Badlands

Terrence Malick, 1972 (8.8*) Legendary director Terrence Malick turned down the major studios and made his first feature with private investors at a cost of just $350,000. The result is a small, indie film of a famous murder spree in the midwest, as the Kit Starkweather - Caril-Ann Fugate killings are filmed here as characters Kit Carruthers and Holly Sargis (even though a film disclaimer claims the story is fictional). Together, Kit and his teenaged girlfriend murdered her parents and took off on a road trip, eloping for a honeymoon of murder and robbery.

Martin Sheen starred in one of his first roles (no, that's not Charlie on the vhs cover), as did Sissy Spacek as his girlfriend. Together they drew up two characters whose coldness is chilling to witness. Somehow, this film is both raw and brutal, yet poetically beautiful, perhaps due to Tak Fujimoto's cinematography.

Generally considered one of the best feature film debuts in history, Malick [photo below] has since become a legend, making only four films in nearly four decades: Badlands (73), Days of Heaven (78), The Thin Red Line (98), and The New World (2005). Malick won several directing awards for Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. His highly anticipated Tree of Life is due to be released this year.

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The Paper Chase

James Bridges, 1973 (8.2*)
From the novel by John Jay Osborn, Jr., this is a realistic look at the competitive and stressful nature of the first year of law school for a group of freshmen at Harvard. Led by Timothy Bottoms, he and his friends learn they must survive Prof. Kingsfield, an autocratic and tyrannical professor of contract law, who bases his evaluations on the daily browbeating of students using the 'Socratic method'.

While wondering if he's in the right career, Bottoms meets and gets a crush on Lindsay Wagner, without knowing her true identity, which I won't spoil here. The stress of academic life is relieved occasionally with this romance, which some may find unnecessarily distracting, and some light humor, yet the overall tone of the film maintains the stressful nature of law school. Students get summer jobs as apprentices at law firms which could hire them after graduation, so the pressure is on from year one.

Former producer John Houseman (Julius Caesar) is the perfect overbearing yet respectable professor (the epitome of aristocratic haughtiness), earning an Oscar® for this former producer who's rarely seen in front of the camera (Three Days of the Condor), and who certainly steals this movie. Houseman repeated his role for a successful cable tv series based on this film that ran for four years, but it lacked the bite of the original film. The first film directed by James Bridges, who would follow this with The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy.

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Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

John Korty, 1973, tv (8.8*)Emmy, Outstanding SpecialOne of the best tv films ever, based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines, this drama follows the life of an African-American woman, Jane Pittman, born into slavery in the South during the 1850s and who surives to become a 110-year-old who tells her story from her days as a slave all the way up to involvement in the civil rights movement in the early 1960’s, which makes this the perfect film for Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Winner of nine Emmy Awards out of 13 nominations, including Best Lead Actress for Cicely Tyson (formerly married to Miles Davis and used as a model on several album covers) in her best role, also Best Director for John Korty; others awarded for writing, makeup (they age Tyson 70 yrs or so), costume design, music. TV simply doesn't get any better than this, combining history and art to tell a universal tale of social injustice, growth, courage, and change.

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Paper Moon

Dir: Peter Bogdanovich, 1973, bw (8.2*)
Classic 30’s style screwball comedy, filmed in black and white by Bogdanovich. The casting coup was nine-yr old Tatum O’Neal as father Ryan O’Neal’s newly-orpaned "maybe" daughter, who go off on a con artist spree across Missouri, and she ended up being the youngest winner ever of a competetive Oscar, getting the Supporting Actress award, even though she was definitely a lead actress. Madeleine Kahn was also nominated for a true supporting role, as a "would be" matchup for dad, whose scene stealing "maid" was unknown actress P.J. Johnson. A fun story, told in classic style. "They don’t make em like this any more."

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