The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970)

          Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, stately drama The Garden of the Finzi-Continis explores tensions among wealthy Italian Jews during the run-up to World War II, when Benito Mussolini escalated an ethnic-cleansing campaign in lockstep with the anti-Semitic purge wrought by the Nazis in Germany. Adapted from a novel by Giorgio Bassani and directed with rarified style by Vittorio De Sica, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a melodrama with a social purpose, so every scene of interpersonal friction and romantic strife is shot through with foreshadowing. Some characters see where things are headed while others play ostrich, so viewers get a close view at what happens when citizens rebel against totalitarianism and what happens when citizens spend too long ignoring the storm clouds gathering overhead. Many, many films explore similar terrain, and some—notably Bob Fosse’s Cabaret (1972)—inject the American perspective for a broader geopolitical view. Perhaps because of its narrow focus on the moneyed class, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis lacks gut-punch impact. Nonetheless, the question of how societies allow demagogues to gain power is one of timeless importance, and De Sica dramatizes issues with intelligence and precision.

          At the beginning of the story, young adults from throughout the city of Ferrara meet in the sprawling private estate of the Finzi-Contini family for leisurely games of tennis. (Among the story’s central metaphors is the notion of a walled-in compound as a island of tolerance in a sea of hateful madness; it’s the familiar binary argument of involvement versus isolation.) Though he inhabits a slightly lower social station, Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio) is in love with Micòl (Dominique Sanda), eldest daughter of the Finzi-Contini family and also his friend since childhood. Yet she’s drawn the handsome and politically expedient Malnate (Fabio Testi), and the situation is complicated by Micòl’s concern for her frail brother, Alberto (Helmut Berger), another childhood friend of Giorgio’s. Adding more layers to the narrative are scenes set in Giorgio’s home, since his father (Romolo Valli) champions Mussolini. In fact, the father joins the Fascist Party, somehow believing he can stop the spread of anti-Semitism from within the political machine.

         Those with a strong grasp of world history will get more from The Garden of the Finzi-Continis than others, since the movie’s philosophical debates occur on an elevated plane. Similarly, the narrative’s symbolism is intricate and subtle, so those looking to be lead by the hand toward one viewpoint or another will be lost. The broad strokes are plainly evident, but The Garden of the Finzi-Continis explores incremental differences between people who share many common values, rather than outright conflict between oceans-apart enemies. Undoubtedly, that’s why the picture enjoys its enviable reputation. By surgically extracting a sample of diseased tissue, De Sica and his collaborators explore something even more troubling than the rise of tyrants—the ease with which tyrants can seize control while those with the most cultural and economic influence are distracted by petty strife. 

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis: GROOVY

The Inheritance (1976)

          Despite Anthony Quinn’s top billing, this trashy melodrama is a vehicle for glamorous French actress Dominique Sanda, who plays a money-hungry vixen sleeping her way through a dysfunctional family while trying to seize control of a fortune. Produced in Italy and shown on American screens with some iffy dubbing transforming supporting players into English-language speakers, the picture evokes novelist Harold Robbins’ style of sexualized upper-class intrigue, although it’s a period piece instead of a modern story. Together with gauzy cinematography, extensive location photography, and relatively ornate production design, the vintage setting gives the piece a deceptive quality-cinema veneer. For while the characters are credible, the narrative is logical, and the themes are serious, the movie slides into the gutter at regular intervals. Director Mauro Bolognini spends almost as much time pointing his camera at Sanda’s naked body as he does recording her actual performance, and the way her character uses sex ensures that most of the movie feels lurid. Sure, Robbins often took similar material to even sleazier places, but it’s really just a matter of degrees.

