20 top 1970s movies.

Looking at all those BFI lists of 10 best French/Italian/Swinging 60s/gay etc lists on their website, got me compiling another Best of 1970s - but I can't do ten, or twelve - it will have to be a Top Twenty. Were the 1970s the last great decade for movies? I dare say it depends on if you were there and how old you were - I was 24 in 1970 so  been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. We like the 80s and 90s and 2000s too of course, but the 1950s were my childhood, the 1960s my teens and early twenties, so the 1970s was a great era to live through as one went into one's thirties, for movies and music, and of course also discovering the gems of the 1940s and '30s.   So here are the 1970s for me:

• THE PASSENGER. I was mesmerised by Antonioni's mystery and had to return to it several times, as per my review in "Films Illustrated" in 1976.
• BARRY LYNDON - I could see the brilliance of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE but didn't like it, but I love BARRY LYNDON - see next post, above.
• TAXI DRIVER - those searing visuals, Herrmann's powerful score, Scorsese and De Niro .... and Paul Schrader's script.
• OBSESSION - a favourite De Palma, with another amazing Herrmann score (and another Schrader script) and wonderful Genevieve Bujold
• CHINATOWN - Polanski's all time great, its Faye Dunaway's movie as much as Nicholson's.
• KLUTE - the first of Pakula's paranoia thrillers, with Jane Fonda just as mesmerising now
• SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY - Schlesinger's masterpiece with Finch and Jackson never better
• DON'T LOOK NOW - ditto for Nick Roeg, with Julie Christie
• L'INNOCENTE - Visconti's last film in 1976, directed from a wheelchair - another ravishingly opulent costume drama.
• NEW YORK NEW YORK - another Scorsese classic for me, re-imagining those great '40s and '50s musicals for the '70s, with De Niro's Jmmy Doyle the man we love to hate ... this is Liza's other great role.
• CABARET - the other great '70s musical - Fosse also stunned us with ALL THAT JAZZ in '79
• THE GODFATHERS - I have to bundle Coppola's majestic twosome together .... then there is his APOCALYPSE NOW ...
• HAROLD AND MAUDE - Hal Ashby's cult classic still works
• NASHVILLE - after the great MASH, McCABE & MRS MILLER, IMAGES and THE LONG GOODBYE Altman gave us his magnum opus in 1975 - America seems even madder now ...
• CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND - Spielberg's space opus we loved  (never cared for STAR WARS).
• ANNIE HALL - Woody and Keaton - with MANHATTAN and INTERIORS following, after their early items like LOVE AND DEATH ..
• AUTUMN SONATA - A late Bergman, with the other Bergman (Ingrid) and Liv Ullmann providing an acting masterclass, its very affecting too. 
• FOX AND HIS FRIENDS - a terrific Fassbinder, as good as his FEAR EATS THE SOUL
• SEVEN BEAUTIES - Lina Wertmuler's searing drama still stuns now
• THE DEER HUNTER - Cimino's opus
• NETWORK - Finch, Dunaway, Holden etc excel in Lumet's searing drama by Chayefsky.

Thats 20 then - other interesting Euro films included Bunuel's DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, Bergman's CRIES AND WHISPERS, Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT, the Taviani's PADRE PADRONE, Scola's A SPECIAL DAY, and for some fun, Richard Lester's THREE & FOUR MUSKETEERS, and also his tense JUGGERNAUT, lovely ROBIN AND MARIAN, and more hi-jinks in ROYAL FLASH, and Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Thats my 1970s in a nutshell, plus of course THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, THE PARALLAX VIEW, De Sica's GARDEN  OF THE FINZI CONTINI, Visconti's LUDWIG and Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST and 1900, Blier's outrageous LES VALSEUSES in '74, then those Romy Schneider French films .... while Helmut's DORIAN GRAY in 1970 ramped up the trash level, as did JUST A GIGOLO in '78 and BLOODLINE in 1979. 

A week of re-viewings ...

