Wanda (1970)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Wanda (1970) – B. Loden

Intense character study written, starring, and directed by Barbara Loden, her only film.  With no music and shot in that cinema verité documentary style (familiar from the Maysles Brothers) it is easy to think that what you are watching is “real”.  Wanda (Loden) is something of a lost soul (declaring “I’m no good” at one point), wandering (get it?) aimlessly throughout the picture, not seeking out trouble but not avoiding it when it finds her, just trying to get by, it seems.  The film opens in a poor PA mining community with Wanda accepting a divorce from her husband and willingly giving up custody of her two children.  Then we see here move from beer to beer, scrounging money where she can, sleeping with guys who help her out.  She doesn’t say much and perhaps has not much to say.  When she stumbles into a robbery in a bar, she follows the stick-up man to a motel and stays with him even though he is cruel to her.  Perhaps out of loneliness she doesn’t leave when he plans a bank robbery.  When that’s over, she moves on, aimlessly.  An interview I saw with Loden reveals that she felt that Wanda knows “what she doesn’t want” but isn’t sure what she does want.  Most descriptions of the film refer to it as feminist, perhaps because Wanda rejects the expected role for women at the time (mother and housewife) but finds that society offers no other opportunities. 

El Topo (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

El Topo (1970) – A. Jodorowsky

A cult sensation and “Midnight Movie” that brought director Alejandro Jodorowsky (still working at age 90 as of 2019) fame/notoriety and the attention of the Beatles and their resources, El Topo is something of a curiosity in these days of much more grotesque shocks. Despite all the violence and blood (garishly looking like red paint slopped everywhere), the film has more in common with Buñuel’s provocative surrealism than with grindhouse exploitation fare. Jodorowsky himself plays the gunslinger who must defeat four masters to gain enlightenment but who ends up trapped underground with a community of physically disabled outcasts (who he then frees). The shifts in the film are jarring – from mystical acid Western to socio-political attack on religion with some mime thrown in for good measure (Jodorowsky trained with Marcel Marceau!). It doesn’t really make sense but has some great images – every time I started to get bored, another beautiful vista or startlingly weird set-up appeared.  You have to keep asking yourself, who would put this sort of scene in a film – and why? I believe the answer can only be found in Jodorowsky’s deeper consciousness or his autobiography (he’s a metaphysical guy, very interested in the Tarot, as his next better film, The Holy Mountain, would reveal). Of course, El Topo crosses the line of good taste very often and is not for the squeamish or easily offended (Jodorowsky has since apologised for some aspects).

  

Tristana (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tristana (1970) -- L. Bunuel

As Alfred Hitchcock once noted, "That leg!" Bunuel mercilessly mocks social conventions (and questions whether it is possible not to abide by them). (2010 Review)

The Adversary (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Adversary (1970) – S. Ray

Satyajit Ray’s oeuvre includes not only lyrical neorealist classics such as Pather Panchali and the other films of the Apu Trilogy but other films that feel a lot more like psychodramas (e.g., Charulata).  Pratidwandi (The Adversary) falls into this latter category, getting us into the mind of the protagonist, Siddhartha Chaudhuri, as he searches rather hopelessly for a job after giving up on medical school.  We see his resistance to those in authority but we don’t gain much insight into its aetiology. His father has died and he needs to take care of his family but many of his friends seem as aimless as he does (although he seems smarter and more thoughtful).  As his empty fruitless days begin to run together, his mind starts to wander – and we are treated to brief inserts of medical school lectures, “negative” images, and other non-realistic interruptions.  When he accidentally meets a young woman who he could be interested in, he seems to get a grip (although she may be losing hers).  In the end, the episode may have passed, and could be a rite of passage (in fact) or Ray may be commenting on the problems of youth in contemporary society more broadly.  As a moody character study, it works.

  

Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970) – J. Jires

Come explore the erotic and phantasmagorical dream world of a young girl who has just had her first period!  Surreal and hypnotic, this Czech film is full of the beautiful and the weird – and presumably much symbolism.  Valerie lives with her grandmother (who may or may not be a vampire, having pledged her soul to the weasel for a return to youth, temporarily not eternally).  Said weasel may actually be her father (in varying human form, gruesome or handsome) and the father of her suitor/protector (named Eagle). Later, she is ravished by a scary bearded priest who dies but then rises from his coffin unharmed.  Valerie takes it all in stride.  Perhaps she knows this is a dream or perhaps she is confident in the powers of the magic earrings that Eagle has given her for protection.  Now if I’ve made this sound like an actual plot, please forgive me – what we have here is a string of pictures and moments that gently wash over the viewer with no respect at all for narrative conventions.   Choose the right time. 

  

Days and Nights in the Forest (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) – S. Ray

This tale of four young men on a drunken vacation to "the forest" is deceptively simple, but in Satyajit Ray's masterful hands, the story becomes lyrical and complex. Our immature heroes meet two women who are deeper, more tempered by experience, and as a result find themselves transformed. Good thing too, because they started out boorish, careless, and demeaning to those from lower castes than themselves. Full of humid transcendent B&W cinematography.

