The 1973 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1973

VOTE THROUGH MAY 31

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

[swo17]

Is F for Fake a 1973 title? I don't see it on the list.

I'd had it as 1975 but I see various sources calling it a 1973 film including festival and non-festival releases in Spain. I can move it here

[ballmouse]

Is F for Fake a 1973 title? I don't see it on the list.

I'd had it as 1975 but I see various sources calling it a 1973 film including festival and non-festival releases in Spain. I can move it here

I got the same info after I made my post, so I deleted my original question. I am fine with it in 1975.

[swo17]

This Wellesnet article details a couple other 1973 screenings besides the ones IMDb lists, so I am actually inclined to move it here

[Rayon Vert]

Can you add Una breve vacanza by De Sica?

[swo17]

Added, thanks!

[yoshimori]

I'd like to vote for Narushima Toichiro's Seigen-ki [Time Remembered], if you can add that one. Narushima was a cinematographer for Oshima (Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence) and Shinoda (Double Suicide) and his own film here. Takemitsu Toru wrote the music. Worth searching out if those names are meaningful to you.

I may also vote for Matsumoto Toshio's Juroku-sai no senso [War of the 16-Year-Olds], if you can add that one too. Not his best work, but ...

Would also recommend Yoshida Yoshishige's Kaigenrei [Coup d'état] as in the league with Don't Look Now, Badlands, The Long Goodbye, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

[swo17]

I've added the Narushima. All I can find about the Matsumoto suggests it was shot in 1973 but not released until 1976. Do you have any information about a 1973 screening or about it perhaps being ready for release in 1973 but then suppressed?

[the preacher]

Please add Amir Naderi's TANGSIR and Bernard L. Kowalski's SSSSSSS.

[swo17]

Done

[therewillbeblus]

Black Caesar: My memory's fuzzy on all the blaxploitation films I watched about a decade ago, but if this isn't at the top somebody needs to point me in the direction of what is. I find the best blaxploitation films to be ones that transcend the perfunctory staples of the subgenre to ask rhetorical questions of the audience. Fred Williamson's Tommy Gibbs is enigmatically drawn as a product of his environment without didactically falling back on a simplified form of sympathy. He exists and persists in a fundamentally corrupt milieu that prescribes the fate of compromised morality- and as we watch him exercise unethical behavior, the characteristics he chooses to self-actualize with are ambivalently left as both strengths and complacent deficits.

In the few films I've seen of his thus far, Cohen has demonstrated that he opts to lean his sensitivities towards non-whites in social pictures, and clearly takes pleasure in watching Gibbs ambush white mobsters and corrupt police officers, assimilating to their empty codes of conduct, while shrugging off their surprise at his bold actions aimed to achieve equality or even supersede their power. In these cathartic scenes, Gibbs chalks his unethical maneuvers up to racial stereotypes in a cheeky condescending goading, outright shaming these white people, as they should have 'known better'. However, there's an irreversible misfortune embedded in this proclamation that necessitates a diffusion of identity and culture to engage in their world, a devastating implication that only by playing into unfair stereotypes can Gibbs communicate his strengths, and these actions ultimately dilute his sense of self and make him no better than them in the process, deserving a fate no different, or better. Gibbs' offering to his mother early on is a careful bout of compassion that indicates that he's trying to have his cake and eat it too- succumbing to the white capitalist culture-less world, and also attempting to hold onto his community's values of reciprocity for his blood, taking care of his mother divorced from her attitude towards him.

This cannot be sustained though, and Cohen portrays this narrative as one of empowerment contingent on the loss of self, all bottled up into this coating of supreme entertainment, which cannot keep these determinist tragedies from exploding. The narrative time stamps seem superfluous until we get the final one to end the film, and in an aloof shot of the city we're hit with a profound and unsettling sense of meaninglessness- a date and time to define this life insignificantly, as just another story in just another day in a world of inevitable isolation, existential concession, and failure. James Brown's score and the vibrant camerawork bring this film to life in ways I wish more 70s films would, and which God Told Me To would amplify in just a few years. Gibbs' character is one of the more interesting antiheroes I've seen in a film wearing the false clothes of a crime programmer; someone I was drawn to, repelled from, rooted for, and knew was destined to earn the fate his active shedding of dignity would carve out for him- a complex statement that says nothing easy or specific, and is all the more powerful for that refusal to summarize depth, while simultaneously and paradoxically stepping in to meet the audience on their superficial terms.

