Mother Kusters’ Trip to Heaven

Mother Kusters’ Trip to Heaven (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975)

Frau Kusters (Brigitte Mira) is preparing dinner late one seemingly ordinary afternoon in her seemingly ordinary kitchen in Frankfurt, Germany. Mrs. Kusters wants to add canned sausages to the stew, her annoying daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. The point, we soon find out, is moot: Mr. Kusters has murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he works before committing suicide.

India Song

India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)

Poetical tale of Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in India in the 1930s. At 18 she had married a French colonial administrator and went with him on posting to Savannakhet, Laos. 

Visually stunning and populated with long shots of almost still life or still lives, India Song is rhythms only by its voice overs and the musical tracks. It plays as bits of a life of boredom into Asia that its screenwriter/director Marguerite Duras has probably took from her own experience in the Eastern World. It is also a piece of History that reminds the role of the Colonialism countries in the World. Just like the scenes in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux with the French living in Vietnam. They are a strange oddity of upper-class in such a poor and distant world.

India Song is the kind of film that gives lots of time and space for its viewer to think, contemplate, get immersed in the story. However, the contemplative element of the film reminds us of how a film can be that much slow and, in fact, almost standing still. As a self proclaimed film historian and movie critic, I had my share of slow and contemplative films but in this case there are few camera movements and long, long, did I mention long takes? Well, there are many long takes in this film. It is beautiful to look at and a lot of style in the way it is done. 

But, it is so slow that it plays as watching a painting and reading a realist novel of the early last century. The composition of the frames must have been studied for weeks and just like Carl Th. Dreyer I'm sure every movement was synchronised and rehearsed. India Song, plays as a novel that was written to be felt by its words and filled with pretty pictures of grand compositions.

As a whole, India Song feels like a artsy film that brought a few number of viewers in and a fewer number out at the end. Has my first encounter with Marguerite Duras, I'm not sure if I'll ever get excited and jolly about seeing another of her films. Not that it was bad or anything but it was a demanding film that uses its own storytelling way and narratives.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) is a single mother and a six years widow with a teenage son. They live in the same apartment where she daily receives one man to subsists to their needs. The audience is asked to watch her daily routines for three days and to witness her evolution in three subsequent days.

The Passenger (Professione: reporter)

The Passenger (Professione : reporter) (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)

David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is a television journalist making a documentary film on post-colonial Africa. To finish the film, he is in the Sahara desert seeking to meet with and interview rebel fighters involved in Chad's civil war. Struggling to find rebels to interview, his frustrations reach a climax when his Land Rover gets hopelessly stuck on a sand dune. After a long walk through the desert back to his hotel a thoroughly glum Locke finds that an Englishman by the name of Robertson (Charles Mulvehill), who has also been staying there and with whom he had struck up a friendship, has died overnight in his hotel room.

Night Moves (1975)

Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)

Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a retired professional football player working as a private investigator in Los Angeles. He is dedicated to his job, but is also following his wife Ellen (Susan Clark) because she and a man named Marty Heller (Harris Yulin) are having an affair.
Aging actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) hires Harry to find her trust-funded daughter Delly Grastner (Melanie Griffith), distracting Harry from his marital problems. Harry goes to a Hollywood film set to interview a stuntman he knows, Ziegler (Edward Binns), about an unsolved death during the shooting of a film, and a mechanic, Quentin (James Woods), who knew the lascivious teen Delly before she took off for Florida.

The Travelling Players

The Travelling Players (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1975)

A group of theater actors are traveling in Greece to try to perform the erotic tale of Golfo. With this 230 minutes film Theodoros Angelopoulos, who was a film critic in Greece for a socialist journal,  directs his third feature film that tries to summarize in episodic vignettes some of the most important moments of the History of Greece in the 20th Century. The rise of the Nazis, the Occupation, the presence of the Englishmen, the rise of the leftist governement, etc. It is a very political movie that wants to be a representation of a particualr time. Much like Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, Angelopoulos’ film doesn’t have a distinct narrative and the almost documentary feeling of the whole thing brings a genuine historical angle to the events pictured.

Dersu Uzala

Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)

The Russian army sends an explorer on an expedition to the snowy Siberian wilderness where he makes friends with a seasoned local hunter.

A few months after master director Akira Kurosawa attempted suicide, he went to Russia to make his film for Mosfilm studios because in Japan he wouldn’t find a studio ready to finance him after the financial failure of Dodeskaden (1970). Dersu Uzala earned him the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1976 and even with this recognition he had to ask George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola to finance his next film Kagemusha. It is interesting to observe that everyone of Kurosawa’s film is considered at different levels as near-masterpieces and/or masterpieces. The Japanese director did not make a lot of films outside of his native land and it is interesting to watch Dersu Uzala for its almost entire location shooting in beautiful exteriors. The use of color and the photography of the Russian film are almost perfect in every way possible. The construction of every frame is once again at the level of excellence of Kurosawa. It is the sobriety and the natural storytelling of Kurosawa that makes it one of the most enduring films.

Gina

Note: this a new series of reviews I'm installing on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque. Since I was born and raised in the Province of Québec I've decided to present and review some of the films that populate my culture and that represents the Cinema of here. The feature will be called after our license plate motto: "Je me souviens" for "I remember".

Gina aka Stone Cold Revenge (Denys Arcand, 1975)

Following the review of one of Denys Arcand most celebrated films, comes this very 1970's revenge film that is so much more than just a I Spit On Your Grave film. It might have been influenced in some ways by Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs without stealing anything out of it. But the strenght of storytelling might be of the same kind.

