1972 Movies

Finding box office information for movies made before 1980 is not an easy task.   For somebody looking for box office information on 1972 it is very very frustrating.  Over the years, we have researched and collected information on over 36,000 movies.  So we figured we would show all the 1972 movies in our database.

To make this list a movie had to be made in 1972.  This page will looks at 136 1972 Movies.  The movies are listed in a massive table that lets you rank the movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.    This only represents about 33% of the movies made in 1972….but should cover the top box office movies.

Some of the highest rated movies of 1972…certainly you can name them.

Our UMR Top 50 of 1972

1972 Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort 1972 Movies by movie titles and movie trailers
  • Sort 1972 Movies by the stars or in some cases the director of the movie.
  • Sort 1972 Movies by domestic adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort 1972 Movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each 1972 Movies received and how many Oscar® wins each 1972 Movies received.
  • Sort 1972 Movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking Score (UMR).  Our UMR score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
 
Sir Maurice and Sir Larry in 1972’s Sleuth

Top earners in 1972 for Adjusted USA Box Office:

My Main Sources

Source 1: Variety – January 3rd 1973,  January 9th, 1974

Source 2: Twentieth Century-Fox A Corporate and Financial History by Aubrey Solomon

Source 3:  Wikipedia

Source 4:  IMDb.com

Source 5:  BoxOfficeMojo.com

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47 thoughts on “1972 Movies”

  1. Hello Bruce.
    1972 was a good year for films. I liked “The Godfather”, “The Poseidon Adventure”, “What’s Up, Doc?”, “Deliverance” and “Cabaret”, but my favorite films of 1972 are “Jeremiah Johnson”, “The Getaway”, “The Cowboys”, “Butterflies Are Free”, “The Candidate”, “Junior Bonner”, “Slaughterhouse Five” and my favorite film of the year was “The Ruling Class”. I thought Liza Minnelli was amazing in “Cabaret” and Peter O’Toole was great in “The Ruling Class”. Of the five films nominated for best film my pick would be “Cabaret”.

    Reply

    1. great share. very bold. I thought cabaret more entertaining(joel grey, the band is beautiful) than godfather but not as magnificent. is there some way to adjust UMR yearly pages to include the 5 best picture nominees: sounder and the emigrants are missing nominees, I suspect they came out on wrong day. maybe dual listings?

      Reply

      1. Hey bob cox……glad you liked Lyle’s comment. As I just realized when I was responding to Lyle….I forgot to include Sounder. It will be on the table in about 2 minutes…as the website is updating as I type comments. As for The Emigrants…..it is actually on the 1971 page. It was released in Sweden in 1971…..and in America in 1972.

        More on Sounder from my recent comment – “Your comment about “Of the five films nominated for best film my pick would be “Cabaret”.”…made me realize that I somehow did not include Sounder in this page…..it was in the database….but did not have a box office number…..so it was not included….well…..by the time you read this…Sounder will be seating in the 9th spot….which is good for that movie…..but now pushes out one of my favorite movies…Sleuth….out of the Top 10.”

        So good catch…..you are proofing your Hall of Fame status was well warranted….lol.

        Reply

    2. Hey Lyle
      1. Thanks for stopping by and commenting on our 1972 page.
      2. Your comment about “Of the five films nominated for best film my pick would be “Cabaret”.”…made me realize that I somehow did not include Sounder in this page…..it was in the database….but did not have a box office number…..so it was not included….well…..by the time you read this…Sounder will be seating in the 9th spot….which is good for that movie…..but now pushes out one of my favorite movies…Sleuth….out of the Top 10.
      3. I have seen all the movies you liked and and your favorites….I would put The Godfather, Poseidon, The Getaway, What’s Up Doc? and The Cowboys in my Top 10.
      4. As for Slaughterhouse Five…..mmmm…..well Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author….I have read Slaugherhouse Five more times than any other book…..actually read it out loud to my oldest children back when they were teens. They vividly remember the railroad car and how it was viewed by the guards. So the movie always fascinated me….as a teenager…..the combination of George Roy Hill (director of The Sting and Butch and Sundance) and Vonnegut had me expecting greatness. That first viewing was disappointing…….but later in life….a second viewing was much better…..and pretty recently ….a third viewing was actually enjoyable. So in a nutshell….I like the movie…..but it has not yet worked it’s way onto my favorites.
      5. You would have thought I would have learned my lesson on Vonnegut and movies…..but when Bruce Willis (on of my Top 3 actors) made Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions….I got the same teenage expectations….and just like my first viewing of Slaughterhouse Five…I was so disappointed. Only this time Breakfast of Champions has remained a horrible movie….one of Bruce’s Top 3 Worst movies….with The Whole Ten Yards and Sunset.
      6. Sorry….just went off on a Vonnegut rant.
      7. Sad to say I have not seen The Ruling Class from beginning to end…..but I will one day.
      8. Interesting Oscar pick…..Caberet won lots of Oscars…..but glad Godfather got the big one.
      Good feedback as always.

