Category: Nominees – 1970s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Towering Inferno – 1974

OK, I can’t start this review without mentioning how much of a badass Steve McQueen is.  He kicks but and looks sexy doing it.  Just had to get out of the way.  But the movie had many more big name stars than just McQueen.  It also starred Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, William Holden, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner, Jennifer Jones, Robert Vaughn, and Susan Blakely.  That’s some real star power.  Even O. J. Simpson had a role.

The title pretty much tells you exactly what the movie is about.  The Towering Inferno is considered one of the best examples of the disaster movie genre.  It features a 138 story high-rise called the Glass Tower which houses businesses and luxury apartments.  Its construction is nearly complete and a ribbon cutting party is taking place in the Promenade Room.  Because of the tower’s greedy builders, costs were cut using substandard electrical equipment and insufficient safety measures.  While 300 people have their swanky party on the 135^th floor, an electrical fire breaks out on the 81^st floor.

Newman was arguably the main character of the ensemble cast, but McQueen had the meatier role.  Newman played Doug Roberts, the building’s architect.  McQueen played Mike O’Halloran, the Battalion Fire Chief.  Dunaway played Doug’s fiancée, Susan.  Holden was the Builder, Jim Duncan, and his sleazy son-in-law, the building’s electrical engineer, Roger Simmons, is played by Chamberlain.  Aside from that, the only other significant roles were the aged con-man, Harlee Claiborne, played by Astaire, and Lisolette Mueller, the woman he is attempting to con, played by Jones.

There were definitely plenty of impressive things, though there were also plenty of things which were embarrassingly disappointing.  First, I’ll go over the good things.  The technical achievements involved in making such a spectacle as the Towering Inferno were amazing.  There was fire everywhere, explosions, suffocating smoke, characters dying in horrible ways, actors being nearly drowned in massive amounts of water, helicopter heroics, and daring stunts.  It was visually stunning.  Understandably, setting a stunt man on fire is incredibly dangerous, and it was done several times.  It will be a while before I forget the shocking image of Jennifer Jones, falling to her death from a glass elevator, bouncing off of burning wreckage on her way down.

It was all so engaging that I was almost able to overlook the film’s glaring failures. The film’s biggest flaw, in my opinion, was the implausible, nay, impossible solution that the script writers came up with to douse the fire.  Mike and Doug blow up the massive water tanks on the top floor of the high-rise and the floor below the tanks so that the water drains through the fire-engulfed building, putting out the flames as it descends.

Nope!  Not buying it!  First, the few men left in the Promenade would be dead if that much water dumped directly on them.  Second, half the water was shown pouring out the windows, missing the fires completely.  Third, the only way that all the fires in the tower could have been extinguished is if the building was submerged in water flooding every room and hallway.  The falling water may have doused flames in the stairwells and elevator shafts, but there were floors and floors of blazing hallways and apartments which the falling water would never have touched.  End result?  The plan would have failed and Doug and Mike would be dead.

My second biggest problem with the film was Newman’s poor acting.  There!  I said it!  Newman looked like he was phoning it in.  Half the time he seemed disinterested, whether he was kissing Dunaway or rescuing kids from a burning apartment.  But at least I found a reason.  Apparently, during filming, Newman was quoted as saying, “For the first time, I fell for the goddamn numbers.  I did this turkey for a million and 10% of the gross, but it’s the 1^st and last time, I swear.”  Sorry Paul, but it looks like it.

And as a final interesting fact, I have to return to Steve McQueen’s badassery.  During filming, McQueen was conferring with two fire chiefs at 20^th Century-Fox when word came that Goldwyn Studio was in flames.  Steve and his wife, actress Ali MacGraw, accompanied the chiefs to the scene to observe firefighting techniques.  As the flames grew, McQueen put on a helmet and protective gear and began to fight the fire along with the real firemen.  He remained in the front lines, helping to battle the blaze.  At one point, a fireman was startled to see the famous actor at his side and shouted in amazement, “Steve McQueen!  My wife will never believe this!” to which McQueen replied, “Neither will mine!”  How frickin’ awesome was he?!?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lenny – 1974

This movie must have been pretty topical for its time, and it isn’t that I don’t think it could be relevant today.   It’s just that it was a slow and plodding movie about a historical figure that, quite honestly, very few people remember today.  I’ve heard the name Lenny Bruce associated with the counter-culture movement of the 60s.  But I had no idea who he was or what he stood for.  This movie is dramatized documentary about his rocky career.

Apparently, Lenny Bruce, played by Dustin Hoffman, was a stand-up comedian.  At least, he started out as one.  But as his career progressed, his comedy turned into pure social commentary which he occasionally made funny.  Eventually, he stopped being funny and became nothing more than a mirror, showing how people in the 1960s were hypocrites who allowed social injustices to be commonplace.  He showed us how greed, corruption, and worst of all, the apathy of the society in which he lived were responsible for social atrocities.

