1970s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[denti alligator]

The central conceit -- that of a group of damned souls who continually reenact the events that damned them, their hell therefore being one of their own making -- is a particularly creepy one, and although done numerous times before, it has never been done better.

Better than Last Year at Marienbad?

[colinr0380]

If Week End (or LtJ) had been my first Godard film, there would likely have been no second one.

No worries, we all have different tastes and tolerances - for me the same would apply to Une Femme est une Femme, the only Godard I could say that I do not like, and even in that there are a couple of good bits hiding under my overwhelming dislike of the shallow, self-centred main characters! Weekend's characters may be similar but at least we are meant not to sympathise with them! I'm still unsure whether the messages of Femme are meant to be taken on face value or ironically (unlike the later Band of Outsiders or Masculin Feminin there do not seem to be any tip offs as to how the viewers should place themselves in relation to the work). Is the film a heartfelt non-ironic love letter to Karina and the concept(ion) of 'woman', or is it meant as a scathing insight into a manipulative, pouting personality and its affect on the weak men in her life?

(Actually I told a lie in my last post - Weekend was the second Godard I saw. I forgot that I had seen Contempt the year before!)

[Perkins Cobb]

I think Lisa and the Devil is a pretentious mess too (and I like most of Bava). The Wicker Man could've made my list on a different day, though; the treatment of sexuality & repression in that film have a frankness and an intensity I haven't seen in many others, and finding that element within a horror film is especially startling.

[Michael]

Pretentious. I see the term "pretentious" used to describe a film here and there. What the hell does that mean? How can a film be "pretentious"? I notice it applies only to films that are regarded as directors' most personal films. I've seen 8 1/2 and INLAND EMPIRE and now Lisa and the Devil - all very deeply personal and masterful and original - being accused as being "pretentious". WTF.

[denti alligator]

I think Lisa and the Devil is a pretentious mess too

Just for the record: I never said it was a pretentious mess.

[Perkins Cobb]

Well, "pretentious" (an overused term, granted) as in a loftiness in an artist's goals that exceeds his/her talent or achievement. That's what I was getting at with Lisa and the Devil. Tim Lucas writes that Bava tapped "memories of growing up among his father's sculptures, dialogue borrowed from Dostoevski's I Diavoli, and an unrealized project about real-life necrophile Viktor Ardisson" to create a "waking dream" film ... but the film I saw was indistinguishable in its lurid flavor from Lucas' other late 60s/early 70s gialli, except that it's burdened with a confusing narrative, a meandering pace, and a pretty silly Telly Savalas performance.

Although the argument that Lisa is exceedingly overpraised is tied into Lucas' contention that it's Bava's attempt at an art movie, which I'm not sure I agree with -- I mean, he's the expert, but I wonder if that's not placing too much of a burden on the film and the director.

[Michael]

I happen to love Telly's presence in Lisa. He adds a twist of fun kinkiness to the already very brooding gothic world of death with dummies, corpses and ghosts and Lisa, a fresh green flower scrambling through being "raped" by everyone. There is no exit for her, she's eternally damned in the cycle, like the figurines circling atop the music box.

Better than Last Year at Marienbad?

I have never seen it.

[mikeohhh]

Now what I like most about these lists this time around is seeing how they evolve from the previous round. To say that DVD availability helps out a film's chance is like saying being a multi-millionaire helps a politician's chance of being elected. That said, films that have had DVD debuts or re-releases in the 2 1/2 years since the first 1970s list shook things up considerably, with two films in the top ten (both new to DVD) jumping 60 or more places, although special editions did not bode so well for perennial canon faves like Taxi Driver and A Clockwork Orange. Death becomes Michelangelo Antonioni and especially Robert Altman, but not so much Ingmar Bergman. Also, it seems a referendum on Hollywood blockbusters was in motion. Anyway, here's a round-up:

What's New:

35. Killer of Sheep (Burnett)
37. Vengeance Is Mine (Imamura)
39. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah)
43. Jeanne Dielman. . . (Akerman)
53. Edvard Munch (Watkins)
54. Eros Plus Massacre (Yoshida)
56. Love (Makk)
57. The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos)
58. The Phantom of Liberty (Bunuel)
59. Mujo (Jissoji)
64. Cria cuervos (Saura)
69. The Man who Fell to Earth (Roeg)
70. Network (Lumet)
71= Fox and his Friends (Fassbinder)
71= Stroszek (Herzog)
74. The Man who Left his Will on Film (Oshima)
76. The Devil, Probably (Bresson)
78= The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Brakhage)
78= Harold and Maude (Ashby)
81= Tristana (Bunual)
83. WR:Mysteries of the Organism (Makavejev)
84. Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion (Petri)
85. The Ceremony (Oshima)
86. Cockfighter (Hellman)
87= Four Nights of a Dreamer (Bresson)
90= Carnal Knowledge (Nichols)
92. O Lucky Man! (Anderson)
93= Punishment Park (Watkins)
96= The Parallax View (Pakula)
100= Day for Night (Truffaut)