      Reply

  2. HI BRUCE

    My earlier post to you and Bob Cox went thru twice for some reason. Mind you my posts are usually well worth being duplicated but I don’t want Steve getting jealous so maybe if you have the time you’d remove one of the duplicates Many thanks BOB ROY

    Reply

  3. I saw 24, including top 18. a horrific year for movies for me. 2 tens the godfather and my one favourite the cowboys, one of the 10 best coming of age movies all time. the horror, in the top 36 fritz the cat, prime cut. deep throat, last tango in paris, deliverance. I saw them all. yea for belfast banning last tango, despite brando’s incredible performance what a downer of a movie. except for godfather(seen 3 times), top 14 were 1 and done for me. I rarely watch even the greats and favourites more than once a decade, just not enough time.
    hidden gems the candidate and the cowboys. I agree sleuth is most enjoyed by me of top 14 of 1972 but does not make my top 320 favourites list. i plan to watch it again soon and consider increasing my rating (under influence of Bruce and Bob) LOL.

    Reply

    1. Hey bob cox…..thanks for the tally, comment and visit. So your top 2 from this year are The Godfather and The Cowboys……interesting…..The Godfather is one of the greatest movies ever made…while The Cowboys is rarely mentioned when great John Wayne movies are mentioned….but I agree it is an awesome movie.

      I agree with you about Last Tango in Paris……in many ways it reminds me of Marlon Brando’s Streetcar Named Desire…..both are considered classics…..both I have seen numerous times (Tango twice, Streetcar three times) but am always left with…..what am I missing? Of those two performances I think Brando is better in Tango…..but like you said “downer of a movie”.

      Sleuth has aged well…..as it was always essentially a play……with Caine and Olivier in stellar roles……just avoid the remake also with Caine that is just horrible. I have that one on DVD…and one day I will listen to the Caine DVD commentary….and maybe he can explain their logic in taking a great story and flushing it down the toilet.

      Good stuff!

      Reply

      1. HI BOB COX and BRUCE

        I agree with you that Streetcar and Tango are “dry goods” and that is why in the early 50s action/western stars like Heston, Ladd and Jimmy Stewart with those wonderful Anthony Mann westerns were my idols before Marlon was.

        Bruce’s opinion that Brando’s Tango performance is better than the much lauded Streetcar is interesting. Of course as you both know I never argue with Bruce but anyway the late Alexander Walker famed and highly respected film critic of London’s Evening Standard obviously agreed with Bruce because he opined that Brando’s Tango was the “greatest performance ever given by an actor on screen”.

        Alexander has to be right of course because he was born in Portadown Northern Ireland, which is also the birthplace of little ole ME! However as I’ve indicated when Last Tango was being planned and filmed Marlon’s Godpop comeback hadn’t happened and probably Last Tango was meant to be little more than a low budget art-house film.

        Indeed the original leads were meant to be Jean- Louis Trintignant and Dominique Sanda and it is hard to think of a more “art-housey” pair than that highly talented Continental European duo So if Last Tango had proceeded in that direction one has to wonder if Alexander would have thought so highly of Brando’s performance in it.

        ADDITIONAL TRIVIA Trintignant ‘s last US release Amour in 2012 earned $6 million in the US and $30 million globally against a reported budget of just under $10 million. According to Bruce’s tables Last Tango earned a US gross of $190 million when adjusted for inflation and its budget according to Wikipedia was just $7.25 million in today’s dollars.

        Reply

        1. Hey Bob….some good trivia here. First of all….I guess Last Tango In Paris could be considered the most successful ‘art film” of all-time. I doubt the producers were too upset when Brando’s Godfather was taking over the world, and that they had his next movie already completed…..that is good timing. Have not heard of either Jean- Louis Trintignant or Dominique Sanda…I imagine if they had made the movie…I would not have heard of Last Tango in Paris either. Sounds like Mr. Walker is an equally smart man….lol. Good feedback.

