70's Bonanza: "Death of a Corrupt Man"

 

"He votes against long hair, porn, and abortions. But not arms dealing."

French politicians of the 1970's in Georges Lautner's wonderful "Death of a Corrupt Man" haven't changed their stripes from global democracy of today, apparently. One of the best of the 70's French paranoid thrillers that stars two of my favorite actors, Alain Delon and Ornella Muti and just drips with corruption behind every movement and action, the film's tense grip on who's watching who only grows tighter (and somehow weirder) after Klaus Kinski shows up as a high ranking political figure also involved in the hunt for a document that could ruin everyone. The said document, held by the beautiful Muti, becomes the focal point in a film that never really clarifies who is good/bad/or corrupt, but seamlessly posits that in a world this awash with self-preservation, it doesn't really matter any longer.

Directed by veteran filmmaker Georges Lautner (who made a host of action and crime thrillers with lots of Delon, Belmondo and Michel Constantin), "Death of a Corrupt Man" stands out for its austere tone and commitment to a reality where there's little room to breathe and even less room to say the wrong thing in public. Floating at the margins of the mystery are the dead man's drunken wife (Stephane Audran), her new lover (Julien Guiomar) and two police officers trying to unravel the deaths (Jean Bouise and Michel Aumont). How it plays out (in typical fatalist fashion) is yet another of the claustrophobic joys of a film that not only seems to get the blase attitude of those in charge, but the only thing that ever seems to generate sizeable action on their part is mobilizing to protect themselves. Oh, and Delon's apartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower? Wow. One of the discoveries of the year for me.

70's Bonanza: "I Guappi" aka "Blood Brothers"

Pasquale Squiteri's "I Guappi" reveals the inauspicious entanglement of the Mafia with everyday life in nineteenth century Italy during a pivotal scene. Newcomer in town Nicola (Franco Nero), after quarreling with local Don Guatano (Fabio Testi), soon earns his trust and becomes inducted into the Cosa Nostra with a familiar ceremony that includes the pricking of fingers and solemn words. What makes the event especially unique is that it's done in a cavernous after-hours church with a priest chanting and praying as the hollow-eyed men go about their ancient methods of recruitment. The line of the sacred and the profane is blurred and "I Guappi" highlights something that's been known in history books for years- that the lifestyles of the religious and the violent are inextricably linked by generations of necessity. However, to see it so casually embraced on-screen is one of the many wonderful passages of Squiteri's subtle mafia drama.

Featuring a murderer's row of acting greats (Testi, Nero, and Claudia Cardinale as the woman caught between both men), "I Guappi" feels tailor made for each actor. Nero, as the man trying to escape a life of crime, only to be embroiled back into the most absorbent style of violence imaginable, is perfect as Nicola. Menacing and towering as the local black hand, Testi scowls and carries himself with dark presence, never afraid to back down from a fight... often deployed by simple knives, hard fists, or whips. There's nary a handgun in sight, which further belies the film's focus on the earthly means of an organization holding rule over a population by attitude and respect. Cardinale, portraying the girlfriend of Testi, (unfortunately) spends a good portion of the film cowering from the same violent hands of Testi that subjugates the people of his town. In addition to that, she suffers the wrath of the local police who see her as the weak link in a chain towards ending Don Guatano's reign. But "I Guappi" shifts its worldview in the second half to a more empowering fable where she doesn't endure pain and suffering for nothing, and with the help of newly converted Nicols to the side of the law-abiding, the film reckons with the mafia's violence.

Being the first Squiteri film I've seen, I can't say whether "I Guappi" is a forensic miracle about the minor machinations of Cosa Nostra or a steppingstone in a more obvious career. It reminded me of the films of auteur Francesco Rosi, especially "Salvatore Guiliano" (1962) and "Lucky Luciano" (1973)- films that utilize iconic figures of the mafia to tell a microscopic story of the political and practical ways in which they impacted each. In "Salvatore Giuliana", the man is only glimpsed as a corpse, and the next 2 hours are spent as his specter is refracted around the country in numerous perspectives. "Lucky Luciano" takes place after the popular mob boss has been deported back to Italy and concerns itself with the conversations, muckraking, and subterfuge involved as he helped the US Government during World War II. While "I Guappi" tackles these ideals many years before, it's no less concerned with the mundane snapshot of a lifestyle that's just as normal as that of the local grocer. It's a film that soars even more by its lack of action and popular mythmaking of a certain Cosa Nostra lifestyle. 

But even more soaring is the film's denouement that I won't completely spoil. Needless to say, it's a bravura long take that reveals the timelessness of the film's milieu while remaining firmly entrenched in that bleak 70's style that no good deed ever goes unpunished in an Italy whose violence is always bubbling just below the seams of decency.

70's Bonanza: Martha Coolidge's "Not a Pretty Picture"

The layers in Martha Coolidge's hybrid documentary "Not a Pretty Picture" are potent. The film deals with rape- not only that of the filmmaker herself in 1962, but the actress portraying her (a wonderful Michele Manenti) at that age is also a survivor of the same trauma. We watch as the film intercuts between Coolidge's fictionalized re-telling of the event as well as the deconstruction of the emotions swirling around the actors as they rehearse. Add to the fact that this film was made and released in the mid 1970's and one soon recognizes the vibrant and raw intention of a female filmmaker examining the culture of sexual abuse as a necessary addition to the New School of American filmmaking and one that belongs in the conversation alongside so many of her male counterparts whose visions of male corrosion are widely regarded as the best of the decade. "Not a Pretty Picture" is a masterful example that expulsion of the old guard was not exclusive to Coppola, Scorsese and Cimino.

Swaying back and forth between fiction and documentary, "Not s Pretty Picture" is quite harrowing in either form. As a fictional film, the specter of dangerous seduction hovers at the edge of the frame. Young Martha (Manenti) is drawn into a double date with another girl where the two (alongside three men, including the eventual perpetrator played by James Carrington) end up in a dilapidated New York loft whose central feature is a hole in the wall that leads into another room where young Martha will eventually be victimized. If watching the act itself played out in long form isn't crushing enough, Coolidge shrewdly intercuts the various conversations, rationalizations, and conflicted attempts of the actors to contextualize their actions around her acted film. It's this debate that sets "Not a Pretty Picture" apart from other personal essay films. Coolidge doesn't shy away from the varying degrees of guilt and acceptance. Even if actor Cunningham gives some feeble attempts at his character's actions, Coolidge allows the space for everyone. It's awkward at times. Strikingly painful at others. And while not a necessarily healing experience (as the final few moments of emotion on Coolidge's face exemplify), the film definitely feels like a quiet scream of simple pronunciation about the act that Coolidge needed to explore. That alone is worth this film being seen by as many as possible.

