D-Rated Movies

April is the cruelest month, bringing Oscar winners out of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And losers. I won’t bother with the rather futile exercise of listing what should win and/or what will. Instead, in addition to my regular capsules, here’s a wrap-up of the best -and the worst -of the 1974 cinema.

THE BEST of’74…

Amarcord: Fellini remembers – his boyhood, papa Mussolini, adolescent horny days and nights, the town floozie and the town sage, schoolboy pranks and the first tentative Teachings toward manhood. Earthy, frank, wholly winning, a magical mystery tour of the selective memory.

Chinatown: Roman Polanski’s stunning evocation of 1930’s crime thrillers, with Jack Nicholson as a wry private dick, Faye Dunaway as a very strange lady, and John Huston as L.A.’s biggest SOB. Murder, political malfeasance, a sprinkling of incest, all the juicy things.

The Conversation: Waterbugging pre-Watergate. Francis Ford Coppola’s chilling examination of the surveillance mentality gone bonkers. Gene Hackman plays the master eavesdropper, getting deeper and deeper into a puzzling crime, the victim and perpetrators of which are not entirely clear to him or to us. A gripping film of the very first rank.

The Godfather, Part II: Surpasses the original by a mile, with Al Pacino as the young Don and Robert De Niro in flashback in the Brando role as Big Daddy on the way up. Over three hours long, but worth every minute; possibly the best examination of syndicate crime in the contemporary film. For once, a sequel to treasure.

Lacombe, Lucien: An absolute triumph from Louis Malle. The story of a young French peasant lad who becomes a collaborator in 1944, finds happiness doing the Nazis’ dirty work and more joy with a Jewish girl, then … Beautifully done, powerfully communicating its message by example, subtly, tightly.

Murder on the Orient Express: A superlative Agatha Christie thriller now magnificently filmed, starring everybody, including Ingrid Bergman cast against type as a drab religious fanatic and Albert Finney as the irrepressible Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, with Lauren Bacall as Mrs. American Chatterbox, Richard Widmark as the corpse, Tony Perkins as a flaky secretary, Wendy Hiller as an ancient Russian princess, and on and on. The victim dies of multiple stab wounds, but his train compartment is locked from within. Whodunit? A giddy romp, and a train so lovely that you’ll know for sure what we’ve lost in rail travel since the 30’s.

The Phantom of the Paradise: A devastating reworking of the Faust story with elements of Dorian Gray and the Phantom of the Opera horror rolled into one, attempting an evisceration of the squal-idness of the rock ’n’ roll industry. Some magnificent effects, moments of breath-takingly original music, and many scenes that are jolting. A triumphant parody.



Scenes from a Marriage: Ingmar Bergman’s brilliant study of a modern alliance gone quite sour, distilled from a lengthy television series into an awesomely jarring movie starring Liv Ull-mann. Not for those whose marriages are on the rocks. This is a sophisticated, icy, phenomenally fine work.

A Woman Under the Influence: The finest American film of 1974. John Cassavetes’ unnerving, shattering look at a wife distraught beyond repair. With Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk as the suffering couple. Come prepared to suffer along with them.

Young Frankenstein: Mel Brooks’ latest mad comedy, starring Gene Wilder as the Frankenstein’s grandson (“I pronounce it Fronkensteen; my grandfather was doodoo!”). The ultimate send-off of that enduring old classic. Marty Feldman as good servant Igor with a movable hump; Cloris Leachman as the wierd Frau Blu-cher, the very mention of whose name frightens the horses; Madeline Kahn as Frankenstein’s giddy girl friend; and Peter Boyle as the 7-foot monster with appendages to match.

…AND THE WORST of ’74

The Abdication: Why Sweden’s ditsy Queen Christina vacated her chilly throne in 1654 to find happiness as a Catholic lusting after a Vatican cardinal of the celibate persuasion. Liv Ullmann and Peter Finch, back from their Lost Horizon hokum, meander through an endless she-bang of philosophical and sexual chatter leading nowhere. One wishes she had expired in a snowdrift on the way south.

Airport 1975: A disaster a day keeps the pilots at play. Interminable, witless, unintentionally funny, a clinker with everyone from Moses (Charlton Heston) to the Exorcist girl (Linda Blair), plus cross-eyed Karen Black as the stew in a pickle, Helen Reddy as a warbling nun, Sid Caesar as a nervous nelly, Myrna Loy as a lush, and Gloria Swanson as Gloria Swan-son, plus your favorite: the 747, with a big hole in its cockpit. And a good man to fly it is hard to get.

Andy Warhol’s Dracula: Same cast as his occasionally amusing Frankenstein, with Joe Dallessandro as the Marx-spouting Italian servant, and all those European “discoveries” as the “wirgins,” ghouls and drones. Much blood, no humor, no point, no end, no fun.

Death Wish: Charles Bronson’s vigilante story, with dialogue your neighborhood Mongoloid idiot could improve upon, acting on a par with the histrionics of the avocado in your fridge, and a do-it-yourself approach to law that has them in ecstacy at the Birch Society.

Earthquake: Number 38 of the 1974 disaster flicks, full of outrageous special effects and a cast of zillions, including, once more, Moses Heston. Plus an added thrill: the annihilation of L.A. The acting is as heavy as the falling buildings, the loose ends are tied together with Elmer’s glue, and I wished they had all croaked in the first reel.

