The movies of 1975 are among the best ever made.
One in particular changed everything about how movies are made.
Let’s look back on these movies of 1975, the year that changed everything — and see how relevant they are 50 years later.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
1970s comedies pushed the limits, and Monty Python rarely flirted with sacrilege more than they did with the brilliant Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (Of course, they topped themselves in 1979 with The Life of Brian.)
Holy Grail is loaded with great jokes, from the coconut gallops to the knights who say “ni!” to our favorite joke of all — “Message for you, sir!”
We also absolutely love the lush English forest aesthetic of the whole affair, which puts us in a relaxed state of mind even during the few moments when we aren’t laughing.
Shampoo
What a difference seven years makes. Set in 1968 but released in the middle of the following decade, Shampoo charts the death of sixties idealism through the eyes of Warren Beatty’s George Roundy.
Roundy is a promiscuous hairdresser inspired by hairstylist to the stars Jay Sebring, who was killed alongside Sharon Tate and their friends by followers of Charles Manson. Roundy doesn’t suffer such a grim fate, but he does suffer.
Shampoo is incredibly watchable for its interpretation of what was then recent history, as well as for top-notch performances by Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, and a young Carrie Fisher, in her first film role.
Dog Day Afternoon
If you pitched the plot of Dog Day Afternoon in 2025, some people would downvote as impossibly woke: it’s the story of a fledgling criminal (Al Pacino) who robs a bank to pay for his partner’s gender reassignment surgery, and becomes a folk hero as he battles the cops trying to bring him down. – Credit: Warner Bros.
Based on the true story of a 1972 bank heist, it features some of Pacino’s best acting, and he’s at his most charismatic while chanting “Attica, Attica” as he tries to rally onlookers against the police.
It also has some of Sidney Lumet’s most captivating direction, which is really saying something. The film keeps you and your allegiances shifting up until its stunning conclusion.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
If you ask Oscar voters, this was the best film of 1975 by a wide margin.
It was the second of three films to win all five major awards, between 1934’s It Happened One Night and 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. Besides Best Picture, the Oscars went to Jack Nicholson for Best Actor, Louise Fletcher for Best Actress, Milos Forman for Best Director, and Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman for Best Screenplay.
A story of a man who fakes mental illness to get into an asylum and stay out of prison, it’s one of the ultimate stories of rejecting conformity, at almost any cost.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
As we recently noted, The Rocky Horror Picture Show bombed when it first premiered — but then a savvy studio executive had the brilliant idea of showing it at midnight.
It’s been showing at midnight in theaters around the world for the five decades since, and its mix of horror, sci-fi, comedy, preppies, rockabilly, leather, and stockings have felt gloriously transgressive ever since.
The film’s 50th anniversary this year was marked by the documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, directed by Linus O’Brien — who is the son of Rocky Horror writer and Riff Raff actor Richard O’Brien.
Barry Lyndon
In our humble opinion, two films on this list are legitimate contenders for the best film ever made. One is the last film on our list. Barry Lyndon is the other.
Director Stanley Kubrick is known for a sometimes clinical aesthetic, and early on, this adaptation of the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, by William Makepeace Thackeray, feels like it must be a lark — how hilarious that Kubrick made all these people dress up in these costumes, we think. Is he making fun of movie excess?
No — he’s calling out the grotesquerie of a world where some have so much, and others have so little, and the wall between them is so high, no matter how scalable it seems. The film ends devastatingly, with as much emotion as you’ll find in any Kubrick movie.
The final lines of Barry Lyndon are stunning. (If you haven’t seen the movie, please stop reading and do so.) If you have seen it, you surely remember the gist of the epilogue: “It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”
Deep Red
You know that joke about how not a lot of people bought the first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band?
Deep Red has a similar influence. Perhaps the most giallo of all giallo movies, this Dario Argento classic was released at the height of giallo, and also marked the first collaboration between Argento and the band Goblin, which composed and performed the score.
Whether you’ve seen Deep Red or not, you’ve seen it imitated in countless movies in which a faceless killer slips on black leather gloves to do wrong.
Dolemite
A prime example of Blaxploitation and DIY filmmaking, Dolemite follows Rudy Ray Moore as a slick-talking con, fresh out of prison, who uses his private army of ladies of the night and extremely subpar kung-fu skills to mete out justice.
It spawned numerous sequels, even more parodies, and the terrific 2019 Eddie Murphy comedy Dolemite Is My Name, which gave Rudy Ray Moore his due not just as a comic figure, but an indie filmmaking icon.
Watching Dolemite is kind of like reading the Bible — you constantly stop and say “oh this is where that’s from?”
Tommy
You can visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame… or just watch Tommy.
The Who’s musical features a who’s who (pun very much intended) of rock icons, from Eric Clapton to Tina Turner to Elton John to The Who’s Roger Daultrey, who plays the titular “deaf dumb and blind kid [who] sure plays a mean pinball.”
Other standouts include Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, and Jack Nickolson, who also appears in another 1975 movie on this list.
Tommy is a real rarity: a time capsule of an era, yes, but also a production that still rocks and shocks.
The Stepford Wives
Even if you haven’t seen the delightfully creepy Stepford Wives, you’ve heard someone referred to as one. Such is the cultural reach of the film, which stars the great Katharine Ross as a woman who relocates to a Connecticut community where the wives are weirdly subservient.
As an added plus, it’s written by one of the all-time great screenwriters, William Goldman, who also wrote perhaps the best of all movies in which Katharine Ross appeared, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It had a sequel and 2004 reboot, but we’re actually kind of surprised it movie hasn’t gotten a recent remake in light of the whole “trad wife” movement.
Nashville
Director Robert Altman’s influence is very strong — just watch the films of Paul Thomas Anderson, who shadowed him on the set of 2006’s Prairie Home Companion and dedicated his 2007 film There Will Be Blood to the master.
Altman perfected his naturalistic storytelling style with Nashville, which featured overlapping narratives, improvised dialogue, musical breaks, and a three-hour runtime. It also has a stupendous cast that includes Lily Tomlin, Ned Beatty, Scott Glenn, Keith Carradine, and Karen Black (pictured above).
Anderson’s 1999 masterpiece Magnolia is arguably the best of the many films that took inspiration from Nashville, though maybe you can detect Atmanesque touches in Traffic, Babel, and many other great films.
Jaws
This is the other movie on this list — along with Barry Lyndon — that we think has a reasonable claim to being the best movie ever made.
It introduced the concept of the modern blockbuster, but it’s true resonance is in the number of people scared to go to the beach — or even dip their toes into a pool — because of how flawlessly director Steven Spielberg played on our fears of the mysteries of the deep.
The mechanical shark kept malfunctioning, which fed into his masterful strategy of deploying the monster only strategically, and then finally unleashing it in, in glimpses, to horrifying effect.
Jaws is, of course, the reason that 1975 changed everything for movies. It was the highest-grossing film in movie history until it was displaced by Star Wars two years later, and led those with greenlight power to begin seeking mega hits instead of singles and doubles — perhaps to the detriment of thoughtful movies for grown-ups.
But Jaws is the rare movie that works for everyone. It works on a surface level, a just-below-the-surface level, and in terms of symbolism. Not a week goes by without some overly optimistic politician being compared to the foolish mayor of Amity Island.
Main image: Nashville. Paramount Pictures.