Was he right?  Yes, he was, but he seemed to have forgotten what made him popular in the first place.  When his comedy act became a rant on the ills human nature, people stopped wanting to see him.  Then, the crowds he drew in were only there to see if he would say something obscene or be arrested.  And his frequent drug use didn’t seem to help either.  Neither did the great love of his life, his wife, Honey, played by an actress I have never even heard of before named Valerie Perrine.  She was a stripper, but he called her his “Shiksa goddess.”

The only other two significant roles in the film were his mother, Sally Marr, played by Jan Miner, and his manager, Artie Silver, played by Stanley Beck.  The movie was, as I mentioned, a dramatized documentary.  The film cut back and forth, and was told through interviews with Lenny’s wife, his mother, and his manager.  There was also plenty of Bruce’s stand-up material, performed by Hoffman.  The film’s climax was the comedian’s death by morphine overdose.

Now, this isn’t a review about the career of Lenny Bruce.  It is about the film.  The real life of Bruce may have been fast-paced and interesting.  But I’m sorry to say that the film was slow and plodding.  And while Hoffman’s performance was very good, I think he was upstaged by Perrine.  Her acting was incredibly good.  She carried much of the film’s emotional drama.

Honey, like Lenny, was a drug addict and she played that part of the character amazingly well.  There was one scene, in particular, in which she is strung out on heroine of some other drug, and calls Lenny to ask for money.  She was so real and it was almost heartbreaking to watch.  Perrine did a fantastic job and really deserved the Oscar nomination she received, though she lost to Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

So, as with any film that is based on a true story, I looked into the story of Lenny Bruce’s life and found that the movie followed all the key points, but glossed over others.  For example, when Lenny and Honey were divorced, there was actually a custody battle for their daughter, Kitty, which the film didn’t mention.  Or even the first time the comedian was arrested was ignored, which was for impersonating a priest as part of a get rich quick scheme.  And just as a side note, his scheme worked.  Dressed as a priest with a stolen collar, Lenny Bruce solicited over $8,000 in donations for a leper colony in British Guiana.  He gave #2,500 to the real colony and kept the rest.  Not surprisingly, the film also really played up the romance between Lenny and Honey.

Another scene that caught my attention was Hoffman’s portrayal of Bruce’s final performance.  At least, it was his final performance showed in the film.  He was sick and high, and dressed in two items of clothing: a raincoat and a sock.  He was pathetically dazed and incoherent.  He was clearly having a very difficult time putting any kind of understandable thoughts together.  He could barely stay on his feet.  It was an awkward scene that was uncomfortable to watch, and it was very well played.

My main complaint about the film was its slow pacing, which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that it was a biopic about a man in whom I was never personally interested.  Still, it had its moments which held my attention.  But not far behind that was the fact that it was filmed in black and white.  Most black and white filming went away in the 60s, and I completely understand why director Bob Fosse chose to make it a black and white film.  It was because of the movie’s biopic documentary angle.  Filmed footage of the real Lenny Bruce would have been taken in the 60s, and at that time, most low-budget documentary footage would have been black and white.  But I don’t think the film would have lost anything if it had been filmed in color.  Then again, it wouldn’t have enhanced it either, so I guess that one is just a personal preference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Conversation – 1974

This was a fascinating little movie.  It didn’t seem like it would need a big budget, a large cast, or a lot of different sets or costumes.  It was a small story that delved in the mind of its main protagonist.  One might call it a psychological thriller, though the plot’s real suspense only showed up in the last half an hour or so.  Actually the suspense began at the beginning of the film, but the build-up was so slow and gradual that I didn’t even realize it was there until it was too late.

Gene Hackman starred as Harry Caul, a professional private surveillance man.  He spied on people for money, and apparently, he was the best in the business.  As you might imagine, it takes a certain kind of personality to violate the privacy of unwitting victims for a living, but Harry seemed to have just the right combination of social and emotional dysfunctions to enable him to excel at his trade.  However, it also ensures that he is a very lonely man who cannot competently interact with his fellow human beings, as is evidenced by his failing relationship with a woman named Amy, played by Teri Garr, a woman who would love him if he could only allow himself to tell her anything about his personal life.

He was naturally paranoid, profoundly suspicious, emotionally crippled, and intentionally detached from normal society.  He would use any trick he could to record private conversations, then sell the secrets he learned to other unscrupulous people who were willing to pay.  The trade-off is that he spends so much time spying on strangers, he is terrified about being spied upon, himself.

The conversation we see him recording at the start of the film is between Mark and Ann, played by Fredrick Forrest and Cindy Williams, as they wander through a crowded, noisy, outdoor environment.  We hear it only in bits and pieces.  But then, as Harry and his associate, Stan, played by John Cazale, study the tapes, we slowly begin to get a better sense of what was said and the order in which it was spoken.  Afterword, he takes the incriminating recording of the conversation to the men who hired him, a man known only as The Director, and his assistant, played by Robert Duvall and Harrison Ford, respectively.