70's Bonanza: Dusty and Sweets McGee

Honed into the type of leisurely, anemic snapshot-of-time that would come to define the careers of Sofia Coppola and scores of others in the post 90's indie new wave boom, Floyd Mutrux's "Dusty and Sweets McGee" outlives its thin pseudo documentary beginning to morph into a sobering, half-dreamt memory of sunny California and the dark storms of addiction that roll just beneath its pleasant surface. That this film is relatively unseen today (thank you Turner Classic Movies for its late night broadcast this month!) only adds to the film's lilting presence somewhere between tone poem beauty and after school special didactic. 

Beginning with introductions to its main slate of characters (supposedly real addicts playing themselves), Mutrux lets the good times roll, synching images of their late night car drives around the valley and frolicking in bedrooms to a host of popular tunes as if timed to a hay-wired jukebox unable to settle on 1 song for long. Even though it feels like "American Graffiti" (1973) and Mutrux himself would later direct "American Hot Wax" (1978), the film soon settles into the darker reaches of its time and place. We see Clifford "Tip" Fredell recounting his jail house experiences, getting high in laundromat bathrooms, and planning a big score with his equally stoned partner. We get glimpses of male hustler Kit, who dispenses shards of hustler wisdom with comments that he's done things with married men not only in their wife's bed, but also in the beds of their children. We get to know dealer City Life who, when he's not polishing or admiring some type of sports car, trots all over the city peddling his drugs or picking up women and talking constantly. In one such conversation (which invariably involves both a car and a woman) he spouts what's perhaps the most perceptive line of the film. After describing his actions in a "gang bang" back in Texas, he stops short of ending his story with a regretful, hangdog stare and "most of the people in Texas are assholes."

But through the tangled web of direct cinema "interviews" and staged action, the most penetrating relevance of "Dusty and Sweets McGee" falls in the laps of two couples, college aged Beverly and Mitch and the much younger Larry and Pam. It's almost excusable for the malaise that surrounds Beverly and Mitch. Constantly strung out, bickering, but prone to moments of unadulterated honesty and affection between them, they're basically functional addicts. In fact, after shooting up in one scene, she has the strength and wherewithal to stumble to her car and retrieve her crossword puzzle book. They should know better, but at least they're surviving with each other.

More tragic is Pam and Larry. Looking to be between 14 and sixteen, they are the baby-faced harbinger of drug addiction... the type of young kids that launched a thousand public service announcements. Never seen outside of their bedroom, it's almost excusable to accept everyone else in the film. They've made their hardened choices and continue to make bad ones, but they had a chance. "Dusty and Sweets McGee" wants us to experience drug addiction in its horrible array, and Larry and Pam are the shocking finger wave that hopefully turns at least someone away from trying it. Mutrux also returns to one of the most painful needle drops in the film, timing the teenagers' shooting up to the crescendo of Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic". It's poignant because Larry and Pam are entering their own stratosphere before crashing back to the hard reality of a non ambiguous Earth.

Released briefly in 1971, "Dusty and Sweets McGee" never quite made the mark it hoped. Although Mutrux is perhaps one of the more underrated writers and filmmakers of the 70's (just check out his wonderful bio) the film is one of those discoveries that needs to be made. It may seem tame in comparison to the German miserablism of Uli Edel years later, but as a touch point in independent American lyricism, its message hits loud and clear. 

70's Bonanza: Ryan's Daughter

There's a harsh juxtaposition of technique towards the end of David Lean's maligned 200 minute 1970 drama "Ryan's Daughter" that, for me, aligned all my lingering thoughts of greatness into sharp contrast. After falling in love with a tortured soldier (Christopher Jones), young wife Rosy (Sarah Miles) runs out before daybreak to catch a fleeting embrace with him on the hill overlooking their house. The music swells to a lush ovation before cutting back to silence (suddenly) as older husband Charles (Robert Mitchum) watches them morosely from the window. Add to the fact that Lean (and screenwriter Robert Bolt) refuse to create violent physical tension between the two men that would usually provide the undertone for such a film dealing with turn of the century love triangles, and "Ryan's Daughter" is an immense achievement in understated filmmaking crossed with the overstated aesthetic of Lean's usual compositions. It may be sanctimonious to declare this film my very favorite of Lean's over the more prestigious "The Bridge on the River Kwai" or "Lawrence of Arabia", but there it is.

Released fairly late in Lean's career (in which its chilly critical reception would see the filmmaker not craft another film until 1984, effectively missing out on an entire decide of great revisionist 70's filmmaking), Ryan's Daughter" is about so much more than the damning relationship that flares up between the trio. As Rosy, Sarah Miles virtually throws herself at older schoolteacher Mitchum in the beginning of the film because she feels her youth will be wasted in her cloistered, hermetic coastal Irish village. When the handsome (and dare I say pre-goth) and injured soldier Major Doryan shows up to command the small military derricks on the outskirts of town, its almost as if fate is tempting Rosy and telling her she made the matrimonial leap just a bit early. Transcribe this narrative to the forlorn heartlands of Kansas or the snow swept plains of Montana in a Howard Hawks film, and "Ryan's Daughter" is essentially a universal paean to passionate choices and fluctuating feelings that have bridled humanity since the beginning of time.

But this is certainly not Montana or Kansas. "Ryan's Daughter" situates itself in 1916 smack in the breast of IRA territory, often scurrying into side-plots that will eventually draw Doryan into the fray and divide Rosy against the very loyal townsfolk. While some deride the film for its length- and mostly the asides for the Oscar winning performance of the town fool played by veteran actor John Mills who just happens to be in every important place at once throughout the film- plus the extra subtext with IRA conspirators, a brash town priest (Trevor Howard) and Rosy's own cowardly barkeep father (Leo McKern) who harbors his own impetuous and damning actions, all of this establishes an atmosphere and world that feels like its widening into something sinister. In fact, the IRA and "The Troubles" would blossom a few years later. Ireland's coast would change dramatically over the coming years. England's reach would continue to strangle the countryside. In that regard, "Ryan's Daughter" and its love triangle could be read as metaphorical innocence morphing into a turbulent rupture of family, home and state.

