T.R. Baskin (1971)

          Moderately insightful and sensitive but plagued by a tendency toward superficiality, T.R. Baskin is an intimate character study that puts a fresh spin on the old story of a young person experiencing culture shock by moving from a small town to a big city. Rather than portraying its protagonist as a naif overwhelmed by sophisticates, T.R. Baskin presents a preternaturally wise individual disappointed to learn that sharing her life with metropolitan folks isn’t the revelation she expected. Candice Bergen, delivering one of her best early performances, is almost too well cast in the leading role, since she’s so beautiful and worldly that it’s hard to believe she doesn’t thrive among the cosmopolitan set.

          Written and produced by Peter Hyams, who later enjoyed a long career as a genre-cinema auteur, and directed with characteristic grace by Herbert Ross, the movie begins with traveling salesman Jack (Peter Boyle) arriving in Chicago and running into a college acquaintance, Larry (James Caan). Jack asks if his pal knows any ladies who might keep him company, so Larry suggests T.R. Baskin (Bergen). A phone call later, she shows up at Jack’s hotel-room door. Jack believes he’s hit the jackpot until T.R. challenges him verbally, revealing she’s his intellectual superior by a mile. Performance anxiety ensues, so they talk instead of trysting, and their conversation triggers flashbacks detailing T.R.’s early experiences in Chicago. After leaving home for a new life, T.R. took a mindless data-entry job and tried double-dating with a co-worker who was obsessed with landing a wealthy husband. That got boring fast. Eventually, T.R. met Larry, who seemed intellectual and tender at first blush. How their relationship unfolded, and how that course of events led her to Jack’s hotel room, is the heart of the picture and a small statement about the casual cruelty of modern life.

          T.R. Baskin unfurls like an observational novella, with copious dialogue revealing characters’ personalities as a larger sketch of city life emerges through the accumulation of detail. Easily the most interesting aspect of the storytelling is the quippy dialogue that Hyams provides for the title character. “I want to die young and neat,” she says. “I don’t want to die old and sloppy.” Or, more tellingly, “I just wish everybody else didn’t look like they know exactly what they’re doing.” T.R. Baskin is frustrating because Hyams and Ross ignore so many obvious opportunities to dig deeper, but excellent acting fills in some of the blanks. Boyle infuses his role with surprising warmth, and Caan conveys important nuances that can’t be discussed without spoiling the story. Bergen, of course, carries much of the picture on her shoulders, and she’s terrific, complementing her innate comic timing with the soulfulness that precious few of her early roles allowed her to display.

T.R. Baskin: GROOVY

The Adventurers (1970)

          Per the norm for pictures adapted from the trashy novels of Harold Robbins, The Adventurers is a big, glossy melodrama filled with betrayal, sex, and violence, set against a backdrop of international strife and unimaginable wealth. From a technical standpoint, the movie is impressive, thanks to glossy cinematography by Claude Renoir and swank music by Antonio Carlos Jobim. The Adventurers also features a truly eclectic cast, comprising accomplished veterans (Ernest Borgnine, Olivia de Havilland), colorful international stars (Alan Badel, Charles Aznavour, Rosanno Brazzi, Fernando Rey), and dazzling starlets (Candice Bergen, Jaclyn Smith, Leigh Taylor-Young). Yet the film’s laughable flaws are myriad. The story, reputedly inspired by the exploits of real-life jet-setter Porfirio Rubirosa, is an overheated mixture of bedroom antics and political machinations. The pictorial style, marked by silly metaphors during sex scenes, lacks anything resembling good taste. And the leading performance, by Yugoslavian stud Bekim Fehmiu, is atrocious.

          Nonetheless, it must be said that the film’s three hours breeze by fairly quickly, since director Lewis Gilbert and his collaborators ensure that the screen is almost constantly filled with vivid images of people fighting, scheming, and/or screwing, if not all at once.

          The picture begins in the fictional South American country of Courteguay during a rebellion. After soldiers rape and murder his relatives, Dax Xenos (played as a boy by Loris Loddi) meets Rojo (Badel), leader of the rebellion. Rojo helps Dax kill the soldiers who slaughtered his family, beginning a lifelong relationship. Eventually, Dax is taken from South America by his guardian, Fat Cat (Borgnine), and integrated into a group of wealthy young Europeans. By the time Dax reaches adulthood (whereupon Fehmiu takes over the role), Dax is a playboy with a chip on his shoulder. Over the course of myriad back-and-forth trips from Europe to South America, Dax seduces a series of rich women (including Bergen and de Havilland), thus gathering his own personal fortune. Meanwhile, Courteguay descends into chaos, so Dax returns home and leads a military coup against his onetime benefactor, Rojo.

