1975

Best Movies of 1975
The Usual Choices
Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston)
Nashville (Robert Altman)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman)


But how about...
Conduct Unbecoming (Michael Anderson)
I love a good courtroom mystery, and this overlooked minor gem is based on a stage play (as many of them are)...which means they often get a little talky and a little claustrophobic. Yes, this one has both those detriments, but the risky construction (minimal music; scenes held long and straight; it takes its time to unfold; once the initial action sequences are done with, a sombre moodiness takes over) and the quality of the ensemble acting (Michael York! Stacy Keach! Richard Attenborough! Trevor Howard!) help lift it above its limitations. Set in British Raj India, this tells the tale of a new officer being accused of a physical assault on an army widow...a trial is held (hush-hush for the sake of the regiment's honour) and the truth eventually steps forward. A side-attack on the silliness of military machismo is a bonus and the actual events are quite, er, surprising. While not really up there with Breaker Morant or even A Few Good Men, this is still an engrossing what-really-happened courtroom drama.

...and what about...
Love and Death (Woody Allen)
This remains Woody's most purely funny movie (it's not a rom-com; it's not nostalgic or sentimental; it's not a love letter to New York)...it's the one that makes me laugh out loud the most often. A send-up of artistic seriousness (Leo Tolstoy & Ingmar Bergman in particular...and you can't get more serious than those two), this tells the story of Woody the cowardly Russian peasant who fights in a war against Napoleon, despite really just wanting to have as much sex as possible and his question "What is Life?" answered (the classic Woody dual-obsession). From wonderful sight gags & slapstick to witty one-liners & fast comebacks, this is like Duck Soup if Groucho was the only Marx brother to turn up, or Road to Utopia if Bob had ditched Bing. While some of his later films had more emotional depth (personally, I'm an Annie Hall and Zelig fan), if I want the stand-up comic & physical comedian pre-Great-Artist, this is the Woody I'd choose to see. 

...not to mention...
Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam; Terry Jones)
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
A scratch? Your arm's off!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Oh, shut up and go and change your armour.
She turned me into a newt. I got better.
That rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide.
You must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with...a herring.
I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of electric donkey bottom biters.
What...the curtains?
Ni.

...and one personal unmentionable...
The Hindenburg (Robert Wise)
I am a fan of zeppelins (they just look so cool), and The 1937 Hindenburg tragedy has always fascinated me, so let me count the ways this film was a major disappointment:
#1)  The story is fanciful rubbish, trying to fiddle up some kind of plot (the airship was not blown up by sabotage...the culprit was static electricity + a big bag of hydrogen).
#2)  While the airship looks magnificent from the outside, silently slicing through the clouds, frustratingly you never feel as if you're inside of it. All of the interior shots are clearly setbound and cheap-looking.
#3)  All the actors (even shouters like George C. Scott and Charles Durning) seem to be performing under a heavy blanket...everybody talks softly and moves slowly. And it's far too stuffy in there.
#4)  The infamous B&W doco footage of the disaster used here for the climax, has been reduced to a series of freeze-frames and consequently reduced in both horror and impact.
#5)  And then, at the very end, like some kind of sick joke, a roll call of the passengers is read out (who survived; who didn't)...and the last character mentioned (complete with photo) is the bloody dog! After witnessing 36 real people really being burned to real death, who gives a shit that a dalmatian lived?
P.S. There is a wonderfully comprehensive book called Hindenburg: An Illustrated History by Rick Archbold & Ken Marschall. Infinitely superior to this inanity and currently available at Abebooks for $5.00. Coffee-table hardback.

My Top 10 Films of 1975
Worst blind date ever.
#01  A+ Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet)
#02  A   Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Gilliam; Jones)
#03  A   Jaws (Spielberg)
#04  A-  Farewell, My Lovely (Richards)
#05  A-  The Man Who Would Be King (Huston)
#06  A-  Nashville (Altman)
#07  A-  Love and Death (Allen)
#08  A-  Conduct Unbecoming (Anderson)
#09  B+ Three Days of the Condor (Pollack)
#10  B+ One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Forman)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11  B+ Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir)
#12  B+ Smile (Ritchie)
#13  B+ The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman)
#14  B+ Sunday Too Far Away (Hannam)
#15  B+ Dogpound Shuffle (Bloom)
#16  B+ All Creatures Great and Small (Whatham)
#17  B+ Hester Street (Silver)  
#18  B+ Hearts of the West (Zieff)
#19  B+ Ride a Wild Pony (Chaffey)

Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
B   Night Moves [private eye story that's more ponderous character study than plot-driven mystery]
B   Shampoo [a groovy, swingin' sex comedy with an ending that is poignant and wrong]
B   The Hiding Place [Christian view of The Holocaust which forgets to mention that the Nazis were Christians too] 
B   The Sunshine Boys [mildly enjoyable, but I wish that Walter wouldn't yell so much]
B   French Connection II [I don't understand...why didn't the drug dealers just shoot him?]
B   Inserts [very adult, very confronting, very chatty, very dark humour, very view-it-once...only once]
B-  The Wind and the Lion [The African Queen meets The King & I...and lots of people get killed]
B-  Rollerball [sport will replace war because nothing will replace bloodlust...some message]
B-  W.W. & the Dixie Dancekings [so-so Burt-Reynolds-with-shit-eating-grin comedy]
>    Tommy [a couple of good songs...a lot of boring songs; some excessive scenes...a lot more excessive scenes]
C   The Stepford Wives [an interesting suburban horror premise that everybody failed to bring to life]
C   A Boy and His Dog [post-apocalyptic tale which is sex-obsessed and aggressively misogynistic]
C   Hennessy [thrill-less assassination thriller featuring Queen Liz II & Rod Steiger trying to be Irish]
C   The Prisoner of Second Avenue [utterly miserable Neil Simon "comedy" about urban despair & mental illness] 
C   Barry Lyndon [an anorexic supermodel movie: gorgeous, with only one expression and all empty inside]
D   The Wilby Conspiracy [leaden chase movie that wants to say something about Apartheid but gets sidetracked]
D   Escape to Witch Mountain [Disney does the supernatural, with a pair of annoying, white-bread kids]
D   Adventures of the Wilderness Family [for hippies who don't realise they can just go on a holiday instead]
D   The Eiger Sanction [wonderful Clint Eastwood action but the story is very George Kennedy]
E   The Hindenburg [A Personal Unmentionable]
F   Mandingo [a vile, sex-obsessed exploitation of The American Holocaust]

"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1975 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Autobiography of a Princess (Ivory); Bite the Bullet (Brooks); Breakheart Pass (Gries); Bucktown (Marks); Carry on Behind (Thomas); Crazy Mama (Demme); The Day of the Locust (Schlesinger); Deadly Strangers (Hayers); Death Race 2000 (Bartel); Diagnosis: Murder (Hayers); End of the Game (Schell); Galileo (Losey); The Great Waldo Pepper (Hill); The Killer Elite (Peckinpah); Hard Times (Hill); The Human Factor (Dmytryk); Hustle (Aldrich); Legend of the Werewolf (Francis); Let’s Do It Again (Poitier); Lies My Father Told Me (Kadar); 92 in the Shade (McGuane); Paper Tiger (Annakin); The Passenger (Antonioni); Posse (Douglas); Race With the Devil (Starrett); Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (Richards); Rancho Deluxe (Perry); The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (Thompson); Report to the Commissioner (Katselas); The Romantic Englishwoman (Losey); Royal Flash (Lester); Shivers / They Came from Within (Cronenberg); The Yakuza (Pollack)


Best Performances of 1975
Oft-Mentioned Choices
George Burns in The Sunshine Boys
Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Lee Grant in Shampoo
Carol Kane in Hester Street
Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon

But how about...
Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely
While Humphrey Bogart enjoyed himself, Dick Powell was a little bored and aloof, and Elliott Gould got all groovy, this Philip Marlowe, as played by puff-eyed, bourbon-throated Robert Mitchum, is just plain TIRED. Drinking too much, smoking too much, knowing too much, Robert has just about had enough. Too bad that it was deemed necessary by the filmmakers to "youth him up" with Grecian 2000 and Polyfilla makeup, because Robert Mitchum has one of the great lived-in / worn out faces, perfect for this version of Marlowe, the Private Eye of film noir Nirvana. Sarcastic, verbally florid (and bloody funny with it) and still able to pack quite the punch, Robert endearingly convinces us that his line of work is not for the faint of heart. The perfect fit of actor and role.

...and what about...
Brian Keith in The Wind and the Lion
While the film itself is basically an African Queen / Anna & the King of Siam hybrid (and nowhere near as good as either), it does contain something fresh: Brian Keith as Theodore Roosevelt. A big chin holding a big mouth holding big teeth, sporting a handbroom moustache and a pair of John Lennon glasses, this President Teddy is more adventurer than politician, and more boy than man. I have no idea how accurate this portrayal is (how could I?...although I have viewed the American Experience documentary about the great man 3 times now...and love it) but, as usual, truth doesn't matter when trying to tell a good story. Brian as Teddy is fun (the only character in the film who is) and quite rousing in his penchant for carrying big metaphorical sticks. Bully!

