Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ingmar Bergman
1972/Sweden
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[first lines – written] Agnes: It is early Monday morning and I am in pain.

Some must-see movies are also very hard to take.

The setting is early 20th century Sweden.  Two sisters, Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin), return to their family’s country manor to visit their sister Agnes (Harriet Anderrson), who is on her death bed.  Agnes has apparently been ill for years and remained in the family home under the care of housemaid Anna (Kari Sylwan).  The other sisters are married – unhappily as we are about to learn. Agnes is now in agonizing pain and near death.

Agnes’s pain has become unmanageable.  She is desperate for comfort.  Her sisters come to her side but are little use.  Only in the arms and next to the skin of Anna does she find the human connection she craves and relax.

Agnes gets sicker and sicker.  We learn about the sisters.  Both have grown cold and hard.  Maria has been unfaithful to her husband, a weak man who attempted suicide, and her former lover (Erland Josephson) tries to show the selfishness, coldness and indifference now lining her beautiful face.  Karin is married to a horrible old diplomat and is full of hate and resentment, including the self-directed kind.  Maria approaches Karin to try to form some sort of sisterly bond.  Eventually, Agnes dies and the sisters coolly settle up affairs.

I have not gone into detail about some of the very distressing stuff that happens in this movie.  The basic plot is sad.  The main message I got out of it is that we all die alone and disappointed.  I had not remembered what terrible human beings the Ullmann and Thulin characters really were.  Bergman tries to pull some hope out of the ending but the viewer leaves depressed and exhausted.

However, and this is a huge however, you will never see more splendid individual and ensemble female performances anywhere. Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist create an amazing atmosphere with a spectacular use of the colors red and white. Highly recommended.

One of my favorite facts about this movie is that it was the first distributed by Roger Corman’s New World Films.

Sven Nykvist won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.  Cries and Whispers was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced; and Best Costume Design.

Trailer narrated by Ingmar Bergman

Criterion Collection: Three Reasons to Watch

Solaris (Solyaris)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Written by F. Gorenshteyn and Andrei Tarkovsky from a novel by Stanislaw Lem
1972/USSR
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Dr. Snaut: We don’t want to conquer space at all. We want to expand Earth endlessly. We don’t want other worlds; we want a mirror. We seek contact and will never achieve it. We are in the foolish position of a man striving for a goal he fears and doesn’t want. Man needs man!

Tarkovsky creates a universe in which Earth may be the most precious and beautiful place of all, while making outer space mystical, terrifying, and eerily beautiful.

This is a long movie with a complicated plot and an obscure message.  Probably impossible to sum up on a first viewing, at least by me.

The story begins with our protagonist psychologist Kris Kelvin exploring the wonders of the Russian countryside.  He has been assigned to travel to a space station docked above an ocean on the planet of Solaris.  The original crew numbered 80, now there are only three remaining.  Some of the crew apparently went insane before they died.  It is speculated that the ocean on the planet is some sort of intelligent life form. The authorities have decided to halt all research work on the station.

Kelvin meets with Anri Burton, a pilot and one of the few to return from Solaris many years ago.  He shows a Burton a video made at the time showing him telling a roomful of authorities about his experience over Solaris.  A fog came up and became solid turning itself into many things including a 12-foot tall human baby.

Kelvin arrives at the station.  Only two of the scientists are still alive and they are hidden away in their separate labs.  Kelvin locates the third man only to find he has committed suicide and left him a video.  The man says he fears for the well-being of the others, who have already been affected, and particularly for Kelvin. He eventually locates the others and they seem to be hiding something.  Eventually it comes out that they have “guests”.

After a while, Chris is visited by his estranged wife, who has been dead for ten years. They fall in love.  The wife resurrects from the dead again at least a couple of times.  A bunch more stuff happens but I think I’ll stop here.  What does it mean to be human?

The first thing that hits the viewer when watching this movie is the amazing camera work and beautiful strains of Bach.  Beauty characterizes every frame from there on.  The movie was made as a response to Kubrick’s 2001 (1968) and I must say I prefer it to that film. This is warm and humane where Kubrick is cold and cynical.  It also has a relatable story line.  Admittedly, I can’t say what either film is trying to get across.  Also, I thought this dragged at times.  At any rate, see this before you die if you haven’t yet and bask in the images and sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR0buWkOuO8

Excellent fan trailer (dubbed).

The Godfather
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Written by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo from Puzo’s novel
1972/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Peter Clemenza: Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

There are a precious few movies in cinema history when the careers of all the personnel peak at the same time and achieve movie perfection that resonates through the decades. One of those movies is The Godfather.

