The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)

A group of criminals are taking hostage for ransom the passengers of a busy New York City subway car.

Starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, and Hector Elizondo The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is an iconic film of the 1970’s. A good suspense and an influential movie for Quentin Tarantino with the naming of the criminals by colors (see Reservoir Dogs) and a huge influence on action films to come along with John Carpenter’s The Assault of Precinct 13. Not the actual film canon that is praised a lot habitually by this critic, but it is deserves its mention here.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah, 1974)

Director Sam Peckinpah often stated about Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia that it is his only film to have been released the way he intended it to be. As of today, The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid have been re released with new director’s cuts.

Céline and Julie Go Boating

Céline and Julie Go Boating aka Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974)

This 193 minutes film about two women in Paris living in a total debonnaire attitude reflects the liberty and improvisation that the movie represents. This is an experience of playful and free cinema that few great films have displayed. Weirdly connected to the Czech New Wave film by Vera Chytilova’s Daisies, where two women are getting rid of every social convention and finish in a huge orgy of food that can make anyone hungry as hell.

In the case of Rivette’s film, the two leads also acts as two child-women and it almost always involves playful acts in every scene. There is also a sense of improvisation in the dialogues and the development of the scenes. However, Rivette has stated that the script was written way ahead before filming and that the story was planned. The scenes are quite long and it is interesting to see how they evoluate. Rivette seems to have the instinct of the director who knows how to get those moments of pure cinema (borrowed from Jeffrey Anderson’s superb review at Combustible Celluloid). Especially, considering the long list of writers that contains almost all of the central actresses of the film.

There’s also a superb use of space in Céline and Julie, and it is clear that Rivette knows his Cinema. Some eliptical scenes are refleted between the two leads and the concept of location has a very deep meaning in his means of telling his story. Another important aspect of his storytelling is how he mixes imagination and reality.

A vibrant feeling of cartoon fills the acting of the two leads and it makes all senses when they are together with the little girl of the ghost house where they go and try to change the past. The freedom of Rivette’s filmmaking is unsettling at first, but once you get into his story and let yourself drift into this dream like state that characterizes Céline and Julie you are in for a memorable and a one of a kind movie experience.

With all that said, I believe that it is a monumental film that places itself within the most important films of all time, just like The Discreet Charm of the Brougeoisie or Pierrot le Fou. It is a very fun film that also demonstrates a master’s unique storytelling and his cinematic innovations. However, compared to the two aforementioned masterpieces, I would rank Céline et Julie vont en bateau as a near masterpiece. Still, I would highly recommend it to any French film enthusiast (yes John LaRue it is you I am pointing at) and every film buff.

A Woman Under the Influence

A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

For Roger Ebert and many other serious film critics, A Woman Under the Influence is its director’s (John Cassavetes) masterpiece. The later, considered as the pioneer of American Independent movies and the father of Cinéma vérité has directed a daring piece about American sociology and human behaviors. Starring Cassavetes’ wife Gena Rowlands as Mabel Longhetti and one of the director’s closest friend Peter Falk as Mabel’s spouse Nick, it represents a dysfunctional family where the mother and the father are mentally ill.

Ali : Fear Eats the Soul

Ali : Fear Eats the Soul aka Angst essen Seele auf (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

Emmi, a woman truly in the second half of life, falls in love with Ali, a Berber guest worker more than ten years younger. When they both decide to marry, everybody seems to be against them. When the folks calm down a bit, Emmi and Ali get deeply unsure about their relationship.

Shot in 15 days, this “throwaway” film by German New Waver Rainer Werner Fassbinder became his most famous and recognized movie. Based on Douglas Sirk’s melodrama All That Heaven Allows, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is far from being a remake of the 1955 gem. It is a film that portraits a situation that creates reactions from the audiences. Almost forty years later, it is easily conceivable that a couple of a German woman in her sixties and an Arab man in his thirties will be rejected and seen as “dirty”.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

Five friends visiting their grandpa's old house are hunted down and terrorized by a chainsaw wielding killer and his family of grave-robbing cannibals.

On a trip in Texas to find childhood memories first at the grave of their grandfather and then at their first house, a brother and a sister are accompanied by three other young adults. As one might expect, one by one they disappear in the house near the old creek until the last girl, the pretty blonde (Marilyn Burns), gets into a nightmarish chase and torturous night with a family of four retarded hillbillies who live in the most eerie and unsettling house to ever have been filmed. The sets are composed of a room there are meat hooks, in another one you find poultry, feathers, charms, many kinds of bones and altars, and I won’t even mention what’s on the second floor. This is a superbly well manufactured set for a macabre story like this one.

