Yeah, its OT, but Psycho and Hitchcock turn up in it.
I found it getting too big and unwieldy.
I'd like to start a second thread, with a swanstep post I wanted to respond to.
But you can go to the FIRST THREAD and post, too.
CONT
swanstep wrote:
Some more on The Good The Bad & The Ugly (1966).
1. Fans of TGTB&TU have been in a tough spot over the last few decades with a range of cuts (stemming from the film's production which was US-financed with US actors for the most part but Leone also produced a longer, main-actors-dubbed-in-Italian edition at the time) being available with various kinds of dubbing, and the most extraordinarily varied and downright oddly color-graded editions on blu-ray have emerged. For a lot of us, TGTB&TU has been almost unwatchable over the last decade. Well, *finally* there is a really good blu-ray edition of the US Theatrical edition available from Kino Lorber. This vid. has all the super-extensive details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ko0utoKX2w
The bottom line is that a good (color-accurate, checked against original technicolor prints) blu-ray of the US Theatrical version is all most of us wanted or needed, and it's here. Halleluljah.
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This is the one I will watch. Because I'm not sure that I've ever watched ANY version of it all the way through. GBU has been around for decades, and I remember the "woooo-ie-wooie-wooh" theme song playing on the radio and the rapid ascent to superstardom that Mr. Eastwood attained. I also remember GBU as a 1968 release in the US but...who's counting?
GBU is one of those movies where, when I was in college and elsewhere, if I was calling out Psycho(or in a more timid mode, North by Northwest) as my favorite , somebody else (always a guy) picked GBU.
CONT
Now my beef with Leone is two-fold: (1) How LONG he takes having characters wait in certain gunfights (like the one between Bronson and the three guys in Once Upon a Time in the West, er...OUATITW.) I always felt that two guys -- Hitchcock and Peckinpah -- seemed to have a perfect sense of how to build things up and then release them before things went on too long(example: Arbogast's murder; the final showdown in Wild Bunch); but Leone just loved to luxuriate in "mak
ing us wait too long" for his action, and taking in his landscapes. And yet, I KNOW: others LOVE this about his timing, and it is a timing he wanted to express. OK by me but: Hitch and Peckinpah, better. To me.
(2) It took me a long time to get over a certain "big budget Hollywood production snobbery" and to ACCEPT all the foreign elements in a Leone. The dubbing. The too-choppy gunfire. Even Leone's music sometimes, loudly slathered over everything and ALSO stretched out too long. (I'll take my beatin' on that one.)
I have a suspicion about subtitles or dubbed lines: have they been "dumbed down" from the real dialogue? Or at least cut short? I can't say I loved a lot of the dialogue in GBU, but some, sure ("When you are going to kill a man...shoot, don't talk!) And whichever movie has the line about three horses: "We brought one too few" "No you brought two too many." Etc.
And how about those good, bad, ugly guys? Has not Eli Wallach emerged as the TRUE star of the show? This and his somewhat similar Calvera in The Magnificent Seven stand to me as the greatest argument for casting a role "however you want to cast it." My estimation of Clint has gone up and down and up and down over the years. Always interesting as an icon, sometimes a bit dull as an actor(I much preferred Steve McQueen's presence when they were competitive in star roles), sometimes cheating his audience with cheapjack movies, sometimes delivering masterpieces, and...now an over the title legend at 91.
And Lee Van Cleef. Eastwood ended up 'set for stardom" and Wallach already had it -- supporting, at least -- but Van Cleef had been around for years doing small parts(perhaps most memorably with Strother Martin as Lee Marvin's henchman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ) and now...almost suddenly...stardom. Sort of. For awhile. And B legend status after that.
This guy I knew whose favorite movie was GBU had a favorite SCENE: the three guys standing off against each other for a final showdown, two against one against one against one. It IS cool ...and it is perhaps the only time I really enjoyed Leone going on forever with his visuals(while Morricone went on with his music.) I like how the "riddle was solved," too: who lives, who dies?
But I haven't really "absorbed" this "neo-classic" and I think it is time. I did not see it in theaters. Or a revival house. So I have to rent it or buy it to fully watch it. I've seen it on TV a few times, but never all the way through.
The next one -- Once Upon a Time in the West -- I DID see at the theater(on a double bill with Downhill Racer, a dull match that made for a LONG day at the movies.) I also appeared in a student film scored to Morricone's OUATITW music...I died on screen to it. It felt meaningful.
So OUATIW, I'm covered(hey, its Jason Robards in look and manner who steals that one for me).
2. Netfilx, at least where I live, has a fun documentary, Sad Hill Unearthed, about the fan-driven project to restore and preserve the epic, remote cemetery location from the climax of TGTB&TU.
