Westworld

Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973)

A robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.

In a not so distant future, people are traveling to a remote setting where they can experiment the life of three distant past : the Old West, a Medieval court, and the Roman Empire. All of this is controlled by programmers that control robots with humanoid appearance. Much like HAL 9000 in 2001 : A Space Odyssey, the robots eventually take control of the amusement park and drift from the original purpose of the park and becomes harmful for its visitors. Staring Yul Brynner as one of the robots a full copy of his character in The Magnificient Seven, Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as two visitors of the Old West, Westworld is a reference in pop culture and an iconic Science fiction film.

Inspired from the Disney parks and the trademark animatronics, Westworld presents a way to vacation that is not that far from us with the constant eveolution of technologies at the service of humans. It could have been even more interesting to see a social commentary on the fat that the machines were evolved and revolted against humans who serviled them as their slaves. Just like the robot that refuses the advances of one of the Medieval visitors. The technicians see it as a malfunction but it could be a normal reaction for a real woman to refuse the advances of a man.

Director Michael Crichton who also was a succesful author of many novels including Jurassic Park, which is a better twist and exploitation of the concept he explored in Westworld, was one of the reasons why I wanted to watch the 1973 film. There’s also an episode of The Simpsons where they get to the Itchy and Scratchy Park populated with robots trying to kill the family. Those are some of the many reasons why Westworld is worth the look, but as a film this is more on the okay side of appreciation and the ending feels a bit flat.
Crichton wanted his settings to be cliché and almost false or fake to remind us that his characters are in an amusement park inspired by films and the imaginary perception we have of times in History. Just like that old saying from the great John Ford : print the legend. Crichton wanted to create a world where the commentary and the story surpass the sets and the clichés.

J'ai mon voyage!

J’ai mon voyage! (Denis Héroux, 1973)

Jean-Louis Cartier (Jean Lefebvre) from France decides to quit Quebec City to go live in Vancouver with a fifth wheel. The Cartier family of Danielle (Dominique Michel), François (René Simard) , and Luc (Régis Simard) embark on a road trip that will take them into the wilderness of the West Canada that Jean-Louis romances in his letters to his parents in France.

American Graffiti

American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)

It is 1962 and teenagers are cruising in their real cars around the city of Modesto in California. A myriad of characters portrayed by Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Harrison Ford, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Wolfman Jack, and Suzanne Somers. Cruising was a way to get diner at Mels’ Drive in, get girls, and race around the city. 

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)

Often praised by critics and recommended by one of my friends, Christian Audet an Independent filmmaker and Horror aficionado, The Wicker Man is an intriguing and very interesting movie. Sgt Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) is a catholic investigating the Summerisle community about a missing young girl. The people of the village don’t want to collaborate and Howie witnesses many pagan rituals that alarm him. Those are Celtic pre-catholic rituals including couples copulating in public fields, teaching children the importance of the maypole as a phallic symbol, women dancing around a fire naked to celebrate the coming of a child, and strange cures like putting a frog in the mouth for a sore throat.

Don't Look Now

Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

After the accidental death by drowning of their daughter, a couple (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) goes to Venice for a contract of church restoration. Laura (Christie) meets a couple of elderly sisters that told her that her daughter his still with them. It is one of the sisters, who is blind, that tells that she can see her sitting between them. Following this memorable scene the couple will be intertwined in a story of look alike and apparitions. It also contains one of the most well recognized sex scenes ever shot on film.

Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973)

Lee (Bruce Lee) is a Shaolin martial artist from Hong Kong who possesses great philosophical insight into martial arts as well as physical prowess. He receives an invitation to a martial arts competition on an island organised by the mysterious Mr. Han (Shih Kien). Lee learns from his Sifu (teacher) that Han was also once a Shaolin student, but had been expelled from their order for abusing their code of conduct. Han is suspected to be involved in drug trafficking and prostitution. He also runs a martial arts school to protect his drug operations, as well as holding his tournament every three years to recruit international talent to expand his criminal business. Before leaving, Lee learns from his teacher that Han's bodyguard O'Hara (Robert Wall) had been involved in the death of his sister, Su Lin.

Soylent Green

Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer, 1973)

Thorn (Charlton Heston) lives with Sol (Edward G. Robinson) in 2022 and they form a team of detective and researcher respectively. Sol being older has regrets of the evolution of the world and how just food isn’t the same anymore. Instead of eating crackers of Soylent Green they were eating real food. The detective story is about the assassination of a rich man called Williamson (Joseph Cotten). Thorn’s supervisor asked him to close the investigation but being stubborn leads Thorn to disover the truth about the society and the explanation of the murder.

