Vanishing Point

Richard Sarafian, 1971 (8.2*)
This homage to anarchy should have better known, it was pure action adrenaline from the start. Barry Newman plays a man named Kowalski who delivers cars and must drive a car from Colorado to the west coast in about 24 hours. Soon after starting, he makes a bet to bring it the car in less than 15 hours.

Having to obviously break the speed limit, he arouses the interest of law enforcement along the way, beginning with some motorcycle cops. Eventually, there’s a multi-state effort coordinated to bring him under arrest for flagrantly flouting the law. He becomes a folk hero along the way, being given help on the radio by a DJ named Supersoul, who is blind but has police scanner. Other than a minor diversion with his family, there’s not much character development or interest here, it’s all about the action.

This entire film has a Thunder Road and NASCAR feel to it, as if you can outdrive the law on open highways, as if they don’t really have radios or telephones and can’t simply deploy other units ahead of you. It’s not like a straight car race across the desert, once you get ahead just stay ahead and you’re clear.

The appeal of this film is that it brings existential statements into a car chase thriller, which is admittedly a bit thin but there nonetheless. This film predated the Australian Mad Max series, but seems to have directly influenced The Road Warrior (1981), easily best of the series - and many more modern copycat films, where speed did make you king of at least one stretch of road, that to the box office.

There’s a mediocre remake of this from 97 with Viggo Mortenson as the driver, who has a diversion in the desert with Pita Wilson of Nikita fame, but it just doesn’t have the anarchistic feel of the original.

Read more...

Get Carter

Mike Hodges, 1971 (8.5*)

A very methodical crime film in which Michael Caine gives one of his best dramatic performances as a hitman for London mobsters who 'goes north' to Newcastle to investigate the death of his brother, which he thinks is not a suicide as ruled, but a murder. He seems to have a way of getting information while staying one step ahead of the other bad guys, and he uncovers a nefarious and unseemly crime that enrages him personally.

This works because of a low key approach to this underworld that makes it seem more realistic than most crime films, which usually go a bit over-the-top. This was director Mike Hodges' first feature film (after tv), and it's quite a worthy directing debut. The dvd features a commentary track with him; another curiosity is a 'music only track' of the film, which has no other sound, just the music score. This film actually won a British fan poll once for 'best film of all time'.

Michael Caine's awards (31 total). Caine took his name (he was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite) from the 1954 film with Humphrey Bogart, The Caine Mutiny.

Director Mike Hodges [IMDB bio photo]

Read more...

Walkabout

Dir: Nicholas Roeg, 1971,
Australia (10*)

This beautiful nature story starts when a father abandons his two children (Jenny Agutter's first film?) in the Australian outback and kills himself. The children are found by an Aboriginal youth (David Gulpilil) on his rite of manhood, a walkabout, where one must survive six months alone in the wilderness. The story follows the three as they all fight for survival in the outback, while the white children learn the ancient wisdom that has allowed the aborigines to survive in this environment for at least 50 thousand years.

This adventure film, by British cinematographer Roeg (Performance), is simply beautiful and not like any other, a parable of urban man in the wilderness. The closing poem is one of the most beautiful in film history.

This beautiful film set a precedent for Aussie films to follow using Aborigines as a subject. Two more that make an excellent trilogy with this adventure are Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), and Australia (2007), which both deal with the "Stolen Generations" of mixed-blood children taken from their parents in the interest of "racial protection" of the Aborigines.

This poem was read as an epilogue at the end of the film. It is the complete Poem 40 from A Shropshire Lad by Alfred Edward Housman.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Complete text of the sixty-three poem cycle at Project Gutenberg

Read more...