Since I went over to Sky Movies recently, a lot more classics have been on tap, its rather nice to settle down once again and see a favourite .... so, before we head off to some new movies - good, and bad - here's another canter through old favourites.

VERTIGO. Theres a special intensity to this 1958 Hitchcock classic, its mesmerising watching it again, noticing how wonderful Barbara Bel Geddes is as Midge, and drowning in that swooning score by Bernard Herrmann, Kim may have been a replacement but is the perfect actress here. At first met by mixed reviews (I remember seeing it as a kid), this tale of an acrophobic ex-detective following a beautiful woman through a dreamy San Francisco, is now revered a a true classic. More on this and that "Sight & Sound" poll at Hitch label ... more Hitch horror in:

THE BIRDS, 1963. I simply never tire of it - every element works, and Tippi Hedren is just perfect here, whereas I do not care for her in MARNIE much at all. The premise of this classic chiller - a town in terror when thousands of birds unite to attack the residents - gets no less terrifying with age. Hitch's third Daphne du Maurier adaptation (by Evan Hunter) creates an atmosphere of muggy dread as the Brenner family board up their house against the invading birds. Visiting socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi) plus Mitch's clingy mother (Jessica Tandy) and sister are trapped - then Melanie goes upstairs .... Bodega Bay looks marvellous and Rod Taylor is just right as the guy at the centre of it all, as the teasing interplay between him and Melanie turns serious. Suzanne Pleshette is terrific too.

Watching BELL BOOK & CANDLE yet again I really like the Zodiac Club, tucked away around the corner, where Hermione Gingold presides over that beatniky offbeat scene and Kim Novak lurks in the shadows while a young Jack Lemmon plays those bongo drums ... its a great 'Christmas in New York' movie too, Kim is at her zenith, its Stewart's last romantic lead and director Richard Quine and ace cameraman James Wong Howe make it look great. Apparantly, as per other posts, gay writer John Van Druten meant the witches to be code for the secret life of gays in 1950s New York ...

SABRINA. A favourite Billy Wilder, enough said? Wilder's films are rather problematic for me - some I revere (SOME LIKE IT HOT will always be in my top 10, as per recent post on it, below and we highly rate DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, ONE TWO THREE) - but others of his I have no wish to see ... this 1954 one is a perfect treat as Audrey comes back from Paris with that Givenchy wardrobe, and starts to romance William Holden, upsetting the family's plans (love her "Oh, I've learned a lot" to Mrs Larrabee, eager to put the chauffeur's daughter in her place) - so older brother Humphrey Bogart (maybe too old, but who cares) steps in, and there's that New York skyline. Martha Hyer scores also as the rich girl eager to marry Holden and who has no desire to spend the first 18 hours of her proposed marriage "on a plane, sitting up"). A witty script and a great cast make this a fine romantic comedy, and it looks great too.

THE PASSENGER. Michelangelo Antonioni made his name in the early Sixties with that great quartet of films featuring Monica Vitti, which included L'AVVENTURA, but this intriguing 1975 anti-thriller is one of his greatest works even if it seems a little pretentious now (I wrote a review of it at the time, when I was 29, for a magazine "Films Illustrated"). It was long out of circulation owing to the intractability of its star, Jack Nicholson - who owned the rights (it couldn't even be shown in full at the 2005 BFI Antonioni retrospective, thankfully the dvd came out not too long after). Jack plays a jaded reporter in Africa, who switches identities with the dead man in the next room at the hotel, and finds himself leading a gun-runner's life .... then there is that amazing ending . More on this at Antonioni and Passenger labels.

THE EAGLE. Kevin MacDonald's 2011 film of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular novel "The Eagle of the North" works surprisingly well - a solid action film capturing the period and providing a tangled interplay of pride loyalty and masculinity. It gives Channing Tatum one of his best roles as Marcus Flavius Aquila, the Roman son in Britain trying to save his father's destroyed reputation, as he and slave Esca (Jamie Bell) head north of the border over Hadrian's Wall to the wild country beyond ... Master and slave find their roles reversed and keeps us guessing. It certainly reboots the Peplum genre.