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There are evidently quite a few of this "niche" documentaries about fans trying to do something with, to, or about their favorite movies and scenes.
--
The doc. interweaves a lot of the key anecdotes about TGTB&TU's production and its influence with the details of the cemetery project which was timed for TGTB&TU's 50th anniversary back in 2016 (so Morricone was still around to celebrate). I recommend the film as a good relaxing watch.
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I'm on my way...if I can find it.
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TGTB&TU, like Psycho, is a supreme collaboration of Director & Composer, and the doc. makes clear how the score to TGTB&TU both worked to make TGTB&TU a huge world-wide hit at the time (with years and years of re-releases) and has ensured that TGTB&TU has never really gone away. The doc really does end up implicitly arguing that if a director wants serious longevity in pop culture, he or she should find him- or herself a true musical partner.
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I agree with all of that...and that's even with me "dissing" (just a little bit) Leone AND Morricone for the overlength(Leone) and overdramatic (Morricone) elements of their work. There can be no doubt that they forged something that has stood the test of time and -- just like Hitchcock and Herrmann -- visual and music are fused, inseparable.
Also, movie spoofs use that "wooie-wooie-woo" theme motif almost as often as the screaming violins from Psycho. Usually, the Morricone theme is used to create a sudden Western atmosphere, but sometimes just to get all "hip."
CONT
Of his post-Leone scores, I most like Morricones score for The Untouchables, which has (like Psycho does) SEVERAL musical motifs that drive the emotion of the film:
Credit music: NOT the famous theme. Rather this staccato, lightly drum driven martial beat with an edge.
Famous theme: Thrilling, exhilarating, thunderous, a bit All-American , the theme for The Untouchables Horseback ride ("Hell, you're gonna die of somethin'" Connery intones) ...and used for TV productions like the AFI Life Achievement Award ever since.
Baby's lullaby/staircase suspense: The big shootout on the staircase gets a contrapunctual Baby's Lullaby(for the baby in the stroller) with tense Herrmanesque suspense music. When will the baby and the gunfight merge?
Sad music for the sad death of certain heroes: Two of the Untouchables die, and Morricone gives us tear-duct music for the deaths. I recall with the first one thinking '''Oh, this music is PERFECT" and then -- it got SADDER and I thought "this is even MORE perfect!" I remember that moment, in a theater with that movie and that music.
I also like Morricone's ominous overture that accompanies the great shot ("Tortured Jesus in the Snow") that opens The Hateful Eight(there's a little bit of the Untouchables credit music there, not the big theme.)
Leone did scores for literally *hundreds* of different films, and I guess everyone has their favorites out of his non-Leone work. I especially love Leone's score for Days of Heaven, and especially this piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UXfwBb2JfE
Of course, when you write as many scores as Morricone did there's bound to be some overlap and repetition. E.g., bits of his score for The Mission (which really grabbed people of my broadly '80s generation) strongly echo some of his more sentimental themes from The Good The Bad and The Ugly.
As for Leone, like De Palma (and QT who was influenced by both of them) sometimes dragging sequences out in very 'look at me' ways... it's true that one has to be in the mood for opera I suppose. I tend to go through phases with all of these guys where they're exactly what I want and phases where they're exactly what I don't want whereas I'm more or less always in the mood for less operatic, hyperbolic directors like Hitchcock or Wyler or George Stevens or George Roy Hill or Donen or... Hitchcock is the best (at least for me) perhaps because he has a ton of visual style and has this tight connection with Herrmann in his best work and yet still has the taste not to unbalance his films into indulgence or so that dialogue, character, etc. starts to degrade into cartoons or general ephemerality.
1965
Number One: The Great Race
Number Two: Thunderball
Honorable mentions
Mirage
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Cat Ballou
The Sound of Music
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Another "weak year" that, I suppose if one adds the foreign film(Repulsion?) comes out better.
The Sound of Music, like The Godfather and Titanic after it, managed to cadge the Best Picture Oscar and the status of biggest hit of the year(and, until The Godfather, of all time.)
A guide to how movies were released in the 60's: I finally saw The Sound of Music in 1967. Our family elected not to drive into Hollywood to see that film in its long first run, but rather chose to see it a couple of years later at a neighborhood theater than played that movie for about a YEAR! (They left, permanently, a cut-out of Julie Andrews on the outside wall of the theater for years AFTER SOM played at that theater, as if to "mark the theater" as having once housed such a great hit.)