Now, here is where the tension really starts to ramp up.  At one point, a piece of the conversation cannot be heard because it took place near a loud band playing music.  But when Harry is able to filter out the ambient noise, he hears something that curdles his blood.  He hears Mark say, “He’d kill us if he had the chance,” and knows that someone is contemplating murder.  What should he do?

The movie explores certain themes such as the morality of covert surveillance, and paranoia.  The character of Harry Caul is a wonderful study in both of these things.  He tells himself that he is alright with his profession because he doesn’t get emotionally involved in the cases on which he works.  Unfortunately, when the secrets he learns lead to murder, he cannot maintain his emotional distance.

It was the film’s ending, that last half an hour, which boosted the film from average to fascinating.  The conversation, which we hear over and over again throughout the movie, yields the name of a hotel, a room number, and a date where something is supposed to happen.  We the viewers, start to become emotionally involved right along with Harry.

Harry, however, paranoid and suspicious as he is, doesn’t go to the police with the secrets he has learned, but goes to the hotel himself, possibly in hopes of preventing the murder.  He drills through the wall in the bathroom to listen in on what is going on in the room, but abandons his surveillance equipment when the screaming starts.  He can hear what is going on through the thin walls of the hotel with his own ears.

But the film throws us a curve ball.  We have been led to believe that Mark and Ann are going to be murdered, but they, themselves, turn out to be the murderers.  And Harry can do nothing to stop it.  It was a very well written plot twist and Hackman really did a great job.  In fact, Hackman did a fantastic job in general.  I have always liked him as an actor and his character could very easily have been over the top or border on ridiculous.  Instead, he made me feel for him and even like him, at times.  And as you might imagine, it is not always easy to like a character with so many negative qualities.

The last scene in the film was creepy and poignant, laying bare Harry’s psyche and showing just how deeply his paranoia is a part of his personality.  The murderers have learned that Harry knows what happened and they bug his apartment.  They let him know that he, the one who is always the watcher and the listener, is now the victim of an invaded privacy.  The knowledge drives him insane.  It was a creepy and perfectly executed ending to a movie that I found surprisingly engaging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chinatown – 1974

I have been looking forward to seeing this movie for a while, and I was not disappointed.  I really enjoyed it!  The acting was excellent, the direction was interesting and captivating, the sets and costumes were spot-on, and the plot was engaging.  It was a modern film noir starring Jack Nicholson as private eye, J. J. Gittes, and Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray.

Gittes is the classic gumshoe, played along the same line as Sam Spade, and it even follows several common tropes of the genre.  He is a private investigator with an office and a secretary.  And he’s in it for the money.  He is mostly hired by women who want proof of their husbands’ cheating.  When a wealthy woman calling herself Mrs. Mulwray, wife of Hollis Mulwray, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, asks him for such evidence, he takes the job.  He follows the woman’s husband and takes some photos of his rendezvous with a beautiful young woman.

But then, once the incriminating photos show up in the newspaper, the real Mrs. Mulwray, Dunaway, shows up and threatens to file a law suit against Gittes.  Unfortunately, Hollis Mulwray soon turns up dead and his mistress goes missing.  And there’s the setup.  So while it is certainly a who-done-it mystery, it has a bit of an intellectual edge, because the crime isn’t one of passion.  The reason for the murder is money, which is a byproduct of shady deals taking place at the Department of Water and Power.

The plot is complex but not too difficult to follow.  It draws you in and holds your attention.  The mystery moves at a good pace and has several twists and turns, as one might expect from a crime drama.  And the script was so well written, that as the list of murder suspects starts to take shape, each potential killer is believable.  Was it Evelyn, the victim’s jealous wife?  Or was it Noah Cross, played by John Huston, Evelyn’s father and Hollis’s former business partner?  Or maybe it was Russ Yelburton, played by John Hillerman, who stood to inherit Hollis’s high profile job.  Or perhaps it was his missing mistress.

I’ve always seen Nicholson as a good actor, and his performance in Chinatown helps to bolster that opinion.  He seemed quite natural in the skin of his character.  He was bold and brash, yet cool and calculating at the same time.  He had brains and a quick wit, and yet his reckless and impulsive behavior often got him in a little over his head.  Nicholson made it all look effortless.  His character hints at a checkered past, working in Chinatown, which helps to give the movie its title.

And I have to give a special thumbs-up to Dunaway.  She was set up to be a fem-fatale, and she played it incredibly well.  She was mysterious and secretive when she needed to be, but vulnerable and alluring when she started to fall for Gittes.  In fact, I would almost go as far as to say that she was sometimes a bit of a scene-stealer, though Nicholson was certainly able to hold his own opposite her.

Houston also did a fine job.  Spoiler alert:  he was the villain, and though he was clearly a cold-hearted criminal, he could have easily played his part as just a run-of-the-mill, evil bad-guy.  But he didn’t.  He was charming, and had a likeable personality.  There was a heart beating inside him, twisted as it was, and Houston did a great job of letting it show at just the right times.  And his voice sounded so familiar that I had to look it up.  He was the voice of Gandalf the Gray in the 1977 Rankin Bass animated feature, The Hobbit.

