170 Winter Kills

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MichaelB
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170 Winter Kills

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Nov 07, 2019 5:07 am

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WINTER KILLS
(William Richert, 1979)
Release date: 27 January 2020
Limited Blu-ray Edition (UK Blu-ray premiere)


Pre-order here.

Based on a novel by Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate), William Richert’s brilliantly off-kilter conspiracy thriller features an all-star cast, including Jeff Bridges (Jagged Edge), John Huston (Breakout), Elizabeth Taylor (Secret Ceremony), Tomas Milian (The Last Movie), and many other famous faces. This dark vision of political corruption is presented in two cuts from a new 4K restoration.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New 4K restoration
• Two presentations of the film: the 1983 director’s cut (97 mins); the original theatrical cut (90 mins)
Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with writer-director William Richert (2003)
Who Killed ‘Winter Kills’? (2003, 38 mins): retrospective documentary on the making of the film, featuring Richert, actors Jeff Bridges and Belinda Bauer, director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond, and production designer Robert Boyle
Reunion (2003, 9 mins): Richert and Bridges reflect on the film’s colourful production
Star Stories (2003, 8 mins): Richert discusses the film’s extraordinary all-star cast
Things Happening in Secret (2020, 31 mins): critic and writer Glenn Kenny explores the history and legacy of conspiracy thrillers
• Original theatrical trailer
• Josh Olson trailer commentary (2013, 4 mins): short critical appreciation
• Radio spot
• Image gallery: publicity and promotional material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive 36-page booklet with a new essay by Anne Billson, archival accounts of the making of the film, Richert on Winter Kills, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies

#PHILTD170
BBFC cert: 18
REGION B
EAN: 5060697920369

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Aunt Peg
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#2 Post by Aunt Peg » Thu Nov 07, 2019 8:18 am

I canned my Kino order and am going with this one. Indicator have never let me down. Every release has been top-notch and this is a long time favourite of mine so I'll sell off my DVD.
Last edited by Aunt Peg on Sat Nov 16, 2019 5:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#3 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Nov 16, 2019 1:08 am

This was a pretty good time, though not always hitting home runs as it goes for political satire with a humorless approach. Still, I enjoy these twisty overplotted thrillers following a wrong man or surrogate character in the dark, enough to settle for fun and let go of most flaws - plus it helps that basically everyone Bridges encounters is a surprise cameo. Sadly Bridges is a rather dull protagonist and Huston as his father is phoning it in, a far cry from possessing the intensity he can bring to the seedy cold questionable-villain. The Indicator release looks like quite the package considering the absolutely insane production disturbances. Worth picking up if you find pleasure in these B-paranoia thrillers and can accept the balance of getting a bit less investment but a bit more action.

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MichaelB
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#4 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jan 19, 2020 7:08 pm


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Drucker
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#5 Post by Drucker » Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:03 pm

Well I agree with therewillbeblus somewhat. It is definitely a kind of pulpy B movie. But until the last third, I absolutely hated this movie. I didn't find the satire really that funny or poignant, and the ending was pretty easy to see coming within the first five minutes. That said, the satire sort of gets explained within the last third, so it's somewhat forgivable.
But I think my main problem is that if this is supposed to be a biting satire which says something about the darkness in America...what exactly is it saying?
SpoilerShow
That a dad would murder his own (EDIT: SON!) father for his pursuit of the American dream? And spend his life keeping it a secret from everyone?
It just didn't do it for me. Its darkness isn't dark enough and satire isn't funny enough.

Also, not sure if it was pointed out, but there's some random audio dropouts at like 58:04ish and 58:11ish. Not sure if anyone else's copy had the same problem?
Last edited by Drucker on Fri Jul 02, 2021 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#6 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:14 am

