Flickers in Time

The Last of Sheila
Directed by Herbert Ross
Written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins
1973/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Lee: Who did this room? Parker Brothers?

This tricky murder mystery is good fun.

The film begins at a big Hollywood party.  Sheila drunkenly runs off into the street and is killed by a hit-and-run driver.  On the one-year anniversary of her death, widower Clinton hosts a party on his yacht, the “Sheila”, for six of the people who also attended the fateful party.  Clinton is obsessed with games and has an elaborate one planned for entertainment each evening.

He assigns each guest a secret and leaves clues on shore to assist the others in discovering it.  It just so happens that the secret held by a given guest will be embarrassing to another guest at the party.  Each night is to be devoted to a different secret.

The guests include movie star Alice Wood (Raquel Welch), her talent-manager husband Anthony (Ian McShane), sassy talent agent Christine (Dyan Cannon), screenwriter Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin) and his heiress wife, Lee (Joan Hackett), and film director Philip Dexter (James Mason).  Murder ends the game short of its intended climax.

This is one of those light-hearted mysteries with plenty of red-herrings and a million moving parts.  I liked it a lot on original release and the script remains clever.  There are several false finishes before the actual end and I found the convolutions of the plot tedious after the first big reveal.

Paper Moon
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Written by Alvin Sargent from a novel by Joe David Brown
1973/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Moses Pray: I now owe you one hundred and three dollars and seventy-two cents.
Addie Loggins: Seventy-four.

The omission of this excellent comedy from the 1001 Movies list is the most inexplicable to date.  If you are a classic movie buff, you must see it.  If you are not, you probably will still love it.

The story is set in the Depression-era Mid-West. As the film begins, we see a funeral in progress, in what truly appears to be the middle of nowhere. The deceased was the local town harlot.  Her illegitimate daughter Addie (Tatum O’Neal) is now an orphan.  Moze Pray (Ryan O’Neal) shows up to pay his respects.  Townspeople remark at Addie’s resemblance to him and he reluctantly agrees to take the girl to her aunt’s house after they agree to his price.  He then works a con and extracts $200 from the brother of the man that hit Addie’s mother in the car accident.

Addie has overheard the whole thing.  She hopes against hope that Moze will admit he is her father, He adamantly denies it. In that case, she figures the $200 belongs to her and sticks like glue to him demanding her cash.

It turns out that Addie is as skilled at grifting as her mentor, Moze, if not more so.  They become quite the team of Bible salesen and work a number of other scams as well. They accumulate well more than $200 without splitting up.

All this changes when Moze sees the hootchie-cootchie act of exotic dancer Miss Trixe Delight (the hilarious Madeline Kahn) in a traveling carnival.  He is smitten and the next thing we know he has installed Trixie and her long-suffering maid Imogene (the wonderful P.J. Johnson) in his car.  Addie is furious and shares a smoldering hatred for Trixie with Imogene.  She will not rest until she finds a way to get rid of this insufferable spender of Moze’s money.

The final act of the movie concerns Moze’s very ill-advised attempt to work a con on a bootlegger (John Hillerman).  The trials of the duo bring them even closer together.  I will stop there.

Bogdanovich and company. create a beautiful blend of sad images of the dustbowl, nostalgia for a time and its music, father-daughter warmth, and a bit of screwball hilarity in this great film.  The acting in this movie is really outstanding.  The three fantastic females swamp poor Ryan O’Neal, but he couldn’t be more perfect either.  Very Highly Recommended.

Tatum O’Neal won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (though, IMO, she was clearly the lead actress and the film’s protagonist).  At age 10, she became the youngest winner ever in a competitive category.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Supporting Actress (Kahn); Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium; and Best Sound.

Great clip showing the chemistry beween Ryan O’Neal and his talented daughter

The Day of the Jackal
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Written by Kenneth Ross from the book by Frederick Forsyth
1973/UK/France
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Col. Rodin: We are not terrorists, you understand. We are patriots. Our duty is to the soldiers who died fighting in Algeria, and to the three million French citizens who have always lived there.

In his penultimate film, Fred Zinnemann delivers a tense political thriller.

It is 1962.  Disgruntled French military officers have formed an underground militant organization in anger over Algerian independence.  They have already made one unsuccessful attempt on the life of President Charles DeGaulle.  They decide that what they need for success is a professional hitman who is an outsider.  They settle on an Englishman who uses the code name “Jackal” (Edward Fox).