Or maybe I'm translating way too much into it. I fell in love with this film from the outset. Not only does it exude a master's touch- just watch the early scene where Rosy awaits Charles in his schoolhouse and the camera pans across walls and doors from her point of view as Charles enters the other room and his lumbering physique is heard coming closer, which feels like an imprinted visual touch adapted later by everyone from David Fincher to P.T. Anderson- but it's an old fashioned romance that rarely saw the light of day as the 70's rolled in. And that was the general complaint against Lean's film, that he was regurgitating previous themes and motifs from earlier efforts and that, at best, "Ryan's Daughter" was second-tier copy. My reply? If this is second tier, then I wish more filmmakers would attempt it.

70's Bonanza: Operation Ogre

In the latter half of the twentieth century, cinema's attraction to the heroic romanticism and ultimate fatalism of the Wild West outlaw shifted onto the righteous terrorist. Just as committed to their brand of outlaw justice as Billy the Kid, the terrorist also served as the perfect (for better or worse) embodiment of the every-man's indignant right to fight "the man". So, it's no surprise that far left-wing filmmakers like Gillo Pontecorvo (who ascended to international acclaim after his 1966 film "The Battle of Algiers") would make such a film like "Operation Ogre" in which the sole burden of empathy and attention is given to a set of terrorists who meticulously planned and attacked Spanish Prime Minister Luis Blanco in 1973. In fact, their bomb was so potent that it sent the Prime Minister's car up in the air far enough to land on a building the next street over. The fact that "Operation Ogre" isn't just a radicalized political statement or transparent attempt to memorialize such men and women is a feat Pontecorvo pulls off brilliantly. In fact, I'd dare call "Operation Ogre" his best film, even better than "The Battle of Algiers" or the cultish "Burn!" starring Marlon Brando. More of a procedural thriller with some stunning shifts of time than anything else, its such a sad fact this film is rarely available on any home video format.

Starring the always fascinating Gian Marie Volonte as the leader of the Basque revolutionary group who travel to Madrid to assassinate Blanco, the name of the film is derived from the military operation assigned the mission. Of course, nothing goes as planned. Just when the group thinks they have their plan figured out, Blanco is promoted to Prime Minister, which not only alters his daily schedule but includes an influx of new bodyguards. Patiently following Volonte and his group as they audible their own plans, the film soon settles on their doom's-day-ticking-clock attempts to bury a bomb beneath one of the PM's main routes to and from church everyday.

Outside of their tense main mission, Pontecorvo throws in a couple of emotional curveballs, such as the relationship between of one of the terrorists and his wife, including one jarring narrative slip that jumps ahead in time to reveal the diminishing rewards of their violent actions and its repercussions on those who surround them. If nothing else, Pontecorvo routinely understands that the revolutionary life isn't without its mortal sacrifices.

Based on a novel by Julien Aguirre and released just 6 years after the assassination, "Operation Ogre" would be the last feature film directed by Pontecorvo before consuming himself in documentary work. It's a fitting piece. For someone who began his career championing the suspect rule of governments and the violent insurrection possible by its citizens, "Operation Ogre" reveals that his passion for violent change was unwavering.

70's Bonanza: Max and the Junkmen

A slight parallel can be drawn between Claude Sautet's "Max and the Frenchman" and Michael Mann's 1995 epic crime masterpiece, "Heat". Both leading cops in the film (Al Pacino as Vincent Hannah in the latter and Michel Piccoli  as Detective Max in this one) are singularly determined to bring down a group of thieves. Outside of the domestic upheaval in Hannah's life (and a step daughter who threatens to bring the violence he works with daily in the streets crashing home), he cares about very little other than achieving his goal of solving crimes. Likewise, Max is given even less enjoyable backstory, other than a check that arrives monthly from his family from their riches of wine producing. It's alluded to that he doesn't even need to work, but chose this profession due to some jilted sense of injustice as a magistrate years earlier. The likeness between the films deepens even further when both cops become exposed to their respective "crews" when the progression of confidential information unwittingly gives them leads into a much bigger series of events. The way Pacino as Hannah spins on a dime when his C.I. mumbles, "man, this Slick ain't no joke" is a marvel of "ah hah" procedural that rarely gets noticed in modern movies. Likewise, Max is poking around the garage of a known car theft front when he sees a recognizable face downstairs. The owner of the garage, under pressure from Max and his partner, fingers that man named Abel (Bernard Fresson) as someone whose supplied cars to various thugs in town. Using his past as a fellow soldier to reunite with his old friend, Max slowly perpetrates a series of double crosses and roleplaying with the man's prostitute girlfriend to steer the man and his crew into a bank robbery. Endlessly fascinating for the way in which "Max and the Frenchman" undulates between crime film procedural and slowly invading romance drama, it's an unheralded great film that, besides its marginal re-release here in the U.S. back in early 2013, deserves a wider audience.

But that's where the similarities between the two films ends. While Robert DeNiro and his crew in "Heat" are intelligent, coiled professionals.... ready to drop, kill or run with brutal precision at any moment... Max is chasing a rather lump-headed and sullen crew. Living in the junkyard of their boss (who takes most of their money from their random 'scores' of stealing copper wire), its rather clear where their destinies are headed from the get-go. These are not successful, career criminals. What filmmaker Sautet is essentially after is the relationship that develops between Max and Abel's girlfriend, played to perfection by Romy Schneider. The moral complexity that eventually grows between them is the core of the film, and it's a hugely impactful moment that occurs between them in the film's finale.

French 'policiers' of the 70's have a distinctive flavor and tone. Either they end up as muscle-bound, illogical sleaze-fests such as some of the latter day Alain Delon films, or they strike the perfect balance of intelligence and pathos. Of course, the gold standard are the films of Jean Pierre Melville. And while Sautet's "Max and the Frenchmen" isn't quite "The Red Circle" or "Un Flic", it is a well crafted and devious procedural that understands truth is in the hushed details of a conversation over car chases and grand shoot outs. It does feature a pretty awesome shoot out at the end, though.

