Why 1975 was the best year for cinema

Before the release of Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking “Jaws” in the summer of 1975, Universal devoted an unprecedented $700,000 of the film’s budget to television advertising. This allowed the film’s marketing team to air, in prime time, several 30-second “Jaws” trailers over the two nights leading up to its arrival. It was the first real marketing blitz in Hollywood history. Additionally, the original plan was to release “Jaws” in 900 theaters in the United States at the same time, which was unheard of at the time. Before that, most summer tentpoles stayed in U.S. theaters for months, opening in major cities before moving to smaller and smaller cities as the season wore on. Only small B films were widely released at the same time. The idea was that lower quality films wouldn’t survive a national tour, so they hit every market at once, hoping to make a quick buck before word got out that it was a stinker.

The 900-theater plan was ultimately scaled back, but “Jaws” is still playing on hundreds of screens. Widespread release, coupled with the marketing blitz, more or less formed the modern notion of the Hollywood blockbuster. It also helped that “Jaws” was a well-loved horror film that is still watched to this day. Spielberg has made a high-quality creature feature that, to use a cliché, has captured the public imagination.

Thanks to “Jaws,” the film industry has never been the same. When we think of an “event” film, even 50 years later, we still think of everything that “Jaws” set up and accomplished. And 1975 was actually a great year in the theater. Many films that would soon become classics were released that year, many of which are still being considered – and, in some cases, still screened with relative regularity in theaters – to this day.

“Jaws” is not the only improbable success of 1975. Jim Sharman’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, based on the musical by Richard O’Brien, was released to very little fanfare in eight American cities in September, sparking a great wave of indifference. The gloriously campy and unapologetically queer musical followed Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a flamboyant bisexual alien transvestite, as he set out to create a Frankensteinian male model for sexual purposes, starring Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick as an innocent human couple who witness his glorious depravity. Unfortunately, the film originally crashed and burned, only for Tim Deegan — an enterprising executive at 20th Century Fox — to suggest that theaters show the film at midnight, knowing that films like “El Topo,” “Pink Flamingos” and the re-releases of “Night of the Living Dead” and “Reefer Madness” did well in the wee hours.

The formula was a success, and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” became a phenomenon. Fans began watching it every week, keeping it in theaters in perpetuity. Soon after, people started wearing costumes to not only watch the movie, but also interact with it. Eventually, full shadowcasts would recreate the film live on stage in front of the screen it was projected on. Even today, some theaters show the film every year. It’s the crown jewel of cult films. And it’s so, so wonderfully weird. It’s a movie that’s safe for gay people to watch and allows perverts to let their queer flag fly in public. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is the foundation of one of the most important queer subcultures of all time.

1975 would have been pretty impressive with these classics. But damn, there were so many more.

Even the Academy knew what it was doing that year, as Miloš Forman’s big screen adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was highly praised on Oscar night. A penetrating look at the conceptual impasse of the rebellion (which ended in tragedy), the film won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress.

Indeed, 1975 saw the release of many impactful and meaningful dramas. For example, Sidney Lumet directed “Dog Day Afternoon,” a film in which a novice criminal (Al Pacino) attempts to rob a bank in order to obtain funds for his trans girlfriend (Chris Sarandon) to undergo gender-affirming surgery. Meanwhile, in Belgium, Chantal Akerman directed “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” a domestic drama about a middle-aged widow that Sight & Sound declared the best film of all time in 2022. Elsewhere, Robert Altman directed his sprawling musical ensemble film “Nashville,” Michelangelo Antonioni directed “The Passenger” and Stanley Kubrick unveiled his cynical historical epic “Barry.” Lyndon”, one of the most visually beautiful films of all time. On top of all that, Peter Weir released the eerie school drama “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, and Akira Kurosawa returned to the big screen with “Dersu Uzala”.

There were also plenty of fun comedies and genre films. “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” remains unassailable. “Return of the Pink Panther” is one of the funniest entries in the franchise. “A Boy and His Dog” is deliciously bitter. Dario Argento directed “Deep Red,” David Cronenberg directed “Shivers,” and Paul Bartel directed “Death Race 2000.” Then there was Toho’s “Terror of Mechagodzilla,” the D’Urville Martin and Rudy Ray Moore blaxploitation hit “Dolemite” and the chilling satire “The Stepford Wives.” And who could forget the Ken Russell/The Who “Tommy?”

Yeah. Great year.