But I think that the real stars of the film were Robert Towne and Roman Polanski, the film’s screenwriter and director, respectively.  They really did a fantastic job of creating a cast of characters that were well-developed and believable, even while they adhered to the stereotypes of the genre.  That alone was pretty impressive.  One of the biggest reasons the movie was so good, was that they successfully fought with the producer, Robert Evans, on the film’s ending.

Evans wanted a watered down, Hollywood ending.  He wanted the bad guy to die and the beautiful woman to end up with the hero.  But sometimes, bad guys win, and good guys die.  Towne and Polanski kept the ending they wanted, and it was not only appropriate, it gave extra weight and a sense of tragedy to the plot that fit in perfectly with the private eye stereotype.  Wonderful writing!

And as an interesting note, watch out for the little cameo of Roman Polanski as the thug who slices Gittes’s nose.  His screen-time was short but memorable.  All in all, the film was both fascinating and fun to watch.  It was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, which included both Nicholson and Dunaway for Best Actor and Best Actress, and Best Director for Polanski.  Unfortunately, it only won one:  Robert Towne, took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.  I’d say it was well-deserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Touch of Class – 1973

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting when it came to this movie.  I knew very little going into it except that it starred George Segal and Glenda Jackson, and that it was a romantic comedy.  Beyond that, it could have been anything.  What I got was a quirky situational comedy that was very character driven.  The nature of the romance was questionable, at best, and the plot, at times, had me rolling my eyes.

But was it a bad movie?  No, it wasn’t.  It just wasn’t the poignant drama or the sweeping epic that I have grown to expect from a Best Picture nominee.  I thought that this kind of candidate had gone away in the early 40s.  George Segal played Steve Blackburn, a business executive working in London.  Apparently, he regularly cheats on his wife as much as he can.  He meets Vickie Allessio, played by Glenda Jackson.  She has a good job that keeps her busy, two kids, a divorce, and a non-existent sex life.  The two meet and hit it off.

The plot is remarkably simple.  The two start a causal affair but end up falling in love.  In the end, they realize that they want different things.  He wants the occasional rendezvous, and she wants companionship.  He wants a secret mistress, and she wants a permanent relationship.  Though they love each other, they eventually part ways, knowing that the end of the affair is for the best.  However, it is interesting to note that in the last minute or so of the movie, Steve seems to come to a decision which makes him happy, though it is never really revealed what that decision might have been.  It is possible he might have decided to leave his wife to be with Vickie.

I’d like to think that I am a pretty liberal guy, but the main problem I had with the film was a moral one.  The film seemed to look at marital cheating as perfectly acceptable, at least from the man’s point of view.  It’s absolutely normal to mess around outside of your marriage, just as long as you don’t fall in love with the girl.  Is this the way people thought in the 70s?  Were they ok with this concept?  Steve went out of his way to cheat on his wife on a regular basis, and even when his friend Walter Menkes, played by Paul Sorvino catches him in the act, he encourages Steve to continue the affair as long as he remains emotionally detached.  Again, Paul tells of his own affair in which he made the mistake of falling in love with his mistress.

And while I’m on the subject, I have to point out that I didn’t like Steve’s character at all.  Steve was a class-one, grade-A jerk!  Not only is he a cheater, he is self-centered, childish, volatile, and an egotistical liar.  He is both overly sensitive and insensitive towards others.  Conversely, I liked the character of Vickie very much.  She was smart, confident, pragmatic, and thick skinned.  She seemed to know exactly what she wanted out of the affair, and what she didn’t want.

They take a trip to Spain together for their first real tryst.  After their first time making love, Steve says he felt the earth move.  Vickie says that it was “very nice.”  Suddenly, the notion that his sexual prowess has failed to impress her offends Steve’s ego, causing him to blow up at her.  He goes from thoroughly enjoying her to hating her in a matter of seconds.  After that, I could no longer take him seriously. She tolerates his infantile behavior for only a short time before fighting back and calling him on his typically American shortcomings.

Their arguments increase and increase until they both lose control in the hotel room.  In a wacky scene, the two begin throwing the contents of their suitcases at each other, along with anything else they can get their hands on, half of which ends up hitting the hapless bellhop.  But in the most unrealistic, but often used movie trope, the fighting gets the two lovers so worked up that they end the battle by having passionate sex.  Still, I suppose that it wasn’t any sillier than anything else that happened in the movie.

Jackson really did a good job.  Her acting was spot on, and she, in fact, won the Academy Award for Best Actress that year.  And it was she who, I think, really carried the film’s dramatic content.  As the affair dies, she seems to get the short end of the stick.  Longing for more permanent companionship, she goes out of her way to keep the relationship going, but he simply doesn’t have enough free time to give her what she needs.  He breaks things off through a telegram and she leaves.  She sheds a few tears, but seems ultimately undamaged but the affair’s demise.  Jackson played the part realistically and believably.

