Monthly Archives: September 2020

Fiddler on the Roof
Directed by Norman Jewison
Written by Joseph Stein from stories by Sholem Aleichim
1971/USA
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Perchik: Money is the world’s curse.
Tevye: May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover.

This was better than I remembered from back in the day.  Great cast, beautiful images, beautiful songs, what more could you ask?

The setting is early 20th Century Russia, when progroms against Jews were causing a mass migration West.  Tevye (Topol) is a poor and pious milkman trying to support  his wife Golde and five growing daughters in the shtetl of Anatefka.  The eldest three are of age and the family is looking to arrange marriages to upstanding men who will not demand a dowry.  The local matchmaker tries to pair the eldest daughter Tzeitel with the local butcher Lazar Wolf, a 62-year-old widower.  Tevye agrees with the match but Tzeitel has already pledged herself to impoverished tailor Motel (Leonard Frey).

Tevye is somewhat of a softy and changes his mind.  But how to get Golde to agree? The next daughter falls for a revolutionary and Tevye blesses this union as well.  But when the youngest starts keeping company with a gentile, paternal impulses are stretched to the limit.  While all this domestic drama is going on, the local Russians are gradually making things in Anatefka intolerable for their Jewish neighbors.

This movie is three-hours long but it didn’t drag for me, always a good sign.  The recreation of the village is beautiful with all the weathered old faces lovingly captured.  The script is full of memorable quips and some of the songs have become classics.  My favorite part of the movie is when Tevye describes how Golde’s grandmother came to him in a dream with some strong advice.  Recommended.

Fiddler on the Roof won Oscars for Best Cinematography; Best Sound: and Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Supporting Actor (Frey); Best Director; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Directed by Robert Fuest
Written by James Whitten and William Goldstein
1971/US
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube
They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They?

Sgt. Schenley: Well, they have one thing in common.
Inspector Trout: If you say they all died mysteriously, I’ll bloody kill you.

What better could you ask for than a good old-fashioned horror film with plenty of Vincent Price?

The setting is mid-1920s England.  The wife of Dr. Anton Phibes (Price) died in a surgery that went spectacularly wrong.  Phibes was involved in a horribly disfiguring accident on his way to her side.  Phibes blames all nine doctors involved in her care for her death.  He spends the next few years inventing fiendishly elaborate ways to take out his men, each based on one of the Pharaonic curses.

We watch Phibes execute his revenge, accompanied by a automoton-like woman who is his companion.

This is a high-class prouction with a sharp script and Price acting his heart out.  It’s time period is at some kind of intersection between 1924 and 1971 oddly enough.  It’s a good time and I would recommend watching with popcorn and maybe a beer.

Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Witten by Werner Herzog
1971/West Germany
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. — Helen Keller

In a land of silence and darkness, people do the best with what they’ve got.

Frau Fini Staubinger, now in her later years, had lost both her sight and her hearing by the time she was 16.  In this documentary, she tells the story of her life.  (She stayed in bed for 30 years!)  Somehow Frau Staubinger broke free and dedicated the rest of her life to helping other deaf and blind people to improve their connection with each other and with the world.  She was better equipped than some to serve as their ambassador since she could speak fluently having retained her hearing to a more advanced age.

I liked this a lot.  It was sad to think about being cut off from such basic parts of the human experience.  And yet these people were certainly not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves.

10 Rillington Place
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Written by Clive Exton from a book by Ludovic Kennedy
1971/UK
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

John Reginald Christie: This stuff I use, 1 in 10 might die from it.
Timothy John Evans: Die!
John Reginald Christie: Well, that’s an acceptable medical risk.

Solid true-crime thriller is blessed by a couple of fine performances.

In the first five minutes of the movie we see John Christie (Richard Attenborough) administer kitchen gas to a young woman he is supposedly treating for bronchitis and follow up by starting a sexual assault on her.  He buries her in the garden.

Christie lives in squalid quarters at 10 Rillington Place with his rather beaten down wife Ethel.  Young Timothy (John Hurt) and Beryl Evans (Judy Geeson move in. They have a baby daughter, Geraldine.  The couple is barely making ends meet.  Timothy is illiterate. They fight constantly about Beryls spendthrift ways.