Trial and Error: Yoshitaro Nomura's "The Incident"

Being a huge fan of Japanese director's Yoshitaro Nomura's 1974 film "Castle of Sand", it's easy to see what attracted him to the subject matter of "The Incident", which was released four years later and racked up numerous Japanese film awards. Lengthy, dense and ultimately concerned with the shifting perspectives surrounding the murder of young Hatsuko (Keiko Matsuzaka), "The Incident" plays like a John Grisham novel transposed to Japan. By playing with the viewer's expectations.... giving us snippets of possibilities... parading a host of possible suspects, witnesses and innocent bystanders.... the film expertly navigates the murky waters of young love short-circuited by affairs, questions and insidious personalities. And, since its based on a novel by respected writer Kaneto Shindo, there's plenty of talk about the impact of environment on man. Long a subject of fascination for Japanese culture, "The Incident" makes it clear that the man accused of the murder, Hiroshi (Toshiyuki Nagashima), certainly seems to have little control over the spiraling judicial body firmly deciding his fate. It's no surprise he confesses to the murder in the opening ten minutes of the film. Things only get more complex from there.

Hands clutched to his side and eyes fervently poised downward, filmmaker Nomura constantly frames Hiroshi as some sort of fallen Greek god aimlessly watching the jury deciding his fate. There are onlookers as well- namely members of the press, his current impregnated fiance Yoshiko (Shinobu Ohtake, who's also the sister of the victim) numerous witnesses and elderly family members perched just behind him throughout the trial. Alternating between measured, careful dialogue of examination and cross-examination within the courtroom and the moments leading up to and including the murder, "The Incident" walks a precarious line of fact and blurred memory fiction. Just how reliable is the testimony of the witnesses? What exactly is the relationship of Hiroshi and Hatsuko? What do all those furtive glances between suspect and sister in the courtroom really mean? Over the course of two hours and twenty minutes, Nomura carefully builds a web of "Rashomon"-like events that fold and twist and bend around each other. Like he did in "Castle of Sand"- another film interested in the reverberations of the past on the present- Nomura mines an especially stringent intellectual thriller.

If the final verdict of the film is far less interesting than the serpentine-like path it took to get there, I feel that's the point. Compared to Nomura's other works (and its a shame more are not available on DVD, including this great film) "The Incident" fits neatly into his worldview of panoramic events whose real apocalypse can only be felt in the hearts of an unlucky few. A father and son in "Castle of Sand". A couple in "The Incident". A weathered, somewhat evil husband in "The Demon". While the whole world seems to be caught up in their own self-satisfying objectives in the death of beautiful Hatsuko, Nomura reminds us in a lyrical yet subtly dark closing shot that, perhaps, the greatest victim of this particular incident hasn't even been born yet.

70's Bonanza: Le Serpent

French filmmaker Henri Verneuil hit his stride in the late 60's and early 70's with a trilogy of films including "The Sicilian Clan" (1969), "The Burglars" (1971) and "Le Serpent" (1973)..... highly entertaining (and star studded) "policiers" that have yet to find their due in widespread distribution here in the States. The Austin Film Society recently included "The Burglars" in a repertory screening under the auspicious title of "The French Connection", but that's the extent of Verneuil's impact on American screens. Even though I love the frenetic pace of "The Burglars"- in which Omar Shariff and Jean Paul Belmondo engage in one of the finest car chase sequences ever put to film- Verneuil's "Le Serpent" is the better film of the bunch.... a cerebral, coolly detached spy tale that spends much more time on the diagnostics of a lie detector test than the various dead bodies that wash up along European shores. Like John Huston's "The Kremlin Letter"- which also trades in skulduggery without a hint of pretension- "Le Serpent" details the carousel of double crosses, political innuendo, 'spyspeak' and Cold War fixations with an icy gaze. It's only fitting that, in the finale, when head spook Henry Fonda makes a swap with the Russians to bring back a downed Air Force pilot, not only does the film's biggest enemy get off easily, but its prefaced with a line of dialogue where Fonda says the intel of the American officer in "explaining just how the Russians were able to shoot him down at 30,000 feet" becomes more important than anything we've observed over the past two twisting, convoluted hours. I can only imagine this nonchalance is apt par for the course in the world of high stakes spy games.

 

Beginning with the defection of KGB agent Yul Brenner, his information to the Americans (and namely Fonda) sets in motion the devious wheels of "Le Serpent". His intel- that there are highly placed spies in all echelons of governments around the world- kick starts a series of murders, wearisome eyes and urgent secret memos in both France and America. Philippe Noiret is one such agent cast under suspicion. British officer Dirk Bogarde, seemingly with his fingers in every cookie jar, plays both sides. Fonda is unsure of Brenner's real intentions. And all the while, bodies of agents turn up dead, others go missing and seemingly innocent photographs belie sinister intentions. All of this is handled in Verneuil's no-nonsense approach, refusing to telegraph anyone's actual motive and creating a paranoid atmosphere where anyone could be "le serpent" working their magic to eradicate the others.

 

I can't see "Le Serpent" existing in any other time period than the 70's. Echoing the later American thrillers of Sydney Pollack and especially Alan J. Pakula, "Le Serpent" is an arid exploration of the callowness involved in world politics. The basic sentiment of wanting our world to be safe, but not knowing just exactly how we make it so safe, continually runs through the veins of this film. It's a thriller, yes, but also a pretty frightening document of plausible denialability.

70's Bonanza: Witchhammer

During last month's latest installment of the Sundance Film Festival, word began to trickle out about a horror film called The Witch, a debut film by Robert Eggers that would eventually go on to win the directing award. Strong word of mouth has pushed this gothic New England tale into one of the more anticipated features this year. It will surely also revive the "witches" film, right? So many efforts in this genre- from the late 60's British offerings like "Witchfinder General" to Rob Zombie's post-punk "Lord of Salem"- take the fantasy as truth and spin scary, devilish stories about possession, satanic brews and gaudy bloodletting. So when a film such as Otakar Vavra's "Witchhammer" comes along, not only is it a sobering glimpse at the base inhumanity perpetrated by mankind, but it makes one reconsider the guilty pleasures enjoyed by those other frivolous witches films.