          There’s enough plot in The Adventurers for three movies, the characterizations are beyond contrived, and the dramaturgy is as subtle as thunder. For instance, it’s never enough for a character in this movie to discover a dead body—the body must have a dagger impaled in the neck or a giant wound in the middle of the forehead. Similarly, the myriad overwrought sex scenes recall the work of skin-flick auteur Russ Meyer. During Dax’s first conquest, Gilbert intercuts lovemaking with close-ups of erotic statues (one of which has a giant erect phallus) and then literally zooms the camera in and out, matching the rhythm of Dax’s thrusts. When Dax beds Taylor-Young’s character, Gilbert uses a rifle and cymbal crashes to symbolize Dax’s potency. And Dax’s first encounter with Bergen’s character begins in a hothouse (get it?) and concludes with actual fireworks. This sort of stuff isn’t credible by a long shot, but neither is it boring.

          Unsurprisingly, The Adventurers was savaged upon its initial release, and today it’s best to regard the movie as big-budget camp. FYI, at least one actor had serious misgivings about making The Adventurers. In his autobiography, Borgnine calls the picture “my worst experience in nearly 20 years of filmmaking.”

The Adventurers: FUNKY

A Night Full of Rain (1978)

          After achieving notoriety on the international-cinema circuit with pictures including Seven Beauties (1976), which resulted in her becoming the first woman nominated for an Oscar as Best Director, Lina Wertmüller made her first and last English-language feature, A Night Full of Rain. (Fitting her occasional proclivity for cumbersome monikers, the picture’s full title is actually The End of the World in Our Usual Bed on a Night Full of Rain.) Like much of Wertmüller’s work, the picture is overtly political, employing a romantic storyline and avant-garde flourishes to explore questions about whether people with different ideological beliefs can find interpersonal harmony.

          Wertmüller’s frequent leading man, Giancarlo Giannini, costars with Hollywood actress Candice Bergen. They portray spouses who represent opposing sides of the ’70s debate surrounding gender roles. Paolo (Giannini) is an Italian writer who lives off the largesse of relatives while trying to build a career, and Lizzy (Bergen), is his American-born wife. When the story begins, the couple have become estranged, so Wertmüller employs flashbacks—as well as commentary from the couple’s friends, who magically appear inside the couple’s apartment, like angels or ghosts—to describe the arc of Lizzy’s and Paolo’s courtship. The two met while Lizzy was traveling in Europe as a student. During a violent political demonstration, Lizzy intervened and was nearly mauled by a mob until Paolo rescued her. They subsequently embarked on a long and flirtatious argument, leading to a near-miss sexual encounter, before Lizzy returned to the U.S. Paolo followed her there and wooed her back to Italy, where they had a child together. Then tensions emanating from sociopolitical differences caused problems, because Lizzy is a liberal feminist hewing to the values of her materialistic upbringing, whereas Paolo is a chauvinistic communist.

          Wertmüller, who also wrote the picture, tackles heavy subjects passionately but clumsily, presenting stilted speeches instead of naturalistic dialogue, while also utilizing overwrought visual metaphors. For every sharp line that Wertmüller lands (“This house is just like Italy,” Bergen’s character complains, “It’s gorgeous and there’s no money to run it”), Wertmüller also drops a lead balloon (elsewhere in the picture, Bergen’s character asks, “Do you think about love as sentiment or eroticism?”). Furthermore, it’s not fun to watch Gianini incarnate a thug who mistreats his wife—in one ugly moment, Giannini’s character crows, “I rape you, but it will give you something exciting to tell your girlfriends in America!” Adding to the abrasive quality of the picture is an overly insistent jazz score by Roberto De Simone. On the plus side, Giuseppe Rotunno’s cinematography is luminous, and Wertmüller’s blending of economics and gender is provocative. As for the acting, it’s hit-and-miss, with Bergen straining to match the naturalism of her costar. Ultimately, A Night Full of Rain is more of an intellectual experience than a visceral one, so the real value of the picture is found in the discussions it inspires.