Christie claims to have some sort of medical knowledge derived from being in the war though he’s not inclined to give explanations or answer questions.  He also brags of his service in the War Reserve Police. Christie is big on enforcing “rules” and soon puts himself in charge of the couple.  They find that they are about to be in even worse financial straits because Beryl is now pregnant.  But the devious Christie says he knows how to fix Beryl’s problem.  I will stop there for those who don’t know the rest of the story.

I really enjoyed this better-than-average serial killer movie.  The superb performances of Attenborough and Hurt make the movie special.  Despite the subject matter, there is little to no gore or nudity.

The old Hollywood continued its transition to the “New Hollywood” and nothing was ever the same.  We welcomed the debut performances of F. Murray Abraham, Kathy Bates, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gerard Depardieu, and Cybill Shepherd, among others.  And thanked Harold Lloyd, Glenda Farrell, Michael Rennie, Van Heflin, Louis Armstrong, and Max Steiner for the memories.

At the Oscar Ceremony on April 15, 1971, Lillian Gish received an Honorary Oscar for “superlative artistry and for distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures”.  Orson Welles was honored for his “superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures.” Ingmar Bergman won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and Frank Sintatra won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

The Magic Kingdom at Disney World opened for business.  An adult ticket cost $3.50. Each ride was paid for separately using tickets. “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night was the number one single of the year, spending six weeks atop the Billboard Charts.  Jim Morrison died.  No Pulitzer Prize was awarded for literature.  “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the Moon Marigolds” by Paul Zindel won for drama.  President Richard Nixon was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.

The New York Times published sections of the Pentagon Papers showing the US Government had been lying to the American People about multiple facets of the Viet Nam War. Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the documents, was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property; the charges were later dismissed,

The 26th Amendment to the Constitution gave American 18-year-olds the right to vote. Cigarette advertising on American television was banned.  The microprocessor was invented.  The first CAT scan machine was produced.  The Soviet Union launched the first space station.

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The time has come for me to pick up some speed.  I promised myself to do a fairly exhaustive exploration of each year’s movies from 1929-1970.  Now that the Golden Age is but a fond memory, I am going to take a more relaxed approach.  I’ll devote six weeks to each “year” and watch what most appeals to me.  There’s a lot of good stuff I haven’t seen and I can get through a decade a year with that system.  The list I’ve come up with to choose from is here.  I have no intention of revisiting A Clockwork Orange or Straw Dogs or sitting through The Devils or W.R. The Mysteries of the Organism.  Neither The Sorrow and the Pity nor Red Psalm are available to me.  Tell me if I’m missing something essential.

Brewster McCloud
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Doran William Cannon
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime Rental

The Lecturer: In these words, the German poet Goethe expressed man’s desire to fly, “How I yearn to throw myself into endless space and float above the awful abyss.”

A murder mystery with no solution, a fairy tale with no happy ending, and all around chaos mark this early work by director Robert Altman.

The film is set in an alternative universe somewhat similar to that we know.  The film is intersper)ed with meditations on flight and the characteristics of various birds by a crazed Lecturer (Rene Auberjonois).  Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) lives in a fall-out shelter in the Huston Astrodome.  There he works on a contraption that will allow him to fly like a bird. He is assisted in this by mysterious beauty Louise (Sally Kellerman).  Meanwhile, various people that have crossed Brewster are found strangled and covered in guano.

Louise warns Brewster not to have sex because that will interfere with his flying.  But Brewster succumbs to the advances of Astrodrome tour guide Suzanne (Shelley Duvall).  Suzanne’s talents as a race-car driver come in handy in the inevitable car chase. With a cast of thousands including Margaret Hamilton as an old crone, Stacey Keach as Brewster’s ancient boss, William Windom as a pillar of the community, and Michael Murphy as Frank Shaft, a San Francisco cop brought in to help in the murder investigation.

Altman throws in every off-beat idea he can come up with plus a bunch of movie homage and winds up with something that is mildly amusing if not particularly great.  It probably didn’t help that he threw out the entire screenplay and made things up as he went along. Bud Cort already had his “Harold” persona perfected by this time and is quite good.