Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Wanda
Directed by Barbara Loden
Written by Barbara Loden
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing, Criterion Channel
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Norman Dennis: If you don’t want anything you won’t have anything, and if you don’t have anything, you’re as good as dead.

Barbara Loden’s rambling story about a woman at loose ends is good but is it unmissable?

The setting is somewhere in the rust belt.  Wanda (Loden) works in a clothing factory,  She is not fast enough to be retained.  Her ex-husband is seeking custody of the children.  She shows up late at court wearing curlers and admits the kids would be better off without her. She then tries to eke out an existence by picking up men at bars.  Finally, she picks up the wrong guy, Norman Dennis (Michael Higgins)

Norman is super controlling and demeaning.  However, he seems to need a companion and takes her on a long road trip.  Toward the end, Norman informs Wanda that they are going to rob a bank.  She does not want to go along but doesn’t seem to realize she has a choice.

This is good as a character study of the lot of an uneducated woman with low self-esteem in the late 60’s early 70’s.  Loden is very good as the title character.  The production has a grimy, seedy feel throughout.  I’m not sorry I saw it but don’t consider it a must-see either.

Print was much better in the version I watched

Tristana
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Luis Bunuel and Julio Alejandro from a novel by Benito Perez Galdos
1970/Spain/France/Italy
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Don Zenón: And the Ten Commandments?
Don Lope: I respect all of them, except those to do with sex, because I’m sure they were added to the truly divine ones by Moses for political reasons that don’t affect me.

Yes, Buñuel can tell a straight-forward story and tell it very well.

Tristana (Catherine Deneuve) is an innocent and religious teenager.  Her mother has just died and Don Lope (Fernando Rey) becomes her guardian.  Don Lope is a well-known libertine, atheist, and socialist.  Eventually, he has his way with Tristana.  He tells her both of them are free to end the relationship when they wish.  This is far from true. Don Lope claims rights as both Tristana’s father and her husband, despite being neither.  He essentially confines her to the house

Tristana grows to hate Don Lope more with each passing year.  Don Lope inherits some money and, worried about Tristana’s increasing rebellion, marries her.  But that does not prevent his wife from exacting protracted revenge, especially as Don Lope becomes more and more frail.  With Franco Nero as Tristana’s lover.

Tristana wears black to her wedding

I had no particular expectations going in but this wound up being one of my favorites of all the Buñuel I have seen.  All Buñuel’s tics are in evidence but this works perfectly as an engrossing tale of oppression and revenge.  There is little to no surrealism.  Rey and Deneuve are fabulous as always.  Deneuve is so pretty I keep forgetting what a really fine actress she was.  Recommended.

Tristana was nominated for the Acaemy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Clip from near beginning of film

Little Big Man
Directed by Arthur Penn
Written by Calder Wittingham from a novel by Thomas Berger
1970/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Old Lodge Skins: There is an endless supply of white men. There has always been a limited number of human beings.

This tragi-comic story of a man who straddled two worlds holds up well.

The 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffmann) tells the story of his life to a historian who known only of Jack’s participation in The Battle of Little Big Horn.  Most of the movie is in flashback.  When he was 10-years-old, Jack Crabb’s parents were murdered by the Pawnee.  Jack and his sister are rescued by the Cheyenne tribe.  (The word Cheyenne simply means “human being” in their language.) Jack and the Indians take to each other and he becomes the adopted grandson of their leader, Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George).  Jack gradually becomes far more comfortable in the Cheyenne world than in that of the white man.

In his long life, Jack shuttles between the two worlds.  In turn, he is adopted by a churchman and his horny wife (Faye Dunaway); works for a snakeoil salesman (Martin Balsalm); becomes a gunslinger and meets Wild Bill Hickock (Jeff Corey), then a general store proprieter; marries a Swede who is eventually captured by Indians; becomes a muleskinner in Custer’s (Richard Mulligan) cavalry; goes back to the Cheyenne and takes on three sisters as wives; and meets up with Custer again at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Hoffman does a pretty incredible job aging from around 15 to 121 but all my favorite scenes had Dan George in them.  The script gives everyone concerned some sharp dialogue to sling around.  I think I would have liked it better if it had been 1/2 hour shorter but it entertained me throughout.

Chief Dan George was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

El Topo
Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky
1970/Mexico
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

The Colonel: Who are you to judge me?
El Topo: I am God!

What seemed psychedelic and mystical back in the day now seems gruesome and pointless.

A man in black (director Jodorowsky), known only as El Topo (The Mole) wanders the desert with his naked seven year old son in tow.  They walk into a town that is in the midst of being massacred by bandits.  We see this in bloody detail.  El Topo avenges the dead. Mara, a young woman who has been kept as a slave by the head bad guy, convinces El Topo to go on a kind of pilgrimage to defeat  Gun Masters and claim the title of Greatest Gun Master in the land.  He agrees, leaving his son with some monks who miraculously survived the carnage.  Mara and a woman in black who speaks with a man’s voice will be his companions.

Then things get even more weird.  Each Gun Master has a more bizarre attribute.  The common denominator is the extreme violence needed by El Topo to prevail.

