A Doll’s House (1973, UK) & A Doll’s House (1973, USA)

          In an odd coincidence, two films of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House arrived in 1973, one in theaters and one on television. Both take place in 19th-century Norway, where housewife Nora revels upon hearing that her husband, uptight banker Torvald, has earned a major promotion, because the change marks an end to the family’s monetary woes. When Torvald fires a subordinate named Krogstad, the disgruntled man blackmails Nora with evidence that she once forged documents for a bank loan. The ensuing melodrama reveals what little respect Torvald has for his wife—hence the title, which refers to men treating women as playthings. Given the story’s ultimate theme of a woman’s self-realization, it’s obvious why the material seemed timely during the early feminist era.

          The British version, ironically enough, has American roots. It’s a filmed record of a Broadway production that was adapted from Ibsen by the celebrated UK playwright Christopher Hampton. The Broadway show featured revered British actress Claire Bloom in a tour-de-force performance, and Bloom re-creates her meticulous work in the movie. Director Patrick Garland largely ignores any cinematic possibilities in the play, opting for intimate scenes taking place on fully dressed approximations of the stage production’s sets. At his worst, Garland slips into bland cuts back and forth between flat close-ups, particularly during the final, lengthy showdown between Nora and Torvald. What Garland’s A Doll House lacks in visual imagination, however, it makes up for in dramatic firepower.

          Bloom runs the gamut from frivolous to manic to regal, and her costar—the sublime Anthony Hopkins—imbues Torvald with a mixture of inflated ego and repressed desperation. Playing key supporting roles are Denholm Elliot, bitter and cruel as the maligned Krogstand, and Ralph Richardson, elegantly sad as Nora’s aging friend, Dr. Rank. One can’t help but wonder what a filmmaker more adept at stage-to-screen adaptations, perhaps Sidney Lumet, could have done with the raw material of these finely tuned performances, but at least theater fans can savor great work forever. Plus, in any incarnation, Ibsen’s prescient notions about women liberating themselves pack a punch. Consider this passage from the British film: After Torvald exclaims, “No man would sacrifice his honor for love,” Nora replies, “Millions of women have.”

          Seeing as how Jane Fonda was a fierce combatant on the front lines of the ’70s culture wars, it’s not surprising she felt Ibsen’s statement merited a fresh adaptation. Alas, she proved unlucky twice. First, she clashed with director Joseph Losey, and second, she completed her project after the UK version had already reached theaters. That’s why the Fonda film landed on TV—producers rightly estimated the limits of the public’s appetite for this material. In nearly every way, Losey’s take on A Doll’s House is inferior to the Bloom/Hopkins version, even though Losey’s comparatively sophisticated camerawork creates more visual interest than Garland’s stodgy frames.

          The big problem is that the casting never clicks. Fonda gives an adequate performance, with intense moments of fervor and physicality weighted down by stilted readings of classical-style dialogue. Viewed in context, she’s an outlier. Fine European actors including Trevor Howard (as Dr. Rank) and David Warner (as Torvald) seem natural delivering reams of ornate dialogue while stuffed into period costumes, but none of them truly connects with Fonda—her performance exists in isolation from the rest of the picture. Plus, since the gangly Warner somewhat resembles a frequent Fonda costar, it’s impossible not to picture Donald Sutherland in the Torvald role and wonder what that dynamic might have been like. That said, Edward Fox is excellent in the Krogstand role, radiating predatory heat. Yet the thing that should have supercharged this spin on A Doll’s House, Fonda’s offscreen passion for gender equality, makes key moments feel more like stand-alone political speeches instead of organic elements of interpersonal confrontation.

A Doll’s House (UK): GROOVY

A Doll’s House (USA): FUNKY

1980 Week: Nine to Five

          Throughout the late ’70s, Jane Fonda performed a remarkable feat of synthesizing her acting and her activism, serving as producer (sometimes uncredited) for the Vietnam-vet drama Coming Home (1978), the nuclear-meltdown thriller The China Syndrome (1979), and this comedy, which brought to light the gender inequity plaguing American workplaces. At first glance, Nine to Five might seem lightweight compared to its predecessors in Fonda’s producing oeuvre, but treating the theme with humor proved a savvy move because it attracted a wide audience. The picture earned more than $100 million at the domestic box office at a time when that was still a rare achievement, and now Nine to Five is considered something of a modern classic. The picture even inspired a TV series, which ran sporadically from 1982 to 1988, as well as a 2009 Broadway musical.

