High Plains Drifter (1973)

          After making a strong directorial debut with 1971’s Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood decided to put his stamp on the genre that originally made him famous as an actor: the Western. Yet instead of simply churning out a moralistic shoot-’em-up in the John Wayne mold, Eastwood made High Plains Drifter, a creepy revenge tale so heavily allegorical it might actually be a ghost story. Considering this was only his second directing job, Eastwood’s artistic ambition is impressive. Yet while the movie is brisk, nasty, and stylish, it has major narrative weaknesses. One big problem is that the protagonist is a cipher—we never learn the character’s background, name, or true motivation—and another is the way the movie fails to clarify whether onscreen events are happening in “reality” or taking place in a supernatural netherworld. Eastwood gets points for attacking heavy themes, but his inability to bring everything together is disappointing.

          The story begins when a character referred to as the Stranger (Eastwood) rides into the lakeside frontier town of Lago. He gets into a hassle with a group of thugs, and then kills all of them with his frightening gunplay. Impressed, the townspeople ask the Stranger to plan an ambush: Three murderers who have just been released from prison are pledged to ravage Lago, so the townspeople are terrified. Courtesy of (confusing) exposition and flashbacks, we learn that some time ago, the murderers slaughtered Lago’s do-gooder sheriff while the townspeople watched—and that the tragedy stemmed from a conspiracy related to the mine from which the town derives its livelihood. Furthermore, Eastwood’s character may or may not actually be the sheriff’s reincarnation and/or spirit—never mind the fact that no one recognizes him.

          Anyway, the Stranger is given carte-blanche throughout Lago, so he installs a local dwarf (Billy Curtis) as the new mayor/sheriff, seizes a local tramp (Marianna Hill) as his personal concubine, and makes the townspeople paint all of Lago’s buildings red so the town looks like a vision of hell. This sets the stage for a showdown with the murderers, although the townspeople start to wonder if their “savior” is worse than the killers he’s been hired to fight.

          The gist of the piece is painfully obvious right from the beginning—the people of Lago are being punished for their sins—but the script, by Ernest Tidyman, muddies the narrative waters. The Stranger is a bloodthirsty, crude, sarcastic outlaw capable of violent sexual assaults, so it’s not as if he’s the personification of justice. Therefore, the movie has virtually no morality on display, making it difficult to care what happens to any of the film’s characters. And since the movie doesn’t compensate for this deficit by providing a tidy parable, what’s the point? Still, High Plains Drifter looks great, especially during the moody nighttime scenes, and Eastwood surrounds himself with interesting faces. Curtis stands out as the town’s perverse voice of conscience, and Eastwood favorite Geoffrey Lewis is effectively odious as the leader of the murderers.

High Plains Drifter: FUNKY

The French Connection (1971) & French Connection II (1975)

          Cop movies were never the same after The French Connection, a scalding thriller about a New York detective obsessively tracking a Gallic drug smuggler. Once audiences watched morally challenged policeman Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) dress like a Salvation Army Santa Claus to snare a hoodlum, rattle suspects with twisted psychological tricks, and recklessly instigate the most frightening car chase 1971 audiences had ever seen, any subsequent policier with less verve seemed old-fashioned by comparison.

          Based on a bestselling nonfiction book by Robin Moore and directed with docudrama realism by William Friedkin, the movie meticulously tracks how Doyle and his partner, Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), latch onto a small-time hood, Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco), who unwittingly leads the cops to enigmatic European crook Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). Among many other things, the film is a respectful but unflinching homage to dogged police work, because surveiling Sol way past the point when superiors see the value in doing so unlocks clues leading to a much more significant target. Ernest Tidyman’s muscular script juxtaposes vivid character-development scenes with explosive sequences of police action, creating just the right ambiguous context for signature moments including the harrowing vignette of Doyle shooting an escaping felon in the back. Throughout, the storyline uses Doyle as a means of exploring of whether Machiavellian law enforcement degrades or protects society.