This movie was much worse than I remember it being from my single viewing at the midnight show in the 70’s.  The film has an average IMDb rating of 7.5/10. So what do I know?  It was a cult movie for a reason.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo)
Directed by Dario Argento from a novel by Fredric Brown
Italy/1970
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Inspector Morosini: Right! Bring in the perverts!

Dario Argento’s debut proved to be a key early work in the Giallo movement that would be popular during the 70’s.  There’s oodles of style here but watching women dying in terror got old fast.

Sam Dalmas, an American journalist living in Rome, is about to return to the States when he witnesses the stabbing of a young woman.  He rescues her.  The police question him for a description of the assailant and get nowhere.  But Sam is convinced he saw something significant that he simply can’t remember.  He begins his own investigation.  The would-be assassin now begins stalking him.

In the meantime, we are treated to the brutal murder and terrified screams and whimpers coming from several  victims of a serial killer.  I will go no further.

This is a classy movie with a score by Ennio Morricone and cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.  Argento introduces or perfects many of the basic tropes of the genre.  There are several twists in the intricate plot.  You would have to like watching female terror a lot more than I do to enjoy it, I think.

Trailers from Hell

Five Easy Pieces
Directed by Bob Rafelson
Written by Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce); story by Eastman and Rafelson
1970/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Palm Apodaca: Fantastic that you could figure that all out and lie that down on her so you could come up with a way to get your toast. Fantastic!
Bobby: Yeah, well, I didn’t get it, did I?

Bobby (Jack Nicholson) comes from an upper-class family, all of whose members seem to be classical concert musicians.  Bobby was raised to become a concert pianist.  He has now dropped-out and is traveling around picking up the odd oil rig job, drinking and hanging out with friends from the trailer park.  He barely tolerates his needy, waitress girlfriend Rayette (very touchingly played by Karen Black) but cannot seem to break up with her.  He is angry at his life and at the entire world.  He has an explosive temper but seems to be imploding at the same time.

Bobby’s father, the unquestioned patriarch of his family, has become paralyzed and speechless from a stroke.  He gives in to his sister’s pleas and pays a visit to the old man.He arrives with Rayette in tow and then ditches her in a motel.  He proceeds to fall in love with his brother’s girlfriend Catherine (Susan Anspach) and begins a slightly crazed pursuit.  Catherine isn’t having any.  Bobby is as angry and out of control with his family as previously.  What is wrong with Bobby?  With Sally Struthers as a good-time girl.

Jack Nicholson is the quentissential American angry young man in a break-out performance.  He is really in his prime as an actor.   Karen Black is equally fabulous and I had forgot all about Susan Ansbach. She is excellent here. It’s a well-made film with a sharp script and well worth seeing. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly was making Nicholson’s character so angry, unhappy and explosive and never really did. A mental illness? Modern life? Feeling of inadequacy as a pianist? Dysfunctional family?  Any way, the movie works well as a character study.

Five Easy Pieces was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Supporting Actress (Black) and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced.

Re-release trailer

M*A*S*H
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Ring Lardner Jr. from a novel by Richard Hooker
1970/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

Hotlips O’Houlihan: [to Father Mulcahy, referring to Hawkeye] I wonder how a degenerated person like that could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps!
Father Mulcahy: [looks up from his Bible] He was drafted.

Altman perfects his style complete with overlapping dialogue and organized chaos. I enjoyed my re-watch a lot but the misogyny, sexual objectification, and misanthropy throws kind of a pall on the proceedings.

The story is set near the front lines of the Korean War.   Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) arrives at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital to take his turn doing combat surgery under very harsh circumstances.  The irreverant, bad boy Hawkeye gets on the nerves of bible-thumping Maj. Frank Burns (Robert Duvall).  Soon Burns has an ally in by-the-book nurse Maj. Margaret (Hot Lips) Houllihan (Sally Kellerman), chief nurse at the hospital.  When ace surgeon Trapper John McIntyre (Elliot Gould) arrives he is a perfect match for Hawkeye and the two mercilessly rag Burns and Hot Lips.

Time marches on.  When the hospital’s well-hung dentist believes he has turned gay after an episode of impotence, he plans suicide.  Hawkeye and Trapper John plan a resurrection.  The film ends with a crazy football game in which each team brings in its own ringer.  With Roger Bowman as Lt. Col. Henry Blake; Gary Burghoff as Cpl. “Radar” O’Reilly;  Bud Cort as Pvt. Boone; and David Arkin as the voice on the PA system.

This is a cleverly made and written film.  The perfect anti-war film for 1970.  As the years have passed, its cynicism and objectification of women has become more evident (all the nurses are eyed as potential sex partners).  This may have been the first time I’ve seen the movie with subtitles and they definitely added to my understanding of the dialogue.  Despite my little quibble, I would class this as a must-see movie.

The film is much more cynical than the TV series would ever be.

M*A*S*H won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; Best Supporting Actress (Kellerman); and  Best Film Editing.

The Ear (Ucho)
Directed by Karel Kachyna
Written by Karel Kachyna and Jan Prochazka
1970/Czechoslovakia
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police. — Tony Blair

Harold Pinter meets Kafka in this interesting entry from the tail end of the Czech New Wave.

