ANDREI RUBLEV
****½
USSR
A unique, much banned biopic of
the 15th Century icon painter, which has
since found its way into several all-time best lists. It's composed of
seven episodes, each of which comes announced by an intertitle. Beyond the
chronology, the links between these are often purely metaphorical. You're
supposed to make a lot of the connections in retrospect, so you learn to
be patient. And patience is a prerequisite since the picture runs well
over three hours and several sections may strike you as rather stagnant
even with afterthought. But they are generally drowned out by Tarkovsky's
hypnotic touch with time and setting.
dir: Andrei Tarkovsky
wr: Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Kontchalovsky
ph: Vadim Yusov
ed: N. Beliava, L. Lararev
cast: Anatoly Solonitsin, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolai Grinko, Nikolai
Sergeyev
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
***½
USA
Adventures of the of the
train-robbing duo of the title.
An amusing, easygoing and amiable contemporary Western that proved a major
success, both critically and financially. A touch too slight and self-conscious but
generally enjoyable.
dir: George Roy Hill
cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
CACTUS FLOWER
***
USA
A dentist needs to convince his
suicidal mistress that his secretary
is his wife.
A miscast, increasingly incongruous yet predictable comedy, with a few
redeeming scenes and an adorable debutante.
dir: Gene Saks
cast: Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, Goldie Hawn,
Jack Weston, Rick Lenz, Vito Scotti
THE DAMNED
***½
Italy/Switzerland/West Germany
The leader of a munitions
dynasty is slaughtered by the SS on the eve of Nazi power. Heightened
melodrama ensues.
In a sense, the quintessential Visconti picture: gorgeous, opulent, badly dubbed and
always on the verge of hysteria.
dir: Luchino Visconti
cast: Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Berger, Helmut
Griem, Renud Verley, Umberto Orsini, Charlotte Rampling
EASY RIDER
****
USA
A landmark low-budget road-movie
about two pothead bikers riding across America in search of Freedom.
Concentrating on an America where ethereal wisdom-seeking hippies and rich
young lawyers feel equally imprisoned and boasting a trendy
anti-establishment spirit, it captured the zeitgeist like no other picture
(with plenty of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll) and made quite a bit of profit.
Being disillusioned
with one's country was terribly fashionable at the time, and many people mistook the grit,
squalor
and general unpleasantness of it all as down-and-dirty realism, or even social
commentary. And the makers were convinced they've made a profound,
Allegorical piece about two bikers as Jesus figures.
It isn't productive
however, to judge this picture as you would most others. Few of its
strongest qualities are intentional - its primary value lies in the way it
accidentally reveals so much about a social climate which would embrace it
as a box-office hit. One of the most influential and imitated films in
history, it's probably best enjoyed as a time capsule with a terrific
soundtrack - including contributions from the likes of Bob Dylan, Jimi
Hendrix and The Band - as well as a good eye for location. As such, it's
never less than absorbing. (It's also healthier to program your brain to
think that things like the climactic LSD trip in a cemetery weren't as
derivative then as they appear now.)
dir: Dennis Hopper
wr: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern
ph: Laszlo Kovacs
ed: Donn Cambern
cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson,
Karen Black, Toni Basil
LA
FEMME INFIDÈLE
****
France/Italy
This is one of the first times that the age-old tale of the adulterous
wife received the coolly sophisticated French upper-class treatment. It
was also done in the day when it was shocking for someone to discover that
upper-class people have it in them to commit gruesome acts of violence.
Bewitching as ever, Stéphane Audran takes on the title role,
with Michel Bouquet as the cuckold. They are both intelligent, intriguing
actors, who can play rich and cultured, and still stay relatably human.
This is probably the most purely Hitchcockian of Claude
Chabrol's celebrated mid-career thrillers. The score composed of
half-screeching violins is a clear homage. But the more useful attribute
Chabrol shares with The Master is the morbidly funny way he has about
handling scenes with things like fresh corpses and murder investigations.
It's also possible to respond to the tension and gravity of the situations
without necessarily getting the joke (which may be the case with the kind
of chic, civilised viewer who is innately drawn to tastefully presented
schlock).
wr/dir: Claude Chabrol
ph: Jean Rabier
cast: Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, Maurice Ronet, Serge
Bento, Michel Duchaussoy, Guy Marly, Stephane Di Napoli, Louise Chevalier
KES
****
UK
In a small industrial town, a
boy finds joy in looking after a pet bird.
