The Academy Awards Year 1975 was held at Los Angeles, California, USA on 8 April 1975

BEST PICTURE 1975 WINNER

Save up to 60% on hit DVDs & Blu-rays

THE GODFATHER: PART II (1974)

Director : Francis Ford Coppola
Writer : Francis Ford Coppola (screenplay) & Mario Puzo (screenplay)
Genre : Crime, Drama, Thriller
Main Cast : Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, John Cazale

Plot : The sequel to THE GODFATHER tells the story of both a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), newly arrived in America, and his son Michael (Al Pacino) 40 years later, running the family empire. On the streets of Hell’s Kitchen in 1917 New York City, Vito is initiated into the ways of the local Cosa Nostra by his friend Clemenza (Bruno Kirby). After killing the local mafioso in a towel-wrapped gun, Vito becomes the new man to be respected and feared. Meanwhile, a dour Michael Corleone negotiates with business partner Hyman Roth (legendary Method-acting teacher Lee Strasberg in his first film role) in Cuba and testifies in front of a Washington Senate committee. Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen), Diane Keaton (Kay Corleone), Talia Shire (Connie Corleone), and John Cazale (Fredo Corleone), reprising their roles from THE GODFATHER, are outstanding as the people forced to watch the new godfather’s moral destruction. De Niro, speaking in Italian, captures the mannerisms of Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone from the first film brilliantly. THE GODFATHER PART II is one of the only major sequels ever made that might just surpass the original.

 

 

 

OTHER NOMINEES

CHINATOWN (1974)

Director : Roman Polanski
Writer : Robert Towne (written by)
Genre : Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Main Cast : Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman

Plot : JJ ‘Jake’ Gittes is a private detective who seems to specialize in matrimonial cases. He is hired by Evelyn Mulwray when she suspects her husband Hollis, builder of the city’s water supply system, of having an affair. Gittes does what he does best and photographs him with a young girl but in the ensuing scandal, it seems he was hired by an impersonator and not the real Mrs. Mulwray. When Mr. Mulwray is found dead, Jake is plunged into a complex web of deceit involving murder, incest and municipal corruption all related to the city’s water supply.

 

 

LENNY (1974)

Director : Bob Fosse
Writer : Julian Barry (play) & (screenplay)
Genre : Biography, Drama
Main Cast : Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner, Stanley Beck, Frankie Man

Plot : Director Bob Fosse (CABARET) brings his characteristically scathing commentary on the entertainment biz to this biopic about the controversial comedian Lenny Bruce. Bruce’s career was brought to a dramatic halt just years before this film was made, when he was found dead of a drug overdose on the bathroom floor of his home. He was 40 years old. Lenny’s sexual and narcotic misdemeanors are graphically portrayed. The film is shot in black-and-white, and the story of Bruce’s life is told in flashback interviews with prominent figures from his life. Valerie Perrine’s performance as the stripper Bruce married garnered her an Academy Award nomination (in addition to five others for the film in 1975). Dustin Hoffman transformed himself into an erratic anti-hero to play Bruce, giving a multi-faceted, riveting performance that truly depicts the demise of a legend. LENNY was Fosse’s first and only non-musical film, and its innovation rivals the best of those works.-ROTTENTOMATOES

 

 

THE CONVERSATION (1974)

Director : Francis Ford Coppola
Writer : Francis Ford Coppola (written by)
Genre : Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Main Cast : Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams

Plot : In The Conversation Henry Caul, played by Gene Hackman is a surveillance expert who has been hired by an unseen Director to follow the director’s wife, Ann, played by Cindy Williams and record her conversations. As Henry does so, he hears her having a conversation with her lover Mark, played by Frederic Forrest. The conversation he hears makes him fear for their lives if he turns over his findings to the Director. Henry becomes more and more paranoid as he tries to protect the tapes and thus Ann and Mark’s lives. When the tapes are stolen, Henry goes to the hotel Ann and Mark talked about and finds a bloody hand print in their hotel room. He immediately fears the worst, only to learn that Ann and Mark are fine – but the papers are reporting that the Director has been killed in a car accident. Ann and Mark were the perpetrators rather than the victims. And now they are watching Henry.

