20 Movies That Prove That The 1970s Was The Best Decade For Film

16. The Last Picture Show

'Anarene, Texas, 1951. Nothing much has changed...' Peter Bogdanovich's film is a very 1970s take on the coming-of-age story. It's about kids in a small Texas town who discover sex and other grown-up things and how they react to the pressure of these new experiences. Written down, it sounds like an American Pie film, but The Last Picture Show couldn't be further from it. It's a restrained, intimate look at small town life and relationships. Performances by Cybil Shepherd and Jeff Bridges are on-point, but Ben Johnson and Ellen Burstyn are even better. Johnson won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, despite his protestations that he would never make the film. Bogdanovich managed to persuade Johnson that he'd win the Oscar if he took the part and, true to his word, he did. The film received a host of other awards and nominations and is generally regarded as one of the best films of the 1970s. It is one of the rare films that have a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 47 reviews).