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

1980 Week: Ordinary People

          One of the most harrowing domestic dramas ever released by a major Hollywood studio, Ordinary People tells the story of a family poised to implode in the wake of a tragedy. Tracking the emotional recovery of a teenager following a suicide attempt—which, in turn, was the direct result of his older brother’s accidental death—the picture uses a scalpel to peel back the socially acceptable masks that hide hatred, pain, and shame. Even with glimmers of humor from supporting actor Judd Hirsch, who plays a psychiatrist with an earthy demeanor, Ordinary People is rough going. The movie is almost relentlessly sad. Yet the final act is quite moving, a reward for viewers who cross an emotional minefield with the film’s characters. Another incentive: Ordinary People is exquisitely made in terms of acting, storytelling, and technical execution. The movie is not perfect, partially because it takes so long for tonal variance to emerge and partially because the stately pacing results in a slightly bloated running time. In every important respect, however, Ordinary People is a model for how small-scale dramas can achieve their full potential. When the movie works, which is most of the time, it’s almost transcendent.

          At the center of the picture is the Jarrett family. The father, Calvin (Donald Sutherland), is an easygoing lawyer who can’t see how deeply his family was scarred by the death of elder son Jordan during a boating accident. The mother, Beth (Mary Tyler Moore), is a tightly wound avatar of suburban perfection who suppresses everything that’s challenging and imperfect and weak. That’s why she can’t even begin to connect with the family’s surviving son, anguished teenager Conrad (Timothy Hutton). Because he was present when his older brother died, Conrad blames himself for Jordan’s death. Unfortunately, so does Beth, for whom the sun rose and set with Jordan. The unique dramatic crux of Ordinary People is the notion that parents don’t always love their children equally—Beth resents Conrad as much as she worshipped Jordan.

          Despite its great sensitivity and meticulous craftsmanship, Ordinary People might have become the equivalent of a glorified TV movie if not for the involvement of one key player. Acting icon Robert Redford made his directorial debut with Ordinary People, and his work was so assured that he scored an Oscar for Best Director. Rather than showing off with visual trickery, Redford focused on molding performances and shaping scenes, with marvelous results. He led first-time movie actor Hutton to an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and the way Redford exploded Moore’s girl-next-door image was masterful. Also netting an Oscar for the film was screenwriter Alvin Sargent, who beautifully adapted the story from a novel by Judith Guest by creating a tightly connected web of metaphors and signifiers. Collectively, the team behind the movie was rewarded for their efforts with the ultimate Hollywood prize: Ordinary People won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1980.

Ordinary People: RIGHT ON

A Man, a Woman, and a Bank (1979)

          Elevated by a charming leading performances but weighed down by a sleepy storyline, the Canadian-made heist comedy A Man, a Woman, and a Bank is pleasant to watch even though it lags frequently and leaves only the faintest impression on the viewer’s memory. Donald Sutherland, all bright smiles and twinkling eyes, plays Reese, an ambitious schemer with an idea for casing a construction site in order to rob the bank that’s being built there as soon as the bank opens to the public. Actor/director Paul Mazursky, participating here only as a performer, plays Reese’s doughy sidekick, Norman, a computer programmer experiencing a midlife crisis. Rounding out the main cast, offbeat beauty Brooke Adams plays Stacey, an ad-agency photographer who stumbles into a romantic relationship with Reese that threatens to complicate the robbery. Orchestrating these inconsequential shenanigans is director Noel Black, whose all-over-the-map career arguably peaked with his first feature, the acidic murder story Pretty Poison (1968). Set to bouncy music by Bill Conti, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank was obviously envisioned as a frothy romantic caper, with the buddy-comedy antics of Norman and Reese providing a counterpoint to the love-struck interplay between Reece and Stacey. Alas, the script by Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon, and Stuart Margolin misses the mark again and again.

          The obstacles related to the robbery are too easily surmounted. The friction between Norman and Reese is too soft, because instead of challenging each other, the characters support each other almost unconditionally. Most problematically, the romance between Reese and Stacey fails to generate suspense—Reese’s lies about his activities endanger the relationship, but Stacey doesn’t learn enough secrets to imperil Reese’s plans, at least not until the very end of the story. Because of these narrative issues, long stretches of A Man, a Woman, and a Bank unfold without any dramatic conflict. Yes, the bit of Norman and Reese hiding from security guards in an elevator shaft has a smidgen of suspense, and yes, it’s possible to become sufficiently invested in the Reese/Stacey relationship to worry about the union’s survival. Overall, however, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank is frustratingly bland, and it doesn’t help that Mazurky plays his sad-sack role so credibly he engenders more empathy than amusement. While Black’s slick style ensures that every scene is polished, Adams’ warmth and Sutherland’s charm are the best reasons to overlook the picture’s mediocrity.

