100 Greatest Movies of the 70's: 41. All the President's Men

Worth checking out. Doubly so if you like Bowie.

 

72. Marathon Man

Marathon Man is a 1976 thriller film based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman. The film was directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Laurence Olivier. The original music score was composed by Michael Small.

Marathon Man was not the first feature film production to use the Steadicam (the distinction going to Bound for Glory). However, it was the first feature using Steadicam that saw theatrical release, predating the premieres of both Bound for Glory and Rocky.

Thomas Levy (Dustin Hoffman), nicknamed "Babe" in the film, is a history Ph.D. candidate researching the same field as his father, who committed suicide after being investigated during the Joseph McCarthy era. Babe is also an avid runner, which lends the film its title. Babe's brother, Henry (Roy Scheider), better known as "Doc", poses as an oil company executive but in fact is a U.S. government agent working for a secret agency headed up by Director Peter Janeway (William Devane). Babe is not aware of his brother's true occupation.

Doc is often supposedly out of the country on business for extended periods of time but comes to New York under the guise of a visit to Babe. The brother of a Nazi war criminal possesses a safety deposit box key, but is killed in a traffic accident (after a road rage altercation with a short tempered middle-aged Jewish American motorist). Doc suspects that the criminal, Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) will be arriving to retrieve an extremely valuable diamond collection.

Babe enters into a relationship with a young woman named Elsa Opel, who claims to be from Switzerland. One night while out on a date Elsa and Babe are mugged in a park by two men dressed in suits. Some time later, Doc takes the couple to lunch, where he tricks Elsa into revealing that she has been lying to Babe about her background. Though Doc suspects she may have some connection to Szell, he tells Babe only that she is simply seeking an American husband so that she can become a U.S. citizen.

After Szell arrives in America, Doc meets him to tell the former Nazi he is not welcome in the country. Szell casually accepts the pronouncement, but then swiftly knifes Doc, wounding him severely. Doc is able to make it back to his brother's apartment, but collapses and dies in Babe's arms without telling him anything. The police interrogate Babe for hours, until government agents led by Peter Janeway arrive. Janeway asks Babe what Doc told him before he died, and informs Babe of his brother's career as a U.S. government agent. Babe insists that his brother did not tell him anything, but Janeway feels that Doc struggled all the way to Babe's apartment to give him vital information of some kind.

Babe is later abducted from his apartment by Szell's subordinates, Karl and Erhardt (the two men from the park). In an infamous sequence, Babe is tortured by Szell, a skilled dentist, who repeatedly asks "Is it safe?" Confused by the question?a code phrase he does not understand?Babe denies any knowledge, but is tortured. The dentist offers him oil of cloves, an anesthetic, as positive inducement to cooperate. Eventually, Babe loses consciousness and Szell pauses his torture.

Babe is then rescued by Janeway, who apparently kills Szell's bodyguards and takes Babe from Szell's hideout. As he drives, Janeway explains that Szell is in America to sell off his large cache of diamonds, which he had taken from Jews he had exterminated at Auschwitz during World War II. Janeway continually presses Babe about Doc's dying words, but Babe again insists he knows nothing. Frustrated, Janeway reveals himself as a double agent working with the Nazi criminal all along, and he turns Babe over to Karl and Erhardt (Janeway had only faked killing them). Szell, it turns out, is one of Janeway's highest level informants, and had informed on other Nazi war criminals in return for immunity.

Delivered back into Szell's hands, the Nazi has a curiously kindly conversation with Babe before calmly explaining why he is hold

 

It's not really a great film, but it is a rather unique and engaging thriller when it finds its feet. I watched it for Olivier a few years back, and it's easily his most restrained performance of that period - especially compared to his 1978 Oscar nomination...

The dentistry scene really does stay with you though. And Olivier's wrist-blade exploits in New York.

 

It isn't often that you watch a movie and Olivier is the most subtle actor in the bunch. But that's the case here. It is a pretty great thriller. Hoffman is good, Scheider is good and Devane is amusingly scenery chewing. The scene I can't forget is the one where Hoffman is in the bathtub and slowly becomes aware that someone's inside his apartment. Just outside the door. That's really quite intense.

It's not nearly smart enough or nuanced enough to be a work of art. But it's entertaining and involving.

 

71. Macbeth

Macbeth is a 1971 film directed by Roman Polanski, based on William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth, about the Highland lord who becomes King of Scotland through treachery and murder. It features Jon Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth. For cinematic purposes, passages from the original play were cut for time and some soliloquies changed to inner monologues for the sake of psychological realism.

