Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)

Funeral Parade of Roses (薔薇の葬列) was bananas. It's a film within a film about a gayboy in 1960s Japan who is plotting to overthrow the madam who runs the club where she works and sleeping with the man who owns it. The film is spliced with short interviews with real (are they?) gayboys on the streets of Tokyo and a sort of sex party with filmmakers. It's also densely referential: Jean Genet is everywhere in this movie – not just in the title – and Funeral Parade of Roses is also deeply invested in the Oedipus myth as well.

This is an amazing movie. I've been meaning to see it for years and then a friend in my unseen movie club put it on his list and our host figured out a way for us to watch it.

Paix sur les Champs (1970)

I started off liking Paix sur les Champs very much, but then as it went on, I think it became more and more conventional.

Jacques Boigelot's film was ok, but not great. It starts off as a portrait of a town, the young people who move around in it, and the influence of the older generation, but it sort of devolves from there as it gets overwhelmed with plot.

This film has been out of print in the United States for a long time, as far as I can tell, but I was able to see it finally here.

Paw (1959)

Paw is an anti-racist Danish family film from 1959. It's a kind of Huckleberry Finn tale, where a young boy from the Danish West Indies (i.e. St. Thomas or St. Croix) comes to live in Denmark where his father was born. He is beat up and taunted by his schoolmates, and then his aunt dies. But he is taken in by a kindly old gamekeeper, and the two make a life. It's quite sweet, and there is loads and loads of footage of Danish wildlife, particularly birds. Although released in Denmark in 1959, it wasn't released in the United States until 1970 (!).

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Frank Perry's filmmaking style sort of freaks me out, to be honest; all of his films seem like they're made as though they're horror films. This is a really strong movie, though, and Carrie Snodgress is excellent as the eponymous housewife. There is an odd moment at the end of the movie that sort of needs analysis for which I don't have time: the man with whom Carrie Snodgress has been having an affair for most of the movie, a man with whom she has (apparently) great sex, is played by Frank Langella. At the end of the picture, his sadistic treatment of her becomes a bit too much like her husband's sadistic treatment of her and she's had enough. But then she has some sort of epiphany about the masculinity his sadism is intended to bolster and she tells him to his face that he is doing all of that because he "is really a fag". And I think the film believes this to be true. Homosexuality was sure understood differently in 1970 than it is now. He's "really" a fag, but he's been having sex with a woman – in secret, no less; no one knows they're having sex – but he's having sex with this woman in secret because he's really a homosexual? Perhaps Sue Kaufman's original novel explains this a bit better. There is, further, an odd bit of foreshadowing in regard to this "fag" moment, in which after one session of lovemaking, Carrie refers to Marcel's love for Albertine in Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Frank laughs and says that Proust was a homosexual and Albertine was a boy. Carrie resents being laughed at, but in the next sequence she is re-reading – presumably – Time Regained, a section of the novel (for what it's worth) in which Albertine does not appear.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Madron is a western shot in Israel (apparently the first feature to be shot in Israel that wasn't set in Israel). Being a western, Madron is, of course, set in the American Southwest. This is a strange, strange picture (as its poster promises), mostly because of the television sensibility of its director Jerry Hopper. It feels like television to watch this, and that isn't just because this was released in 1970. Still, it is fun, and Leslie Caron is lovely and mysterious as the film's lead. The appeal of Richard Boone is a little lost on me, but hey: to each his own.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Dodes'ka-den (どですかでん) is Kurosawa's first color film. I thought it was ok. Sad, but with lots of lovely parts. It's intended as a kind of Chekhovian story, with comedy, love, tragedy, fantasy, etc. The title Dodes'ka-den means, apparently, "clickety-clack", and the metaphor here is the train, which rolls by the lives of the poor people that this film describes. The characters are beautifully sketched here. Dodes'ka-den was also produced by the great director Kon Ichikawa. In any case, this is not the place to start with Kurosawa, but it is very good nonetheless.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

I actually don't understand how this was nominated for Best Foreign Language Picture. Wikipedia and IMDb both say that First Love is a German-language film. But that is definitely not true of the English-language print I watched. With the actors John Moulder-Brown (British), Maximilian Schell (Austrian), and Valentina Cortese (Italian), English rather than German seems a more common language here, as well. In any case, First Love is a beautiful picture, and this is mostly due to its exquisite direction (also by Schell). It is Chekhovian and wise and visually interesting. The film is marred by a 1970s musical soundtrack that now seems dated and silly, but otherwise this is gorgeous stuff.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

As I watch all of these movies from 1970, some are amazing films that I would never have seen (The Molly Maguires: so good!), some have brilliant acting (The Great White Hope, I Never Sang for My Father), and some are great lessons from the history of the time-period (Joe). Others, like The Hawaiians, have enormous casts and spend lots of money, but can't manage to tell a story that anyone would want to watch.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

A weird poster for a very straightforward movie. I Never Sang for My Father successfully transfers Robert Anderson's play into the cinematic form. Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons are absolutely wonderful in this. (He was – inexplicably – nominated for Best Supporting Actor even though he is clearly the main character and has the bulk of the screen-time.) It is standard for Gil Cates's work to be small and simple, and this film is definitely that. But I Never Sang is very good for what it wishes to be.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

