1. Don’t Look Now
Nicolas Roeg’s haunted wake is a masterpiece of unease. Fractured glimpses of a hidden realm lurk beneath an already disquieting
surface. The leading character, psychic-in-denial Donald Sutherland, resists
the beckoning realisation of survival beyond death, taking refuge from grief
in a superficial landscape of structure and repair. His wife, Julie Christie,
more open about mourning the loss of their daughter, finds solace in messages
from beyond. The Venice they have escaped to is a labyrinthine warren where one
may lose oneself completely by choosing to ignore the proferred signs and synchronicities.
While Don’t Look Now
lingers long in the mind, it holds two immediately potent and provocative sequences.
The first is the justly feted “best ever” love scene between Sutherland and
Christie (one that, if Peter Biskind is to be believed, ignited her paramour
Warren Beatty’s ire). A masterful and evocative staging of bittersweet lovemaking, it is intercut with the couple’s post-coital dressing and preparation
for dinner. Pino Donnagio’s accompanying score is both uplifting and
melancholy. It’s that rare sex scene that advances the story and, despite the
salacious gossip it invited, is the very antithesis of gratuitous. Then there’s
the shocking climax, a twisted bad joke on the hopeful visions of a red-coated child
that have been dogging Sutherland.
Elegiac best describes Don’t
Look Now. Such is Nicolas Roeg’s approach to storytelling where, time
and again, hapless victims are caught in the web of time itself,
lacking full awareness of reason or destination. This tapestry unfolds through at-first strange marriages of disparate theme and scene and image. Rich and densely layered, his are films most rewarding
of repeat viewing. He remains a director
who stands apart in approach to narrative and paradigm. We glimpse the world in his films through a glass darkly, unable to comprehend its magnificent
and terrible truths. Pauline Kael labelled the film trash, but reluctantly
admitted to its effectiveness. Her disaffection for the horror genre fuelled
her inability to recognise the picture’s beauty and resonance. But she also
found fault with Roeg’s sensibility as a filmmaker. She regarded him to be a shallow
manipulator, obsessed with chic, all technique and no feeling. Anyone who has
followed his career would testify that nothing could be further from the truth.
True, the director is not to everyone’s tastes. But those enjoying one encounter with
the maestro will find further explorations irresistible and illuminating.
CHOICE LINES
Laura Baxter: This one who's blind. She's the one that can see.
2. The Wicker Man
The Wicker Man’s
reputation continues to grow, and deservedly so, despite (whisper it) not
really being very well directed. Robin Hardy’s approach is scrappy and
make-do but, perversely, this lack of finesse and rawness has a positive
effect. The proceedings are lent a vérité style. Consequently, there is
sense of immediacy to Sergeant Howie’s sojourn on Summerisle in search of a
missing girl. So much so that we too feel his unadulterated dread when the final,
unthinkable reveal occurs.
Anthony Shaffer’s literate screenplay eschews the shock
value of typical horror films, as it pits pagan cynicism against Christian
hubris. Edward Woodward perfectly encapsulates Howie’s starchy rectitude while
Christopher Lee is clearly enjoying himself immensely, discarding the count’s
cloak and instead embracing a kind of louche intellectualism. There’s plenty of
pulchritude among the supporting cast, with Britt Ekland (but not her
buttocks), Ingrid Pitt and Diane Cilento adding exoticism to the Hebrides. Paul
Giovanni’s soundtrack is immeasurably valuable, crucial to the overall tone, suggesting
a place steeped in the old ways, swathed with occult enchantment and danger.
CHOICE LINES
Lord Summerisle: Come. It is time to keep your appointment
with the Wicker Man.
3. The Long Goodbye
This might be my favourite Robert
Altman film. It’s definitely my favourite Elliot Gould picture. The director is
working from a script by Leigh Brackett, whose career spans The Big Sleep to The Empire Strikes Back, and the transplantation of Philip Marlowe to
the 1970s, essentially as a man morally out of time (but played by Gould,
so still very much contemporary), is a stroke of genius. Altman’s counterculture ethos here skews the detective genre as successfully asit did the the war picture in M*A*S*H . Marlowe’s
nobility does not fit easy; he is ever the underdog, so we root for him
even more. That’s also partly because Gould is so enormously likable in the
role; he’s an up against it, down at heel hero who loves his cat. Raymond
Chandler’s dense plot is carried over, but the world it inhabits is more
violent and depraved than any Humphrey Bogart encountered. This and Chinatown provide the ‘70s take on the
classic gumshoe, and I’d find it hard to choose between them.
CHOICE LINES
Detective Green: My, my, you are a pretty asshole.
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, my mother always tells me that.