The character of Ross (played by John Stride) is developed far beyond what is mentioned about him in the play. Along with the jarringly downbeat ending and the unconventional portrayal of Lady Macbeth, this embellishment takes considerable liberties with Shakespeare's original work. In the play, Ross is a relatively insignificant and innocuous character; but in Polanski's revision, he is made into an amoral, opportunistic courtier and henchman who becomes a knowing accomplice in Macbeth's schemes once the latter has murdered Duncan and attained the crown, but later betrays his master.

In the film, Ross is first brought to the attention of the audience during Macbeth's coronation ceremony at Scone when he shouts "Hail Macbeth, King of Scotland!" in a very ostentatious manner, and this causes Banquo to look upon him with suspicion. Ironically, in the penultimate scene of the film, when the tables have finally turned, Ross removes the crown from the decapitated head of the slain Macbeth and presents it to the victorious Malcolm, loudly hailing the latter as the new king in precisely the same ostentatious manner as before. The implication is that Ross is totally unprincipled and self-seeking, and his only allegiance is to the one who holds the most power at any given time.

In addition, there are several other notable departures from Shakespeare's text with regard to Ross throughout the course of the film:

In the play, Macbeth has a conversation with an unidentified person who he tells the king of Macduff's refusal to present himself in the Scottish court. However, in the film, Macbeth is directly informed of this by Ross.
In the play, the identity of the third murderer who is sent by Macbeth to kill Banquo is never specified by Shakespeare. Whereas, in the film, Ross is clearly the third murderer of Banquo, sent by Macbeth as separate from the first two murderers. Not only that, but it is Ross, who eventually dispatches the other two hired villains to their deaths in a dungeon when they have outlived their usefulness to the king.
During the banquet scene when Banquo's ghost appears and frightens Macbeth, the brief lines of dialogue each specifically attributed to Lennox and Ross in the play are spoken by exactly the opposite characters in the film?thus making Ross appear somewhat fawning and insincere in his stated concern for the king's health.
In the play, Ross is apparently unaware of the slaughter of Macduff's household at Fife?even though he is the one who takes the news to Macduff, claiming he heard about it from trustworthy sources. But in the film, Ross is an active conspirator who has prior knowledge of the raid on Macduff's castle and deliberately leaves the doors wide open for the assassins to enter and massacre Macduff's family and servants.
Also, in the film, Ross eventually betrays Macbeth only because he is not honored with Macbeth's former title of Thane of Cawdor, a rank symbolized by a ceremonial necklace which the king chooses to bestow upon Seyton instead.

 

The elephant in the room is, of course, the happenings in Polanski's private life prior to the making of this film.

 

I'm glad you brought this up, because if you hadn't, I would have. I saw this film a few years ago, and it's one of the most repulsive things I've ever seen. Polanski's state of mind after his personal tragedies seems to have infected his vision of this Shakespearean tragedy.

And an interesting choice of material for him too. Of all the things in the world Polanski could have done, he chose this. Curious.

 

That's almost been the theme of his whole career, due to his many incidents. I feel his personal life will always overshadow his directing abilities, for right or wrong.

 

Been years since I saw it, but I disliked this quite a bit. Jon Finch was an awful, awful actor.

 

Makes sense to me. "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I think that would kind of be what you'd think about your life after Charles Manson got through with it.

 

70. Seven Beauties
Pasqualino Settebellezze (English title Seven Beauties) is a 1975 Italian language film written and directed by Lina Wertmüller and starring Giancarlo Giannini in the main role. Fernando Rey and Shirley Stoler are also featured. The production design and costume design were by the director's late husband, Enrico Job.

The picaresque story follows its protagonist, Pasqualino (Giannini) who, as a dandy and small-time hood in Naples, to save the family honour, is sent to prison for killing a pimp (and then dissecting the victim and placing the body in suitcases) who had turned Pasqualino's sister into a prostitute. Convicted and sent to prison, Pasqualino succeeds in being transferred to a psychiatric ward. Desperate to get out, he volunteers for the Italian Army, but then somewhere in Germany he deserts with a comrade. They are captured and sent to a concentration camp. There, in a bid to save his own life, Pasqualino decides to gain the sexual favors of the obese and ugly female commandant (Stoler). His plan succeeds, except for the fact that he is then put in charge of the barracks as a kapo, and is obliged to select six men to be killed under the threat that if he doesn't do so, they will all be killed. Pasqualino ends up executing the soldier with whom he was captured and being responsible for the death of another fellow prisoner, a Spanish anarchist. At the war's end, upon his return to Naples, Pasqualino discovers that his seven sisters, his fiancée and even his mother have all survived through prostitution

 

Well, I've heard of it, not seen it. And the summary doesn't sound enticing.

