1971

Academy winner The French Connection poster

The French Connection

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Should have won A Clockwork Orange poster

A Clockwork Orange

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The Academy's ballot

🏆The French Connection#774.24 🎬A Clockwork Orange#181.56 🎬Fiddler on the Roof#375.09 🎬The Last Picture Show#574.84 🎬Nicholas and Alexandra#1865.39

Your #1 was A Clockwork Orange (#1).

The full slate

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

🎬 Nominee⭐ Top-rated🏛️ All-time great💰 Box office #9

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Dir. Stanley Kubrick · Malcolm McDowell · Patrick Magee · Carl Duering · Michael Bates

IMDb 8.2 (937,549 votes) · TMDB 8.177

In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?

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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory poster

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Mel Stuart · Gene Wilder · Jack Albertson · Peter Ostrum · Roy Kinnear

IMDb 7.8 (244,637 votes) · TMDB 7.5

When eccentric candy man Willy Wonka promises a lifetime supply of sweets and a tour of his chocolate factory to five lucky kids, penniless Charlie Bucket seeks the golden ticket that will make him a winner.

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Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

🎬 Nominee⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #2

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Dir. Norman Jewison · Chaim Topol · Norma Crane · Leonard Frey · Molly Picon

IMDb 8.0 (52,260 votes) · TMDB 7.765

In a pre-revolutionary Russia, a poor Jewish milkman struggles with the challenges of a changing world as his daughters fall in love and antisemitism grows.

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Dirty Harry (1971)

⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #5

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Dir. Don Siegel · Clint Eastwood · Harry Guardino · Reni Santoni · John Vernon

IMDb 7.7 (181,421 votes) · TMDB 7.455

When a madman dubbed 'Scorpio' terrorizes San Francisco, hard-nosed cop, Harry Callahan – famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement – is tasked with hunting down the psychopath.

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The Last Picture Show (1971)

🎬 Nominee⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #7

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Dir. Peter Bogdanovich · Timothy Bottoms · Cybill Shepherd · Jeff Bridges · Cloris Leachman

IMDb 8.0 (57,079 votes) · TMDB 7.6

High school seniors and best friends, Sonny and Duane, live in a dying Texas town. The handsome Duane is dating a local beauty, while Sonny is having an affair with the coach's wife. As graduation nears and both boys contemplate their futures, Duane eyes the army and Sonny takes over a local business. Each struggles to figure out if he can escape this dead-end town and build a better life somewhere else.

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Harold and Maude (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Hal Ashby · Ruth Gordon · Bud Cort · Vivian Pickles · Cyril Cusack

IMDb 7.8 (85,151 votes) · TMDB 7.6

A deadpan young man obsessed with death meets an eccentric septuagenarian who teaches him to live life to the fullest.

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The French Connection (1971)

🏆 Winner⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #4

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Dir. William Friedkin · Gene Hackman · Roy Scheider · Fernando Rey · Tony Lo Bianco

IMDb 7.6 (150,889 votes) · TMDB 7.497

Tough narcotics detective 'Popeye' Doyle is in hot pursuit of a suave French drug dealer who may be the key to a huge heroin-smuggling operation.

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Anand (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Hrishikesh Mukherjee · Rajesh Khanna · Amitabh Bachchan · Sumita Sanyal · Ramesh Deo

IMDb 8.1 (37,562 votes) · TMDB 6.928

Dr. Bhaskar Bannerjee struggles with his patients' suffering and the darkness and poverty he confronts daily. He treats cancer patient Anand who upon learning of his impending death determines to use the time he has left to the absolute fullest.

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Gentlemen of Fortune (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Aleksandr Sery · Evgeni Leonov · Georgiy Vitsin · Savely Kramarov · Radner Muratov

IMDb 8.3 (14,276 votes) · TMDB 7.804

Kindergarten teacher Evgeniy Ivanovich Troshkin is reluctantly sent undercover to take the place of an imprisoned thief who stole Alexander the Great's helmet. Evgeniy uses his striking resemblance to the thief to infiltrate his gang and learn the location of the stolen artifact. He finds the gangsters are unexpectedly similar to his students- they also need love and care.

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#10

Duck, You Sucker! (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Sergio Leone · Rod Steiger · James Coburn · Romolo Valli · Maria Monti

IMDb 7.5 (40,284 votes) · TMDB 7.673

At the beginning of the 1913 Mexican Revolution, greedy bandit Juan Miranda and idealist John H. Mallory, an Irish Republican Army explosives expert on the lam from the British, fall in with a band of revolutionaries plotting to strike a national bank. When it turns out that the government has been using the bank as a hiding place for illegally detained political prisoners -- who are freed by the blast -- Miranda becomes a revolutionary hero against his will.