For Pete’s Sake: Barbra Streisand’s worst film to date, and that’s saying a lot. Cloying “humor,” all the oldest, most tiresome sight gags, and a plot for kindergarten.

The Longest Yard: Burt Reynolds as a noble jailbird, with prisoners you would love to like if they’d let you, and Eddie Albert as a warden typecast for a prison reform panel’s nightmare.



The Towering Inferno: When the tallest building in the world catches fire, a galaxy of stars are on hand to be brave, cowardly, dead, and alive. The dialogue is as if meant for chiselling in stone, and the fire does go on, and on.

The Trial of Billy Jack: How much treacle can the counterculture stomach? They’re flocking to this like salmon up the stream. Sanctimoniousness envelopes the film such that you want to retch, idealism is rampant on every shining kiddie puss, and the band plays on. How wonderful is youth! How noble! What a piece of dreck is this!

A Very Natural Thing: The first attempt at a serious homosexual film, it emerges instead as an unintentionally vapid comedy, with soap opera profundity, and the artsy cinematography that Elvira Madigan did years ago. This one sets gay lib back a decade.



CURRENT FILMS



(All films listed are in current run; most are expected to be in Dallas, though some may not be distributed here immediately.)



Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore:

Ellen Burstyn is marvelous in this tragicomedy about a woman suddenly widowed, attempting to structure a new life for herself and her 12-year-old terror of a son. Hard-hitting dialogue, no softsoaping of the woman’s still active sexuality, some tremendous bits from Alfred Lutter as the kid, and some nice moments from Kris Kristofferson as the man in Alice’s life.

Escape to Nowhere: A thrilling French escape tale, involving international intrigue, love, double- and triple-cross, and some sophisticated, literate dialogue. A sleeper little noticed in America.

Freebie and the Bean: One of the worst cop flicks in years. Alan Arkin and James Caan as the oddly-named heroes, Valerie Harper (“Rhoda”) as a Chicano housewife (sic), blood, guts, mayhem, madness, viciousness, and inanity. This is called a comedy.

The Front Page: The odd couple-Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon -at it again, in a watery, fuzzy version of the great 1928 stage play about the tough life of a newspaper. Most of the sparkle is gone; what’s left is a diamond in the rough, very rough.

Lenny: Dustin Hoffman as the liberals’ scourge, Lenny Bruce, here transmogrified into a liberal saint. Somewhere deep inside there’s an important message: don’t stifle your eccentrics. But the film buries Lenny under the weight of its own reverence, showing us only a bit of the Lenny who skewered every convention, made fun of everybody and everything, and rewrote the book on bad taste. Hoffman is super, as is Valerie Perrine as his wife. Some of the material is well transposed directly from Bruce’s routines to the film, though much of it is too chopped up to retain its power. Grim, hard, and at times biting.



Love and Anarchy: Lina Wertmuller’s wicked satire on politics and lust, an Italian delight throughout, with some hard-headed insights underneath the fun.



Malizia: An Italian put-on of X-rated movies, with a surface anti-woman bias masking a subterranean women’s lib message.



Paperback Hero: Well, they make films in Canada too. Jolly. This one wanders all over the macho landscape, makes a fetish out of plaintalk, and wastes utterly the talents of Keir Dullea and Elizabeth Ashley as the hero and his barmaid groupie. The best scenes are at the village hockey game, and they’re terrible too.



The Phantom of Liberty: Another extended dig at the bourgeoisie, from Luis Bunuel. Everything turned upside down, every convention shattered, all connective tissue severed, until at the end one suddenly realizes that one hasn’t understood a bit of it. But since every Bunuel film is an extended dig at the bourgeoisie…



Report to the Commissioner: This year’s Serpico – the honest, idealistic cop confronted by the entrenched System. Along the way, two remarkably harrowing chases, some unusually frank racial talk – a wise Negro cop instructs our innocent hero in the realities of black street crime – and splendid performances by Michael Moriarty and Yaphet Kotto. Troublesome in its simplism, but taut in spots.



The Seduction of Mimi: Another gem by Lina Wertmuller; this, an acidic dissection of a dedicated young Siciliano Communist going, shall we say, straight to the bourgeoisie. Funny like cold pasta, with (for the misogynist on your block) the most gruesome naked woman since Rubens got the giggles.



Stardust: A remarkably moving film detailing a rock group’s rise, stardom and decline, with David Essex as the lead, and some of the best pop music of the ’60s and ’70s, plus an original score for the fictional “Stray Cats” group. Not overplayed or moralistic or antagonistic, just a splendid bloodletting-cum-social commentary.



Stavisky: Alain Resnais’ languid, soporific retelling of the true story of an early twentieth-century con man in France, and his frightening influence on 1930’s international relations. With Jean-Paul Bel-mondo as the charming bounder, and Charles Boyer as the ever-dapper Baron Raoul. Anti-Semitism, elitism, snobbism, the works. But dull.



Thieves Like Us: Another sleeper,much ignored during its first run, nowgoing the rounds again. A tender andtough story of a young fellow caught up incrime, with Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall as the young lovers. A Bonnieand Clyde with feeling.