A Man, a Woman, and a Bank: FUNKY

Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)

            Stupidity reigns in Start the Revolution Without Me, a goofy riff on the French Revolution—and not just because the movie’s version of Louis XVI is a dolt preoccupied with his clock collection. Directed by Bud Yorkin and produced by Norman Lear—the formidable combo behind several big-budget comedy movies but especially known for their spectacular success in television (All in the Family, etc.)—Start the Revolution Without Me features a frenetically paced combination of farce, satire, slapstick, and verbal comedy. Most of the humor is broad, gentle, and obvious, more on the order of second-rate Carol Burnett Show gags than the kind of inspired lunacy that took root in movie comedies a few years later, following the ascent of Mel Brooks and the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker collective.

          Among other weak devices, Start the Revolution Without Me employs chaotic fight scenes filled with pratfalls, crude jokes about effeminate men, self-reflexive narration, silly gags predicated on mispronounced words, sped-up photography, and tawdry scenes of men groping and/or ogling women. Most of this stuff was already considered old-fashioned in the vaudeville era. Some scenes in Start the Revolution Without Me almost work, simply because the skills of the performers trump the shortcomings of the material, and the movie boasts amazing production values in terms of costumes, locations, and props. Plus, of course, the movie has Gene Wilder at the height of his powers, as well as an enthusiastic but miscast Donald Sutherland.

          The stars play two sets of twin brothers. In the convoluted narrative, one pair of brothers is raised poor, and the other is raised wealthy. Upon reaching adulthood, both pairs are drawn to intrigue surrounding the French Revolution. Naturally, the poor brothers get mistaken for the rich brothers, and vice versa, leading to trouble as the poor brothers exploit their newfound position in Louis XVI’s court, and as the rich brothers try to escape service in the rebel militia. There’s also a lot of bedroom comedy involving a character loosely modeled after Marie Antoinette, as well as a wink-wink framing device during which modern-day Orson Welles (playing himself) introduces the movie and “tells” the story to the audience.

          Costar Hugh Griffith scores some points playing Louis XVI as a nincompoop, Victor Spinettii contributes a fun villainous turn in the Harvey Korman mode, and Billie Whitelaw is alluring as the Antoinette character. Yet Wilder, naturally, has most of the best scenes—as well as many of the worst—because of his no-prisoners approach. He’s infinitely better playing the rich brother, since that role allows for Wilder’s signature psychotic slow burns, and the early running gag about the rich brother’s affection for the dead falcon he wears on his arm is pleasantly absurd. Alas, even though Start the Revolution Without Me has its partisans—the script, by Lawrence J. Cohen and Fred Freeman, earned a Writers Guild nomination—the movie gets awfully tiresome after a while. The higher your tolerance for brainless humor, the longer you’re likely to stay engaged.

Start the Revolution Without Me: FUNKY

Fellini’s Casanova (1976)

          Among the iconic directors occupying the highest strata of the world-cinema pantheon, Italian madman Federico Fellini is almost certainly the one whose work I find the least interesting. And while one must divide Fellini’s work into at least two categories, cerebral art pieces and over-the-top freakouts, it’s fair to say that Fellini’s style is so extreme in all circumstances that for non-fans, watching Fellini films is like listening to a lunatic rant at top volume. The campy costuming, the grotesque characters, the voluptuous production design, the weird dream sequences—it’s all just too much, especially in the director’s later years, when he often slipped into self-parody.

          As a case in point, Fellini’s Casanova is an absurdly overlong adaptation of the legendary 18th-century lothario’s autobiography. Sprawling over 155 interminable minutes—that’s two and a half hours of noisy nonsense—Fellini’s Casanova contains attempts at many worthwhile things, such as questioning whether Casanova actually made emotional connections with his conquests and, on a deeper level, questioning what sort of existential malaise might drive a man to live by his libido. The movie also tries to capture the melancholy notion of an intelligent and sophisticated man who eventually became something of a circus animal, demonstrating his storied virility when the aristocracy of Europe expressed indifference to whatever else he might offer.