I liked The Sound of Music, and we had the album and it played a lot in the house. There can be no doubt that, compared to the fast and loose and Satanic Damn Yankees, or the macho melancholy of Paint Your Wagon...this more famous musical was just a bit too much on the treacly side for me. But it was good, and I liked it and I recall getting the feeling , near the end , of what it was like to find your country slowly begin taken over by evil -- with Switzerland as a "heavenly goal of safety."
Decades later, I sat for a full house "fun" showing of Sound of Music with "audience participation" ala Rocky Horror Picture Show...plus subtitles for "sing a along." Best: the opening helicopter shot all over Austria, with the audience yelling AT the helicopter -- "Go to your left! To your LEFT! KEEP GOING! DOWN THERE!" and as the camera dove down to Julie Andrews, the place went "nuts with hysteria" (on purpose) She's DOWN THERE! THERE SHE IS! A lotta fun.
CONT
And to think, the next year, Julie Andrews made Torn Curtain for Hitchcock and saw her career slowly spin down.
I do believe that Hitchcock's flopping with Julie Andrews AND Paul Newman pretty much nixed his career as a Top Hollywood Dog. He would keep working, but not with stars, and rather as a Nostalgia Specialty Act.
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My Number One is The Great Race, which stands in for ALL the Blake Edwards/Henry Mancini collaborations of the sixties(their best decade.) Its is built for kids(which I was in '65) with Jack Lemmon's over-the-top Professor Fate (complete with Peter Falk as sidekick/henchman Max), Tony Curtis as the gallant and pure Great Leslie, and Natalie Wood as the very sexy suffragette and ace reporter Maggie DuBois.
Compared to Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, which was noteably a "foreign production" with an international cast, The Great Race was Hollywood Homebred -- expensive-looking as hell, smooth and plush and filled with cliche sequences(a Western barroom brawl; a "Prisoner of Zenda" mini-movie) that work quite well today.
All these years later, what most impresses me in The Great Race is Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate. I saw Jack in person back in the 70's and he said he got the most fan mail by far for Professor Fate, and its easy to see why: the character was a cartoon villain that kids would love and remember warmly as they grew older. But it is better than that: Lemmon, so neurotic and nebbishy and wimpy for most of his career(even to great effect in The Apartment) here played things big and loud and macho and he LOOKED great, as men in middle-age do(especially movie stars.) Fate's all-black outfits were cool and his moustache looked good on Lemmon.
Lemmon would play another role in the film -- the foppish Prince of a magical kingdom who is "Jack back to silliness" (Oh, you Great Leslie you!), but that role was funny enough and Lemmon returned to Fate through the ending.
CONT
Note in passing: As with The Beatles with "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help" Lemmon and Curtis had one big black and white hit(Some Like It Hot) and one color hit(The Great Race.) Some Like it Hot is in the record books as a classic (AFI's Number One Comedy of All time; as Psycho is the Number One AFI thriller.) But The Great Race is its own great big lollapalooza of a comedia gargantua.
Note in passing: The Great Race is probably the last time that Tony Curtis is REALLY a movie star, bankable and good. Though Jack Lemmon was always to be Professor Fate, Curtis got The Great Leslie after Charlton Heston and Paul Newman turned it down. It was more of a Curtis role, anyway -- his "wooden on-purpose" line readings ("my auto-MO-BEEL") were elegant and funny in the classic movie star tradition. Within a few years, Curtis would Go Ugly as The Boston Strangler, and then off to TV. But he earned his stardom when he had it...and The Great Race may well be his most famous movie now.
CONT
After much thought, I put Thunderball at Number Two. The only Bond movie to make that level, even.
I considered why.
The Bond movies got a solid start with Dr. No and From Russia With Love, but those were rather "small" movies, cheaply made. As box office rolled in, the budgets went up and Goldfinger was both a Titanic-level hit in 1964 AND the "template for Bond as we know him" (Supervillain, henchman; main hot lady, subsidiary hot ladies.)
Goldfinger couldn't get higher on my 1964 list because Strangelove and Mary Poppins beat it.
But Thunderball -- evidently an even bigger hit than Goldfinger -- and the Peak of Bond -- can find room in 1965 and stand in for ALL the Bond movies I like.
I saw Thunderball twice. Once around Xmas time of 1965 -- with my parents(a bit embarrasing), and then later during the summer of 1966, with male friends (a bit more like it.) Thunderball is famously the "ocean-going Bond of the 60's" (with good and bad armies in scuba suits battling it out underwater. And the second time I saw Thunderball, it was at a theater near the beach, where my family was summering(ha, in a dumpy shack-like apartment) so..movie and reality merged. (As would Jaws in the same vicinity ten years later.)
