record (Silverman 1). The following week, Variety added that December “was
the 19th consecutive domestic b.o. peak month, and the 22nd such monthly
high over the past 25 months” (Murphy 116). The ten highest grossing films
domestically were Grease, Superman, Animal House, Every Which Way But Loose,
Jaws 2, Heaven Can Wait, Hooper, California Suite, The Deer Hunter, and Foul Play
(Cook, Lost 501–02). Among the films that critics tended to favor in the end-
of-year awards were The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, An Unmarried Woman,
Days of Heaven, Alan Parker’s Turkish prison film Midnight Express, and Ing-
mar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata (“Miss Bergman” 13).
Conversely, it was a sour year for many auteurs who had emerged in
the late 1960s and early 1970s: among the disappointments were Robert
Altman’s A Wedding and Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz. On the other hand, some
genre films achieved aesthetic and/or fiscal success. Horror films continued
with films like Omen II, Dawn of the Dead, The Fury, The Eyes of Laura Mars,
and the most successful at the box office, Halloween, which in turn helped
spawn the slasher cycle (Cook, Lost 234–38). Science fiction films like Coma,
The Boys from Brazil, and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers all drew
on the widespread public distrust of corporate, scientific, and governmental
authorities. Thanks in part to the boom in the recording industry, the
increasing use of Dolby sound in theaters, and the spectacular success of
Saturday Night Fever, movies about music abounded, even if they did not all
thrive (“Star Wars Heralds” 9). They included FM, I Wanna Hold Your Hand,
The Buddy Holly Story, The Last Waltz, American Hot Wax, Thank God It’s Friday,
The Wiz, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Grease.
In several significant ways the movies of the year grappled with the
changing times. First, Hollywood finally decided to engage seriously with the
national trauma of Vietnam, most notably in Coming Home, Go Tell the Spar-
tans, and The Deer Hunter. Second, several films responded to the persistent
feminist call for Hollywood to make more movies focusing on women and
their concerns: two of the most important were Paul Mazursky’s An Un-
married Woman and Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends. Finally, the golden years of
ambitious auteurist cinema were inexorably giving way to the juggernaut of
Hollywood blockbusters: we can best illustrate this change by juxtaposing
Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, a kind of last gasp of the American Film
Renaissance, and the smash musical blockbuster Grease.
■■■■■■■■■■
Hollywood’s Vietnam
Industry insiders avoided Vietnam like the plague while the
war was being fought. In 1973 an aspiring young screenwriter brought two
1978 — MOVIES AND CHANGING TIMES 207