Category Archives: 1976

Taxi Driver (1976)

Posted on April 24, 2021 | 2 comments

Taxi Driver
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Paul Schrader
1976/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Travis Bickle: You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talking… you talking to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? Oh yeah? OK.

Martin Scorsese’s first masterpiece is as relevant now as it was then, sad to say.

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a lonely Vietnam veteran who can’t sleep at night.  So he gets a job driving a cab for 12 hours a night.  Already preoccupied with the sin and corruption of New York City, his job as cabbie just provides him with more evidence that some kind of avenging rain should come and wash the trash, human and otherwise, off the streets.  Despite his hatred for vice, he spends much of his time in porno theaters, where he does not seem to be watching the movies.

His one vision of innocence comes when he sees Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) walking down the street in a white dress.  Betsy is a campaign worker for Senator Charles Palantine who is running in the primary for the Presidential nomination (party unstated).  Travis drops into NYC campaign headquarters and chats Betsy up.  Intrigued by his crazy adoration, she agrees to have coffee with him.  Then she agrees to a date.  He takes her to a porno movie and she drops him like a hot potato.

Travis gradually becomes more unhinged.  He decides it is he that has the mission to clean up the dirty city,  He encounters Iris (Jodie Foster),  a twelve-year-old prostitute, and it becomes his mission to save her as well.  The only way he can get to her is to pay so he does and gives her a lecture on how she should go home and have a normal teenage life.  Iris agrees to meet Travis for coffee and a conversation in which it is clear that the teenage hooker has it way more together than Travis does.

As part of his mission, Travis acquires an arsenal of weapons.  He spends much of his off-time at shooting ranges or at home practicing his draw.  He continues on his downwards spiral.  I will stop here except to note we get a bloody climax and a very interesting denoument.  With Albert Brooks in his film debut as a campaign worker; Harvey Keitel as a pimp; and Peter Boyle as a fellow cabbie.

This has it all: brilliant acting; a scathing and powerful script; stunning visuals; and a fantastic score by Bernard Herrmann. Ticks all the buttons for a time not so unlike our own: loneliness, isolation, paranoia, demagogues, ideological violence, political violence,  angry white men; etc., etc.  Not for the faint of heart but highly recommended.

Taxi Driver was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Supporting Actress (Foster); and Best Music, Original Score.

Trailer

 

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1976

Rocky (1976)

Posted on April 22, 2021 | 8 comments

Rocky
Directed by John G. Avildsen
Written by Sylvester Stallone
1976/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Apollo’s Trainer: He doesn’t know it’s a damn show! He thinks it’s a damn fight!

Americans have always loved a good rags-to-riches story.  Sylvester Stallone came up with a perfect one to celebrate the country’s 200th birthday.

Rocky Balboa (Stallone) is a small-time boxer on the Philadelphia scene.  He wins a few and he loses a few.  His day job is as a collection agent for a loan shark. He is scary enough physically to coerce payment but at heart he is a softie.  He has a crush on mousey pet store salesgirl Adrian (Thalia Shire).  He tries to chat her up but she is too shy to respond.  Rocky is also friends with her loser brother Paulie (Burt Young).  His trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) throws the clothes from his locker at the gym out into the street to give the locker to a better prospect.

Concurrently, heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) is determined to have a championship bout in Philadelphia on July 4, 1976 as a kind of bicentennial celebration. His intended opponent is injured and his management is unable to find a worthy opponent for that date.  Undeterred, Apollo flips through some photos and decides that Rocky “The Italian Stallion” would make an appealing underdog for the fight.  Apollo is basically Mr. Show Business and figures he will not even have to go into training.

Rocky, on the other hand, takes the matter deadly seriously.  Mickey is suddenly anxious to train him once again.  We watch as Rocky trains and visibly becomes more and more fit.  He also wins the heart of Adrian.  Paulie, feeling threatened with the loss of his live-in housekeeper, thinks this is his opportunity to cash in.  He provides access to the carcasses in the meat packing establishment he works at for use as punching bags and brings in the press.

The climactic fight is thrilling and unforgettable.  Well, actually I did forget the result, so I won’t spoil it here.  When I left the theater on original release, I felt pumped up with victory.

Rocky is a simple story that has been told umpteen times throughout film history.  Between the writing, directing, and acting, it works and it works perfectly.  And that music! Highly recommended.

Rocky won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; and Best Film Editing.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Actor; Best Actress; Best Supporting Actor (Meredith); Best Supporting Actor (Young); Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Stallone); Best Sound; and Best Music, Original Song (“Gonna Fly Now”).

