Rachel, Rachel
Directed by Paul Newman
Written by Stewart Stern from a novel by Margaret Laurence
1968/US
IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Nurse: The operation was a success. You’re out of danger.

Rachel Cameron: How can I be out of danger if I’m not dead?[/box]

1968 was a good year for sensitive, dramatic character studies.  This film is a prime example.

Rachel Cameron (Joanne Woodward) is an elementary school teacher living with her mother in a small rural town.  She was traumatized in her childhood from bullying for being the undertaker’s daugher.  The mother is a piece of work who keeps Rachel under her thumb by continuous malingering.  Rachel has withdrawn into a cocoon inside her head where she berates herself constantly.  The few light-hearted moments in her day are spent with best friend Calla (Estelle Parsons), a fellow teacher.  She fends off all masculine attention despite the fact that her mind is also filled with sexual fantasies.

Calla has been “born-again” and keeps begging Rachel to go to church with her.  The denomination is kind of a blend of new age philosophy and Pentecostalist fundamentalism, complete with talking in tongues.  A breakdown during the services and a disturbing encounter with Calla immediately afterwards shake Rachel to the core.  This leaving her more open to the advances of a former classmate (James Olson) who has returned from the big city to be near his ailing mother.  I will the end plot summary right here.

I enjoyed this a whole bunch, even more than my fond memory of it on original release.  It might sound like a real sudser but never, ever crosses that line.  Rachel is too quirky to be your standard movie old maid.  Some of her lines are classic.  All-in-all it’s a moving coming-of-age story for late bloomers.  Recommended.

Newman directed his way to an Academy Award Best Picture nomination the first time out. Woodward and Parsons’ fabulous performances both richly deserved their Oscar nods. The film was also nominated for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

This is such a beautiful love letter from Newman to his wife.  Well worth a watch.

Bullitt
Directed by Peter Yates
Written by Alan Trustman and Henry Kleiner from a novel by Robert L. Fish
1968/US
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Chalmers: Frank, we must all compromise.

Bullitt: Bullshit.[/box]

Fairly solid film for fans of Steve McQueen, car chases, and San Francisco.

McQueen plays Frank Bullitt, a San Francisco police detective.  His soon-to-be-nemisis Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) hopes to boost his Senatorial hopes by producing a secret witness to a San Francisco hearing into the activities of the mob (here called “The Organization).  The man is the brother of the Organization’s boss.  Bullitt is ordered to protect the witness.  Within the first few minutes gunmen manage to talk their way into the witness’s hotel room and leave him in extremely critical condition.  Chalmers is not pleased and starts going after Bullitt’s job.

The rest of the movie is taken up with finding the bad guys, culminating in a car chase through the hilly streets of the City by the Bay.  With Jacqueline Bissett as Bullitt’s girlfriend.

I like McQueen’s charisma, Vaughn’s smarmy, evil performance, the San Francisco scenery and Lalo Schifrin’s great score.  I am less keen on the story, which is frankly slight, and even more with the ending that felt like a big let-down.  Frank P. Keller won the Oscar for Best Film Editing.  Bullitt was also nominated for Best Sound.

Charly
Directed by Ralph Nelson
Written by Stirling Silliphant from a novel by Daniel Keyes
1968?US
IMDb link
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Charly Gordon: What’s enough love?

Alice Kinnian: Always a little more than anyone ever gets.[/box]

Despite my many quibbles, this futuristic love story kept my interest throughout.

It is sometime in the very near future.  Charly Gordon (Cliff Robertson) is a sweet-tempered developmentally disabled man who tries to better himself by attending a night school class taught by beautiful researcher/teacher Alice (Claire Bloom) and working as a janitor in a bakery.  Alice is also working with scientists who have successfully created genius mice.

One of the subjects, Algernon, beats Charly consistently at mazes.  The scientists are ready to start human experimentation and Alice encourages them to pick Charly as the test subject.

As the surgical changes take effect, things don’t work out great at first for Charly.  His frustration leads to him becoming a very angry individual.  Then his new-found maturity leads him to fall in love with Alice, who is engaged.  Things gradually get better until they don’t.

I have a number of niggles with this movie starting with Robertson’s Oscar-winning, Oscar-bait performance.  He’s great when he gets smarter but overdoes it by a long shot at the beginning of the film.  I have never seen a developmentally-disabled person behave this way.   Second, the film is filled with “artistic” editing and split-screen work that doesn’t really work.  Other than that it’s an enjoyably well-made movie with a nice score by Ravi Shankar.  The print available on YouTube is not the greatest.

Interesting how the word “retardate” was bandied about in 1968.

Cliff Robertson won the Academy Award for Best Actor.  Peter O’Toole was again robbed, IMO, for his outstanding work in The Lion in Winter (1968).

Clip (spoiler)

Black Panthers
Directed by Agnes Varda
1968/France
IMDb link
First viewing/Criterion Channel

[box] “You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.” — Huey Newton[/box]

This short documentary provides a window into the late 60’s when things seemed more cut and dried even amidst all the turmoil.

The movie was filmed at a “Free Huey Newton” rally held near the courthouse in Oakland, California where the Black Panther Party’s “Minister of Defense” and co-founder was being tried for killing a policeman during a shoot-out in which Newton was also shot.