          Alas, co-writer/director Fellini surrounds these thoughtful elements with endless scenes of cartoonish stupidity. The filmmaker’s usual gimmicks are present and accounted for (extremely ugly supporting actors, women painted with whorish makeup), and he also includes such bizarre characters as a giant woman who wrestles men in a cage before taking sexy baths with her dwarf companions. (It wouldn’t be a Fellini movie without dwarves.) Even the sex scenes are not bereft of Fellini’s excessive stylization. The first carnal vignette, for instance, features Casanova holding onto the hips of a woman with whom he’s copulating and then bouncing around a room like some kind of erotic acrobat.

          Exacerbating the strangeness of the scene—and, for that matter, of the whole movie—is the manner in which Fellini presents his unlikely leading man, lanky and sardonic Canadian Donald Sutherland. The actor shaved the front of his scalp for this role, and then applied makeup prosthetics to his nose and chin before topping off the clownish effect with exaggerated eye shadow. He looks like a psychotic drag queen, especially when Fellini frames various point-of-view shots—from the perspective of Casanova’s sex partners—in which Sutherland pumps away at women with the aggression and snarling facial expressions of an athlete doing reps. (Rest assured, not a single frame of Fellini’s Casanova is sexy, despite the presence of lovely starlet Tina Aumont in the supporting cast.)

          Since Fellini’s Casanova employs a meandering, dreamlike story structure that wafts back and forth between time periods, the overall desired effect becomes hopelessly obscured. Is the movie supposed to be a criticism of Casanova’s libertine ways, hence the animalistic portrayal? Is the movie supposed to indict the audience for being fascinated by Casanova’s sex life? Or is the movie just another in a long series of intellectually masturbatory indulgences by a director who never seemed to recognize when enough was enough? Maybe you’re a Fellini fan who cares enough to find answers to these questions, but simply raising the questions represents as much effort as I’m willing to invest. As a last thought, however, I’m willing to acknowledge that Fellini’s Casanova is filled with eye candy for those who subscribe to the more-is-more aesthetic, notably during the impressive but bewildering opening scene of an nighttime outdoor carnival in Venice.

Fellini’s Casanova: FREAKY

The Great Train Robbery (1979)

          Easily the best movie that novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton ever directed—thanks to a larky story, rich cinematography, and two vivid performances—The Great Train Robbery is an old-fashioned escapist adventure. Set in late-19th-century England, the movie concerns gentleman crook Edward (Sean Connery), who travels in high-society circles while cruising for possible schemes. One day, Edward learns the particulars about a regular gold shipment transported by the British government to cover military expenses. Excited at the prospect of being the first person to ever rob a moving train, Edward enlists cronies including femme fatale Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down) and pickpocket John (Donald Sutherland). Over the course of several months, Edward’s team tracks down and copies the four keys needed to open the locked train safe in which the gold is stored during transit. Concurrently, Edward contrives an outlandish method for getting onto the train undetected. When unexpected complications arise, Edward’s gang responds with imagination and verve.

          Crichton, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel of the same name, based the story on a real event. As a result, the narrative has the flavor of authenticity even though the tone is strictly lighthearted. Better still, Crichton stays laser-focused on the fun of depicting a seemingly impossible heist, rather than getting bogged down in contrived plotting and/or iffy characterization (two conundrums that permeate Crichton’s wholly original stories). That’s not to say The Great Train Robbery is flawless; quite to the contrary, the movie drags in the middle and contains several passages of stilted dialogue, such as Crichton’s weak attempts at double entendre-laden romantic patter. Nonetheless, the virtues of The Great Train Robbery outweigh the shortcomings. First and foremost, the movie looks gorgeous. Employing his signature deep-focus compositions and haze filters, cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth creates a look that seems as if it’s illuminated by the gas lamps of the story’s historical period. Fantastic costuming and production design complete the intoxicating illusion of Unsworth’s imagery.

          Leading man Connery, ever comfortable in the role of the handsome rascal, sells the effervescent aspects of his characterization with a grace reminiscent of Cary Grant, and he underlines the physicality of the character with impressive stunt work on moving trains. Sutherland provides a terrific foil, opting for eccentric whining as a contrast to Connery’s unflappable poise; with his mutton-chop sideburns and scowling expressions, Sutherland approaches but safely avoids camp. Leading lady Down is more beguiling than interesting—while her work in The Great Train Robbery is competent, all she’s really asked to do is look seductive. It’s true that The Great Train Robbery is a bit windy at 110 minutes, although the painstaking approach pays off with such long scenes as the nighttime break-in at a train-depot office. However, with expert composer Jerry Goldsmith’s rousing music pushing things along, The Great Train Robbery snaps back into shape for a bravura finish.