I just watched Hell Up in Harlem, Larry Cohen's sequel to the superior Black Caesar (also released in '73 - that was quick! Writeup posted above), and while it's nowhere near as thematically compelling or schematically coherent as the first film, there's plenty to like here, even if most of what works lies in the absurdity divorced from narrative heft. There's a spectacular 'storm the beach' raid scene where the black gangsters infiltrate a beachfront party of white-collar political gangster. It's a perversely wild set piece, with some wonderful touches in assistance from 'the help', and balances the silliness with acute severity of violence admirably well. You'll be disappointed if you expect this to recapture the complex, rich portrait from the first film (which, despite the depth I touch upon above, is just as fun as this follow-up), but it's a fine way to spend an afternoon

I hope more people jump on the Larry Cohen train as this decade continues - his best film, Bone, only got two votes last month... I know a lot of people on this board are interested in provocatively progressive race relations in cinema, so I have to imagine a lack of engagement with these works has more to do with lack of access vs interest (though looking at the vacant threads of Criterion's PoC-focused releases from the last few years is disheartening to say the least)

[therewillbeblus]

I just accidentally watched two George Segal films back to back, both strong romantic comedies that may slide into the tail end of my list. A Touch of Class takes the extramarital affair melodrama and pitches it as a comedy, getting some good, honestly-dry social gags out of the fumbling deceit necessitating the birth of their love into being, before turning into something much more resonant. Blume in Love is at once a stark satirical study of the elite liberal zeitgeist in early-70s L.A. trying to 'figure themselves out', and an earnest, absurdist romantic-chase flick, as Segal tries to win back a woman from a man he can't dislike, who may not really quite belong with either of them. But in typical Mazursky fashion, he respectfully takes no position on a matter so personal and instead attends to the unconditional merits in each person's experience, often through focusing on the richness of details. Mazursky is so good at seeking out seemingly trivial moments of silly awkwardness and intimate bliss and agonizing discomfort that would exist in the margins of a 'normal' movie of its ilk, and honoring their value in the process of approaching them with genuine curiosity. [Also, there's a very... implicitly dark turn that's loosely engaged with in a startlingly light way, while also completely aware of the problematic nature of the events (70s contempt looked a bit different than today's) - I think fans of Chilly Scenes of Winter and other films of its type that plant themselves between the pathetic and empathetic may get something out of seeing the situation played out to its logical (read: most probable) extreme.]

[swo17]

This is quite the year for Đorđe Kadijević--all three of his mini-features included in the All the Haunts Be Ours set are from this year. Štićenik is my favorite, a very effective mood piece thanks to the stark B&W cinematography and memorable score

[knives]

Thought I had posted my recent thoughts here, but guess not. Well, no time like the present to catch up.

Di Leo’s The Boss isn’t as good as The Italian Connection, but makes up for it with some gonzo styling. This is the only film I’ve seen to make the energy and power of Japanese Yakuza films. At time the film plays like a Beat Kitano film with Silva’s silent hitman being a good fit for Kitano himself.

Speaking of Yakuza flicks, I’m hoping to get further in the Battles Without series and am at the second film. It’s not as exciting and new feeling as the first, but it still has a potency that prevents it from being lackluster.

Three Wishes for Cinderella is quite possibly the best live action fairy tale I’ve seen. Certainly the best variation on Cinderella. It’s gorgeous to look at with a style that is at once conservative and completely foreign to earth. In that respect it reminds me of those DEFA, who co-produced, fairy tales although this works harder to make a film that lives beyond being a retelling.

What a retelling it is though. A lot of the modern complaints against Cinderella is cured giving a lot of strength to the central romance. The prince meets with her several times with different aspects being revealed at each moment. Their first meeting shows her circumstance, the second the masculine side of her personality in the film’s most exciting scene, and finally at the ball her feminine side which cements his love and care. Cinderella as full fledged person with a gross of personality works really well and guarantees this as a future household favorite.

[swo17]

Thank you for reminding me of Three Wishes for Cinderella which I had neglected to include in the eligibility list. It's there now

[knives]

Gladly done. It’s the one film I really am now hoping people run to for the month.

[the preacher]

Just noticed Les mille et une mains is missing, a title I would like to vote for.

[Rayon Vert]

I just remembered there's a few extremely sleazy exploitation films I've seen recently that I've enjoyed (for all the wrong reasons of course!) and usually don't think to consider for lists like these, but my list for this year is kind of short. One is The Candy Snatchers that's in this list, but another is Schoolgirls in Chains (Don Jones). Is it possible to add it?

(I should have voted for Bonnie's Kids for the previous year.)

[swo17]

All added, thanks

[the preacher]

I just remembered there's a few extremely sleazy exploitation films I've seen recently that I've enjoyed (for all the wrong reasons of course!) and usually don't think to consider for lists like these, but my list for this year is kind of short. One is The Candy Snatchers that's in this list, but another is Schoolgirls in Chains (Don Jones). Is it possible to add it?

(I should have voted for Bonnie's Kids for the previous year.)

Interesting. Only The Candy Snatchers was released here.

