The Great Silence (1968)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Great Silence (1968) – S. Corbucci

Wintry Spaghetti Western (that takes place in “Utah” in 1898) featuring Jean-Louis Trintignant (what a career!) as a mute gunfighter (Silence) with a vendetta against bounty hunters working within a cruel law (soon to be rescinded) that allows them to massacre “outlaws” wanted dead or alive.  Klaus Kinski plays the most devious and brutal of the bounty hunters (called Tigrero in the subtitled Italian version I watched, but Loco elsewhere), piling up corpses for the hefty reward money. The new sheriff in town (Frank Wolff) sympathises with the ragtag group of outlaws hiding in the hills just outside of Snow Hill and finds a way to arrest Kinski, with plans to transport him to a larger prison. Meanwhile, Pauline (Vonetta McGee), widow of a recently killed outlaw, solicits Silence’s help in getting revenge.  We already know he’s the fastest gun in the area, encouraging the bad bounty hunters to draw first so he can kill them in self-defence. Eventually, there’s a showdown.  Ennio Morricone’s score really adds to the action, heightening those trudges through the deep snow (on foot or on steed) and cinematic vistas (matched by the many huge head close-ups that director Sergio Corbucci favours). The ending is astonishing but historically accurate (I think).  Moody and somehow majestic.  

 

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Night of the Living Dead (1968) – G. Romero

The first thing that Romero’s original low-budget zombie flick has going for it is that you feel that it could really be happening – the characters do the things you expect them to do, if facing this (otherwise implausible) scenario. The second thing is that Romero manages to sneak some social commentary (chiefly about race relations) into what would have been expected to be just grindhouse fare. The third thing is Pittsburgh – it just feels like a place where a zombie manifestation could happen.  Dawn of the Dead, the first sequel, may be even better, although the franchise loses steam after that.  If you’ve only seen its more recent descendents (or remakes), you really owe it to yourself to check out the opening salvo.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – S. Kubrick

I’ve watched this so many times over the years but, on this occasion, it seemed even more lyrical than before, the many wordless sequences (backed with classical compositions from Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, or Ligeti) in Super Panavision widescreen (albeit on my 55” TV) creating absorbing moods (of tranquility or alternately, disorientation or terror). Director Stanley Kubrick collaborated with writer Arthur C. Clarke (based on his 1948 short story, “The Sentinel”) to develop the screenplay which contemplates how alien intelligence may have intervened to influence human evolution (via a giant black monolith). The film falls loosely into three parts: 1) australopithecines find the monolith and learn to use tools; 2) early 21^st century humans discover another monolith buried on the moon which emits a signal aimed at the planet Jupiter – astronauts are sent there to investigate; 3) one astronaut experiences another transformation.  Of course, the longest sequence (the second) is the most well-known and features HAL 9000, the artificially intelligent computer which becomes paranoid after the astronauts, played by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, discover that it made a mistake. The final sequence drove some patrons out of the theatre back in the Sixties and continues to create a quizzical reaction. However, viewed as an experimental film, using analog techniques, it is pretty sublime (and eventually returns to the narrative, sort of). Indeed, the major achievement here is undoubtedly the painstaking craftmanship that went into creating the spacecraft (and illusion of space) with analogue methods (lots of models). Kubrick’s perfectionism may have driven some crazy but it achieved a masterpiece.

Shame (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Shame (1968) – I. Bergman

The ordering of discs in Criterion’s Bergman blu-ray boxset sees Shame (1968) following Hour of the Wolf (also 1968) and arriving not long after Scenes from a Marriage (1973) and Saraband (2003), all films that feature marital discord.  This really shines a light on the central couple’s relationship during this viewing of Shame, a relationship which also begins to fall apart as the characters played by Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow experience the stresses of a civil war in their country (and locally on their small island).  Unlike these other films, Bergman’s focus here is really on the collateral damage caused by war on innocent third parties (the Vietnam war was going on at the time). He mostly leaves the political dimension aside but shows us the manifestations of war on the lives of those on the island.  Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow’s characters are forced to act pragmatically as they encounter soldiers from each side of the battle and leaders who seek to exert (and misuse) their power over others.  Soon, Eva and Jan find themselves compromising their own moral beliefs in order to survive.  The film is dark and doesn’t pull its punches.  Despite the main characters being concert musicians, there is no music on the soundtrack – in the special features, Bergman suggests that the film shows a time after music, where music no longer exists.  Indeed, he implies that the arts are another casualty of war, that they can’t solve the problems that result in violence.  If this wasn’t Bergman, you might think that this film was a cry in the dark, hoping that the powers that be were listening – but Bergman is too pessimistic for that to be the case.   