MARGIN CALL. J C Chandor, assembling a cracking cast for his debut, depicts 36 hours at a fictional Wall Street bank on the eve of the economic meltdown of 2008 (which cost me my job too). Risk assessment manager Stanley Tucci is fired; Zachery Quinto completes his research and makes an alarming discovery. This well-crafted thriller is gripping as panic spreads through the chain of command - Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons excel too.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. If not quite the masterpiece we were told to expect, Tarantino's pastiche of war films is still rollicking good fun and has all the classic Tarantino ingredients. A celebration of vengance, its an audacious, self-indulgent take on the Second World War. Christopher Waltz deservedly won an Oscar for his incendiary turn as the "Jew Hunter", as Brad Pitt and his men track him down. Love the sequence with the French cinema and Melanie Laurent's plan to do away with the Nazi high command ..... I have been enjoying Quentin's KILL BILL saga too as it re-runs here, and now to tackle DJANGO UNCHAINED  .....  

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. Tony Richardson's 1968 re-telling while not successful at the time, looks marvellous now - great cast, great costumes, bitter irony,and that Victorian era nicely caught. David Hemmings is the ill-fated Nolan, Vanessa Regrave and Jill Bennett are contrasting Victorian ladies - Trevor Howard, John Gielgud and Harry Andrews are the military dunderheads who let it happen ...

A chronicle of events that led to the British involvement in the Crimean War against Russia and which led to the siege of Sebastopol and the fierce Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854 which climaxed with the heroic, but near-disastrous cavalry charge made by the British Light Brigade against a Russian artillery battery in a small valley which resulted in the near-destruction of the brigade due to error of judgment and rash planning on part by the inept British commanders .... It may have been a commercial flop, but we liked the look of it at the time, particularly Hemmings in that Hussar uniform - very 1968! More on this at British-1 label. 

Once again: The Passenger, 1975

THE PASSENGER: This melancholy, languid and hypnotic existential anti-thriller by Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the great Italian directors, stars Jack Nicholson as a soul-sick television reporter on assignement in the North African desert, who decides to assume the identity of the dead man in the hotel room next to his and decides to see where it leads him. The dead man turns out to have been an arms dealer - and Jack is soon up to his neck in danger as he travels around Europe meeting arms dealers, with the carefree girl who travels with him, while his wife and colleagues want to meet the dead man who they think was the last person to see him alive .... it all comes together in that astonishing final sequence. We like Antonioni a lot here, as per the many posts on him and his films, as per label. 

THE PASSENGER (or PROFESSIONE: REPORTER) does not crop up much in the television schedules these days, so when it does one has to have a look, or as I did, record it to look at again (the dvd with Jack's commentary is filed away).  This is what I wrote about it last time: - with more at The Passenger label).

Movies one becomes obsessed by: at different times I was obsessed about EAST OF EDEN, and then about THE MISFITS, and BLOW-UP and KLUTE, and then the 1954 A STAR IS BORN and 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY etc - and those favourite Hitchcocks, Michael Powells, Wilders, Mankiewiczs, Hawks etc. When I was 30 in 1975 I became as obsessed about Antonioni's THE PASSENGER as I did about his Monica Vitti films and BLOW-UP (ZABRISKIE POINT not so much), THE PASSENGER has another screening today on our Film4 channel as part of its Jack Nicholson season. 

My 1976 review,  see Passenger label

I was dazzled by THE PASSENGER then in 1975 and, as per The Passenger label, had a full page analysis of it published in a film magazine of the time, the very good FILMS ILLUSTRATED which gave readers a page each issue to talk about a film - quite good in that pre-internet pre-video age (whereas now we can write to our heart's content about whatever it is we want to...). The tone of the article makes me wince a bit now, but hey - it was 1975 and I was 30! (the full text is at the Antonioni label). Then the next year I became obsessed about TAXI DRIVER and OBSESSION and ....

