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Cinema · 1973 Ranked

Best Films of 1973, Ranked by IQ Score

The single year Scorsese, Malick, Altman, and Friedkin's mid-period peaks aligned. Films of 1973, ranked.

1973 is the year multiple New Hollywood directors hit their canonical mid-period peak. Mean Streets (Scorsese), Badlands (Malick), The Long Goodbye (Altman), The Exorcist (Friedkin), American Graffiti (Lucas), all released within twelve months.

The structural argument for 1973-as-canonical-year: Scorsese's breakthrough (Mean Streets), Malick's directorial debut (Badlands), Altman's canonical neo-noir (The Long Goodbye), Friedkin's genre-redefining horror (The Exorcist), Lucas's pre-Star-Wars breakthrough (American Graffiti). The most-canonical New Hollywood class-of-1973 cohort.

11 titles · ranked by IQ Score

  1. 1
    Scenes from a Marriage poster, IQ Score 168/200, Masterclass tier

    Scenes from a Marriage

    Masterclass drama, miniseries

    Ingmar Bergman's 1973 six-episode Swedish television miniseries about the disintegration of a marriage. The structural commitment to letting two characters' conversations across years be the entire subject, without exter…

    168/200
  2. 2
    Day for Night poster, IQ Score 168/200, Masterclass tier

    Day for Night

    Masterclass drama, comedy, international

    François Truffaut's 1973 metafictional film about the production of a film called Meet Pamela, anchored by Truffaut himself as the director Ferrand. The structural commitment to letting the film-about-filmmaking premise…

    168/200
  3. 3
    Cries and Whispers poster, IQ Score 166/200, Masterclass tier

    Cries and Whispers

    Masterclass drama, psychological

    Ingmar Bergman's 1972 chamber drama about three sisters at the country house where one is dying of cancer. The structural commitment to letting the visual register (deep reds in interior cinematography, the close-ups Sve…

    166/200
  4. 4
    Serpico poster, IQ Score 166/200, Masterclass tier

    Serpico

    Masterclass drama, crime, biography

    Sidney Lumet's 1973 Frank Serpico biographical film anchored by Al Pacino (Oscar-nominated). The structural commitment to letting the NYPD-corruption institutional cognitive material be the actual subject, and Pacino's g…

    166/200
  5. 5
    Badlands poster, IQ Score 165/200, Masterclass tier

    Badlands

    Masterclass drama, crime, indie

    Terrence Malick's 1973 directorial debut about the 1958 Charles Starkweather-Caril Ann Fugate murder spree, anchored by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The structural commitment to letting Spacek's narrator-character (a 1…

    165/200
  6. 6
    Amarcord poster, IQ Score 165/200, Masterclass tier

    Amarcord

    Masterclass drama, comedy, memoir

    Federico Fellini's 1973 memoir-fiction film set in a fictionalized version of his hometown Rimini in 1930s Fascist-era Italy. The structural commitment to letting episodic-vignette structure render the protagonist's reco…

    165/200
  7. 7
    Mean Streets poster, IQ Score 162/200, Masterclass tier

    Mean Streets

    Masterclass crime, drama, indie

    Scorsese's 1973 Little Italy film that defined his American-Catholic moral architecture for the next half-century. Harvey Keitel's Charlie and De Niro's Johnny Boy operate inside the religious-guilt-as-criminal-economy r…

    162/200
  8. 8
    The Sting poster, IQ Score 153/200, Stimulating tier

    The Sting

    Stimulating crime, comedy, drama

    1973 Best Picture winner. Paul Newman and Robert Redford execute an elaborate con in Depression-era Chicago. High cognitive demands, the plot's nested deceptions require the viewer to track multiple layers of misdirectio…

    153/200
  9. 9
    The Exorcist poster, IQ Score 152/200, Stimulating tier

    The Exorcist

    Stimulating horror, mystery

    Combines theological horror with psychiatric medicine, asking viewers to evaluate whether demonic possession or mental illness explains a child's deterioration while building dread.

    152/200
  10. 10
    The Long Goodbye poster, IQ Score 150/200, Stimulating tier

    The Long Goodbye

    Stimulating noir, crime, mystery

    Robert Altman drops Chandler's Marlowe into 1970s Los Angeles as an anachronism who mutters that it's okay with him while everyone betrays their word. Vilmos Zsigmond's constantly drifting, flared camera refuses the fixe…

    150/200
  11. 11
    American Graffiti poster, IQ Score 135/200, Stimulating tier

    American Graffiti

    Stimulating comedy, drama, coming-of-age

    George Lucas's 1973 vehicular nostalgia piece, set on a single night in 1962 Modesto. Lucas, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck wrote the multi-character cruise structure that Linklater later borrowed for Dazed and Confused.…

    135/200
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Questions about this ranking

What is the best film of 1973?

By IQ Score on TV Intelligentsia, Mean Streets (Scorsese), Day for Night (Truffaut), Cries and Whispers (Bergman), Badlands (Malick), and Amarcord (Fellini) anchor the year. International auteur peak.

Why is 1973 considered such a strong year?

1973 saw simultaneous canonical work from Scorsese (Mean Streets debut), Malick (Badlands debut), Altman (Long Goodbye), Friedkin (The Exorcist), Truffaut (Day for Night Oscar), Bergman (Cries and Whispers Oscar nominees), Fellini (Amarcord upcoming Oscar). The most-canonical international-cinema convergence year of the 1970s.

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