A Night Full of Rain: FUNKY

Getting Straight (1970)

          Stylishly directed by the singular Richard Rush, a filmmaker who is equal parts entertainer and provocateur, the campus-unrest dramedy Getting Straight has taken a lot of flack over the years for being too glib and polished. After all, the movie engages such inflammatory topics as drugs, sexual liberation, and student protests against the Vietnam war. Yet even though film historians are unlikely to classify Getting Straight as one of the essential counterculture movies, Rush does a great job of capturing a moment from a romantic viewpoint. Specifically, he makes with-it college students seem cool and sexy by showcasing charismatic stars, flashy camerawork, rebellious attitudes, and sharp dialogue—even if, in order to propel his story, he also exposes the ways in which these characters can be hypocritical, ridiculous, and self-important.

          The brisk narrative concerns Harry Bailey (Elliot Gould), a graduate student/Vietnam vet who’s pushing 30 and feels as if he’s outgrown campus activism. Determined to finish his master’s so he can begin a teaching career, Harry tries to steer clear of political demonstrations that are erupting around his campus. Alas, Harry’s beautiful girlfriend, Jan (Candice Bergen), is deeply involved in activism, so she’s part of the very chaos Harry wishes to avoid. The purpose of this storytelling gimmick, of course, is to make Harry choose between apathy and involvement—while also forcing Jan to examine whether she’s committed to political causes for meaningful reasons or simply because flipping off the Establishment is fashionable.

          Working from a script credited to Ken Kolb and Robert Kaufman—but likely co-written by Rush himself—Rush does a bang-up job on Getting Straight, his first studio feature after cutting his teeth on a series of wild biker- and drug-themed exploitation pictures. Rush and cinematographer László Kovács use a fluid camera style combining long lenses, probing movements, and sneaky zooms to create a sense of tension and vitality; one feels as if the very world is being torn asunder by campus conflict. Even the casting feeds into the central theme of generational clashes spinning out of control. With his bushy hair and walrus moustache, Gould bridges youth and maturity, his bitchy line deliveries underlining his character’s constant exasperation. Bergen, conversely, provides a complicated and glamorous vision of entitlement meshed with idealism. (That being said, the movie’s portrayal of women can be a little dodgy, with Jan sometimes coming off as a needy narcissist with bourgeois sensibilities.) Meanwhile, supporting characters played by Jeff Corey and Harrison Ford represent, respectively, conservatism and the apolitical stance.

          Inevitably, the picture climaxes with a full-on riot—after all their debating, joking, and speechifying, the characters in Getting Straight must face the test of civil disobedience with real consequences. And while it’s true that Getting Straight may ultimately be little more than a lavishly produced snapshot of a fraught era, Rush and his team deserve credit for exploring a trend when it was still central to the national conversation.

Getting Straight: GROOVY

Soldier Blue (1970)

          Nineteen-seventy was a wild year for Hollywood movies about the Native American experience, even if most of the stories Hollywood generated were told through the prism of white people assimilating into Indian culture. The best of the 1970 batch is undoubtedly Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman, although A Man Called Horse, with Richard Harris, has noteworthy virtues, as well. And then there’s Soldier Blue, which is in odd hybrid of bleeding-heart liberalism, culture-clash comedy, gut-wrenching violence, and Vietnam allegory. The movie’s a mess, but it’s strangely compelling and undeniably memorable, if for no other reason than how well it captures the anguished spirit of the historical moment in which it was created. Based on a novel by Theodore V. Olsen (which was originally titled Arrow in the Sun), the movie is set in the American West during the Civil War and revolves around two white characters with opposing views on Indians. Thrown together by circumstance, they bicker until arriving at an understanding, only to stumble into a horrific slaughter by U.S. soldiers of an entire Cheyenne village.

          Although the film’s bloody climax is based on a real historical incident from the time of the Indian Wars—the infamous Sand Creek massacre—the filmmakers’ thematic and visual parallels to the 1968 My Lai atrocity in Vietnam are unmistakable. So, in a weird way, the Native Americans supposedly at the heart of Soldier Blue are doubly marginalized—not only are Caucasians the leading characters, Indians are used as an all-purpose metaphor representing oppressed indigenous people everywhere. Still, iffy politics are the least of Soldier Blue’s problems from a cinematic perspective, because the film wobbles between sitcom-style banter and ugly scenes of murder and rape. Nearly everything in the movie is highly watchable for some reason or another, but Soldier Blue feels like several films cobbled together into one sloppy whole.