          Set in the late 19th century, the film begins abruptly, with cruel patriarch Gregorio (Quinn) announcing that he’s dissolving the family business, a huge commercial bakery, and giving his three adult children their inheritances while he’s still alive. Long-suffering elder son Pippo (Gigi Proietti) gets a pittance, handsome Mario (Fabio Testi) receives only repayment of his massive gambling debts, and daughter Teta (Adriana Asti) gets nothing because Gregorio dislikes the man she married. Set adrift, Pippo starts a hardware business and marries the beautiful Irene (Sanda), who seems like a saint at first blush, given how she mediates various squabbles between the siblings. Alas, Pippo discovers her true character once he realizes that Irene is sleeping with Mario. Later, she makes her way into Gregorio’s bed, though it’s never clear whether that was her plan all along or whether she simply pursued an opportunity once it became visible. Although it’s made skillfully, The Inheritance is forgettable. Among other problems, it’s impossible to root for any of the characters, who run the gamut from avaricious to entitled. Moreover, while Sanda possesses a certain kind of regal allure, she’s too much of an ice queen to generate empathy. Go figure that she won the Best Actress prize at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival for her work in The Inheritance. 

The Inheritance: FUNKY

1900 (1976)

         While much has been written about American auteurs of the ’70s derailing their careers with overly indulgent projects, the phenomenon was not exclusive to the United States. After notching a major international hit with the controversial Last Tango in Paris (1972), Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci created 1900, a five-hour epic tracking the course of Italian politics from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of World War II. The movie has all the heaviosity and scale it needs, and Bertolucci’s central contrivance—following an aristocrat and a peasant who were born in the same location on the same day—gives the sprawling narrative a pleasing shape. The film’s images are lustrous, with regular Bertolucci collaborator Vittorio Storaro applying his signature elegant compositions and painterly lighting, and the film’s music is vibrant, thanks to the contributions of storied composer Ennio Morricone. Beyond that, however, 1900 is frustrating.

          The presence of American, Canadian, and French stars in leading roles diminishes the authenticity of the piece; a subplot about a sociopath becoming a sadistic Axis agent leads to laughably excessive passages of gore and violence; and Bertolucci indulges his sensuous aspect to such an extreme that he comes off like a fetishist obsessed with, of all things, excrement and penises. The movie has too much of everything, eventually devolving into a lumbering procession of strange scenes expressing a trite political message about poor people having morals and rich people being assholes.

          The first stretch of the picture, essentially a lengthy prologue, introduces the grandfathers of the protagonists. Alfredo Berlinghieri the Elder (Burt Lancaster) is the benevolent padrone of an estate, and Leo Dalcò (Sterling Hayden) is a peasant in his employ. Both welcome grandsons on the same day in 1900. The children grow up to be close friends, despite one enjoying privilege and the other doing without. Later the boys become young men. Alfredo (Robert De Niro) has learned from both his humanistic grandfather and his scheming father, so he enjoys crossing class lines while also treasuring power and wealth. Olmo (Gérard Depardieu) is a political firebrand, resentful of the ruling class no matter what face it wears.

          As life pushes the childhood friends apart, they watch Italy split along similar lines, with aristocrats forming the backbone of the Fascist movement while laborers suffer. Personifying the rise of the Fascists is Atilla Mellanchini (Donald Sutherland), whom we first meet as an enforcer helping Alfredo’s father maintain discipline on the estate. Naturally, the movie has a love story, revolving around Alfredo’s relationship with the unhinged Ada Chiostri Polan (Dominique Sanda). After many twists and turns, the story transforms into a politicized morality play as vengeful workers reclaim power from the Fascists.

          Bertolucci and his collaborators present some meaningful insights about important historical events, so the film is strongest when it sticks to polemics. Matters of love, lust, and madness are handled less gracefully. The most extreme scenes involve Atilla performing grotesque acts of violence. Rather than shocking the viewer, these sequences render Atilla so inhuman as to be one-dimensional, which stacks the political deck unfairly. Bertolucci is just as undisciplined with bedroom scenes. It’s quite startling, for instance, to see an actress playing an epileptic hooker manually pleasuring De Niro and Depardieu in full view of the camera. Wouldn’t suggesting the action have communicated the same narrative information? Similarly, do viewers need to see the actors playing the younger versions of the leads examining each other’s genitals? And what’s with the scene of Lancaster stalking a young girl into a barn, asking her to milk a cow because it turns him on, rhapsodizing about life while squishing his feet up and down in pile of feces, and then forcing the poor girl to slide her hand into his pants?

