Nationtime—Gary (1973)

        Some documentaries are such useful historical artifacts that quibbling about their artistic or technical shortcomings misses the point. Such is the case with Nationtime—Gary, a record of the first National Black Political Convention, which took place in Gary, Indiana, circa March 1972. Organized at a fraught moment when the Black Power movement, the Civil Rights movement, and resistance to Nixonian conservatism saw African-Americans gain ground culturally, economically, and politically, the convention pursued a noble goal of unifying various factions of Black activism. The effort was not successful, and apparently the follow-up event (held two years later in Arkansas) exacerbated problems. Nonetheless, the attempt was important, and therefore we’re lucky that Black documentarian William Greaves filmed the proceedings and edited his reportage down to feature length. Unsurprisingly, Greaves’s work was considered too provocative for wide release in 1973, so only a heavily truncated version was available for decades. In 2020, the full 80-minute doc was digitally restored.

          As journalism, Nationtime—Gary is undisciplined. The picture distills the three-day convention into a (more or less) chronological highlight reel, and some of the editorial choices are perplexing. Letting Jesse Jackson’s centerpiece speech run for a full 20 minutes doesn’t leave much room for other speakers to expound. Clipping performances short (including Isaac Hayes’s rendition of “Theme from Shaft”) seems arbitrary. And the presentation of a key debate is murky—we see moderator Amiri Baraka trying to get a platform adopted, which sparks friction between delegations from Michigan and New York, but Greaves neglects to convey the substance of the platform, so the quarrel is bewildering. Luckily, the convention’s core messages permeate Jackson’s speech, during which he explores such topics as the need for proportionate representation by Blacks within the Democratic Party. Making a different sort of impression is Dick Gregory’s edgy standup routine, and Nationtime—Gary features a handful of effectively wordless moments, for example an onstage appearance by Coretta Scott King.
          Some sequences feel almost impressionistic because of the way Greaves juxtaposes footage from inside the convention hall with (poorly recorded) audio of Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier reciting poetry and/or explaining what’s happening onscreen. Based on the number of shots marred by iffy lighting and shaky focus, it’s apparent this film was made with a meager budget. However, because Nationtime—Gary is inherently a subversive political statement, perhaps a slick presentation would have undercut the endeavor. In sum, Greaves reached for more than he could grasp—as did the organizers of the convention—but he still managed to capture a lot. FYI, when the documentary was restored, its title was confusingly abbreviated in marketing materials to Nationtime even though the full original title appears onscreen.

Nationtime—Gary: GROOVY

Not a Pretty Picture (1976)

          Before launching her long career as a director of mainstream comedies and dramas for both film and television with the 1983 teen romance Valley Girl, Martha Coolidge mixed documentary and fiction techniques for her feature debut Not a Pretty Picture, a cinematic meditation on Coolidge’s experience as a victim of sexual assault. (Long available only on the fringes of the marketplace, the film received a posh Criterion release in 2024.) This is bracing work with enduring relevance—one of the movie’s first conversations involves women saying “me too” while sharing their stories. In some ways, Not a Pretty Picture provides even more fulsome discourse on sexual assault than is present in today’s comparatively enlightened climate, simply because the actor tasked with portraying the rapist offers a perspective on male sexual impulses that would get a man cancelled today. His honesty reflects the ethos of the project.
          Not a Pretty Picture is divided almost equally between dramatic re-creations of Coolidge’s high-school years and behind-the-scenes footage of Coolidge rehearsing her actors. The most ingenious aspect of the film’s structure is that the actual assault is never shown. Additionally, the moments immediately preceding and following the assault are presented only as rehearsal footage, rather than staged scenes. Coolidge has said she wanted the ability to interrupt the assault sequence so she could rap with her actors about their feelings. Michele Manenti, who plays 16-year-old Martha, was also raped in high school, so her ability to compartmentalize her emotions while acting is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Jim Carrington, who plays the rapist but was in real life a longtime friend of Manenti’s, talks about how the male adolescent’s drive for conquest (combined with the pervasive fallacy that all women secretly desire forceful sex) renders the male adolescent blind to moral implications when things get heated.
         Not a Pretty Picture doesn’t achieve everything it attempts. The staged scenes are credible but stilted, and the inexperience of the performers is apparent when they read scripted dialogue (less so when they improvise). Coolidge appears onscreen throughout the rehearsal scenes, so it’s both distracting and fascinating to guess at her thought process while events unfold—she mostly lets the film speak for her, though powerful exchanges about agency and guilt happen between Coolidge and Manenti. The movie also doesn’t have much of an ending—hardly a design flaw, since Not a Pretty Picture was engineered to spark conversations, but the lack of resolution is awkward. Viewed critically, the movie comes across as a rough draft for some more polished effort that never materialized. Viewed empathetically, it’s a deeply personal statement in which a filmmaker uses her chosen medium to explore a traumatic experience.

