When the swarm of literally tens of thousands of films nesting inside a dedicated movie buff’s head reaches critical mass and the buzz becomes too busy to ignore, there’s but one thing to do – compile a top 100 list.

This ‘hive’ will be organised according to time period – nominating ten loved films from each of the decades from the 1940’s through to the 2010’s. That will total eighty films. Twenty selections will be included each for the 1970’s and 80’s – ‘my‘ decades – rounding out the list to 100 titles.

In the 21st century, historians have increasingly portrayed the 1970s as a “pivot of change” in world history. Novelist Tom Wolfe (1930 -2018) coined the term the ‘The Me Decade” referring to the 1970’s. The term describes a societal attitude towards individualism and away from the communitarianism that characterized the previous decade.

The 70’s were noted for both the oil crisis (1973) and the energy crisis (1979). Politically, Idi Amin led a political coup in Uganda in 1971 and Britain elected it’s first ever female Prime Minister – Margaret Thatcher – in 1979. Greenland was granted self government from Denmark, a fifteen year Lebanese civil war commenced in 1975 and Angola and Mozambique gained independence from Portugal the same year.

Technology-wise the 1970’s witnessed an explosion in the understanding of solid-state physics, driven by the development of the integrated circuit and the lazer. This was also the decade Stephen Hawking developed his theories about black holes.

Academy Award winners for Best Picture during this decade were –

And here are my twenty favorite films from this period –

There were regrets for the movies that didn’t make the cut but would have if the list had been a little longer – APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) – THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) – ONE FLEW OVER THE CUKOO’S NEST (1975) – THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975) and THE GOODBYE GIRL (1977).