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#11

Straw Dogs (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Sam Peckinpah · Dustin Hoffman · Susan George · Peter Vaughan · T. P. McKenna

IMDb 7.4 (68,398 votes) · TMDB 7.2

David Sumner, a mild-mannered academic from the United States, marries Amy, an Englishwoman. In order to escape a hectic stateside lifestyle, David and his wife relocate to the small town in rural Cornwall where Amy was raised. There, David is ostracized by the brutish men of the village, including Amy's old flame, Charlie. Eventually the taunts escalate.

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#12

Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Dalton Trumbo · Timothy Bottoms · Kathy Fields · Marsha Hunt · Jason Robards

IMDb 7.8 (19,881 votes) · TMDB 7.48

A young American soldier, rendered in pseudocoma from an artillery shell from WWI, recalls his life leading up to that point.

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#13

Walkabout (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Nicolas Roeg · Jenny Agutter · Luc Roeg · David Gulpilil · John Meillon

IMDb 7.6 (29,754 votes) · TMDB 7.3

Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.

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#14

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Robert Altman · Warren Beatty · Julie Christie · René Auberjonois · William Devane

IMDb 7.6 (30,466 votes) · TMDB 7.2

A gambler and a prostitute become thriving business partners in a remote Old West mining town until a large corporation arrives on the scene.

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#15

Monty Python's and Now for Something Completely Different poster

Monty Python's and Now for Something Completely Different (1971)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Ian MacNaughton · Graham Chapman · John Cleese · Terry Gilliam · Eric Idle

IMDb 7.5 (32,754 votes) · TMDB 7.215

A collection of Monty Python's Flying Circus skits from the first two seasons of their British TV series.

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#16

Vanishing Point (1971)

💰 Box office #3

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Dir. Richard C. Sarafian · Barry Newman · Cleavon Little · Dean Jagger · Victoria Medlin

IMDb 7.2 (32,314 votes) · TMDB 7.1

Kowalski works for a car delivery service, and takes delivery of a 1970 Dodge Challenger to drive from Colorado to San Francisco. Shortly after pickup, he takes a bet to get the car there in less than 15 hours.

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#17

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

💰 Box office #10

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Dir. Robert Stevenson · Angela Lansbury · David Tomlinson · Roddy McDowall · Sam Jaffe

IMDb 7.1 (43,446 votes) · TMDB 7.0

Three children evacuated from London during World War II are forced to stay with an eccentric spinster. The children's initial fears disappear when they find out she is in fact a trainee witch.

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#18

Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)

🎬 Nominee

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Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner · Michael Jayston · Janet Suzman · Roderic Noble · Ania Marson

IMDb 7.2 (6,243 votes) · TMDB 6.968

Tsar Nicholas II, the inept last monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.

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#19

Carnal Knowledge (1971)

💰 Box office #8

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Dir. Mike Nichols · Jack Nicholson · Candice Bergen · Art Garfunkel · Ann-Margret

IMDb 6.9 (17,003 votes) · TMDB 6.578

Two lifelong friends navigate complex sexual encounters and emotional entanglements, wrestling with societal norms and personal desires.

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#20

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

💰 Box office #1

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Dir. Guy Hamilton · Sean Connery · Jill St. John · Charles Gray · Lana Wood

IMDb 6.5 (123,614 votes) · TMDB 6.403

Diamonds are stolen only to be sold again in the international market. James Bond infiltrates a smuggling mission to find out who's guilty. The mission takes him to Las Vegas where Bond meets his archenemy Blofeld.

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#21

The Burglars (1971)

💰 Box office #6

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Dir. Henri Verneuil · Jean-Paul Belmondo · Omar Sharif · Dyan Cannon · Robert Hossein

IMDb 6.6 (3,385 votes) · TMDB 6.9

In Athens a collection of emeralds is successfully stolen by a team of robbers, led by safe-cracker Azad. Things go smoothly until they miss the ship by which they planned their escape; a police chief pursues Azad while he waits for the next ship to set off.

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How scoring works: films are ranked by a composite of a weighted (Bayesian) IMDb rating — the same method as the IMDb Top 250, so a high score from few voters can't outrank a strong score from many — blended with TMDB. Box office is a tiebreaker and a badge, never part of the score. Raw IMDb ratings and vote counts are shown on each card.