Category Archives: 1969

Boy (Shonen)
Directed by Nagisa Oshima
Written by Tsutomu Nomura
1969/Japan
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying, — Nikki Giovanni

Nagisa Oshima gives something different from the usual sex-fueled violence fest.  His technical mastery is evident throughout this downer of a film.

Takao Omura is an abusive con-artist with a wife and two sons, Toshio aged around ten and the other around three.  The family’s scam is for the wife to thrown herself by the side of a moving car and feign being struck.  Takao then extorts money from the driver by threatening to call the police.  The ten-year-old later switches roles with his mother.  Both Mom and Toshio sustain real injuries in the process.

The real injury is to Toshio’s soul.  Neither parent is loving in any way.  Toshio dreams of becoming an alien from Andromeda sent to earth to kill all evil-doers.

I am always impressed by Oshima’s technique.  It reminds me of color work films of a much more recent vintage.  I’m not too keen on abused child movies in general so that was a minus.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)
Directed by Paul Mazursky
Written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker
1969/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing

Ted Henderson: First, we’ll have an orgy. Then we’ll go see Tony Bennett.

This sex comedy for the late 60’s could have been made at no other time.  It hasn’t aged well but is interesting as a time capsule of a time when the hippie ethic – at least the free love and drugs part – crossed over into the liberal middle-class.

Bob (Robert Culp) is a laid back documentary film maker.  His best friend Ted (Elliott Gould) is an uptight lawyer  Their beautiful wives Carol (Natalie Wood) and Alice (Dyan Cannon) are the kind that spend much of their time shopping, playing tennis, and having lunch.

Carol and Bob spend a weekend at a spa where they undergo New Age couples therapy.  When they come back they are expressing themselves like mad and start experimenting with extra-marital liaisons which they freely tell Ted & Alice about.  Their friends are both shocked and Alice is particularly disturbed by this revelation.

The foursome decide to spend a weekend in Las Vegas.  Alice decides to see if Bob and Carol will put their money where their mouths are.

I saw this on original release and remembered lots of it.  What seemed at the time to be pretty groovy comes across now as phony, which may even be what Mazursky intended.  My favorite part is the song.  Wonder why it wasn’t nominated.

Gould and Cannon steal the picture out from under the stars and were rewarded by Best Supporting Oscar nominations.  The film was also nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced and Best Cinematography.

Clip – “What the World Needs Now Is Love” – written by Bert Bacharach & Hal David, sung by Jackie DeShannon

The Honeymoon Killers
Directed by Leonard Kastle and Donald Volkman
Written by Leonard Kastle
1969/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Mother: [shouting at Martha from the window of the rest home she’s been dumped at] Goddamn you, goddamn you! I hope you end up like this! I hope someone does this to YOU!

i loved this darkly comic take on the classic ‘lovers-on-the-lam’ trope of film noir.

This is the “true story” of Raymond Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco) and Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler), who are suspected to have killed more than 20 women in 1947 and 1949 when they were known as the “Lonely Hearts Killers”.  Raymond is a con-artist who makes his living ripping off wealthy widows he meets through newspaper ads.  Martha is an embittered, overweight nurse who advertises in the lonely-hearts column.  Somehow, they make the perfect couple.

Martha is perfectly willing to put up with Tony’s serial weddings so long as she can go along for the ride as his sister.

The director says that this was his response to Bonnie and Clyde (1967) but it reminds me more of noir films of the early 50’s.   All of it seemed fairly tongue in cheek and there is very little graphic violence.  I liked it.

The Learning Tree
Directed by Gordon Parks
Written by Gordon Parks from his novel
1969/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime

“The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.”
― Gordon Parks

The first major feature by an African-American director is a passionate story of his struggles as a black teenager in the rural American South.

Newt (Kyle Johnson) is an African-American high school student with dreams of going to university.  His mother, Sarah, works for the local judge.  They live in a small town t which has at least nominally integrated its schools but that continues to suffer from blatant individual and institutionalized racism.  Newt hangs out with of a group of friends his age.  One of these, Maurice, is the extremely angry son of a brutal alcoholic and has for some reason has sworn eternal hatred for Newt.

Newt falls for the beautiful, sweet new girl in town.  Their happiness is soon marred by the unwanted attentions of the son of the judge.  If Newt didn’t have bad luck he would have no luck at all and things continue to go sour throughout.  The third act is taken up with a courtroom drama at which Newt must testify.

Parks does a good job with his cast of unknown actors and Burnett Guffey’s color cinematography is splendid.  It’s a bit of a misery sandwich but the misery is earned, I think.  Recommended to those interested in the subject matter.

Medium Cool
Directed by Haxell Wexler
Written by Haxell Wexler
1969/US
IMDb link
First viewing/Netflix rental

[asked in 1969 if he could see himself making a film in exile because of his social and political views] I’m proud to say I get regular visits from the FBI, but I’ll never become an exile. I think this is a great country. That’s precisely why I feel I have an obligation to keep examining the freedoms that are rightfully ours. We all have that obligation–to see that they don’t get away from us. — Haxell Wexler

The perfect old movie for these times.  Things weren’t all that different in 1968 than they are now, sad to say.