          The picture begins when Cheyenne warriors attack a group of civilians and soldiers. Only Cresta (Candice Bergen) and Honus (Peter Strauss) survive. She’s a white woman who has been held captive by Indians for a long period of time and has unexpectedly developed sympathy for their plight, whereas he’s a straight-line military man with ignorantly racist attitudes. The duo travels through a remote wilderness, arguing their way to mutual attraction while surviving near-death experiences as well as encounters with weird frontier characters. (Reliably odd character actor Donald Pleasence plays one of these folks.) Eventually, Cresta and Honus reach a military fort, where Cresta becomes permanently disillusioned with white culture—the soldier to whom she’s engaged reveals his plans to annihilate the village where she was held.
          The heroes try to prevent mass bloodshed, to no avail, so director Ralph Nelson unleashes an incendiary barrage for the movie’s big finish—the raid on the Indian village is filled with graphic violence and intense rape scenes as nature-loving Indians fall victim to monstrous whites. All of this is exactly as heavy-handed as it sounds, even if the underlying message is historically valid. Viewed as a piece of dramatic art, Soldier Blue is a train wreck. But viewed as a window into the concerns of its time, Soldier Blue gains a measure of twisted relevance.

Solider Blue: FREAKY

11 Harrowhouse (1974)

The title of actor/humorist Charles Grodin’s first memoir, It Would Be So Nice if You Weren’t Here, stems from the making of this caper film. In the book, Grodin recalls that he and costar Candice Bergen were killing downtime by chatting in a lovely room of a large English estate where the production was shooting. Then a representative from the estate discovered the actors and explained they’d ventured into an off-limits space: “It would be so nice if you weren’t here,” the representative said. If only the film had as much dry humor as Grodin’s anecdote. Instead, 11 Harrowhouse is a moderately diverting picture elevated by charming performers but weighed down by a flat screenplay. Grodin plays Howard Chesser, a diamond merchant drawn into a criminal enterprise involving the theft of a valuable jewel from a high-security facility. Bergen plays Howard’s girlfriend, who aids in the crime, and the great James Mason plays an unlikely accomplice. (Other veteran British actors in the cast include John Gielgud and Trevor Howard, both droll in their distinctive ways.) Adapted from Gerald A. Browne’s novel by Grodin himself, and polished into a final script by Jeffrey Bloom, 11 Harrowhouse aspires to soft-spoken pithiness of a veddy British sort, which would seem to suit Grodin’s reserved screen persona. Unfortunately, the onscreen events aren’t quite novel enough to sustain interest, and Grodin lacks onscreen counterpoint—he’s best when bouncing his deadpan energy off an expressive costar, but in 11 Harrowhouse, everyone is as taciturn as Grodin. The result is monotony, even when the story twists and turns through clever-ish developments. Further, the script doesn’t withhold enough information from the audience, so there aren’t many surprises; thus, even when the execution of a complex crime is shown, the only tension derives from the possibility of error. One misses the fun of discovering an imaginative scheme as it unfolds. 11 Harrowhouse isn’t a total bust, of course—how could it be, with so much talent involved?—but it badly wants for an injection of vitality.

11 Harrowhouse: FUNKY

Starting Over (1979)

          James L. Brooks was at the apex of his spectacular run as a TV showrunner when he penned his first theatrical feature, Starting Over. Adapted from a novel by Dan Wakefield, the movie is shot through with the same funny/sad humanism Brooks brought to his award-winning TV shows—The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, etc.—so even though Starting Over features a trio of brand-name actors and was helmed by A-lister Alan J. Pakula, the movie is primarily a showcase for Brooks’ sharp observations about human frailty. (Brooks and Pakula co-produced the picture.)

          Stepping way outside his comfort zone and scoring with a charming performance, Burt Reynolds plays Phil Potter, a magazine writer who is abruptly dumped by his wife, Jessica (Candice Bergen), a beautiful narcissist embarking on a new career as a singer-songwriter. Suddenly thrown back into the dating scene, Phil takes solace in the company of his amiable brother, Mickey (Charles Durning), a touchy-feely psychiatrist. Mickey introduces Phil to divorced schoolteacher Marilyn Holmberg (Jill Clayburgh)—this happens during a funny scene involving mistaken identities and foul language—and they become a couple after a few false starts. However, their second-time-around romance is complicated when Jessica decides she wants Phil back.

