structural:reformatting
1970s – Indian summer

In 1970 Gielgud played another modern role in which he had great success; he joined Ralph Richardson at the Royal Court in Chelsea in David Storey 's Home. The play is set in the gardens of a nursing home for mental patients, though this is not clear at first. The two elderly men converse in a desultory way, are joined and briefly enlivened by two more extrovert female patients, are slightly scared by another male patient, and are then left together, conversing even more emptily. The Punch critic, Jeremy Kingston, wrote:

At the end of the play, as the climax to two perfect, delicate performances, Sir Ralph and Sir John are standing, staring out above the heads of the audience, cheeks wet with tears in memory of some unnamed misery, weeping soundlessly as the lights fade on them. It makes a tragic, unforgettable close.

The play transferred to the West End and then to Broadway. In The New York Times Clive Barnes wrote, "The two men, bleakly examining the little nothingness of their lives, are John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson giving two of the greatest performances of two careers that have been among the glories of the English-speaking theater." The original cast recorded the play for television in 1972.

In the first half of the decade Gielgud made seven films and six television dramas. Morley describes his choice as indiscriminate, but singles out for praise his performances in 1974 as the Old Cardinal in Joseph Losey 's Galileo and the manservant Beddoes in Sidney Lumet 's Murder on the Orient Express. In a 1971 BBC presentation of James Elroy Flecker 's Hassan, Gielgud played the Caliph to Richardson's Hassan. The critic of The Illustrated London News said that viewers would "shiver at a towering performance by Gielgud, as a Caliph with all the purring beauty and ruthlessness of a great golden leopard". In the theatre Gielgud directed Coward's Private Lives and Somerset Maugham 's The Constant Wife (both 1973, London and 1974, New York). His final production as a director was Pinero 's The Gay Lord Quex (1975).

Gielgud continued his long stage association with Richardson in Harold Pinter 's No Man's Land (1975), directed by Hall at the National. Richardson played Hirst, a prosperous but isolated and vulnerable author, and Gielgud was Spooner, a down-at-heel sponger and opportunist. Hall found the play "extremely funny and also extremely bleak". The production was a critical and box-office success and, over a period of three years, played at the Old Vic, in the West End, at the Lyttelton Theatre in the new National Theatre complex, on Broadway and on television. In Julian Mitchell 's Half-Life (1977) at the National, Gielgud was warmly praised by reviewers; he reprised the role at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in 1978 and on tour the following year.

In the latter part of the decade Gielgud worked more for cinema and television than on stage. His film work included what Morley calls "his most embarrassing professional appearance", in Caligula (1979), Gore Vidal 's story of Ancient Rome, spiced with pornographic scenes. In Gielgud's ten other films from this period, his most substantial role was Clive Langham in Alain Resnais ' Providence (1977). Gielgud thought it "by far the most exciting film I have ever made". He won a New York Film Critics Circle award for his performance as a dying author, "drunk half the time... throwing bottles about, and roaring a lot of very coarse dialogue". His other film parts included the Head Master of Eton in Jack Gold 's Aces High (1976) and Tomlinson in Otto Preminger 's The Human Factor (1979). For television his roles included Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1976), John of Gaunt in Richard II (1978) and Chorus in Romeo and Juliet (1978).