tryavna wrote:I always tend to associate Private Life of Sherlock Holmes with all those other "revisionist" Sherlock Holmes adaptations of the 1970s and early 1980s: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Murder By Decree, Sherlock Holmes in New York, etc. I guess Wilder's film must have been the first, but if you're a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, all of them are interesting. They're "revisionist" in the sense of exploding the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce model and, although not usually based on Doyle's originals, are truer in spirit to the original characters, setting, etc. Of course, all of this would culminate in the Jeremy Brett series for Granada. My favorite of the 1970s films is probably Murder By Decree, which was directed by Bob Clark -- just before he made Porky's!
Tryavna, I actually only have the vaguest of reading experiences of Doyle's original stories, and I have not seen any of the other Holmes films that you mention -- although Wilder's film (and your post) did intrigue me enough to want to look up some of these other works (both Doyle's originals, and some of the later interpretations). However, Wilder has always been a director I admired and enjoyed a lot, and I think that he put something very personal into this film, which I responded to.
Moving on down the line of the huge list of 1970s films that I was hoping to view in connection with this lists poll, here are some notes on a couple of handfuls of these films that I viewed recently.
Someone mentioned above that Barbara Loden’s
Wanda (sadly, her only feature film as director and actress), was a central film of the ‘70s to that poster. I viewed the film on a particularly rainy evening, and the film definitely also resonated with me. In the mid-90s I spent a season in an area of Michigan that could have stood in for the country that Wanda travels through, amongst people who were not much different from those depicted in this film. It is possibly the only American film that I have ever seen that depicts a white female drifter; a woman who passively accepts a divorce at the opening of the film, and walks away from her family without looking back. She is like a fallen leaf in the wind, taking up randomly with more or less any strangers who will take her along, no matter how ill they treat her. And, no one treats Wanda particularly kindly at all. That said, it is also one of the single most depressing films that I have seen from the decade of the seventies (or any other decade for that matter), and for presenting such an unflinching image of a huge side of the American story that is not habitually chronicled, I would agree that this is a central American film of the seventies.
As someone who admires the bloody, apocalyptic world of Sam Peckinpah’s cinema almost in spite of myself, I was very happy to finally see
The Ballad of Cable Hogue, which, like
Junior Bonner, displays a different, and less graphically sadistic side of the filmmaker. If revenge is still the driving force behind Cable’s actions, and women are still something to be bought at best, then in this film, at least, Peckinpah depicts a man, who is capable of mercy, and who is actually seen to engage in something like marital bliss. The film looks gorgeous, even without any of the director’s signature slow-motion choreography (in fact, we get a few scenes of sped-up action instead), and the only thing which really places this film short of Peckinpah’s best work for me is the way the ending is played.
Viewing
Catch-22, I found myself regretting that I never read this particular book. The premise of the double-logic that is the catch of the title – the main character is “crazy,” and as such can be exempted from further duty in the air force, however, to ask to be exempted on these grounds would be the act of a rational mind, thus disqualifying him as crazy, and he would have to fly his missions – is a fascinating one. The structure of the film could be seen to follow the paths of the protagonist’s mind, with events happening out of order, and characters and situations becoming increasingly baroque. How much of this came from the novel, I do not know, but it makes for an engaging and often entertaining film.
The central conceit of
No Blade of Grass: that in the near future, the soil of the earth has become polluted to the extent that it can’t feed the world almost comes across as prophetic, considering the vintage of the film. Within the first fifteen minutes, the global situation spins out of control, with martial law being declared in Britain, and we follow a family in their attempt to escape London and make it into the highlands, where the brother of the father presides over an estate with fields that still produce food. On the way, they confront a number of other people with whom they ally themselves, and/or fight for survival. As the film progresses, the focus soon shifts from the ecological disaster, to the psychology of the small group of survivors. Cornell Wilde directed the film, and it is reasonably successful as a thinking man’s action picture, although Wilde could have done without the intrusive flash-forwards that are inserted rather arbitrarily into the flow of the film, and which had me wondering, whether the film had been edited in a booth with Roeg and Cammell going at it next door.
Having seen almost all of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, I have long waited for an opportunity to see
Zabriskie Point, and a dear friend finally provided this opportunity by making a copy of it available to me. Being aware that this particular film has a strongly divided reputation, I was most prepared to be less than overwhelmed, only to find that I absolutely loved it. Really, everything about it: the awesome use of the widescreen and color; the depiction of both the desert and urban landscapes; the sense of freedom and revolt; the romance of automotive and aerial travel. There is a driving scene in Los Angeles, where the billboards and the cityscape miraculously bleed into one another and become one that took my breath away, and the courtship between the two main characters, as she is driving on a desert highway, and he is soaring high above in an airplane is fantastic cinema. And, the final montage is legendary, of course. Perhaps most surprising of all to me is the timelessness of this film, which was so obviously carved out of the confrontation between the youth of the time and the established society. Aside from the first quarter of an hour, which directly concerns a student rebellion on a College campus, and the gratuitously pshychedelic orgy scene in the desert, just about everything else in the film could have easily been shot yesterday. An absolutely essential film of the ‘70s, which remains unobtainable in acceptable format on DVD anywhere in the world – what a pity!
