The year 1974 in film involved some significant events.
John Holland Cazale was an American actor. He appeared in five films over seven years, all of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: The Godfather (1972), The Conversation (1974), The Godfather Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and The Deer Hunter (1978), with the two Godfather films and The Deer Hunter winning. Cazale started as a theater actor in New York City, ranging from regional, to off-Broadway, to Broadway acting alongside Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Sam Waterston. Cazale soon became one of Hollywood's premier character actors, starting with his role as the doomed, weak-minded Fredo Corleone opposite longtime friend Al Pacino in Francis Ford Coppola's film The Godfather and its 1974 sequel, as well as Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon. In 1977, Cazale was diagnosed with lung cancer, but he chose to complete his role in The Deer Hunter. He died shortly after, in New York City on March 13, 1978.
The Kiryat Shmona massacre was an attack by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command on civilians in Kiryat Shmona, Israel during the Jewish holiday of Passover on 11 April 1974. Eighteen people were killed, 8 of them children, and 16 people were wounded.
Moshé Mizrahi was an Israeli film director.
Assaf "Assi" Dayan was an Israeli film director, actor, screenwriter, and producer.
Boaz Davidson is an Israeli film director, producer and screenwriter. He was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and studied film in London at London Film School.
The Odessa File is an 1974 thriller film, adapted from the 1972 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, about a reporter's investigation of a neo-Nazi political-industrial network in post-Second World War West Germany. The film stars Jon Voight, Mary Tamm, Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell and was directed by Ronald Neame, with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was the only film that the Schell siblings made together.
Bourekas films were a genre of Israeli-made comic melodrama films popular in Israel in the 1960s and 1970s.
Adir Miller is an Israeli actor, screenwriter, and comedian. He is well known for his dry humor and his split second improvisation skills.
Etan Cohen is an Israeli-American screenwriter and film director who has written scripts for Hollywood movies, including Idiocracy, Tropic Thunder, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Men in Black 3, and The Bad Guys.
The 81st Blow is a 1974 Israeli documentary film directed by Haim Gouri. The film covers the oppression of Jews under the Nazis and features rare historical footage of concentration camps. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The title is derived from a comment by a witness at Adolf Eichmann's trial. According to his testimony, he was whipped 80 times by the Nazis, but was not believed by Israelis after the war; this final doubt of his own people was the "81st blow". The 81st Blow is the first film in the Israeli Holocaust Trilogy by Bergman, Ehrlich and Gouri. It was followed by The Last Sea (1984) and Flames in the Ashes (1985).
Ze'ev Nachum Revach is an Israeli comedian, film and theatre actor, and filmmaker. He has been one of the stars of the Israeli film genre known as Bourekas films.
Kazablan is an early Israeli Hebrew language play, staged first as a 1954 drama followed by a 1964 screen adaptation, later as a 1966 musical comedy, and still later produced as a 1974 musical comedy film. The name Kazablan comes from Casablanca, the birthplace of the main character.
Lepke is a 1975 film starring Tony Curtis as the Jewish-American gangster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. It is often regarded by film critics as one of Tony Curtis's most underrated movies and one of his finest performances
The Mainspring is a 1916 American silent drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring Ben F. Wilson, Wilbur Higby and Francelia Billington.