          Reply

          1. HI BRUCE

            As I know you didn’t like the film I was surprised at how astute your take on Last Tango matters actually is. I would maybe go a bit further and wonder if it hadn’t been for Godpop would Tango have been consigned to just the art-houses even with Brando in it.

            I actually saw his 1969 Burn [aka Queimada] in our local small art-house and it was shown nowhere else here. As for his 1968 Night of the Following Day it surfaced over here as the supporting feature to Clint’s Coogan’s Bluff. Winner was a bit luckier because whilst as your tables show his Nightcomers with Marlon was not great box office it washed its face commercially as the saying goes because its release in many areas coincided with the Godfather tour de force so maybe Michael concluded it had been worthwhile after all his addressing Brando as “Sir” on Nightcomer set as Michael claims he he never did any other actor. Amazingly maybe because Winner was a Brit that awful film earned his star a BAFTA Best Actor nomination despite Brando’s cartoonish Irish accent.

            Anyway as it is though whilst Tango may not be a “Continental art-house” film Wikipedia reckons it did better collectively on the European Continent and in other markets abroad than it did in even the States.

          2. Hey Bob…..without Godfather an entirely different perspective of Brando might exist. Questions like that always make you wonder….What if James Dean did not love fast cars? What is Steve McQueen had lived a healthy life? What if Frank Sinatra had done the lead in Die Hard? Good memories of the Brando movies right before his second coming. Good stuff as always.

  4. HI BRUCE Thanks for your detailed feedback
    LAST TANGO. For those of us who bother ourselves about such matters [you don’t need to read on Steve!] Last Tango’s exact release year used to be a bit of a puzzle. However as I now understand it the distributors at the time were uncertain about how to market it fearing that it would be seen as a continental “art” film and maybe doomed to attract just arthouse audiences. So between Oct and Dec 1972 it was released in continental Europe and just in a few NY cinemas in the states. The controversy was such though that it was given a US wide release on 7 Feb 1973. However you could maybe play safe by giving Steve’s favourite mumbler credit for it in your 1973 Review as well!

    As you say other films make it look tame as do some of the things now seen on TV. However film historians opine that its controversy back in the early 1970s was capable of being hyped up enormously by the fact that a US household-name movie star was involved in a film that would not usually get mainstream release. Critics and audiences at the time could not imagine the likes of Grant or Cooper for example getting involved in some of the antics of the butter-loving Brando in Last Tango. The imagination of audiences was further spiced up by the fact that Tango’s star was also still doing the rounds in Godpop. Hype fed on hype ferociously.

    Thanks for sharing your own HONEYMOON STORY with me. It reminds me in a way of the 1966 film The Family Way starring Sir John and Hayley Mills. In that one Sir John has a lifelong friend called Billy Stringfellow and they are so inseparable that he goes on Sir John’s honeymoon but immediately after it disappears and Sir John never sees him again. Down the years Sir John regularly recounts to his family circle the adventures of Billy and him and when he reminisces about the honey moon it’s always about the good times that BILLY and he had together on that honeymoon!

    Say it strikes me that it’s a pity Joel isn’t around to join you and W o C on any 2nd honeymoon! The Family Way ends with Sir John again recounting to his son a long-ago Billy story when Sir J suddenly stops, stares at his son and says “I wonder why Billy disappeared like that, but you know son, it suddenly strikes me how much you look like him!”

    Seriously though I think it was a great idea you and W o C taking the kids along in your situation because it enabled you to get to know yourselves as a new family in relaxed surroundings without having to cope with the daily grind as well. Imagine for example having to familiarise yourself with a new family setup and reply to one of Steve’s meandering posts as well! Certainly the success of that honeymoon seems to have been a great harbinger of lots more happy times for you all as a family unit so my belated congratulations

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob…..glad you liked “our honeymoon” story. Hilton Head, South Carolina is actually pretty small…..so for a week….we played at the beach with the kids during the day…..and chilled at night watching the sun go down…..with movies being the few times we left the cottage….which was a three story cottage….and we filled that puppy up with kids and family members who came for the wedding. For the wedding…we literally walked out of the cottage…went about 100 yards…got to the beach and got married….no limo required…..lol.

      Wow…never even heard of The Family Way. Thanks for pointing me to that direction. As for Tango in late 1972 and 1973….seems like that was the perfect time for that movie to get released…..after Deep Throat became a cultural phenomenon…Tango pretty much arrived during a perfect storm….if it had come out before…I suspect North America would have joined Belfast in their boycotting of the movie. Good feedback.