I wouldn’t say that A Touch of Class was a bad film, but I don’t think I would classify it as anything more than average.  I enjoyed it for what it was, but I wasn’t able to see anything in it that set it above any other movie.  The comedy was mildly amusing, the romance was present, though not especially passionate, and the drama wasn’t very intense.  Still, I’ll admit that it held my interest for an hour and 46 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Exorcist – 1973

OK, here we go.  This is a very famous movie, one that is often considered one of the scariest movies of all time.  I’m generally not a big fan of horror films, but I realize that they definitely have a place in our culture.  There are plenty of people who love them and even I can enjoy that rush of adrenalin that they can bring.  So I have to ask, what is it about The Exorcist that made it so frightening?

At first I thought that it was because it was inspired a true story, but that’s not it.  It is a supernatural horror story that transcended that true story and became something more.  Maybe it was because of the profane and hideous imagery.  There certainly was plenty of that, but I think it was more than just that.

After watching the film, I think I finally understand why it is so scary.  It is because it deals with one of the most personal subjects possible: religion.  I look at several other films, the ones that frighten me the most, and I see the common thread.  The Omen, which came out in 1976, Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, The Amityville Horror of 1979, and Prince of Darkness from 1987 each had that religious angle in which Satan or the son of Satan made an appearance.  Everyone has an opinion about religion, and no matter what your personal beliefs are, they are generally deep and strong.  It can be very frightening when the darker side of those instinctual beliefs are brought to the light of day.

In The Exorcist, a beautiful little 12 year old girl named Regan, played by Linda Blaire, is possessed by an evil spirit claiming to be the devil himself.  Her mother, played by Ellen Burstyn, takes her to a parade of doctors and psychologists before she is finally driven to seek the help of a Catholic priest.  She makes contact with Father Damien Karras, played by Jason Miller, a trained psychologist, who is having a crisis of faith.  The aged priest, Father Lankester Merrin, played by Max von Syddow, is called in to perform the exorcism.

The strange events begin small.  Loud sounds can be heard from the attic.  Regan finds and plays with a Ouija board.  Then things quickly escalate to violent behavior and profanity.  But it is not long before the situation goes over the top with a horrifying physical transformation, violent grotesqueries, flying objects, demonic voices, projectile vomiting, murder, and death.

Wait… murder?  Well, yes.  When the possessed Regan murders a man by twisting his head around and throwing him out a high window, police investigator Lieutenant Kinderman, played by Lee J. Cobb, begins to ask questions.  However, I almost felt that his character was extraneous to the plot.  The movie wouldn’t have lost much if the character had been cut.  He didn’t really do anything to effect the events taking place.

This is actually the 3^rd time I have seen the film, and to be honest, I wasn’t as frightened of it this time as with the first 2 viewings.  There were things about the movie that I honestly didn’t remember from before, like the film’s first scene which took place in Iraq with Father Merrin.  But through my research, I have discovered how important this was to the plot.  As part of an archeological dig, the priest finds an amulet of an ancient Assyrian demigod named Pazuzu.  Apparently this is the very demon that possesses Regan, and the exorcism is something of a grudge match between Merrin and Pazuzu.

But the film never really explains this in any detail.  In fact, it never even names the demon.  It mentions, in passing, that Merrin had once performed a successful exorcism in Africa, but according to my research, that one had apparently involved the same demon.  Then when Merrin dies of a heart attack, Pazuzu is infuriated because the battle is not yet over and he had been winning.  Maybe this is more fleshed out in a director’s cut or one of the sequels, but not in the version I watched.

And I also have to mention, the one image that frightened me the most when I first saw the film.  The image of Regan, shown in silhouette with a demonic statue next to her, a statue of Pazuzu, which had been shown in Iraq in the first scene, actually made more sense and consequently wasn’t as scary as when I first saw it.  But now, what scared me the most were the few times in the movie when the ghostly, white face of Pazuzu was flashed onto the screen, sometimes superimposed onto Regan’s face.  That was super creepy!  The flashes were always on the screen long enough for you to know you had seen it, but never long enough to get a good look.

And finally, I have to really give a lot of credit to Linda Blaire.  She had such a demandingly physical role and was really put through her paces, both emotionally and psychologically.  It was quite an impressive feat for the young actress.  She really deserved being nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cries and Whispers – 1973

I have no idea what I just watched.  I’m not sure I fully understood it.  It was like a film that was trying too hard to be deep and artsy.  It isn’t that what actually happened in the plot was hard to follow.  It’s just that the characters were strange, their motivations were confusing, and the directing style that was used was, for lack of a better word, creepy.

This was a foreign film directed by Ingmar Bergman, and as such, was in Swedish with English subtitles. The plot was a bit eerie, delving into the psyches of four women.  Harriet Andersson played the part of Agnes, a young woman dying of cancer.  She is in constant pain and endures terrible suffering.  Her two sisters, Maria and Karin, played by Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulan, are watching over her death bed, waiting for her inevitable demise.  The fourth woman is the maid/nurse, Anna, played by Kari Sylwan.  Hers was, at times, the strangest character of them all, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

In order to give a clear idea of how the characters were portrayed and developed, it is important to spend a moment talking about the choices Bergman made as a director.  First, I’ll mention the use of the color red.  The color permeated almost every aspect of the film.  Everything from the sets to the costumes seemed to be saturated with the color with healthy smatterings of white and black.  It gave the film a very striking look, bringing up images of passion and blood, while at the same time giving everything a feeling of sterility and detachment.