Not a Pretty Picture: GROOVY

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

          While I’m a reasonably adventurous cinefile, the reputation and running time of Chantal Ackerman’s acclaimed character study Jeanne Dielman kept it near the bottom of my to-view list for decades—I was challenged to muster enthusiasm for a 3.5-hour picture comprising extraordinarily long takes of mundane activities. Even when Jeanne Dielman was named the greatest film of all time by Sight and Sound in 2022 (more on that later), the movie seemed as if it would be a slog to watch. Now that I can finally report back from the other end of Jeanne Dielman’s 201 minutes, of course I understand that being a slog to watch is part of the picture’s design. It’s open to debate whether the film’s abnormal length was the best way achieve her goals, but clearly Ackerman wanted viewers to feel as numbed by repetition as the leading character does. Accordingly, the key question is whether the movie rewards viewers’ time. I believe the answer is yes, though perhaps not to the degree implied by Jeanne Dielman’s placement on the Sight and Sound list.
          For those unfamiliar with the picture, it depicts three days in the life of fortysomething widow Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig), who lives with her young-adult son, Sylvain (Jan Decorte), in a Brussels apartment. Jeanne supports the household with sex work, receiving one client per day as part of a highly regimented routine. Up each morning to prepare breakfast and send Syvlain off to school; cleaning, errands, and meal preparation interspersed with occasional childcare for a neighbor’s infant; then evenings spent serving dinner and helping Sylvain with schoolwork, even though he’s so absorbed in reading that he barely communicates with his mother. (The boy’s age and grade level is never stated, but he’s either a high-schooler or a college student.) Jeanne Dielman is as rigidly structured as the title character’s lifestyle, with chapter breaks identifying transitions between days, and the glacially paced plot only gets cooking about halfway through the movie, when an unexplained change in Jeanne’s mental state causes her to become dislodged from everyday activities, for instance dropping a spoon or forgetting to close one button on her housecoat. All of this is preamble to a single noteworthy event, which won’t be spoiled here but which retroactively imbues Jeanne Dielman with layers of meaning.

          It should be apparent by now that appraising Ackerman’s movie by conventional standards is pointless—even though the narrative has an ordinary shape, the style is borderline experimental. Ackerman deliberately avoids opportunities to take us into her leading character’s mind, forcing viewers to extract Jeanne’s psychology from her behavior. (The director reportedly coached leading lady Seyrig to constrain her facial expressions.) Viewers get enough information to grasp the contours of Jeanne’s life, but then Ackerman adds the element that makes Jeanne Dielman so challenging—outrageously long takes of activities ranging from the cleaning of dishes to the preparation of meals. Throughout Jeanne Dielman, a static camera watches Seyrig do uninteresting things in their full durations. Presumably the film’s advocates zero in on this aspect as one of the picture’s great strengths, a means of forcing viewers to engage with the grinding tedium of domestic work.

          And then there’s the climax, which provides a bracing commentary on the toll such domestic work, done in the service of men, has on women.
         I’m certain the film’s champions would argue that it must be watched repeatedly in order to appreciate its profundity. I don’t see that happening anytime soon, though I acknowledge my willingness to watch comparatively dim-witted entertainment films over and over again compares poorly with my reluctance to spend another 201 minutes with Jeanne. Nonetheless, I feel confident that I took much of what the film has to offer from one viewing. Jeanne Dielman is, in its idiosyncratic and unwieldy fashion, both a crisp statement and a potent conversation piece. But could it possibly be the greatest film of all time, as the contributors to Sight and Sound’s list determined? No. It is difficult to perceive that designation as anything other than a rebuttal to decades of male-dominated cinema discourse. However, exalting Jeanne Dielman over enduring films directed by men could also be seen as an amplification of Jeanne Dielman’s message—in a patriarchal society, a woman has to make a hell of a noise to get heard.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles: GROOVY

The Sheriff (1971)

          After opening with a moderately exciting bank robbery and chase, which introduces audiences to the title character of even-tempered Southern California lawman James Lucas (Ossie Davis), The Sheriff gets down to business with a creepy scene of White traveling salesman Larry Walters (Ross Martin) menacing young Black woman Janet Wilder (Brenda Sykes). The ensuing (offscreen) sexual assault triggers a crisis in the mixed-race town that Lucas polices, which in turn spirals Lucas toward a crisis of his own—not just because the rape victim’s boyfriend is the sheriff’s son, but also because Lucas’s deputy, Harve (Kaz Garas), is married to a racist. All of this is fairly lurid stuff, and The Sheriff has shortcomings common to ’70s telefilms. The standard 74-minute runtime necessitates obvious storytelling, the aesthetics are cheap (what’s with backyard scenes shot on a soundstage?), and the horn-driven score lends a distractingly upbeat quality to an otherwise a downbeat narrative. Nonetheless, a couple of elements make The Sheriff respectable. Arnold Perl’s sturdy script is humane and reasonably thoughtful, while leading man Davis imbues the whole piece with dignity, purpose, and restraint.

          Presumably designed as a pilot for a series starring Davis—who at the time enjoyed prominence as an activist, director, performer, and theater artist—The Sheriff announces its intentions fairly early. When Lucas identifies the rape suspect as Caucasian, he asks his deputy to join him for the suspect interview because Lucas knows his word won’t be enough to indict a White man. Similarly, the choice to center Lucas’s son pulls the story into predictable but useful thematic terrain; impassioned Vance Lucas (Kyle Johnson) is impatient for social progress, whereas his father has reconciled himself to achieving incremental gains whenever possible. Adding an X factor to this dialectic is the attitude of Cliff Wilder (Moses Gunn), the father of the rape victim—as the sheriff’s chronological peer, Cliff recalls the bad old days when White men abused Black women with impunity, leading Cliff to consider frontier justice.

          Although nothing in The Sheriff would have been groundbreaking in 1971, the way the movie blends multiple race-related provocations gives the piece a measure of validity. So, too, does the overall quality of the acting. Martin, best known as the comic-relief sidekick on ’60s series The Wild, Wild West, essays one of several odious villains he portrayed in ’70s TV movies, and it’s to his credit that he neither injects vulnerability into his character nor comes across as a cartoon—Martin’s performance captures the most infuriating type of morally bankrupt entitlement. Others appearing in the movie include Davis’s real-life partner, Ruby Dee; reliable character players Edward Binns and John Marley; and ’60s/’70s starlet Lynda Day George. Everyone delivers solidly professional work, even when Perl’s dialogue tips into melodramatic extremes, so it’s tempting to believe the cast perceived The Sheriff as a worthy endeavor instead of just another small-screen paycheck gig.