Playing like a Sidney Lumet 'policier' thriller (think "Prince of the City" transposed to 1684), "Witchhammer" concerns the initial hysteria that grips a Czech village when an elderly woman is caught trying to steal a host from her Catholic Mass service. Initially saying the object would be to help nurse a sick cow, her testimony soon includes other women on the outskirts of town and an ominous sounding place called Peter's Rock. Believing they have a full-on witches coven sullying the land beneath their noses, the local leaders call in ex tribunal judge Boblig (Vladimir Smeral) and a mass witches trial eventually overtakes the town. 

Being of Czech origin and released in 1970, its no surprise "Witchhammer" is an angry veiled reference to, basically, name your aggression. Boblig, whose shadowy intentions slowly emerge, is shown to be secretly as vile and consumed by wealth and money than any person in the town said to be a worker of the devil. His wreckage of souls (and bodies through torture) targets some of the richest men in town since their land, upon confession, would be forfeited to his tribunal in order to pay for the trial services. It's not long before "Witchhammer" becomes an exercise in tolerance as we watch the machinations of Boblig destroy people and crush souls all in the name of religious piety. The only comic relief we get are brief explanations of tribunal law from a book about twice the size of the Bible, in which it regulates with mind-numbing calculations the extent to which a head nod under torture is allowable as an actual head nod admission. Bureaucracy hasn't changed in 300 years, obviously.

Filmed in sharp black and white, "Witchhammer" looks just as imposing as its message of institutional confinement. Talky and political, yes, but it also features some stunning, haunting images, such as the stream-of-conscience rant from an imposing monk (framed with just the right amount of light and shadow to create a demonic gleam in his eyes) inter cut throughout the film. The horror film reference is never far removed. Still, his monologues on the seductive ways of women or the various "truths" about how Christianity is usurped by demonic forces make him a likely candidate for any governmental office in the world. 

In an ideal world, the outrageous acts explored in "Witchhammer" are true remnants of the ignorant past, fodder for silly horror films and Vincent Price's intent gaze. Sadly, open any page in any local newspaper and   one realizes we're consistently doomed to repeat that ignorance. For that matter, "Witchhammer" is just as prescient today as it was almost 40 years ago.

70's Bonanza: Natural Enemies

In the opening scene of Jeff Kanew's "Natural Enemies" (1979), the lead character named Paul Steward (Hal Holbrook) brazenly tells the viewer via interior monologue his plan for the upcoming day- which is go to work, take the train home and shoot his wife, three kids, then himself when she calls him down for dinner. From there, his misery-filled odyssey is the remainder of the film. He tries to rationalize his upcoming actions with several people he meets throughout the day, and one, a friend played by Jose Ferrer, sees the upcoming internal apocalypse and takes him out for a drink. There are moments when we feel the crisis may have been inverted. During lunch, he visits a brothel and arranges to be with five women at the same time. In keeping with the film's verbose patterns, Steward ends up talking more than screwing, lying naked and facing his prostitutes as if they were a Greek chorus, lamenting his loveless marriage and searching for acceptance in a life filled with little physical passion. In flashback, we see the deteriorating, almost spiteful marriage he shares with his wife (Louise Fletcher). Dealing with emotional problems of her own, neither wife nor husband are shown to be completely blameless. Basically, "Natural Enemies" is a trenchant assault on the nuclear American family of the late 70's. Scripted in a novelistic fashion, full of rambling stories by its characters, and unafraid to hold its unflinching gaze on Hal Holbrook's slowly dissolving moral core, "Natural Enemies" strikes at something raw. It belongs in the same category of disturbed nihilism that bore "Joe", "Taxi Driver", and Gaspar Noe's "I Stand Alone"- films that place the viewer firmly inside the hermetic, dangerous mind of its unhinged protagonist with little hope for escape.

Written, produced, directed and edited by Jeff Kanew, it's no surprise "Natural Enemies" has yet to find its way to mainstream home video distribution. Even for the liberal 70's, it's a dark and almost rotten experience from the beginning, but one that certainly shakes up the senses and challenges the viewer. It also feels strangely European in tone and pace. Privy to Holbrook's thoughts running underneath the entire film, we begin to wonder how much is true and how much is being sickly reflected through his own memories and unbalanced recollections. Case in point- towards the end of the film (and assuredly the film's finest scene) Holbrook takes the fateful last train ride home when its suddenly frozen on the tracks due to a fire up ahead. The emergency lights kick on and bathe him in a woozy, red light as the woman next to him (played by Patricia Elliot)  starts up a conversation. She talks about the lost attraction to her husband, writings in a diary that will never see the light of day, then plainly asks Steward to make love to her "right here right now".The consecutive abrupt cut shows Steward leaving the train as normal. Either this is one of the many unfulfilled fantasies banging around his head or the film is showing us the pervasive unhappiness seeping into the entire universe. Either way, its a gentle respite in the oncoming hurricane of emotional turmoil.

70's Bonanza: L'Attentant (The Assassination)

Like the best French thrillers, they move at their own pace, elevating scenario, dialogue and Machiavellian politics above action. Yves Boisset's "L'attentant" (aka "The Assassination" or "The French Conspiracy") is a clear example of this. There are some gunshots and chase sequences, but the ultimate pulse of the film lies in the complicated dynamics of how someone is set up and then the various machinations between state, police and general citizens conspire to see their plan to the end. Ripped from real-life headlines- the vanishing of Moroccan politician Mahdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965- "L'attentant" mixes an international cast (Roy Scheider, Jean Seberg and every popular French male actor of the time) with a dialogue laden script whose serpentine authenticity feels just as modern today.

Starring Jean Louis Trintignant, he's the slightly complex anti-hero drafted into the plot by a government agency to sell out his friend, Sadiel (Gian Marie Volonte). Upon luring him to Paris and becoming more and more upset at his involvement in the large scale deception, Trintignant attempts to free his kidnapped friend. Like his previous role in Bertolucci's "The Conformist", his character is a man compromised by the state due to the transgressions of his past. While the idea is much more oblique and abstract in Bertolucci's hands, Boisset maintains a fairly rudimentary arch for him in "L'attentant". He plays a man trapped by his past sins during the Algerian War. His relationship to nurse Jean Seberg is affectionate when it needs to be, then savagely distant the next. Like this main charachter, the entire film is a clean, simple affair. Though the revolving merry-go-round of faces can be overwhelming at times, Boisset and screenwriter Ben Barzman maintain control on the narrative. There's nothing flashy or complicated about the mise-en-scene.  Darker themes are hinted at in conventional camera setups, such as one tracking shot that follows an eavesdropper's long walk to a telephone, passing a dozen other men sitting at desks listening to phone conversations.... the insidious nature of the state's agencies developed through a five second clip. This is exactly the type of slow-burn, exposition heavy thriller I appreciate. In fact, the only thing amplified in "L'attentant" is Ennio Morricone's spruced-up score.

