The Usual Choices
Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson)
MASH (Robert Altman)
Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner)
Performance (Donald Cammell; Nicolas Roeg)
But how about...
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah)
This is Sam's Old West vision of the American Dream: a man builds up something from nothing with his own two hands (and a lot of nous) + finds, beds & adores a fine woman + never trusts anyone completely, especially townsfolk who talk about progress + shoots any bastard who does him wrong. Hell, he even flies the Stars 'n' Stripes above his small patch of land. Cable Hogue is an ornery old cuss who is left out in the desert to die, discovers water where there wasn't any, and becomes a businessman, selling the precious liquid to passing stagecoaches. Jason Robards is marvellous as Hogue, revelling in a rare lead role, especially one that sets him up as a legend. The movie tells his tale quite reverently (and bawdily...Man is a sexual being after all), with backslap humour and little touches of sentiment. Enjoyable viewing and, while the film is guilty of dragging its feet, remains companionable.
...and what about...
The Owl and the Pussycat (Herbert Ross)
An underrated screwball comedy that kicks off from the Bringing Up Baby premise (nerdish bookworm is slammed together with an aggravating dingbat; she brings him to life and he gives her love). The sex quotient is mightily beefed up (she is a hooker) and the dueling between boy & girl is certainly more aggressive than Cary & Kate, but the humour survives. Barbra Streisand and George Segal are a surprisingly effective romantic/comic duo (she is at her most raucous; he is at his most bemused) and, while the film lacks any supporting cast to help boost the quirk factor (no heirs of Charlie Ruggles or May Robson here), in this rare case, they aren't overly missed. This is an adult comedy from the 70's that actually works without coming across as just a long dirty joke you've heard before.
...not to mention...
Too Late the Hero (Robert Aldrich)
An unusual choice for a personal fave I know, but this is much more than just another macho war film (although it certainly is that, too). Set on a tiny island in the New Hebrides during WWII, a reluctant US Lieutenant (Cliff Robertson at his best...maybe his only best) is sent to join a British commando unit. The mission: destroy a Japanese radio transmitter on the other end of the island before an Allied naval fleet sails past. As the group edges closer to its target through an oppressive jungle, the men's competence, morality and resolve are tested. With a topnotch British supporting cast (Harry Andrews! Ronald Fraser! Denholm Elliott! Ian Bannen!) fronted by a never-better Michael Caine (in classic up-yours form), this is an action film which explores the self-preserving common sense of cowardice & opting out rather than the expected-of-you bravery & following orders blindly: a very different perspective for an American war movie.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Performance (Donald Cammell; Nicolas Roeg)
I once visited the Auckland Art Gallery. In the Audio/Visual wing, there was a film loop playing. Timing it perfectly for the next complete play, I sat down in the comfy chair in front of the screen, watched and listened. It began with a shot of what looked to be an empty and dilapidated concentration camp shower / gas chamber. The shot was held for a full minute so you could adjust to where you were, then a naked old lady walked in through the metal door and stood staring at the camera. She was soon joined by a naked boy who looked to be around 10 years old and they started to play chasey. Every 15 seconds or so, another and another naked person of random age entered and joined in with the game, and the level of laughter and joyous squealing rose. The chamber eventually became overcrowded. After around 10 or so minutes, the scene abruptly cut back to the emptiness and recommenced. The piece was titled "The Fun".
Next to the screen were white cards and black pens. Viewers were asked to write and submit a comment. So I did:
A pretentious load of Arty codswallop which is obviously ignorant of the difference between "Confront" and "Repulse".
Sometimes, you just end up saying the perfect thing.
My Top 10 Films of 1970
 |
| "I'm not really in the mood for a Happy Meal. Can I have one that's merely chuffed?" |
#02 A Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson)
#03 A- Goin' Down the Road (Shebib)
#04 A- The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Peckinpah)
#05 A- Patton (Schaffner)
#06 A- The Landlord (Ashby)
#07 A- Monte Walsh (Fraker)
#08 A- The Honeymoon Killers (Kastle)
#09 A- The Owl and the Pussycat (Ross)
#10 A- Lovers and Other Strangers (Howard)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 B+ And Soon the Darkness (Fuess)
#12 B+ I Walk the Line (Frankenheimer)
#13 B+ The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Wilder)
#14 B+ Loving (Kershner)
#15 B+ I Never Sang for My Father (Cates)
#16 B+ The Railway Children (Jeffries)
#17 B+ Something for Everyone (Prince)
#18 B+ The Molly Maguires (Ritt)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B Little Big Man [shaggy dog story that only really comes alive with Custer the Buffoon]
> B Deep End [affecting coming-of-age comedy trainwrecked by an incongruously-brutal ending]
> B MASH [the all-time classic TV series has reduced this film forever]
> B Where's Poppa? [bad-taste comedy that is more miss than hit...but when it hits...]
> B Diary of a Mad Housewife [if there was ever anyone who could justifiably turn axe-murderer...]
