Julia

Julia (1977) explores the dubious friendship of playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) and her eponymous childhood friend Julia (Vanessa Redgrave). (It's disputed that Julia even existed.) According to Hellman, Julia fought against the Nazis, and even roped Hellman into her cause by having her smuggle money from Paris to Berlin (in a drawn-out but tense sequence on a train). It’s hard to imagine this is the same actress that gave such a groundbreaking performance as the worldly wise call girl Brie in 1971’s Klute. It’s not that Fonda is bad, but she spends most of the time taking orders from other people and acting mildly nervous. The only life in her performance comes when we see her as Hellman the tormented playwright, pounding away at the typewriter to no avail. (In one scene she even chucks it out the window in a fury of writer’s block.) She's also pretty good in the last act, when she's given a little bit more of an active role in her movie. (It's not called Lillian for a reason: this movie is about one person's obsession with another person. But I don't mean to use that word in a suggestive or sensationalistic way. And the film dances around suggesting that Julia and Lillian's friendship was something deeper.) Fonda gives the same tense, uptight performance she would later reuse in 9 to 5, when she was clearly upstaged by the sharp Lily Tomlin and the bubbly Dolly Parton. In Julia there’s no one to upstage her. Everyone is deadly serious because this is a serious movie about a lot of serious themes. The tasteful direction of Fred Zinneman—from a script by Alvin Sargent—is fine, but nothing in Julia really stands out. Fonda narrates, breathing mournful intonations over Zinneman's camera. The scenes, which are well-constructed, aren’t vivid or powerful, and given the subject matter, Julia should have been more affecting. It’s also not particularly strong as a study of a friendship, as it purports to be. We’re never sure why Lillian and Julia are friends: Julia seems to put up with Lillian, whose worship of Julia doesn’t transcend to the level of an equal. And Vanessa Redgrave, who’s a fine actress, doesn’t do much to warrant the Academy Award she got from this. Some of the flashback scenes of the girls wandering the English countryside are attractively done, even haunting, but they don’t linger either. The film is haunting too, but it feels incomplete, dramatically undercooked. With Jason Robards as Dashiell Hammett (Hellman’s long-time beau), Maximilian Schell, Hal Holbrook, Rosemary Murphy, John Glover, and, in her first film, Meryl Streep.

Suspiria

Suspiria (1977) is a film for which the word ‘garish’ could have been invented, a wacky thriller from Italian director Dario Argento—some call it his masterpiece—about a dance school in Germany that’s run by witches. The main character, an American student named Suzy Bannion (played by Jessica Harper) arrives at the school in the dead of night during a thunderstorm (a perfectly logical time to arrive at a dance school in Germany) and is confronted by ominous howling sounds and a disturbed fellow student fleeing the academy in terror. Slowly, as Suzy becomes assimilated into the school, she begins to suspect that the teachers are witches with agendas far more insidious than forcing young women to wear tight-fitting clothes and dance around on their tiptoes for hours.

How is it that a movie as dumb as Suspiria is considered such a classic? Well, it’s because of the film’s beautiful color and lighting and its nightmarish atmosphere. It feels as though it were conceived in the unconscious mind of a painter. Almost every scene is thrown into relief by bright reds and yellows. The sets are ornate, even when they’re supposed to be purely functional rooms. The music by the band Goblin—a sinisterly playful xylophone refrain set to throbbing drums—pounds away with devilish persistence. The film’s aesthetics do not cancel out the stupidity of the plot or the often ludicrous lack of logic. But they make Suspiria seem somehow brilliant. It’s as if Argento has deliberately pitted a dumb script against a marvelous visual design to see which one would win.