The music was sparse, furthering the surrealistic mood.  The pacing was slow though I wouldn’t say plodding.  While Agnes lay dying, each of the other three women are given their little moments of flashback, revealing how her death was affecting them, or at least how they were emotionally dealing with it.  Each time these flashback sequences began, the camera would show a close-up on a woman’s face and the image would turn blood red before fading to black.  Then when the memory would end, the black screen would become a red image of the woman’s face, which would then return to normal color.  It gave everything an intensely ominous feel.

The use of silence was also a very prominent feature of the film.  The first 6 or 7 minutes of the film has almost no sound at all: no dialogue, no music, and very few sound effects other than a ticking clock.  It was all very mysterious and uncomfortable.  Why use dialogue as a way of displaying emotion when long, silent, drawn-out shots of distressed facial expressions will do it better?

During these flashback segments, a few other characters are introduced.  During Maria’s story, we meet two men: her husband Joakim, played by Henning Moritzen, and her lover, the doctor, David, played by Erland Josephson.  David spends several minutes studying Maria’s face, explaining why she is more beautiful than ever, and yet less desirable.  Joakim, when he begins to suspect his wife’s infidelity, attempts suicide.  While he is bleeding, he begs Maria to help and she callously refuses, showing how shallow and calculating she is.

During Karin’s story, we meet the husband Fredrik, whom she despises, played by Georg Arlin.  He is focused on his career and turns a blind eye to his wife’s unhappiness.  But Karin is apparently dead inside, and the only way she can feel anything at all is to cut her vagina with a piece of broken glass.  Then she goes to bed, bleeds all over the sheets and wipes the blood across her mouth.  I’m not sure what this was supposed to mean.

And then there is Anna.  She has been the family’s maid for many years, and the way she chooses to comfort the dying Agnes is to kiss her intimately, then remove her own clothes and press the sick woman’s face to her breast.  This was very confusing.  She is never shown to have been Agnes’s lover, so why would she do this?  But it is all done with such gentleness and tenderness that there had to have been some kind of special connection somewhere.

Anna’s special scene, which took place after Agnes’s death, wasn’t a flashback, but a strange sequence in which each of the three women are called, in turn, by the ghost of Agnes who is begging for comfort.  Karin, who cannot feel emotion, rejects the shade, claiming that she does not care that she is dead.  Maria tries to embrace the spirit, but becomes overwhelmed with grief and fear.  She runs from the room screaming.  Only Anna is able to comfort her, undressing for her one last time.

At the time of its release, this movie was lauded as a “magnificent, moving, and very mysterious new film,” and maybe it was.  Maybe I’m being shallow calling it unnecessarily slow, confusing, pretentious, and melodramatic.  Still, there was real emotion in it, something that is not always easy to achieve.  If you like artsy, depressing films, you’ll enjoy Cries and Whispers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Graffiti – 1973

Everyone remembers American Graffiti because it was Harrison Ford’s first film, except that it really wasn’t, and because it was one of George Lucas’s early films.  But ask the average person who else was in the movie and they wouldn’t be able to tell you.  It actually had some actors in it that are pretty famous today.  Richard Dreyfuss arguably played the lead, Curt Henderson, alongside Ron Howard, known back then as Ronny Howard, playing the part of Steve Bollander.  I say arguably because the movie didn’t really have a central plot, and so there was no real lead… but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The movie also had a pretty good supporting cast, some of whom I remember, some of whom I don’t.  Cindy Williams, who most people know from her role of Shirley Feeney on the hit TV show Lavern and Shirley, played Steve’s girlfriend and Curt’s sister, Laurie Henderson.  Curt and Steve had two close friends, each of whom seemed to have equal weight in terms of the film’s plot.  Paul Le Mat played the greaser, John Milner.  Charles Martin Smith played the nerd, Terry “The Toad” Fields. .  Harrison Ford, played the part of Bob Falfa, a racer looking to race John.

The Toad meets Debbie, played by Candy Clark, a blonde girl looking for fun.  Mackenzie Phillips, daughter of John Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas, played the part of Carol, a young girl who rides with John up and down the strip.  Curt spends time trying to find the mysterious blonde woman in the T-Bird who caught his eye, played by Suzanne Summers.  This film was clearly all about the cast.

But that was part of the film’s genius.  It was a character driven movie.  Unfortunately, it was also part of the film’s weakness.  There was very little cohesive plot.  The movie followed the various adventures of its diverse characters over the course of a single night, never lingering on any one of them for too long.  Not only did the different actors have completely separate story lines, they each had multiple story lines that were almost episodic.  It was like a series of barely related scenes that helped to paint an overall picture of the era rather than to tell a specific story.