The Sheriff: GROOVY

The Burglars (1971)

          Enjoyably vapid French/Italian heist thriller The Burglars features a typically random assortment of international actors, though unlike many similar pictures that flowed from the continent throughout the ’60s and ’70s with off-putting dubbed soundtracks, this one can be enjoyed by American viewers with original English-language dialogue because the producers simultaneously shot scenes in English and French. Combined with lavish production values, plentiful comic elements, and zippy chase scenes, the English-language soundtrack ensures The Burglars is a smooth ride. Given the genre to which it belongs, perhaps it goes without saying that The Burglars isn’t about anything, so the experience is colorful, distracting, and forgettable—exactly as it was meant to be.
          Set in Greece, the picture begins with a home invasion during which a crew of professional thieves subdues a victim, cracks his safe, and steals a cache of emeralds. The main hook of this scene is an elaborate electronic system used by protagonist Azad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to open the safe; director Henri Verneuil films the scene so clinically that it feels like a tutorial. During the robbery, wily cop Zacharia (Omar Sharif) briefly encounters Azad, so once Zacharia learns what happened, he tracks down Azad with the intention of grabbing the emeralds for himself. Notwithstanding Azad’s romantic entanglements with two different women, a French criminal (Nicole Calfan) and an American model (Dyan Cannon), most of the movie comprises Zacharia chasing and/or confronting Azad, so The Burglars is largely a Mediterranean mano-a-mano movie.
          Since the narrative is slight, what makes The Burglars watchable is style. There are two intricate chases, both staged by the team that did similar work for The Italian Job (1969), and the chases give equal focus to jokes and stunts. Typical gag: a car passes a group of nuns and the wind created by the car’s motion blows out the candles the nuns are holding. It’s worth noting that star Belmondo does a few outrageous stunts, such as hanging onto the sides of moving vehicles and tumbling down an enormous hill. Adding to the picture’s candy-coated veneer are lots of gloriously tacky sets and periodic intervals of jaunty music by Ennio Morricone.
          Though one generally doesn’t gravitate to this sort of movie for the acting, Belmondo’s casual cool suits the material well—notwithstanding that his character’s treatment of women is atrocious. Revealing another flaw common to the genre, Calfan and Cannon serve largely decorative functions. Yet heist thrillers are only as good as their villains, and Sharif’s haughtiness is employed to good effect—whether he’s rhapsodizing about Greek food or warning victims that drunkenness impairs his aim, Sharif presents a delightfully self-satisfied type of odiousness.

The Burglars: GROOVY

Teenager (1974)

          More admirable for what it attempts than for what it achieves, Teenager is not even remotely the movie suggested by its poster and title. Instead, this is a lurid but fairly serious-minded story about the risks an obsessive low-budget filmmaker takes while trying to capture onscreen realism. On a thematic level, Teenager is something of a precursor to Richard Rush’s outrageous The Stunt Man (1980), even though Teenager was made with a fraction of the cash and skill brought to bear on Rush’s epic. Providing another link between the pictures, Teenager follows the production of a biker flick helmed by a guy who resembles Roger Corman—the low-budget legend who worked alongside Rush in the biker-movie trenches at American International Pictures during the ’60s. As the preceding suggests, the more one knows about the cinema-history context surrounding Teenager, the more intriguing the film becomes. Considered out of context, it is much less appealing.
          The movie opens with Charlie (Joe Warfield) trying to film a car chase while steering a van down a cliffside road, leading to a fatal crash. Then Charlie narrates from beyond the grave, flashing back in time to explain how he met his dramatic fate. The journey begins when Charlie woos a female financier who demands sex in exchange for the $50,000 Charlie needs to shoot an exploitation flick about bikers harassing the residents of a small town. The gimmick is that Charlie doesn’t tell the residents what’s happening because he wants actors to spark “real” trouble for the benefit of Charlie’s camera. Eventually the teenager of the title gets involved when local 16-year-old Carey (Andrea Cagan) latches onto the film crew and starts sleeping with one of the actors. Soon afterward, a brawl inside a general store results in a death that forces Charlie to suspend production. The remainder of Teenager explores how far he’ll go to finish his movie.

          Although director/cowriter Gerald Seth Sindell and his crew generate amateurish-looking imagery, presumably because they were under budget/schedule restraints just like the characters in their movie, the storyline’s implications are sufficiently provocative to sustain a measure of interest. And while the script is not much more polished than the physical production, Sindell’s choice to cast a Corman lookalike in the leading role seems ingenious when viewed retrospectively—Teenager provides a twisted image of what happens when nervy filmmakers disregard danger and propriety while trying to generate exciting footage. Devotees of vintage cinema will find much to savor here, from shots of filmmakers operating Arri-S cameras to a glimpse at the façade of Rollins/Joffe Productions’ LA office, and so on. Yet it’s the thematic stuff that lands with the most impact. What is realism? What entitles artists to disrupt everyday life in order to indulge the creative process? Which sacrifices are justified, and which ones cross lines? Added to this mix are nuances related to the Generation Gap, because the clash between sexually precocious Carey and her uptight father has important narrative consequences.
          To be clear, Sindell’s reach exceeds his grasp in countless ways. The script is artless, the characterizations are serviceable, and the shooting style is so rudimentary that one longs for richer coverage and slicker editing. Moreover, the acting runs a dispiriting gamut from adequate to amateurish. In other words, it’s clear why Sindell’s only subsequent feature credit is the abysmal sex comedy H.O.T.S. (1979). That said, he was onto something here, as suggested by the picture’s alternate title, The Real Thing (also the name of a recurring theme song). It’s not common for a grungy flick centering bikers and jailbait to double as a conversation piece, but for those already fascinated by the topics explored here, there’s a lot worth unpacking.