Drucker wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:03 pm
Also, not sure if it was pointed out, but there's some random audio dropouts at like 58:04ish and 58:11ish. Not sure if anyone else's copy had the same problem?
I just checked my copy on both versions of the film and didn't notice anything during those time frames... weird
Drucker wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:03 pm
But I think my main problem is that if this is supposed to be a biting satire which says something about the darkness in America...what exactly is it saying?
SpoilerShow
That a dad would murder his own father for his pursuit of the American dream? And spend his life keeping it a secret from everyone?
It just didn't do it for me. Its darkness isn't dark enough and satire isn't funny enough.
I completely agree, which is why any pleasures from the film must be found in the flowing ride of multi-setpiece 'wrong man' narratives, though I think what ultimately works about this film under that superficial logic of enjoyment is that the film isn't saying anything except maybe
SpoilerShow
that there is no greater depths to be grasped from these conspiracies! That even if they are true, they are predictably within the wheelhouse of stereotypical capitalist antisocial actions, as rich people try to stay rich and murder people secretly who stand in their way. The film's dilution of all excitement typically gleaned from musing on these theories into boring reveals is pretty funny on several levels, but also fitting with its narrative's surface-level lowbrow merits- as you mention, even the 'twist' is painfully obvious! So we watch a movie that follows the expected beats from a genre we all know, under a satire that doesn't say anything that we don't already suspect. Perhaps the film's lack of delving into the dark territory we crave is what makes it theoretically so dark... I'm reminded of the paranoia/anti-paranoia Pynchonism that Rosenbaum discusses in reference to Rivette's work: Since paranoia serves a function in allowing us to chase after some greater elusive meaning, when we're presented with a reality that there is none, and we're exactly right, there's something very terrifying and dark about that. Deep down, maybe we don't want to be right about these things!
That doesn't make any of that stuff work to stimulate our intellects on the level the film is operating on, because it's so peripherally shallow by design (which does match the shrug of conspiratorial 'answers' we get!), but interesting to think about.

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feihong
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#7 Post by feihong » Fri Jul 02, 2021 2:20 am

I found the film a little funnier than the rest of you, I think. and I think I agree somewhat with therewillbeblues on the ultimate upshot of the film. The issue for me is a sort of failure to make the film worthy of the strong and fairly unique theme it actually arrives at. I think the film goes farther thematically than more competent political thrillers of the time, like The Parallax View, in the sense that Winter Kills suggest that the whole ultimate meaning of conspiracy––the value of Anthony Perkins and his big spy/computing unit, the value of hiding a miserable political murder––that it ultimately boils down to the mere expression of power, for its' own sake. We aren't Joe Frady in this movie, gnawing at the trouser-leg of conspiracy and never really reaching its' core; Winter ultimately gives up all it's secrets at the end, and the revelation of what's behind the conspiracy is predictable. But it is, ultimately, stunningly petty, too, and the film ultimately leaves us with this idea, which The Parallax View and other thrillers of the time never reach: the truth of power in this glibly corrupt system is, in the end, the most nakedly venal expression of it. The grotesque sexuality of the Huston character, his obsession with his sons' sexual habits––that is all for him. He will screw and die, and his children will screw and die, and if they get in the way of that––by developing some form of conscience, say, or by finding the whole world of American politics a stew of grotesque corruption they want no part of––well, maybe they have to die early, so the wheels can keep on turning. In this schema, the Anthony Perkins character remains a perpetual servant, even though he knows where every body is buried. What keeps him from taking power? Simply that he doesn't wield power the way the Winters do; sexually ambiguous, he does not use his power to get laid. So the disappointment at the end of Winter Kills is, to me, the most audacious assertion the movie makes. None of the other paranoid thrillers of the time––none of the more slickly-produced Pakula films, for example, or the glossier Three Days of the Condor––go this far; in these movies, the mystique of power endures, and there is the hope at the end of it all that maybe all this power could be turned to use for good, that maybe the incrementalism of these sh*tty, corrupt politicos might actually lead to progress in some kind of long arc. All of those movies follow a little guy through a labyrinth––their approach is married to Borges view of the labyrinth, the mire for the man trapped by life––and none of these movies have the chutzpah to suggest that at the end of that labyrinth there is no mystique, just some stupid horn dogs who are stuck there, too, just one floor up. The powerful in Winter Kills are mired seeking pleasure, whereas Joe Frady is mired seeking pain.