This was weird, y'all. I mean, it is clear from this film why they broke up. There is some great stuff here, though. The concert on the roof at the end of the movie is classic, lovely. But what is Yoko Ono doing in this movie? She never says a word, and she just hovers, ubiquitous but never really contributing in any way. Paul is in charge in this film, that's clear enough. And Ringo: well, he looks slightly confused at all times. As my friend Julie says, that is part of his charm. She is correct, of course, about Ringo. As for the fourth Beatle, I just wanted to hug George Harrison the whole time. He needs a little consoling.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Wow. Martin Ritt's The Molly Maguires is the undiscovered gem of 1970. Like Cromwell it stars Richard Harris and Frank Finlay, with additional superb performances from Samantha Eggar and (even more importantly) Sean Connery. The molly maguires are a gang of saboteurs who work in the coal mines of nineteenth-century America. They are exploited, beaten down, and killed by the men who run the mines, and so they fight back: violence with violence. Ritt's film is a smart one, but I also found it deeply moving. Henry Mancini's score is haunting and beautiful, and the filmmaking is excellent.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

An excruciatingly predictable story about a priest who becomes involved with a beautiful woman (Lauren Hutton who – I hadn't realized before – was clearly the poor man's Faye Dunaway in 1970). Anyway, as you can imagine, the priest is questioning the way the church does things: contraception, celibacy, racism, etc. And then he questions himself and his commitment to god, his mother, etc. Blah blah blah. Robert Forster in 1970, though? What a hottie. Seriously. I had no idea.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Wow. This is a really weird picture. Paul Newman took over as director for this movie mid-shoot after five weeks. The film is based on the novel by Ken Kesey. It's a sort of father-son, brother-brother narrative. But... well it didn't really work for me. The direction is odd – lots of shots of machinery working at cutting down trees, and the emotional payoff just isn't there. Also: Newman is in the movie and (as we all know) he is pretty much a genius, but he hasn't put himself in the movie enough. He has generously paid much more attention to his costars, and so the movie is more about Henry Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Richard Jaeckel, and Lee Remick. And Newman can't save the film from the insularity on which it trades. I didn't identify with the guys a bit.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Richard Harris as Cromwell and Alec Guinness as Charles I are both absolutely fantastic in this. And, actually, the film convinced me (at least for a little bit) that Cromwell was not a complete jackass. This is an excellent historical epic. It went on a bit long, but then these British history films from the period all went on a little too long. I want to say, too, how much I absolutely love Frank Finlay – in Othello, of course, but he's great here, as well.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

The classic film. This is the first Peanuts film, and it isn't exactly coherent, but the music is so much fun, the characters are great (of course), and there are some absolutely unforgettable sequences.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

This movie is just brilliant. It is shocking to me how many extremely smart films about race were made in the 1970s. and how many films are idiotic about race forty years later. The Landlord is a film by Hal Ashby and it follows a young, extremely naive, rich white man who buys a tenement in New York City and expects to just go live there. It's very funny at times and also incredibly moving. It's realistic and silly and everything else I want out of a film, too. The performances are wonderful, and if you haven't ever seen the great Diana Sands on film, this is one of the best places to do it as she didn't make many films. And Lee Grant, the great supporting actress of the 60s and 70s is absolutely fantastic in this. Pearl Bailey also has some hilarious stuff in here.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Blake Edwards' Darling Lili is clearly a vehicle for Julie Andrews. Because it's Blake Edwards, Darling Lili is irrepressibly silly. It also makes next to zero logical sense. I found myself very frustrated by the entire thing, mostly because Andrews was playing the role the way Doris Day might play the role – classier to be sure and with slightly less mugging toward the camera, but the resemblance is uncanny (right down to the extremely high necklines). This was occasionally funny, but even the humor in Darling Lili is placed oddly, seeing as how in most of the other scenes, someone is plotting to overthrow the British during WWII or, you know, killing people.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Well this is an odd picture. It's a comedy, really, but well... it's about the United States's systematic genocide of  American natives. So it's not really a funny topic. The movie stars Dustin Hoffman who, apparently, decided that after playing a pretty boy in The Graduate and grunging down for Midnight Cowboy he would cover himself completely with old-age makeup and play the world's oldest man. Faye Dunaway is very funny in this and so is Hoffman, to a certain extent. The tale is told in a very picaresque fashion, as well, and so to cover its gaps it depends heavily on voice-over narration (again by Hoffman, who – quite inexplicably – is playing the incredibly old man). The direction is by Arthur Penn (the old master of cinematic violence), but I never got over the unevenness of the whole thing.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

Lovers and Other Strangers is a vaguely charming little movie about sex in 1970. This is one of the films after the fall of the Production Code that was going to deal with the topic of sex. The whole thing is incredibly time by today's standards of course, but I found it harmless (it's homophobic at times, but then what isn't?). Lovers and Other Strangers is a series of stories – a man who is cheating on his wife, an old married couple, an extremely neurotic (and, frankly, annoying) pair who has just met, a couple just about to get married, one just about to get divorced, and a married couple that constantly fights about equality and masculinity and who is in charge in the relationship. Some of these relationships (as you can imagine) were more interesting than the others, and I was most interested in the sexiest couple (the one who is just about to get married). This couple is played by Bonnie Bedelia and Michael Brandon and they are just so cute! Gig Young is also really delightful as Bonnie Bedelia's dad. The whole thing is very talky. It was clearly a stage-play before it was a movie, but I liked it nonetheless.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1970

This is an odd little film and one I never really completely bought into. The film attempts a critique of its central character, but I can understand why not everyone really got it at the time, and how one could (instead of critiquing) take the hate speech that Joe delivers ad nauseum in the film as though it were meant seriously. This wants to be the stuff of high tragedy, but it struck me as rather contrived.