 

69. The Last Detail

The Last Detail is a 1973 American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby with a screenplay adapted by Robert Towne from a novel of the same name by Daryl Ponicsan. The film became known for its frequent use of profanity.

Stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. Navy sailors, Billy "Badass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young) are assigned shore patrol detail to escort young sailor Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) to Portsmouth Naval Prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Meadows has drawn a stiff eight-year sentence for a petty crime: trying to steal $40 from a mite box of the C.O.'s wife's favorite charity. During their train trip up the northeast corridor, the oddly likeable Meadows begins to grow on the two Navy "lifers"; they know the grim reality of the Marine guards at Portsmouth, and feel sorry he'll miss his youth serving his sentence. They decide to show him a good time before delivering him to the brig.

With several days to spare before they are due in Portsmouth, the trio detrains at the major cities along the route to provide bon-voyage adventures for Meadows. In Washington they take him to a bar to have a beer, but are denied because Meadows is too young. Buddusky gets a few six packs and a hotel and the three get drunk. In Philadelphia they seek out Meadows's mother, only to find her away for the day and the house cluttered with empty whiskey bottles. In New York, they take him ice skating at Rockefeller Center and then in Boston, to a brothel to lose his virginity. In between, they brawl with Marines in a public restroom, dine on "the world's finest" Italian sausage sandwich, chant with Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists and open intimate windows for each other in swaying train coaches. Meadows pronounces his several days with Badass and Mule to be the best of his whole life.

When they finally arrive in frozen Portsmouth, Meadows has a final request ? a picnic ? so they buy some hot dogs and attempt a frigid picnic in the crunching snow. Docile Meadows walks along the park, seemingly ready to head to prison. He suddenly bolts, though, in a last-ditch effort to run away. Buddusky runs after him, catches him, and pistol-whips him fiercely upside the head. Mulhall and Buddusky then brusquely take Meadows to the prison, execute the Navy paperwork, and after being released from their detail, they stride away angrily, berating the marines they have encountered at the prison ? and about how hopefully their orders will come through when they get back to Norfolk.

 

Haven't seen this movie. It has a good reputation, especially for the performances.

 

68. A Woman Under the Influence

A Woman Under the Influence is a 1974 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It focuses on a woman whose psychotic behavior leads her confused husband to commit her for psychiatric treatment, leaving the family even more dysfunctional than before.


Los Angeles housewife and mother Mabel Longhetti loves her construction worker husband Nick and desperately wants to please him, but the strange mannerisms and increasingly odd behavior she displays while in the company of others has him concerned. Convinced she has become a threat to herself and others, he reluctantly commits her to an institution, where she undergoes treatment for six months. Left alone with his three children, Nick proves to be neither wiser nor better than his wife in the way he relates to and interacts with them or accepts the role society expects him to play.

John Cassavetes was inspired to write A Woman Under the Influence when wife Gena Rowlands expressed a desire to appear in a play about the difficulties faced by contemporary women. His completed script was so intense and emotional she knew she would be unable to perform it eight times a week, so he decided to adapt it for the screen. When he tried to raise funding for the project, he was told, "No one wants to see a crazy, middle-aged dame."

Lacking studio financing, Cassavetes mortgaged his house and borrowed from family and friends, one of whom was Peter Falk, who liked the screenplay so much he invested $500,000 in the project.[1] The crew consisted of professionals and students from the American Film Institute, where Cassavetes was serving as the first "filmmaker in residence" at their Center for Advanced Film Studies. Working with a limited budget forced him to shoot scenes in a real house near Hollywood Boulevard, and Rowlands was responsible for her own hairstyling and makeup.

Upon completion of the film, Cassavetes was unable to find a distributor, so he personally called theater owners and asked them to run the film. According to college student Jeff Lipsky, who was hired to help distribute the film, "It was the first time in the history of motion pictures that an independent film was distributed without the use of a nationwide system of sub-distributors." It was booked into art houses and shown on college campuses, where Cassavetes and Falk discussed it with the audience.[1] It was shown at the San Sebastián Film Festival, where Rowlands was named Best Actress and Cassavetes won the Silver Shell Award for Best Director, and the New York Film Festival, where it captured the attention of film critics like Rex Reed. When Richard Dreyfuss appeared on The Mike Douglas Show with Peter Falk, he described the film as "the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie" and added, "I went crazy. I went home and vomited," which prompted curious audiences to seek out the film capable of making Dreyfuss ill.