 

 

TOWERING INFERNO (1974)

Director : John Guillermin, Irwin Allen
Writer : Richard Martin Stern (novel), Thomas N. Scortia (novel)
Genre : Action, Thriller, Drama
Main Cast : Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire

Plot : “The Towering Inferno,” one in a string of disaster movies of the 1970s, was promoted as a tribute to firefighters and their heroic work. It was also among the highest-grossing box office draws of the mid-1970s. The finishing touches have just been made to the Glass Tower, a 138-story skyscraper in the heart of San Francisco. A huge celebratory gala, complete with VIP guests, has been planned to celebrate the dedication of what has been promoted as the world’s tallest building. But the building’s architect, Doug Roberts, suspects all is not right with the building. The contractors have used shoddy wiring, not the heavy-duty wiring he had specified. The overworked wiring develops short circuits, coincidentally enough during the height of the celebratory extravaganza; it isn’t long before the Glass Tower becomes a huge towering inferno. The nearly 300 guests become trapped on the building’s 135th floor, where the party takes place. Fire Chief Michael O’Hallorhan immediately devises a daring plan to rescue the trapped guests, but his efforts quickly become a battle against time and the panicked guests.

 

 

 

 

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM WINNER

AMARCORD (1973)

Also Known As : I Remember
Country : Italy | France
Director : Federico Fellini
Writer : Federico Fellini (writer), Tonino Guerra (screenplay)
Genre : Comedy | Drama
Main Cast : Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Magali Noël, Ciccio Ingrassia, Nando Orfei

Plot : A year in the life of a small Italian coastal town in the nineteen-thirties, as is recalled by a director with a superstar’s access to the resources of the Italian film industry and a piper’s command over our imaginations. Federico Fellini’s film combines the free form and make-believe splendor with the comic, bittersweet feeling for character and narrative we remember from some of his best films of the 1950s. The town in the film is based on Rimini, where Mr. Fellini grew up. Yet there is now something magical, larger-than-life about the town, its citizens and many of the things that happen to them.

 

 

OTHER NOMINEES

LA TREGUA (1974)

Also Known As : The Truce
Country : Argentina
Director : Sergio Renán
Writer : Mario Benedetti (novel), Aída Bortnik (writer)
Genre : Drama | Romance
Main Cast : Héctor Alterio, Luis Brandoni, Ana María Picchio, Marilina Ross, Aldo Barbero

Plot : Life has lost its savor for the middle-aged widower in this drama. He keeps on at his job, but his grown children are a puzzle to him. One of his sons treats him with surly indifference when he sees him, which isn’t often. The other son, it is increasingly clear, is a homosexual. However, when he begins an affair with a new employee in his office, a girl young enough to be his daughter, he experiences a brief sunny interlude.

 

 

LACOMBE LUCIEN (1974)

Also Known As : Lacombe Lucien
Country : France | West Germany | Italy
Director : Louis Malle
Writer : Louis Malle (writer), Patrick Modiano (writer)
Genre : Drama
Main Cast : Pierre Blaise, Aurore Clément, Holger Löwenadler, Therese Giehse, Stéphane Bouy

Plot : With a superb music score by Django Reinhardt, this is a Louis Malle film about the German occupation of France. Based on his own experiences in France during the occupation, Malle’s film does not paint a pretty picture of the French Resistance and eventually he emigrated to America because of the critical reaction to this film. Essentially the tale of a young boy who wants to join the Resistance but is shunned by them because of his youth, he joins the Gestapo. Unfortunately, he then falls in love with a young Jewish girl. Push comes to shove and he suddenly has the unsympathetic Resistance and the Gestapo hot on his trail. Not a pretty picture of either side.

 

 

MACSKAJÁTÉK (1973)

Also Known As : Cat’s Play
Country : Hungary
Director : Károly Makk
Writer : Károly Makk (writer), János Tóth (writer)
Genre : Drama | Music
Main Cast : Margit Dajka, Ildikó Piros, Elma Bulla, Éva Dombrádi, Mari Töröcsik

Plot : Love and heartbreak are not just for the young, as this Hungarian film shows. Nominated for the 1974 Academy Award for “Best Foreign Film,” it tells the story of two sixtyish sisters. The younger sister, a singing teacher, has remained in Hungary, and the older one lives in West Germany. Despite many requests from her older sister, the teacher remains in Hungary at least partly due to her love for a retired opera singer. As letters pass between the two sisters, many flashbacks tell the story of their childhood. When the younger sister discovers that the opera singer has a new girlfriend, she takes drastic action to deal with her rejection.

 

 

POTOP (1974)

Also Known As : The Deluge
Country : Poland | Soviet Union
Director : Jerzy Hoffman
Writer : Jerzy Hoffman (writer), Adam Kersten (writer)
Genre : Adventure | War
Main Cast : Daniel Olbrychski, Malgorzata Braunek, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Kazimierz Wichniarz, Wladyslaw Hancza

Plot : Nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1974, this follow-up to WITH FIRE AND SWORD is yet another romantic, action-packed drama woven around a stormy love affair set against the Polish-Swedish War in the 1600s. Based on the novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Jerzy Hoffman’s lavish production captures the melodrama inherent in such a sweeping, historical tale.