Right after introducing us to Suzy at the beginning of the film, Argento’s camera leaves her and follows the other student, the girl who’s running from God knows what through the woods and eventually to a mysterious hotel/apartment building to her friend. This is all setup for the most gruesome murder set-piece in the film, in which this poor girl is stabbed repeatedly and then dropped through the glass ceiling of the hotel with a noose around her neck. It’s been said that Dario Argento put the “gore” in gorgeous. Well, he certainly has a way of making terrible death scenes seem elegant. If this had been made by an American director, it would have felt sleazy. Somehow, the artistry elevates the material and you feel that you’ve truly entered into a visceral, vividly colored nightmare that’s being orchestrated perhaps by Picasso and Alfred Hitchcock.

Argento punctuates his gorefest with little odes to Alfred Hitchcock, like when a bat flies into a room and terrorizes the heroine (a la The Birds), or when his camera zooms in on water circling a drain (as in Psycho). But this film is far too batshit to be a rip-off of Alfred Hitchcock, and Argento has his own visual style that, while comparable in some ways, is far different. He doesn’t give a hoot about things making sense, which is maddening, and he doesn’t care all that much about continuity or motivation. Sure, it’d be nice if little details could be consistent. But it’s apparently no big deal if they are not. (Suzy tells someone she arrived at the school at 10 o’clock; then later she says it’s 11; when she is turned away at the school that first night, it’s never clear where she goes; when she comes back the next morning, she has no luggage and we never know how she even got there, nor does she make mention of these things to any of the teachers or students.)

Perhaps it’s a fault in the viewer (myself included) for wanting more consistency, more sense. If you take the movie as a dreamlike horror experience, you’re likely not to care as much about these things. The best scenes in this movie are remembered for their exaggerated expressionism. The final confrontation with the head witch is quite strange and yet entirely appropriate for a movie this bizarre. It’s sort of the splatter movie equivalent to Mario Brothers, when Mario finally gets to fight King Coopa in his castle after traversing many lands full of lesser goonies and underlings. The witch is quite a sight to hear and see with her deep, husky, gravelly voice and hideous burnt skin.

As for the supporting cast, most of the girls in the school are extras, and very few of the teachers register either. But, there are two well-cast parts among the teachers: Joan Bennett projects a venal confidence as Madam Blanc. You know she’s pure evil, but she’s also a woman of elegance, and her husky voice and her tightly wrapped hairdo and her smart attire make her seem like an aging movie star. It’s as though Olivia de Havilland is running the school. And Alida Valli plays Miss Tanner, a teacher who rigorously works the girls and plays up the stereotype of the strict, unflinchingly severe German instructor.

With Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, and Miguel Bosé.

Star Wars

Star Wars (1977) is really a lot of fun to heckle. When Luke Skywalker whines, "I wanted to go into town and get power converters," I laughed hysterically and re-wound it to listen again. When Carrie Fisher's voice slips into that horrible English accent--slightly evocative of Julie Andrews--I couldn't help myself, even though I love Carrie Fisher. "Thah rebellion will slip through yoor feen-guhs." I recalled listening to the audiobook of Fisher's wonderful memoir Wishful Drinking, where she makes fun of her role in Star Wars and especially at that tyrannical madman George Lucas, the creator of this monstrous franchise. Fisher took acting lessons in England, where she learned elocution techniques that served her well in the first 30 minutes of Star Wars. But as soon as some real crisis emerges, the blowsier Carrie Fisher--with the less pretty, decidedly un-mid-Atlantic tongue-- emerges. That's the Carrie Fisher I love. The one who plays an alcoholic has-been sitcom writer that terrifies Liz Lemon in an early episode of 30 Rock. (I highly recommend Wishful Drinking. If you like Carrie Fisher, you'll like her even more. If you dislike George Lucas, you'll have even more reason to jeer at him after you hear about his strict no-underwear policy for Princess Leia's costume.) But don't let me catch you bashing Ms. Fisher. She always seems to be the butt of jokes because of her very public struggles with addiction and mental illness. But I find her honesty and her humor truly uplifting.