The story begins at the wedding reception of Don Vito Corleone’s (Marlon Brando) daughter Connie (Talia Shire).  We get a snapshot of Sicilian culture, Mafia culture, and family dynamics in one brilliant sequences that shows the exposition rather than telling it. A Sicilian “godfather” (family patriarch) cannot refuse a favor on his daughter’s wedding day so we see all the people lined up to be potential recepients.  Don Vito is treated with reverence bordering on terror.  Don Corleone calls in a bunch of “thank yous” in the form of generous cash wedding gifts.  Some of these are government officials.

All of Don Vito’s sons – Sonny (James Caan); Fredo (John Cazale); Michael (Al Pacino); and adopted son Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), the family lawyer – do not share their father’s sense of tradition, respect, and caution.  Other Mafia families, headed by Barzini (Richard Conte) are pressing for the Don Vito to share his political access and get into the narcotics business.  When the Don refuses, he is almost killed in an assassination attempt.

Michael, as the youngest son, had been groomed for an honest career.  He has told his girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton) so a thousand times.  But when the family comes under threat he leaps into action.  His new found ruthlessness gets him in trouble.  Will it eventually earn him fear and respect?  With a simply outstanding cast of supporting actors.

Cinematographer Gordon Willis and Francis Ford Coppola during filming

I have seen this many times including, on original release, at the drive-in.  There are so many iconic moments to savor on each re-watch!  The movie works both as a crime story and as a critique of the American Establishment.  It also has something to say about masculinity, culture clash, and especially family.  Then the whole thing is topped off by Gordon Willis’s fabulous warm lighting and Nino Rota’s instantly evocative score.  The film’s sheer epic scale, with seemingly thousands of moving parts, is also pretty amazing. You’ve probably seen it.  It is well worth revisiting.

The Godfather won Oscars in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor (Brando) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Supporting Actor (Caan, Duvall, and Pacino); Best Director; Best Costume Design; Best Sound; Best Film Editing; and Best Original Dramatic Score (nomination later withdrawn on grounds Rota stole from his own score for another movie). Pacino boycotted the ceremony because he thought he should have been nominated in the leading category and Brando refused his own award.

The Heartbreak Kid
Directed by Elaine May
Written by Neil Simon from a story by Bruce Jay Friedman
1972/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube

Mr. Corcoran: You don’t know what determination is. I eat determination for breakfast.

This riff on The Graduate (1967) pales in comparison.  Viewed on its own I thought it was pretty funny, if mean-spirited.

Lenny Cantrell (Charles Grodin) is a sporting goods salesman in New York City.  We will learn during the course of the movie that he is awkward and clueless but at the same time arrogant and driven.  He has a conventional Jewish courtship with Lila Kalodny (Jeannie Berlin – May’s daughter IRL) and a modest wedding.  They honeymoon in Miami.  They have saved sex for the wedding night.  Lenny instantly learns that some of Lila’s quirks get on his last nerve.   When Lenny and Lila visit the beach, she gets a terrible sunburn.

He goes to the beach alone the next day.  There he meets hot, seductive, wealthy and gorgeous young Kelly Corcoran (Cibyll Shepherd), who is visiting from Minnesota with her family.  Although he has been married but three days and is with his wife on his honeymoon, he begins an all out blitz to win Kelly’s hand.  Kelly’s father (Eddie Albert) is not keen on of his daughter dating a newlywed and learns to hate Lenny with a vengence.

The first hurdle we must overcome in watching this movie is accepting the idea that someone like Cybill Shepherd could possibly be attracted to the looks, behavior, or conversation of someone like Grodin’s character. He’s not even smart.  And, it’s true, this is a lot of behaving badly with no one to root for.  On the other hand, every scene with Berlin or Albert is a priceless gem to me.  Despite the listing of this in The Book, I think May’s A New Leaf (1971) is a better example of her work.

Jeannie Berlin and Eddie Albert were nominated for Oscars in the Supporting categories.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Written by Werner Herzog
1972/West Germany
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime (free for members)
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[on the dangers of filming Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) on location] You know, I’ve filmed in Black Africa, and during the shoot I was jailed five times in a row, I had malaria, we almost died – nothing scares me anymore, neither a jungle nor a Klaus Kinski, nor costumes, nor being with hundreds of Indians. There were in fact extraordinary difficulties, financial problems too. When you see the film, it looks as though it must have cost $2 million to make. But it cost maybe a tenth of that. — Werner Herzog, 1973

Who needs a budget when the dream, the vision, the obsession, and the scenery come free?

