The following introduction by Mark Harris, author of “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood,” was recorded in 2024

Directed by Terrence Malick • 1978 • United States
Starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard

One-of-a-kind filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting films of the twentieth century, and his glorious period tragedy DAYS OF HEAVEN, featuring Oscar-...

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich • 1971 • United States
Starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is one of the key films of the American cinema renaissance of the seventies. Set during the early fifties, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a mov...

Directed by Sidney Lumet • 1975 • United States
Starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning

On a sweltering August day, novice criminals Sonny (Al Pacino) and Sal (John Cazale) attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank in order to pay for Sonny’s lover’s gender confirmation surgery—a situation that qu...

Directed by John Frankenheimer • 1966 • United States
Starring Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph

Rock Hudson is a revelation in this sinister, science-fiction-inflected dispatch from the fractured 1960s. SECONDS, directed by John Frankenheimer, concerns a middle-aged banker who, dissatisfi...

Directed by Robert Altman • 1970 • United States
Starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt

Robert Altman’s distinctive genius first announced itself with this innovative, smash-hit black comedy in which a pair of irreverent surgeons (Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould) at a mobile...

Directed by Alan J. Pakula • 1971 • United States
Starring Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland

With her Oscar-winning turn in KLUTE, Jane Fonda reinvented herself as a new kind of movie star. Bringing nervy audacity and counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels—a call girl and aspiring actor wh...

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola • 2001 • United States
Starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Harrison Ford

A work of overwhelming, visionary power, Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory Vietnam War epic stands as one of the twentieth century’s most monumental works of art. Ordered to “terminate ...

Directed by Eleanor Coppola, Fax Bahr, and George Hickenlooper • 1991 • United States

“We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.” In 1976, director Francis Ford Coppola arrived in the Philippines to...

Directed by Mike Nichols • 1967 • United States
Starring Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross

One of the most beloved American films of all time, THE GRADUATE earned Mike Nichols a best director Oscar, brought the music of Simon & Garfunkel to a wider audience, and introduced the world ...

Directed by Arthur Penn • 1967 • United States
Starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman

The film that forever changed Hollywood filmmaking, Arthur Penn’s New Hollywood landmark injected a jolt of fresh energy into the studio system with its kinetic style and frank depiction of sex and ...

Directed by Melvin Van Peebles • 1970 • United States
Starring Godfrey Cambridge, Estelle Parsons, Howard Caine

Melvin Van Peebles puts a spin on Franz Kafka’s THE METAMORPHOSIS in this provocative racial satire. Bigoted white insurance salesman Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambridge) has it made: he’s ...

Directed by Robert Altman • 1974 • United States
Starring George Segal, Elliott Gould, Ann Prentiss

Robert Altman’s distinctive brand of loose-limbed naturalism reached sublime heights with this freewheeling buddy comedy. Elliott Gould and George Segal make for one of the most delightfully offbe...

Directed by Bob Rafelson • 1970 • United States
Starring Jack Nicholson, Karen Black

Following Jack Nicholson’s breakout supporting turn in EASY RIDER, director Bob Rafelson devised a powerful leading role for the new star in the searing character study FIVE EASY PIECES. Nicholson plays the now ...

Directed by Hal Ashby • 1973 • United States
Starring Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Otis Young

Jack Nicholson is at his very best in this acclaimed tragicomedy written by Robert Towne and directed by Hal Ashby. Two hard-boiled Navy petty officers, Buddusky (Nicholson) and Mulhall (Otis Young), ar...

Directed by Elaine May • 1976 • United States

Elaine May crafted a gangster film like no other in the nocturnal odyssey MIKEY AND NICKY, capitalizing on the chemistry between frequent collaborators John Cassavetes and Peter Falk by casting them together as small-time mobsters whose lifelong re...

Directed by Martin Scorsese • 1976 • United States
Starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks

Scripted by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese, TAXI DRIVER is a powerful study of a dangerously fractured psyche, as well as a vividly grimy portrait of New York City in the 1970s....

Directed by John Schlesinger • 1969 • United States
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles

One of the British New Wave’s most versatile directors, John Schlesinger came to New York in the late 1960s to make MIDNIGHT COWBOY, a picaresque story of friendship that captured a city in cris...

Directed by Brian De Palma • 1976 • United States
Starring Cliff Robertson, Geneviève Bujold, John Lithgow

Nearly twenty years after his wife’s tragic death, a guilt-ridden man (Cliff Robertson) meets her exact look-alike (Gen...