Teenager: GROOVY

Stop! (1970)

          Years before he made the strange vampire saga Ganja & Hess (1973), multihyphenate Bill Gunn wrote and directed this arty meditation on identity, mortality, and sex. Made for Warner Bros. and slapped with an X rating, Gunn’s movie was either given scant distribution or completely shelved, depending on which reference material one consults. Whatever the particulars, Stop! largely disappeared after 1970, so as of this writing it’s only viewable through rare festival screenings and/or private copies. It should be noted that some of those private copies (including the one viewed for this post) feature edits imposed on the movie by Warner Bros., so it is conceivable that Gunn’s original version is substantially different.

          As for the Warner Bros. version, it’s beguiling, erotic, sad—and more than a little pretentious, given the obvious influence of European filmmakers then popular with the intelligentsia, notably Michelangelo Antonioni. When Stop! connects, the experience is hypnotic and unsettling. And when the movie doesn’t connect, it’s indulgent and needlessly opaque. The story begins with attractive young couple Michael (Edward Bell) and Lee (Linda Marsh) traveling from the U.S. to Puerto Rico because of a recent tragedy—Michael’s brother killed his wife and then himself. Over several sweaty days in San Juan, Michael and Lee navigate sexual bliss and marital strife while it becomes evident that Michael is nearly as tormented as his late sibling. When Michael and Lee encounter another couple, played by Marlene Clark and Richard Dow, new sexual complications ensue and the threat of violence is omnipresent.
          While Stop! is occasionally (and deliberately) cryptic, the film overflows with mood. Gunn and cinematographer Owen Roizman employ striking compositions, some quite melodramatic, so every shot feels like a piece of an art installation. The leading actors are all lean and pretty, allowing Gunn to use the angles and surfaces of the human body like colors in a painting, especially during atmospherically filmed sex scenes. (Despite the X rating, nothing explicit is shown.) Gunn also employs trippy editing techniques, from the predictable (languid montages set to ominous music) to the unpredictable (splices that render unclear who is having sex with whom). And while the dialogue can tend to be obvious and stilted (“I really think I love you—I don’t know”), Gunn renders several memorably weird moments of human interaction. The vignettes involving a prostitute are as humane as they are unflinching, and the scene during which Lee paints her husband’s toenails while he makes out with Clark’s character feels personal and real.
          Yet the test of a piece like Stop! is not its ability to command attention with glossy images and alluring flesh, but rather its ability to explore heavy concepts. A superficial reading of Stop! would interpret the title literally, thus positioning the picture as Gunn’s plea for people to transcend psychosexual gamesmanship. However it seems unlikely Gunn was after anything that reductive or tangible. Note, for instance, the centrality of mental illness and sexual identity. Does every story about a lost soul need to end with a definitive moment of self-discovery? Clues regarding the answer to that question may be found in the picture’s bold final shot, which won’t be spoiled here. Among other things, Stop! is a descent into the unknowable—so for some viewers, the final shot might seem like a cop-out, while for others, the image could be the perfect grace note. Perhaps the highest compliment one can offer Gunn’s little-seen debut is to call it a mosaic that reveals as much about the beholder as it does about itself.

Stop!: GROOVY

Mon oncle Antoine (1971)

          Set in rural Quebec during the 1940s, Mon oncle Antoine is mostly the intimate character study of a teenager experiencing formative experiences over a Christmas holiday. Strongly evoking the work of François Truffaut (albeit without the master’s discipline or whimsy), Mon oncle Antoine explores several major themes simultaneously. Most effective is the coming-of-age material. Nearly as potent are scenes investigating the dynamics of a group that functions like a family. Least impactful, alas, are efforts at tethering this small story to a larger narrative about looming social change in French-speaking Canada. That said, one must admire the ambition of the piece, especially because the notion of world-class indigenous Canadian cinema barely existed at the time Mon oncle Antoine was made. (There’s a reason why this movie has for decades been prominent on lists of the best Canadian movies ever made.)

          The picture gets off to an odd start, because cryptic early scenes depict the bleak life of Jos Poulin (Lionel Villeneuve), a French-speaking laborer. Then the movie awkwardly shifts from Jos’s remote milieu to the streets of a tiny town, where middle-aged Antoine (Jean Duceppe) operates a general store that doubles as a community hub. Antoine also serves as the local undertaker. Eventually, the filmmakers settle into the viewpoint of Antoine’s nephew, Benoit (Jacques Gagnon), who works in the store alongside Antoine’s wife, Cécile (Olivette Thibault); another teenager, Carmen (Lyne Champagne); and an adult clerk, Fernand (played by the film’s director, Claude Jutra). Antoine drinks, delegates, and vacillates between ignoring and seducing his wife, who seems a bit too receptive to Fernand’s flirtations. Meanwhile, Benoit endures the disorienting phase of learning how to critically appraise grownups—and how to manage growing awareness of Carmen’s sexuality. The main narrative begins about halfway through the movie, when Antoine gets the call to collect a body from a home in the countryside. Benoit tags along, but the journey becomes a test that everyone involved fails.