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Hour of the Wolf (1968) – I. Bergman

I had this on videocassette for many years but it seems almost like a different film now on blu-ray and rescued from my decaying memory traces.  I did not recall that the story is essentially told by Alma Borg (Liv Ullmann), filling in the gaps of the narrative from the details revealed in her husband’s diary (Johan Borg played by Max von Sydow).  He is an artist, a tortured artist who may be coming apart at the seams.  They are holidaying on an island in the Swedish archipelago.  During his time out painting, Johan begins to meet and interact with other residents on the island, who live in a large castle (and perhaps they represent his patrons and critics).  He develops an antagonistic relationship with them and in recounting them to Alma, he makes them sound exactly like demons.  In truth, one of them is the spitting image of Bela Lugosi and all of them seem perverse or perverted.  Or perhaps this is all in Johan’s head – we can never really be sure whether they are just figments of his imagination or not (except that Alma does seem to be present when they are around on some occasions).  Johan becomes increasingly haunted and stops sleeping at night (including during the Hour of the Wolf when it is said that more people die than at any other time).  In one of their late night sessions, Johan tells Alma of a recent experience (shot in flashback in stark high contrast bleached out b&w) where he was followed by a young boy who wouldn’t leave him alone until Johan felt so antagonised that he killed the boy; of course, it is hard not to think of the boy as Johan’s younger self and the dialogue often suggests splintering or loss of identity.  Eventually Johan has a violent break with reality, shoots his gun at Alma, and flees.  We are left only with Alma’s version of events and the diary.  One reviewer even suggested that this is all part of Alma’s imagination!  In any case, Bergman manages to wed his interest in the artist’s place in society (here an object of possibly unwanted attention and judgment) with some of the imagery of the gothic horror film (ravens make an appearance). Perhaps this doesn’t rank with the all-time classics from the Swedish master (the characters remain too distant from us) but it isn’t like anything else you’ve seen.

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

The Devil Rides Out (1968) – T. Fisher

Hammer Films hired Richard Matheson (adept in the horror/supernatural genre) to adapt Dennis Wheatley’s novel about Satan worshippers for the screen. The result takes for granted that evil powers exist and that men (such as Aleister Crowley) could tap into them and use them for their own purposes after much study of the ancient arts.  In this film, that man is Mocata (Charles Gray) but he also appears (called Karswell) in my favourite film of this genre, Curse of the Demon (1957), played by Niall MacGinnis.  The editing in The Devil Rides Out is tight and often cuts out the exposition – we jump right in to find that the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) are worried about a friend who has been keeping too much to himself.  They drop by his house to discover that he has recently joined a Satanic circle and then the plot launches from there, as Richleau and Van Ryn tangle with evil in an attempt to rescue their friend Simon and another girl Tanith before they are baptised on the evil Sabbath.  The film blends references to arcane rituals with spooky (though fake-looking) special effects with rip-roaring adventure story action.  Christopher Lee is his usual commanding presence – and fortunately he is on the side of good, rather than evil; otherwise, the Goat of Mendes might have won.  As usual, the Hammer production values are top notch (those amazing cars and mansions) and this is one of their best releases. 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – S. Kubrick