Ludvik is a Vice Minister.  He has a turbulent relationship with his wife Anna, who looks to be a chronic drunk.  At any rate she is drinking or drunk throughout the film.  The two spar with each other like George and Martha, with the wife possessing the  sharper tongue. They have one child whom we hardly meet.

Ludvik and Anna attend a Party function where Ludvik learns that several of his colleagues have been removed from their posts.  When the couple arrive home they can’t find their keys and discover other suspicious changes such as cuts in power and telephone.  They already know that parts of the apartment are bugged.  Now Ludvik frantically searches the house for additional bugs.  Meanwhile, the marital squabbling doesn’t stop.

Government agents are parked outside throughout.  As dark turns to dawn a bunch of highly inebriated and shady looking men talk the their way into the house.  I will stop here. This movie has a rather neat ending.

This movie possesses all the wry irony of the Czech New Wave that I love so much.  The screenplay is clever and amusing.  I don’t know if its a must-see but I enjoyed it.

No subtitles.  Print on Criterion Channel is far superior

Patton
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Written by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North
1970/USA
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Patton: Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

This excellent biopic rubbed me entirely the wrong way on the wrong day of Lockdown.

The film begins with Patton (George C. Scott) delivering a speech in front of a huge American flag.  The story covers the WWII phase of his career and begins as he takes command of II Corps during the North African Campaign.  He will repeatedly butt heads with British Field Marshall Montgomery both there and as he leads the Corps in the invasion of Sicily.  During this time General Omar Bradley (Karl Malden) becomes his confidant and right hand man.

But Bradley, “the GI’s General” does not really appreciate the way he treats his men and eventually becomes Patton’s boss.  Career-suicide strikes when Patton slaps a soldier hospitalized with shell-shock.  He redeems himself slightly when he takes charge of the Third Army as it presses toward Berlin.  He can’t keep his mouth shut however and is finally forced out of his role as Occupation Commander of Germany.

This is a beautifully made and acted movie with outstanding special effects.  No argument with anything except I would have been fine if it had been trimmed a half hour or more from its three-hour length.  However, Patton is portrayed as a grandiose, egotistical, prima donna whose whole aim is victory no matter the cost.  He views the soldiers’ deaths as glorious.  He reminded me quite a bit of our Dear Leader except that Patton had leadership skills that came in handy in a crisis,

I was in a super bad mood.  My sister-in-law has Covid and I’m waiting for other dominoes to fall.  No worries about us we live several hundred miles away and haven’t seen them in months.

Patton won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; Best Actor (refused); Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration; Best Sound; and Best Film Editing. It was nominated in the categories of Best Cinematography; Best Effects, Special Visual Effects; and Best Original Score.

The Conformist
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Written by Bernardo Bertolucci from a novel by Alberto Moravia
1970/Italy
IMDb page
Repeat viewing
One of 1001 Movies You Should See Before You Die

Italo: A normal man? For me, a normal man is one who turns his head to see a beautiful woman’s bottom. The point is not just to turn your head. There are five or six reasons. And he is glad to find people who are like him, his equals. That’s why he likes crowded beaches, football, the bar downtown…
Marcello: At Piazza Venice.
Italo: He likes people similar to himself and does not trust those who are different. That’s why a normal man is a true brother, a true citizen, a true patriot…
Marcello: A true fascist.

It took me until the third viewing to really appreciate this film.  The style and imagery are out of this world.

The story begins in 1938 Fascist Rome and in Paris.  Our anti-hero Marcello’s (Jean-Louis Trintignant) core desire is to be “normal”.  To this end he has become a Fascist and is about to marry lovely petit bourgeois airhead Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli).  We learn through flashbacks that his childhood was spent in the decadent household of a drug-addicted mother.  He is haunted by his sexual abuse at the hands of a chauffeur.

Marcello is eager to prove his devotion to the Party and is persuaded to spy on his old professor, an anti-Fascist who fled to Paris.  He marries Giulia and they travel to Paris on their honeymoon.  The professor and his exquisite young wife Anna welcome Marcello and Giulia into their circle with open arms.  Marcello is magnetically drawn to Anna but Anna is more interested in Giulia, and begins a seduction campaign on the flighty, materialistic young women.

Then Marcello gets an order to murder the Professor and things get very dark indeed.  We fast forward to Mussolini’s removal from power by the King.  How will Marcello handle the “new normal”?

I’ve seen this a couple of times before but always in a dubbed version.  This viewing was in Italian with subtitles.  This alone made a big difference in the viewing experience.  The print was also a thing of beauty.

At any rate, I think I finally understand why this film has the reputation it does.  I decided to just sit back and let Vitorio Storaro’s  images and Georges Delerue’s music wash over me.

The lighting and design are cutting edge for the period and changes constantly in mood.  With all that beauty, I no longer care much about the message.  Maybe the point is just that Mussolini’s Italy was a brutal, corrupt place or that conformists are dangerous.

If you have four minutes, this clip wordlessly shows why this film is so brilliant as I never could with words.