          Notwithstanding a few moments of levity, Mon oncle Antoine is largely clinical and downbeat. Through Antoine’s eyes, we see how some lives fall into downward spirals, how other lives get stuck in empty routines, and how still more lives encompass only disappointment and regret. Left to the audience’s imagination, of course, is how Antoine might respond to these lessons. Co-written and directed by Jutra, a major pioneer in Canadian narrative film, Mon oncle Antoine boasts engrossing location work and persuasively naturalistic performances. Events feel authentic, as well, perhaps because the storyline was inspired by the youthful experiences of co-writer Clément Perron. Whether it’s accurate to call their film uniquely Canadian is best left to those born in the Great White North, but beyond dispute is the assertion that Mon oncle Antoine is thoroughly empathetic—perhaps to a fault. One can’t help but wonder how a more surgical edit of the same footage might have come across. 

Mon oncle Antoine: GROOVY

The Road to Salina (1970)

          This sultry European melodrama/thriller exists somewhere between classic film noir and the psychosexual explorations of Nicolas Roeg and David Lynch. Like classic film noir, The Road to Salina concerns an everyman who drifts into trouble because of an irresistible woman. And like many deliberately perverse movies perpetrated by Roeg and Lynch, The Road to Salina plays wicked games with chronology and morality. Also adding to the film’s allure is an offbeat cast and a potent musical score. In fact, the score has undoubtedly led many curious viewers to this picture, because Quentin Tarantino repurposed some music from The Road to Salina for Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004). Yet unlike grungier offerings to which QT often leads his acolytes, The Road to Salina has a somewhat elegant quality even though the subject matter is sordid.

          Per the noir playbook, the movie opens in media res, with a young man fleeing a remote location while a middle-aged woman screams for him to stay. The young man makes his way to a police station, reveals to the authorities (but not the audience) that something awful has happened, then reluctantly agrees to head back where it all went down. The remainder of the movie comprises the young man’s return trip, intercut with flashbacks while he explains past events to a cop. Via the flashbacks, we learn that Jonas (Robert Walker Jr.), an American drifting through Mexico, happened upon a gas station operated by Mara (Rita Hayworth). Mara mistook Jonas for her long-missing son. Upon determining that his hostess seemed harmlessly delusional, Jonas decided to indulge her fantasy for a few days. Then a neighbor named Warren (Ed Begley) showed up and he, too, mistook Jonas for Mara’s missing son. Things got really weird when Mara’s sexy daughter, Billie (Mimsy Farmer), became the third person to believe Jonas was someone else. This juncture shifts the movie into Roeg/Lynch territory, because Jonas learns that Billie was unusually intimate with her brother. It should come as no surprise to hint that Jonas’ strange erotic idyll eventually takes some dark turns.

          Given the twisted interpersonal dynamics of The Road to Salina, it’s a wonder the movie never becomes confusing. Director/co-writer George Lautner keeps the plotting as simple as possible, allowing viewers to marinate in bizarre moments—and to gradually unravel the film’s many mysteries. This streamlined narrative approach gives Lautner room for extended carnal vignettes, which Farmer and Walker perform without inhibition. Both actors essay familiar types well; Farmer’s dangerous impetuousness strikes believable sparks against Walker’s dopey recklessness. Meanwhile, the impact of watching faded screen icon Hayworth in a poignant role compensates for the shortcomings of her passable performance—the sense of a woman failing to reconcile comforting fantasies with intolerable reality is palpable. The Road to Salina is not for every taste, to be sure. The pacing can be leisurely, the plot requires suspension of disbelief, and the ending doesn’t quite achieve the impact it should. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to admire here in terms of boldness, heat, and style, so it’s heartening that the film eventually found a second life after briefly passing through American theaters back in the day.

The Road to Salina: GROOVY

The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)

          Generated by the short-lived company Tigon British Film Productions, The Blood on Satan’s Claw is something of a companion piece to an earlier Tigon production, 1968’s Witchfinder General. One could also draw a line connecting both of these pictures to 1973’s The Wicker Man. All three movies juxtapose supernatural topics with realistic rural settings, thus providing early examples of the “folk horror” style presently in vogue thanks to such pictures as Midsommar (2019) and The Witch (2015). When these movies click, as is the case with The Blood on Satan’s Claw, ideas that might seem cartoonish in other contexts land with visceral impact because they’re grounded with believable characterizations and environments. Excepting some sketchy makeup FX, it’s hard to dismiss The Blood on Satan’s Claw as mere escapism, and that’s a hallmark of the whole “folk horror” genre.
          Set in 18th-century England, the picture begins with a simple farmer discovering a deformed corpse and summoning a snobbish judge (Patrick Wymark) to examine what the farmer describes as the remains of a “fiend.” Yet by the time the judge is brought to the spot where the corpse was found, the remains have disappeared. So begins a strange series of events bedeviling a small, superstitious village. Among other disturbing occurences, the judge watches his future daughter-in-law succumb to a sort of possession—she even manifests a claw-tipped atrocity in place of one of her hands. As instances of hallucinations, self-mutilation, and uncharacteristic behavior grow in number, the judge begins to accept the grim possibility that evil has taken control of his neighbors, prompting a call for help from outside authorities. Eventually, provocative teenager Angel Blake (Linda Hayden) becomes the nexus of the village’s problems when her transgressions escalate from the sinful (trying to seduce a priest) to the homicidal. By far the most unnerving aspect of film is a trope of Angel leading local children in “games” that involve brutalizing victims for amusement—or perhaps for the pleasure of a master from another realm.
          One could easily argue that director Piers Haggard and screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons misstepped during the climax, which shifts from creepily ambiguous to drably literal, and the makeup FX in this sequence are regrettable. Still, most of what unspools prior to the climax boasts admirable tension and texture. The Blood on Satan’s Claw is filled with great faces, literate dialogue, and vivid locations, all of which create a useful foundation for the whole cinematic experience. And while The Blood on Satan’s Claw is not on par with Witchfinder General—among other shortcomings, one longs for a compelling central character—Satan’s Claw provides a serious-minded alternative to the often silly qualities of mainstream British horror from the same period, notably films from Amicus and Hammer. After all, baked into the gore and suspense of The Blood on Satan’s Claw is a parable about the ease with which bad ideas take root in susceptible minds.