Back to THE PASSENGER: Antonioni began shooting his anti-thriller (co-scripted with Mark Peploe) in 1973, with locations in Africa, Germany, London and Gaudi's Barcelona ... it finally emerged in 1975. It remains a key '70s movie for me but was probably overshadowed by Nicholson's mega-hits of the time like CHINATOWN and CUCKOO'S NEST ... Jack in that check shirt and green combat trousers in that riveting African section at the start still looks as iconic as Hemmings in the white jeans in BLOW-UP (and after the cluttered muddy look of a modern film like MAGIC MIKE the clean sharp clear photography here is an absolute dream). I must play the Nicholson dvd commentary ...

A classic year: 1975

IMDB 's Classic Film Board has a thread on the best films of 1975. I submitted my 1975 top twenty - I didn't realise it was such a classic year! and of course in that pre-video, pre-internet world we had to see all those films at the cinema (and London still had plentiful arthouse and revival circuit chains) and read the movie magazines to keep up with them ...  I have written about several of these here, as per labels.

THE PASSENGER - Antonioni 

BARRY LYNDON - Kubrick 

LOVE AND DEATH - Woody Allen 

NASHVILLE - Altman

HISTORY OF ADELE H. - Truffaut 

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS - Fassbinder 

SEVEN BEAUTIES - Wertmuller 

DOG DAY AFTERNOON - Lumet 

THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR - Pollack 

THE STEPFORD WIVES - Forbes 

THE MAGIC FLUTE - Bergman 

INDIA SONG - Duras 

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUI DE COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES - Akerman 

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW - Sharman 

TOMMY - Russell 

ROYAL FLASH - Lester 

SHAMPOO - Ashby 

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK - Weir 

MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL - Gilliam. 

Dreadful but compulsive (for Lee Remick, Barbra Streisand fans!): HENNESSEY / FUNNY LADY. 

In the IMDB poll on 1975, JAWS topped the list, but THE PASSENGER (PROFESSIONE: REPORTER) made a respectable 7th on the top 20, with BARRY LYNDON in second place, and NASHVILLE third followed by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, and also respectable placings for ADELE H and SEVEN BEAUTIES. 

A fascinating year in the mid-70s then, CHINATOWN was the year before, and the following year 1976 had TAXI DRIVER, OBSESSION and Visconti's L'INNOCENTE to fascinate us, while 1977 and beyond took us into CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, ANNIE HALL, NEW YORK NEW YORK and the rest ... not a bad decade at all, the 70s are up there with the 50s and 60s - great to have lived through them as cinema changed and developed so much.

1975 was of course also a great year for music - on those vinyl gatefold albums, like this Joni Mitchell favourite: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns".

Other classic years here, as per labels: 1954, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1970

Its back!: Zabriskie Point, 1970

Even us Michelangelo Antonioni fanatics find his 1970 ZABRSKIE POINT his most difficult film, not widely liked at the time, it seemed that having done Swinging London in BLOW-UP, he now attempted the distill the essence of the U.S, counterculture in his second English-language film, made in America, also for Carlo Ponti and MGM. Its a time capsule full of enigmas and ellipses, student politics of the late hippie era and Pink Floyd songs, cinematic imagination and lots of coupling in the desert. 

Now re-released in a new digital print, at the Curzon Mayfair, who have this to say about it:

Digital reissue of Michelangelo Antonioni's coutercultural classic featuring original music by Pink Floyd. By using special effects, documentary-style footage and unusual camera angles, Antonioni's suburb surreal film succeeds in revealing how societal conflicts lead to violence. 

Mark (Mark Frechette) is a student radical. Daria (Daria Halprin) is a beautiful, restless young woman. Their meeting sparks a deep passion in this visually stunning fantasia on the 60s counterculture when fate brings Mark and Daria together in Death Valley's desolate yet stunning Zabriskie Point. 

Daria is driving to a meeting with her employer. Mark has been forced to steal an airplane to escape from Los Angeles. The two become entranced both by each other and by the fleeting beauty of the shifting desert sands, but their time together is shattered by a tragedy that will haunt Daria forever.