Kubrick’s take on sci-fi is a masterwork of technical achievement.  Just think:  all of the special photographic effects are pre-digital, done with models, matte paintings, trick shots, etcetera.  It boggles the mind and more so since these effects hold up even in the face of today’s easier digital manipulation where the laws of physics no longer apply.  Kubrick’s notorious perfectionist streak and obsessive attention to detail really pay off.  However, the film is also a cracked take on evolutionary theory (involving the intervention of intelligent alien life, one supposes) that loses coherence as the film proceeds to its concluding “Jupiter and Beyond” (stargate) hallucination sequence.  But the two middle sections, involving, first, Dr. Heywood Floyd’s trip to the moon and, then, Dave and Frank’s mission to Jupiter with paranoid supercomputer HAL-9000 are really the heart of the movie. Watching again, it is impressive that very little actually happens despite the film’s 140 minute length.  The plot is glued together with hypnotic scenes of outer space movement (space ships and astronauts drifting), set to classical music (by Strauss, by Strauss) and scenes with the black monolith, eerily (and illegally) scored by Ligeti.  So, the “space between” means almost as much as the narrative elements do and somehow this makes the film pass quickly.  In a word: timeless. 

Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1968) – A. Resnais

Perhaps taking a cue from his friend Chris Marker, Alain Resnais tackles time travel in his fifth fiction feature.  A bunch of scientists convince Claude Rich to serve as their guinea pig in a risky experiment after a failed suicide attempt suggests to them (or their computer) that he might not care if he dies in the process (although mice have survived in the earlier trials).  As intriguing as this is, Resnais takes the premise and makes an even more insane film than you would expect.  It turns out that, rather than spending one discrete minute in the past (a year prior) as intended, Rich gets stuck in an endless loop bouncing around his past.  This allows Resnais to show us various scenes from his life (pre-suicide attempt) in a Burroughs-styled cut-and-pasted jumbled order for the next 60 minutes.  So, this is a film of wall-to-wall non sequiturs and I say keep ‘em coming.  The puzzle to be solved involves piecing together the events of a life from these snippets.  But even if you let the moments wash impressionistically over you, a gestalt still emerges. Perhaps Resnais (who died this year) was trying to represent our fragmented stream-of-consciousness which dips in and out of the past, remembering moments here and there, and consequently influencing our present, emotionally, cognitively, behaviourally -- and doing it with science fiction.  For this, I hereby dub him the grand master of high concept (but truly Resnais’s themes of time, memory, and longing are a key to his greatness).

The Shame (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Shame (1968) – I. Bergman

Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow are civilians who find themselves caught up in war in this astonishingly potent film from Ingmar Bergman.  As the movie opens, we find them alone in their remote island farmhouse. They speak of political tensions and hostilities that seem to have led to some cultural collapse (the symphony orchestra for which they worked has shut down).  But soon convoys of soldiers are rolling through, then fighter planes (which eventually firebomb their area).  After a run-in with the “liberators”, they are rounded up by the “defenders” (my terms) and interrogated (roughly).  They are forced to choose sides and become compromised.  The local resistance group targets them.  Under pressure, they violate their own moral principles.  They fight with each other. Things become bleak and apocalyptic.  In the end, who is ashamed?  Is it God? Is it humankind? Is it world leaders? Is it the characters in the film? Is it you and me? How can such things happen – and continue to happen? 

Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) (1968) – S. Parajanov

What strange artefact is this? What arcane language of symbols and signals is being directed at me, the humble viewer? I find myself totally befuddled but in awe of the majestic imagery created as so many sequential still lives purporting to tell the life history of an Armenian poet (Sayat Nova himself).  He was born, he grew up, he fell in love, he entered a monastery, he died.  However, not a word of dialogue is spoken and the soundtrack instead buzzes with middle eastern sounds and we can read a few scant phrases of his poetry.  Supposedly, those with knowledge of Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian cultures and history can readily decode the mystical and religious messages on display (for example, the pomegranates apparently seep their red juice into a puddle the shape of the former Armenian state) – and these were enough to cause much political trouble for Parajanov in the U. S. S. R. (so much so that the film was cut upon release).  However, the average modern viewer will probably just get hypnotized, as I did.