Modernly, I think that Thunderball moves pretty damn slow but back then (pre-Star Wars) it was pretty exciting. The villainous Largo with his eye patch and white hair was memorable, feeding his failed henchman to the sharks (Jaws, ten years early.) Working for supervillains was always dangerous work -- you don't get fired if you fail, you get executed.
CONT
BUT: the main draw to me now with Thunderball is: those WOMEN. I think this one had the prettiest group of them all: Claudine Auger(Domino) gets my vote for the prettiest Bond Girl(tut tut) ever. Redheaded Italian favorite Lucianna Pallazi(sp?) was a 60's staple, and a villainess here. And then there is that homespun British beauty at the health spa who Bond evidently blackmails(under threat of getting her fired for someone else's assassination attempt) into sex in a steam room. This, just one year after Marnie. Oh, well, let the debate continue. The woman 's "no" seems a lot like a "yes" from here. Anyway, three gorgeous women and I think there were more in that one. Its back when Bond "got around."
A memory from 1965: Thunderball had an intermission, first run. It came as he went to bed with one of those women. Fade out and a title card appeared on the screen: "Even James Bond is Entitled to a Little Privacy. INTERMISSION." Say what? I was too young.
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CONT
Ironically enough , the BIGGEST movie in my life to arrive in 1965 was called..Psycho.
It got a re-release on March 16, 1965(then, a movie in re-release was kept away from the Xmas and Summer blockbusters.) I opened up an LA Times, went to the movie ads as I liked to do, and was confronted with a big, scary slashed word that I didn't understand and couldn't pronounce ("PUH-SY-CHOO?") The ad said: "Psycho is back with its blonde, its blood, and its shower bath scene."
I was intrigued. Something about that ad was SCARY. The slashed word, I think. The word "blood." And what was this "shower bath scene"? (Note: shower bath. Not shower.)
Soon I was on the street and getting an earful from older kids and parents about how bloody Psycho was, how horrible, how I should never see it. And the shower scene was described to me(shes naked and she gets stabbed 100 times!) terrified me in the telling.
I recall asking my mother to give me the plot. She complied, with edits. I remember her saying "a private detective shows up and Perkins tells him he has to speak to his mother and he goes up to the house and, well...you just never see him again."
In retrospect, I think my mother was speaking about the book(Perkins never told Arbogast to go speak to mother). I don't think she saw the movie til it was on TV a coupla years later. And she gave me the twist ending : Anthony Perkins dressed up as Mother in the fruit cellar with the skeleton mom. Yep, I never got that from seeing the movie. I got it from...my mother.
And thus, Anthony Perkins as a horrific psycho killer and Psycho as a horrific movie arrived simultaneously in my life on that day in March of 1965 and the adventure began. It took years to see it for myself.
Later that year, in summer at the same theater where I saw Thunderball, I saw the trailer for Psycho..."coming soon with Mirage" as an "Exciting Co-Feature." I've told that story..I ran out of the theater into the lobby until the trailer was over. I thought. I returned in time to see the lady in the shower screaming.
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CONT
Actually , I HAD seen Mirage earlier in 1965, without Psycho. My parents had no compunction about taking us to violent thrillers that weren't called Psycho. I found Mirage to be very claustrophobic and oppressive -- only Walter Matthau as an amiable private eye who tries to help amnesiac Greg Peck was any comfort as comic relief. And soon he was killed, not as violently as Arbogast but -- I suppose that's why they put Psycho on the bill with Mirage, eventually.
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Cat Ballou. Lee Marvin plays two roles -- one of them a hilarious drunken broken-down gunslinger -- wins the Best Actor Oscar and becomes a leading man for about ten years or less (like Walter Matthau, Lee had to toil in supporting roles until the Big Break came along.) Jane Fonda is sexy(and as an outlaw, in an early "rebel" role), Marvin is hilarious(and pulls off some Oscar-worthy long speeches, too) Michael Callan and Dwayne Dobie Gillis Hickman are a discount Curtis and Lemmon, and Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye are troubadour narrators. Cole (with his GREAT voice) would die the same year, this is his legacy.
Small, low budget, but memorable. And Lee Marvin became one of my favorite stars -- if not Hitchcock material.
PS on 1965.
James Bond has been a big thing for six decades now, but I think I can only place the Connerys as "favorites." I lost interest in the series once Roger Moore came on board and though I've seen every James Bond movie ever made, they simply don't have the "forbidden" sex and violence punch they had in the 60's with Connery. The new ones are far better made(with CGI) but they are nostalgia pieces. And Bond simply don't get around like he used to.