The Great Train Robbery: GROOVY

Murder by Decree (1979)

          Presumably inspired by the success of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a 1974 novel by Nicholas Meyer about Sherlock Holmes teaming up with Sigmund Freud—and by the favorable reception for the terrific 1976 movie adaptation of Meyer’s book—this ambitious mystery film pits Holmes against a real-life murderer, Jack the Ripper. That’s where things get a little complicated. First off, Meyer was not involved with Murder by Decree, but he made a wholly separate 1979 movie about Jack the Ripper called Time After Time. Furthermore, Murder by Decree is based on two separate books. They are Murder by Decree, a 1975 tome that Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd adapted from their own 1973 BBC miniseries Jack the Ripper, and Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, a 1976 book by Stephen Knight. Oh, and neither of those books features Sherlock Holmes. Confused? Me, too. Moving on!

          Murder by Decree is predicated on two gimmicks. First is the novelty of pairing Holmes with a real-life mystery, and second is the conspiracy theory detailed in the books upon which the film is based. Without giving away anything that isn’t hinted at by the title, the theory holds that Jack the Ripper was a member of the British aristocracy who had official sanction for his horrific crimes. Murder by Decree has many fans—deservedly so, since it’s a consistently intelligent and sophisticated film—though one wishes the producers had demonstrated more confidence in the source material, since the Holmes contrivance makes the whole picture feel a bit fluffy. After all, it’s hard to buy into a conspiracy theory when it’s presented in tandem with one of world literature’s most famous fictional characters. In other words, the story can only be so persuasive since it contains a made-up protagonist. Anyway, notwithstanding the credibility gap (and an overlong running time), Murder by Decree is solid entertainment for grown-ups.

          The cast is terrific, with an urbane Christopher Plummer playing Holmes opposite a snide James Mason as Dr. Watson. Supporting players include Frank Finlay and David Hemmings as policemen, plus John Gielgud as the British PM. (Geneviève Bujold and Donald Sutherland also appear.) Orchestrating the whole film is eclectic director Bob Clark, who at this point in his career had just escaped the ghetto of low-budget horror pictures; appropriately, he cloaks Murder by Degree with enough shadows and smoke to fuel a dozen frightfests. The movie comprises lots of skulking about in dark places, as well as interrogating suspects in ornate rooms, so the contrast between posh and seedy locations serves the story well. Still, it’s all a bit long-winded, and Plummer’s quite chilly, making it difficult to invest much emotion while watching the picture. Accordingly, how much you dig Murder by Decree will depend on how intriguing you find the central mystery—and how satisfying you find the ending, which might tie things up a bit too neatly for some tastes.

Murder by Decree: GROOVY

The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

          By far the funniest and most polished of the various doofus-humor anthology films that hit theaters after Saturday Night Live’s success transformed so-called “college humor” into mainstream entertainment, The Kentucky Fried Movie was a game-changer for its director, John Landis, and its writers, the zany team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. After this picture made a splash, Landis went on to helm the blockbuster Animal House (1978), while the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team perfected their style of comic insanity with Airplane! (1980). Yet while both of those pictures feature traditional start-to-finish narratives, The Kentucky Fried Movie operates in the Saturday Night Live mode by presenting more than 20 different sketches, some of which are less than a minute long, and one of which runs more than 30 minutes. Some bits are funnier than others, of course, but everything in The Kentucky Fried Movie is executed with the utmost professionalism; Landis’ sleek camerawork and meticulous pacing has the effect of corralling the movie’s slapdash gags into a coherent format.

          Obviously, none of this should give the impression that The Kentucky Fried Movie represents an exercise in good taste. Quite to the contrary, the movie is gleefully crude, especially in the realm of sex jokes, of which there are many. For instance, one sketch that I’m ashamed to say kept me chuckling for years after I first saw the picture (and still makes me laugh now) is the outrageously vulgar two-minute trailer for a nonexistent sexploitation movie called Catholic High School Girls in Trouble, which hits every note of Roger Corman-style hucksterism perfectly. There are other fake trailers, as well as ersatz news broadcasts, faux commercials, and straight-up comedy bits that feel like stand-alone short films. Sometimes, characters from one sequence pop up in an unrelated sequence, so everything feels like it’s happening in the same milieu.