          Sensitively examining the complexities of relationships during an era of shifting gender roles, Starting Over is smart and touching, with likeable people riding the amusing currents of confusing situations. Brooks’ dialogue is incisive, and his ability to shift the tone of a scene from ominous to promising and back again is spectacular; although Starting Over is one of Brooks’ lightest efforts, essentially just a romantic comedy made with exemplary skill, the movie is filled with insights and wit.

          It’s also filled with great acting. Reynolds ditches his usual macho swagger to play an everyman trying to find his way through life without hurting anyone—thereby ensuring he causes lots of inadvertent damage—while his female counterparts play to their respective strengths. Bergen revels in humiliating herself for the sake of a joke, especially when giving cringe-inducing performances of her character’s songs, and Clayburgh takes neuroticism to a Woody Allen-esque extreme. The women also create distinctly different personas, so it’s easy to see why Phil’s torn. Durning makes a great foil for Reynolds, and supporting players Frances Sternhagen, Mary Kay Place, and Austin Pendelton enliven minor roles.

Starting Over: GROOVY

Carnal Knowledge (1971)

          A dark and strange exploration of male sexuality, Carnal Knowledge sprang from the bitter pen of playwright/satirist Jules Feiffer, with the sophisticated social observer Mike Nichols serving as director. The story begins in the ’50s, when college roommates Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) fumble their way through early sexual encounters with coeds. Jonathan’s an unapologetic horndog who soothes his insecurities through physical conquest, and, at least in his early days, Sandy is a romantic trying to balance libidinous urges with respect for women. The boys form a triangle with worldly coed Susan (Candice Bergen), who is drawn to Sandy’s sweetness but can’t resist Jonathan’s confidence. After this triangle runs its painful course, the movie skips forward and eventually lands in late-’60s New York City.

          Jonathan, who has grown into a deeply angry adult, gets involved with Bobbie (Ann-Margret), an older woman whose va-va-voom figure drives him wild. Unfortunately for him, she comes complete with emotional needs that he’s incapable of meeting, so their romance devolves into a regular schedule of screeching arguments. Meanwhile, Sandy becomes a seeker of sorts, bouncing from one unsatisfactory relationship to the next, and Jonathan makes wildly inappropriate passes at Sandy’s girlfriends.

          Much of the picture’s nonstop dialogue is sharp, capturing the extremes of emotionally crippled individuals. In one harrowing moment, for instance, Jonathan screams to Bobbie, “For God’s sake, I’d almost marry you if you’d leave me!” Nonetheless, the wall-to-wall dysfunction is a bit much. Since Feiffer and Nichols populate the movie exclusively with characters who are horrible or weak, if not both, their implied statement about the inability of men and women to coexist seems arch, forced, and unpersuasive. It’s also unclear whether Carnal Knowledge is meant to be drama or satire—is watching these sad people destroy each other supposed to be funny?

          Nonetheless, the film garnered considerable praise during its initial release, with Ann-Margret winning a Golden Globe and Feiffer earning a Writers Guild Award nomination. Furthermore, the film’s craftsmanship is impeccable. Nichols employs a restrained visual style, putting the focus on potent acting. The four lead actors are quite good, with Ann-Margret surpassing the low expectations established by her long string of shallow sex-kitten roles prior to this movie. Bergen conveys an alluring brand of icy intelligence, while ’60s pop icon Garfunkel, giving his first major dramatic performance, presents a unique sort of natural twitchiness. As for Nicholson, he’s hamstrung by a severe characterization, since Jonathan is more a compendium of compulsions than a genuine individual. Nicholson’s performance is creepily intense, but not realistic.

Carnal Knowledge: FUNKY

The Domino Principle (1977)

          By the late ’70s, the cinematic marketplace was clogged with so many like-minded conspiracy thrillers that filmmakers had to struggle to contrive credible new conspiracies—and in some cases they didn’t even bother with credibility at all. The latter circumstance is true of The Domino Principle, which was inexplicably directed by venerable Hollywood filmmaker Stanley Kramer, a man best known for hand-wringing dramas about Big Issues like injustice and racism. This profoundly stupid movie follows Vietnam vet Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman), a prison inmate offered clemency by mysterious but high-powered conspirators in exchange for committing an assassination.