          Yet beyond its probing questions about right and wrong, The French Connection is breathlessly exciting, particularly during that infamous car chase, which has Doyle pursuing an elevated train carrying a suspect; Doyle’s near-misses with pedestrians are so terrifying that they reinforce the movie’s theme of a cop who’s arguably as dangerous as any crook. Lo Bianco, Rey, and Scheider provide sterling support, with Scheider demonstrating the streetwise suaveness that made him a leading man a few years later. As for Hackman, he’s on fire, alternately ferocious, funny, perverse, and wild, turning scenes like the “pick your toes in Poughkeepsie” interrogation into unforgettable moments. His performance is a master class in channeling the unique energy of the male animal into an expression of complicated sociopolitical concepts. Friedkin, Hackman, and Tidyman all won Oscars for their work, and they each spent much of their subsequent careers trying to recapture the bristling intensity of this film.

          For instance, Hackman continued charting Doyle dark odyssey in French Connection II, for which hard-hitting journeyman John Frankenheimer replaced brash provocateur Friedkin. A respectable thriller in its own right, French Connection II sends Doyle to Marseilles, where he tries to capture the evasive Charnier on the Frenchman’s home turf. In the sequel’s brilliant contrivance, Doyle gets abducted and by Charneri’s thugs, who force heroin into the cop’s system until he becomes a desperate junkie. This eventually leads to an extraordinary sequence of Doyle going through violent DT’s. Another strong moment is the grim finale, which pays off the French Connection journey on an appropriate note of moral ambiguity.

          Overall, however, the storyline of French Connection II isn’t nearly as focused or potent as that of its predecessor. The rivalry between Doyle and his Gallic counterpart (Bernard Fresson) plays well without lodging too firmly in the viewer’s imagination, and too many scenes feature Doyle killing time. As wonderful as it is to luxuriate in character development, leisurely pacing does not an exciting crime thriller make. That said, Frankenheimer plays rough whenever the action starts, and Hackman’s portrayal of Doyle is just as powerful the second time around. So while French Connection II ultimately feels unnecessary, it’s sufficiently well-crafted that both of these movies deserve spaces on the top shelf of ’70s crime cinema. FYI, the real-life cops who inspired The French Connection also inspired two other thrillers, both released in 1973: Badge 373 and The Seven-Ups.

The French Connection: OUTTA SIGHT

French Connection II: GROOVY

Suzanne (1973)

          The popular arts of the late ’60s and early ’70s were filled with hippy-dippy freakouts made by plugged-in youths who perceived themselves as explorers charting the outer edges of human consciousness, often aided by mind-altering party favors. And that’s about the only way to contextualize the impenetrable drama Suzanne. Jared Martin plays an insufferably self-important movie director whose newest project has something to do with Christ mythology, and he finds inspiration when he meets a moon-eyed blonde named Suzanne (Sondra Locke). Inexplicably drawn to her pompous new suitor, Suzanne dumps artist Leo (Paul Sand), a fragile soul who’s clearly one angst-ridden episode away from a nervous breakdown. The main thread of the movie concerns the director’s preparations to impale Suzanne with real nails so his crucifixion scene has the desired impact, but the movie also follows Leo’s descent into madness, and the hapless efforts of an Establishment newspaper columnist (Gene Barry) to investigate what sorta vibes the counterculture kids are groovin’ to these days.
          If any of these particulars make Suzanne sound interesting, be warned that the “story” is presented in weird, disassociated vignettes punctuated by arty montages of things like people in clown makeup dancing around in trippy fisheye-lens shots. By the time this movie was released in 1973, more interesting filmmakers had been doing this sort of thing for several years, so Suzanne was already a relic with its narrative opacity and obnoxiously collegiate dialogue. (Sample Suzanne chatter: “You are beauty. I need to stay away from you. It’s not anything you did, it’s just I don’t know what I do with what you are.”) The movie gets points for seeing its pretentious premise all the way through to the gruesome conclusion, and Suzanne also provides a load of interesting Hollywood footnotes: It was inspired by the Leonard Cohen song “Suzanne,” which appears several times on the soundtrack; Shaft creator Ernest Tidyman was a script consultant (even though the script ain’t too tidy, man); Performance editor Frank Mazzola assembled the montages; and the cast includes Richard Dreyfuss and future Wayne’s World director Penelope Spheeris.
          In case you’re wondering how a movie this strange gets made, Suzanne writer-director Michael Barry’s dad is actor Gene Barry, who played TV’s Bat Masterson in the ’50s; Papa Berry executive-produced (read: financed) the flick in addition to costarring.

Suzanne: LAME