          The centerpiece of The Kentucky Fried Movie is A Fistful of Yen, a slick spoof of the iconic Bruce Lee flick Enter the Dragon  (1973). A Fistful of Yen contains some of The Kentucky Fried Movie’s silliest gags—think of this extended vignette as a dry run for the genre send-ups Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker made in the ’80s, and you’ve got the right idea. (Sample gag: The bad guy has a disloyal underling beheaded, then shouts, “Now take him to be tortured!”) During this sequence, comic actor Evan Kim gives a simultaneously charming and ridiculous performance as the Bruce Lee-styled lead character, delivering all of his lines with an absurdly racist accent; the wide-eyed shamelessness of his acting is winning, and he does a credible job of mimicking Lee’s fierce athleticism.

          A few familiar names pop up in cameos during The Kentucky Fried Movie, including Bill Bixby, Henry Gibson, and Donald Sutherland, but utility players appearing in multiple roles—including David Zucker—carry most of the load. As with most examples of “college humor,” The Kentucky Fried Movie isn’t for everyone, because it’s a guy movie through and through. In other words, it’s so dumb and leering you may feel embarrassed laughing at some of the jokes. However, when seen in the right frame of mind, The Kentucky Fried Movie provides 83 minutes of jubilantly juvenile jocularity.

The Kentucky Fried Movie: GROOVY

Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

          Full disclosure: My first book was about Dalton Trumbo, the writer-director of Johnny Got His Gun, and in the course of writing the book I became acquainted with Trumbo’s son, who also worked on the picture. Therefore, I’m not completely objective, so some of the virtues I see in Johnny Got His Gun may not be quite as visible to casual viewers. Adapted from Trumbo’s own novel, a legendary antiwar story originally published in 1939, Johnny Got His Gun is an impassioned personal statement about an important theme. That said, the movie is challenging because of problems that stem not only from budgetary limitations but also from Trumbo’s inexperience behind the camera—even though he’d been working in Hollywood since the mid-1930s, Trumbo did not attempt directing until this project, which he made when he was 65. And while it would be heartening to report that Johnny Got His Gun represents one of the great cinematic debuts of all time, it’s more accurate to say that the picture is interesting because of its intentions. It must also be said, of course, that the narrative is not inherently cinematic.

          Set during World War I, the tale concerns an unfortunate Colorado youth named Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms), who suffers horrific battlefield injuries. In the “present day” scenes, Joe is an armless, legless cripple; he also lost his ears, eyes, and mouth. What remains of Joe’s body lies in a French hospital bed, and doctors spend endless amounts of time trying to determine why Joe remains alive. Yet while the doctors believe Joe to be unaware of his circumstances, his mind is still active and his sense of touch allows him to develop a sort of communication—he can respond to taps on his body, and can in turn lift his head back and forth to send Morse code messages. The “present day” scenes are intercut with plaintive flashbacks to the life Joe lost—his relationships with his father, mother, and girlfriend.

          Many previous attempts to film Johnny Got His Gun ran aground, but as he neared the end of his incredibly colorful career, Trumbo decided to adapt the book himself. (Determination was nothing new for Trumbo; he’s the screenwriter credited with breaking Hollywood’s anticommunist blacklist, of which he was an early victim.) Some of Trumbo’s directorial flourishes work better in concept than in practice, like shifting between color, black-and-white, and an intermediary muted color scheme; the device has intellectual heft but little emotional impact. Further, Trumbo’s lack of visual panache exacerbates the claustrophobic nature of the story—a more experienced director could have “opened up” the material without harming the spirit of the piece. The worst shortcoming, however, probably involves Trumbo’s weak attempts to apply a Fellini-esque veneer to certain dream sequences. Yet the underlying story is so powerful, and the key performances are so heartfelt, that Johnny Got His Gun packs a punch.

          Bottoms delivers incredibly sensitive work when performing onscreen in flashbacks and when voicing narration during the “present day” scenes; the psychic pain his character experiences from start to finish is harrowing. Jason Robards brings palpable world-weariness to the role of Joe’s father, and cameo player Donald Sutherland offers a sly interpretation of Jesus during a memorable hallucination scene. To his credit and detriment, Trumbo honored the unrelentingly grim tone of the novel, which means Johnny Got His Gun has integrity to burn but is also a tough picture to sit through. Nonetheless, Johnny Got His Gun is a fittingly idiosyncratic statement from one of the 20th century’s most irrepressible voices.

Johnny Got His Gun: GROOVY

The Day of the Locust (1975)

          In terms of artistic ambition and physical scale, The Day of the Locust is easily one of the most impressive studio movies of the ’70s. Working with first-class collaborators including cinematographer Conrad Hall, director John Schlesinger did a remarkable job of re-imagining ’30s Hollywood as a dark phantasmagoria comprising endless variations of debauchery, desire, despair, disappointment, and, finally, death. As a collection of subtexts and surfaces, The Day of the Locust is beyond reproach.