      Reply

      1. HI BRUCE

        Thanks for your responses to my 1972 posts, additional honeymoon information and your compliment.

        Reading some of the posts across the board illustrates many regulars of this site who have gathered much knowledge about the movies and as you know (1) I very much admire our “foreign” contributors who obviously go to great lengths to communicate with us in a language that may be difficult to them for times (2) my own nomination for certainly the Queen of Movies and particularly classic era ones is Flora.

        Whilst most of them are probably not the “nitpicker” that I am if one too many things seriously wrong those guys and gals will soon “out” one. [See by the way my personal apology in my post today to Steve about Miriam Hopkins – I couldn’t have been more wrong about her]

        Reply

        1. Hey Bob…..I see that Hopkins comment….will be checking it out soon. I agree 100% with you about the commenters that take the time to translate their comments to English….they are indeed awesome.

          Reply

          1. HI BRUCE

            In Hopkins case I was misled by Eddie Robinson’s stories in his autobiography about spats they had on the Barbary Coast set in which Miriam was supported by McCrea in taunting Edward G about politics and which actually led to blows with Eddie punching Hopkins .

            As Joel is actually credited with having been a Republican Party fundraiser I naturally assumed that Miriam was also a Republican. Lesson – As a Boss of mine once strictured me on an occasion when an assumption of mine turned out to be very wrong “Never assume!”

            However as I now find that both Eddie and and Miriam were up to their eyes in Democratic politics, were enthusiasts for Roosevelt and his New deal, and had the common bond of apparently being accused of being Communist sympathisers/fellow travellers I find myself nonplussed over what the aggro between them was actually about.

            As with you and the general ethos of your site politics of a star do not prejudice me against his or her artistic worth but I like being aware of such background trivia.

          2. Thanks for the reasoning behind your thinking Hopkins leaned towards a different political way. I like movie stars…..but which way they lean has nothing to do with the way I lean. I have always felt there are three seperate groups….20% fanatics that lean right…..12% fanatics that lean left….and 60% who lean either way depending on the each subject.

  5. As I have previously made clear I greatly value these Annual Reviews but the 1972 survey is particularly welcome for nostalgic reasons as 1972 was the year in which I got married. Indeed it is fitting for me personally that The Godfather is tops in the Review for both critical and box office achievements as I went to see that movie for the first time on my honeymoon in Dublin near Christmas 1972.

    I have seen 7 more of the Top 15 movies in the main chart when it’s in its primary form before any sorter buttons are used including the notorious Last Tango though we didn’t get that over here in Northern Ireland until 1973.

    Because of the sexual content of that movie it was banned in Belfast our capital city and some of the large towns but the censorship did not extend to movie houses in the countryside and whereas normally those cinemas would be half empty because of their isolation there were huge queues outside them when Last Tango was showing as audiences travelled from the towns and cities to take advantage of the more flexible censorship.

    In 1972 The Godfather would have been hard to top for entertainment value but for my money the Caine/Olivier Sleuth ran it a close second so that movie too holds certain nostalgic memories for me with great performances from its two stars and its use of some of Cole Porter’s music

    “You do something to me
    Something deep inside”.

    is indeed very appropriate to the feelings that Sleuth itself and some other movies invoke in me even today from the year of 1972 that was highly pivotal for me.

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob
      1. Glad you liked this yearly review as well…..so that is now 1930 through 1972…..with 1976 being completed as well……it is starting to become a decent amount of years completed.
      2. Congrats on your almost 50 years of marriage…..that might be the most impression thing I now know about you.
      3. Honeymoon and The Godfather….sounds like a good combo…..WoC and I have only been married 13 years……on our honeymoon we saw…..The Wedding Crashers, Must Love Dogs and Sky High. We took our previous kids on our honeymoon…..and Sky High was for them……we got married on the beach in South Carolina.
      4. It is strange seeing Last Tango in Paris….I thought it was always a 1973 movie…..if only because of Brando’s back to back nominations…..I had to double check that one.
      5. After Deep Throat and Pink Flamingos….American audiences might have thought Tango was tame….lol.
      6. Sleuth is one of my all-time favorite movies….and a movie we watch on a regular basis….I still have my 2 VHS tape of that movie……even though I do not have a VCR anymore…lol.
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts on 1972 movies.

      Reply

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