Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) – C. Akerman

Named as the #1 Greatest Film of All Time in the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll (which runs every 10 years) and shockingly I had never seen it.  But when to find the time to watch a 3 hour and 22 minute film, masterpiece though it may be?  With my family off to visit Japan, now was the time. How strange then, the synergies with my current “lonely” lifestyle and the plot of the film, which finds widow Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) performing ordinary household chores on her own all day long while her teenage son is at school.  This is often hailed as a key feminist film due to the primacy of “women’s work” (in all its drudgery) – and Jeanne receives little gratitude or even acknowledgement from her largely non-communicative son.  His only real comments seem to focus on his mother’s sex life, revealing some Freudian subtexts.  Little does he know that Jeanne also draws an income from prostitution, with daily male guests to her little bedroom. Throughout the three days we follow her, she is emotionless and we get not even a tiny glimpse of what is going on in her mind. Yet tension builds through the endless “minimalist” scenes that director Chantal Akerman stages for us: endless “real time” minutes of washing dishes or peeling potatoes or walking to the shops. The tiny apartment (and seemingly the world outside) is perfectly colour coded in pale greens and blues and Jeanne’s wardrobe matches. Every shot is static, usually head on.  But as the running time accumulates and the perpetual routines continue to be enacted, we start to notice little things.  Was the stove left on? (It was).  Did she not button a button or comb her hair? (She did not). On the third day, we start the really wonder whether everything is okay for her. She stares off into space a bit more, some tasks might not be getting done. After the long slow build, this is riveting. The film ends with a surprising climax. In retrospect, the 200 odd minutes passed surprisingly quickly, holding your attention with its sheer audaciousness and with little mysteries (what is the flashing blue light anyway?). So, is this the greatest film of all time? The case would be that it has experimented dramatically with cinematic form while also making important arguments about the inequity -- and well-being destroying effects -- of women’s work (including prostitution) and the economic plight of single mothers. Fascinating, if you can find the time (and you should).

 

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) – P. Weir

Perhaps knowing that the mystery at the centre will remain a mystery removes some of the tension from Peter Weir’s otherwise seductive film on subsequent viewings.  Why these Victorian schoolgirls (Victorian era and State of Victoria) on day’s outing vanish (and where to) is open to speculation. Perhaps conflating this film with the director’s subsequent The Last Wave (1978), with its much more overt focus on Indigenous people’s different ways of knowing, made me suspect that the girls had entered a sort of Dreamtime state, fixated on the strange volcanic outgrowth called Hanging Rock.  I can’t profess to understand.  The combination of ominous shots of the rocks (and native fauna and flora), Zamfir’s pan flute, and a very gauzy sometimes sun-dappled cinematography by Russell Boyd might also lend itself to this interpretation. But there is also another force here, that of awakening sexuality, which seems to burn in some of the girls (for each other?) and perhaps in two boys who see the girls on their way to disappearing. Weir juxtaposes the young people in nature and in their more “civilised” environment – a girl’s school ruled with a heavy hand by principal Rachel Roberts – where repression is the norm (and urges must be controlled).  A subplot finds Roberts unable to deal with the rebellious Sara who feels intensely toward Miranda one of the vanished girls, leading to a more decided tragedy. One would hope that the missing girls (and their maths teacher) find themselves in a better freer place (but perhaps not abducted by UFOs as original author Joan Lindsay apparently later speculated). Weir’s (and Lindsay’s) gambit that the story has a true origin may be more symbolic than literal, allowing viewers to invest in the mystery of their own existence.

 

Jaws (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Jaws (1975) – S. Spielberg

It has been a few decades since last I watched Jaws and although it isn’t always scary, it does get rather gruesome at times (vilifying sharks in the process).  The story pits commercialism against safety and, of course, man against nature -- although we are firmly on the side of man here.  Roy Scheider plays the new police captain of Amity Island (somewhere between Long Island and Cape Cod) who deals with a series of shark attacks just before the 4^th of July.  Although he wants to close the beach, the town’s mayor and council block this, leading to more fatalities.  Soon, an oceanographer played by Richard Dreyfuss is assisting Scheider, armed with a lot of shark knowledge.  Together they get the mayor to agree to hire salty old fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) who promises to track down the shark, which turns out to be a giant Great White, for a large sum of money.  The second half of the film shows us the mission to kill the shark which is adventuresome (even if the shark doesn’t always look real).  Of course, John Williams’ memorable theme music plays at the appropriate moments -- although at other times it reminded me of Spielberg’s tendency toward heavy-handedness.  It’s an enjoyable summer movie – but potentially one of those blockbusters that tilted Hollywood production toward teenage boys and away from more substantive fare.  

Deep Red (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Deep Red (1975) – D. Argento

I’m not usually one for violent slasher pictures but I have made an exception for the work of Dario Argento – at least for his 1970s films (e.g., Suspiria, 1977), because his more recent output does not look good.  Profondo Rosso ranks among his best and has the usual trademarks:  hallucinatory images, prog-rock soundtrack by Goblin, many tracking shots (often from the killer’s viewpoint), nearly incomprehensible plot that rests on psychological foundations (here, rather Freudian).  The film benefits from having David Hemmings (who starred in Antonioni’s Blow Up, 1966) in the lead role, along with Argento’s partner and co-conspirator Daria Nicolodi as a journalist investigating the murders.  Hemmings plays a jazz pianist who is a witness of the first murder (although he doesn’t remember the face of the killer).  Together, they follow an array of clues that leads to a very spooky house.  Of course, this film is not for the squeamish, as there are some very violent and bloody murders (I had to look away from the screen several times).   But despite the content (an Italian genre called giallo, based on the yellow covers of a series of pulp novels), Argento’s artistry is plain – the setpieces with Goblin backing tracks are pretty incredible.  Perhaps the dialogue/translation (sometimes English, sometimes Italian – lots of dubbing) leaves something to be desired and there are occasional dull stretches, but that’s not really Argento’s main interest (nor that of his mentor, Mario Bava).  Worth a look, for the brave? 