Sam Shephard and Antonioni regular Tonino Guerra worked on the so-so screenplay. Today, from our perspective, the behaviour of Mark and Daria makes no sense, but back in that hippie era of 40 years ago ... 

It will look great on the big screen, and has that terrific soundtrack, including Patti Page and the Rolling Stones as well as Pink Floyd. What lets the film down is the blankness of the two leads - who had not acted before (Rod Taylor plays Daria's nasty capitalist boss/lover). They both had a few more roles afterwards, but Mark Frechette died in mysterious circumstances, aged 27 in 1975 (in prison after a bank raid) which I have touched on before here, at Antonioni label. 

We liked Antonioni's 1975 THE PASSENGER, his third for Ponti/MGM, a whole lot more and it remains a key '70s movie for me (THE PASSENGER label) but ZABRISKIE POINT has a lot of pluses too - those stunning widescreen landscapes, and that amazing final sequence where Daria imagines that stunning house being blown-up. Writer Mark Peploe who was at the filming, explained how they did it at that Antonioni retrospective at the BFI back in 2005 - with lots of cameras to catch it all from different angles, but they could only do it once .... then there is that orgy or love-in, another druggy fantasy in the desert - which also makes fascinating viewing. 

Its certainly a blast at American consumerism and I imagine not what MGM were expecting, but yes, its a fascinating time capsule now of that fascinating era 40 years ago, and for those who do not know it, one to catch up with. MGM were also exploiting student revolution with their lesser THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT, GETTING STRAIGHT and the like. 

and again, here is that Dick Cavett almost painful non-interview with Frechette and Halprin (who barely speaks) in 1970 (also with Mel Brooks and Rex Reed):

Antonioni & Blow-Up

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) who died aged 94, on practically the same day as Ingmar Bergman, has long been one of my favourite directors, ever since I first saw his early '60s Italian studies of alienation and fascinating portraits of characters in relation to those landscapes ... His first film in colour IL DESERTO ROSSO in 1964 was a dazzler too, not least for his then muse Monica Vitti with that brown hair, a contrast to her usual blonde. The factories belching fumes around the industrial wasteland of Ravenna was also mesmerising - as was that green park (Maryon, in Woolwich) in that quiet part of London where a murder may have happened ... was a park or trees ever so green (they were painted so, of course, as related in that BBC HOLLYWOOD UK documentary in 1993 (TV, London labels). Left: that first book of 4 Antonioni scripts, essential stuff - I had the hardback edition initially, whatever happened to that? 

I was 21 at the time and seeing David Hemmings up there on the screen was like almost seeing myself - we dressed alike, and I had in fact been talking to his then girlfriend actress Jane Merrow that 1996 summer, when she was doing a play in London, and he was making the film, while Monica Vitti with working with Losey and Bogarde and Stamp on the MODESTY BLAISE pop art classic. This recent coffee table book on the film has some terrific images and essays ....
 

There are several posts here on BLOW-UP and Antonioni and Vitti - including posters, books - see labels - I just want to look now at how Antonioni saw the Swinging City, as we join Thomas the photographer as he drives around in his car, with that two way radio - cool ! One gets a sense of the city changing and developing as he drives through the centre down to the park - past that red painted street in Stockwell - and that antique shop he wants to buy - as, as he put it, the area is already changing "with queers and poodles" already moved there. I later lived next to that street in Chelsea, off the Kings Road, where that restaurant still is now. The film, usually listed as a 1966 release, did not open in London until early 1967, when it also went to the Cannes film festival, so it will always be a 1967 film for me.

