The Usual Choices
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill)
Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper)
Kes (Ken Loach)
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
But how about...
Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough)
The most purely entertaining anti-war movie ever made. A British musical about the history of World War I (no, really), this is made up of songs from the era (both the popular-back-at-home and the trench-made, coarser versions actually sung by the troops). Taken from a West End stageplay, this has been expertly opened up as a film by Richard Attenborough in his directorial debut (it remains his greatest achievement in filmmaking). Using a Holiday-at-Brighton as the allegorical setting, brutal scenes from The Front are spliced in with various prime figures of the war (Haig; The Kaiser; The Archduke) and key events & issues (The Christmas Truce; gas attacks; war profiteering; boy soldiers). Featuring the-then cream of the British acting community (Laurence Olivier; Maggie Smith; John Mills; Ralph Richardson; Michael & Vanessa Redgrave etc etc), this is an effectively double-faceted production: What a Friend We Have in Jesus morphing into When This Lousy War is Over sums it up perfectly. And the departing sequence is made indelible by the sheer visual-impact of number...where a corner of some foreign field has become forever England.
...and what about...
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Sydney Pollack)
I saw this for the first time when I was around 16 years old. I had stopped believing adults, my body was making fun of me and I had my first encounter with death. The world was a miserable place and I was convinced that I wasn't meant to be here...a mistake had been made. The "It's All Rigged, Kid...So Give Up" moral of this story shot into me, confirming my suspicion that everything was wrong. The setting/metaphor of the dance marathon (going round and round and getting nowhere) is perfect, and, while I'm somewhat put-off by the film's deviations from the linear narrative (a peculiar use of flash-forwards... impending doom, I guess), the unforgiving bleakness of it all is actually quite cathartic. And what a cast!: Jane Fonda! Michael Sarrazin! Gig Young! Susannah York! Red Buttons! Bonnie Bedelia! Bruce Dern! The Sarge from Hill Street Blues! Grandpa from The Munsters! And, speaking of Jane, this is THE great nihilist / cynical / life-loathing performance in all of cinema... never playing for sympathy or even understanding, the woman aggressively resents existing (just listen to how she says "no"). You just gotta get to know (from a distance) somebody as extreme as that, right?...for a start, it makes you feel better about being 16 with prospects. Yowser.
...not to mention...
A Walk with Love and Death (John Huston)
It's strange to think that this romantic drama set during the Hundred Years War was released the same year as Easy Rider, The Wild Bunch and Midnight Cowboy...let alone being directed by John "A Man's Man" Huston. The story is about a teenage couple in love (aristocratic lass + Parisian student) trying to escape the evils of war by fleeing through the French countryside to the sea. Anjelica Huston, in her film debut, is pale 'n' pretty and gives the medieval phrasings a good going over, while Israeli actor Assi Dayan manages to prevent his airy wanderer from drifting too far into hippiedom. While I can't watch films like this without thinking of Monty Python & the Holy Grail, there are no unintentional titters here, and the smartest decision made by the filmmakers was to keep it small-scale, thus avoiding the bombast of an "Epic". Recommended to the half-dozen fans of 1971's The Last Valley.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Staircase (Stanley Donen)
An unwatchable abomination. Richard Burton & Rex Harrison play a pair of homosexual men, living as a couple in the East End of London...they hate themselves, they hate each other, they hate their life and they hate your life too. Rex plays a very-minor TV actor who is charged with moral depravity after making a pass at an undercover cop, and consequently must appear in court. As he fearfully awaits the trial, he spits bile at his partner, who spits back...for 96 excruciating minutes. Opting for Camp over Compassion ("giggle at the bitchy old queers"), this is Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served ("I'm free!") squaring off against Clarence from The Dick Emery Show ("Hello Honky Tonks!"). There is no physical affection shown between these supposed lovers, only mincing, preening and that sour touch of British kitchen-sink realism (Richard empties his mother's bedpan + Rex cuts his toenails in bed). Staircase is witheringly cruel and an insult to every member of the human race, no matter who they choose to sleep with.