> B Scream and Scream Again [peculiar but interesting three-way horror movie that nearly works]
> B- Ryan's Daughter [how does such a little story warrant all that class?]
> B- Airport [we had to have this to enable Airplane! / Flying High to exist]
> B- A Man Called Horse [I prefer "My Cat Named Dog"...it's bouncier with no nipple pain]
> B- They Call Me Mister Tibbs [I don't care what they call him...this detective from Dullsville ain't Virgil Tibbs]
> B- The Twelve Chairs [a Mel Brooks comedy with more jokes than laughs]
> B- Three Sisters [stageplay-film of the Anton Chekh..............sorry, I must have dozed off there for a moment]
> C On a Clear Day You Can See Forever [it's the singer, not the songs...not any of 'em]
> C Catch-22 [a war comedy that's not as funny as Buck Privates or as profound as Dr Strangelove]
> C Fragment of Fear [absorbing Brit thriller that is frustratingly all cliffhanger with no landing]
> C The Man Who Haunted Himself [long episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that shoulda starred Robert Vaughn]
> C Love Story [I already have diabetes...I'm not supposed to watch this or eat mangos]
> D Brewster McCloud [an American attempt at a Monty Python movie, with additional smart-arse smugness]
> D WUSA ["what we have here is failure to communicate"]
> D Cromwell [Richard Harris & Alec Guinness at their insufferable English Historical Epic worst]
> D Waterloo [I kept hoping it was about the making of the ABBA song, but no]
> E Performance [A Personal Unmentionable]
> E Zabriskie Point [an Italian director tells us what's wrong with America, and tells it very very badly]
> E Ned Kelly [fatal rockstar casting; Tiny Tim would've been a wiser choice]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1970 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Angel Levine (Kadar); Bartleby (Friedman); Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Meyer); Bloody Mama (Corman); The Boys in the Band (Friedkin); The Buttercup Chain (Miller); Colossus: The Forbin Project (Sargent); Cotton Comes to Harlem (Davis); Country Dance / Brotherly Love (Thompson); The Dunwich Horror (Haller); End of the Road (Avakian); Entertaining Mr Sloane (Hickox); The Great White Hope (Ritt); Hi, Mom! (De Palma); Hornets’ Nest (Karlson); Husbands (Cassavetes); Joe (Avildsen); Kelly’s Heroes (Hutton); The Kremlin Letter (Huston); The Liberation of L.B. Jones (Wyler); Loot (Narizzano); The McKenzie Break (Johnson); One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Wrede); The Out-of-Towners (Hiller); Perfect Friday (Hall); Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (Hussein); Scrooge (Neame); A Severed Head (Clement); Sometimes a Great Notion / Never Give an Inch (Newman); Spring and Port Wine (Hammond); Start the Revolution Without Me (Yorkin); Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (Preminger); There was a Crooked Man (Mankiewicz); There’s a Girl in My Soup (Boulting); tick…tick…tick…(Nelson); The Travelling Executioner (Smight); Tropic of Cancer (Strick); Two Mules for Sister Sara (Siegel); The Walking Stick (Till); Wanda (Loden); Watermelon Man (Van Peebles)
Best Performances of 1970
Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces
Melvyn Douglas in I Never Sang for My Father
Gene Hackman in I Never Sang for My Father
Helen Hayes in Airport
John Mills in Ryan's Daughter
Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces
George C. Scott in Patton
But how about...
Eva Marie Saint in Loving
While there isn't enough of her (to the point that it is nearly a supporting role), Eva is marvellous as the middle-class middle-aged wife who shares a life with her middle-class middle-aged husband (George Segal). George is a commercial artist who has a half-his-age mistress, two kids too many, a drinking problem and a suspicion that he is an abject failure. Eva has to prop him up, fully aware that she is the only adult in the relationship. Cajoling, understanding (she knows him better than he knows himself), wannabe affectionate and patient up to a point, Eva is the woman who secretly stands in front of the man. It is a very subtle performance, primarily built upon fleeting facial expressions and abrupt snatches of dialogue. It culminates with a humilation horror at a drunken party...finally, she (may) have had enough.
...and what about...
Tuesday Weld in I Walk the Line
The eternal teenager, Tuesday Weld (who was actually 27 when she made this) is the obsession of a gettin'-on-in-years, disenchanted-with-his-lot, small town Tennessee sheriff. He wants to reboot his life with her, throwing out his marriage / parenthood / reputation to do so. And you can totally understand why: Tuesday is a backwoods coquette, not wanting to hurt anyone, quite happy to give and receive loving, but when it needs to stop, she stops, and can't understand why others can't simply stop too. There is not a malicious bone in her, but she's not about to desert her moonshine-makin' pappy & two brothers to run off with any man who says the word "love" to her...well, maybe as a temporary cure for boredom, but not permanently, of course. Even managing to arouse primal passion in someone as dormant as Gregory Peck, Tuesday is the unintentional but fully aware cause of many a man's ruin. The grateful fools.
...not to mention...