The film was shot on location before and during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.  John Casselles (Robert Forster) is an apolitical and ambitious photojournalist eager to be in the middle of things.  He has a beautiful blonde girlfriend with whom he frolics.  He covers such 1968 events as the Robert Kennedy Assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, and riots in the lead-up to the Convention.

John kind of drops the girlfriend after he meets Eileen (Verna Bloom), a young widowed mother from rural West Virginia who is now living in Chicago with her strong-willed 13-year-old son.  John finds himself drawn closer into the violence and political uproar outside the Convention Hall.  In the meantime, Eileen’s son goes missing and she spends the remainder of the film searching for him through the crowds and confusion of protestors and heavily armed National Guardsmen.

I thought this was very interesting as a time capsule though perhaps not so riveting as a film.  Wexler is a much better cinematographer than he is a director or writer.  The film looks beautiful but the plot seems somehow contrived.  Some of the acting by the unknown cast is a a little stilted.  Wexler wears his political heart on his sleeve and this is a film that takes sides.

Is there anything that looks sillier in 2020 than a hippie?  I identified at the time but now they look kind of ridiculous.  The film has a timely score by Mike Bloomfield with some incidental music by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

La residencia (The House That Screamed)
Directed by Narciso Ibañez Serrador
Written by Narciso Ibañez Serrador; story by Juan Tebar
1969/Spain
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Prime (Shout Factory channel)
They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They

Sra. Fourneau: This school specializes in students whose character is, um, shall we say, um, difficult, and there are a few among them who, in spite of their youth, have not exactly led exemplary lives. In order to bring them back to the right path, I must run this establishment with a firm hand.

Director Narcisco Ibanez Serrador turns the classic camp “slasher in a girls boarding school” premise into a pretty darn solid thriller.

The setting is 19th Century France.  Sra. Fourneau (Lili Palmer) rules an isolated girls boarding school with an iron hand with the assistance of sadistic senior student Irene, who is a mean hand with the whip.  She carries motherly love for her son Luis to almost incestuous extremes.  Bastard orphan new girl Therese begins seeing Luis secretly.  Several girls run away, never to be seen again.  Both these factors only cause the butch headmistress to further tighten her grip.

Lili Palmer is excellent and the production values are top notch. The movie takes all the usual titillating tropes of this particular genre of horror to the max.   It manages to pull off a scary thriller that is more than a guilty pleasure by taking each element sereiously.  I watched this in a dubbed version with numerous commercial interruptions from “Elvira”, a longtime US late night movie host.  I enjoyed it and imagine it would be even better in the original Spanish version.

Cactus Flower
Directed by Gene Saks
Written by I.A.L. Diamond based on a Broadway play by Abe Burrows – original play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy
1969/US
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Dr. Julian Winston: Well, it’s different for a man. If a man is with a younger woman it looks entirely appropriate, but when it’s the other way around, it’s disg…
Stephanie: Well, you go to your church and I’ll go to mine.

A great cast is largely wasted in this pleasant but predictable romcom.

Dr. Julian Weston (Walter Matthau) is a New York City dentist, a confirmed bachelor and a ladies man.  A central part of his practice is his no-nonsense dowdy nurse Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman).  Julian has been having an affair with much younger free spirit Toni Simmons (Goldie Hawn).  He tells her he is married so she won’t get any ideas.  Toni’s cute young neighbor Igor Sullivan may have an ulterior motive for constantly barging in on their trysts.

Igor and Toni’s friendship makes Julian jealous and he decides he must marry her.  Toni insists he produce his wife.  Julian selects Stephanie as the stand-in, not knowing that behind her business like exterior lie more tender feelings.  Jack Weston plays Julian’s friend that is corralled into standing in for Stephanie’s lover.

A Married Couple
Directed by Allan King
1969/Canada
IMDb link
First viewing?/Criterion Channel

But I had not quite fixed whether to make him [Don Juan] end in Hell-or in an unhappy marriage-not knowing which would be the severest. — Lord Byron

This fascinating “actuality drama” takes an intimate look at the breakdown of the marriage of two intolerable people.

The film chronicles the daily struggles of Billy and Antoinette Edwards, their toddler son Bogart, and their dog Merton.  He is writes ads for a living.  She’s a stay-at-home mother.  They appear to be well-educated and relatively well-off.  Director Allan King lived with the Edwardses at the time and the family appears to ignore the camera, if that is even possible.  At any rate, Billy feels free to spend most of his time at home in his underwear and the couple argue and reconcile freely in the bedroom.

Billy likes to do a lot of yelling and dishing out orders.  He believes that the fact that he is the sole breadwinner gives him total control over the family finances.  I found him absolutely insufferable.  Antoinette likes to wind him up by endlessly talking about some expensive object she covets, like a harpsicord.  She appears to have lost all respect and physical desire for her husband and loves making him jealous.  She is equally insufferable.They are both expert game players and frustrated manipulators.

There is no voice-over narration nor interviews in this film.  It is amazingly raw.  But could the participants really ignore the camera?  How much of what we see has changed due to its presence.  I’m kind of fascinated by relationship dynamics and I was glad I saw the film.