Please welcome back the one and only Doug Strassler, critic and movie buff. He’s here to take us through 1971 in the The Best Picture Expansion Project, where we imagine that the new Oscar rule of nominating ten films for Best Picture applied from 1943 to 2008.

Looking at this list, I realize that 1971 was a seriously fine vintage for American cinema, and I’m excited that I’ve actually seen a lot of these movies. That way, I can nod my head with geeky certainty when Doug makes a good point.

(To visit the rest of the Project, please go here.)

The Best Picture Expansion Project: 1971

Thank you, Mark, for giving me another chance to enter my mental DeLorean. For today’s Best Picture Expansion Project, I look back to 1971. This was the year that The French Connection sped its way to an Oscar sweep. Of all the films released in 1971, these are the five that made the short list:

Actual Best Picture Nominees

A Clockwork Orange

Fiddler on the Roof

The French Connection (winner)

The Last Picture Show

Nicholas and Alexandra

In Retrospect: I just love how eclectic this list is; I wish the Academy would recognize such a diverse array of genres and styles every year. Not only did the religious musical Fiddler score eight nominations, it was also the top-grossing film of the year. Meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick’s much darker Orange also cracked both the top 10 and the Oscar 5.

Nicholas, director Franklin J. Schaffner’s follow-up to his own Oscar-winning Patton, is now forgotten by all but the most ardent Oscar followers (that pretty much just means those of you reading this). The movie covers the lives of the Russian tsar and his wife. It’s standard period epic fare: overlong, ornate costumes and sets (both of which took home statuettes), and altogether bland. I watched it once and don’t have any specific fond memories of it.

You’ll get no argument from me about Connection. Gene Hackman (who won Best Actor) and Roy Scheider are both terrific as renegade cops, director William Friedkin creates a perfect glimpse into the moral decay that was the 1960s, and the uber-famous elevated train-car chase scene is every bit as good you’ve no doubt heard it is. (I saw this movie at a special screening in a theater recently, and that chase scene really holds up — Mark)

But I have a special place in my heart for Picture Show, a movie that’s much quieter but no less dynamic. Peter Bogdonavich’s sentimental tale of life in a small Western town will break your heart with its piercing look at relationships fraying and forming. It turned Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges into overnight sensations, and earned Bridges his first Oscar nomination (I still say it’s criminal he’s never won). Ellen Burstyn also received the first of her six nominations, and supporting actors Ben Johnson and a pre-Dancing Cloris Leachman both won for their work. (Leachman was an upset victor over Carnal Knowledge sex kitten Ann-Margret).

All in all, quite a good group. But imagine if the Academy had also made room for these:

The Expansion Pack

6. McCabe & Mrs. Miller

I’m a lifelong Robert Altman fan, but even I admit his films are hit-or-miss. For every Nashville or The Player, there’s always a Popeye or Beyond Therapy. McCabe is one of the winners, though it’s bleak viewing. Set about a century ago, Warren Beatty is a gambler who gets involved with the madam who runs his brothel – a luminous Julie Christie (when is she ever not?). Everything in this Western, from Vilmos Zsigmond’s filter-heavy cinematography to the Leonard Cohen songs Altman uses, will haunt you. In the good way.

7. Harold and Maude

I mentioned the great Hal Ashby before in my 1976 BPEP, having directed Bound for Glory, but here’s a movie that in some ways is even better. Bud Cort and Oscar-winning actress-writer Ruth Gordon comprise perhaps the ultimate May-December romance. He’s nineteen and suicidal; she’s 79 and willing to teach him about life. The film is dark, funny, poignant, and deeply, deeply romantic in its own way. There’s never been another movie quite like this one.Fun fact: When my friend Laura was in high school, she had a scandalous affair with an older guy. His AOL Screenname was Bud Cort. At the time, we thought that made him sexy. — Mark

8. Mon oncle Antoine

Claude Jutra directed and co-wrote this Canadian classic. It takes place in rural Quebec before the late 1940s Asbestos Strike, which led to the Quiet Revolution. Jacques Gagnon plays teenage Benoit, through whose eyes we witness an entire generation come to an end over the course of one Christmas Day. In a way, the film is not unlike Cabaret in its look at how one way of life gave way to a new one. Instead of depravity giving way to Nazi Germany, however, Antoine looks at how Quebec’s conservative agrarian lifestyle ultimately gave way to drastically different political and social changes in the region.

9. Klute

Jane Fonda won the first of her Best Actress Oscars for this thriller, and for my money, it’s a performance for the ages. Alan J. Pakula directs the movie, in which Detective John Klute, played by (the never-nominated!) Donald Sutherland, gets caught up with prostitute Bree Daniels, who is targeted by a serial killer. Fonda’s work is textbook realism, as Bree faces the danger of her line of work and also fights letting her guard down with Klute. It’s also completely lacking in pretense or ego. Witness the scene in which she listens to a recording of one of her friends being killed. Her reaction is devastating, for her and for us.

10. The Hospital

It’s no secret that I’m a die-hard fan of Paddy Chayefsky, so it should be no surprise that I included this black comedy on my Expansion list. George C. Scott is the chief of medicine at a hospital. Both his home life and work life are falling apart around him, as his colleagues keep turning up dead. It’s to the credit of Chayefsky, Scott, and director Arthur Hiller (later a President of the Academy) that we feel both the humor and the heartache of these messed-up characters.

The Snubs

There were quite a few also-rans on this list—movies that I really like, but ones that nonetheless didn’t quite make the cut: And Now For Something Completely Different, Brian’s Song, Duel, The Go-Betweens, Polanski’s Macbeth, A New Leaf, and The Panic in Needle Park.

All in all, as Sinatra might have said, 1971 was a very good year. What do you guys think?