          Alas, something bigger and deeper must be present in order to hold disparate elements together, and even though Schlesinger’s film was adapted from a book many regard as one of the great literary achievements of the 20th century, The Day of the Locust lacks a unifying force. Schlesinger and his team strive so desperately to make a Big Statement that the movie sinks into pretentious grandiosity, and Schlesinger’s choice to present every character as a grotesque makes The Day of the Locust little more than an exquisitely rendered freak show.

          Novelist Nathanael West based his 1939 book The Day of the Locust on his own experiences as a writer in ’30s Hollywood, capturing the has-beens, never-weres, and wanna-bes living on the fringes of the film industry. West’s book is deeply metaphorical, with much of its power woven into the fabric of wordplay. So, while screenwriter Waldo Salt’s adaptation of The Day of the Locust is admirable for striving to capture subtle components of West’s book, the effort was doomed from the start—some of the images West conjures are so arch that when presented literally onscreen, they seem overwrought. Plus, the basic story suffers from unrelenting gloominess.

          While employed at a movie studio and hoping to rise through the art-direction ranks, Tod Hackett (William Atherton) moves into an apartment complex and becomes fascinated with his sexy neighbor, actress Faye Greener (Karen Black). Loud, opportunistic, and teasing, Faye accepts Tod’s affections while denying his love, even though Tod befriends Faye’s drunken father, a clown-turned-traveling salesman named Harry Greener (Burgess Meredith). Meanwhile, Faye meets and seduces painfully shy accountant Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland), who foolishly believes he can domesticate Faye. The storyline also involves a hard-partying dwarf, a borderline-sociopathic child actor, a lecherous studio executive, and loathsome movie extras who stage illegal cockfights.

          The narrative pushes these characters together and pulls them apart in wavelike rhythms that work on the page but not on the screen. And in the end, ironic circumstances cause Hollywood to erupt in a hellish riot.

          Considering that Schlesinger’s film career up to this point mostly comprised such tiny character studies as Darling (1965) and Midnight Cowboy (1969), it’s peculiar that he felt compelled to mount a production of such gigantic scale, and it’s a shame that his excellent work in constructing individual moments gets overwhelmed by the movie’s bloated weirdness. In fact, nearly every scene has flashes of brilliance, but The Day of the Locust wobbles awkwardly between moments that don’t completely work because they’re too blunt and ones that don’t completely work because they’re too subtle. Predictably, actors feel the brunt of this uneven storytelling. Atherton gets the worst of it, simply because he lacks a leading man’s charisma, and Black’s characterization is so extreme she’s unpleasant to watch. Meredith’s heart-rending vulnerability gets obscured behind the silly overacting that Schlesinger clearly encourages, and Sutherland’s performance is so deliberately bizarre that it borders on camp, even though he displays fierce emotional commitment.

The Day of the Locust: FREAKY

Klute (1971)

          A character piece disguised a thriller, Klute has so many extraordinary elements that it’s silly to complain about the movie’s shortcomings. For while Klute is not particularly effective a whodunit, it soars as a probing investigation into the sexual identity of a complicated woman. Klute is also a great mood piece. The picture earned leading lady Jane Fonda the first of her two Oscars, and it’s the project on which director Alan Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis perfected the visual style they later used on two classic conspiracy-themed films, The Parallax View (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976). In fact, Klute is often cited as the first entry in a trilogy comprising Parallax and President’s, because themes of duplicity, paranoia, and surveillance pervade all three films.

          Set in New York City, Klute concerns the search for a missing business executive from the Midwest. Laconic heartland cop-turned-PI John Klute (Don Sutherland) travels to the Big Apple to look for the missing man, and his best source of information is call girl Bree Daniels (Fonda). As John pressures Bree for information, the movie examines her intricate personality. Pakula features several insightful scenes of the call girl speaking with her therapist, and it’s fascinating to watch Bree waffle between justifications (exercising sexual power over men validates her self-image) and recriminations (for her, prostitution is a sort of addiction).

          As carefully sculpted by Fonda and Pakula—who presumably used the script by the otherwise undistinguished writers Andy Lewis and David P. Lewis as a jumping-off point for elaborations and improvisations—Bree Daniels is one of the most textured characters in all of ’70s cinema. Among the unforgettable moments during Fonda’s scorching performance is the bit when Bree seems to experience a massive orgasm with one of her clients—until she “breaks character” by checking her watch. Truth be told, Klute almost delves too deeply into Bree’s personality, because the unveiling of her soul pushes the actual plot of the movie into the background. Even Sutherland, very much Fonda’s equal as a performer, falls into his costar’s shadow.

