The 1978 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1978

VOTE THROUGH OCTOBER 31

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

[therewillbeblus]

Can you please add On the Yard (Raphael D. Silver) and Trio A (Yvonne Rainer)?

[swo17]

Added

[geoffcowgill]

I'm especially interested in seeing what the final list looks like for this year as I feel this is the worst film year of the sound era. Looking over the eligible titles, I didn't see anything I was familiar with and forgotten about that challenges this impression. The '70s just really fell off hard and fast after a remarkable run in the first half of the decade. If anyone can convince me 1978 isn't the nadir of, at the very least, American film, I am looking forward to the argument.

[knives]

This doesn’t just cover American film, but based on a quick look I see so many great films it’s impossible for me to dismiss the year. Pennies from Heaven alone should have it ranked as one of the best. It’s such an ingenious approach to the idea of jukebox musicals that even before you get into the story I have to mutter greatness.

Jackie Chan bursting out of the screen as a major star is another boon for the year. Drunken Master might just be the best action movie of all time and arguably comedy as well.

Adele Hasn’t Had Her Dinner Yet is such a delightfully gonzo love letter to all things Americana while taking it for a rope. It’s one of those films that if someone were sour on it I’d just assume they were joyless.

I like Weill’s Girlfriends a lot and wish that was the female directed proto-mumblecore movie everyone loved.

Finally I feel like I could just blurt out the following and their stature speaks for themselves: The Tree of Wooden Clogs, The Hypotheses of the Stolen Painting, The Driver, 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Perceval, Watership Down, and Blue Collar

[swo17]

Not to detract from your point but I actually have Adele as a 1977 film

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, it's on my 1977 list. I knew we talked about it somewhere before, and found the brief exchange:

Without question Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet is the highlight of the festival. A hilarious Czech fantasia that combines every genre and era together to form something which even just on the surface level I could enjoy it through is a wonderous masterpiece.

I’ll second this- it’s been a long time since I’ve felt comfortable calling a film definitively slapstick, but this is; not because it’s always shooting for a joke (though the gags are of the slapstick variety) but because the choices here are so wildly self-conscious, confidently goofy, and relentlessly inspired, yet ultimately willing to stop plot to embody a series of flowing non-sequiturs, that developing a fantasy around them makes the entire exposition work like a slapstick vibe externalized into an orchestral movement. Even if the atmosphere is born from this tone, the melting pot of influences contains a lot, as knives said, including multiple direct sources from other media’s plot and characters, to create its own unique universe. I was more than happy to spend as much as as possible in there.

[knives]

Haha, that’s what I get for being lazy about the master list. Only up to C for 1977.

[geoffcowgill]

Thanks for the response, Knives. That's just what I was hoping my provocation would elicit, an impassioned recommendation list! I'll admit to Dennis Potter's TV work being a long-standing oversight on my part; I've just never gotten around to Pennies from Heaven or The Singing Detective for that matter. But I'll take this as more incentive to track them down. It's been many decades since I've seen the Olmi, and I would likely appreciate it more than I did at nineteen or twenty. And maybe I should re-appraise Perceval too, but it was just such a stylistic departure from what I've expected and loved from Rohmer, and not one that I thought was very successful. I'll have to check out the others, but I guess I just hadn't found myself too compelled to watch Watership Down or The Driver.

Blue Collar and Girlfriends are definitely going to make my list, but in other years they might not have. Every year has seen the release of some great films, of course; I've just yet to see much that strikes me as exceptional from 1978. This may be a silly distinction to point out, but when I made a list of my 100 favorite films of the decade, the highest ranking film from this year came in at 32. I don't propose there were more bad films released in 1978 than the average, but masterpieces seem thin on the ground. But if Drunken Master and Pennies from Heaven strike me with the force they do you, my impression will happily be revised!

[swo17]

Last time there was a year that struck me as a little weak based on the films I was already familiar with, I took another pass through the eligibility list (including recommendations made by others in the thread), gave a shot (or a second chance) to the most promising options, and ended up having to make some tough cuts to keep my list to 25. I'd be surprised if this approach didn't work for basically any given year (assuming one has the time and resources necessary)

[Rayon Vert]

Several horror classics this year.

[geoffcowgill]

Last time there was a year that struck me as a little weak based on the films I was already familiar with, I took another pass through the eligibility list (including recommendations made by others in the thread), gave a shot (or a second chance) to the most promising options, and ended up having to make some tough cuts to keep my list to 25. I'd be surprised if this approach didn't work for basically any given year (assuming one has the time and resources necessary)

Yes, time and resources are powerful factors. What year was that, if you don't mind saying? I'm curious what years people do think come off as blatantly weak.