For example, at one point, Curt is seemingly forced to join a greaser gang called the Pharos.  He is pressured into a criminal initiation rite which involved him hooking a chain to a police car, causing its back axle to be torn off.  It had nothing to do with his decision whether or not to go to college, nothing to do with him searching for the mysterious blonde woman, and nothing to do with him meeting Wolfman Jack.  It was just another random adventure that could have happened to any other character in the film.

But I think Curt and Steve could be called the main characters because the film starts off with the two of them discussing their upcoming departure to college.  Curt doesn’t know if he will go and Steve is eager to go.  However, at the end of the movie, after they each have unique experiences, Curt decides to leave for college while Steve decides not to go.

The film seemed to be one big nostalgia trip taking us back to the 1950s and early 60s, the days of classic cars, cruising, sock hops, greasers, and rock and roll.  But I could also call it a coming-of-age film as it showed the subtle transition of four young men, Curt, Steve, John, and Terry, as they grew from teenagers to young adults.  They all seemed to learn significant lessons about themselves during that one eventful night, lessons that made them grow a little.  And I will say that the characters were all developed well enough that I really got to know them by the end.

Now I’m going to mention one thing about the film, about which I have to throw up a huge red flag!  OK, so the film’s climax is a big hot rod race out on Paradise Road between John Milner in his 1932 Ford Deuce Coup, and Bob Falfa in his 55 Chevy.  Laurie is riding shotgun with Bob.  The race starts and just before they reach the finish line, Falfa blows a front tire and loses control of the car.  It flies off the road and crashes, rolling over several times before landing on its roof.  Bob and Laurie jump out and run away from the wreck before it explodes into flames.  WRONG!  WRONG!  Bob and Laurie are dead or at the very least, injured, or even shaken up!  But no!  They both walk away without so much as a bruise.  Nope!  Not buying that one!

Another important part of the film, maybe the most important part that helped to paint that portrait of the 50s and early 60s is the music.  The music actually never stopped.  There was always music of the era being played in the background of every scene.  Forty-one songs were used, ranging from the Beach Boys to Buddy Holly, from Chuck Berry to The Diamonds, from Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids to The Platters, and everything in between.  The music from that time had a very distinct and easily recognizable style that really helped set the right tone for the movie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sounder – 1972

This was a very well-made movie.  The casting was great, the story was inspiring, the cinematography and art direction were wonderfully realistic, and the social significance was important.  It was a film which celebrated the triumph of the human spirit.  It confronted issues of racism in a positive way, and did so without being preachy or accusatory.  It wasn’t dark or depressing, though it certainly wasn’t fun or light-hearted.

Child actor Kevin Hooks played the part of David Lee Morgan, the eldest son in a poor family of sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, right in the middle of the Great Depression.  The film opens with him and his father, Nathan, played by Paul Winfield, hunting in the woods for a raccoon so that the family will have meat to eat.  With them is their dog, Sounder, so named because of his loud barking.  Waiting for them at their tiny cabin is Nathan’s wife, Rebecca, played by Cicely Tyson, and the two younger children, Earl and Josie Mae, played by Eric Hooks and Yvonne Jarrell.

Well, to make a long story short, the family is starving, so Nathan steals food to feed them.  He is arrested and sentenced to a year of hard labor.  The film’s main plot is about how David Lee must become the man of the house and how Rebecca and her three children must band together to sharecrop the land without Nathan.

I learned that there were two big differences between the book upon which the movie was based and the film.  First, the dog, Sounder, is cruelly and casually shot during Nathan’s arrest.  The main body of the book focuses how the family rallies around Sounder to keep him alive, just as they hope for Nathan’s survival and safe return.  The film is focused on the family struggling to keep the farm and themselves alive.  Second, in the book, when Nathan is eventually released and returns home, both he and Sounder die within a few months.  In the film, they both live.

But in both mediums, the remarkable story of the character of David Lee growing up and becoming a man remains the same.  Both Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively.  True, those nominations were deserved, but I thought Kevin Hooks also did a pretty good job, especially since he was really the main character of the film.  Everything seemed to be told from his perspective and Hooks did a fine job of keeping the emotional content of the film moving forward.

As I mentioned, the subject of racism was given its fair share of the plot.  The simple act of thievery should not have been worthy of the unusually harsh sentence that the character of Nathan was forced to endure.  But the fact that he was a colored man being sentenced by a racist, white judge, seemed to guaranty unfair treatment.  After he was taken to prison, they would neither let his wife have any contact with him, nor would they tell the family what prison camp he would be assigned to.

After a kindly white lady named Mrs. Boatwright, played by Carmen Matthews, breaks the law to learn where Nathan is being sent, David Lee goes on a journey to find his father.  Along the way he meets and starts a friendship with a black school teacher who takes him in and takes an interest in his education.  Janet MacLachlan played the school teacher, Camille Johnson, and did a wonderful job.