Teorema (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Teorema (1968) – P. P. Pasolini

I haven’t seen too many Pasolini films (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, The Decameron) and this one is certainly a lot more puzzling than the others.  Terence Stamp plays a mysterious “Visitor” who arrives at the bourgeois home of a factory owner and his family and proceeds to seduce each of them (maid, son, mother, daughter, father). Stamp is eroticized by the camera and the scenes unfold with little or no dialogue.  In fact, the film itself is full of heightened but plain images and little clear narrative structure.  After Stamp departs, each of the seduced characters changes.  Vincent Canby (of the New York Times) suggests that they each experience a sort of “collapse” (seeking to recreate the sexual experience with others or withdrawing into themselves or into art).  The maid becomes a sort of holy saint herself, which has led other reviewers to suggest that Stamp plays a reincarnation of Jesus or another god-like manifestation.  The factory owner gives away his factory to the workers -- either a Christian or Marxist act (forshadowed in the film’s odd opening).  Since Pasolini himself was a gay Marxist Catholic, interweaving these three themes into a puzzle film seems likely to have been his theorem.  More might be imparted by another viewing.

Baisers Voles (Stolen Kisses) (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Baisers Voles (Stolen Kisses) (1968) -- F. Truffaut

Truffaut continues the adventures of Antoine Doinel (and, by implication, his own fictionalized life story) that began with the 400 Blows.  Jean-Pierre Leaud (the same actor) is now in his twenties and returns here as a charming somewhat hapless guy who pursues his girl, Christine, and takes on various unsuccessful jobs (night watchman, TV repairman).  The centerpiece of the film involves his career as a private detective investigating why no one loves Michael Lonsdale's shoestore owner (by Lonsdale's request) and falling in love/lust with Lonsdale's wife (Dephine Seyrig). Truffaut's easygoing style is marked by a number of beautiful shots and fun sequences (the letter travelling the pneumatic tubes, various montages); he manages to  capture an affectionate tone that must be hard to create in reality (since we see it so rarely).

If… (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

If… (1968) -- L. Anderson

Lindsay Anderson's heralded counter-culture film manages to portray a sense of the norms and culture of the British boarding school experience from its very opening scenes.  Then, it shows how arbitrary some of the institutional rules may be and how people in the position to enforce them may act in cruel and irresponsible ways (i.e. power corrupts).  This satirizing sets the stage for resistance and a trio of more independently minded students, led by Malcolm McDowell (impossibly young), take on the establishment.  The film has a slow build and ends with a shock (to which your reaction may show just how desensitized we've become 45 years later).  A tribute in spirit to Jean Vigo's Zero de Conduite (from 1933), also well worth checking out.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Rosemary's Baby (1968) -- R. Polanski

A perennial favorite and one of those films that you wish you could go back and watch for the very first time again.  Polanski provides just enough ambiguity (but not too much) for us to feel that Mia Farrow is, perhaps, going insane -- after all the odds would seem to suggest that outcome is more certain.  But most audiences will know too much and the thrill is in hoping that Satan is real.  You know the story:  actor John Cassavetes and wife move into NYC apartment building (where John Lennon was shot) and meet vivacious older couple (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer in astonishing performances).  Have they seduced the husband into joining their witches' coven? The evidence mounts.  One of the great ones.

Kuroneko (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Kuroneko (1968) -- K. Shindo

Highly stylized (in high contrast black and white) Japanese ghost story that pulls no punches in its portrayal of wronged women who seek revenge (on all samurai) after their deaths.  Of course, the samurai who is charged with defeating them (by his clan leader with the funny mustache) finds himself strangely compromised. Shindo's tale is almost minimalist in its starkness with all the action taking place at the Rashomon gate, the spirits' house of screens and timber, or a dark bamboo grove. A spooky folktale (kaidan).

Rewatched 16/10/2020. This time, in addition to the horror elements, I thought about the historical context and the way the powerful may always exploit the powerless (and the powerless may seek to become powerful and lose their empathy). Also, Freudians won't be disappointed.

Faces (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Faces (1968) – J. Cassavetes

A Cassavetes film is different, it plays by different rules, to its own tune. Sometimes that tune is off-key or the jams go on too long, but it can also soar. Faces is about middle aged people and their (over)reactions to a stale relationship -- they seek out other, younger, partners. See what happens as the older generation encounters the Swingin' 60s (ignoring the datedness of everything). Things get pretty intense.