Of the family of freaks, not much is explained except that we guess that they like to eat fresh human meat and they are some deranged guys. This flaw or probably intended obscure part of the story is one of the things that bothers me in this kind of gross Horror. Almost shot like a documentary or an exploitation film, the original that inspired many other parts and remakes, may have launched one of the most prominent subgenre in Horror.

There are many images that have persisted through time from this movie and even if the overall quality of it is pretty average, you have to see the sets, the moment when Leatherface slams the door after he made his first victim, his pause while not really understanding what’s happening, and the grand guignol finale.

Just like Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, someone may bring up that it is a movie that doesn’t really hold up to the test of time. It, however, still creates an automatic repulsion and you only wish to never take the same road that those poor kids took.

Personally, it is a film I never saw before having to watch it for my quest to watch the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time of They Shoot Pictures Don’t They and I can surely say that I won’t be seeing this movie again, it is disturbing, annoying, and I just hoped that they all died as soon as possible just to get rid of all the screaming and crazy laughing. The effort and the talent of the filmmakers is undeniable and I admire someone who will take a risk at doing something out of the regular paths. This is a great example of that and I may also say that they accomplish the goal they probably wanted to get with this movie filled with filth (in the good sense), suggested violence, unique characters, and a great sense of Horror and repellency. Honestly, this is just not my kind of Horror and as much as I admire the whole thing I could not stand another viewing. Worth a look. 

The Phantom of Liberty

Le fantôme de la liberté aka The Phantom of Liberty   (Luis Buñuel, 1974)

What characterizes Luis Bunuel in the history of films is the fact that he is probably one of the few filmmakers who adapted the surrealist concepts on the big screen in the 1920's, well during the surrealist period. His approach on filmmaking and storytelling brought many new angles to this art. On a career that lasted from 1929 to 1977, Bunuel had the time to direct 34 films.

Le fantôme de la liberté also known as The Phantom of Liberty is one of the best examples of a surrealist approach on a comedy of situations. Far from being Un chien Andalou or L'âge d'or, Le fantôme de la liberty is closer to a film like Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie. One thing charaterizes the films of Bunuel; the feeeling that we are watching the reconstitution of a dream or the dream into the dream. At some point, in these films we never know if it's a dream sequence or realit; it's never explained.

For the film regarded here, Le fantôme de la liberté, we are closer to a surrealist comedy that makes interfere many characters with each other. They populate the film each with his little story. Some stories seem to go in a direction and then at some point they go in a whole other avenue. Other stories are just unconcluded and it gives the viewer a sense of frustration because we are never asked to conclude or finish a story with character. It's like watching people on the street as they pass by us until they turn the corner and someone else comes by and attracts our attention with something completely different.

I tend to think that Bunuel attempted to criticize television that always cuts shows, films or whatever they present with publicities at every 13 or 15 minutes. A critic on the modern society that can't keep its attention on something more than the quarter of a hour. This thinking came to me when I remembered reading an interview with the late Luis Bunuel about the broadcasting of one of his films and was outraged to see it cut in half with a publicity about mattresses if I remember correctly.

Made in 1974, Le fantôme de la liberté is a fresh comedy like only Luis Buñuel could have make, a classic!

A review by Michaël Parent

The Conversation

TSPDT Greatest Films #166 The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)


A very musical film, Coppola's The Conversation is about an invader of privacy that tape people's conversations for his clients. Respected by his pairs and regarded has a myth he only lives for his work and never cared about the people's lifes. But one day a conversation he tapes, the one from the openning sequence, changes his approach on his work and he starts to care about what is gonna happen after his job is done.

With the success of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola made the film he wanted to make: The Conversation. A more minimalist approach to films and a personnal film is the result of The Conversation. A film inspired by european filmmakers of the 1960's, Italian films and the French New Wave films. After Apocalypse Now, The Conversation is the best film Coppola made in his entire career. The Godfather saga was not bad but the romantic/traditionnal touch of the films is too much and they don't pass the test of time because they feel old.

The Conversation should be regarded has one of the best films of the 1970's and it's a shame it is shadowed by the two first parts of The Godfather... This is a highly recommended film that every cinephile must have seen.

A Film Review by Michaël Parent