          Cowritten and directed by Colin Higgins, who embellished a previous script by Patricia Resnick, the picture takes place in a midlevel department of fictional firm Consolidated Companies. The department’s boss is Franklin Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman), whom female employees rightly characterize as a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.” Throughout the picture’s first act, Hart earns the enmity of protagonists Judy Bernly (Fonda), Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), and Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton). Franklin berates new employee Judy for incompetence, showing no sympathy for the fact that her post at Consolidated is the recent divorcée’s first job. He steals work product from Violet and blocks her well-deserved promotion. And he sexually harasses the buxom Doralee, bolstering his macho reputation by fomenting bogus rumors that they’re sleeping together. One evening, the women drown their sorrows and share revenge fantasies, which Higgins stages as elaborate dream sequences. Then a farcical showdown occurs during which Violent (mistakenly) believes that she’s poisoned Franklin.

          A few plot twists later, the women find themselves holding Franklin hostage in his own home while trying to gather evidence that will entrap him and therefore free the women from suspicion.

          As he demonstrated with ’70s hits Foul Play and Silver Streak, Higgins had a unique gift for orchestrating comedies with Swiss-watch storylines. Nine to Five is far-fetched and silly, but everything in the plot is worked out neatly. Ultimately, however, the narrative is merely a vessel for the theme: Nine to Five is a fairy tale for female professionals. Fonda, drifting back to the sort of light comedy she did in many of her earliest films, uses her performance to tell a story about self-actualization, letting her costars take the showier roles. Parton nearly steals the picture with her down-home charm, Tomlin grounds the film with a deadpan approach to jokes, and Coleman makes a great cartoonish villain. Despite its sociopolitical heft Nine to Five is consistently gentle and undemanding. Like the theme song that Parton wrote and recorded during production, which subsequently became a No. 1 pop hit, Nine to Five is a sugar-coated rallying cry.

Nine to Five: GROOVY

Julia (1977)

          A posh drama that eventually morphs into a posh thriller, Julia is made with such consummate restraint and taste that it’s as delicate as silk. Alas, beautiful photography and elegant words and graceful direction go only so far, even when combined with strong performances by world-class actors, because, ultimately, story is everything—and the story of Julia is dull, episodic, and far-fetched. Adapted from a book by the venerable Lillian Hellman, the movie depicts an episode in the late 1930s when Hellman allegedly aided Germans who were resisting the rise of the Third Reich. Setting aside the question of whether the events in question ever really happened—even the film’s director, the venerable Fred Zinnemann, later expressed doubts about the veracity of Hellman’s tale—the problem with Julia is that it can’t decide whether it’s a quiet chamber piece or a wartime adventure.

          The movie has at least four major components. First is a long prologue depicting young Lillian’s friendship with a sophisticated girl named Julia. Next comes a long passage during which the adult Lillian (Jane Fonda) becomes a famous writer under the tutelage of her lover/mentor, crime-fiction legend Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards). After that, Lillian ventures to Europe, where she’s reunited with the grown-up Julia (Vanessa Redgrave) for a passage depicting the subtle textures of adult frendship. And finally, the movie shifts into intrigue mode when a rebel operative (Maximillian Schell) enlists Lillian to carry a package through Nazi-occupied terrain. Seen generously, this is the story of how Hellman’s character was built on the road to performing a great deed of selfless heroism, but since even that reading relegates the first half of the movie to the role of backstory, it becomes obvious why the structure of the picture is so peculiar. After all, did the makers of Casablanca (1942) have to spend half the movie explaining Rick Blaine’s childhood so audiences would understand his actions during the movie’s final scene?

          Even though Julia enjoyed considerable acclaim during its original release—winning Oscars for Redgrave, Robards, and screenwriter Alvin Sargent—it’s a tough film to love. For, while Julia contains many great things, from Robards’ world-weary characterization to the gorgeous cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, the various elements never cohere. Worse, the idea that Hellman might have fabricated such an outlandishly self-aggrandizing narrative leaves a bad taste on the palette. In any event, Julia occupies an interesting place in pop-culture history, because it was upon collecting her Academy Award for this film that Redgrave made her infamous “Zionist hoodlums” speech during the 1978 Oscar broadcast.