But I think that clear-eyed premise demanded a better script, and a better director; someone as bold and confident in his creation as Antonioni. Blow-Up and The Passenger are films which make similar assertions to that of Winter Kills––films which chide you for expecting meaning when you look deeper into the abyss. But they are so much more under control as films, and in them Antonioni has found the language of a drama wherein one doesn't quite despair at the futility of challenging one's status. And Antonioni can reveal power in his films without showing the Joe Kennedy figure behind the throne; somehow his manipulation of narrative leaves us satisfied with his conclusion in spite of the way in which these characters remain invisible. There are, interestingly, no Joe Kennedy figures in Antonioni's oeuvre––I suppose Rod Taylor in Zabriskie Point comes closest––though he is still a functionary, a member of the management class rather than a ruler––probably closer to Anthony Perkins in Winter than to John Huston. And I think Antonioni has a more existential eye which sees the idea of a ruler as perhaps a fake distinction between people. But no one on Winter Kills has that facility for storytelling on film, so the movie's sometimes impressive themes and criticisms end up represented in clumsy set-piece scenes. There seems to be a certain embarrassment about the crudity in the picture on the part of the filmmakers, a way in which the film tries to backpedal from scenes like the one where Winter asks his son whether he thinks the girl in the golf cart next to him has her hand on his c*ck, by then trying to find the character capable of human sympathy in the next breath. That is realistic, and a psychologically balanced approach to the character––but the premise of the film's script seems to me that there can be no quarter in our analysis of such figures of power. They should not be humanized; they are stupid, they are dumb, they are *ssholes. They will bury us all if they are not...overthrown? But there the film chickens out a bit, too. One feels another coverup coming. I would like to have seen the unrest in the streets we see in the background of films like Illustrious Corpses and We Still Kill the Old Way; or even the suggestion in THX 1138 that we're all too asleep to notice the Winter clan tumbling from grace. But I do admire the film for sticking a thumb in the eye of Camelot and for pointing out that the end result of power in America never seems to elevate an ideology beyond the personal score.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#8 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jul 02, 2021 10:45 am

Great post, feihong! We disagree on The Parallax View though, which as I mentioned the last time I watched it, the most intriguing aspect of the twist isn’t that there’s some complex or ominous force. Rather, that those making these decisions are not the eccentric in step with their hired psychopaths, but using the eccentric as patsies. The implication is much more unsettling and follows a similar idea to Winter Kills: that those in power are actually the pure logical and composed individuals we affirm as idols in our society and everyday lives, who embody characteristics we empower and appreciate, and conversely- the unbalanced people we pathologize as deviants are actually far less threatening to our wellbeing.

There may be a less nakedly simplified composite of their vacuous nature compared to this film, but regardless of specific motive, The Parallax View’s subtle reveals only indicate that the end of the conspiracy is equally meaningless- at least in terms of some spectacular meaning that exists outside of expected cyclical motions producing cold 'rational' outcomes. These are also men in power who make pragmatic choices without valuing human life, and any intrigue into ‘why’ is usurped by the revelation that they are playing directly into both our expectations for capitalist sociopaths, accentuating the banality of the specific mysteries we’re chasing and exposing that objective we are set on as a ruse (and self-reflexively weaponizing our powerlessness as an audience against us at the whim of those controlling the narrative, a nice touch keeping us in line with Frady’s myopic experience) to distract us from a deeper injury in the familiarity and cultural respect for these successful and driven everymen who have characteristics we secretly covet; namely that they can tap out of emotional influences that only impede our progress towards goals, ultimately a flaw in the realistic self-preservation we've irreparably ingrained into our civilization.

Pakula’s film fleshes out the ironic revelation from Winter Kills and then flips it around on us with both a mirror and threatening dagger, a dual weapon that’s all the more disturbing because it starkly suffocates us with the realization that it's our own reinforcing relationship with the mundane anti-paranoia that evokes the last brand of meaning we wanted to face: Maybe there’s no higher meaning to our fantasies, and maybe we - the emotionally intelligent ones -are the pathetic subset of species doomed to perish with Social Darwinism, and even more excruciating, maybe that’s the ‘right’ course the world is taking in a vapid milieu where ideology is God.