British verité, detailed, incisive, funny and unexpectedly affecting.
wr/dir: Ken Loach
cast: David Bradley, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland,
Freddie Fletcher, Brian Glover
MEDEA
***½
Italy/France/West Germany
Medea helps Jason capture the
golden fleece, flees her father's kingdom, is left by Jason for the
princess Glauce and plots revenge.
A strange, arresting adaptation that does require some familiarity with
the original myths and suffers from awkward dubbing and composition. Not
necessarily lacking in impact all the same.
dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini
cast: Maria Callas, Giuseppe Gentile, Massimo Girotti, Laurent
Terzieff, Margaret Clementi, Annamaria Chio, Paul Jabara
MIDNIGHT COWBOY
***½
USA
A Texan goes to New York with
dreams of becoming a hustler and befriends a sick con man.
Universally heralded for showing the seamy side of New York as it is.
The detail is ugly and confronting, and the performances are mesmerizing.
dir: John Schlesinger
wr: Waldo Salt
cast: Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Brenda Vaccaro,
Sylvia Miles
MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S
*****
France
A devout Christian must spend a
night with an open-minded divorcée.
The fourth, best and most successful of Rohmer's moral tales. A witty, captivating and
intoxicating conversation piece, impeccably written
and acted.
wr/dir: Eric Rohmer
ph: Nestor Almendros
cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Françoise Fabian, Marie-Christine
Barrault, Antoine Vitez
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
*****
Italy/USA
A widow anticipates the
railroad as she is being targeted by ruthless gunmen.
A long, violent, operatic and wholly engrossing Western epic, with an
array of memorable sequences - from its legendary credits to its intimately
rousing finale. Perhaps the last true old-style Western classic.
dir: Sergio Leone
cast: Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards,
Charles Bronson
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ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
***½
UK
You already miss Connery but director Peter R. Hunt has a fine sense of
the formula, so you don't come out disappointed just yet.
dir: Peter R. Hunt
cast: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Ilse Steppat,
Gabriele Ferzetti
QUE LA
BÊTE MEURE
****½
France
Released
in the US as “This Man Must Die”, this is one of a
string of very respectable thrillers Claude Chabrol made in the late 60s and early 70s. In
the opening scenes a child is killed in a hit-and-run accident and his
father swears revenge. After at least one major coincidence, he tracks
down the culprit and what transpires involves Hitchcockian setpieces, cool
psychological dissecting and the bourgeoisie.
One of Chabrol’s major strengths in this and several other
pictures is the way he nails down that lived-in feel with just about every
room he presents. He uses interiors evocatively, as extensions of the
characters that inhabit them, and he has a strong sense of the way the
mode of conversation can depend and sometimes conflict with the
environment. The contrast he establishes between the room where a warm,
folksy working-class family keeps their dinner-table and the one where a
rich but dysfunctional one keeps theirs also tells you all you need to
know about where his sentiments lie.
The restraint with which Michel Duchaussoy plays the bereaved
father may alienate some viewers. He doesn’t play on your condolences.
He doesn’t strain for close-ups. He’s rigid and reserved in a way that
adds subtext to his actions. When he gives a girl he’s trying to seduce
the standard spiel about how he can’t think and sleep since the day she
came into his life, he controls his voice masterfully to hint at a much
more morbid interpretation. And he doesn’t need a close-up for it.
The villain, as played by Jean Yanne, is a larger-than-life
upper-class monster. This is partly for metaphorical purposes (the title,
a direct lift from the Bible, when translated reads “As the Beast Must
Die”), partly for audience identification purposes, partly for good
old-fashioned plot purposes. Yanne is a very skillful, very natural actor.
Though he is playing a borderline-grotesque brute – and with relish –
he moves and talks in a way that makes you think of gruff bastards
you’ve met in real life rather than cartoon villains. He has a couple of
nicely observed, telling moments, such as a scene where he rejects
sympathy after a near-death experience.
dir: Claude Chabrol
wr: Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff
ph: Jean Rabier
ed: Jacques Gaillard
m: Andre Girard
cast: Michel Duchaussoy, Caroline Cellier, Jean Yanne,
Anouk Ferjac, Marc Di Napoli, Maurice Pialat, Guy Marly, Lorraine
Rainer, Louise Chevalier
SATYRICON
***
Italy
Loosely interconnected
episodes of debauchery in Ancient Rome, most of them revolving around two
very attractive grown men fighting to exclusively screw a young slave boy.