Well, Arcand's setting is directly taken from his background of documentary feature directing. There's actually a documentary shooting crew visiting the manufacture of the little town. The actual images are from Arcand's censored documentary Au cotton. His direct camera slowly sets the story in place where the inhabitants of the little town of Mauricie county are enjoying a typical winter of the 1970's. They ride their snowmobiles, play in the snow, and go to work. Until the arriving of cabaret dancer Gina, a woman from the city with lots of sex appeal. Shortly after her arrival a band of bikers in snowmobile molest Gina and humiliate her. Then begins the revenge of Gina upon her aggressors.

Even if the vengeance story has been exploited nomerous number of times, the setting of the Quebecois winter and the approach of Arcand's direct camera and multilayered script give it a fresh lecture here. It is also very interesting to see Denys Arcand's work prior to his major success of Le déclin de l'empire américain. It is a raw film depicting many elements strucured in a uneven way. However, the naive charm of this transition between documentary and fiction film is quite interesting in the career of Arcand here. One must consider this as a learning project. Personnally, it is my favorite film by Denys Arcand, even if I'm not that fond of documentary or revenge flicks the charm of the exercise and the actual unperfectness of this film makes it a very interesting piece.

Rating:

The Man Who Would Be King

The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston, 1975)

Entering in a John Huston film is always a challenge for because I tend to not like his films very much: The Maltese Falcon was ok but take Bogart apart and it's never the same movie. The Asphalt Jungle is in my opinion a better Noir than Maltese... As for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen, they are adventure movies that tend too much of crowd pleasers to my tastes. Moby Dick is probably my favorite of his films I've seen so far! Well, you would say I need to see The Misfits, Beat the Devil, The Dead, Wise Blood, Key Largo, Under the Volcano, etc. Probably, but for now I catched The Man Who Would Be King on a specialised movie channel and I surprisingly liked it.

India and those Arabian countries were gold mines to directors of the old generation(s), Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Louis Malle, Roberto Rossellini, and others I surely forgot. The Man Who... is the story of two adventurers British soldiers (Sean Connery and Michael Caine) who would be (Kings) rich, free, and on their own. They decide to travel to an almost inhospitable country to fight for a land and become kings. They learn that no white men have returned alive from that land. We they arrive there they form an army and decide to conquer to learn that they are on the path of the Greek almost god Alexander The Great. One of them is then considered as his son.

This epic story about the will to become great men, kings shows how the power can lead to greatness but also to excesses in every aspect. The presence of Connery is extraordinary and his character's evolution is well mastered with his ever growing taste for power.

The cinematography is interesting and the vast landscapes are filming really well as the close-ups of the stars and the natives actors. Without knowing the year the movie was made, 1975, I couldn't have guessed if it was in the 1960's 1970's or in the 1980's. It has an unperishable glow on it and some interiors reminded me of the firsts Indiana Jones in their lighting and presentation.

The two leads, Sean Connery and Michael Caine did an excellent job. Their pairing is interesting and also really British comedic. This is maybe one of the aspects I was the more surprised about, how the dialogues included lots of jokes between the two main characters and how it felt right in this genre that is wildly and boldly over serious.

With The Man Who Would Be King John Huston gain some points in my personnal Director rating. I probably have this negative approach to his films mainly because of François Truffaut who used to constantly bash Huston's films... After all, we all have our opinions on films and whether they are great or dull.

All the President's Men

All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)

Recalling the inspired work of the two journalists of the Washington Post that brought light into the scandal that moved America and made President Richard Nixon dismiss: the Watergate. Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) had an informant named Deep Throat that gave them hints to make light on the break-in that happened in the Democratic Party National headquarters. All the President's Men shows their hardwork and stubborn perceptivity to preserve and maintain democracy.

All the President's Men is the kind of film that you don't want to close your eyes to miss any single detail of the plot. This is the kind of script that I would love to write. Being a historical fact the ending of the story is sort of secondary and there are no twists or punches at the end: we all know how it's gonna end. So the story has to be interesting and make us forget that we know the ending and that the facts are obvious to anyone. Alan J. Pakula delivers an extraordinary film from William Goldman's screenplay adapted from the book of Woodward & Bernstein. The investigation is so tight and entertaining that every bit of information the journalists obtain is like a victory from your favorite team in the playoffs. Redford and Hoffman are excellent in roles that required so much objectivity in their plays when we think that journalists must be totally out of any political allegiances...

A true classic of the 1970's, far from being as inspired as other Hollywood productions of its time like Taxi Driver or The Conversation, All the President's Men proved that the chase is always better than the catch. For fans of David Fincher's Zodiac too!


A Review by Michaël Parent

Salo: or the 120 Days of Sodom

Salo: or the 120 days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)


Notorious communist, atheist and homosexual the poet/director Pier Paolo Pasolini couldn't finish his career with a more provocative film than Salo. Assassinated few time after he completed Salo, Pasolini made his final masterpiece unforgettable.

Based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade, the film is a kick in the face of Nazism, the Italian bourgeoisie, christianism, and the institutions of all the governments. It depicts how the Nazi regime used to manipulate and humiliate humanity.

He presents his arguments without any compromise and goes far beyond the tolerable for the viewer. Many scenes are just disgusting and the characters are all repulsive. As a cinephile I had to see this, it is a cornerstone of filmmaking. The final film from one of the best Italian director of all time.

After seing this, even Adolf Hitler would hate Nazism and its excesses. But did Pasolini had to go that far? Unappealing sex scenes, shit eating scenes and the many torture scenes? It's like Lars von Trier's Antichrist; yes they have to go that far to respect their visions and express their points of view (anti-feminism in Antichrist and Communism in Salo) even if I don't share them. True artist go all the way and they don't need to censor themself!

A must see for all the true cinephiles! Be warned this is not for the faint hearts!