Grey Gardens
Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffy Myer
1975/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

Edith ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale: But you see in dealing with me, the relatives didn’t know that they were dealing with a staunch character and I tell you if there’s anything worse than dealing with a staunch woman… S-T-A-U-N-C-H. There’s nothing worse, I’m telling you. They don’t weaken, no matter what.

This quirky documentary only seems to get better with time.

Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale (age 78) is the aunt of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale (age 52) is “Big Edie’s” daughter and Jackie O’s cousin.  They both look to have lived like American aristocracy in their youth, then … something … (we are not told what) happened.  Things seemed to go way downhill when Little Edie’s father left the scene.

For the past 25 years, the two have been reduced to living in their decaying mansion “Grey Gardens” in the Hamptons.  The place is full of trash, feral cats, and a major raccoon infestation.  Neither of the occupants seems to mind.  The authorities have tried to condemn the place once already but the Beales were bailed out by relatives.

Neither appears to be living in the real world though Big Edie is more grounded than her daughter.  Little Edie blames her mother for every setback in her life, mom loves to needle her daughter, and the two squabble constantly but always make up.   Little Edie believes that if she could only move to New York City she could make her dreams come true.

Little Edie has a … unique … flair for fashion and changes costumes several times a day.  She also fancies herself a dancer and we are treated to a couple of her performances.

This makes at least the third time I have seen this and it always delights me.  But it also leaves me with so many unanswered questions!  What was wrong with Little Edie’s hair?  Is she on any kind of meds?  And how did the mighty fall so far?  The subjects of this documentary have no inhibitions in front of the camera and they say the most amazing things.  At the same time, we leave not only having laughed a little but maybe with a tear in the eye.  Warmly recommended,

Parade
Directed by Jacques Tati
Written by Jacques Tati
1974/France
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going, don’t take anything too seriously, it’ll all work out in the end. — David Niven

Jacques Tati kept the world laughing through his final film.

Made for French TV, Tati serves as ring master to a small circus that encourages audience participation.  As usual with Tati, the humor is mostly physical with accompanying sound effects.  We also get a fair amount of acrobatic clowns and a mule-taming act.

This made me laugh out loud several times, which earns it a recommendation from me.

Harry and Tonto
Directed by Paul Mazursky
Written by Paul Pazursky and Josh Greenfield
1974/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Netflix rental

Harry: You know, the strangest thing about being old is… all your friends are dead.
Shirley: Well, all your old friends, maybe. You could make new friends, you know?

There are coming of age movies and coming to terms with age movies.  This is a good example of the latter.

Harry (Art Carney) is a seventy-something who has lived for some years in the same apartment building in New York City.  He has long been a widower.  His most faithful friend is his cat Tonto. The neighborhood is changing in ways Harry doesn’t like and now they are demolishing the building for a parking garage.  Harry has to be removed by force.

Harry’s son Burt offers to take him in. Harry’s son is welcoming but it is clear his wife and two sons are not fans of the idea.  Harry’s grandson Norman is on some kind of mystical hunger and silence strike.  Harry tries to talk some sense into him.  Harry eventually decides that living with Burt is not for him either and announces he is going on a road trip to visit his other children: Susan (Ellen Burstyn) in Chicago and Eddie (Larry Hagman) in Los Angeles.

The problem is Tonto.  The airline will not take him without doing a security screen, which Harry refuses, and when Harry tries to sneak Tonto onto a bus, the cat is not a fan of its toilet facilities.  Harry’s driver’s license expired in 1958.  Finally Harry buys a used car and picks up a couple of hitchhikers.  He asks one of them to drive.

The driver splits off early on and Harry carries on his journey with 15-year-old Ginger (Melanie Mayron) who is running away to join a commune in Boulder, Colorado.  They get talking about Harry’s first love and Ginger insists on trying to find her.  She has grown up to be Geraldine Fitzgerald and is now living in a memory-care facility.  They finally make it to Chicago, where Harry has a rather tense reunion with Susan.  Norman is sent by his parents to locate Harry and meets up with him in Arizona.  He decides to try out the commune Ginger is headed for.  Finally, Harry reaches Los Angeles where his playboy son Eddie is not living the life he has described.  With Arthur Hunnicutt as a quack medicine salesman and Chief Dan George as a cellmate.

Here we have a movie where the main character has to trust in the kindness of strangers and appears to be in no danger at anytime.  It really was a more innocent age.  This could pull at the heart strings in all the wrong way if it were not for the grounded dignified performance of Art Carney, who won the Oscar for Best Actor.  The supporting cast is also solid and the script does not go overboard.

Paul Mazursky told Carney he would win the Oscar and was proved right.  Carney was good in an Oscar-bait performance.  Or maybe it was the goodwill earned by the actor from years of performing the role of Ed Norton hilariously in the TV series “The Honeymooners”.  But was he better than nominees Jack Nicholson (Chinatown); Al Pacino (The Godfather Part II); Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) or Dustin Hoffman (Lenny)? If it were left up to me, Gene Hackman’s performance in The Conversation  would have won out over all of them.  The film was also nominated in the category of Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

The Castle of Sand (Suna no utsuwa)
Directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Yoshitaro Nomura and Yoji Yamada from a novel by Seicho Matsumoto
1974/Japan
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. — Ambrose Bierce

Yoshitaro Nomura delivers a solid, intricate police procedural

An old man is found murderd in Tokyo train station.  As the story starts, the police don’t even know the identity of the victim.  He was a retired policeman and nobody has a bad word to say about him.  He was very generous to an orphan he adopted. As the investigation spreads out to various locations in Japan the police find things are seldom what they seem.  I really don’t want to reveal any of the movies secrets.

I really enjoyed this.  The story has lots of surprises and kept me engrossed the whole time.

Italianamerican
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Martin Scorsese
1974/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Charles Scorsese: My mother, I remember my mother scrubbin’ them floors, wooden floors, on her knees. No carpets. Wooden floors. With a brush, an iron brush. In the hallway and in the house. She used to make those floors sparkle. Wooden floors. Today they got it so soft. They got a washing machine, they got this, they got that. And they was – they never, they never cried, you know, that they’d say they were tired. There was no such thing as being tired.

The super-prolific young Martin Scorsese gives us this loving portrait of his parents and life for Italian immigrants in New York City.

The entire film looks to take place in real time.  Scorsese’s mother Catherine is making her famous meat meat sauce and runs in and out of the room while she tends to it.  Scorsese interviews her and his father, Charles about what it was like to grow up as a first generation American.  He reminisces about his own childhood as well.

This is a charming movie, is only 45 minutes long, and contains the recipe for that meat sauce!