          Right away, the film raises bizarre questions it never answers. Why bother recruiting a convict instead of simply hiring a criminal who’s walking free? Why go through all the trouble of bribing and manipulating prison personnel to engineer Tucker’s “escape”? Why go through an extended negotiation with Tucker about his desired terms, when the simpler thing to do is simply threaten his beloved wife (Candice Bergen) in order to pressure Tucker? Why send Tucker to an expensive hideaway in Mexico after the assassination is over, instead of just cutting him loose or gunning him down? And why does the supposedly savvy Tucker think all this will end well?

          Instead of raising intriguing questions about why the bad guys are scheming, the film stacks idiotic plot contrivances upon each other until the viewer’s brain is numbed. It’s even unclear what sort of reaction The Domino Principle is supposed to generate. Tucker is a callous son of a bitch, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to care that he’s in trouble. The stakes of the assassination are never made clear, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to worry about the world order getting overthrown. Worst of all, the movie is so confusing, talky, and tedious that it’s not as if viewers can simply cast logic aside and groove on the thrills.

         Hackman seems peevish throughout the entire movie, as if he’s upbraiding himself for agreeing to yet another pointless paycheck gig; Bergen is upstaged by the horrific perm she wears throughout the picture; and villains Richard Widmark and Eli Wallach sneer happily even though they probably can’t make any damn sense of the inane dialogue they’re spouting. (Plus, the less said about the pointless supporting character portrayed by an out-of-place Mickey Rooney, the better.) By the time the movie sputters to an overheated conclusion that’s as nonsensical as it is merciless, The Domino Principle has bludgeoned viewers so badly that only one mystery remains: Were the conspirators behind this cinematic atrocity ever brought to justice?

The Domino Principle: LAME

The Hunting Party (1971)

          One of the most vicious movies I’ve ever seen—which is saying a lot, believe me—this grisly British flick opens by introducing Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman), a wealthy rancher who gets off on beating his wife, Melissa (Candice Bergen), during sex. When this charmer and his sleazy buddies take off on a luxurious hunting trip, Melissa wanders over to a small schoolhouse to keep herself occupied. Along comes rough-ridin' outlaw Frank Calder (British madman Oliver Reed) and his gang, who kidnap Melissa and head off toward the frontier. Frank keeps his cronies from raping Melissa because he wants her to teach him to read. Meanwhile, Brandt hears what happened and enlists his hunting buddies to help track down the scoundrels. Thing is, Brandt figures Melissa's been tarnished, so he decides to take her out with one of the fancy rifles he uses to bag prey from a safe distance. As Hackman’s character devolves from meanie to monster, Frank evolves from scummy to sensitive. Sort of. Because, see, he wins Melissa's heart by raping her, which she secretly enjoys because it's the first time she’s ever been with a real man.

          But wait—there’s more! The movie was shot in Spain, which allows the picture to inexplicably shift from palm-tree-dotted plains to high desert, and in true spaghetti-Western style, The Hunting Party features a faux-Morricone score that’s beyond overbearing. During this bizarre picture’s goofiest sequence, Frank taunts a starving Bergen by eating peaches obscenely in front of her, all to the strains of cringe-worthy "comical" music. Plus, as was the cinematic fashion of the time, Brandt turns totally psychotic about halfway through the picture, leading to endless slow-mo bloodbaths. The Hunting Party is unconscionably mean-spirited, but it’s not boring. Quite to the contrary, it’s arresting in a nauseating sort of way, offering prime evidence of Hackman’s disturbing ability to incarnate unstable sons of bitches, and equally telling images of Reed portraying animalistic charisma. So if sadism is your bag, then The Hunting Party is your movie.

The Hunting Party: LAME

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

          After making a name for himself by writing a number of imaginative films and then proving his directorial skills with the gangster flick Dillinger (1973), manly-man auteur John Milius swung for the fences with The Wind and the Lion, a grandiose adventure story in the David Lean tradition. Despite containing many powerful big-canvas visuals and exploring the collision between global tensions and personal agendas, the movie is undercut by, of all things, a sloppy script. Milius has always excelled at creating audacious scenes and memorable characters, but left unchecked, his stories get so ambitious that they lose focus. That’s certainly the case in The Wind and the Lion, which uses as its very loose inspiration a mostly forgotten historical incident.