Other than Connery's sixties Bonds, the only Bond I rate as something special is the one with Lazenby(also 60s), which plays like an epic(with no money to have to spend on Connery, they could spend on the production), and has real emotion at the end. ("Mrs. Bond" gets killed on her wedding day.)
I say this in full appreciation that generations following mine will choose from Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig and find their own favorites.
But Connery in the 60s'...a very big deal. And very naughty and brutal, in its own way, for that decade.
BUT: the main draw to me now with Thunderball is: those WOMEN.The women in Thunderball are indeed its strong suit, especially Claudine Auger. Obviously people's tastes differ widely, but, even 50 years later, Auger is quite generally recognized as being one of Bond's greatest beauties. I didn't see Thunderball for the first time until a couple of years ago and had the thought that maybe Auger was *too* beautiful for '60s Bond, in that the rules of the game for Bond at that point mean that he has to love and leave Domino (Auger). But, seriously, Bond is chump if he walks out on her. And cruel too! She's so kittenish (triggering protectiveness feelings). What sort of monster would walk out on a kitten?
1975:
Number One: Jaws
Number Two: Three Days of the Condor
Honorable mentions:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Love and Death
Tommy
Bite the Bullet
The Wind and the Lion
Funny Lady
The Man Who Would Be King
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After I picked my personal favorite of each year, I pick a favorite of the decade. North by Northwest is my favorite of the 50s'; Psycho is my favorite of the 60's -- and they were released less than a year apart!
I found myself in a conundrum when I totaled up the 70's. Two favorites were SO favorite -- The Godfather in 1972 and Jaws in 1975 -- that I gave them a tie for the decade. My only one.
But that was a "years ago" decision. In more recent years, I have found that while every scene in The Godfather (the first one only) is engrossing to watch and pleasurable to remember -- Jaws rather gets bogged down(in tV showings) in that second half where we are out there with those three guys on that boat. We never get to leave that boat -- that's part of the terror -- but it is problem on re-viewings. The Godfather gets to roam hither and yon -- Hollywood, Italy, Vegas - even as all the New York scenes are gold, too.
So The Godfather is my favorite of 1972 AND the 70's.
But Jaws is still my favorite of 1975 -- it was a aummer blockbuster back when you only got one of those per summer. No competition. I recall sitting in a theater about to watch a rather dull and gritty political thriller with Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine that summer (The Wilby Conspiracy) and they showed a "Jaws" trailer first ("Now Showing in Theater Two") and I thoujght..."why am I HERE to see this Poitier/Caine movie? Why am I not seeing Jaws AGAIN?" The trailer was that exciting. The movie was that exciting. The grip of the movie on the summer of 1975 was that exciting.
CONT
The paperback of Jaws had come out as a "beach book" one summer earlier -- the summer when Chinatown was Hollywood's idea of a summer blockbuster -- and the excitement and anticipation "locked in" for an entire year, through the fall, winter and spring of 1974 into 1975 (with The Towering Inferno and Young Frankenstein along the way) and finally to that day in June when I joined several male friends in a long, long, LONG opening day line (just as I had with The Godfather, but not on opening day) and finally got in to see it.
One of the great movie going memories of my life.
Full house. Lots of screaming(after the head pops out of the boat, you can't hear Schider, Dreyfuss and the Mayor talking on the beach in the next scene.) Lots of yelling in supsense (like when the two fishermen get chased in the water by a SMALL DOCK -- chained to a shark you can't see.)
I recall how with each killing, you saw more and more of the shark. Once the film reached Killing Number Three(the lifeguard) and we could actually see the entire head of the shark chomping down on the man -- the screams shook the building. The "kicker" -- a hairy leg underwater revealed to be severed, with tennis shoe still on the foot -- brought a BIGGER scream. Fun.
Like Psycho and like The Godfather, Jaws is a movie that reveals its structure for all to see as it goes along. With Psycho it was: Marion killed, detective killed, Norman caught. OR: "Part One: Marion's story, to the bottom of the swamp; Part Two: Norman's Story to the jail cell." With The Godfather it was: "Part One: Meet Everybody at the Wedding" Part Two: Exciting Mafia wars."
With Jaws it was "Part One: The HItchcock Movie -- Bloody shark attacks in Your Town USA. Part Two: The Hawks Movie: A Group of Men on an Adventure, killing the shark."
CONT
Of all the horror movies to follow Psycho, Jaws is the one that comes closest to the same level of success, IMHO. They were both summer blockbusters(Hollywood just didn't know it yet, with Psycho.) They were both event movies...people formed long lines to see them and saw them again and again.