Like his contemporary in Italy, Francesco Rosi, filmmaker Boisset seems accustomed to the non dramatic brushstrokes of the political thriller. In "L'attentant" (like Rosi's "Hands Over the City" or "The Mattei Affair"), the currency is not action but the delicate nature of bargaining and emotional complicity. There's a terrific moment that snaps Trintignant's resolve from being just one of the guys involved in selling out his friend into a committed person to make things right. It's that course of action that propels the second half of the film, and leaves one to wonder if the title of "The Assassination" refers to the political captive or Trintignant's own sinking moral center. It's just one of the delicate pieces examined in Boisset's drama.

70's Bonanza: Bite the Bullet

Think of the madcap all-star race films of the 1960's ("Its A Mad Mad Mad Mad World") transposed to the American West with a bit of 70's melancholy and that's exactly what one gets with the Richard Brooks film "Bite the Bullet". Starring James Coburn, Candice Bergen, Gene Hackman, Jan Michael Vincent, Dabney Coleman and Ben Johnson, the film takes place over the course of one week as the various riders race across 700 miles of tough terrain and barren desert. Along the way, they find their feelings for each other, mend old wounds and generally lament about the passing of the Old West... all stalwart topics in the highly revisionist era of the woozy 1970's. Yet "Bite the Bullet" overcomes its oft cliches and ambles into a deeply entertaining, consistently moving exploration of people against nature and the choices we make, good or bad.

Brooks, a filmmaker of great clarity and purpose, made "Bite the Bullet" towards the end of his career after major hits such as "The Professionals" and "In Cold Blood". At first glance, "Bite the Bullet" looks like a gimmick. All those Hollywood stars, dirtying themselves and flying across the screen on horses at breakneck speed. But its the quieter moments that resonate and reveal the film to be something more. Ben Johnson, as the eldest of the riders, easily embodies the 'death of the west' with his world weary gait and seen-it-all-expressions. Hackman, saddled with a bitter past and even more complicated relationship with fellow female competitor Candice Bergen, is the conscience of the film, holding the others riders in check and, eventually, crafting the film's most perfectly imagineable finale. But it's James Coburn who remains as the soul of the film.... his deep voice always spouting reason and uttering the film's most pungent one liners. "Bite the Bullet" (whose title is a bit of an in-joke within the film) might have been assembled from the Hollywood factory as a method to cash in on the various high profile persona, but it far exceeds those superficial beginnings and becomes something terrific on its own.

70's Bonanza: La Traque (aka The Track)

Next to the game of baseball, hunting is the sporting event cinema loves to apply mythological proportions. From Carlos Saura's "The Hunt" to "Deliverance" to especially "The Deer Hunter", game hunting always begins as one thing, then slowly and assuredly morphs into something greater. Serge Leroy's "La Traque" falls squarely into this category. Released in 1975 and starring some of France's biggest names, "La Traque" posits the question just how far can a group of elitist, well positioned men go when they abandon society, become armed and infuse themselves as gods hunting smaller creatures.

The sense of propriety is immediately established as one of the main characters, Jean Luc Bideau, is seen leaving a hotel after spending a night with his mistress. On the way out, he meets American Helen (Mimsy Farmer) and offers to give her a ride to the same country area he's traveling for a game hunt. Once there, Helen is introduced to his other friends... men representing a cross section of society including brothers Albert and Paul (Jean Pierre Mierelle and Phillipe Leotard), financier David (Michel Lonsdale) and Captain Nimier (Michael Constatin). The men have a big weekend of drinking and hunting planned, but the attractive Helen is quickly hit upon and reduced to another part of the weekend. It's only when the brothers Danville find her wandering around the grounds the next day that things turn ugly. Paul forces himself on her... his brother joins in and timid Rollin (Paul Crauchet) stands watch. Things turn from bad to horrible when she manage to get ahold of Paul's gun and shoot him, running off into the woods. From there, Helen becomes the hunted prey as lies become reality and the men spend the next half of the film trying to find her.

It's here that "La Traque" moves out of its tepid "rape and revenge" category that has somewhat pigeon-holed the film for years and becomes a shifting drama of dynamics between the men. Jean Luc Bideau is running for a high political position in France, and while he wants to reason and understand just how things went sour, the other men led by the remaining Danville brother, simply want to catch and kill Helen to hide their violent crime. Images that initially represented the formation of the hunt for wild boar quickly devolve into France's version of "The Most Dangerous Game". The lean, cold, tree-branched setting of the film and Helen's pained screams and continual out of breath wheezing become the dominant traits of the hunt, ending in a shocking, cold denouement that sends shivers down the spine. The great tag line of "in space no one can hear you scream" is nothing compared to the screams of a woman hunted by the ordinary, eventually faceless men of propriety.

Regional Review: Drive-In (1976)

There's an extended scene in Rod Amateau's "Drive-In" that places a majority of the film's characters circling each other at a roller skate rink as they flirt, fight and discuss their upcoming weekend plans. Not only does this scene feel uniquely antiquated due to its now foreign setting of a by-gone juvenile playtime (which I took part in weekly myself) that no teenager probably even knows about today, but it creates an innocent introduction to a host of kids without a hint of sarcasm or irony that would surround a scene like this today. Basically, "Drive-In" is a film of its time... and its a wonderfully realized representation of small town Texas.