The year is 1560 and the setting is Peru.  Hundreds of Indians and Spaniards descend the Andes.  A rag tag team of explorers is deputized by conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro to make a voyage down the Amazon in search of the fabulous rumored treasures of El Dorado. Pizarro chooses Don Pedro de Ursua to command the expedition and Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) as his second-in-command.  The team is told it will be presumed lost if it does not return within a week.  For some reason Ursua elects to travel with his wife and Aguirre takes his 15-year-old daughter.  Within perhaps a day it becomes obvious that this particular stretch of the Peruvian Amazon is not survivable.  Ursua wants to return to Pizarro but the insane Aguirre insists on pressing forward.

So Aguirre stages a mutiny and proclaims the fat, lazy, aristocrat Don de Guzman as the Emperor of El Dorado.  Ursua is wounded and the entire troupe floats down the river, suffering the onslaught of hostile Indians, tropical heat, rapids, and disease toward glory or death.

From the opening scene of hundreds of Indians and Spaniards descending the Andes, this film is one indelible, incredible image after another.  It is is an epic emotional, visual, and sonic experience.  When man battles nature in Herzog’s universe, nature always wins.  And nature is a cruel mistress.  I think this movie is a masterpiece even if I cannot explain why.  A must-see in a year of must-sees.

I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like to make this film living on rafts on the edge of insanity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCVeM68kHSY

Cabaret
Directed by Bob Fosse
Written by Jay Presson Allen from stories by Christopher Isherwood and the play by John Van Druten and musical book by Joe Masteroff
1972/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing, Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Sally: Does it really matter so long as you’re having fun?

Bob Fosse took a pretty good Broadway musical and elevated it to art that withstands the test of time.  Fifty years from now I bet this will still look interesting as well as be entertaining.

Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) is a cabaret singer in 1931 Weimar Berlin at a time when Hitler’s Nazi Party was positioning itself to take over the Government.  Sally, an American expat, thinks she is “divinely decadent” and maintains that persona but she is oblivious to what is going on around her and terribly naive when it comes to real decadence.

The Kit Kat Klub where Sally sings is a cesspool of real decadence.  Its girlie show is  vulgar and its Master of Ceremonies (Joel Grey) is positively devilish, growing increasingly crude and anti-Semitic as time goes on.  Into this milieu comes Brian Roberts (Michael York) who hopes to support himself by teaching English while he completes his German studies.  He is immediately befriended by Sally who makes it her mission to shock him at all times.  She says she doesn’t mind that he’s not attracted to women but they end up sleeping together any way.  Concurrently, Sally picks up a German playboy who ends up romancing both of them.

One of Michael’s students is wealthy and beautiful Jewess Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson).  There is a fairly extensive subplot about her extremely complicated courtship by Michael’s friend Fritz Wendel.

The various numbers in the cabaret show parallel the growing Nazification of Germany.  Sally and Michael are kind of innocents in hell.  Will they have the savvy to get out?

I’ve seen the Broadway musical on stage a couple of times over the years and its soundtrack was on rotation at my house for several years.  It’s good but the extensive rewrite and a brillliant production makes the film achieve a kind of perfection.  And that perfection is attributable to the genius of Bob Fosse and the excellence of the film’s cast. I can’t argue with any of the many Oscars it won.  Most highly recommended.

Cabaret won Oscars for Best Actress (Minnelli);  Best Supporting Actor (Grey); Best Director; Best Cinematography; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration; Best Sound; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.  The film lost in those categories to The Godfather (1972). I’m looking forward to see how I feel about the Academy’s choices!.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song
Directed by Melvin Van Peebles
Written by Melvin Van Peebles
1971/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Tagline: You bled my Momma–You bled my Poppa–But you won’t bleed me.

This may be historic, revolutionary and all that but I hated almost everything about it.

A boy (Mario Van Peebles) is raised in a brothel.  When he is about 13, he is initiated into sex by one of the prostitutes.  We watch at length as the little boy mounts a woman twice his size and gets to work.  His prodigious endowments earn him the nickname “Sweetback”.  Sweetback grows up to be Melvin Van Peebles and he is now the main attraction of a live sex show. We get to watch some of the “acts”.

Eventually white LAPD officers raid the club and coerce its owner into supplying a man who can be temporarily used as a suspect in a case the police are getting nowhere with.  He is assured the man will not even be handcuffed and will be returned in a couple of days.  Sweetback is the patsy. He escapes later after killing a couple of cops.  Now he is the subject of a major manhunt and will make his way to Mexico for the rest of the film.  If you think the graphic sex stops during this part you would be wrong.

From the unsimulated sex, to the amateur acting, to the murky photography, to the graphic violence, this movie had nothing to offer me.  The score is by Van Peebles and the band Earth, Wind, and Fire.  They sound nothing like they did when they began to sell records.