The Blood on Satan’s Claw: GROOVY

Road Movie (1973)

          Telling the grim story of two truckers who travel across America with a tough hooker as their passenger, Road Movie epitomizes the New Hollywood aesthetic, even though its level of notoriety is infinitesimal compared to that of similar films by, say, Monte Hellman and Bob Rafelson. As cowritten and directed by the adventurous Joseph Strick, Road Movie is a dark meditation on the circumstances of unfortunate people whose pursuit of independence leads nowhere. There’s a reason the blunt title works—for the characters in Road Movie, life is all about leaving the pain of yesterday behind while chasing the possibilities of tomorrow.

          Road Movie opens by introducing Janice (Regina Baff), a jaded young woman new to the skin trade. Older hookers laugh as she hustles drivers at a truckstop, and she pathetically drops her price in half just to turn a trick. Janice quickly discovers the danger of working the trucker circuit: Since drivers feel invulnerable inside their rigs, many of them abuse Janice as she moves from town to town, one rough ride at a time. Enter Gil (Robert Drivas) and Hank (Barry Bostwick), two young partners trying to make a go of their independent trucking operation. They hire Janice, and then Gil—a cocksure bastard who rants about not wanting to pay union dues, because why should he pay to support other people’s healthcare—slaps Janice around for a thrill while screwing her. Hank has a gentler way about him, but Janice rightly calls him on his choice to align himself with a son of a bitch.

          As Road Movie trundles along, the three have experiences that can’t rightly be called adventures—more like travails. Janice punishes Gil by yanking the power cord on the refrigerator car the boys are hauling, ruining an entire load of meat. And when the guys get into a brawl with other truckers, Janice comes to the rescue by whipping out a straight razor and slashing the guys’ attackers. Gradually, we learn what pushed Janice onto the road, and what compelled Gil and Hank to start their own business. One of the film’s tricky implications is that Janice, the character who endures the most self-inflicted humiliation, might be the only one who sees the world clearly—until she goes completely insane, that is.

          It’s hard to say whether Road Movie “works” in any conventional sense, because it seems Strick was after something more than a morality tale, although Road Movie has that sort of a narrative shape. The picture achieves its greatest impact by presenting specific characters in specific situations as a means of asking difficult questions. What is ambition? What is freedom? What is human connection? Is the portrayal of Janice feminist or misogynistic? Are Gil and Hank antiheroes or merely facets of the same prism as Janice? Is the horrific finale literal or figurative? To some degree, the answers to these questions don’t matter, because sparking the viewer’s imagination is an accomplishment in and of itself.

          Aiding Strick greatly in his peculiar endeavor are the leading performers, each of whom commits to an unsympathetic character. Yet it’s Strick’s seemingly endless directorial curiosity that drives this piece: Frame after frame of Road Movie juxtaposes vignettes about three sad people with disheartening POV shots looking out truck windows at ugly commercialization littering Middle America’s thoroughfares.

Road Movie: GROOVY

The Windsplitter (1971)

          Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) was one of those generation-defining hits that inspired countless homages, so it’s tempting to dismiss all of them as faint echoes of the original. Yet doing so would overlook respectable efforts including The Windsplitter, which borrows iconography and themes from Easy Rider without directly copying that film. And while in many ways The Windsplitter is clumsy and obvious compared to Hopper’s picture, it’s not as if Easy Rider is the most articulate and refined piece of popular entertainment ever created. In fact, The Windsplitter expresses certain notions even more effectively than Easy Rider does. The key difference between the pictures is that the hog-riding rebels of Hopper’s movie live and breathe the hippie ethos, whereas the main character of The Windsplitter is merely mistaken for someone who does that.

          Set in small-town Texas, The Windsplitter explores what happens when hometown boy Bobby Joe (Jim McMullen) returns after a 10-year absence. During that time, he’s become a Hollywood movie star using his proper name, Robert Brandon. Town officials invited Bobby Joe home for a celebration in his honor, expecting the same clean-cut kid they knew a decade ago. Instead they get a longhair with a fringe jacket and wraparound shades who zooms into town atop a powerful motorcycle. Town officials, particularly the local Reverend (Paul Lambert) are aghast, but local kids embrace Bobby Joe like he’s an ambassador from a foreign country. Writer-director J.D. Fiegelson, who later had a middling career in television, takes a meticulous approach to dramatizing conflict. Bobby Joe’s  father (Jim Siedow) views everything about his son’s new lifestyle with contempt, even revealing that he didn’t see Bobby Joe’s hit movie. Bobby Joe tries to pick up where he left off with Jenny (Joyce Taylor), but she’s the daughter of the Reverend, who fears that Bobby Joe’s influence will lead the town’s youth to ruination. Bobby Joe also reconnects with boyhood friend R.T. (Richard Everett), but the town’s other blue-collar types offer a much different welcome—threats leading to real violence. Everything moves steadily toward a public assembly where Bobby Joe is scheduled to crown the high school’s homecoming queen.