Instead, I want all of you haters to channel your rage at George Lucas, the man who destroyed American cinema, a man so full of himself that he has succeeded in coasting on the success of Star Wars for nearly 40 years. He made another "classic"--American Graffiti--before that. It's nothing more than a bland nostalgia trip to the America of the 50s and early 60s. Likewise, Star Wars is a kind of nostalgia trip too. A trip to boyhood adventure-land, where men battle each other and say, without irony, "it always helps to have a blaster at your side." Guys like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas turned cinema into their own personal childhood playgrounds.  

Star Wars grabs all the classic story archetypes and throws them into one big pot. There's plenty of corny dialogue too. What results is an admittedly compelling story of very, very big proportions. But most of the good stuff doesn't come until the sequel. One cannot deny George Lucas's vivid imagination. He obviously spent a lot of time thinking up side characters and names of planets and other aspects of this world. (Perhaps it was all part of the marketing plan. Why else would characters who got three seconds in the film get turned into action figures for sale to the kiddos?)

One can, however, deny Lucas's ability to do anything with actors. (See Portman, Natalie and McGregor, Ewan.) Pauline Kael said it most deliciously, that they were educated at the "Ricky Nelson School of Acting." The performances aren't embarrassing, and they do improve over time. But the first installment is pretty banal. Star Wars is still kind of exciting in a cheap way, and there are lots of colorful characters, like all the slimy creatures the farm boy Luke Skywalker meets in that sleazy bar. But this movie is essentially an empty-headed adventure tale. Mindless entertainment is certainly not a crime. There are a lot of wonderful examples of it. But Star Wars is a double sinner in this regard: it's mindless and cinematically pretty uninteresting. Nothing is ever really dangerous enough to keep you in suspense. It's the kind of bland, safe entertainment that parents think is good for their kids. (A good example of the opposite: the novels of Roald Dahl, whose young characters were never spared the horrors of life. Those stories are marvelously colorful and smart.)

As a child I resisted watching the Star Wars films for what I thought was a long time. It wasn't until 4th grade that I sat down and viewed them all. By then all my friends were well-versed in the lore. My brother (five-and-a-half years older) had the action figures. He was old enough to be taken to Return of the Jedi and then promptly removed from the theater after Jabba the Hut scared the living hell out of him. So I was certainly aware of Star Wars. I was just trying to hold out for as long as possible. (Does this make me one of those wretched hipsters?) When I finally watched them I was captivated. I spent a few years being a Star Wars nerd, even writing a Star Wars novel in 6th grade. But eventually I grew out of my Star Wars mania and went on to other kinds of mania. I'm so happy I did. I can't quite figure out why so many have chosen to linger behind. Come to us. It's wonderful over here where other movies besides Star Wars exist.

Of course, you already know who plays who, but here are a few notes on the cast: Harrison Ford's sarcastic mugging is weirdly reminiscent of Chevy Chase's. Ford has that same rugged, scruffy look but with a shorter face and of course a stronger on-screen persona. As the farm boy who gets caught up in galactic-sized political struggles, Mark Hamill is upstaged by just about everyone around him, but he's plucky enough to be likable, and likability is enough in this movie. Peter Cushing is great fun as the wicked general who's leading the dark empire against the small but feisty rebellion. The generals talk and look like Nazis, and the rebels act like Americans fighting the British for independence. James Earl Jones gives the most magnetic performance, providing the voice of Darth Vador. With Alec Guinness as an aging wizard who wants to pass his mystical religion onto Luke, Peter Mayhew as the endearing fuzzy giant Chewy, and Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker as the bickering robot couple.