          In 1904 Morocco, outlaw Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli (Sean Connery) kidnaps American Eden Perdicaris (Candice Bergen) and her two children. Although ostensibly seeking ransom for his hostages, the sly Raisuli actually wants to trigger an international crisis in order to topple Morroco’s government, which is controlled by various European factions. Meanwhile, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt (Brian Keith) is campaigning for re-election, so he sends troops to rescue Eden, even though Roosevelt’s Secretary of State (John Huston) argues against getting involved. As if that wasn’t enough material, the picture also depicts the dangerous dithering of Morroco’s head of state (Marc Zuber); the pragmatic negotiations of an American diplomat (Geoffrey Lewis); and the valiant soldiering of a U.S. Marine captain (Steve Kanaly). To say that the story gets muddled is an understatement.

          Nearly every individual scene in The Wind and the Lion is of some interest, but taken together, they feel like disconnected episodes. The stuff with Roosevelt and his operatives is comical because Milius portrays Roosevelt as a blowhard more preoccupied with his hobbies than his job. The military material with Kanaly’s character is a rousing throwback to the stylized action films of the Douglas Fairbanks era. And the main story is a mess: Connery is absurdly miscast as a North African, and Bergen barely has any role to play. As such, their scenes ring false, especially when viewers are expected to believe they’ve bonded. So as either an international romance or an ambitious study of complex geopolitical issues, The Wind and the Lion is more windy than lionhearted.

          But as a beautifully filmed action movie, however, it’s quite effective. The scenes of Raisuli and his minions fighting on horseback are thrilling, particularly the mid-movie showstopper during which Raisuli single-handedly rescues Eden from a gang of thugs. The movie’s finale is even more spectacular, with two different battles taking place simultaneously as scimitars flail against Gatling guns. Moreover, even the dodgiest sections of this movie have considerable appeal: Bergen looks fantastic, Connery is regal, Kanaly is contagiously exuberant, and Keith is thoroughly amusing. One wishes these elements hung together more effectively, but there’s a lot to enjoy in The Wind and the Lion nonetheless.

The Wind and the Lion: FUNKY

Love Story (1970) & Oliver’s Story (1978)

          The cinematic equivalent of Wonder bread, this by-the-numbers tearjerker somehow became one of the defining hits of the early ’70s, earning $100 million at a time when few movies ever hit that milestone, much less low-budget melodramas. Weirder still, when screenwriter Erich Segal was asked by Paramount to create a novel of his script as a means of drumming up pre-release hype for the film, the book became a runaway hit, eventually moving more than 20 million copies. That’s a whole lot of marketplace excitement for a movie whose opening voiceover reveals the vapidity of its narrative: “What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?” The answer to that question is, apparently, little more than is actually contained within the question itself, because Love Story is 90 minutes of foreplay leading to a bummer ending. Obviously millions of people bought into the thin premise of excitable rich kid Oliver (Ryan O’Neal) falling for saintly working-class girl Jenny (Ali MacGraw).
          The repetitive, plot-deficient first hour comprises chipper scenes about young love set against the rarified backdrop of the Harvard campus (trivia lovers dig the fact that Oliver was partially inspired by two of Segal’s real-life Harvard homeys, Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones). The promising glimmer of a subplot about Oliver’s uptight dad (Ray Milland) disapproving of Jenny doesn’t amount to much; after papa detaches the couple from the family teat, Jenny works as a teacher to pay Oliver’s way through law school, after which he lands a cushy job at a law firm. The only inkling of drama arrives two-thirds of the way through the film, when Jenny’s unnamed fatal illness is discovered. Yet even the main event is all hearts and flowers, because Jenny slips away without so much as a cough.
          It’s to director Arthur Hiller’s credit that the picture moves quickly even though it’s running on fumes from start to finish, because he doesn’t get much help from O’Neal or MacGraw, neither of whom summons believable emotion (O’Neal is marginally better, but MacGraw is quite awful). Only the melancholy piano theme, by composer Francis Lai, really connects, especially in the movie’s one cinematically interesting scene: After Oliver gets the bad news, he wanders city streets in a montage set to car horns and snippets from Lai’s theme. Still, it’s hard to genuinely hate Love Story, in the same way it’s hard to hate Wonder Bread: Neither pretends to be anything but a spongy mass of empty calories.
          Seven years after Love Story conquered the box office, Segal published a follow-up novel, Oliver’s Story. In the 1978 film adaptation, O’Neal and Milland reprise their roles for a threadbare narrative about Oliver trying to love again two years after the events of the first film; meanwhile, Oliver’s dad tries to draw his son into the family textile business even though Oliver is satisfied with his work as a do-gooder attorney. Poor Candice Bergen gets the thankless job of playing the woman who tries to romance grief-stricken Oliver. In trying to generate believable relationship obstacles, Segal and co-writer/director John Korty rely heavily on soap-opera tactics. Marcy (Bergen) is a rich girl who accepts class divisions without guilt, whereas Oliver is a bleeding-heart type who feels anguished about coming from money. Although Korty shoots locations well, particularly during an extended trip the lovers take to Hong Kong, he can’t surmount the absurdly contrived narrative or the severe limitations of the leading performances. Handicapped by trite characterizations, Bergen and O’Neal seem robotic. And just when the film’s portrayal of Oliver as a saint becomes insufferable, the plot contorts itself to ruin Oliver’s second chance at love. Yet whereas Love Story earned enmity by being manipulative, Oliver’s Story merely earns indifference by being pointless.

