Women's History Month: Best female performances of the 1970s

Jane Fonda in Klute

I wanted to do something for Women's History Month but I was struggling to come up with the ideal angle. My fiancee suggested highlighting my favorite films which pass the Bechdel test but that would be hard for me to narrow down. 

So instead I thought I'd focus on my favorite decade of films and attempt to pick my favorite female performance from each year.

This won't be easy, I could easily pick more than four or five performances alone from 1974. But this will be a fun challenge for me.

1970 - Sally Kellerman in M*A*S*H
Kellerman delivers a comic tour de force as the frequent foil for the heroes in this brilliant anti-war satire (which also inspired the long running TV series). As "Hot Lips," Kellerman suffers a lot of indignities but manages to endear herself and portray a real evolution of a character -- from an uptight by-the-book military stooge to a loose and lovely ally to the anarchic heroes.

1971 - Jane Fonda in Klute
Fonda won her first Best Actress Oscar for a performance as a complex call girl drawn into a deadly murder plot. The film does a great job of employing Fonda's inherent sex appeal, but it also gives her a fully realized life outside of her work. Her harrowing final scene is emotionally wrenching.

1972 - Liza Minnelli in Cabaret
This was neck and neck with Diana Ross' work in Lady Sings the Blues, but I give Minnelli a slight edge only because her performance in this Bob Fosse musical is arguably the most iconic of her career. The role of the plucky, hopelessly romantic and naive Sally Bowles was tailor-made for her. And her incredible song and dance numbers are electrifying.

1973 - Pam Grier in Coffy
I could have gone with Ellen Burstyn here for her blistering work in The Exorcist, but I am going to go with this exploitation classic because Grier really elevates this B-movie to something special. Sure, the movie has a lot of gratuitous T&A, but Grier's charisma and gravitas are so inherently watchable. This performance and film are head and shoulders above anything else from the so-called blaxploitation era.

1974 - Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
This was a really tough one. I am huge fan of Faye Dunaway in Chinatown. And Gena Rowlands does powerful work in A Woman Under the Influence. But my favorite may just be Burstyn's Oscar winning performance in Martin Scorsese's underrated gem about a suddenly widowed stay at home mom who must get her life back on track as a professional, while caring for her bratty son. Never sentimental, this moving film deserves more rediscovery.

Susan Sarandon

1975 - Susan Sarandon in The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Another close call. The ensemble of Nashville has several female standout (especially Lily Tomlin) and then there's Louise Fletcher's chilling portrait of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

But I am going to go outside the box a little with this one and pick Susan Sarandon's sexy and silly performance in the classic camp musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She has always been one my favorites, and in that film she is both self aware and uninhibited.

1976 - Faye Dunaway in Network
An honorable mention for Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver here, but it's gotta be the eventual Oscar winner Faye Dunaway for the win. She is one of my favorite actresses and I've never been sure why she doesn't ever get her due. She gives a ferocious performance as a borderline psychotic television executive. Her tendency to go over the top is employed to great effect here and this dark satire of television delves into increasingly insane depths.

1977 - Diane Keaton in Annie Hall
The most iconic role of her career in perhaps Woody Allen's most beloved film. It's hard to know where the character of Annie Hall begins and Keaton ends because she so inhabits this flighty persona that it barely seems like acting at all. This movie works because of her luminous charm and sensitivity, which provides a great contrast to Allen's cynical one-liners. Keaton gave many other terrific performances in her career, but she will always be Annie Hall.

1978 - Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman
A groundbreaking film at the time of its release. Clayburgh plays a woman whose life is turned upside down after she learns that her husband of many years has been cheating on her. Her emotional and raw performance is a revelation.They just don't make movies like this anymore. It's a fully realized character study about a woman who is not under 30 and not a broad comedy.

1979 - Sally Field  in Norma Rae
People know the famous shot, Sally Field standing tall in a factory holding up a makeshift sign that reads: Union. I know it looks and seems corny, but in the context of this film it's a powerful and galvanizing moment. Field made her breakthrough as a serious actress in this film, and for a time she was neck-and-neck with Meryl Streep for the leading dramatic female star of the era, although that may seem odd to audiences now.