Shock Waves

Underwater Nazi zombies. These days, such a ridiculous phrase sounds like a cliché. But when Shock Waves premiered in theatres, it was relatively new ground. It's a low-budget cult classic (made for about 200,000 dollars, although Wikipedia erroneously claims the budget was a million) that asks the question: What if the Germans were experimenting with dead soldiers during the war only to create a division of ultimate Aryan fighting machines? And then, what if these creatures were submerged in a watery grave for thirty years near an island off the coast of Florida, only to be resurrected when a small group of boaters runs into their ghostly death ship? As idiotic as it sounds, Shock Waves isn't bad. The zombies are appropriately ominous looking, and the synth score by Richard Einhorn is effective. Plus there's the presence of two cinema legends in small but amusing roles: Peter Cushing, as the aging SS commander living in isolation on the island, and John Carradine, as the cantankerous captain of the ill-fated boat that runs afoul of the zombies. With Brooke Adams (in her first major screen role), Luke Halpin, and Fred Buch. Written by Ken Wiederhorn (who also directed) and John Harrison. Filmed in 1975, copyrighted in 1976, and released in 1977. Also known as Death Corps and Almost Human. ★★½

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which has been hailed as some kind of cosmic masterpiece, really one of the biggest snow jobs in movie history?

The first forty-five minutes of Close Encounters work really well at establishing a sense of mystery, even foreboding, using very ordinary, grounded effects: shaking household objects, Richard Dreyfuss's car sputtering and rattling as a spacecraft approaches--the meters on all his gauges going haywire and loose objects flying out of the glove compartment and off the dashboard. Director Steven Spielberg also manages to achieve a kind of impressive realism in the events that take place: the air traffic controllers trying to register an unidentified vessel, carrying on multiple conversations at the same time as they interpret their green computer screens; the cozy clapboard house in Muncie, Indiana that rattles in the wake of the spacecraft; a child's bedroom with the wind-up toys and the record-player all abuzz, shattering the silence and waking a three-year-old boy (these images felt like precursors to Poltergeist, which Spielberg produced) and calling the curious youngster out of the house, his bewildered mother (Melinda Dillon) following after him.

But then, as Richard Dreyfuss's character becomes increasingly more obsessed with his close encounter, the movie becomes tiresome and our trust in the direction of the story falters. I think it was the scene where Dreyfuss pulls the shrubs out of the yard--by the root--and throws them into the kitchen through an open window, that pulled me out of the movie. I'm not a fan of Richard Dreyfuss to begin with: he's too much the stereotypical egghead, miscast as an everyman whose repressed wide-eyed eccentricity awakens during his close encounter and alienates his wife (Teri Garr) and three young children.

I can appreciate that Spielberg (who also wrote the screenplay) was grasping at the wondrous with this project. But I was too disinterested by the time we finally got to have a look at the alien beings whose imminent landing teased us for the whole movie. And I kept re-casting the main character, quite convinced that Jeff Bridges, with his rugged mellow Americana qualities, would have serviced this film nicely: he has the necessary "everyman" look down pat, and I can believe Jeff Bridges is a curious eccentric more easily than I can like or enjoy Richard Dreyfuss.

What's more, much of the film centers around Dreyfuss's mini-meltdown. Because he's so obsessed with the spaceship he saw, his wife ends up leaving him with the kids in tow, and it struck me as fairly cynical that the "everyman" should be so monomaniacal. He loses it, and in turn loses the audience along with "it."

On a positive note, the so-called practical effects were refreshing after seeing an endless series of computer-generated effects in current movies. Even The Great Gatsby looked like it was mostly done with computers, and that depresses me greatly. Going back to the 1970s, when big-time effects were done with models and "magic," I'm reminded of the immense value a movie can have when someone actually makes the trick. Even when some of the effects appear dated, they're still believable. The CGI, for all its realistic looks, is not believable.

With Francois Truffaut, Bob Balaban, Josef Sommer, Lance Henriksen, and Roberts Blossom. 137 min. ★★

High Anxiety

With High Anxiety (1977), Mel Brooks spoofs Hitchcock, with mixed results. He plays a psychiatrist with a fear of heights who takes over a prestigious mental institution. The previous head of the institute died under mysterious circumstances, and the other staff members embody a variety of bizarre and suspicious qualities.