          It’s tempting to believe there’s a clue about the source of the film’s excess during an elaborate wedding scene, because a character presents the gift of a white horse named “Cocaine.” After all, doing too much blow was the creative downfall of many a Hollywood director.

          Whatever the reason, Bertolucci lost control over 1900 as a literary statement fairly early in the movie’s running time. Perhaps no single moment captures the ugly bloat of 1900 better than the harshest Atilla scene. After Atillia rapes a young boy, Bertolucci shows Atilia killing the child, lest a potential witness to his crimes survive. Fair enough. But instead of simply shooting the child, Atilla picks up the boy by his feet, spins him around the room, and repeatedly smashes the boy’s head against a wall until it cracks open like a watermelon. In the twisted aesthetic of Bertolucci’s 19oo, too much is never enough.

1900: FUNKY

The MacKintosh Man (1973)

          Despite being shallow, turgid, and unoriginal, The MacKintosh Man more or less slides by on star power, both in front of and behind the camera. Sleekly made by veteran director John Huston, who enlisted frequent collaborator Oswald Morris as his cinematographer, the picture tells an inconsequential story about conspiracies, crime schemes, personal betrayals, and other such things. Taken as a pure narrative, the piece falls somewhere on the spectrum between forgettable and irritating simply because so much of what happens onscreen is confusing. Taken as a cinematic experience, however, The MacKintosh Man is considerably more palatable. Walter Hill’s screenplay is so terse that the graceful images generated by Huston and Morris cut together at a brisk pace, giving The MacKintosh Man an almost musical flow. Composer Maurice Jarre’s jaunty main theme accentuates the cotton-candy texture of the movie, even though the subject matter is quite dark, and Paul Newman plays the leading role with his customary effortless charm. All in all, The MacKintosh Man feels, looks, and sounds like a solid movie, and sometimes the illusion of substance is enough to warrant a casual viewing.

          Attempting to describe the labyrinthine plot of the film is pointless, so the broad strokes will have to suffice. Rearden (Newman) is a British spy enlisted to penetrate a ring of thieves who smuggle diamonds through the mail. While posing as a criminal, Rearden is captured, convicted, and imprisoned, whereupon he discovers a second scheme. In exchange for a cut of the loot he “stole,” Rearden is offered a chance to bust out of prison. Accepting the terms, Rearden participates in an elaborate escape that involves cranes and smoke grenades and a phony ambulance, then meets a group of conspirators who extort money from criminals—all of which ties back to the original ring of diamond thieves. There’s also lots of murky business involving one Mrs. Smith (Dominique Sanda), a beautiful European working for British Intelligence, as well as the predictable levels of intrigue relating to high-ranking government officials, namely Member of Parliament Sir George Wheeler (James Mason) and spy boss MacKintosh (Harry Andrews).

          Following all of the story’s moving parts is dull and unrewarding labor, so it’s better to just go with the flow, savoring Hill’s pithy dialogue, Huston’s confident presentation, and Newman’s cheerfully cynical characterization. Furthermore, the supporting cast is so strong that the movie works well on a scene-to-scene basis even if the sum effect is underwhelming. That said, the story achieves something close to clarity and dramatic power once it gets past the halfway point, eventually resolving into an enjoyably suspenseful final scene.

The MacKintosh Man: FUNKY

The Conformist (1970)

          Every so often, a movie defeats me. In some cases, I’m unable to parse the mysteries of a film because the project is so obtuse that it exists outside anything I recognize as reality. (Here’s looking at you, Performance.) In other cases, however, I’m simply not sophisticated enough to receive the message the picture is sending. And so it goes with Bernardo Bertolucci’s political thriller The Conformist. On a textural level, I can say without hesitation that the film is exquisite. Working with frequent collaborator Vittorio Storaro, one of the true magicians of color cinematography, Bertolucci creates one memorable image after another. Using angles, color, framing, movement, production design, and special relationships with masterful precision, the filmmakers present 1930s and 1940s Europe as a living metaphor representing the spread of fascism.

