JANET Maslin of the New York Times has put her paper's official stamp on a fact of life already known by many film buffs -- namely, that the decade of the 1970s was a high-water mark of movie-making. As Ms. Maslin noted in a May 1 commentary, while the 1970s may not have been the Golden Era of the Silver Screen, it was nonetheless a time of remarkably diverse, intelligent and influential works, the likes of which emerge all too infrequently from the timid film factories of today.

Just consider some of the titles Ms. Maslin cited in her piece. Among the foreign movies were "Chloe in the Afternoon," "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," "Two English Girls," "Cries and Whispers," "Tokyo Story," "Last Tango in Paris," "Day for Night," "The Conformist," "Lacombe, Lucien," "Armacord" and "Le Petit Theatre de Jean Renoir."

The American productions named by the Times movie critic included the first two "Godfather" films, "The Conversation," "American Graffiti," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," "Images," "California Split," "Thieves Like Us," "The Long Goodbye," "Nashville," "Mean Streets," "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," "The Last Picture Show," "French Connection," "The Exorcist," "Carnal Knowledge," "Klute," "The Parallax View," "The Heartbreak Kid," "Three Days of the Condor," "The Way We Were," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Chinatown," "Shampoo," "Don't Look Now," "Badlands," "Bad Company," "Husbands," "Women Under the Influence," "Blume in Love" and "The Sugarland Express."

An impressive roster. And Ms. Maslin didn't even mention "Taxi Driver," "Network," "Star Wars," "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein," "Sleeper," "Love and Death," "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," "Serpico," "The Deer Hunter," "Patton," "MASH," "Cabaret," "Save the Tiger," "The Sting," "Apocalypse Now," "Animal House," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "All the President's Men," "Rocky," "Julia," "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "Being There."

We could go on. Say what you want about the '70s, it was a great decade for movies and movie lovers.