4. The Exorcist
It seems that the only possible way to respond to The Exorcist is to admit that it is the
best horror movie ever made; The
Godfather of horror films. And I can’t deny its effectiveness, but I feel
slightly as if I’m damning a resounding classic with faint praised by not going
all Mark Kermode on its arse. Am I allowed to admit that I prefer Exorcist III: Legion? That I think
William Peter Blatty had more interesting, philosophically challenging things
to say about concepts of good and evil there than he does in William Friedkin's conceptually black and white furnace of chills? This is
a Roman Catholic’s wet dream of a horror movie, following which they must
contritely say five Hail Marys.
I’m not a huge fan of Friedkin’s aesthetic; particularly knowing
he’s the kind of guy who so strains so hard for his peculiar brand of
perfection that he’s willing to give one of his actors (Ellyn Burstyn) a
permanent back injury. Yet both this and The
French Connection stand the test of time. The director fell swiftly grace under the weight of a swollen ego (which appears to have also blighted
his remastered mess-ups of Blu-ray editions and fan-pleasing – or not – spider
walk director’s cuts). What’s interesting about this film is that it is equal
parts dread atmosphere and cheap shock effects. I’m naturally more inclined to
the former than the head-revolving antics of the latter, but in both regards
Friedkin makes us feel that demonic possession is a part of the real world
and intrudes upon daily lives. The use of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells is a sublime choice; it’s difficult not to conclude
that John Carpenter took his minimalist musical cues from this horror titan.
CHOICE LINES
Father Karras: Where is Regan?
Demon: In here. With us.
5. Sleeper
One of Woody Allen’s early funny films, a science fiction
comedy in which Miles Monroe (Allen), a jazz musician and health food store
owner, awakes in 2173 after spending 200 years cryogenically frozen. A stream
of swipes at 20th century mores follows, as we learn how silly we
were to think that smoking and fatty foods were bad for you, and Woody makes up
a load of junk to fill in the gaps of future peoples’ knowledge of our era.
Allen’s
affinity for slapstick is at its peak here, and the plot involving the
overthrow of a repressive regime is little more than a peg to hang a series of
very funny jokes on. Diane Keaton returns, as spoilt rich girl come rebel
leader Luna (“Rebels are we! Born to be
free! Just like the fish in the sea!”). Woody launches into a string of
one-liners on familiar topics from psychoanalysis (“I haven't seen my analyst in 200 years.
He was a strict Freudian. If I'd been going all this time, I'd probably almost
be cured by now”) to sex (Luna: It's hard to believe
that you haven't had sex for 200 years. Miles: 204, if you count my
marriage). Then there’s Miles’ encounter with the orgasmatron whilst posing
as a robot butler, a giant chicken (“That's a big chicken”), the movies’ biggest slipping on a banana skin gag, and a run
of nose jokes.
CHOICE LINES
Rags: Woof woof. Hallo, I’m Rags. Woof woof.
6. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Sam Peckinpah has never been a director I can get fully on
board with. He was clearly one to wrestle with his booze-soaked demons on
screen, and the resultant explorations of the most unedifying extremes of
masculine impulses are not always very comfortable to behold. I don’t think Pat Garrett, even in non-butchered form,
is quite the defining Peckinpah masterpiece, but it is certainly an impressive
and poetic picture, and you can quite see why the director saw it as his chance
to make the definitive statement on the genre.
James Coburn can do no wrong in my book, and he makes a
magnificent Pat Garrett (my favourite Peckinpah film is their later pairing on Cross of Iron). I’m less sure of pork
belly-eyed Kris Kristofferson, who not only is a good 15 years too old for
Billy but fails to exude the necessary charisma. Neither am I sold on Bob Dylan
(nor was the director).
I’ve yet to see the 2005 special edition, so couldn’t
comment on how it stands up (I’ve not heard great things), but since Peckinpah
was happy enough with the preview version that’s good enough for me.
CHOICE LINES
Billy: You’re in poor company, Pat.
Pat Garret: Yeah, but I’m alive.
Billy: So am I…
7. The Legend of Hell House
In most years there won’t be a single horror movie in my Top
10 list, let alone four. I wouldn't attempt to argue that John Hough’s film,
based on Richard Matheson’s novel (and screenplay), is in the same league as the
other three scary pictures here but, for unabashed entertainment value, it’s
hard to beat. Four psychic investigators descend on a famous haunted house with
a terrible past, their objective to establish whether there is continued existence after the demise of the physical body. The conceit of factual reporting is
adopted, with each new uncanny encounter introduced with date and time
subtitles.
If the results are more post-Hammer theatricality, rather than the domestic terrors of The Exorcist, then that’s something to be embraced. In particular,
Roddie McDowall’s tortured psychic brings just the right level of manic energy.
Pamela Franklin is involved in the chilliest moments, her bouts of possession
proving so effective that they inspired Orbital to sample her in “I Don’t Know You People”.
CHOICE LINES
Benjamin Fischer: I was the only one to make it out of here
alive and sane in 1953, and I will be the only one to make it out of here alive
and sane this time.