Trailer

Clip

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1976

Harlan County U.S.A. (1976)

Posted on April 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

Harlan County U.S.A.
Directed by Barbara Kopple
1976/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

Where it’s dark as a dungeon, damp as the dew
Danger is double, pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls, the sun never shines
It’s a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine – Lyrics by Merle Travis

Barbara Kopple gives us the ultimate in political documentaries, with lots of Appalachian culture as a bonus.

The film depicts the 1973-74 strike by miners at the Brookside Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky against Eastover Mining Company and its parent Duke Power.  A strike in the 1930’s had resulted in the county being called “Bloody Harlan” for the violence involved.

This strike was also violent and seemingly everything was lined up against the workers. The local police force and judge were solidly behind the management.  People on the picket line were arrested, some hit by baseball bats, shot at, and struck by cars. Many of the most fervent and effective supporters of the strike were miners’ wives.

We also get inside the United Mine Workers union, where J.A. Boyle had held sway for years. He was known for caving in to management.  His opponent Joseph Yablonski was murdered in 1969.  Boyle was later convicted for ordering this crime.  In 1972, Arnold Miller ran as a reform candidate and won.  He  said that the rank and file would vote on any new contracts.  This promise was short-lived.

The strike lasted 13 months.  The murder of a young striking miner by strikebreakers was the catalyst that brought the two sides back to the negotiating table.

Along the way, we get some pretty fabulous mountain music written to inspire the strikers. We also learn about black lung disease.  Management claimed that it had not been scientifically shown the inhaling coal dust harmed miners’ lungs!  The company would not compensate a worker disabled by black lung until the diagnosis was confirmed by an autopsy!  We go inside the abysmal company housing provided to the workers.  The houses are little better than shacks and lack electricity or running water.

I can’t imagine worse work than toiling in a coal mine.  The strikers let Kopple into their lives and the result was a documentary as compelling as any fiction film.  I love a good documentary and this is one of the very best.  Highly recommended.

Harlan County U.S.A. won the Oscar for Best Documentary, Feature

 

 

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1976

Posted on April 20, 2021 | 9 comments

The “sleeper” film Rocky made its debut. It was filmed in twenty-eight days with a budget of about $1 million, and ultimately grossed well over $100 million.  Sylvester Stallone supposedly wrote the script for the sports comeback film over a three-day period.  He became the third person in Oscar history to be nominated in a single year as both an actor and as a screenwriter.  The other two were Charles Chaplin for The Great Dictator (1940), and Orson Welles for Citizen Kane (1941).

The Steadicam (a stabilizing device for hand-held cameras), developed by Garrett Brown, was used for the first time in director Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory,  for which DP Haskell Wexler won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.  Marathon Man and Rocky also used the new device.

The first VHS cassettes and players, which cost about $885 each, were released by JVC in October. The system was designed to compete with Sony’s Betamax magnetic tape system, with a longer recording time.  By 1987, VHS had acquired about 90-95% of the consumer market. The new technology was considered a threat to the film industry but in subsequent years was re-evaluated as a boon when studios discovered videos to be a major source of income. By 1986, the home video industry’s annual gross rentals exceeded rentals paid for films by theatres.

For his performance in Network, Peter Finch became the first person to win a posthumous Best Actor Oscar.  Beatrice Straight won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, the shortest role to win an acting Oscar, for her less than eight minutes of screen time in Network .  

Futureworld (1976) featured the first use of 3D CGI in a live-action film – it was a brief view of a computer-generated face and hand.

Sal Mineo was murdered.  We also lost Roger Livesy, Lee J. Cobb, Busby Berkeley, Luchino Visconti, Howard Hughes, Carol Reed, Fritz Lang, Alistair Sim, Dalton Trumbo, Edith Evans, Jean Gabin, and Rosalind Russell.  Albert Brooks, Amy Irving, Jessica Lange, Brooke Shields, and Deborah Winger made their film debuts.

“Silly Love Songs” by Wings spent 5 weeks atop the Billboard Charts making it the number one pop single of the year.  Humbolt’s Gift by Saul Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.  A Chorus Line by Michael Bennett etal won for Drama.  Time Magazine’s Man of the Year was Jimmy Carter.

The United States celebrated 200 years of independence.  Jimmy Carter was elected President.  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple.  The Viking 1 successfully landed on Mars. The first recognized outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease killed 29 at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia.

After the death of former leader Mao Zedong in September, Hua Guofeng was announced as the new leader of China. One of Hua Guonfeng’s first tasks was ordering the arrest of the so-called Gang of Four which consisted of party officials accused of treasonous actions.  Their arrest and Hua Guofeng’s leadership lead to the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Palestinian extremists hijacked an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They take it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos stormed the plane freeing the hostages. The first Concorde flights took off.

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The list of 1976 releases I will select from is here.  Suggestions or warnings will be appreciated!

 

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Posted in 1976, Movie Reviews