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

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

          Long before contemporary virus-on-the-loose movies such as Outbreak (1995) and Contagion (2011), writer Michael Crichton explored the terror of a potentially unstoppable blight with his 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain, which provided the basis for this intense, Oscar-nominated movie. Built around the idea of a virulent alien entity brought to Earth by a returning space probe that crash lands in a tiny Southwestern town, Crichton’s tale spends very little time depicting the effects of the virus on the outside world. Instead, the bulk of his story takes place inside Wildfire, a massive underground complex designed for responding to viral threats. Accordingly, The Andromeda Strain is one of the most methodical thrillers in sci-fi history, favoring logic and reason over melodrama until the final act, which succumbs to silly ticking-clock story mechanics.

          Drawing on his background as a medical doctor, Crichton painstakingly envisioned the procedures that might be followed in such a facility, so the screen adaptation sometimes feels like a training film as it portrays disinfection baths, specimen analysis, and so forth. In fact, the challenges of adhering to scientific method inform the film’s character conflicts—the mastermind behind Wildfire, bacteria specialist Dr. Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill), repeatedly criticizes his people for succumbing to emotionalism. This cold-blooded approach irks Stone’s subordinates, including compassionate medical doctor Dr. Mark Hall (James Olson), avuncular pathologist Dr. Charles Dutton (David Wayne), and irritable microbiologist Dr. Ruth Leavitt (Kate Reid). These characters must overcome interpersonal friction as they unravel mysteries with apocalyptic implications.

          Director Robert Wise, whose previous contribution to the sci-fi genre was the chilling classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), mirrors the clinical subject matter by utilizing a restrained style. Most scenes are detailed and lengthy, revealing minuscule details about procedure and technology. Combined with the film’s spectacular production design—think smooth chrome surfaces hiding ornate infrastructure—Wise’s storytelling surrounds the characters with dehumanizing atmosphere. Composer Gil Melle’s freaky electronic music, comprising all sorts of mechanized beeps and screeches, jacks up tension considerably.

          The movie occasionally cuts outside Wildfire to depict the activities of military men appraising the contagion’s spread, but the real drama stems from watching the scientists expand their knowledge of the alien killer in their midst. Operating within the tight parameters of the movie’s icy style, leading actors infuse their characters with effective colorations. Hill incarnates a pure scientist capable of fully suppressing his emotions, while to varying degrees his costars let loose. Olsen vigorously attacks the thankless task of portraying the story’s bleeding-heart character, and Reid contributes subtly distinctive work as a woman hiding a secret. Some might find the picture’s approach too muted (the movie is rated G despite fleeting gore and nudity), but given that it spends 130 minutes dramatizing combat against an antagonist the size of a grain of sand, The Andromeda Strain is memorably smart and suspenseful.

The Andromeda Strain: GROOVY

The Hindenburg (1975)

          A generation before James Cameron put Kate and Leo aboard the Titanic, transforming a historical tragedy into the colorful backdrop for a silly fictional story, the makers of The Hindenburg used a similar gimmick for their movie about history’s most famous airship disaster. Based on a speculative book by Michael M. Mooney, the picture presents one of the sexiest theories for why the famous zeppelin crashed while docking in New Jersey after a 1937 transatlantic voyage from Nazi Germany, where the ship was considered a powerful symbol of Third Reich accomplishment. According to the movie, anti-Nazi conspirators planned to destroy the ship after the passengers were safely away, but then a perfect storm of circumstance led to the deaths of 36 people.

          Completely missing every opportunity presented by this edgy storyline, The Hindenburg is a slow-moving bore filled with drab subplots, trite characterizations, and woefully little action. Using a tired Agatha Christie-type structure, the movie introduces Col. Franz Ritter (George C. Scott), a German pilot sent by the Nazi high command to spy on crew and passengers because of a bomb threat that was issued prior to the ship’s departure from Germany. (In typical disaster-movie fashion, every sensible person in the story recommends delaying the trip, but the expeditious high command insists on a timely liftoff.)

          Once the Hindenburg is airborne, Ritter pokes around the lives of various people, looking for clues of bad intent, so the picture quickly falls into a clichéd cycle of melodramatic vignettes that are supposed to make the audience wonder (and care) who’s going to live and who’s going to die. Unfortunately, none of the characters is interesting—not the German countess who shares romantic history with Ritter; not the songwriter and clown performing anti-Hitler routines; not the twitchy crewman whom the audience can identify as the saboteur the first time he appears onscreen. It doesn’t help that the supporting cast almost exclusively comprises character actors: William Atherton, Robert Clary, Charles Durning, Richard Dysart, Burgess Meredith, Roy Thinnes, and Gig Young are all solid performers, but they’re not exactly the mid-’70s A-list. (Lending a pinch more marquee value is Anne Bancroft.)