F for Fake

F for Fake aka Vérités et mensonges (Orson Welles, 1973)

A documentary about fraud and fakery.

Throughout his career Orson Welles has been a director “maudit”. Just for his making of Othello and Falstaff for instance, he had to shoot during spans of months and years because of lack of financing for his personal projects. He managed to make his films like he wanted them to be and left a mark in the imagination of cinephiles for more than sixty year with the most celebrated film of all time: Citizen Kane. This is the story of a newspaper tycoon. Welles is tricking its audience on believing who was and who wasn’t Charles Foster Kane. As for its technical aspect, two thirds of it is cinematic trickery and lookalikes. It has had repercussions by creating a real typhoon in the business in the size that only Orson Welles could have provoked. Since then, and even before, Welles has been a master at magic tricks, fake, fraud, trickery, and most of all storytelling. This is why F for Fake might be one of Welles’ most personal projects.

Often categorized as a documentary, the movie that Welles directed isn’t just a simple film or just a documentary. It is a study on how as viewers we are eager to believe anything that we are told and how it is possible to forge great masterpieces of Art, History, mysterious persons, and even to trick an audience. F for Fake is the story of Elmyr de Hory the most successful Art forger of the 20^th Century and his biographer Clifford Irving. Both are frauders in their own spheres and they have succeeded when imitating and lying about their works. Welles brings us to reevaluate the experts in Art and everything we put a high price on just for the sake of its evaluation.

It was Pauline Kael who wrote that F for Fake was not a Wellesian picture because it doesn’t have the master’s signature. Welles responded by saying that he really cared not to put anything that reminded of his visual touch, this is why the editing is very precise and that there are no real long shots. Welles actually worked one year in three editing rooms seven days a week to complete this movie. It is easy to believe this obsession from the master because the trick plays very well and the film is entertaining, filled with material that will take you on another level and it stands out as one of the most important films of Welles career. Given the right means he could have reinvented himself just like a Jean-Luc Godard and develop his own non- genre. On a personal level, Welles was a mythomaniac and in interviews he often misled his past, his relationships, and his family. He forged an image of himself and even the people who were close to him knew that he liked to maintain this façade. F for Fake is then, a very autobiographical document that is not speaking directly of its subject but like any well gifted storyteller it broads around facts and present it in a riveting manner.

With time and thinking I would rank this film along Welles’ other masterpieces and not being as game changing as Citizen Kane, or stunning as The Magnificent Ambersons, F for Fake stands alone in its unique spot of great films.

Being the ultimate film by Orson Welles on the list of 1000 Greatest Films, I feel like this completion feels great but also I feel a little sad that I don’t have any more films from this great director. It is somewhat fulfilling to catch a director’s whole corpus and be able to put it in the perspective of its entire career. There are very few directors that I truly admire that I can say I have seen all the films. Just like Andrew Sarris, I think that Welles is a Pantheon Director and he deserves his place amongst the great gods of Cinema.

La nuit américaine

La nuit américaine aka Day For Night (François Truffaut, 1973)

In this love letter to the seventh Art by one of its greatest lovers of all time, François Truffaut, the Cinema, the making of, the world in front and behind the camera is exposed like a porn star in a XXX feature. Truffaut wants to present all his passion and love to the medium by showing to the public and his comrades the craft of making a film within a film. Almost shot like a documentary but clearly a fiction, La nuit américaine is one of Truffaut's most well-known film.

With an uneven but interesting plot Truffaut wants us to feel his dedication to film making and cinephilia. Almost redefining the term cinephile for himself first with his writings in Les Cahiers du Cinema then while being one of the most celebrated French cinéaste and one of the two main figures of the  French New Wave with Jean-Luc Godard La nuit américaine stands out like a masturbatory exercise that could have been more than a cult film but that carries dreamt sequences of pure cinematic bliss and many forced dramatic events that could have been spared in the script.

However, one cinephile cannot be cold blooded by Truffaut's film and this is mainly what saves the entire picture from falling apart. The naive charm and the passionate hugs from the maker to the final product are enough to court the most heartless of cinephiles.