For the most part, the movie kept with the trend of the time in film-making in that it seemed to prize realism.  Director, Martin Ritt, did a great job of keeping the plot and the art direction grounded in the real world.  The characters were well-written and believable, and the actors were all very well-cast.  I’d like to give a special shout out to Cicely Tyson for a great performance.  She really seemed to embrace her character and gave her a strength that was inspiring to watch.

And speaking of being inspired, the message that the end of the film left me with was both uplifting and powerful.  David Lee has been invited to spend the school year with Miss Johnson and attend her school.  He almost refuses to go because with his father’s return, he wants to stay and help him with the farm.  But Nathan’s little speech, telling David Lee to go was emotionally stirring.  He says, “That’s what I’m gonna do with this trouble in my leg.  I’m gonna beat it.  Ain’t nothing left for me to do but to beat it.  But that’s what I want you to do.  I want you to beat the life they got all laid out for you in this place, cause there ain’t nothing, there ain’t nobody here but them bastards that sent me… Son, don’t get too used to this place, cause wherever you is, I’m gonna love you.”  I’ve always liked those scenes in films that say “My life is here because I have responsibilities, but you have a chance to make a better life for yourself.  I mean to see you get that chance.  If you do, you’ll make all my hard work mean something.”  If that isn’t inspirational, then I don’t know what is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Emigrants – 1972

Before I started watching The Emigrants, I was not aware that I already knew the story.  I am familiar with one of the most gorgeous musicals it has ever been my pleasure to hear, Kristina fran Duvemala, a Swedish musical that premiered in Malmo, Sweden, in 1995.  It was written by Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the two men in the pop group, ABBA.  The Emigrants is a film that was based on the same series of four novels by Vilhelm Moberg:  The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, The Settlers, and The Last Letter Home.  The movie covers events that take place in the first two novels.

Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann play the leads, Karl Oskar Nilsson and Kristina Nilsson, extremely poor farmers working themselves to the bone on a rocky and unproductive farm in Korpamoen, Sweden.  Karl Oskar’s brother Robert, played by Eddie Axberg, is a dreamer who is physically abused by his employer when he hires himself out as a farmhand.  Pierre Lindstedt plays Arvid, Robert’s best friend and fellow worker.

Poverty and no hope of a better future cause both Robert and Karl Oskar to contemplate moving to America, where the streets are supposedly paved with gold, and the land is good for farming.  After the death of one of her children, Kristina agrees to go and plans are made.  It isn’t long before a large party of people, including Danjel, played by Allan Edwall, and Ulrika, played by Monica Zetterlund.  Danjel is fleeing from religious persecution, and Ulrika is an ex-prostitute who is one of his followers.

The second leg of the film is about the hardships the group endures while crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a 10 week voyage on a filthy boat, under horrible conditions.  Then, when they finally reach America, they decide to make their way to unclaimed land in Minnesota. When the finally reach their destination, what we now know as Chisago Lake, they stake their property claims and begin to build the budding nation of America.  That is where the film ends, but it is important to know that there was actually a sequel, Unto a Good Land, which brought the entire surviving cast back to reprise their roles.  In it, we learn the fates of the main characters.  We follow the hardships they endure, some setting down their roots and thriving in the new land, and others traveling on to new adventures.

The film has a wonderful and inspirational story and the acting was very good.  Unfortunately, the film was a little hard to watch.  The picture quality was horrible, the camera work was frequently shaky, the cinematography was rough, and the music was jarring and disjointed.  The color quality was always washed out so badly that I might as well have been watching a film in black and white.  There were times when I think the colors were supposed to be vibrant, which would have enhanced the mood and feel of scenes, but the dim and muted colors seemed to suck all the joy out of the movie.

I’m having trouble determining if it was all on purpose or not, because if it was, I don’t understand why it was nominated for Best Picture.  I mean, really, it looked like it was filmed on an old Super 8, hand-held camera.  Scenes which took place in bright sunlight were so overexposed that sometimes the screen actually burst into pure white.  Maybe the faded colors were supposed to enhance the drab and dismal circumstances of the characters, but then I think they might have gone a little overboard.

And I mentioned the music that didn’t always seem to blend with the action taking place on the screen.  Half the time it was barely noticeable, and then it would flare up to a distracting volume at unexpected times.  For example, when the party of Emigrants is leaving Korpamoen for the last, the music turns into something that might have made more sense in a melodramatic horror film as the monster finally reveals itself to the screaming damsel.  Music is supposed to enhance the action on the screen, not distract from it.

If it weren’t for things like this and the questionable picture quality, I think this movie had the potential to be a spectacular telling of the epic story.  Instead, it just looked like a low-budget film that could have been so much more than it was.  But there were 3 things that saved this film from mediocrity.  The inspiring story with its wonderfully written characters that were never presented as cultural stereotypes, the capable cast of believable actors, and the down-to-earth, gritty, and realistic sets and costumes.

Though the film was made in Swedish, the only version that I could find was dubbed in English.  I would have rather seen it in its original language with subtitles, but I didn’t really mind the dubbed voices.  They did a good job of matching the dialogue to the lip movements of the actors.  There were times when it actually looked like they were just speaking English.