          The film’s production values are impressive-ish, including vivid re-creations of the Hindenburg’s interiors, and some of the flying shots feature handsome old-school effects, but director Robert Wise’s dramaturgy is so turgid that even these quasi-spectacular elements are for naught. Viewers who soldier through the whole movie are rewarded with a 20-minute climax featuring a detailed re-enactment of the Hindenburg disaster, which Wise presents in black-and-white so he can intercut his footage with newsreel shots of the real Hindenburg. This laborious denouement offers thrills, but it’s all too little, too late.

          If nothing else, the filmmakers get points for the sheer nerve of ending this bloated whale of a movie with vintage audio from the famous “Oh, the humanity!” radio broadcast: The last thing viewers hear before the credits is a voice announcing, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.” Cinematic self-awareness?

The Hindenburg: LAME

Audrey Rose (1977)

The ’70s supernatural-cinema boom produced a number of provocative films that were more thoughtful than horrifying, and Audrey Rose is a good example. Adapted by Frank De Felitta from his own novel, the story concerns haunted Englishman Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins), who believes a 10-year-old girl living in New York is the reincarnation of his daughter, who died in a horrific car accident. Hoover’s obsession with the girl, Ivy Templeton (Susan Swift), traumatizes her parents, Janice (Marsha Mason) and Bill (John Beck). Complicating matters is the fact that Ivy keeps having seizures, creating the impression that she’s “reliving” Audrey’s death. While this might sound like a solid setup for a creepshow, the filmmakers have larger ambitions. Veteran director Robert Wise, whose résumé includes the restrained fright classic The Haunting (1963), methodically follows the story through a lengthy court trial and an epic hypnosis sequence, eschewing cheap jolts for intense discussions about the comparative values of eastern and western spirituality. So while the movie is mostly a bust as a thriller, it’s interesting as an existential conversation piece. Mason is touchingly fraught as a mother in an impossible situation; her reaction shots during the hypnosis scene are especially potent. Hopkins’ performance veers into strange directions, with flitting hand gestures and overly musical line deliveries, so it’s hard to determine whether he succeeded at creating something otherworldly or failed at creating something believable. Either way, he’s oddly entertaining. Beck is his usual stolid presence, supporting Mason without calling much attention to himself, and Swift is okay, doing a Linda Blair-lite routine. Slow and long but generally interesting, Audrey Rose gets points for trying to do something out of the ordinary.

Audrey Rose: FUNKY

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi TV series Star Trek (1966-1969) limped through three ratings-challenged seasons on NBC, then became a moneymaker in reruns during the ’70s. Several attempts to revive the franchise for television failed, including a one-season animated series, but when Star Wars (1977) became a monster hit, Paramount dug the Enterprise out of mothballs for a big-screen adventure. Then Roddenberry picked a story without enough action, the studio hired a director prone to overlong running times, and special-effects delays kicked the budget into the stratosphere. As a result, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a lumbering monolith running over 130 minutes, with none of the swashbuckling joie de vivre that distinguished the TV series’ best installments. All of the original actors returned—James Doohan, De Forest Kelly, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, George Takei—but neither they nor newcomers Stephen Collins and Persis Khambata were given anything fun to do. Instead, the Enterprise crew is sent to investigate a gigantic energy cloud that’s creeping toward Earth, swallowing everything in its path. So rather than battling intergalactic baddies, the crew spends most of the movie watching weird celestial phenomena and talking about philosophy. For anyone but devoted fans of the franchise, the movie is close to interminable. Having said that, Star Trek: The Motion Picture can’t be entirely discounted because it’s a landmark for musical scoring and visual effects. Long FX sequences of the Enterprise in a docking station, a close encounter with a wormhole, and a trip through the energy cloud’s interior chambers are filled with gorgeous flourishes, even if the scenes are dead weight from a narrative perspective. And throughout the picture, Jerry Goldsmith’s music is magnificent: His rousing main-title fanfare became the franchise’s musical signature throughout the ’80s, and his use of an electronic instrument called a “blaster beam” gives scenes related to the energy cloud a truly otherworldly feeling. The story’s twist ending has a certain existential kick, too. None of this is quite enough, however, to compensate for the picture’s needlessly humorless tone or for such cringe-worthy false notes as Khambata’s stiff performance. (Even Shatner, believe it or not, is too restrained here.) On the plus side, Nimoy lends enjoyable gravitas, and the revival of the franchise set the stage for many delightful subsequent adventures, beginning with the infinitely superior Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).

Star Trek: The Motion Picture: FUNKY