Love Story: LAME
Oliver's Story: LAME

Bite the Bullet (1975)

          There’s a major story problem at the center of this big-canvas adventure set in the afterglow of the Wild West era, so your ability to overlook the problem will determine whether you can enjoy the film’s many verbal, visceral, and visual pleasures. Here’s the problem. A macho adventure story about a brutal 700-mile horseback race across some of the southwest’s most unforgiving terrain, the narrative is predicated on the notion that competitors are willing to endanger their steeds in the hope of winning a significant cash prize. Fair enough. Yet the film’s hero, Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman), is consistently portrayed as such a devoted equine caretaker that he beats the tar out of anyone he observes abusing horses. Therefore, his choice to enter the race—even though his original role was merely to deliver a champion stallion to one of the competitors—makes very little sense. Seriously, is the most effective means of protesting an event that you consider to be inhumane participating in that event?

          As was often his wont, writer-director Richard Brooks pushes the story deep into the Myth of the American Man, which means that notions of heroism and legacy and pride often trump basic logic. That said, for viewers who can overlook the basic disconnect at the heart of the film’s principal characterization, Bite the Bullet is an exciting film.

          Predictably, the race attracts a colorful group of competitors. Clayton and Luke Matthews (James Coburns), are both veterans of Teddy Roosevelt’s famed Rough Riders. Sir Harry Norfolk (Ian Bannen) is an Englishman with high-minded notions of sportsmanship. Carbo (Jan-Michael Vincent) is a hotheaded kid looking to make a reputation as a tough guy, no matter the cost to animals or people. Miss Jones (Candice Bergen) is a prostitute eager to change her life. The oldest competitor (Ben Johnson), is a saddletramp with health problems who never shares his name—making him a surrogate for the countless anonymous adventurers whose labors helped birth the legend of the Old West.

          Brooks, an adept screenwriter who often wandered into strange narrative terrain, mostly stays focused in generating character-driven pathos and rip-roaring adventure, essentially recapturing the vivacious tone of his great film The Professionals (1966) while infusing the picture with a thread of melancholy. Much of this works. Brooks capably introduces the characters with pre-race vignettes, and then he follows groups and individuals during intimate scenes of adversity and bravery. Hackman hits consistently interesting notes by playing to his mean streak while also demonstrating compassion, Johnson hums the same elegiac melodies he performed so beautifully in The Last Picture Show (1971), and Vincent incarnates the arrogance of youth. Meanwhile, Bannen, Bergen, Coburn and fellow supporting player Mario Arteaga add important colors to Brooks’ palette.

         Speaking of palettes, the film looks terrific, with cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr. crafting just the right mixture of frontier grit and nostalgic beauty.

          Ultimately, the lingering image from this picture is that of horses moving in slow motion, sweat pouring out of their bodies in clouds of foam, as their riders push them beyond their limits. One imagines Brooks was after some sort of Big Statement here, so it’s a shame he didn’t find the right leading character to use as a prism. At best, the film’s Big Statement is hopelessly murky; at worst, the assertion is bewilderingly hypocritical. It doesn’t help, of course, that the film is quite long-winded, especially during a pair of endless monologues, one inflicted by Hackman and the other by Johnson.

Bite the Bullet: FUNKY