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feihong
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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#9 Post by feihong » Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:53 am

I feel as if my reading of The Parallax View meshes with your reading in the post you linked, but I don't consider Parallax to have what are, to my mind, better politics than Winter Kills. And by that I just mean that I agree with the fundamental assertion in Winter Kills that the powerful are after sex and dynasties––that they don't have larger, loftier goals. It tends in politics to be a basic assumption we make without even considering it––that our masters must be our betters. And the fun to be had in Winter Kills, and the cleverness, is the idea that our masters are myopic sh*theads. But I don't see a comparable figure to Pa Kegan in Parallax, or even a figure in the position Anthony Perkins is in. And because the Pacula movie never points to the top of the power structure, I don't think its' assertions about the nature of power reach the same point of perception about the source of political power as does Winter Kills. We're always dealing with the patsies in Parallax––Jack Younger is no more than a functionary in the scheme of American politics. He doesn't shape ideology, he executes the demands of someone higher up, like Burt Lancaster's character in Executive Action, who realizes too late that his own part in the proceedings will be to serve as the fall guy. If Frady fails to take the wrap, Younger will serve just as well––and the masters that guide the hand of Parallax will remain in the shadows. But Pa Kegan, even after his conspiracy is revealed, will never take the wrap for any of it––not because he has insulated himself too well, but because the position he occupies simply precludes it. He has too much power to be blamed for anything, to be "responsible" for any of the political rot he spreads. And why is he afforded this untouchable position? Simply because he occupies that space of privilege. So while I feel that Parallax does illuminate the little guy and the functionary and it does point to how the narrowness of vision makes patsies out of a Joe Frady (though I think also the film is additionally suggesting that Frady already comes with an isolation and misanthropy which makes him peculiarly suited for Parallax to make into their man), I never feel that the top of the pyramid in the scheme of Parallax is more than implied. What's more, Pacula's particular directing style gives the veiled or the absent a kind of special romance, and I can feel that mystique settling on the invisible power-brokers that give Parallax their orders. So I don't feel that Pacula arrives at the same criticism of power that Winter Kills does. In a way, Pacula worships power––he ensconces it in velvety darkness––he makes its' wielder the ultimate Cagliostro, gone long before his trick is discovered. But for me the joke of Winter Kills just rings closer to the truth; you can walk up to these people of power and talk to them. And they will hem and haw about the same kind of things that annoy in your relatives, say––or they might say something stupider, or hornier, or more absurd. And you stare at this idiot in front of you and you realize that nothing really separates you from them. They have the same urges. And just as you have no goals loftier than self-preservation and petty jealousy, they have none loftier, either. As I said in the last post, though, the film Winter Kills isn't really quite worthy of that conclusion. The filmmaking is dull and simplistic. The high points it reaches for me are those scenes where Jeff Bridges' failson whines to his father and his paid-off lover about his own impotence. And we see the factor in dynasty which always unravels, that truism which goes back to the Romance of Three Kingdoms––that the ambitions of the ruthless father are not often conferred upon the son reared in luxury. Bridges' Kegan wants to be gentle. Huston's Kegan wants him to be fierce, uncompromising, like he is. Neither one is capable of seeing as the other does––they are figures brought up in opposite conditions. You could say that the child is unworthy of the conquering ambitions of the father––that's certainly the assertion made in Romance of Three Kingdoms, that the next generation is not worthy of their parents' ambitions––but I don't see anything especially wrong with Nick Kegan. Like so many people, he wants to be born in a different position than he has found himself–––and no one will let him be. Those elements of the film work most strongly for me. I certainly don't want to make it seem like I'm dismissing The Parallax View; but I think it's focus is more in the machinations of 60s-70s politics on the ground. I don't disagree with what I see, but what I don't in Parallax is the guy in charge. Most of the political thrillers of this time end up demur when it comes to the pinnacle of power––Parallax is, and, ultimately, so are the Rosi pictures, except perhaps for Hands Over the City, and so are the Petri films (sort of––I think you could read the butcher in Property is No Longer Theft as a coded version of powerful, except that he is not at leisure). So in that sense, I think Winter Kills stakes out its own territory in the group of political thrillers from that time.