As with a large number of Oshima’s films, zedz has already provided an excellent and insightful teaser for
The Man Who Left His Will On Film earlier in this thread, and it is the best possible introduction to the film. The style and structure of this film is very rich, and builds upon a number of earlier Oshima films (
Shinjuku Thief,
Death by Hanging,
Three Resurrected Drunkards). As far as the narrative goes, the best term to cover all the different things that transpire throughout the film may be investigative – there is a quest that runs through the film of understanding the apparent suicide of a character that takes place in the film’s opening minutes, but as is usual with Oshima, the story folds in upon itself and chases down unexpected paths at several turns, and in the course of the film the characters end up investigating themselves above all, political realities in Japan at the moment, the nature of making films, and so on. That said, I will admit that there were moments in this film, where – because of the way the film shoots off in so many directions – I began to question if Oshima was really in control of the film, and I admit that I even thought the film lapsed into self-parody at times, but then a few minutes later it became clear that Oshima was very much guiding things along with a strong purpose. The investigation into the locations of the film left behind by the deceased filmmaker is a tour-de-force in itself, and resonates in so many ways within the film itself, Oshima’s body of work, and the idea of film as such. I am not at all sure that this particular film will register strongly, unless one has seen a good number of Oshima’s other films, but as far as I am concerned this is one of his very best.
While Teruo Ishii’s
Blind Woman’s Curse may not be in league with the lofty films of the ‘70s by fellow countrymen Yoshishige, Jissoji and Oshima that I have so far seen, it is nonetheless a truly unique entertainment that blends just about every genre peculiar to the world of Japanese film. Here is yakuza and martial arts action wedded to otherworldy horror, presented against a psychedelically colourful backdrop of Meiji society. There is a rather healthy injection of the erotic as well, with beautiful Meiko Kaji (bright star of many pinky violence films) heading a large and busy cast of characters.
Last Spring I read an excellent review by Svet Atanasov (Pro-Bassoonist) over at DVDTalk of Roy Andersson’s
En Kärlekshistorie. As a Dane, living in Sweden, I am utterly surprised never to have heard about this lovely little film. Aside from being a really genuine and bitter-sweet depiction of teenage love, it is also an excellent portrait of Sweden in 1970. Andersson is a master at depicting the human, and there are a number of scenes in this film describing the subtle defeats that take place over the decades in people’s lives. One specifically striking scene occurs in the first few minutes of the film, as the members of a family have gone to visit their grandfather at the hospital. They take him out for a walk in the park adjoining the hospital; they stop to have lunch at a small outdoor cafeteria, and at one point the comment is dropped that they will soon have grandpa back home again. However, grandpa emphatically states that he will not go home, and lapses into a disjointed speech on loneliness. The way the scene is played, the old man’s muffled words and tears streaking his cheeks, are of course all but completely drowned out by the clatter of plates, the chatter of the cafeteria’s guests, the barking of a dog, and the eternal nightmare of a little girl hopelessly playing a recorder to her grandmother. Aside from the intrinsic qualities of the film, I was absolutely shaken by the story that is told outside the edge of the frame – the social changes that have taken place in Sweden (and the rest of the world) in the past 30-40 years are truly heartbreaking.
About a month ago, I started a separate thread on
The Up Series in an attempt to interest the forum in this singular documentary project (unfortunately it has sunk without a trace, I am afraid). The project began as a 45-minute TV documentary on a group of English 7-year-olds back in 1964, but has subsequently turned into a gargantuan life-long project of director Michael Apted to document this initial group of children, as they progress through life. A month after having viewed the entire series of 7 films, I still find myself thinking about the people in these films on a daily basis, and really cannot recommend the entire series highly enough. In the context of this thread, 1970 was the year when Apted really initiated the project with the film
7 Plus 7. As a newcomer in the TV/film industry at the age of 21 or 22, he had become involved in the initial documentary as a researcher, then seven years later, having become a director in the meantime, he decided to go back and revisit the fourteen children of the original program, now aged 14. Apted presents the children with much the same questions as in the original program, and then proceeds to cut back and forth between footage from the original program and the present. At 14, the children are at the threshold to the adult world, and many views that they were parroting at age 7 have either crystallized into strong, precocious convictions, or, begun to become questioned. With some, there is still a strong sense of innocence to the world, with others, the realities of adulthood have already begun to take hold. It is fascinating viewing, and it only becomes more powerful with each successive film in the series.
Werner Herzog’s three films from 1970/71 –
Fata Morgana,
Handicapped Future and
Land of Silence and Darkness also fall into the documentary category, although for the first of these the fit is rather uncomfortable.
Fata Morgana is for much of its duration utterly spellbinding, even though I did have the odd feeling that it represented something like Herzog’s “best of b-roll” in terms of the images used in the film. The majority of the film is made up of footage shot in Africa, and set to the narration of some kind of religious origins text. In the later stages, Herzog meets several truly odd Western characters, who have permanently or temporarily made their home in the forbidding landscapes of the film. I was not sure quite what to make of this shift in the film’s tone, and I admit it had me shifting somewhat in my seat towards the end.
Handicapped Future and
Land of Silence and Darkness are shorter pieces, and in the traditional vein of social issue documentaries. They are concerned with people with physical disabilities and deaf-blind people, respectively. Both films represent a plea to better the conditions for society’s outsiders, and both films are deeply humane and moving. There is a wonderful feeling in these films of Herzog’s closeness to and care for these people, who in many cases live quietly heroic existences in the shadows of the reality that most of us know.
As I inch my way through the first half of the decade, it is becoming clear that I will not make it far into the second half at all with the present deadline. I suppose it is completely out of the question to push this to the end of June...?
