The 1976 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1976

VOTE THROUGH AUGUST 31

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

[Rayon Vert]

I'm not going to vote for it but I don't see Godard's Comment ça va if anyone wants to vote for it.

[therewillbeblus]

You’re asking a lot for that person to publicly out themselves

[Rayon Vert]

Where's the like button?

[swo17]

Added (the film, not a like button)

[therewillbeblus]

Not that I expect anyone else to watch or vote for it, but can you please add Yvonne Rainer's Kristina Talking Pictures?

[swo17]

Done

[yoshimori]

Thanks for the list. I'll likely find a down-list spot for Ichikawa's Inugami Clan, if that can be added.

'd encourage folks to track down the Rosi (Illustrious Corpses), the Kluge (Der starke Ferdinand) and the Conner short ("Take the 5:10 to Dreamland"), if you haven't seen them.

[swo17]

I've added the Ichikawa

[alacal2]

Hi Swo. I can't see Horace Ove's Pressure. Can you add it please?

[swo17]

I have that as a 1974 film (you actually voted for it for last month's list!) That year assignment is based on my understanding that the film was completed and intended to air on the BBC in 1974, but that they suppressed it due to fears about its depiction of police brutality

[barryconvex]

The IMDB synopsis for Number One sounds amazing. Anyone know where I could see it?

[alacal2]

Duh! Getting older but not any wiser Swo. apologies.

[domino harvey]

I'm not going to vote for it but I don't see Godard's Comment ça va if anyone wants to vote for it.

This was, rather unbelievably, part of the curriculum for my first French New Wave college class (and Les quatre cents coups / Jules et Jim wasn’t!)

[Rayon Vert]

Another batch of unwatched downloaded exploitation films I have on a drive that aren't listed here. Please don't add these unless someone wants to - I won't vouch for them!

Bloodsucking Freaks (shocksploitation splatter/torture horror)
Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (mild sexploitation crime thriller; Lynda Carter showing skin before Wonder Woman)
Date with a Kidnapper (sex/crime)
The House by the Lake (canuxploitation)
Gator (a Burt Reynolds film: a 70s film category of its own - for a few years in a row there when I was a kid, 8, 9 whatever, when it was my birthday my stepdad would take me and my friends to a Burt Reynolds movie after playing bowling - so, nostalgia)
Grizzly
Northville Cemetary Massacre (outlaw biker film)
Shining Sex (Franco)
Snatch (La Orca) (sex/crime)
Strange Shadows in An Empty Room (canuxploitation)
The Town That Dreaded Sundown (berserk killer horror)

And here's one just for TWBB! You're welcome in advance.
Werewolf Woman (La pupa mannara) (sex horror)

[Solaris]

also missing "Oz" by Chris Löfvén
IMDb link - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075030/

[swo17]

Added, thanks

[therewillbeblus]

I'll likely find a down-list spot for Ichikawa's Inugami Clan, if that can be added.

This was pretty good, though I get a little mixed up with so many Japanese character names populating the conversation (the grandsons' names all looked the same, give or take a letter or two, and I would've benefited from a character guide), so I got lost at times during all the twists and turns. Still fun overall. More than anything, I was in awe at how Knives Out seemed to rip off the basic premise, including various distinct narrative beats and details more than any Agatha Christie novel I can think of offhand! I liked the part of the film that focused on the secret historical background of the deceased patriarch, and I wonder how that reads specifically to Japanese culture's relationship with drug distribution during WWII..

SpoilerShow

specifically how narcotics were used by the military

[knives]

I hope everyone gets a chance to see Allegro non troppo which has nestled within it without question the year’s greatest film in the Bolero. It takes Bozzetto’s blunt humour and holds the punchline just long enough to make for an eerie companion to the song.

Beyond that segment the film remains great with even the steps into more generic Italian farce working surprisingly well. What I found especially nice is how the film isn’t strictly a satire on Fantasia, but rather a sincere comedic adaptation of its premise that is well humoured enough to tease at its own derivation. Bozzetto knows he isn’t inventing or innovating the wheel, but rather using it exceedingly well.

[swo17]

Eligibility note: I have Romero's Martin as a 1976 film, whereas lots of other places put it in 1977 or 1978. Note that Stephen Thrower's essay in the Second Sight release identifies that Romero's preferred original 3-hour director's cut had a weeklong run in December of 1976

[knives]

Easily the best eligible film I’ve seen in awhile is Godard’s miniseries Six fois deux/Sur et sous la communication. It’s a swift moving vehicle that seems essential to understanding anything of his that came after especially vis a vis his working relationship with Mieville.

Di Leo’s Rulers of the City has a fun hang out vibe to it as the low level characters flutter around trying to make a buck. Even Palance’s ultimate villain is pretty laid back by genre standards wanting what’s his and not pushing harder than that. This is a double edged sword as it makes for a distinctive experience that always has something new to present, but it also can be a bit of a patience drain as the film waits around for its next movement.

Visconti has a few interesting aesthetic ideas in The Innocents such as a silent scene which plays like a ballet, but the whole affair suffers from a deadly lack of urgency. The film fails to ever be engaging.

[Rayon Vert]

A different opinion from me regarding The Innocent (no "s" - there's only one innocent here! ). Or Torments of a Narcissist. I think it's arguably up there with his best. Taking a masterwork of decadent literature, he reworks the material to adapt a very critical stance towards its central character. It doesn’t have the complexity of his works that have a strong historical background and historical/philosophical text, but it does bring in the recurrent theme of a family’s destruction as it focuses on the consequences of a man’s twisted psychology, in what is also his most erotic film. Strange because for me dramatically I find it quite compelling, while at the same time it provides one of Visconti’s most consistently gorgeous, painterly period films.

[swo17]

Eligibility note: I have Romero's Martin as a 1976 film, whereas lots of other places put it in 1977 or 1978. Note that Stephen Thrower's essay in the Second Sight release identifies that Romero's preferred original 3-hour director's cut had a weeklong run in December of 1976

Oh, and the other thing I should mention is that this is the year to vote for The Other Side of the Wind

[the preacher]

Not sure it makes my list, but Antonio Margheriti's Con la rabbia agli occhi (Death Rage) is worth adding.

SpoilerShow

Also Mes nuits avec... Alice, Pénélope, Arnold, Maud et Richard (The Kinky Ladies of Bourbon Street), but that is another story.

[knives]

I think I may have now found a personal new favorite for the year and as should come as no surprise it’s by Marco Ferreri.

The Last Woman is just a powerful gut punch for being so much of its author’s preoccupations. This plays a bit like the ne plus ultra of Ferreri’s films putting misogynists into self destructive storylines while having his camera be intimate enough to acknowledge misogyny as normal. He goes to a particular extreme with Depardieu who despite his beauty is perhaps the most vile of these men making the minor swerve from expectations in the ending all the more disturbing and upending of where the film’s themes seem to stay.

This is merely a condemnation of misogyny and not also of misogynists. We have a man who really becomes broken through dialogue and doesn’t know how to respond. This whole experience feels especially relevant today (and would make this a nice pairing with Barbie) as on a massive scale we’re seeing what men (and whites/Europeans) will do after an extended period of encountering their own wrongs and it’s different from the movie in a way that seems like a most massive condemnation of reality.