Filmed in the flat, suburban town of Terrell, Texas (approximately 30 miles east of Dallas), "Drive-In" centers its action around the now defunct drive-in theater that once existed in the small town. Sadly, its now a gas station. We're introduced to a variety of people. There's Orville (Glenn Morshower, the man best known for playing Aaron Pierce on "24"), the laid back good kid who finds himself unwillingly fighting for the affections of beautiful Glowie (Lisa Lemole), even though her ex-boyfriend Enoch (Billy Milliken) is the leader of a local gang. Two older men, Will (Gordon Hurst) and Gifford (Trey Wilson, always remembered for his role as Nathan Arizona in the Coen Brothers "Raising Arizona") plan on robbing the drive-in theater later that night. Local town stud Bill (Kent Perkins) and his girlfriend have taken the first step of engagement, but they are having second thoughts. Throw in the casual mix of best friends, little brothers and adults trying to maintain a grasp on the teenagers and "Drive-In" resembles the many efforts that track teenage angst and emotional confusion through the course of one long, aimless night.

Director Rod Amateau is an interesting study. Mainly working in television, his only other film credit is the 1987 "Garbage Pail Kids Movie". From a visual stand-point, "Drive-In" is ordinary. It's the witty, Texas-lingo'ed script by Bob Peete that makes the film. Full of head-spinning analogies and aw-shucks sayings ("whoo, whee bless your mom and dad" when one character sees an amply bossomed girl), it also features some wise, philosophical moments, especially in its recreation of young love. As Glowie, Lisa Lemole (beautiful beyond belief) gets the best of them. A bit of the eye-roll is necessary at times, but that's the most charming thing about the film. Owing itself to a long line of Texas cinema, we seem to be indebted to the listless days and nights that dot our childhood. From filmmakers Richard Linklater to Texas perennial Eagle Pennell, the minute focus of a small group over the course of a short period of time has been the cathartic ambition of Texas filmmaking. And the ordinary Texas setting of Terrell fits right into the catalog of normal landscapes playing host to larger-than-life events that shape and formulate the young lives of Texas men and women. Whether its a drive-in theater, a local watering hole ("Last Night At the Alamo") or the last night of high school ("Dazed and Confused"), what really matters are the connections we create and destroy at pivotal times in our lives.

70's Bonanza: The Goalie's Anxiety At the Penalty Kick

Wim Wender's debut feature (minus a few student films) certainly sets the parameters for his long and inquisitive career. Part road movie but mostly an existential drama that raises more questions than it answers, "The Goalie's Anxiety At the Penalty Kick" is a slow-burn psychological thriller that ends with a whimper rather than a bang. Yet not many of Wim's films end definitively. They are about the journey rather than the destination.

Joseph Bloch (Arthur Brauss) is a goalie for a German soccer team and his anxiety is set up in the opening minutes of the film. He misses a kick and is summarily ejected from the game for arguing with the umpire. That minuscule act sets Bloch on a weird journey. He becomes attracted to a blonde movie ticket girl Gloria (Erika Pluhar), follows her home one night and ends up sleeping with her. The next morning, for no apparent reason, he strangles her and skips town. Bloch ends up in a sleepy country town where he resumes contact with an old girlfriend (Kai Fisher) and becomes involved with the locals, drinking, fighting and, as always in a Wenders movie, listening to rock and roll on various jukeboxes. Wenders never registers a reason for Bloch's cold blooded action, which provides the second half of the film with its tension. Bloch keeps up with the murder investigation of Gloria through newspapers as if he's reveling in his getaway. At the same time, we begin to wonder if this is the beginning of a serial killer, which the film hints at through the disappearance of a local boy. Bloch also comes in contact with several women in the village and our minds begin to wonder when exactly the next murder will take place.

But, as I said at the start, this is an existential effort and nothing else really happens. "The Goalie's Anxiety At the Penalty Kick" is an examination of the tenuous strands that hold us in check through life. Bloch was probably already a little screwed up and it only took a mistake on the soccer field to set him off. And we certainly begin to understand the depths of his depravity when, in a chillingly heightened final scene after long stretches of wandering town, Bloch settles in the stands to watch and comment on a local soccer game. Wenders slowly rises the camera up and away, allowing Bloch to study and criticize the formation of the team, leaving us without closure or even understanding of this enigma. In a long line of cinema crazies, rocketed to their violent outbursts by their lack of tolerance to society- like Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" or more recently "Simon Killer"- Bloch is no different. Maybe that's exactly the point.
Available on region 2 Japanese DVD.

70's Bonanza: Diary of a Mad Housewife

Filmed and released in 1970, Frank Perry's "Diary of a Mad Housewife" sits comfortably in the middle of his two other films that devote themselves to the mid life crisis of their protagonists. First there was Burt Lancaster and his allegorical swim home (or swim away, depending how you look at it) in "The Swimmer", perhaps Perry's most overlooked but strongest effort of the 60's. Five years later, in 1972, Tuesday Weld literally melts away on-screen as the wife of a Hollywood filmmaker floating despondently through her sunny L.A. days in "Play It As It Lays". In "Diary of a Mad Housewife", Carrie Snodgress not only seethes with hatred for her husband (an excellently devilish Richard Benjamin), but this hatred drives her into the arms of young, handsome writer Frank Langella. This smoldering trilogy not only exemplifies Perry's penchant for moral confusion and emotional disconnectivity in his films, but it paints a marvelously vivid snapshot of America's growing disillusionment during that time period.

Opening and closing on the face of Carrie Snodgress in drastically different ways, everything in between is especially violent, metaphysically speaking. As Tina (Snodgress), her hum-drum upper middle class life is quickly documented through the endless preening of her husband and his ludicrous demands for social status and child rearing. Never speaking a dissatisfying tone towards him, instead resorting to passive indifference, her break with her life comes in the form of novelist George (Frank Langella) when they meet at a party. An affair begins, but even that extra-marital scream doesn't fulfill Tina. Perry and screenwriter Eleanor Perry color George in much the same light as Tina's husband.... dashing and handsome, yes, but just as self-involved and nasty as the person she lives with and puts up with day in and day out. Like Tuesday Weld in "Play It As It Lays", we sort of root for her just because everyone around her is so terrible. It's only during the final scene does the film's title come into clarification,and even that supposedly cathartic moment is clouded by the selfishness of everyone involved.

If all of this sounds dismal, it's not. Perry and wife Eleanor are masters of scraping the surface and revealing the hollowness behind people... its just always sad there's one clear-eyed woman (or man) to observe this. Snodgress does seem to eventually liberate herself. It's an obvious but astute metaphor, but the mention of a deadly plant virus that wipes out the vineyard Tina's husband invests in is apt. "Diary of a Mad Housewife" explores the rottenness that bubbles up slowly not only via the wonderful performance of Carrie Snodgress, but the re-growth that's always possible.