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| "We're all goin' on a...summer holiday..." |
My Top 10 Films of 1969
#01 A Oh! What a Lovely War (Attenborough)
#02 A- They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Pollack)
#03 A- Kes (Loach)
#04 A- The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
#05 A- Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger)
#06 B+ The Secret of Santa Vittoria (Kramer)
#07 B+ True Grit (Hathaway)
#08 B+ Medium Cool (Wexler)
#09 B+ A Walk with Love and Death (Huston)
#10 B+ The Italian Job (Collinson)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 B+ The Sterile Cuckoo (Pakula)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B On Her Majesty's Secret Service [there's just no getting around it: this one doesn't star Sean Connery]
> B The Rain People [slowpoke but worthy feminist drama which is too obviously going to end tragically]
> B What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? [psycho-suspenser with a good build-up but the ending isn't all it should be]
> B Death of a Gunfighter [perfectly good Western weighed down with now-feel-this music...lots of it]
> B The Reivers [nostalgic coming-of-age Americana that, for once, isn't about first-time sex]
> B Take the Money and Run [Woody Allen juvenilia...funny in spots; not funny in spots]
> B Women in Love [Al & Ollie wrestle in the nude by firelight...oh, and poetic words & arty pictures]
> B Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid [the supreme example of how starpower can lift an ordinary property]
> B- Journey to the Far Side of the Sun [would've made a good 30 minute episode of The Twilight Zone]
> B- Anne of the Thousand Days [Genevieve is pretty and she & the other costumes act well]
> B- Hannibal Brooks [Oliver Reed & Lucy the Elephant in a featherweight WWII comedy]
> B- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie [charismatic teacher becomes dangerous corruptor = light becomes heavy]
> B- If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium [roadtrip comedy that travels from amiable to bland]
> B- Hello Dolly [big musical...big deal]
> C Goodbye, Mr Chips [small musical...big deal]
> C My Side of the Mountain [starring an arrogant little snot who is precocious, hypocritical and a bore]
> C Gaily, Gaily [a lame comedy about a great American who warranted better than this]
> C Easy Rider ["We blew it"...yep. Bye Sixties...bye.]
> C Age of Consent [a dirty old man's wet dream after a night on the booze]
> C Cactus Flower [swingin' version of a rom-com which is more square than hip]
> D Paint Your Wagon [starring those famous all-singin', all-dancin' fools Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin & Jean Seberg]
> D Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice [is about as swingin' as your grandma...who went to see it when it came out]
> E The Madwoman of Chaillot [a star-studded farce in more ways than one]
> F Staircase [A Personal Unmentionable]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1969 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Alfred the Great (Donner); Alice’s Restaurant (Penn); The April Fools (Rosenberg); The Arrangement (Kazan); The Bed-Sitting Room (Lester); The Chairman (Thompson); Coming Apart (Ginsberg); Downhill Racer (Ritchie); A Dream of Kings (Mann); Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (Fisher); The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (Kennedy); Goodbye Columbus (Peerce); The Happy Ending (Brooks); Hard Contract (Pogostin); John and Mary (Yates); Last Summer (Perry); Laughter in the Dark (Richardson); MacKenna’s Gold (Thompson); Marlowe (Bogart); Marooned (Sturges); Otley (Clement); Out of It (Williams); Play Dirty (De Toth); Popi (Hiller); The Reckoning (Gold); Riot (Kulik); Run Wild, Run Free (Sarafian); The Southern Star (Hayers); Support Your Local Sheriff (Kennedy); Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (Polonsky); That Cold Day in the Park (Altman); 3 Into 2 Won’t Go (Hall); A Time for Dying (Boetticher); Topaz (Hitchcock); The Virgin Soldiers (Dexter)
Best Performances of 1969
Oft-Mentioned ChoicesJane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower
Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy
Glenda Jackson in Women in Love
Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider
Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy
John Wayne in True Grit
But how about...
William Holden in The Wild Bunch
This terrific performance seemed to get lost in the critical admiration of the movie's balletic violence. William plays one tough hombre who has spent a lifetime killing, drinking, whoring and riding riding riding and now, above all else, man, is he tired. Weary to the point of numbness, this outlaw realises that he gave up morality a long time back, replacing it with a personal code: I won't be laid a hand on + I won't walk away from a fight + I will do whatever is needed to get what I want. What a prick...humanity deems that he has got to go. William shows that the man himself accepts that his time is at an end, so end it he does, looking around at how little he actually managed to accrue after years of bloodshed (a bottle of hooch, three lowlife mates and a woman whose name he doesn't know). Then he smiles and goes out in a blaze.
...and what about...
Anna Magnani in The Secret of Santa Vittoria
The film is a small pleasure with flaws (it's a Stanley Kramer film, so it's well-meaning, overlong and not exactly subtle)...a good-natured comedy about Nazi swine occupying an Italian village for the purpose of stealing its vast wine collection (how swinish can you get?). Anthony Quinn is the town mayor who has a cunning plan and Anna is his long-suffering wife...and she is a shrewish hoot! Firing insults and obscenities at her drunken clown of a husband, Anna is all cliched Italian Mama hysterics: wildly gyrating arms, pots-&-pans-throwing, looking up to the heavens in exasperation, rapid-talking with no volume-off button. No doubt an embarrassing wince for real Italian Mamas everywhere, but as a supporting character whose job it is to razz up the as-usual OTT star, Anna is scintillatingly funny. She makes the movie.