The Jackal is the consumate assassin with careful attention to detail and complete willingness to dispose of witnesses.  He is also a master of disguises.  The OAS has a mole inside the French secret service.

We follow the build up to assassination day both from the perspective of the Jackal and from the viewpoint of the French and British secret services who pursue him independently.

This is a slow burn but builds to a very dramatic climax.  It’s a well-made, entertaining thriller.

The Day of the Jackal was nominated for the Best Film Editing Oscar.

Clip

The Mattei Affair (Il caso Mattei)
Directed by Francesco Rosi
Written by Francesco Rosi and Tonino Guerra
1972/Italy
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Enrico Mattei  was an Italian public administrator who was given after WWII the task of dismantling the Italian Petroleum Agency (Agip), a state enterprise established by the Fascist regime. Instead Mattei enlarged and reorganized it into the National Fuel Trust (ENI).  ENI negotiated important oil concessions in the Middle East as well as a significant trade agreement with the Soviet Union which helped break the oligopoly of the ‘Seven Sisters’ that dominated the mid 20th century oil industry. Mattei made ENI a powerful company, so much so that Italians called it “the state within the state.”  He died in a plane crash in 1962, likely caused by a bomb in the plane, although it has never been established which group might have been responsible for his death. — Wikipedia

 

Gian Maria Volonte is phenomenal in this biopic about a populist industrialist that shook up the world oil market and Italian politics in the 1950’s and 60’s.

What would we do without Wikipedia?  We would need to know more about Italian history and politics, that’s for sure!  The film begins with the end of Enrico Mattei’s (Volonte) life in the fiery crash of his private jet.

Anyway, the film portrays Mattei as a driven business man.  A story is repeated throughout the film.  It goes something like this:  A starving kitten sees the food bowl of a German Shepherd.  The tiny kitten timidly approaches the bowl and takes a small bite.  The German Shepherd strikes the kitten with its paw, breaking its spine and killing it.  Mattei was determined that Italy would no longer be the kitten.

Mattei had served in the Italian Resistance late in WWII.  He got his start in the industry exploring for petroleum in Italy with AGIP.  He found de minimus oil nor natural gas but he did find viable deposits of methane in the Po valley.  Eventually the state enterprise became a conglomerate owning a variety of businesses.

Mattei then decided to make ENI a world player and stand up to Big Oil.  His style of doing business earned him the support of Italian leftists (Mattei himself was a Christian Democrat) and the opposition of the right and big business.  He made many enemies. He was not afraid.  We never do find out why the jet crashed or who was responsible.  The CIA, the French OAS, and the Mafia have all been suggested.

Here’s another sleeper at the tail-end of 1972.  This is a film with a political and intellectual bent and may not be the most exciting thing you have ever watched.  Still, the film-making is first rate, Pasquilino DeSantis’s cinematography is beautiful, and that Volonte performance really should be seen.  If the subject matter is of interest, I can recommend.

The Seduction of Mimi (Mimì metallurgico ferito nell’onore)
Directed by Lina Wertmuller
Written by Lina Wertmuller
1972/Italy
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. — Samuel Johnson

Wertmuller’s farce is a delightful sendup of the Sicilian code of honor and Italian politics.

Carmelo “Mimi” Mardocheo (Giancarlo Gianinni) is a vain, macho Sicilian.  He is completely full of himself while at the same time being utterly clueless.  His vapid wife Rosalia is not too interested in sex. He works at a mine.  When the owners learn Mimi voted for the Communist in a supposedly secret election, he loses his job.  He goes North to Turin to find work, leaving his wife behind.  She swears to kill him if he looks at another woman.

Mimi finally gets work in Turin through his claimed connection to a powerful Mafia boss back home.  He meets beautiful street vendor Fiorella (Mariangela Meneghini), who is a Trotskyite.  He asks her out and makes advances.  She says she doesn’t care that he’s married but is saving herself for the man she loves.  It turns out that the man is Mimi after all and they begin to live together and have a son.  He fails to report a couple of serious Mafia crimes and is promoted to a management position back home in Sicily against his will.  He brings Fiorella and their baby with him.

The story turns into a “Divorce Italian Style” type revenge plot with Mimi and Rosalia out for revenge one against the other.  The Mafia does not loosen its hold.

Giannini is a gifted comedian and perfectly suited for this part.  Wertmuller would use him over and over again.  I thought this was a lot of fun with a little sting under the comedy.  Worth trying out.