...not to mention...
Jeanette Clift in The Hiding Place
1975 was a man's year in film. So few were the high-profile female parts that The Academy had to pad out its nominations for Best Actress with Ann-Margret in Tommy (a joke, surely) and pretend that Nurse Ratchett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was not a supporting role. And still, a wonderful (and correctly eligible) performance was overlooked: Jeanette Clift in a little-seen Holocaust film called The Hiding Place. Playing a Dutch Christian who, along with members of her family, hide desperate Jews in their home and prepare them for escape. While the film overly-trumpets the Christian ethics (was it financed by a church group??), Jeanette convinces as a woman whose faith is challenged (she discovers Hatred) but whose courage is unwavering. Primarily devoted to the stage (she only made 4 movies), Jeanette nonetheless gives one of the strongest performances in American-made films about The Holocaust...so where the hell was her nod?

...and one personal unmentionable...
Ann-Margret & Oliver Reed in Tommy
Ann-Margret was always more beauty than dancer, more dancer than singer, and more singer than actress. Here, she emotes as grandly as any operatic diva, making sure that we know how anguished her breasts are feeling. Me, I took her more seriously (and enjoyed her more immensely) as Ann-Margrock in that great episode of The Flintstones. Oh, and after what she had to do in Tommy, I was put off baked beans for ten years.
Oliver Reed couldn't sing well enough to pay his bar-bill and, unlike, say, Rex Harrison or Lou Reed, couldn't talk-sing either. So why the hell would you put this supreme tone-deaf boofhead in a musical? And a musical with absolutely no spoken dialogue...just singing?? Every time Ollie opens his mouth to terrorise another poor innocent note, I feel a primal rage to hurt him.

My 10 Favourite Performances of 1975
Why Jenny Craig had to be invented.
#01  Monty Python in Monty Python & the Holy Grail
#02  Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon
#03  Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show
#04  Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely
#05  John Cazale in Dog Day Afternoon
#06  Chris Sarandon in Dog Day Afternoon
#07  Jeanette Clift in The Hiding Place
#08  Michael Caine & Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King
#09  Roy Scheider & Richard Dreyfuss & Robert Shaw in Jaws
#10  Carol Kane in Hester Street
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11  Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
#12  Veronica Cartwright in Inserts
#13  Ronee Blakley in Nashville
#14  Brian Keith in The Wind and the Lion
#15  Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
#16  Woody Allen in Love and Death
#17  Jessica Harper in Inserts
#18  Simon Ward in All Creatures Great and Small
#19  Melanie Griffith in Night Moves  

Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
>  George Burns in The Sunshine Boys [subdued & hushed due to the vocal pummeling dished out to him by his co-star]
>  Walter Matthau in The Sunshine Boys [his co-star]
>  Lee Grant in Shampoo [needed more vindictive scenes to make more of a comedic impact]
>  Gene Hackman in French Connection II [overdoes the cold turkey improvisation featuring a chicken leg]

And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1975 are:

FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
SILVER: Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam; Terry Jones)
BRONZE: Jaws (Steven Spielberg)

LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Al Pacino (Dog Day Afternoon)
SILVER: Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
BRONZE: Robert Mitchum (Farewell, My Lovely)

LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jeanette Clift (The Hiding Place)
SILVER: Carol Kane (Hester Street)
BRONZE: Jessica Harper (Inserts)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: John Cazale (Dog Day Afternoon)
SILVER: Chris Sarandon (Dog Day Afternoon)
BRONZE: Brian Keith (The Wind and the Lion)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Veronica Cartwright (Inserts)
SILVER: Ronee Blakley (Nashville)
BRONZE: Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Monty Python (Monty Python & the Holy Grail)
SILVER: Michael Caine & Sean Connery (The Man Who Would Be King)
BRONZE: Roy Scheider & Richard Dreyfuss & Robert Shaw (Jaws)

JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Melanie Griffith (Night Moves)
SILVER: Robert Bettles (Ride a Wild Pony)
BRONZE: Eric Shea (Smile)

The Alternate Razzies for 1975 are:

CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Mandingo (Richard Fleischer)

CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Oliver Reed (Tommy)

CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Ann-Margret (Tommy)