Fun Facts:  Bill Cosby lent Van Peebles $50,000 to make this thing.  The director also reportedly collected worker’s compensation from the Director’s Guild for contracting gonorrhea during one of the sex scenes.

A rev

Shaft
Directed by Gordon Parks
Written by Ernest Tidyman and John D.F. Black from Tidyman’s novel
1971/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Who’s the black private dick / That’s a sex machine to all the chicks? / SHAFT! / Ya damn right!
Who is the man that would risk his neck / For his brother man? / SHAFT! / Can you dig it?
Who’s the cat that won’t cop out / When there’s danger all about? / SHAFT! / Right On!
They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother… / SHUT YOUR MOUTH! / I’m talkin’ ’bout Shaft. / THEN WE CAN DIG IT! – Theme from Shaft, Lyrics by Isaac Hayes

Solid but routine crime/thriller is lifted by its attitude, its photography, and its iconic score.

John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is a private detective working the streets of Harlem.  He has a quick wit and attitude to spare.  He’s not good at tolerating BS or following orders.  Some of his clientele need to stay as far away from cops as possible.  So a gang lord in Harlem hires Shaft to rescue his teenage daughter, who has been kidnapped by people who did not leave a ransom note.  Shaft’s first lead is to members of a black radical organization. This does not pan out but the group is in need of money and agrees to help Shaft locate and rescue the girl.

Then NYPD Lieutenant Androzzi, with whom Shaft frequently wrangles, wants info on Shaft’s case. Androzzi finally reveals that the Mafia is trying to take over territory run by black organized crime in Harlem.  Androzzi fears that a mob war will be perceived by the public as a race war.  There is plenty of bloodshed on the way to the crime’s solution.

We’ve seen this story hundreds of times but not with this film’s cool.  The parts I liked best were gazing at Roundtree, the streets of New York from around the time I first saw the city, and that wonderful score.

Isaac Hayes won the Oscar for Best Music, Original Song.  He was nominated for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score.

Amazing fully orchestrated and live

Two-Lane Blacktop
Directed by Monte Hellman
Written by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry
1971/USA
IMDb page
First viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

G.T.O.: If I’m not grounded pretty soon, I’m gonna go into orbit.

I came in expecting one thing.  I got something different, and better.

None of the characters in this movie has a name so I’ll be referring to them by the actors’ names.  James Taylor and Dennis Wilson own a souped-up 1955 Chevy hot rod.  Taylor is the driver and Dennis is the mechanic.  They are the kind of guys who don’t speak unless strictly necessary and when they do it’s usually to reveal the solution to some mechanical puzzle they’ve been working out in their heads.  They survive by challenging other hot-rodders to drag races for money.  They pick up bedraggled but pretty hitchhiker Laurie Bird but pay her far less attention than she would like.

As the story goes on, our heroes meet up with Warren Oates who is the proud owner of a new orange GTO.  After much banter, the three agree to race cross-country to Washington DC.  The stakes will be the pink slips to their vehicles.  We spend the rest of the film watching the unorthodox proceedings.  Oates constantly picks up hitchhikers so he can regale them with tall tales and lies about his very colorful fantasy life.

Well, I thought this was going to be a movie about drag racing.  In fact, there is hardly any racing in it.  And after the “race” with Oates begins, the other car frequently lets him catch up.  It’s the journey that is the point. The story has much to say about alienation, obsession, aimlessness, and looking for America.  It’s 1971, man.  I liked this a lot.  Oates is utterly fantastic.

Klute
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Written by Andy Lewis and David E. Lewis
1971/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Bree Daniel: Don’t feel bad about losing your virtue. I sort of knew you would. Everybody always does.

Jane Fonda inhabits her role as a super-smart call girl with a problem in this solid thriller.

John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a private detective in small town USA.  The family of a missing man hire Klute to find out what became of him in New York City.  The only link to the crime is Bree Daniel (Fonda) a call girl who received a typewritten obscene letter purporting to be from the man and disturbing phone calls from an unknown source.  Bree has other problems.  She is an aspiring actress who is not finding work without experience and can’t get experience without work.  She is seeing a therapist to try to figure out why she cannot seem to leave the life, which she enjoys because of the control she feels she has over her clients.

Initially, Bree considers Klute to be a hick, a meddler, and a “cop”.  But gradually as the killer seems to close in, the two tentatively begin a romance.  I love the ending to this movie.  With Roy Scheider as Bree’s former pimp/boyfriend.

Fonda’s performance really deserves to be seen.  It’s also a nice gritty entertaining thriller.