I have always been fascinated by this park scene

At the time the film was much discussed, one simply had to see it - and we loved those dialogue exchanges, with the antique shop girl who wants to get away from antiques to Nepal, as he says "Nepal is all antiques" or the famous quote when he meets model Verushka at that stoned party - "I thought you were in Paris" and she says "I am in Paris" - 

and of course another Antonioni dawn serquence with that imaginary tennis game ... The plot is a tease: he bends over the body in the park - presumably its really there, then its gone when he returns that morning. The stoned party and those girls keen to be photographed, as well as those models kept posing, and of course the kids in the club fighting over the Yardbirds' broken guitar - which is just a piece of rubbish outside. I love the spare Herbie Hancock soundtrack too, and have had it on vinyl, cd and now on ipod.

 
In the club: Keith Relf and "Stroll On" ....

BLOW-UP is still a fascinating stylish influential movie - there are lots of posters and graphics from it still around. It may have been a bad experience for Sarah Miles but it certainly made Hemmings the icon of the age - to it seems the fury of Terence Stamp who insisted he had been promised the role and it was all about him .... whatever. We will still be looking at it for ages yet ... Its a terrific performance by Hemmings capturing all the jaded ennui of the typical Antonioni male. 
We like THE PASSENGER a lot too, as per the many posts on that - see label - including that review I did in 1975 for "Films Illustrated" magazine. It was good too to catch up with Antonioni's earlier films, now on dvd - reviews at Antonioni label. 
In some ways THE PASSENGER is the 70s for me, as BLOW-UP is the '60s - along with those Kubrick, Scorsese, Visconti, Losey titles. 

Back to Antonioni ... Vitti goes African ...

A discussion over at IMDb brought up a mention of a racist moment in L'ECLISSE, Antonioni's timeless 1962 film. Presumably this scene was meant where Vitti dresses up as an African - I never considered it racist, but rather charming, where her comedy talent comes to the fore ..... It is a stunning, vivid moment in this mesmerising film, showing the ennui and boredom in these Roman suburbs - no wonder Alain Delon passing by gets Vittoria's interest - after the drunk of course drives Delon's sportscar into the Tiber.  However, having looked at that scene again, the comments of the woman returned from Kenya would indeed be considered racist these days, but this of course was back in the early 60s, 50 years ago ... I wouldn't think it detracts from the overall film though, being just a fragment of a scene early on

The influence of Antonioni seems to grow now - L'AVVENTURA continues to be discovered, it seems more "important" than the empty theatrics of LA DOLCE VITA - well to me anyway. The films are all available now in new editions and continue to interest us.

There is so much I like in L'ECLISSE: Vittoria's pleasure at the plane ride among the clouds, following the man who lost heavily at the stock market, playing at romance with smooth boy Delon, and as here pretending to be African, and then that stunning finale where the camera turns up, but the lovers don't .... as eerie night descends on the city. It was certainly a parable for the atomic age ... 

Treats: a western, a Bette Davis classic and Antonioni

Quite a good few days: another look at a superior western, plus one of Bette's 60's grand guignols and that last Antonioni masterwork ....

Movies one becomes obsessed by: at different times I was obsessed about EAST OF EDEN, and then about THE MISFITS, and BLOW-UP and KLUTE, and then the 1954 A STAR IS BORN and 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY etc - and those favourite Hitchcocks, Michael Powells, Wilders, Mankiewiczs, Hawks etc. When I was 30 in 1975 I became as obsessed about Antonioni's THE PASSENGER as I did about his Monica Vitti films and BLOW-UP (ZABRISKIE POINT not so much), THE PASSENGER has another screening today on our Film4 channel as part of its Jack Nicholson season. I was dazzled by THE PASSENGER then in 1975 and, as per The Passenger label, had a full page analysis of it published in a film magazine of the time, the very good FILMS ILLUSTRATED which gave readers a page each issue to talk about a film - quite good in that pre-internet age (whereas now we can write to our heart's content about whatever it is we want to...). The tone of the article makes me wince a bit now, but hey - it was 1975! (the full text is at the Antonioni label). Then the next year I became obsessed about TAXI DRIVER and OBSESSION and ....