 

Shampoo is a 1975 satirical film written by Robert Towne and directed by Hal Ashby. It stars Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn, with Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Tony Bill and Carrie Fisher.

The film is set in 1968, the day Richard Nixon was first elected to the White House, and was released soon after the Watergate scandal had reached its messy conclusion. The political atmosphere provides a source of dramatic irony, since the audience, but not the characters, are aware of the direction the Nixon presidency would eventually take. However, the main theme of the film is not presidential politics but sexual politics; it is renowned for its sharp satire of late-1960s sexual and social mores.

The lead character, George Roundy, is reportedly based on several actual hairdressers, including Jay Sebring and film producer Jon Peters, who is a former hairdresser. According to the 2010 book Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America by Peter Biskind, the screenwriter Towne based the character on Beverly Hills hairdresser Gene Shacove

Shampoo is set during a 24-hour period in 1968, on the eve of a presidential election that would result in Richard Nixon's election to the American presidency. George Roundy (Warren Beatty) is a successful Beverly Hills hairdresser, whose occupation and charisma have provided him the perfect platform from which to meet, and bed, beautiful women, including his current girlfriend Jill (Goldie Hawn).

Despite this, George is dissatisfied with his professional life; he is clearly the creative star of the salon, but is forced to play second fiddle to the "nickel-and-diming," mediocre hairdresser who owns the place. He dreams of setting up his own salon business, but lacking the cash to do so, turns to wealthy lover Felicia (Lee Grant) and her unsuspecting husband Lester (Jack Warden) to bankroll him. George's meeting with Lester supplies a second secret for him to keep from his would-be benefactor: Lester's current mistress, Jackie (Julie Christie), is George's former girlfriend, perhaps the most serious relationship he has ever had.

Lester, who assumes George is gay, invites him to escort Jackie to a Republican Party election night soiree, at which George finds himself in the same room as a number of present and former sexual partners. The principals adjourn to a posh counterculture party, and the night quickly descends into drugs, alcohol and sexual indulgence. In the film's dramatic climax, Lester and Jill happen upon George and Jackie having vigorous sex on a kitchen floor. Just before their identities are revealed, an impressed Lester speaks the memorable line: "Now, that's what I call ****ing!" When Jill recognizes the writhing couple, she throws a chair at them; as George backpedals, trying to placate Jill, Jackie sees him for the cad he is, and flees.

George realizes that Jackie is his true love and proposes to her. By then, however, it is too late: Jackie announces that Lester is divorcing Felicia and taking Jackie to Acapulco. With Felicia gone, Jill gone, and now Jackie gone, the film thus pairs sexual revelation with George's deeper moral development, but ends bleakly for the protagonist, despite his epiphany (during his climax).

 

This hasn't held up well at all. Good use of "Wouldn't It Be Nice," though. And a very strong ending.

 

Beatty's performance is pretty great, I think. The film has dated, but Beatty is very good as a shallow, superficial cad. Just an all around dolt, basically.

 

Almost a sociological document of that era's California lifestyle and politics.

A film perhaps most noteworthy as the first significant film appearance of Carrie Fisher at age 18. She's pretty good in it. I'd love to have heard the offscreen conversations between Carrie and Warren.

I have long felt Warren was basically playing himself in this.

With Felicia gone, Jill gone, and now Jackie gone, the film thus pairs sexual revelation with George's deeper moral development, but ends bleakly for the protagonist, despite his epiphany (during his climax).

Epiphany + Climax = Wow. Now that's dramatic storytelling! What kind of climax though?

 

66. The Last Wave

The Last Wave is a 1977 Australian film directed by Peter Weir.[1] It is about a white Australian lawyer whose seemingly normal life is disrupted after he takes on a murder case for Aborigine defendants. He discovers that he shares a strange and unexplained mystical connection to the small group of local Australian Aborigines accused of the crime.

The film opens with a montage of scenes of daily life in Australia in the 1970s: a rural school in the desert, the main street of an outback town, a traffic jam in the city, all being affected by unusually adverse weather conditions that suddenly appear. Only the local Aboriginals seem to recognize the cosmological significance of these weather phenomena.

During one of these "freak rainstorms" in Sydney, an altercation occurs among a group of Aboriginals in a pub, which results in the mysterious death of one of them. At the coroner's inquest, the unexplained death is ruled a homicide and four men are accused of murder. Through the Australian Legal Aid system, a lawyer is procured for their defence. The circumstances by which he was contacted and retained are unusual, in that his law practice is corporate taxation and not criminal. He nonetheless takes on the case, and immediately his professional and personal life begin to unwind.