The gags are non-stop, but most of them seem hastily assembled and forced, and instead of inventing his own unique storyline that finds ways to make fun of the genre (like he and Gene Wilder did in Young Frankenstein), Brooks just slaps together a handful of plots from various Hitchcock movies, and relies on the mugging of his usual band of performers to fill in the gaps.

Some worthwhile moments make it in: Mel sings an amusing little number in an attempt to woo the lovely Madeline Kahn (who doesn't look right in a blonde wig--her natural red hair is gorgeous), and it's fun watching Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman ham it up. But the material is beneath them. It's beyond juvenile at times. 

With Howard Morris, Ron Carey, Dick Van Patten, and Rudy De Luca.

The Late Show

The Late Show (1977) is a lovely, tattered valentine to the golden age of Hollywood film noirs. Art Carney plays Ira Wells, an aging private eye whose best days are behind him. A flaky ex-actress named Margo (played with daffy energy by Lily Tomlin) hires him to track down her cat, which is being held for ransom by a low-life to whom Margo owes 500 dollars.

Things get more complicated, as they usually do in this sort of flick. It's full of lurid characters and memorable set pieces. The scene where Ira and Margo are skulking around a sleazy apartment complex is pure gold: the lighted pool casts a glittery reflection on the stucco facades, and you realize how unappealing L.A. really must be.  

The Late Show de-mythologizes the allure of Hollywood, and of the private eye, just like Robert Altman's 1973 film The Long Goodbye: Ira has a bad ulcer and he's out of shape and not as quick on his feet as he used to be, and he sees his era and all its players fading before his eyes. (Robert Altman, incidentally, produced this film, which was written and directed by Robert Benton). With Eugene Roche, Bill Macy, Joanna Cassidy, and John Considine, all playing grimy, rotten heels.

The Spy Who Loved Me

James Bond falls in love with a rival, a Soviet spy played by Barbara Bach. Meanwhile, he battles yet another megalomaniac Russian billionaire with world domination on his mind (Curd Jurgens), and we are introduced to 007's cartoonish nemesis, Jaws (Richard Kiel), who's indestructible, and takes the Bond series to a new level of camp, perhaps retroactively mocking the wave of movies about killers who can't be killed.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) has two great things going for it: a smashing thirty-minute-long section of the story takes place in Egypt, and it's one of the most memorable and exciting sections of any Bond film. The sets, the action sequences, the Bernard Herrmann-esque musical accents, and the allure of Egyptian culture (the latter may be the thing I like best about this part of the movie) make that section stand out.

The other is the song, "Nobody Does It Better" (sung by Carly Simon), which bookends the film. It's easily one of the best songs to come out of a Bond picture, and Simon's folky American bell of a voice clashes--beautifully--with the British camp that's happening on screen. (I had forgotten how naughty those 007 opening titles were--and I'm wondering if they were never more so than in The Spy Who Loved Me).

Otherwise, what you have here is an overlong action movie with predictable outcomes and a bumbling sense of camp that doesn't really work for it. During the chase scenes there's a very dated 70s disco sound to the music that ruins them, deflating their suspense. Sure, the sets are still pretty astonishing (much of the movie takes place in a submarine).

Roger Moore may be part of the problem. While I appreciate that he doesn't take himself too seriously, he also seems anachronistic to a 007 movie, particularly one from the 70s. He doesn't mesh with the bad disco-infused score or the trashiness of Bond movies. The reason they're fun, after all, is because they're expensive trash: shiny and high-tech (for their time) and glistening with delicious bad taste. It's certainly not the worst Bond movie (not even then worst Roger Moore Bond movie). It would have been better (and it could have been shorter), if the movie had stayed in Egypt.

Directed by Lewis Gilbert. With Caroline Munro, Walter Gotell, Bernard Lee, Michael Billington (a two-time Bond candidate himself), and Desmond Llewelyn.