The Last Detail

The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)

The life and career of director Hal Ashby as been tainted by his temper and his much notorious drug addiction and his prematured death of a cancer in 1988. In the 1970's, the decade he did his strongest efforts Ashby wasn't recognized as one of the proeminent figure except for his modest but remarkable Harold and Maude. But almost a decade after his death film buffs dug back into his catalog of films to discover more than the aforementioned Harold and Maude but to find Coming Home, Being There, and The Last Detail. Mainly categoried as an actor's director he was far from the cinematic brilliance of Francis Ford Coppola or Terrence Malick in the 1970's. His cinematophy is natural and has more terra cota colours than the colourful films of this era. His technique is sober and the "mise en scène" reflects minimalism and efficiency. Maybe not as minimalist as John Cassavetes but in a more classic way. This is the plot that counts for a Hal Ashby picture, not the display of technique and experimentations. With The Last Detail, Ashby had a strong cast with a young Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, and Otis Young and the first appearance of Nancy Allen. Even if, I think Nicholson is like Johnny Depp, they always plays the same and the viewer never forgets he is in a film. Both have their mimics and just can't get out of them. However, I know this separates cinephiles some love them some hate them but I can stand Nicholson more than Depp.

Two sailors, Buddovsky "Bad-Ass" (Jack Nicholson) and Mulone "Mule" (Otis Young) are ordered to take a young marine named Meadows (Randy Quaid) in a prison from the naval base of Norfolk to Portsmouth. Meadows is charged for theft, being a cleptomane he steals everything from everyone. But he is a young man who has almost nothing in life and that brings up the mercy of  Buddovsky and Mulone. The two men also want to take some time to have some fun during the trip and they embark Meadows in their journey. At first, the guys are tough on Meadows but when they get to know him they befriend with him and feel the need to give him a little glimpse of the adult life before he enters into jail for seven years.

The setting of the film is simple but it is the development of the relationship between the three men and the humanity displayed by the guards of the prisoners that stands out and gives you this smile on your face. It is almost a feel good movie with strong consequences. The fact that the guys take care of the young man as if they initiate him to life before he is taken away from it is ironic at the same time. They present to him what life can offer to a honest man and then bring him to jail to think about his crime. The relationship and the interactions of the characters makes it interesting because Bad-Ass and Mule kind of life through Meadows their own relief and their own enjoyment of life.

Ashby's film delivers a deep humanist tale of justice and deed. The Last Detail represents a learning lesson to Meadows and also to the viewer who must understand the luck he has of being "free" from jail and/or the Army. It also wears the fights of its time by being a post-Vietnam flick where the Marines are considered as mobilized so they have to report to the Army and its administration just like Meadows who is sentenced to seven years of prison. It is a social critique and also an ironic tale from a capable director.

Scenes from a Marriage

Scenes from a Marriage aka Scener ur ett äktenskap (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)

In my quest of seing the 1000 Greatest Films of the website They Shoot Pictures Don't They? I had the oppportunity to watch many films listed on this reference list. While in the process, that isn't done yet I'm only at number 509, I forgot or omit to write my impression of these films. Like many Bergman movies, Scenes from a Marriage was released Theatrically and also as a Mini-series. It is something often done in Sweden they did the same thing with Fanny and Alexander and the Millenium trilogy. As I am a man of Cinema I often only watch the Theatrical release. However, with Bergman's work I like to watch both. And it worth the rewatch sometimes because it explains some elements that were cut shorter in the Theatrical release. Note: I don't own the Criterion DVD of this release so if someone has an extra 60$ for whatever reason he/she can be my secret Santa...

Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson, two Bergman regulars portray a couple married for ten years. They are cited as a example of succesful marriage and they are sharing their experiences of their married life. The many ups and downs and everything that a couple can encounter during its life together. We follow the next ten years of their marriage.

Scenes from a Marriage is an autobiographical portrayal of Bergman's five marriages and many relationships. He had many extra-marital affairs and his couples had some struggles. Well, the artist that he is reflects a lot the patterns that celebs tend to live in their love relationships. The strenght of Scenes from a Marriage is how close we feel we are with the two lead characters. This is an intimate approach in the life of a couple. Into this film we have a feeling of being like a voyeur into their lives but also like being a part of their lives. We feel for these characters and as relationships are universal and timeless everyone feels like he or she understands or have lived some parts or many of what it is exposed. This is a meticulous and precise detail work on how men and women interact and live their marriage. Even if this is a situation different than yours it still interacts with our lives. A great film. Bergman shot a sequel thirty years later titled Saraband that has been widely acclaimed at the time of its release in 2003.