Julia: FUNKY

Plaza Suite (1971) & California Suite (1978)

          During the ’70s, it seemed as if playwright/screenwriter Neil Simon was an industry rather an individual—every year except 1978, he unveiled a new play, and from 1970 to 1979 no fewer than 11 features were released with Simon credited as writer. When the man slept is a mystery. In fact, he even managed to crank out a quasi-sequel to one of his own hits. Plaza Suite premiered on Broadway in 1968 before hitting the big screen in 1971, and its follow-up, California Suite, debuted onstage in 1976 before becoming a movie in 1978. Neither project represents the apex of Simon’s artistry, but both are rewarding. The title of Plaza Suite is a pun, because the film comprises a “suite” of three mini-plays, each of which takes place within the same suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

          In order of appearance, the vignettes concern a middle-aged couple breaking up when the husband’s infidelity is revealed; a tacky Hollywood producer inviting his childhood sweetheart, now married, to his room for a tryst; and another middle-aged couple going crazy when their adult daughter won’t leave the suite’s bathroom even though guests are waiting downstairs to watch her get married. The first sequence is a bittersweet dance, the second is bedroom farce with a touch of pathos, and the third is an explosion of silly slapstick. Plaza Suite grows more entertaining as it spirals toward its conclusion, finally achieving comedic liftoff during the third sequence, which is by far the most fully realized.

          Walter Matthau somewhat improbably plays the lead roles in all three sequences, and he’s terrific—chilly as the adulterous husband, smarmy as the producer, enraged as the would-be father of the bride. His primary costars are a poignant Maureen Stapleton in the first sequence, a delicately funny Barbara Harris in the second, and an entertainingly frazzled Lee Grant in the third. Plaza Suite drags a bit, and it’s tough to get revved up for each new sequence, but the fun stuff outweighs everything else.

          California Suite wisely takes a different approach—although the play of California Suite featured four separate stories, in the style of Plaza Suite, the film version cross-cuts to create momentum. And while Matthau is back (in a new role), California Suite benefits from a larger cast and more use of exterior locations. The film is primarily set in the Beverly Hills Hotel, but Simon (who wrote the screenplays for both adaptations) includes many places beyond the hotel. One thread of the story involves a New York career woman (Jane Fonda) bickering with her estranged screenwriter husband (Alan Alda) over custody of their daughter. Another thread concerns a British actress  (Maggie Smith) in town for the Oscars, accompanied by her husband (Michael Caine), a gay man she wed in order to avoid gaining a reputation as a spinster. The silliest thread involves a Philadelphia businessman (Matthau) trying to keep his wife (Elaine May) from discovering the prostitute in their room. And the final thread depicts the deteriorating friendship between two Chicago doctors (Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor), who bicker their way through a catastrophe-filled vacation.

          Smith won an Oscar for California Suite, and her storyline benefits from the way Caine and Smith expertly volley bitchy dialogue. The Alda/Fonda scenes are more pedestrian, and they’re also the most stage-bound pieces of the movie; still, both actors attack their roles with vigor. Matthau’s vignettes are quite funny, with lots of goofy business about trying to hide the hooker behind curtains, under beds, and so forth. Plus, as they did in A New Leaf (1971), May and Matthau form a smooth comedy duo. Only the Cosby/Pryor scenes really underwhelm, not by any fault of the actors but because both men have such distinctive standup personas that it seems limiting to confine them within the light-comedy parameters of Simon’s style. Unlike its predecessor, California Suite eventually sputters—the funniest scenes occur well before the end.

          As a final note, it’s interesting to look at both pictures and see how two very different filmmakers approached the challenge of delivering Simon’s work to the screen. For Plaza Suite, Arthur Hiller simply added close-ups and camera movement to accentuate the rhythms of the stage production, and for California Suite, Herbert Ross took a more holistic path toward realizing the work as cinema. Yet in both cases, of course, Simon’s wordplay is king.