What's Gone:

26. Star Wars (Lucas, 1977), 251
34. Autumn Sonata (Bergman, 1978), 199
41. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Forman, 1975), 173
43. Salo (Pasolini, 1976), 164
45. Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), 157
47. Gimme Shelter (Maysles, 1970), 154
The Yakuza Papers: Battles Without Honor & Humanity (Fukasaku, 1973), 154
52. Desperate Living (Waters, 1977), 131
57. Casanova (Fellini, 1976), 113
58. M*A*S*H (Altman, 1970), 111
59. The Outlaw Josey Wales (Eastwood, 1978), 110
60. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977), 105
63. The Devils (Russell, 1971), 101
The Emigrants (Troell, 1971), 101
66. The Tin Drum (Schlondorff, 1979), 98
71. Arabian Nights (Pasolini, 1974), 93
A Walk Through H (Greenaway, 1978), 93
74. Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978), 92
75. Two English Girls (Truffaut, 1971), 90
80. Zabriskie Point (Antonioni, 1970), 84
84. Young Frankenstein (Brooks, 1974), 73
89. Life of Brian (Jones, 1979), 69
Love and Death (Allen, 1975), 69
93. Blazing Saddles (Brooks, 1974), 68
It's Alive (Cohen, 1974), 68
97. Being There (Ashby, 1979), 67
98. 1900 (Bertolucci, 1976), 66
99. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Jones, 1975), 64
Small Change (Truffaut, 1976), 64

What's Hot (up 10 or more spots):

2. The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice) 553 (up 37)
5. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette) 493 (up 65)
8. McCabe & Mrs Miller (Altman) 440 (up 13)
10. The Passenger (Antonioni) 422 (up 72)
13. Badlands (Malick) 407 (up 12)
14. The Long Goodbye (Altman) 406 (up 62)
23. Solaris (Tarkovsky) (up 12)
28. Straw Dogs (Peckinpah) (up 37)
33. Claire's Knee (Rohmer) (up 60)
34. The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich) (up 15)
36. The Mother and the Whore (Eustache) (up 41)
41. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes) (up 46)
44. Every Man for Himself and God Against All (Herzog) (up 16)
49. Performance (Cammell / Roeg) (up 37)
60= The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper) (up 29)
62. Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman) (up 16)
65. Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (Ruiz) (up 22)
80. Nosferatu (Herzog) (up 13)

What's Not (down 10 or more):

17. Taxi Driver (Scorsese) 383 (down 13)
22. Annie Hall (Allen) (down 21)
24. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel) (down 13)
29= A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick) (down 16)
31= Cries and Whispers (Bergman) (down 26)
42. Le Cercle rouge (Melville) (down 13)
46. Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder) (down 30)
47. Alien (Scott) (down 16)
48. Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci) (down 18)
51. The Exorcist (Friedkin) (down 24)
55. Amarcord (Fellini) (down 35)
60= The Deer Hunter (Cimino) (down 22)
67. Lancelot du lac (Bresson) (down 13)
75. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir) (down 20)
81= The French Connection (Friedkin) (down 35)
87= All That Jazz (Fosse) (down 31)
89. Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet) (down 21)
90= Hearts and Minds (Davis) (down 11)
95. Grey Gardens (Maysles et al.) (down 56)
96= Carrie (De Palma) (down 47)
99. Death in Venice (Visconti) (down 57)
100= Effi Briest (Fassbinder) (down 19)

italics indicates titles that had a major DVD release or rerelease in the interim between the two lists' compilation. I'm sure I'm missing a lot, as I don't pay too close attention to non-R1 releases that are not MoC or BFI.

[Michael]

Because Chinatown made #1, I just finished revisiting it. A good film. Best thing being the script, every word not wasted. I feel the beautifully multi-layered script outpowers other elements of the film. Everything in Chinatown depends too heavily on its script. Maybe that's typical of noir but Polanski made a better, more cinematic Hollywood film, that is Rosemary's Baby in which all the elements - photography, script, direction, performances - are perfectly balanced and aligned.

Chinatown deserving the #1 position, I don't think so.

[impossiblefunky]

And what about Electra Glide in Blue? Nominate James William Guercio as one of the best first time and only time directors, right up with Laughton. The anti-Easy Rider ending, the pro-authority attitude when it was made makes it seem even more striking. It was booed as a fascist film when it screened in Cannes.

I'm curious how much of Electra Glide's success comes from Guercio and how much comes from Rupert Hitzig. Check out the interview I did with Hitzig and his co-writer Bob Boris.

[mfunk9786]

No, because you're spamming the forum with this shitty podcast