They were both "hybrids": neither is ONLY a horror movie. Psycho is also a heist thriller, a Gothic, a black comedy and a tragedy. Jaws is also a seafaring adventure, a political treatise, a buddy movie, an action movie, and a comedy.
Unlike The Exorcist(yet another blockbuster -- Xmas edition) Psycho and Jaws are about "the monster's gonna jump out and kill you!" It only happens twice in Psycho. It happens four times in Jaws. But in both films, there is plenty of suspense waiting for WHEN it is going to happen. Each film creates a "zone of danger" (the Bates properties; the ocean) and places characters in those zones often.
Each film has a demonstrably great, Brand Name director at the helm. Neither Hitchcock nor Spielberg were flashes in the pan. William "The EXorcist" Friedkin WAS.
Both films have great scripts and great casts -- though Psycho's script is better(the "Jaws" script feels like a committee wrote it and a lot of the time, what is being said doesn't quite make sense or flow naturally from scene to scene -- both the Mayor and Quint seem to reverse their character arcs.)
The ladies are more important in Psycho than in Jaws: Marion, Lila, and Mrs. Bates are important characters. Jaws is about Three Guys - with Mrs. Brody a well-cast, sympathetic woman who literally runs out of the movie at the end of Part One, never to be seen again.
CONT
The Three Guys in Jaws were offbeat, perfect casting. Charlton Heston did NOT get the Chief Brody role(it would have cheapened the movie after all that disaster in Airport 75 and Earthquake.). Hooper was switched from the Young Stud of the book to bookish Richard Dreyfuss(a stand in for Spielberg and many young male audience members; there's a bit of Woody Allen to him, too.)
Quint could have been Lee Marvin or Sterling Hayden -- who both turned it down -- but ended up being Unforgettably Robert Shaw(because he had been in The Sting, in a role turned down by Richard Boone.) shaw evidently helped write his famous USS Indianpolis speech. And the whole movie heads for Quint getting the most graphic eating by the shark.
I like how the three guys each has a "two against one" problem: Brody is a landlubber; the other two are experienced seamen. Hooper is rich; the other two are working class. Quint is nuts; the other two are sane.
Psycho and Jaws each has a great score...with a great famous musical motif: shriek shriek shriek...chug chug chug.
One final note for now: in that "Jaws" summer of 1975, I had some male friends who much preferred another summer release: "Breakout," in which Charles Bronson played his character pretty funny while being supported by Robert The Godfather Duvall and John Chinatown Huston! I saw "Breakout" at the drive-in with these guys, and all through it, they were saying "this is SO much better than Jaws" -- which got its main diss for how that little bitty air tank blew up the shark at the end.
Breakout...or Jaws? You decide.
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CONT
Number Two: Three Days of the Condor
When "the summer of Jaws" finally subsided and the weather cooled, some good movies arrived. Dog Day Afternoon(Pacino) and Cuckoo's Nest(Nicholson) were the Oscar bait(but entertaining.)
Bur Robert Redford showed his Star Stripes well with Three Days of the Condor.
If "Jaws" derives from Psycho, then Condor derives from North by Northwest: Redford is the innocent man caught up in a deadly spy plot and on the run; he is "sorta kinda" a wrong man, a person of interest in some murders.
However, he not THAT innocent. He works for the CIA.
But his job for the CIA is...reading books. To search for spy plot clues.
In one of the great lines of the great script CIA Ultra-Honcho John Houseman asks CIA LIeutenant Cliff Robertson what Redford does at the CIA:
Robertson: He reads.
Another man: What do you mean?
Robertson: I mean, he READS. He...reads..EVERYTHING.
Houseman: Very good.
As a reader myself, I always liked that line. I'll bet that other readers did, too.
Well, anyway, Redford is The Man Who Read Too Much and because of what he has read...everybody in his CIA office is killed by a hit squad led by Tall Quiet Max Von Sydow. Everybody but Redford, of course because --in a HItchcockian "twist of fate" -- he snuck out the back alley to buy lucnh and thus was not seen by the assasssins.
The scene where Redford returns to his office and finds each of his colleagues dead is very "visceral" -- accompanied by the constant click-and-clatter of 1975-era computers printing out pages as Redford finds each dead person -- including the pretty young woman with whom he was flirting and and older woman receptionist. These killers were MERCILESS.
CONT
JUMP TO THE END: In one of the great "character twists" of the 70's, Tall Quiet Assassin Max Von Sydow switches -- in an instant -- from a man hellbent on killing Robert Redford to "no longer interested." Von Sydow's contract has been changed. He kills the man who hired him to kill Redford. Von Sydow and Redford actually have a decent, almost friendly conversation at that point.