Plaza Suite: GROOVY

California Suite: GROOVY

Klute (1971)

          A character piece disguised a thriller, Klute has so many extraordinary elements that it’s silly to complain about the movie’s shortcomings. For while Klute is not particularly effective a whodunit, it soars as a probing investigation into the sexual identity of a complicated woman. Klute is also a great mood piece. The picture earned leading lady Jane Fonda the first of her two Oscars, and it’s the project on which director Alan Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis perfected the visual style they later used on two classic conspiracy-themed films, The Parallax View (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976). In fact, Klute is often cited as the first entry in a trilogy comprising Parallax and President’s, because themes of duplicity, paranoia, and surveillance pervade all three films.

          Set in New York City, Klute concerns the search for a missing business executive from the Midwest. Laconic heartland cop-turned-PI John Klute (Don Sutherland) travels to the Big Apple to look for the missing man, and his best source of information is call girl Bree Daniels (Fonda). As John pressures Bree for information, the movie examines her intricate personality. Pakula features several insightful scenes of the call girl speaking with her therapist, and it’s fascinating to watch Bree waffle between justifications (exercising sexual power over men validates her self-image) and recriminations (for her, prostitution is a sort of addiction).

          As carefully sculpted by Fonda and Pakula—who presumably used the script by the otherwise undistinguished writers Andy Lewis and David P. Lewis as a jumping-off point for elaborations and improvisations—Bree Daniels is one of the most textured characters in all of ’70s cinema. Among the unforgettable moments during Fonda’s scorching performance is the bit when Bree seems to experience a massive orgasm with one of her clients—until she “breaks character” by checking her watch. Truth be told, Klute almost delves too deeply into Bree’s personality, because the unveiling of her soul pushes the actual plot of the movie into the background. Even Sutherland, very much Fonda’s equal as a performer, falls into his costar’s shadow.

          Nonetheless, Pakula occasionally remembers that he’s making a thriller, and the movie features a handful of strong suspense scenes. Especially during these fraught moments, Willis uses deep shadows to convey a sense of ever-present danger; the artful silhouettes he creates during the climax are particularly memorable. Actually, it seems that nearly everybody involved with Klute treated the project like high art, thereby elevating what could have been a pulpy story into something special. For example, supporting players including Charles Cioffi and Roy Scheider give their small roles depth, and composer Michael Small adds to the ominous mood with eerie musical textures.

Klute: GROOVY

Steelyard Blues (1973)

Although it enjoys a certain cult-favorite notoriety because of its irreverent characterizations and storyline, Steelyard Blues is a counterculture-era relic that has not aged well. The film’s main characters are ostensibly freethinking rebels who want to throw off the yokes of Establishment society. In theory, these people are admirable—but in practice, they’re lawbreakers who create destructive chaos while pursuing selfish goals. Plus, as was so often the case with “progressive” ’70s movies, the portrayal of women in the picture is demeaning. Steelyard Blues was written by then-newcomer David S. Ward, who won an Oscar for his next script, The Sting (also released in 1973), and while The Sting is as focused and funny, Steelyard Blues is meandering and middling. Steelyard Blues concerns a loose collective of misfits. Peter Boyle is “Eagle” Thornberry, a borderline-insane eccentric who checks into mental institutions whenever he needs a break from everyday problems. He’s obsessed with demolishing cars. Donald Sutherland is Jesse Veldini, a small-time crook determined to refurbish a World War II-era plane so he and his cronies can fly away and start a commune somewhere outside the U.S. Jane Fonda is Iris Caine, a prostitute involved in a quasi-romance with Jesse. As should be apparent, these are ideas, not real characters. The first directing job for Alan Myerson, who went on to a long career in TV, Steelyard Blues is numbingly episodic and start-to-finish unbelievable, comprising a series of “outrageous” vignettes featuring characters who bear no recognizable resemblance to persons found in the real world. Yet what really drags the movie down are narrative incoherence and a lack of laugh-out-loud humor. Worse, the picture tries way too hard to be clever, so it gets exhausting after a while, and not even the considerable talents of the leading players can pull the whole jumbled thing together.