          In its broad strokes, The Windsplitter is contrived and predictable, pitting a with-it seeker against close-minded dolts. But in its specifics, the movie reveals depth and sensitivity. The Reverend isn’t just a fire-and-brimstone hatemonger. Jenny isn’t just a small-town girl beguiled by the promise of the outside world. R.T. isn’t just a simpleton grease monkey. And Bobby Joe, who eschews drugs and meaningless sex, doesn’t match the image formed in the minds of those who judge him. To be clear, Fiegelson’s storytelling is not sophisticated. Some of his dialogue thuds, and his most villainous characters are one-dimensional. But because The Windsplitter explores an interesting culture clash from a thoughtful angle, the movie’s grim finale feels organic rather than preconceived.

The Windsplitter: GROOVY

Hedda (1975)

          Although the adjective fearless often gets attached to actresses who play dark or uninhibited roles, perhaps no mainstream performer has so consistently earned that description than Glenda Jackson did during her heyday from the late ’60s to the early ’80s. (She continued acting, often in fine projects, through the early ’90s before shifting to a political career.) For some projects, particularly those directed by frequent collaborator Ken Russell, Jackson descended so far into psychosexual darkness as to become feral. Similarly, in films such as this Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler, Jackson ignored the conventional impulse to engender audience goodwill. When Jackson essayed monsters, as she does here, she did so to spectacular effect.

          To be fair, calling Ibsen’s complex protagonist Hedda Gabler a monster isn’t exactly correct; while much of what she does is borderline sociopathic, Ibsen ensures that we see what drives her. So does Trevor Nunn, the writer-director of this intense adaptation. Casting the story in an amber glow that counters the ice surrounding Hedda’s twisted heart, Nunn employs intimate compositions that either trap characters together uncomfortably or reveal the distance (metaphorical and physical) between them. Nunn’s film is precise and unflinching, just like Jackson’s explosive leading performance.

          Summarizing the plot does little justice to the grim textures of Ibsen’s narrative, but the broad strokes are as follows. Although Hedda (Jackson) is married to Jorgen (Peter Eyre), a socially inept intellectual of marginal promise, she cruelly flirts with Judge Brack (Timothy West), who wants to have an affair with her. Enter Hedda’s simple friend, Thea (Jennie Linden), who is involved with another intellectual, Eijert (Patrick Stewart—with hair!). Long ago, he and Hedda were lovers, and they still have a dangerous bond. As the story progresses, Hedda identifies which characters are obstacles to her dreams of a comfortable lifestyle, then sets in motion a horrific chain of events.

          Just as none would mistake Hedda Gabler for safe classical theater, none would mistake Hedda for a stodgy stage adaptation. Lurking inside the ornate language and posh costume designs is something truly malignant, a skillful exploration of the million ways people hurt each other. Burning at the center of thing is a remarkable character brought to frightening life by an extraordinary performer. Even when she goes big with a gesture or a monologue, Jackson finds truth in Hedda’s grasping for power—and in her startling realizations of powerlessness. So even though everyone around her does fine work, especially Nunn, this experience is all about the portrayal that earned Jackson, as of this writing, the final of her four Oscar nominations for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Hedda: GROOVY

Visions of Eight (1973)

          Rather than providing conventional historical contextualization or even straightforward reportage, this arty documentary project from megaproducer David L. Wolper lets eight internationally acclaimed filmmakers offer cinematic sketches of the Olympics, with the 1972 summer games in Munich as their canvas. The terrorist attacks that left 11 Israeli athletes dead receive only passing mention, not out of disrespect but rather because Wolper’s film was designed to celebrate timeless aspects of the Olympics. As with most anthology pictures, Visions of Eight is a hit-or-miss affair, but even the iffy sequences are imaginative, so as a total viewing experience, Visions of Eight is offbeat, unpredictable, and, just as Woper intended, inspirational. Given a clear shape thanks to well-crafted introductory and closing segments overseen by Mel Stewart (who directed Wolper’s beloved 1971 theatrical feature Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory), the film moves gracefully between quasi-narrative sequences and experimental passages.

          Yuri Ozerov’s “The Beginning” is among the merely serviceable vignettes. Mai Zetterling’s weight-lifting sequence “The Strongest” loses focus despite flashy cinematography and editing, because Zetterling drifts into random stats (Olympians ate 1.1 million eggs over the course of the ’72 games) and images of computers processing data. Infusing “The Decathalon” with his characteristically antiauthoritarian humor, Milos Forman juxtaposes pageantry with mundane details such as officials yawning between events, and he tips his hand by narrating, “I got to see the Olympics for free and had the best seats.” Arguably the best sequence is Claude Lelouch’s “The Losers,” which offers a poignant alternative to familiar views of triumphant athletes.

          Innovative Hollywood director Arthur Penn gets a bit carried away with “The Highest,” employing artsy audio drops, slow motion, and soft focus to transform high jumps into audiovisual abstractions, though it must be said that parts of “The Highest” are quite beautiful. Michael Pfleghar’s “The Women” underwhelms, and Kon Ichikawa’s “The Fastest” obnoxiously celebrates its own technical complexity via narration that explains how 24 cameras and 20,000 feet of film were used to record a 100-yard-dash in granular detail. The final segment, John Schlesinger’s “The Longest,” lives up to its title, offering a repetitive look at an English marathoner.

         Still, Visions of Eight amply rewards the viewer’s attention. The best sequences are terrific, the cumulative abundance of atmosphere and information is impressive, and the license Wolper gave to his collaborators resulted in great stylistic variety. Never lost amid the directorial flourishes is the sincere theme of the piece, which has to do with extolling the values of achievement and community.