Shirley Stoler & Tony Lo Bianco in The Honeymoon Killers
If ever there was a wholly interdependent performance in film, this is it. Shirley is the angry, i-needa-man nurse who hooks up with sexy crook Tony; they decide to use lonelyhearts columns to attract sad women, rip their money off and then shed them...eventually via murder. Due to her girth and amateur acting style, Shirley reminded me of early Divine but, when partnered with straight-outta-The-Sopranos Tony, a unique pulp-fiction performance is created (butcher-paper quality). Shirley is scary and Tony is slimy and together they are an aberrant force of human nature, like a lynch mob. Shirley shows the depths of her passion through poisoning, skull-hammering and drowning innocents...anything to keep her man exclusive. Most frightening of all is that this double act goes a fair way in pragmatically explaining how Ian Brady & Myra Hindley were dredged up from nowhere: monsters you can believe.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Roger Moore in The Man Who Haunted Himself
It is with respectful wonder that I acknowledge Roger's own assessment of his performance in TMWHH: he thought it was his best on film...his personal favourite, in fact. Like David Niven (and George Clooney and...but I don't want to start a long list here), I can not understand how Roger Moore ever had an acting career. A nice, friendly fellow I am sure, who was probably great fun to hang out with, but all he ever seemed to do in his day job was play Simon Templar... over and over and over (his Bond James Bond was still just one big Simon). Even in this (very minor) psychological thriller, Roger's dual portrayal of the protagonist and his doppelganger seem to be The Saint: civil & amused when he is the good guy and miffed & amused when he is the bad one. Cock an eyebrow, furrow your forehead and call it a performance.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1970
 |
| "Who would've guessed it? My husband was delicious." |
#02 Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces
#03 George C. Scott in Patton
#04 Jason Robards Jr. in The Ballad of Cable Hogue
#05 Gene Hackman & Melvyn Douglas & Estelle Parsons in I Never Sang for My Father
#06 Tuesday Weld in I Walk the Line
#07 Denholm Elliott in Too Late the Hero
#08 Eva Marie Saint in Loving
#09 David Hemmings in Fragment of Fear
#10 Lee Marvin in Monte Walsh
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Barbra Streisand & George Segal in The Owl and the Pussycat
#12 Lee Grant in The Landlord
#13 Robert Mulligan in Little Big Man
#14 The ensemble cast of Lovers and Other Strangers
#15 Louis Gossett Jr in The Landlord
#16 Joan Plowright in Three Sisters
#17 Angela Lansbury in Something for Everyone
#18 Karl Malden in Patton
#19 Ruth Gordon in Where's Poppa?
#20 Carrie Snodgress in Diary of a Mad Housewife
#21 Maureen Stapleton in Airport
#22 Shirley Stoler & Tony Lo Bianco in The Honeymoon Killers
#23 John Moulder-Brown in Deep End
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces [I know she was meant to be annoying, but did she have to be that annoying?]
> Helen Hayes in Airport [aka The You-Won-This-Because-We-Didn't-Know-You-Were-Still-Alive Award]
> Sally Kellerman in MASH [Sally was the first Hot Lips but not the forever Hot Lips]
> Sarah Miles in Ryan's Daughter [as gorgeous and empty as the movie]
> John Mills in Ryan's Daughter [the role won the Oscar, not the actor]
> Ryan O'Neal & Ali MacGraw in Love Story [as if...]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1970 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Too Late the Hero (Robert Aldrich)
SILVER: Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson)
BRONZE: Goin' Down the Road (Donald Shebib)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Michael Caine (Too Late the Hero)
SILVER: Jack Nicholson (Five Easy Pieces)
BRONZE: George C. Scott (Patton)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Tuesday Weld (I Walk the Line)
SILVER: Eva Marie Saint (Loving)
BRONZE: Joan Plowright (Three Sisters)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Denholm Elliott (Too Late the Hero)
SILVER: Robert Mulligan (Little Big Man)
BRONZE: Lou Gossett Jr. (The Landlord)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Lee Grant (The Landlord)
SILVER: Angela Lansbury (Something for Everyone)
BRONZE: Maureen Stapleton (Airport)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Gene Hackman & Melvyn Douglas & Estelle Parsons (I Never Sang for My Father)
SILVER: Barbra Streisand & George Segal (The Owl and the Pussycat)
BRONZE: Bea Arthur & Bonnie Bedelia & Michael Brandon & Richard S. Castellano & Bob Dishy & Harry Guardino & Marian Hailey & Joseph Hindy & Anne Jackson & Diane Keaton & Cloris Leachman & Anne Meara & Gig Young (Lovers and Other Strangers)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: John Moulder-Brown (Deep End)
SILVER: Jenny Agutter & Sally Thomsett & Gary Warren (The Railway Children)
BRONZE: TBA
The Alternate Razzies for 1970 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Performance (Donald Cammell; Nicolas Roeg)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Rod Steiger (Waterloo)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Daria Halpin (Zabriskie Point)