Steelyard Blues: LAME

Coming Home (1978)

          Inarguably the best movie made during the ’70s about the unique difficulties facing American veterans returning from Vietman, Coming Home is at once moving, political, provocative, and tender—and it’s also the apex of actress Jane Fonda’s anti-Vietnam War activism, even though it was released three years after the fall of Saigon. While “Hanoi Jane” alienated as many people as she inspired while the war was raging, she used Coming Home—which she developed—to focus her rage at needless conflict through the prism of war’s impact on individuals. Rather than being polemic, even though some detractors saw the film that way, Coming Home is poetic.

          When the movie opens in early 1968, Sally Hyde (Fonda) is happily married to a Marine officer named Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), and both unquestionably accept the rightness of U.S. involvement in Indochina. Once Bob leaves for his tour of duty, Sally begins to hear different opinions about the war, notably from her feminist friend Vi (Penelope Milford); Sally also begins to question the subservient role she plays in her marriage. Eventually, Sally volunteers at a VA hospital, where she meets returning soldiers including embittered but passionate Luke Martin (Jon Voight), who is paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. As part of her larger spiritual awakening, Sally recognizes Luke’s humanity, and they become lovers in a crucial scene that director Hal Ashby executes with a memorable combination of eroticism and poignancy. The fragile world that Luke and Sally build together is upset, however, when Bob returns from Vietnam, having been changed in disturbing ways that echo the film’s theme of how war affects different people differently.

          Placing Sally’s character at the center of the story was a genius move on many levels. First and most obviously, the role gives Fonda a way to express her deep feelings about the war; she dramatizes the ravages of conflict by meticulously charting Sally’s shifting attitudes. Second, making the central character a witness to the horrors of Vietnam—rather than an active participant—allows the audience to see soldiers as real-world people instead of battleground heroes. What does it mean when a draftee is rewarded for his service by wounds that will last the rest of his life? What does it mean when a career soldier encounters horrors during combat for which he wasn’t prepared? How can those left behind in the homeland ever hope to understand the experiences of soldiers?

          Coming Home is a deeply compassionate film, with Ashby and cinematographer Haskell Wexler capturing a spectrum of complex emotions in soft, painterly images; the movie is a tapestry of souls making connections and, alternately, slamming against insurmountable barriers. Coming Home is also a showcase for spectacular acting. Fonda and Voight both won Oscars, Fonda for her precise demarcations of stages in one woman’s life and Voight for his deeply touching openness. (His show-stopping speech to a group of young people near the end of the picture, while a bit of a narrative digression given its length, is among the finest moments Voight’s ever had onscreen.) Dern, unluckily overshadowed by his costars because he’s playing yet another in his long line of screen psychos, gives a performance every bit as powerful as Fonda’s and Voight’s—portraying a man who’s betrayed by the ideals to which he’s dedicated his life, Dern is frightening and yet also completely sympathetic.

Coming Home: RIGHT ON

Fun With Dick and Jane (1977)

Any film whose title describes the reaction the film hopes to elicit is asking for trouble—so the fact that Fun With Dick and Jake isn’t all that fun to watch makes its title seem like false advertising. Comedy of the lightest possible sort, the picture is coherent and smooth, so it’s not a complete misfire. However, it’s executed with such mindless superficiality that it’s more like Passing Time Painlessly With Dick and Jane. Ostensibly a satire of out-of-control materialism, the story revolves around aeronautics executive Dick Harper (George Segal) and his stay-at-home wife, Jane (Jane Fonda). When Dick gets fired as part of a company-wide downsizing, the Harpers realize how tenuous their financial life has become—for instance, during what should be one of the movie’s funniest bits (but isn’t), landscapers repossess the Harpers’ lawn for nonpayment of bills. Dick’s attempts to maintain his family’s lifestyle go badly, because he gets caught working while collecting unemployment, and he misrepresents himself to a potential new employer. Finally, after a supposedly farcical run-in with crooks, Dick gets the idea to become a hold-up man, and Jane insists on tagging along, so they become an upscale Bonnie and Clyde. Segal showcases his usual rascally charm, and Fonda tries (unsuccessfully) to infuse her underwritten role with empowered-woman sass, but the actors cannot surmount an uninspired script and fundamentally unsympathetic characters: The plot is lumpy and mechanical, and the Harpers are rotten people who feel entitled to a luxurious standard of living. Had a true satirist like, say, Larry Gelbart or Paul Mazursky tackled this storyline, the script would certainly have climaxed with some episode of edifying introspection; instead, this shallow romp asks viewers to perceive the Harpers as admirable strivers, thus short-circuiting any potential for social commentary. Oh, and the film’s largest supporting role is played by onetime Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon, which should give an idea of the level of artistic ambition on display here. FYI, the 2005 remake with Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni is just as middling as the original picture.