"Diary of a Mad Housewife" isn't available on DVD, only on OOP VHS sources, which is a shame.

70's Bonanza: Play It As It Lays

Tuesday Weld is just beautiful... and that beauty makes it all the more heartbreaking in the way she stumbles through her days in Frank Perry's dark deconstruction of a Hollywood starlet's psyche. Released in 1972 (and never available on DVD, although the Sundance channel once had it in its rotation about 6 years ago), "Play It As It Lays" is a fragmented and very loose character study as Maria (Weld) has her marriage to hotshot director Carter Lang (Adam Roarke) dissolve early in the film. She then faces an abortion, whose sounds and images are replayed like bad nightmares throughout the remainder of the film. Her best friend, a producer played tremendously by Anthony Perkins, is there for long walks on the beach and drunken conversations, but he can barely stand his own insufferable existence and eventually, Maria has nothing better to do than hang around the desert set of her ex-husband's new film and shoot live ammo with the stunt coordinator. Yes, "Play It As It Lays" borders on the misanthropic side, to say the least, all held together by a swooning visual style that heightens the smog across Los Angeles and plays like a feminist version of a later Brett Easton Ellis novel. Even the shadowy chauffer who leads her to her bayside abortion is more worried about the gas mileage of her corvette than her state of well being.

Based on a short story by Joan Didion and with a screenplay by Didion and John Gregory Dunne, "Play It As It Lays" makes for a startling double feature of mid-life crisis when paired with director Perry's previous film "The Swimmer". In that film, Burt Lancaster is on an almost mythological adventure as he's trying to swim home through the backyard pools of his neighbors, getting caught up in their waifish lifestyles and obviously running from something himself. Also not available on DVD, "The Swimmer" is an amazing film for 1968 whose message is oblique yet somewhat disturbing. In "Play It As It Lays", Tuesday Weld reaches a state of emotional and physical paralysis at one point which prompts Anthony Perkins to remark her state of "catatonia" is not pretty. Like Lancaster, Maria is a stunted individual suffering through the empty Southern California lifestyle. But what makes her story more damaging is the fact she does hold out some hope for a brighter future as her young daughter is confined to a children's home for unspecified reasons. In her fractured voice over that frames part of the film, no answer is given for this although we know she deeply cares for her daughter as it seems to be the only part of her life that means something, held out in her mind like an oasis from the shit of SoCal.

As stated here many times, filmmaker Frank Perry is such an under rated talent, equally depressing that his very adult films are rarely available on home video distribution, "The Swimmer" and "Play It As It Lays" being front and center. By the time Tuesday Weld, hair messy and eyes wide, stares straight into the camera and answers her off-screen director to break the wall between film and confessional in the final scene of "Play It As It Lays" attests, there are beautiful disasters still waiting to be discovered.

70's Bonanza: Freelance

Hustlers in the movies always have such an exhausting effect on me. Whether it's Jason Miller in the hugely underrated "The Nickel Ride" or more well known con men like Dustin Hoffman in "Midnight Cowboy", I always wonder just where they find the energy and veracity to shake and move 24 hours a day when steady income could be had with a 9 to 5 job. But I digress. Francis Megahy's "Freelance" documents the troubles of yet another hustler, this time portrayed by the charismatic Ian McShane. Coming to real success only in the last decade or so due to his tremendous performance as Swearingen on HBO's "Deadwood" series, I've seen McShane in a number of his early roles and he certainly holds his own as a handsome and often tragic supporting player. With "Freelance", McShane is thrust center stage as the wheeling and dealing Brit who happens to witness a murder by the underworld and then tries to carry on his various deals while avoiding the same hit man. Of course, this complicates his live in romance with model Gayle Hunnicutt and her plans to settle down into a normal life.

"Freelance", eventually released on VHS in the United Sates in the early 90's as "Con Man", is certainly a product of its time... which means lots of Swingin' London (including a threesome between McShane, his best buddy and a waitress they pick up) and a pretty terrible folk song that lingers over the opening and closing moments. Yet, as one of those grubby early 70's revenge flicks like "Sitting Target" (in which McShane co-stars) or "Get Carter", "Freelance" more than holds its own as a minor crime film in which most of the film's pleasure is watching McShane sweat and escape from the relentless hit man trying to wipe him out. Directed by Francis Megahy (who really did nothing else of note), "Freelance" occasionally pops up on cable television. And it does feature one of the more impressive ways to break into a window that I've ever seen on film.

70's Bonanza: Sky Riders

Terrorism. Susannah York kidnapped. James Coburn. Hang gliding. Need I say more for pure, unadulterated 1970's bliss? In all seriousness, Douglas Hickox's "Sky Riders" (aka "Assault On the Hidden Fortress", which is a pretty kick ass name in and of itself) is great fun... an actioner that never takes itself too seriously and dispenses with deep characterizations and motives and focuses on it's loopy, Saturday afternoon serial style.

On a quiet morning, American diplomat Robert Culp leaves his wife (York) and two children at home. Soon after, a group of hockey masked terrorists break into the guarded compound and kidnap the family, whisking them away high atop a mountain in Greece. Ex husband James Coburn becomes involved with the rescue process and tracks the kidnappers to their abandoned monastery in the mountain, eliciting the help of a group of professional hang gliders in attacking the compound. Forget that Coburn only needs a day or two to learn hang gliding and that the assault involves daringly guiding oneself through impending, jagged mountain cliffs. This is James Coburn, and he does it all with flair.

Directed by Douglas Hickox, "Sky Riders" best asset, besides the wide grin that Coburn flashes every few minutes or Susannah York's (again) bra-less performance, is the majestic Greek landscape anchoring the narrative. The point of view shots as the hang gliders are in flight, or the terrific night-time raid set piece towards the final half of the film are outstanding examples of mise-en-scene. Hickox, a director best known for "Zulu Dawn" or my personal favorite piece of 70's nihilism "Sitting Target", probably should have gotten more chances at directing large action films instead of the TV series work he was relegated to later in his career. The final shoot-out between the terrorists, the police and Coburn's crew igniting mayhem in the skies turns into a "Wild Bunch" scenario of machine guns, grenades and falling bodies. Even if one doesn't buy the exagerrated scenario, "Sky Riders" wins you over through sheer gusto.