8. My Name is Nobody
Sergio Leone’s comedy-tinged spaghetti western was mostly
directed by his assistant director on the first two Dollars movies, Tonino Valeril, but Leone took up the megaphone for
a couple of scenes, including the opening and the final shoot-out. Consequently this doesn’t have the same visual flourish as the Eastwood/Bronson/Coburn classics. But it is blessed with an outrageously whacky
Ennio Morricone score and similar thematic ideas about the passing of the old
West as Once Upon A Time in the West.
Also from that movie comes Henry Fonda (starring in his last
western) as a decidedly kindlier, mentor figure than Frank. The leading man,
Nobody, is played by Terence Hill, cast as a result of his success as Trinity in two comedy spaghetti westerns a couple of years earlier. Hill
makes for a goofier lead than we’re used to from Leone and he is, to be
kind, an acquired taste. But, if his shortcomings as an actor and in the
charisma stakes are more than evident in his scenes with Fonda,
there is good-natured whimsy running through the picture that makes the Leone connection worth investigating.
Jack Beauregard: Folks that throw
dirt on you aren't always trying to hurt you, and folks that pull you out of a
jam aren't always trying to help you. But the main point is when you're up to
your nose in shit, keep your mouth shut.
9. Serpico
The one honest cop is a less-used trope in the current
cinema environment; in the likes of Training
Day and TV’s The Shield events
instead revolved around a corrupt ones. Director Sidney Lumet would return to
the territory of police corruption in Prince
of the City and Q&A, but
Serpico can claim to based on New York cop Frank Serpico’s actual experiences.
Al Pacino capitalises on his The
Godfather success, and his method actor reputation for diligent research and
immersion in roles begins here (the real Serpico stayed with the actor for a time); he was
rewarded with his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. If Serpico doesn’t hold up quite as well as the second pairing between
Lumet and Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon,
it remains a well-observed and impassioned character study.
CHOICE LINES
Tom Keough: Frank, let’s face it, who can trust a cop
that won’t take money?
10. The Day of the Jackal
Fred Zinneman was a choice example of the
journeyman studio director. Reliable across a selection of genres, and trusted
with prestige projects, he took home two Oscars for Best Director (From Here to Eternity, A Man For All Seasons). Yet, you’d be hard
pressed to identify stylistic trends across his work. The director had tackled
suspense pictures before (High Noon)
but nothing this taut and gritty. This is a very ‘70s movie, with an
unapologetic levels of sex and violence. It shows Zinneman, who had been
through a spell without work following the collapse of a project, responding to
the changes in Hollywood and doing so with a vigour that belies a man in his
mid-60s.
Adapted from Frederick Forsyth’s novel, which presented a fictional assassination
attempt on President De Gaulle, Zinneman
was intrigued by the challenge of making a thriller where the outcome was known
(the assassination could not succeed) and whether he could make it
suspenseful. He succeeds admirably, supported by a career-defining turn from
Edward Fox as the Jackal and Michael Lonsdale (Drax) as his dogged pursuer.
Minister: There is one
thing; how did you know whose telephone to tap?
Lebel: I didn’t, so I tapped all of them.
And then there were...
Best Picture Oscar
The Sting
Entertaining, for sure, but Best Picture winner? Arguably,
this picked up all the glory that the previous Newman/Redford/Hill teaming
should have (Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid).
American Graffiti
George Lucas’ first big success and, now the lustre has somewhat worn
off Star Wars due to his passive-aggressive desire to desecrate the memory of
the original trilogy, increasingly picked as his finest hour. It’s a good
movie, but I’ve never been all that partial to it.
Cries and Whispers
If you want to emphasise your serious,
intellectual film buff credentials you could do a lot worse that worship the films of Ingmar
Bergman. See also; Woody Allen. I’ve seen this more than once, and can testify
that it just gets funnier and funnier each time. Three of the nominees were box
office smashes, so it was up to grumpy boots Bergman to wave the flag of artistic nourishment.
The Exorcist
If a horror film ever had a chance of winning the Oscar (The Silence of
the Lambs is only borderline), it probably would have been The Exorcist. It could make a case for being more than just a lowest common denominator horror
film (otherwise, even with the queues around the block, it would never have stood a
chance of nomination), and was also made in the popular new Hollywood style. It would be my
choice out of the quintet.
A Touch of Class
I might well have seen this, a “quality” ‘70s sex comedy
concerning an adulterous affair between George Segal and Glenda Jackson (who
took home the Best Actress Oscar), but it doesn’t stick in the mind. Another of
those taboo-busting laughers of the period replete with “hilarious” rape jokes, which
doesn’t date it all.
Top 10 US Box Office
1. The Sting
2. The Exorcist
3. American Graffiti
4. Papillon
5. The Way We Were
6. Magnum Force
7. Last Tango in Paris
8. Live and Let Die
9. Robin Hood
10. Paper Moon