Its a clever, seventies-style turnaround and it is key to Three Days of the Condor. Von Sydow reveals to Redford that it is his approach to "take no sides" in political battles.."I never ask why...I only ask when, where, and always: how much." Von Sydow gives Redford some sad, friendly advice -- "It will happen this way. A car will pull up and someone you know, someone you trust, a friend...will open the car door and invite you inside." Von Sydow then gives Redford his own gun: "For that day."
Director Sydney Pollack said he saw HIMSELF in Von Sydow: "an uncommitted man," cynical about politics, and about the world. Von Sydow is actually a carry forward of Redford's similar "uncommitted man" in Pollock's The Way We Were(a character I personally very much like.)
But its truly amazing: the man we saw order the killing of men and women alike at the beginning of the movie leaves the movie without being killed or punished, and we actually LIKE him a little bit...if only because he's a cool guy who just doesn't care. As a mainstream matter, this was the best thing I ever saw Von Sydow do.
And it came only two years after The Exorcist.
Indeed, Three Days of the Condor has Robert Redford being supported by a small "who's who" of classy players:
Faye Dunaway(she was in EVERYTHING.)
Max Von Sydow(The Exorcist)
John Houseman(Oscar winner for The Paper Chase.)
Cliff Robertson(an Oscar winner for Charly, never much of a star, but good here.)
CONT
Condor was a classy, well written, low-key thriller with enough romance in it to make for a great date night feature(that's how I saw it), which..even with the small mass murder up front...played as far more of a non-violent crowd pleaser than something as gruesome as Hitchocck's Frenzy.
It IS a throwback to NXNW, except Redford isn't heading for Mount Rushmore at the end...he's heading for the New York Times, to tell all he knows. Rather a "weak liberal" sort of solution, but Pollack and his writers make a little fun of it themselves:
Redford: You play games...I tell stories.
Robertson: You fool. You've done more damage than you know.
Redford: I hope so.
Robertson: (Pause) How can you be sure they'll print it?
Redford: They'll print it.
Robertson: How can you be sure?
And the movie ends there with a freeze fame of Redford walking away(past Santa Claus.) A rather typical 70's cop out of sorts. But still a good movie, great for a date.
Because: about that "romance." Redford kidnaps Dunaway from a ski shop at gunpoint and holds her hostage at her apartment. That's a bad guy move but its allowed because (said Dunaway herself)...he's Robert Redford! And Dunaway comes to believe Redford is a good guy, being chased by bad guys. And...he's Robert Redford! We get this exchange:
Redford: Have I harmed you in any way?
Dunaway: No.
Redford: Have I raped you?
Dunaway: The night is young.
Hoo boy. Well eventually, this couple makes consensual, sad love..and eventually a killer shows up to take Redford out and Dunaway helps Redford fight and kill the guy...like I said, a great date night movie.
CONT
Robert Redford himself benefitted from the fact that, after four "period pieces" in a row where he had to keep his hair cut short and/or slicked down, he could FINALLY play a contemporary role with long, fluffy 70's hair -- that blond mane of his was a real selling point. As was his handsome, intelligent face ("Millimeters separated Redford from other stars in facial beauty" one critic wrote.)
And befitting his "bookish researcher role," Redford wore glasses for a lot of the film, and a tweedy sportcoat with jeans. Very stylish.
1975 was interesting in how the summer sun of Jaws gave way to the fall and wintry Three Days of the Condor. Both derived from Hitchcock, but both went their own 1975 ways.
I remember buying a fall 1975 Film Comment magazine that had one article on Three Days of the Condor(already in theaters) and one article about Family Plot(recently completed for 1976 release.) It was clear - comparing photos -- that the Redford movie was the more star-studded deal...but the Hitchocck movie looked good too. It was a very comforting pair of articles to read.
Those were the days.
BUT: the main draw to me now with Thunderball is: those WOMEN.
The women in Thunderball are indeed its strong suit, especially Claudine Auger. Obviously people's tastes differ widely, but, even 50 years later, Auger is quite generally recognized as being one of Bond's greatest beauties.
--
I agree -- tastes differ. For instance, I've often read of Barbara Bach of The Spy Who Loved Me as the most beautiful of the Bond Girls(that, terrible, terrible term.) But I find her face a bit more strange and severe than the sheer wowza sexiness of Auger.
Lucianna Paluzzi was a "sizzling redhead" who here gets a sexy bathtub scene. She's a baddie and Bond maneuvers her to her death -- but not before bedding her first. Typical.
