realizing it: The Road to El Dorado. It’s a damn fun movie, but it pales in comparison to the OG. The main reason is simply that the movie doesn’t have Connery and Caine bouncing off one another.
Connery gives one of his best performances, balancing the charisma of a natural leader with the hubris of a man convinced he’s untouchable. Caine is his perfect foil: smarter, more cautious, but no less complicit. Together, they’re so likable you almost forget they’re colonizing con artists. Huston, old and grizzled himself, shoots the film like a dying breed’s last hurrah. A big, sweeping adventure that doubles as a cautionary tale about the price of ambition. He treats the whole thing like an adventure yarn from another century (because it is), but the further the duo gets from civilization, the clearer it becomes they’re way out of their depth. Greed, arrogance, and god complexes don’t mix well with ancient traditions and a suspicious populace. It’s grand, it’s tragic, and it’s got the kind of ending that sticks with you long after the credits roll.
13. Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens is what happens when the American Dream rots from the inside out. The Maysles brothers point their cameras at Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale and her daughter “Little Edie,” once high-society relatives of Jackie Kennedy, now living in a decaying mansion overrun with cats, raccoons, and nostalgia. What you get isn’t just a documentary—it’s a front-row seat to the slow-motion collapse of privilege and sanity.
If you’ve seen the comedy Documentary Now!, you’re familiar with how insane this story is already, but it’s even wilder than how they play it. Big Edie sings old songs like she’s still the belle of the ball, while Little Edie performs monologues about her wasted potential and failed romances, dressed in bizarre, makeshift costumes that are half-fashion statement, half-practical solution to raccoon infestations.
They bicker, they reminisce, they dance around piles of trash, and they do it all with a strange, undeniable charm. The film doesn’t mock them, but it doesn’t save them either. It just lets the dysfunction play out, unedited and unvarnished. It’s tragic, it’s funny, it’s uncomfortable. At times it feels like voyeurism, at others like theater, and at its best moments like a raw confession about aging, regret, and the stubborn refusal to let go of old illusions. By the end, you’re not sure if you should feel pity, admiration, or just relief that you can walk away from Grey Gardens when they can’t.
12. Deep Red
Perhaps the greatest giallo ever made, and a strong contender for the greatest Dario Argento film as well, Deep Red sits between the more straightforward (hah!) murder plots of his earlier movies and the more supernatural-themed projects that were to follow. A musician, Marcus (David Hemmings), witnesses the brutal murder of a psychic. A local reporter (played by Argento’s partner/collaborator Daria Nicolodi) publishes a photo of him in the paper, naming him as a witness. This draws the attention of the murderer, leaving Marcus and the reporter racing to discover the killer’s identity before they’re murdered as well. Argento’s first film made the giallo a phenomenon, and this, his last classic giallo, set the bar so high that it’s arguably never been equaled.
—Bob Cram
11. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Now perhaps best known for topping the 2022 Sight and Sound critics’ poll of the greatest films of all time, Jeanne Dielman follows a housewife over the course of three days as she goes about her regular activities. Chantal Akerman knows that we make movies about things we think are important, and wants us to consider that the unappreciated women who cook, clean, and sacrifice daily for their families are just as worthy of our attention as whatever spectacle is playing the next theater over. Watching Jeanne go through her daily activities at length turns into a meditative experience, and allows us to notice details that change on the second and third days as Jeanne undergoes a transformation.
–Bryan Loomis
30-21 | 10-1
What are some of your favorite movies from 1975? Do you think they’ll show up on this list?