          Nonetheless, Pakula occasionally remembers that he’s making a thriller, and the movie features a handful of strong suspense scenes. Especially during these fraught moments, Willis uses deep shadows to convey a sense of ever-present danger; the artful silhouettes he creates during the climax are particularly memorable. Actually, it seems that nearly everybody involved with Klute treated the project like high art, thereby elevating what could have been a pulpy story into something special. For example, supporting players including Charles Cioffi and Roy Scheider give their small roles depth, and composer Michael Small adds to the ominous mood with eerie musical textures.

Klute: GROOVY

Steelyard Blues (1973)

Although it enjoys a certain cult-favorite notoriety because of its irreverent characterizations and storyline, Steelyard Blues is a counterculture-era relic that has not aged well. The film’s main characters are ostensibly freethinking rebels who want to throw off the yokes of Establishment society. In theory, these people are admirable—but in practice, they’re lawbreakers who create destructive chaos while pursuing selfish goals. Plus, as was so often the case with “progressive” ’70s movies, the portrayal of women in the picture is demeaning. Steelyard Blues was written by then-newcomer David S. Ward, who won an Oscar for his next script, The Sting (also released in 1973), and while The Sting is as focused and funny, Steelyard Blues is meandering and middling. Steelyard Blues concerns a loose collective of misfits. Peter Boyle is “Eagle” Thornberry, a borderline-insane eccentric who checks into mental institutions whenever he needs a break from everyday problems. He’s obsessed with demolishing cars. Donald Sutherland is Jesse Veldini, a small-time crook determined to refurbish a World War II-era plane so he and his cronies can fly away and start a commune somewhere outside the U.S. Jane Fonda is Iris Caine, a prostitute involved in a quasi-romance with Jesse. As should be apparent, these are ideas, not real characters. The first directing job for Alan Myerson, who went on to a long career in TV, Steelyard Blues is numbingly episodic and start-to-finish unbelievable, comprising a series of “outrageous” vignettes featuring characters who bear no recognizable resemblance to persons found in the real world. Yet what really drags the movie down are narrative incoherence and a lack of laugh-out-loud humor. Worse, the picture tries way too hard to be clever, so it gets exhausting after a while, and not even the considerable talents of the leading players can pull the whole jumbled thing together.

Steelyard Blues: LAME

The Eagle Has Landed (1976)

Representing a middling finale to an impressive career, The Eagle Has Landed was the last movie directed by action guy John Sturges, whose previous output included such classics as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963). Considering Sturges’ skill and the caliber of the film’s cast, The Eagle Has Landed should be terrific, but the story is hopelessly convoluted, and the film never quite overcomes the problem of featuring Nazis as protagonists. Based on a novel by Jack Higgins and written by Bond-movie veteran Tom Mankiewicz, who was generally better suited to tongue-in-cheek escapist fare, the narrative concerns an outlandish Third Reich plot to kidnap British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the height of the war’s European action. Some of the Germans behind the scheme are, in descending order of rank, Hitler confidante Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasence), an officer named Radl (Robert Duvall, complete with eye patch), an IRA double-agent named Devlin (Donald Sutherland), and a disgraced Nazi officer named Steiner (Michael Caine). The overcooked plot also includes American soldiers (played by, among others, Larry Hagman and Treat Williams), plus a British lass (Jenny Agutter) who shares romantic history with Devlin. (In case you’ve already forgotten, he’s the IRA guy.) Just describing the plot of The Eagle Has Landed is exhausting, and while watching the movie is not quite as much of a chore as this synopsis might suggest, The Eagle Has Landed lacks the jaunty quality of Sturges’ best action pictures. On the bright side, there’s some low-wattage fun to be had in watching Caine play a snotty officer who openly expresses contempt for his superiors, or in watching Sutherland play one of his signature romantic rogues. Plus, Duvall has a few strong moments as the put-upon Radl, a mid-level officer who endeavors to follow orders while slyly working the Third Reich political system to protect himself from punishment in the event of failure. Good luck, pal!

