The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025
51. 1975 - Jaws
Honourable Mentions: Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1975 was a landmark year for cinema, an attribute you could lay squarely at the feet of Jaws. Directed by a young Steven Spielberg, who to that point had directed two formidable feature films in Duel and The Sugarland Express (plus, not forgetting, an all-timer instalment of Columbo), Jaws tore up the box office rulebook and ushered in the age of the summer blockbuster - of gigantic, tentpole extravaganza that would make the movies more of an "event" than ever before.
Of course, Spielberg's adaptation of Peter Benchley's best-selling novel is a lot more than just an event picture. It's also a showcase for the filmmaker's resilience and deft touch for dynamic movement and innovation, not to mention his rhythmic approach to suspense and action. It's a film that's both of the seventies in its subtext and of another era in its premise and execution, at once a throwback and something uniquely ahead of its time.
The definitive blockbuster, yes, but also just a remarkable piece of cinema.