[Rayon Vert]

It seems it was a Video Nasty in the UK, so maybe its release was limited in certain countries. I mean The Candy Snatchers is much better, and Schoolgirls is really depraved - but for some reason it's off-kilter enough (the mom with her son stuff), and a mixture of realistic and cartoonish, so that I didn't find it depressing, in contrast to the opening of The Last House on the Left which turns my stomach. I wouldn't mistake this for a good film (!), but in the right setting with the right (wrong?) mindset it was a good time!

(It's well-shot film* also and this guy rhapsodizes over it as a complex grindhouse-meets-art film. I'd have to see it again to bounce off that!)

(*Ron Garcia the cinematographer when on to work with David Lynch, incl. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.)

[swo17]

The Art of Mirrors (Derek Jarman)
Not sure if I'll actually end up voting for this since it's an ingredient in the soup of next year's eligible In the Shadow of the Sun, but it sure is one spicy meatball!


Figure instabili nella vegetazione (Paolo Gioli)
A mirror film like Papillon d'amour though this of course preceded Provost by a lot. It's also more frenetically paced, rapidly toggling between various scenes and their negatives to very cool effect. Figure instabili indeed.


The Trip (Kihachirō Kawamoto)
Just casually eating babies...







János vitéz (Marcell Jankovics)
I'd had this pegged as perhaps some rote kids' film folk tale, but it's actually pretty inventive and weird. I watched it with my mom, who loves most anything Hungarian, and she asked me at one point "So is this an arthouse film?" I wasn't quite sure how to respond.

Hard Labour (Mike Leigh)
Jeanne Dielman is a structuralist masterpiece but if you find that part alienating or are primarily drawn in by its feminist critiques and wish to see them in a more traditional and realistic framework, this could be the film for you! A cast of colorful characters (including a very young Ben Kingsley) surround the lead actress, who mostly just hovers in the background cleaning to make it through her days. You might say she "explodes" in the end, though in a very understated and relatable way. This was Leigh's first "Play for Today" though it doesn't feel all that stagebound.

The Illumination (Krzysztof Zanussi)
Has Second Run given this enough of a push to be on all your radars? Like the slept-on Structure of Crystal, this deals with academic pursuits and the lifelong search for meaning in a really intelligent way and with a deft aesthetic touch. It also adds a layer of wistfulness knowing that the lead actor died just a year later in a mountain climbing accident, which mirrors a plot point from the film.


The Stone Wedding (Mircea Veroiu & Dan Piţa)
This was one of my spotlight titles the last time around, and it managed to resonate with enough other people to make the final list, but I fear all those people have since died or whatever. For all those of you who are still alive, here is a brief synopsis of the film's plot in images:







Duvidha (Mani Kaul)
And this was my other prior spotlight title. More pretty pictures:

[therewillbeblus]

Three Wishes for Cinderella is quite possibly the best live action fairy tale I’ve seen. Certainly the best variation on Cinderella. It’s gorgeous to look at with a style that is at once conservative and completely foreign to earth. In that respect it reminds me of those DEFA, who co-produced, fairy tales although this works harder to make a film that lives beyond being a retelling.

What a retelling it is though. A lot of the modern complaints against Cinderella is cured giving a lot of strength to the central romance. The prince meets with her several times with different aspects being revealed at each moment. Their first meeting shows her circumstance, the second the masculine side of her personality in the film’s most exciting scene, and finally at the ball her feminine side which cements his love and care. Cinderella as full fledged person with a gross of personality works really well and guarantees this as a future household favorite.

I liked this too, partially because it's so playful (literally) and inviting, but also because of the insights you point to around their relationship being one of gently-shifting power dynamics in romantic games, inspiring a richer evolution that makes it feel earned and relatable.

[swo17]

Ana y los lobos (Carlos Saura)
My list for this year was looking a little light so I was perusing the eligibility list for ideas and found this one on Criterion Channel, so gave it a shot. Perhaps like a mix of Teorema and Deep End, Geraldine Chaplin's character arrives at a remote country villa and proceeds to enchant all the men that live there. Unfortunately for her, all of them are wolves. For instance, this one (seemingly her favorite) is obsessed with her hair:


Those reference points might be overselling it a little, but this is still a nice slow burn of a film that only in retrospect leaves you realizing that you've been charred beyond repair

[Black Hat]

The Illumination (Krzysztof Zanussi)
Has Second Run given this enough of a push to be on all your radars? Like the slept-on Structure of Crystal, this deals with academic pursuits and the lifelong search for meaning in a really intelligent way and with a deft aesthetic touch. It also adds a layer of wistfulness knowing that the lead actor died just a year later in a mountain climbing accident, which mirrors a plot point from the film.

They haven't. That The Illumination isn't so well known in cinephilic circles is a headscratcher. A really incredible film everyone here should watch.