Note in passing: In "Never Say Never Again," the remake of Thunderball withi Connery back in action, the Auger role went to Kim Basinger and the Paluzzi role to Barbara Carrera. More beauties but they couldn't beat the 1965 models. (And that spa masseuse woman...wow.)
Over on the Thunderball imdb page, there is a 1965 photo of Connery (who pretty much looked HIS best in Thunderball) with the four female stars. I think the fourth is on the "good guy team" in the Bahamas and hangs around in a bikini. Anyway..there they all are. Lucky man.
Funny: while Thunderball was being made, Claudine Auger (a beauty pageant winner) had some sort of rich royal boyfriend who stayed near the set to keep Connery away from his woman!
CONT
I didn't see Thunderball for the first time until a couple of years ago and had the thought that maybe Auger was *too* beautiful for '60s Bond, in that the rules of the game for Bond at that point mean that he has to love and leave Domino (Auger). But, seriously, Bond is chump if he walks out on her.
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Good point. It was part of the fantasy of James Bond that the women in his arms at the fade out(on a raft at sea in Thunderball, and in a bikini)...would be gone and unmentioned by the next film. No marriage. No babies. A model of sexual freedom for men AND women.
But hey...Claudine Auger? Bond should have made an exception. He did for Diana Rigg.
The next Bond(and Connery's last for awhile) was the one in Japan: You Only Live Twice. As I recall, Connery had two Japanese lovers in this one -- and one of them died in place of him. The redhead vilainess was played by Karin Dor -- who would go on to play Juanita de Cordoba (with BLACK hair) for HItchcock in Topaz.
"You Only Live Twice" seemed to mark the beginning of the end of James Bond's primacy. The spoof Casino Royale beat it at the box office in '67. its not the "event" picture that Goldfinger and Thunderball were; Connery seems a bit bored(he wanted out) and I can't really remember the women meaning as much to him personally this time out.
Connery quit, George Lazenby did one and quit, John Psycho Gavin was hired(!) but paid off when Connery came back(Diamonds Are Forever) and then Roger Moore stablized the franchise iin the 70's and early 80's.
But..Connery's the Man for my generation. Well..for me.
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And cruel too! She's so kittenish (triggering protectiveness feelings). What sort of monster would walk out on a kitten?
---
The Monster that Is James Bond. Remember the backlash that guy started to get in the 70's? ESPECIALLY the Connery version...
CONT
One of Auger's best later movies is a Giallo I haven't seen, Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971), where she stars alongside the most beautiful Bond Girl of my youth, Barbara Bach (Spy Who Loved Me), as well as with a number of other amazing Euro-babes, Stefania Sandrelli, Barbara Bouchet (Moneypenny in Casino Royale (1967)).
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Yet again..wowza. On another thread, I speak to my queasiness about the few giallos I've seen. This IS one of them..it was available on streaming not long ago, it had a somewhat older Auger...I was intrigued.
The violence was pretty bad, again. The female victims are given a shot to immobilize them(ala a tarantula's bite)..THEN the killer goes to town with a knife.
Not sure where to go with this. The women sure were beautiful. The violence sure was lingering. And yet so MANY were made.
--- Giallos were low-budget compared to Hollywood but casts of incredible beauties (who were game for some violent death/gore in the end product) were like their one irreplaceable but affordable special effect!
--
I suppose one key thing here is,indeed, the willingness of the actresses to enact these horrible deaths. Its a job, its "make believe."
Critics were yelling about how often Jennifer Jason Leigh gets punched in the face in "The Hateful Eight," but Leigh herself said she wished she could have filmed that part "forever." She had a great time with QT and the cast -- so "faking" all those baatings was...nothing.
And Barbara Leigh Hunt felt that her rape-murder scene in Frenzy was totally necessary to show "what the killer was capable of."
And Janet Leigh made a late career out of detailing her shower murder -- including the very uncomfortable faking her dead face and body on the floor for minutes on end of filming.
"Its only a movie."
CONT
I didn't see Thunderball for the first time until a couple of years ago
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Hmm, swanstep. One of our little differences seems to be -- with some mainstream films at least, and as an example -- that whereas you saw Thunderball for the first time a couple of years ago...I saw Thunderball, oh...a few DECADES ago.
So it comes attached with memories of a time long gone by, rather idyllic really.
I've seen it enough times over the years to develop different "adult(older)" opinions about it. One is that it is very SLOW -- especially when underwater. Another is that as against the great fights in From Russia With Love(Connery vs Robert Shaw) and Goldfinger(Connery vs. Oddjob)...the big fight in Thunderball is right at the begining so there is no build-up to it(though the opponent IS a Mrs. Bates "man in a woman's dress and wig."
But decade by decade, those women stay just as gorgeous!