Newton’s entire life was filled with violence and rage, apparently, according to this Wikipedia article.  I’m sensing he might not have been a very nice guy.  At any rate, the film takes a solidly pro-Black Panther and pro-Huey Newton stance.  We hear from Panther stalwarts including Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, all of whom preach armed revolution.

The film is accompanied by scripted English narration which makes it more polemical and less fluid than Varda’s other documentaries.  I’m glad to have caught it.

Clip

Witchfinder General (AKA “The Conqueror Worm”)
Directed by Michael Reeves
Written by Tom Baker and Michael Reeves from a novel by Louis M. Heywood
1968/UK
IMDb link
First viewing/YouTube
Included in They Shoot Zombies Don’t They?

[box] Matthew Hopkins: Men sometimes have strange motives for the things they do.[/box]

A handsome horror film worthy of one of Vincent Price’s best performances.

Price plays the historical Matthew Hopkins, who was responsible for two-thirds of the witch burnings in Cromwellian England.  He travels the country with his vile torturer henchman (Robert Russell) looking for “witches” to burn, money to be made, and sexual favors to be coerced.  Meanwhile a young soldier (Ian Ogilvy) in the English Civil War falls in love with the niece of one of the “witches”.  After Hopkins kills the uncle and terrorizes the niece, the soldier vows vengeance.

I thought this was solid with top-notch production values.  Vincent Price delivers his favorite horror performance despite constant disputes with the young director who didn’t want him in the first place.  What a fool!  Movies such as these need the slightly over-the-top edge Price was a pro at.

Funny Girl
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Isobel Lennart based on her musical play
1968/US
IMDb link
Repeat viewing/YouTube rental

[box] Fanny Brice: [singing] Life’s candy and the sun’s a ball of butter.[/box]

What an absolutely unique voice and talent Barbra Streisand had!  To top it off, William Wyler proves once again that he could direct in any genre.

The story is very, very loosely based on the life of comedienne Fanny Brice.  In this version, Brice (Streisand) struggles to achieve her show-business dreams in spite of her unconventional looks.  She has sufficient chutzpa and talent to succeed and reach the pinnacle of success as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Simultaneously, Brice begins an off-again on-again relationship with wealthy, handsome gambler Nick Arnstein (Omar Sharif).  After several years, they marry and have a child.  But when Nick runs into a prolonged losing streak, we move into A Star is Born territory. With Kay Medford as Fanny’s mother and Walter Pidgeon as Florenz Ziegfeld.

The soundtrack album was on constant rotation a couple years later, when I shared an apartment with two Streisand-obsessed roommates.   She explodes on screen and became one of the only actresses ever to win an Oscar for her film debut.  I love the music too.  Recommended to musical lovers.

Barbra Streisand won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a tie with Katharine Hepburn for A Lion in Winter.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Supporting Actress (Medford); Best Cinematography; Best Sound; Best Film Editing; Best Music, Original Song (“Funny Girl”) and Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture.

Restoration Trailer

“Don’t Rain on My Parade”

The Party
Directed by Blake Edwards
Written by Blake Edwards and Tom and Frank Waldman
1968/US
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Hrundi V. Bakshi: Do you speak Hindustani?

Michelle Monet: No.

Hrundi V. Bakshi: Well, you are not missing anything. [/box]

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe.

Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) was brought in all the way from India to play a smallish role in a Hollywood extravaganza.  Being a bumbling idiot, Hrundi messes up every aspect of the production ending with the indispensable setting for the climax.  The director speaks with a studio boss who agrees to see that he never works again.  Unfortunately, the boss absent-mindedly writes down his name on a piece of paper that contains his guest list to a very high-toned Hollywood party.  Hrundi arrives complete with invitation and proceeds to create havoc and destruction wherever he goes.

 In the  boss’s  modern monstrosity of a home everything is operated remotely at the push of a button.  And, man does Hrundi enjoy pushing buttons just to see what will happen. Incredibly, along the way, he attracts the affection of an as-yet uncorrupted starlet (Claudine Longet).

Peter Sellers plays his role to the hilt – including with brown-face and a spot on comic accent.  I thought the role went far enough to be border-line offensive.  On the other hand, I laughed out loud several times at Sellers’ exquisitely timed physical comedy.  The show-biz satire is good as well.

The Swimmer
Directed by Frank Perry
Written by Eleanor Perry from a short story by John Cheever
1968/US
IMDb lnk
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Ned Merrill: Pool by pool, they form a river all the way to our house.[/box]

Burt Lancaster’s “Swimmer” takes a poke at Mid-Century prosperity and despair.

After a long absence Neddy Merrill (Lancaster) shows up in his swim trunks at a neighbor’s pool.  The neighbors are currently enjoying the hair of the dog that bit them after a hard night’s drinking at a party.  They invite Neddy to join them in today’s plan.  But Ned takes it in his mind that he could swim home to his house on the hill by swimming certain pools in order.  His children’s nubile baby sitter joins him for part of the journey.

Ned seems to be a hearty, healthy, executive-type and at ease in the circles through which he swims.  His past eventually catches up with him as the story grows progressively darker.  With Joan Rivers and Kim Hunter among the ladies he meets.

Lancaster’s 52-year-old physique is amazing.  His acting is a tour-de-force.  I found the plot kind of strained by the twist ending but until then this had my attention all the way.  Recommended to fans of Mid-Century Modern or Mad Men.

Trailer – watch for Joan Rivers!