The Eagle Has Landed: FUNKY

Don’t Look Now (1973)

          Adventurous director Nicolas Roeg’s breakthrough movie, the sexually charged psychological thriller Don’t Look Now, is one of those rare films that enjoys both cult-fave notoriety and deep critical respect. Yet try as I might, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the thing, despite having watched it at different times of life. The picture feels intelligent and provocative, so it’s possible I’m missing something, but Don’t Look Now’s opaque storyline and its perverse preoccupation with human suffering has always struck me as needlessly pretentious and grim. Therefore, I can’t find a whole lot to praise beyond certain aspects of acting and technical execution, but it’s clear many other viewers experience Don’t Look Now differently.

          Anyway, the quasi-Hitchockian storyline begins in England, where John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) live with their young daughter. During an eerie, fragmented opening scene, the daughter drowns on the Baxters’ estate. After the tragedy, John and Laura relocate to Venice, where John has work, as a means of escaping their traumatic past. However, Laura remains unsettled, especially when she meets a pair of strange older women, one of whom claims to be a psychic receiving messages from Laura’s dead child. Worse, John has a series of jarring experiences suggesting he’s doomed. Eventually, it all gets very weird, with freaky imagery ranging from cataract-clouded eyes to a homicidal dwarf. Throughout the picture, Roeg deliberately jostles the audience’s sense of time and place with brash editing, creating an effect that might favorably be called dreamlike. Less favorably, the effect might be called confusing or simply annoying.

          At the center of the picture, consuming much more screen time than seems necessary, is an intense sex scene between Christie and Sutherland that’s meant to represent their characters coming back to life after a period of grief. Whatever its story purpose, however, the scene has become infamous after decades of rumors that the actors actually had intercourse during filming. (The gossip has been corroborated and denied so many times that, at this point, it’s anybody’s guess what really happened.) Considering that the sex scene should only be one color in the larger painting—if anything, the picture’s gruesome ending is a more appropriate subject for analysis—the fact that Don’t Look Now is best known for a few moments of carnality says something about its diffuse nature.

          And to those who adore this picture, I can only say that I envy you the pleasure of seeing the great film I’ve never been able to find in the thickets of Roeg’s brash artistic posturing. While I can recognize the fierce commitment of the leading actors’ performances and I can tout the craftsmanship of the picture’s cinematography and editing, I just can’t swing with Roeg’s cinematic insouciance.

Don’t Look Now: FREAKY

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

          The storyline of the 1958 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers is so tethered to the historical moment in which the film was made—a period of anti-Communist paranoia and rampant conformity—that it seemed unlikely a remake could update the storyline’s themes in a meaningful way. And yet that’s just what director Philip Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter accomplished with their 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which equals the original film in terms of intelligence, social commentary, and terror. The premise, taken from Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, is the same in each movie: An alien race arrives on earth, gestates copies of human beings in plant-like pods, and kills the human beings in order to replace them with the “pod people” who serve the alien race’s hive-mind. In the ’50s, the plot distilled the clash between jingoistic postwar Americans and the supposed radical element of domestic communists. In the ’70s, the plot crystallizes divisions between lockstep consumers and counterculture freethinkers.

          The hero of the 1978 version is Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a San Francisco health-department inspector who loves his co-worker, Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), even though she’s romantically involved with an uptight businessman named Geoffrey Howell (Art Hindle). Geoffrey is among the aliens’ first victims, but since Elizabeth has no idea what’s really happened, she’s unable to explain disturbing changes in his personality. Concerned for Elizabeth’s emotional welfare, Matthew introduces her to his pal David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), a pop psychologist with a predilection for catch phrases and turtlenecks. The Kibner angle is one of many clever flourishes in the 1978 version, because the film’s tuned-in characters initially believe they can solve their problems with talking-and-listening therapy—the very sort of human contact threatened by the aliens’ nefarious scheme. Yet Kaufman’s movie isn’t entirely preoccupied by sly observations of modern life, because the director is just as adept at generating excitement.

          The picture has a menacing atmosphere right from the first frames, with everything from shadowy photography to the weird look of the pods contributing to a frightful aesthetic. Kaufman stages a number of effective suspense scenes, like the scary bit at a mud bath run by Matthew’s friends Jack (Jeff Goldblum) and Nancy (Veronica Cartwright). Richter’s witty dialogue and Kaufman’s preference for naturalistic acting allow the actors to sketch individualistic characterizations, and Nimoy, in particular, benefits from the sophisticated storytelling—this is probably his best work outside the Star Trek universe. Watch out, too, for a just-right cameo by Kevin McCarthy, the star of the 1958 version—and do yourself a favor by ignoring the underwhelming later versions of this story, which include the Abel Ferrara-directed dud Body Snatchers (1993) and the Nicole Kidman-starring disaster The Invasion (2007).

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: GROOVY