  

Mirror (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Mirror (1975) – A. Tarkovsky

I don’t know how Andrei Tarkovsky composed this film but I’d imagine it went something like this.  First, think back to your childhood. What are some of the most vivid memories that you recall? Recreate them cinematically with actors, sets, props.  Now think about your mother.  What do you recall her experiencing at the time?  Recreate that.  What about your society? Find some historical footage to include.  Finally, think about the present day.  How is your current experience related to those childhood experiences? Focus on your current family relationships.  Film this, with the same actors that you used for the childhood scenes now playing your current nuclear family.  Use different techniques, film stock, colour or black and white. Break the various bits of footage into different scenes and interweave them together.  Add spoken poetry written by your famous poet father over the top.  Make sure to include some stunning visual shots – for example, shots focusing on the four elements (water, fire, earth, air), sometimes all in the same shot, as found in the rest of your oeuvre, to embed life in nature. Include shots recreating famous paintings (such as Brueghel’s Hunters in the Snow, 1565) to make explicit the connections between art and life (as poetry also does). Feel free to include personal symbols and hallucinatory flourishes within and between the time points in your story (reality is never concrete).  Use classical music as punctuation or to enhance the sensory content. Keep things elliptical (as our memories and thoughts usually are).  Of course, the result is likely to be deeply personal, possibly hermetic, save for those shared experiences of all Russians in the years during and after WWII or for the more generally shared experience of divorce, estrangement from one’s parents, growing older, remembering and failing to remember, wistfulness, nostalgia, regret, and acceptance.  Obviously, this is a film like no other and another masterwork from Tarkovsky.

Seven Beauties (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Seven Beauties (1975) – L. Wertmuller

Giancarlo Giannini seems to be hamming it up comically in his part as a wannabe macho loser in Naples during Mussolini’s rise to power.  But director Lina Wertmuller puts him through the meat grinder instead.  First, he accidentally kills his sister’s pimp and gets 12 years in the insane asylum.  Then, after raping another inmate, he is freed in order to fight in WWII but deserts and is captured by the Germans and placed in a concentration camp.  In order to survive, he decides to seduce the queen bitch female commandant but she has other tortures planned for him.  Wertmuller cheerfully ignores the boundaries of good taste but manages to say something about shame and degradation.  Is it better to humiliate oneself (and even commit atrocities) in order to walk away alive or should one sacrifice one’s meaningless existence for a moral principle, even when the sacrifice will have no effect?  Maybe we’d all choose the latter (or we’d like to think we would) but not Giannini.  He suffers instead.  There is a Fellini-esque flavour to the proceedings but things get much darker than the maestro chose to go.

  

Welfare (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2

Welfare (1975) -- F. Wiseman

As one of the leading progenitors of Direct Cinema still going in his 80s, Frederick Wiseman should be noted as one of our most important historians.  After all, across nearly five decades, he's managed to document our most influential institutions, the ones that control and impact our behaviour, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.  Here, he points his fly-on-the-wall camera at a busy welfare office in New York City (circa 1974), showing the interactions between clients, welfare workers, social workers, security guards, and other visitors and occupants of the building.  Although seemingly objective (there is no voiceover here and no talking heads), Wiseman has carefully extracted a 3 hour movie from 100's of hours of footage and he has certain points to make.  Primarily, he portrays the welfare system as a certain kind of hell in which both clients and workers are ensnared in endless red tape and bureaucracy with neither always knowing the proper course of action.  The system seems designed to block people from receiving assistance rather than to help them and this is fairly apparent to everyone in the building.  Unfortunately, those who seek to do the right thing by the poor (and this is most of those who we meet) are just as hamstrung by the rules as those who simply turn off their empathy.  Wiseman shows us a range of problems faced by those seeking and receiving welfare, demonstrating clearly that many are in the least position to be able to navigate the confusing paths they are directed to take.  He masterfully controls the pacing and the emotional tenor of the film which rises to a nearly unbearable peak near its end. No doubt this institution has not changed and for that reason this film is a must see for all who care about the human condition.

Watch this video on The Scene.

Sholay (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sholay (1975) -- R. Sippy

Hey, it's a rip-roaring good time, as two criminals help a former police officer in his (extremely personal) battle with a gang of bandits, led by a particularly evil guy.  This is Bollywood, so characters spontaneously break out in song and/or dance (or are forced to do so, in one scene).  The music adds a lot, especially to the more extreme psycho-drama elements (and they are very extreme).  But still the film is goofy and good-natured, like a Hong Kong film from the same era; the action sequences have that similar low-budget feel.  However, this is very much a western with horses, gun-play and some rocky terrain straight out of Budd Boetticher.  Unlike most westerns, it is 3 1/2 hours long (but suprisingly well-paced).