The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

Honourable Mentions: Cabaret, Deliverance, Pink Flamingos

Often cited alongside Citizen Kane as the greatest movie ever made, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather redefined the mob genre with a sweeping, sprawling narrative that mirrored America's own loss of innocence. The tragedy of Michael Corleone - a role which catapulted Al Pacino to stardom - was achingly drawn and a key moment in the development of the New Hollywood era, cementing the seventies as a decade of filmmaking freedom and gritty introspection.

Coppola would come to epitomise both the filmmaking highs and anxieties of the movement, following The Godfather with a sequel, The Godfather Part II; the Gene Hackman-starring surveillance thriller The Conversation that same year; and 1979's Apocalypse Now, whose painstaking and chaotic production became the stuff of Hollywood legend.