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Re: 170 Winter Kills

#10 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jul 04, 2021 2:33 am

I agree with most of what you’re saying- and I also mentioned that Winter Kills renders all these ideas cartoonishly transparently in a way that’s cheekily diminishing, though not necessarily cathartic in its blunt anti-wit (though that’s kinda fitting to this candid ‘theme’). I don’t think Pakula is worshipping power in The Parallax View however, but rather positioning his fear of it into a space that’s enigmatic without being abstract, accentuating that fear because it’s born from corporeal familiarities (albeit unseen ones) that have accrued far more power than we can comprehend. It would be comfortably affirming and romantic for this to be a foreign strand of power, that we could give ourselves leeway to appreciate because it would be divorced from our schematic blueprint. But since it’s merely a widespread weaponization of the very values our culture supports, we are faced with existential ambivalence as we consume both what we are conditioned to acknowledge as rational capitalist behavior and what we are disappointed - and, simultaneously, shaken- by, in finding these mechanical, pragmatic systems holding a no-win space between of the de-romanticism of their utility and the de-romanticism of our desires for elusive creative fantasy to latch onto. Pakula may be intrigued by this violating horror that gets too intimate to our cultural comprehensions while remaining nebulous, but it’s anything but romantic or celebrated or worshipped. The sterile depiction of these operations is deflating our desires for oversimplification (i.e. Winter Kills) or ominous imaginative allure (i.e. The Manchurian Candidate in all its psychological magic weaponry), having its cake and eating it too (and by that I mean not allowing us to have any of it).

I also think it's satisfying to have Winter Kills' villains fit the brand of "myopic shitheads," but this so easily condescends to the powerful in a reductive self-congratulatory manner- which I can't help thinking is its own kind of myopic defensive fantasy that perhaps make us susceptible to manipulation a la Frady in your apt reading. Is Winter Kills exactly the kind of self-indulgent tool the powerful in The Parallax View use to let us get our rocks off with easy answers and avoid the horrors that lurk behind the cultural curtain? In The Parallax View these suits are only our betters because they fit a robotic antisocial-emotional position that is a streamlined way of being, focusing all energy towards practical objectives, regardless of if they remain invisible or seen to us. Pakula is not admiring their power, or asserting that their goals are cleverly grand, but instead stating that they are meeting our basic expectations of passionless dullards, whilst failing at allowing ourselves to dilute their power, or the utility of what one (or a mass of 'ones') can accomplish if they turn off their empathy. Pakula does not believe that people are better for eliminating compassion from their personalities, but he does propose that perhaps they are objectively better at accomplishing their goals with limited influences in a capitalist world- and this greyness in our fixed milieu is disturbing. We are impotent to stop these people, or control our emotional intelligence to meet their level, or- even worse- most of us cannot comprehend what it's like to feel that way. These men are inaccessible aliens who are our neighbors that we access on a superficial level every day. So are the villains in Winter Kills- except they are reduced to familiar caricatures of evil greed, who are not recognized as having a beneficiary edge that realistically carries more weight than their ignorant vapid personas permit us to fear. It's fruitless to compare our qualities -that we wouldn't trade for anything- to these heartless bastards' lives, because the authentic answer is The Parallax View's holding of both separate truths as incomparably painful to sit with, and Winter Kills never asks us the critical question: Do we only condescend to these people because we are solipsistically incapable of conceiving trading these qualities for a nullified version of character where success is measured differently? It's not that kind of movie, and 100% services the superficial catharsis of masturbatory beliefs about the rich and powerful, but that doesn't mean it's "true."

The problem with your assumption that Winter Kills is more honest in its depiction of the puppeteers is that in real life there are powerful people with secrets that we cannot walk up to like the fantasy of Winter Kills, so while I appreciate that in some ways it's "closer to the truth" in terms of the subjectively-assessed value of the people from our vantage points, and their basic drives as similar to most of us minus the emotional weights, Parallax still feels the more frank and developed truth. We may not see the puppeteers, but we can be sure they are after the same kinds of goals: money, power, control, systemic territory- and yet we are not allowed to feel superior to them, because that's a false narrative that only focuses on the "I'm glad I'm me" defense mechanism of the empathic everyman, when there's a more unsettling accuracy to be gleaned from the controllers. They can be banal and simple, and also have these traits be the very ones that make them powerful, scary, and advantageous.

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