          As the title character moves through his life before and during World War II, he tries to find a niche for himself inside the sleek surfaces of “normal” society, little suspecting that in the process of shaving off his “abnormal” edges, he is sacrificing his soul. Or something like that. You see, the problem is that I felt totally confused within the first five minutes of The Conformist, and never found any true connection with the movie beyond appreciating its beauty on a purely aesthetic level. Apparently, it takes a better man than me to decipher lines of dialogue like the following: “Yes, they would mistake for reality the shadow of reality.” Non capisco, il mio amico.

          Therefore, you might ask, why have I rated The Conformist highly, given my inability to penetrate its storyline? Well, in deference to the film’s reputation and to the unmistakable craftsmanship with which it was made, I’m comfortable heaping praise on what the movie might be—in other words, if The Conformist is half as dense and provocative and symbolic as I suspect, then it’s certainly among the most accomplished and challenging films of its era. Call it benefit of the doubt.

          Based on outside research more than pulling clues from the actual movie, I gather the storyline follows Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a social striver enlisted by a secretive organization to perform an assassination. On his way to the murder, Marcello flashes back through his life, recalling events that brought him to the current circumstances. He recalls a childhood encounter in which he was molested by an adult whom he then shot. He recalls the opportunistic nature of his marriage to a socially well-positioned woman. He recalls his friendship with a blind political activist. He recalls an affair with a married woman (played by the glamorous Dominique Sanda). And in one moment that I actually did understand while watching The Conformist, Marcello tries to confess his sins to a priest—as a condition of marriage—only to discover that the priest is more upset about Marcello having been with a man than about Marcello having committed murder. That particular scene, so chilly and incisive and sad, emboldens me to suggest that The Conformist contains worlds of meaning I was not able to grasp. Or maybe not. If nothing else, The Conformist is the world’s best cinematographer’s reel, because Storaro renders visual miracles during nearly every shot.

The Conformist: GROOVY

Damnation Alley (1977)

According to Hollywood lore, the fine folks at Twentieth Century-Fox originally thought Damnation Alley, based on a novel by journeyman genre writer Roger Zelzany, was going to be their big sci-fi hit for 1977, so they pumped more marketing money into this old-school cheapie than they did into that strange little movie George Lucas was shooting in England about some character called Luke Skywalker. Suffice it to say there was a course correction when Star Wars opened on May 25, so by the time Damnation hit theaters on October 21, it had already been rendered obsolete in almost every conceivable way by Lucas’ space opera. Looking at Damnation in the context of Hollywood history is about the only way to generate interest in the thing, which would have been passable as a pilot for one of those cheesy sci-fi shows that thrived on Saturday-morning TV in the ’70s, but doesn’t remotely make the grade as a theatrical feature. The plot is the usual post-apocalyptic hooey, with a gaggle of survivors traversing irradiated terrain in a pimped-out Winnebago while avoiding things like overabundant and/or oversized bugs. The effects are clunky in a sorta-endearing fashion (the scorching red skies are pretty cool), but the action and characterizations are utilitarian at best. The only real appeal, aside from the kitsch factor germane to all crappy ’70s sci-fi, is in watching the colorful B-grade cast: George Peppard, showing a glimmer of A-Team things to come, leads an RV filled with Jackie Earle Haley, Jan-Michael Vincent, Dominique Sanda, and Paul Winfield. All fun personalities, all badly underused here. Still, it’s impossible to hate a movie that features Peppard barking lines like this one into his CB: “Tanner, this is Denton. This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches. Repeat, killer cockroaches!”

Damnation Alley: LAME