Klute

Alan J. Pakula, 1971 (8.2*)
Klute works because of one reason: the incredible performance of Jane Fonda, one of her two Oscar winning roles (Coming Home is the other). Here she plays a call girl who has possibly become the target of a stalker with a more devilish purpose than voyeurism, he's perhaps even a murderer. The suspense works because we don't really know for sure, we're as confused as Fonda's character Bree. Donald Sutherland plays a sympathetic detective, investigating a disappearance, who is slowly sucked into Bree's life as well as his client's. Fonda's sessions with her psychiatrist are likely what garnered her the Oscar, for she takes this film beyond an ordinary psycho crime drama.

Note: Eight actresses have won Oscars playing prostitutes (including Kim Basinger, Mira Sorvino, Shirley Jones), see the list at Worlds Best Films

Read more...

The French Connection

William Friedkin, 1971 (7.8*)
Best Picture (AA)

Using a true story, Friedkin has created a believable story of a all-too-human narcotics detective, brilliantly played by Gene Hackman in his Oscar-winning role; this anti-hero, named "Popeye", could be insulting, rude, even racist. The story involves his chasing of a heroin smuggler that becomes his own personal Moby Dick. Roy Scheider had breakthrough as his partner, but the star is probably the Oscar-winning editing and directing of a massive chase scene, probably the best one in any picture up to that point, certainly the prototype for those that followed. It’s a tight and exciting police story, if that’s all you want; down a couple of stars for me because it doesn't have much heart. 8 nominations, 5 Oscars, including picture, director, actor.

Read more...

The Last Picture Show

Dir: Peter Bogdanovich, 1971, bw (9.2*)

AFI Top 100

Coming of age tale of Timothy Bottoms in Larry McMurtry’s sequel to Horseman, Pass By (filmed as Hud), taking place in the town of Anarene, Texas in the 50’s. Best friend Jeff Bridges has the town’s prettiest girl, Cybil Shepherd, as his steady, to the chagrin of her mother Ellen Burstyn. Timothy's brother Sam Bottoms plays his little brother, an autistic kid who works for pool hall owner Ben Johnson, known as 'Sam the Lion', once a local ladies man, now the wise town elder. He and Cloris Leachman, as a high school coach's unloved wife to befriends Timothy, both won supporting Oscars. Larry McMurtry (Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove) at his best, perhaps America’s best living novelist, finally won an Oscar for adapting Brokeback Mountain from another author’s short story; now, that is irony. The title refers to the town’s only movie theater, which, like the town, seems to be dying a agonizing, slow death. 8 nominations, 2 Oscars

Read more...

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Dir: Robert Altman, 1971 (8.9*)

One of my favorite westerns, everything about it works. It's offbeat and humorous, with Warren Beatty (McCabe of course) moving to a northwest Pacific town, snow and cold instead of desert heat and rocks. He opens a brothel with the experienced madam Mrs. Miller, played by Julie Christie. Of course they eventually establish a relationship beyond the successful business one, but like any western, outlaws and the railroad and the greedy corrupt conspire to upset the peaceful tranquility. Features a couple of very well used Leonard Cohen songs, "Stranger Song" and "Winter Lady". This is one of Altmans's two best films (The Player is the other), and one of the best westerns of all time.

Read more...

A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick, 1971 (9.4*)

AFI Top 100

Filmed from the sf novel by Anthony Burgess, now a recognized masterpiece, Clockwork is a frighteningly uncompromising look at a future ruled by ultraviolence, apathy, and urban decay. Malcolm McDowell leads his gang, The Druggies, in a star-making role; at night get tanked up and then he and his "malchicks" go out for "a little of the old ultra-violence".

The incredible language engineered by Burgess includes English, Russian, street slang, and required a glossary in the book, "viddy it well". Kubrick has remained faithful to the book's vision, and created a startling, visionary work that may be eerily prophetic. The book was about a true incident that happened to Burgess and his wife, and this was his attemped exorcism. Brilliant stuff, as was Kubrick's use of Beethoven and Walter Carlos' music, inventive and ground-breaking.

Quote: Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles that is, ya eunuch yelly thou!
Quote2: ello, ello, ello lit'l sisters - wot you got at home to play your fuzzy warbles on, eh?

Read more...