Visions of Eight: GROOVY

Bequest to the Nation (1973)

          It’s not accurate to say that making historical dramas insulates filmmakers from bad reviews, but it’s obvious that critics sometimes tread gingerly when analyzing posh costume pieces laden with unquestionable thematic weight—one never wishes to find oneself in the position of denigrating a piece for mustiness only to later learn that the piece has earned high marks for illuminating some chapter of the past with which the critic was previously unfamiliar. Conversely, occasional overcompensation is a factor, hence the dismaying tendency of some reviewers to dismiss all historical dramas as cheap ploys for accolades. These realities help contextualize Bequest to the Nation, which was made in the UK and released in America as The Nelson Affair. Despite somewhat lurid subject matter, the picture ticks many familiar costume-drama boxes, from high-wattage casting to lofty dialogue, so it’s plainly catnip for the Masterpiece Theater crowd.

          That does not mean, however, that it’s entirely a stuffed-shirt sort of a picture. Thanks largely to Glenda Jackson’s gleefully overwrought performance, Bequest to the Nation is entertaining and even a bit crass. Moreover, it’s only peripherally a history lesson, since the focus of the narrative is an unusual love story. In sum, Bequest to the Nation neither wholly ratifies nor wholly undercuts presumptions associated with its genre, so giving this one a fair shake requires close inspection. Revisiting historical episodes previously depicted in the Vivien Leigh/Laurence Olivier picture That Hamilton Woman (1941), Bequest to the Nation explores the relationship between Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (Peter Finch), England’s greatest naval commander of the Napoleonic era, and his extramarital lover, Lady Hamilton (Jackson). Despite considerable scandal, Lord Nelson abandoned his wife and took up residence with Lady Hamilton, granting her a sort of title by default even though she was common.

          At the apex of England’s sea battles with Napoleon’s forces, according to the script by Terence Rattigan (who adapted his own play), Lord Nelson withdrew from military service for an extended idyll with Lady Hamilton because she had grown weary of waiting to hear whether Lord Nelson had died in battle. A duel over Lord Nelson’s soul ensues, with Lady Hamilton arguing for civilian life while a sense of duty to country gnaws at Lord Nelson’s conscience. Woven into the narrative is the question of what status Lord Nelson might be able to offer Lady Hamilton should he die in combat, since she doesn’t have the protection of marriage. As is the norm for most films adapted from plays, Bequest to the Nation is intimate and talky, but effectively so; Finch and costars including Michael Jayston and Anthony Quayle speak beautifully, lending the piece old-fashioned luster, while Jackson achieves something closer to alchemy, blending insouciance, wickedness, and vulnerability into a persuasive characterization.

          Although the dialogue tends toward the pretentious (“England has no need of a saint at this point in history, Master Matcham, but they have great need of a hero”), posh cinematography and scoring by, respectively, Gerry Fisher and Michel Legrand, helps the film unfold smoothly. Better still, the piece concludes on a suite of poignant notes rendered vividly by Jackson. Thus it’s wrong to reject Bequest to the Nation out of hand as some safe museum piece, because it’s made of tougher stuff than that, and yet the idiom of the film has the familiar rigidity of entertainment aspiring to literary heft. The ferociousness with which Jackson channels her character’s vulgarity ameliorates the picture’s most off-putting impulses.

Bequest to the Nation: GROOVY

Two People (1973)

          Hating the intimate drama Two People wouldn’t require much effort. The acting by the leading players is vapid, the dialogue epitomizes the silliness of with-it ’70s lingo, and the storyline is trite. Yet Two People has something many similar films from the same period don’t, and that’s grace. Director Robert Wise, taking a break from big-budget epics, focuses on dramatic understatement and visual lyricism. Writer Richard De Roy drives every scene toward moments of quiet human connection. And what about those leading actors, Peter Fonda and Lindsay Wagner? At worst, they’re beautiful blanks onto whom Wise projects the tender emotions of De Roy’s script. At best, they compensate for their shortcomings by performing with great sincerity. Either way, they lend pleasing colors to Wise’s palette, allowing him to render a modest tale grounded in humanism.

          The story begins in Marrakech, where somber American Evan Bonner (Peter Fonda) receives a fateful visitor who arranges for Evan’s travel back to the States. Shortly afterward, American fashion model Dierdre McCluskey (Wagner) spots Evan in a Marrakech restaurant, taking note of his sad-eyed handsomeness. They finally meet on the train leaving town, and over the course of a long journey from the Far East to New York, they learn each others stories. She’s a single mother no longer in love with the child’s father, and he’s an Army deserter who recently surrendered to authorities after three years on the run. That these characters fall in love is no surprise, but delivering the unexpected isn’t the goal of a movie like Two People. Like a bittersweet love song, Two People is all about capturing small moments of intimacy and vulnerability with elegance and taste.

          Fonda’s casting is spot-on, because he brings so much rebel-hero baggage to the screen that he never needs to overstate anything. While any number of actresses could have played Wagner’s role, many of them with more gravitas, the friction between Wagner’s California-girl glow and her character’s wounded cynicism lends interesting dimensionality—Wagner’s out of her depth, but so is Dierdre. (Elevating a handful of scenes is the fine Estelle Parsons, who plays a fashion editor.) Is Two People pretentious? Sure, as when Dierdre spews this sort of dialogue: “I really object to the way you get to me.” And is it superficial? Yes. But beyond that special quality of grace, what redeems Two People is the limited scope of its ambition. Rather than trying to offer a geopolitical treatise, a trap that snared many other ’70s movies about deserters (and draft dodgers), Two People presents only what its title offers. Although anyone who derides this movie has ample reason to do so, those willing to overlook the picture’s weaknesses can discover a gentle viewing experience.

Two People: GROOVY