...not to mention...
Geraldine Page in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?
Baby Jane had Bette & Joan; Sweet Charlotte had Bette & Olivia; and this horror-cut-from-the-same-goth has Geraldine Page & Ruth Gordon...but for once, dear Ruthie is the sane one. Geraldine has always struck me as rather odd: her dramatic performances are usually mannered and awkward (Kim Stanley had similar issues). But this character is a case of the role fitting the actress: a selfish old bitch who is on another moral plain entirely from the rest of the human race. Dispatching poor unfortunate little old ladies (after pinching their life savings), Geraldine buries them under a row of pine trees and awaits her next victim, pre-dinner cocktail in hand. All haughtiness and assumed privilege, Geraldine's collection of tics and peculiar vocal inflections help to pre-emptively place this woman in the Psych Ward. How sick can you get? Well...imagine Norman Bates in permanent mother mode: sinister, pathetic and cruelly comedic.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Katharine Hepburn & Charles Boyer & Yul Brynner & Richard Chamberlain & Claude Dauphin & Edith Evans & John Gavin & Paul Henreid & Oskar Homolka & Danny Kaye & Margaret Leighton & Giulietta Masina & Nanette Newman & Donald Pleasence in The Madwoman of Chaillot
What a cast; what a mess. A precursor to all those dreadful star-studded disaster movies of the 70's, this disaster is supposedly an amusing satire that tries to transmit a social message: the common people can always defeat the big, rich, corrupt, stupid, anti-peace, anti-love, fascist people (all loud men, of course). Nobody gets out of this in one piece: Kate is the #1 star and is only bearable when she goes solo and is given wet-eyed closeups; the old stars ham it up to the point of embarrassment; the young ones follow their lead; and the only comedian in the bunch (Danny Kaye with beat-poet beard) is given serious speeches to make...and to show that they're serious, he says them slowly with plenty of pauses, yelling as a replacement for gravitas. Watch each member of this august troupe do their stuffs and realise to your horror that you are also expected to listen to them waffle on. Hey...now there's a message: Shut up.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1969
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| REVEALED: How Liza maintains that gamin look. |
#02 Gig Young in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
#03 Dustin Hoffman & Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy
#04 William Holden in The Wild Bunch
#05 Brian Keith in Gaily, Gaily
#06 Anna Magnani in The Secret of Santa Vittoria
#07 John Wayne in True Grit
#08 David Bradley in Kes
#09 Anjelica Huston in A Walk with Love and Death
#10 Celia Johnson in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Alan Bates & Glenda Jackson & Jennie Linden & Oliver Reed in Women in Love
#12 Geraldine Page in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?
#13 Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo
#14 Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower
#15 Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider
#16 Mitch Vogel in The Reivers
#17 Genevieve Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days
#18 Shirley Knight & James Caan in The Rain People
#19 Robert Forster in Medium Cool
#20 Paul Newman & Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
#21 Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Richard Burton in Anne of the Thousand Days [outmugged and outyelled by Charles Laughton]
> Peter O'Toole in Goodbye, Mr Chips [plays it like Lawrence survived the motorbike crash and became doddery]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1969 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough)
SILVER: They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Sydney Pollack)
BRONZE: Kes (Ken Loach)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: William Holden (The Wild Bunch)
SILVER: John Wayne (True Grit)
BRONZE: Robert Forster (Medium Cool)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?)
SILVER: Geraldine Page (What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?)
BRONZE: Liza Minnelli (The Sterile Cuckoo)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Gig Young (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?)
SILVER: Brian Keith (Gaily, Gaily)
BRONZE: Jack Nicholson (Easy Rider)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Anna Magnani (The Secret of Santa Vittoria)
SILVER: Celia Johnson (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
BRONZE: Goldie Hawn (Cactus Flower)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Dustin Hoffman & Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy)
SILVER: Alan Bates & Glenda Jackson & Jennie Linden & Oliver Reed (Women in Love)
BRONZE: Shirley Knight & James Caan (The Rain People)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: David Bradley (Kes)
SILVER: Anjelica Huston (A Walk with Love and Death)
BRONZE: Mitch Vogel (The Reivers)
The Alternate Razzies for 1969 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Staircase (Stanley Donen)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Richard Burton & Rex Harrison (Staircase)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Natalie Wood (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice)