My 1976 review,  see Passenger label

 
Back to THE PASSENGER: Antonioni's melancholy and languid existential anti-thriller becomes hypnotic as we watch and identify with Jack Nicholson as a soul-sick television reporter on assignment in North Africa who decides to assume the identify of the dead man in the hotel room next door and sees where it leads him, too late he realises he is now a gun runner ...  as we travel from Africa to Germany, London and Gaudi's Barcelona ... there is a stunning climax and that nice little coda. It remains a key '70s movie for me but was probably overshadowed by Nicholson's mega-hits of the time like CHINATOWN and CUCKOO'S NEST ... Jack in that check shirt and green combat trousers in that riveting African section at the start still looks as iconic as Hemmings in the white jeans in BLOW-UP (and after the cluttered muddy look of a modern film like MAGIC MIKE the clean sharp clear photography here is an absolute dream). I must play the Nicholson commentary on the dvd ...

I had not seen Robert Aldrich's HUSH ... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE since its release in 1965, when Bette was back on a roll after BABY JANE (which I did not like at all really) and DEAD RINGER which I liked a lot in 1964 where she played the 2 sisters nice Edie and nasty Margaret (that one deserves a whole review of its own, soon then ...). Joan Crawford quit this gothic melodrama conceived to capitalise on the success of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, leaving the road clear for Bette to romp away with the show and she duly had a field day, and even managed to be quite moving at times. 

I remember critics like Kenneth Tynan being impressed with her work here, as the ageing Southern Belle whose life has been blighted by people thinking she had decapitated her married lover (a young Bruce Dern) 40 years earlier.  Bette's friend and co-star Olivia De Havilland sashayed into Crawford's role as scheming cousin Miriam and Olivia is in fact ideally cast here, while Agnes Moorehead's nutty housekeeper makes even Davis look as though she is underplaying. The icing on the cake is a final appearance for Bette's old co-star from THE GREAT LIE Mary Astor who has a couple of scenes, much older here of course, as the ideally named Jewel Mayhew who holds the secret as to what really happened all those years ago. Its unexpectedly gory for its era with some loopy hallucinations, but Bette is mesmerising here and achieves real pathos by the end. Just try looking away, even though it goes on far too long ...I reported before on seeing Olivia up close at the National Film Theatre in 1972 (at NFT label), marvellous that she is still here in her 90s, along with sister Joan ...

Back out west with another look at SEVEN MEN FROM NOW, the first of those westerns laconic star Randolph Scott make with director Budd Boetticher. This 1956 one was written by Burt Kennedy, who took up directing too and was produced for John Wayne's Batjac company. Wayne was meant to start in it but it seems got held up on THE SEARCHERS. 

Ex-sheriff Ben Stride tracks the seven men who held up a Wells Fargo office and killed his wife. Stride is tormented by the fact that his own failure to keep his job was the cause of his wife's working in the express office and thus he is partly responsible for her death. Stride encounters a married couple heading west for California and helps them. Along the way they are joined by two n'er-do-wells, Masters and Clete, who know that Stride is after the express-office robbers. They plan to let Stride lead them to the bandits, then make away with the loot themselves. But they aren't the only ones carrying a secret. 

This is a perfect little western, barely 80 minutes long with 3 great performances. Apart from Scott being his usual man of few words there is the young Lee Marvin coming into his prime, perfecting that persona that would serve him well in the '60s, and the very affecting Gail Russell is the lovely leading lady. Gail was a real charmer and is usually referred to in tragic terms. She died aged 36 from alcohol problems, alone in her Hollywood apartment. Like Linda Darnell it is one of the sadder Hollywood stories. She had been married though to Guy Madison for 5 years and was a friend of Wayne's with whom she made 2 films. 

Here she is the wife of the farmer heading west in their covered wagon whom Scott helps and travels with, before it all arrives at a satisfying conclusion. Scott and Russell have some nicely understated scenes together, before Marvin goes off like a firework. I like this one a lot, and must watch out for more of these Scott westerns (like COMMANCHE STATION, THE TALL T, BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, RIDE LONESOME etc)  and anything featuring Gail Russell. The young Stuart Whitman is here too.