Plagued by recurring bizarre dreams, the lawyer begins to sense an "otherworldly" connection to one of the accused. He also feels connected to the increasingly strange weather phenomena besetting the city. His dreams intensify along with his obsession with the murder case (which he comes to believe is an Aboriginal tribal killing by curse, in which the victim believed). Learning more about Aboriginal practices and the concept of Dreamtime as a parallel world of existence, the lawyer comes to believe the strange weather bodes of a coming apocalypse.

The film climaxes in a confrontation between the lawyer and the tribe's shaman in a subterranean sacred site beneath the city. Overcoming the shaman, the lawyer escapes to the surface to warn about the Last Wave. Seeing a huge wave looming high above Sydney, he collapses in despair in the last shot.

 

Crazy stuff. Thing is, it has some degree of respect in its approach to Aboriginal culture (even if they're killing everything under the sun.)

Unlike Australia.

 

65. Sleeper

Sleeper is a 1973 futuristic science fiction comedy film, written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, and directed by Allen. The plot involves the adventures of the owner of a Greenwich Village, NY health food store played by Woody Allen who is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and defrosted 200 years later in an inept totalitarian state. The film contains several plot points which parody or spoof several well-known works of science-fiction, most notably H. G. Wells's The Sleeper Awakes and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Miles Monroe, a jazz musician and owner of the Happy Carrot Health-Food store living in Manhattan in 1973, is cryonically frozen without his consent, and not revived for 200 years. The scientists who revive him are members of an underground movement: 22nd-century America seems to be a police state ruled by a dictator, about to implement a secret plan known as the "Aires Project" (sic). The underground movement hopes to use Miles as a spy to infiltrate the Aires Project, because he is the only member of this society without a known biometric identity.

The authorities catch onto the scientists' project, and arrest them; Miles escapes by disguising himself as a robot. He goes to work as a butler in the house of socialite Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton). When Luna decides to have her "robot's" head replaced with something more "aesthetically pleasing," Miles has no choice but to reveal his true identity to her. Luna is shocked, frightened, and threatens to turn Miles in to the authorities. In response, he kidnaps her and goes on the run, searching for the Aires Project.

Miles and Luna start to fall in love, but Miles is captured and forced to undergo brainwashing. He forgets that he comes from 1973, and becomes a complacent member of futuristic society. Meanwhile, Luna finds a group of commando-rebels and joins the underground movement. The rebels kidnap Miles and force him to undergo reverse-brainwashing, whereupon he remembers his past and joins their efforts.

Miles and Luna successfully infiltrate the Aires Project: they learn that the Leader was killed by a rebel bomb ten months previously, and all that survives is his nose. The nose has been kept alive, and the members of the Aires Project, mistaking Miles and Luna for doctors, want them to clone the leader from this single remaining part. Instead, Miles steals the nose and "assassinates" it by squashing it under a steamroller.

 

It's Allen in his early mode; more comedy and less drama. That's a good thing from where I stand. He lifts from Keaton a lot here, but does it pretty well. It's not as good as Bananas, but it's funny.

 

Isn't it odd that when Allen collaborates with someone--like Brickman--it's always 'his' work? Same with Welles.

 

64. The Hospital

The Hospital is a 1971 black comedy film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring George C. Scott as Dr. Herbert Bock. The script was written by Paddy Chayefsky, who was awarded the 1972 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

The film is set in a teaching hospital in Manhattan and centers around Dr. Bock (George C Scott), the Chief of Medicine, whose life is in disarray: his wife has left him, his children don't talk to him, and his once-beloved teaching hospital is falling apart.

The hospital suffers from the sudden deaths of two doctors and a nurse. These are attributed to coincidental or unavoidable failures to provide treatment.

At the same time, administrators must deal with a protest against the hospital's annexation of an adjacent apartment building. The annexation is to be used for a drug rehabilitation center; the building's current occupants demand that the hospital find them replacement housing before the building is demolished.

As Dr. Bock complains of impotence and has thoughts of suicide, he falls for Barbara Drummond (Diana Rigg), a patient's daughter. This temporarily gives Dr. Bock something to live for.

The deaths are discovered to have initiated by Barbara's father, as retribution for the "inhumanity" of modern medical treatment. Drummond's victims would have been saved if they'd received prompt, appropriate treatment -- but they didn't. Dr. Bock and Barbara use a final, accidental death of a doctor at the hospital to cover Drummond's tracks, and Barbara and Drummond head to the airport.