[swo17]

It was the last year Malick had a film

[knives]

And maybe I should re-appraise Perceval too, but it was just such a stylistic departure from what I've expected and loved from Rohmer, and not one that I thought was very successful. I'll have to check out the others, but I guess I just hadn't found myself too compelled to watch Watership Down or The Driver.

Hopefully you do. On Perceval, it’s actually my favorite Rohmer! I think the stylistic daring is very successful and in general find Rohmer at his best when doing formal experiments such as his Zack Snyder preceding George Eliot biopic. That’s not to say Perceval exists in a vacuum. It shares a lot of traits with a few other European experimentations from the period. I find it especially reminiscent of some of de Oliveira’s work. Rohmer seems to be taking several cues from early medieval British paintings offer no perspective and in general losing all sense of three dimensions. This isn’t just a topic appropriate aesthetic either. It seems to be connecting to the film’s concern with early Christianity tying itself to myth as a way establishing its borders.

[therewillbeblus]

Several horror classics this year.

In addition to the obvious candidates (Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), all of which will land favorable spots on my list, there's a fair amount of more obscure horror that'll be charting high for me as well. Those of you who've accumulated unwatched Mondo discs may want to prioritize Hotel Fear and Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (*here only listed as Killer Butterfly) - two of the most essential releases from them and easy list-makers. I hope my Norman J. Warren picks don't continue to get orphaned like Yvonne Rainer's work (whose film this year, Trio A is a mere ten-minutes and can be watched on YT - FYI), but Terror is excellent (though Prey from '77 is superior..) Some may even consider Watership Down a horror movie!

[Rayon Vert]

Coma and Long Weekend also get the job done for me. I'm also one of those who likes I Spit on Your Grave and The Fury. Looking forward to eventually revisit Rollin's Raisins de la mort when Indicator gets to it.

[TMDaines]

1978 looks really thin from my perspective too, especially compared to the following year. I may struggle with a top 10 even that I could bat for here. Probably the weakest year of films I have seen from anytime after the mid-1920s until then. I find much of the 1980s and 90s to be similar too though.

[Randall Maysin Again]

Haven't even seen either of these films, but: two English-language films that enjoy a lofty reputation with many film critics from 1978 are Stevie, the Robert Enders film of poet Stevie Smith's life, with Glenda Jackson and a much-praised Mona Washbourne, and even more so, Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, from Thomas Keneally's acclaimed Australian novel. (I've at least read the book--and it's gr8!)

[Randall Maysin Again]

And what about Alan Rudolph's masterful Remember My Name, the best and least-twinkly (and probably not coincidentally, the earliest) of the Rudolph films I've seen??

[domino harvey]

I’m not sure I’ll participate, but I can at least offer up a suggestion I haven’t seen mentioned yet: If anyone has four hours to spare, Moliere is much better than you might expect a biopic of the author to be, informative in the best way in how it imparts what such an unlikely journey to literary stardom might have looked like for the titular character

[Rayon Vert]

I first saw that film in a French Lit class devoted to theater (of course). Here is my write-up when seeing it again for our biopic list project.

Molière (Mnouchkine 1978). It shows that a lot of work and love went into this production. The film is quite good in its last couple of hours, at the point where we follow Molière as part of a poor-as-dirt traveling acting troupe in France, then as he establishes his reputation and his company in Louis XIV’s court, among all the politics and complexities of the society. The actors are extremely good and the film at this point develops a lot of charm. But I found the first half a very contrasting and disappointing slog to get through. We see Molière at different ages through his childhood and youth, mostly as an observer, in scenes that are atmosphere-heavy and meant to conjure up aspects of this society, but that for my money are much too long and dialogue-poor, without a requisite narrative thrust. It’s like we enter into a different movie in the second “époque” section. So a mixed result, but worthwhile if you are a fan of representations of this century, with Louis, Mazarin, Descartes all appearing.

[swo17]

I figure this is worth a mention: You can vote for Deutschland im Herbst either as a whole or for any of its individual segments. All three of this year's Kluge films are individual segments from this. Fassbinder's segment from the film takes his own name

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks for the reminder - Fassbinder's segment is an easy listmaker

[swo17]

Absolution (Anthony Page)

If you hate priests and/or Richard Burton, you will likely get a kick out of watching a group of Catholic school boys torture their teacher through abuse of the confessional. Treating frivolously that which someone holds as sacred is arguably the most hurtful thing you can do to them, and this is true whether the thing they hold sacred is God or their worth as a human being. This film is/was an Indicator release, so you know it's worth watching, though they also just lost the rights to it literally today, so don't hesitate to secure a copy. Or did I just make that last part up to get you to act in a panic? You'll never know if it's that or merely a reference to the film unless you BUY THIS RIGHT NOW AND SEE FOR YOURSELF

[knives]

It’s also by the same director as I Never Promised You a Rose Garden which is enough to make me put it to the top of my queue.