Bed and Board (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Bed and Board (1970) – F. Truffaut

Truffaut’s gently comic return to Antoine Doinel (his surrogate, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, first featured in The 400 Blows and subsequently in several other features), who is now married and living with Christine (his girlfriend in Stolen Kisses).  He still hasn’t established a consistent career and the two jobs he holds in this film are particularly wacky.  When their son Alphonse is born, Antoine has an affair with a Japanese woman that almost breaks up his marriage.  But again, despite his haplessness and unwillingness to take on responsibility, Truffaut remains affectionate toward him and things end well.  Really, though, it is difficult to imagine the same material working as well in another director’s hands – so warm and welcoming (although some of this should be attributed to Leaud’s presence, I’m sure).

Le Boucher (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Le Boucher (1970) -- C. Chabrol

I'm persuaded that there is more than meets the eye in this Hitchcockian film from Claude Chabrol. For some reason, there is ominous music in some scenes between the Butcher and the Schoolmistress, even when nothing disturbing seems to be going on. They seem to be courting, after meeting at a wedding -- until she stops him cold by indicating that she has forsaken love and romance due to a 10-year-old heartbreak. Yes, he is a rather morose character, always talking about the horrors he saw during a 15 year tour of duty in Algeria and Indochina. When grisly murders start to occur, the Butcher is our only suspect. Does the Schoolmistress think so too? There are suggestions that she does, but she doesn't turn him in. So, deeper, below the surface, Chabrol is interrogating this odd relationship between two types, possibly suggesting strong mutual influences -- the withholding or desire for sex seems important -- even on the murders. But even if there is nothing here but dimestore psychology, the beautiful environs of the Dordogne region of France are splendid to look at.

Claire's Knee (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Claire's Knee (1970) -- E. Rohmer

Perhaps only the French would concoct a movie about a summer place (around a lake) where a 35-to-40 year old man about to get married discusses the possibilities and implications of an affair with a teenage girl.  Perhaps only Eric Rohmer would make such a movie.  The film itself is chaste but evocative.  Jerome stumbles into the plot because he runs into his friend, Aurora, a writer, who is lodging with a single mother of two teen girls (from different fathers, although it matters not).  She wants to experiment with an idea for a novel (about an older man and a teenage girl).  The acting of the principals captures the right blend of awkwardness, especially for Jerome who is very out-of-place at times in the young person's world.  Of course, in a somewhat Bunuellian (or Nabokovian) fashion, the film becomes focused on Claire's knee as an object of desire.  What would be the various meanings or effects of a gentle touch of that knee? A film that unwinds through talk that seems natural enough, though literary in scope, and which pulls you in through the ordinary suspense created when we wonder what people will do when they have moral choices to make. 

Husbands (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Husbands (1970) -- J. Cassavetes

A Cassavetes film is always an intense experience and Husbands is no different.  Subtitled "A comedy about death, life, and freedom", it doesn't seem like a comedy at all, unless you choose to treat the act of living as comedic.  Perhaps it is and we should.  Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and Cassavetes himself are all pretty incredible, exuding raw emotion, laced with confusion and sometimes near delirium.  After the fourth of the friends dies, the remaining three look into the void, take stock, go on a bender, and potentially screw things up with their wives and kids.  As with all of Cassavetes films, there is a loose improvisatory feel here and some scenes go on too long, some exposition is seemingly missing, and you never know what will happen next.  In other words, great.

Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Le Cercle Rouge (1970) -- J.-P. Melville

A long prelude to the actual heist shows us how all the players came to be "in the red circle" at the same time -- Delon just out of jail, Volonte escaping arrest by Bourvil, and Montand in bed with the DTs but ready to go cold turkey.  The heist itself is methodically plotted (and shot). The denouement brings all the vectors together (yes, in the red circle), as Bourvil makes his move. In fact, in this film, Melville seems to spend as much time detailing the cop's position as he does (as is his wont) the crook's. Everyone, on both sides, is tough and cool -- they don't blink, they just get on with it, even when shit happens. Red circles appear now and again, but the film is primarily blue and gold.  Probably the fourth best Melville film (after Le Samourai, Le Doulos, and Army of the Shadows), but still great.

The Conformist (1970)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Conformist (1970) -- B. Bertolucci

Without a doubt, I was missing something by watching this on my laptop -- I can only imagine what these stylish images would look like draped across the big screen. Storaro's cinematography marked by the amazing use of light and color is what this film is about -- the story itself (offering to explain why someone might become a Fascist in 1930s Italy because of a childhood incident) left me a little cold, though I can see that its flashback structure is innovative and dreamlike. Having seen it now, I'd like to watch it again in a cinema, just to marvel at how it was put together.