Twenty-five years after the end of World War II, Patton seemed to be the last major Hollywood film we’d see about World War II. Little did we know, then, that forty years later they would still be making them. It seemed then, that this would be the last time to honor a film about the war.

Critically, Franklin J. Schaffner’s film stood firmly in the middle between Oscar’s other four 1970 Best Picture nominees, with Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces and Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H on the plus side and Arthur Hiller’s Love Story and George Seaton’s Airport on the minus.

George C. Scott had the role of his career as the controversial World War II general and deserved every award he won including the Oscar he refused. Nominated for a total of ten Oscars, the film won seven including Best Picture, Director and its Original Screenplay.

Jack Nicholson solidified his star standing with his brilliant performance as an upper-class dropout in Five Easy Pieces, which was the year’s big winner with the New York Film Critics, winning Best Picture, Director and Supporting Actress Karen Black. Oscar nominated it for Best Picture and Supporting Actress, but substituted Actor and Original Screenplay for Director.

One of the most irreverent films ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, M*A*S*H was set during the Korean War, but its sensibilities were very much in tune with the nation’s growing anti-Viet Nam war sentiment. It was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Director and Supporting Actress Sally Kellerman. It won for Adapted Screenplay.

The year’s biggest box-office hit, Airport,has not aged particularly well, but it was liked well enough at the time to land ten Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Supporting Actress Helen Hayes, Supporting Actress Maureen Stapleton and a slew of technical awards, Only Hayes won, setting a new record for the most years between wins – 38.

A sappy, old-fashioned romance that added four letter words and plenty of sex to give it a modern feel, Love Story was a pre-sold hit. A novel based on the screenplay was a phenomenal best-seller earlier in the year. Audiences flocked to theatres to see how Ali MacGaw and Ryan O’Neal measured up to their impressions of the book’s young lovers. AMPAS members liked them both enough to nominate them for Oscars along with John Marley as MacGraw’s father, as well as for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and Score. It won for the latter.

Other films that Oscar liked included Ryan’s Daughter; Women in Love; Fellini Satyricon; My Night at Maud’s; Lovers and Other Strangers; I Never Sang for My Father; The Great White Hope; Diary of a Mad Housewife; The Landlord; Tora! Tora! Tora!; Darling Lili; Scrooge and Woodstock.

Nominated for three Oscars, and winner of two, David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter was the least successful of the director’s epics. The main problem was that the story of a cuckolded Irish schoolteacher was too slight for the grandeur Lean and team accorded it. Another problem was the casting of Robert Mitchum as the teacher. Audiences just couldn’t accept one of the screen’s greatest he-men in such a role. Sarah Miles as the errant wife and John Mills as the town fool fared better, the former securing a Best Actress bid and the latter winning in support. Also singled out for praise was Trevor Howard as the local priest, and Freddie Young’s Cinematography which accounted for the film’s third nomination and second win.

The battle of the sexes among the British elite was the subject of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, filmed by Ken Russell with Alan Bates, Oliver Reed and Best Actress winner Glenda Jackson in a breakthrough performance as the sculptress Gudrun. Nominated for four Oscars including Best Director, Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay, Jackson’s was the film’s only win.

Visually stunning, Fellini Sayricon was director Federico Fellini’s interpretation of Petronius’ first century novel written under the patronage of Emperor Nero. Hedonistic and bizarre as it was fascinating, it won the Italian master his third Best Director nomination.

Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s had been an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film the year before. This year the legendary French writer/director received a nomination for his screenplay for the deft romance.

One of the year’s brightest comedies, Cy Howard’s Lovers and Other Strangers won an Oscar for Best Song, “For All We Know”, an enormous hit for the Carpenters. It was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor Richard Castellano. Beatrice Arthur, Gig Young, Bonnie Bedelia and Michael Brandon also starred.

Melvyn Douglas received his second career nomination and his first as Best Actor for Gilbert Cates’ I Never Sang for My Father in which he played a difficult 80 year-old man with an emotional stranglehold on his middle-aged son, Supporting Actor nominee Gene Hackman. Robert Anderson’s adaptation of his play was also nominated.

James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander reprised their Tony award-winning Broadway roles in Martin Ritt’s The Great White Hope to Oscar nominations and Carrie Snodgress came out of nowhere to land a nod for Frank Perry’s Diary of a Mad Housewife.

An Oscar winner for editing In the Heat of the Night, Hal Ashby emerged as a director of note with his first film, The Landlord, which earned Lee Grant a Supporting Actress nomination.

A dramatization of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Richard Flesischer’s Tora! Tora! Tora!, co-directed by Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda in its Japanese sequences, was nominated for four technical awards and won for its Special Effects.

Blake Edwards’ critically lambasted World War I Julie Andrews- Rock Hudson musical, Darling Lili, was liked well enough to earn three nominations for Best Score, Song (“Whistling Away the Dark”) and Costume Design. The recipient of better reviews and stronger box-office, Ronald Neame’s Scrooge with Albert Finney in the title role was nominated for four: Best Score, Song (“Thank You Very Much”), Costume Design and Art Direction.

The year’s most successful musical and only musical Oscar winner was the documentary, Woodstock, which was nominated for Best Editing and Best Sound and won for Best Documentary.

All films discussed except Diary of a Mad Housewife have been released on commercial DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include Howl with James Franco as Alan Ginsberg and the 20th Anniversary edition of Ron Howard’s Backdraft. Both are available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.