Later, they're determined to fuck a young hermaphrodite. It's
indulgent, excessive phantasmagoria, difficult to follow and peopled by
repugnant creations, but spectacularly designed and photographed.
dir: Federico Fellini
ph: Giuseppe Rotunno
pd: Luigi Scaccianoce
cast: Martin Potter, Hiram Keller, Max Born, Salvo Randone,
Mario Romagnoli,
THE SORROW AND THE PITY
***½
France/Switzerland/Germany
A celebrated 260-minute
documentary epic about France's involvement with the Nazis in World War
II, concentrating particularly on the small town of Clermont-Ferrand.
Ophüls interviews a total of 32 witnesses, ranging from German occupiers,
Resistance fighters, Anthony Eden as well as local Vichy government
collaborators. Although Ophüls' voice is prominent, he succeeds for the
greater part in maintaining an objective and surprisingly humanist
outlook. All of the interviewees have fascinating stories to tell and
their testimony is interspersed with telling newsreel footage (as well as
clips from a particularly disturbing Nazi-financed anti-Semitic picture).
And gradually Ophüls makes a habit of directly cutting from one
interviewee's statements to another person's completely contradictory
ones. Ultimately however, the majority of the film does consist of blandly
photographed talking heads - it quickly grows repetitive and, sacrilegious
though these sentiments may be, it could have easily stood to lose about an
hour's worth. Cutting down its length wouldn't have necessarily had to
result in cutting down its scope. At the same time, some of its impact
does stem from the feeling of having endured over four hours of it. You
certainly won't be unmoved. At the very least, you will never be able to look
at - or listen to, or tolerate - Maurice Chevalier again.
dir: Marcel Ophüls
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN
***
USA
A mockumentary account of the career of a Jewish aspiring gangster.
Allen's directorial debut: a broad, silly comedy, hit-and-miss in
nature, but generally pleasant.
dir: Woody Allen
wr: Woody Allen, Mickey Rose
cast: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire,
Jacquelyn Hyde, Lonny Chapman, Jan Merlin, James Anderson
THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?
****
USA
Hopeful low-lives engage in a
marathon dance contest in the early 30s.
A detailed, gruelling and harrowing depiction of the Depression era and the exploitation of show
business.
dir: Sydney Pollack
cast: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Gig Young, Susannah
York, Red Buttons, Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Dern
THE WILD BUNCH
***½
USA
In 1913, aging Texan outlaws go
to Mexico seeking revenge.
A landmark Western that re-invented the genre through slow-motion
blood-letting. Despite assured direction, striking imagery and intense
sequences, it's not always easy to sit through, especially when style
overpowers - or stands in for - substance.
dir: Sam Peckinpah
cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond
O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez, Ben Johnson
WOMEN IN LOVE
***½
UK
The sex lives of two
unfulfilled sisters in the 20s.
An ambitious and groundbreaking but ultimately exhausting screen adaptation
of Lawrence's classic.
dir: Ken Russell
cast: Glenda Jackson, Alan Bates, Jennie Linden,
Oliver Reed, Michael Gough, Alan Webb
Z
****
France/Algeria
Any similarity to real
persons 'is DELIBERATE,' announce the opening credits. The political
assassination around which the plot revolves is very directly based on a
similar one that occurred in Greece six years earlier. Costa-Gavras
embraces the script's non-fictional roots with great fervour and exploits
them for a greater sense of urgency and immediate impact. And it works.
The film moves so fast, you barely get a chance to notice the entirely
subjective, fabricating forces operating with a black-and-white moral
outlook - the characters are strictly cardboard (the killer is not only a
sneering homosexual, he's also a convicted child rapist).
The picture also
boasts one of the great chase sequences in cinema, where a man is pursued
by a speeding car.
After a troubled production, the film was so
well-received, it garnered not only the Best Foreign Film Oscar, but also
an editing Oscar and a Best Picture nomination.
dir: Costa-Gavras
wr: Costa-Gavras, Jorge Semprun
ph: Raoul Coutard
ed: Françoise Bonnot
m: Mikis Theodorakis
cast: Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Irene Papas,
Jacques Perrin, Charles Denner, François Perrier, Pierre Dux, Renato
Salvatori, Marcel Bozzuffi
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