Fun With Dick and Jane: FUNKY

The Electric Horseman (1979)

          Enjoyed for its surface pleasures, The Electric Horseman is a diverting romantic adventure servicing such quintessentially ’70s themes as the dangers of rampant corporate control, the exploitive nature of mass media, the nobility of nonviolent rebellion, and the travails of rugged individualism—it’s a popcorn movie offering ideas in addition to star power and visual spectacle. The title character is Sonny Steele (Robert Redford), a self-loathing former rodeo champion who works as a spokesman for a brand of breakfast cereal. Shuffling through a degrading life of personal appearances, photo shoots, store openings, and the like, Sonny is perpetually drunk and rarely on time or prepared, so he’s on the verge of getting fired from his cushy gig.

          Meanwhile, the corporation that employs him has adopted as its mascot a retired racehorse called Rising Star, which is valued at $12 million. When Sonny arrives in Las Vegas for an event at which he’s expected to ride Rising Star during a garish stage show, he realizes that the magnificent animal has been drugged to ensure compliance, which offends Sonny’s long-suppressed nobility. Strapping on his lightbulb-festooned costume—hence the movie’s title—Sonny climbs onto Rising Star’s saddle and rides the horse right out of a casino and into the surrounding desert, stealing the animal with the goal of setting it free. The purpose of this grand gesture, of course, is redeeming Sonny’s sense of honor and self-worth.

          Yet because this is a Sydney Pollack movie—the fifth of seven pictures the fine director made with his pal Redford—The Electric Horseman also includes a love story. Hallie Martin (Jane Fonda) is an ambitious TV reporter who spots Sonny’s bad attitude well before he steals Rising Star, and then dogs him once his actions elevate Sonny to folk-hero status. Eventually, Hallie joins Sonny on the trail and they evolve from idealistically opposed sparring partners to simpatico lovers. As sometimes happens in Pollack’s pictures, the romantic angle feels forced and unnecessary, partially because it slows the momentum of the main narrative and partially because the script contorts itself to make Sonny and Hallie equally interesting. Although Redford seems completely comfortable in his Western-iconoclast role, Fonda struggles to mesh the authentic and ersatz aspects of her contrived character. Worse, since the real love story in the movie is between Sonny and Rising Star—by escaping the corporate system together, they redeem each other—the Hallie character’s presence is ultimately superfluous.

          Nonetheless, The Electric Horseman is filled with glamorous filmmaking and terrific acting. Redford dominates, naturally, though Fonda seizes strong moments whenever she can, and crusty Western types including Wilford Brimley and singer-songwriter Willie Nelson (in his first dramatic performance) lend credibility. On a fundamental level, The Electric Horseman is hypocritical horseshit—an expensive studio movie railing against money-loving corporations—but somewhere amid the hollow posturing is a sweet fable about freedom.

The Electric Horseman: FUNKY

The China Syndrome (1979)

          For viewers of a certain age, the title The China Syndrome recalls one of the eeriest synchronicities in the history of movie distribution. Starring and produced by Michael Douglas, this terrific thriller revolves around a whistleblower taking control of a nuclear power plant—as a TV reporter and her cameraman record the unfolding crisis, the whistleblower grabs a gun and forces a hostage situation in order to put national attention on safety problems at the facility. Intense, smart, and topical, The China Syndrome would have been a provocative picture in any circumstances, but an extraordinary coincidence made the movie seem downright prescient. Twelve days after the picture opened, a real-life accident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, accentuating the film’s theme about the potentially catastrophic risks of nuclear energy.

          Directed and co-written by serious-minded humanist James Bridges, The China Syndrome works equally well as a dramatic film and as a suspense piece. As the story progresses, hard-driving reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) and her idealistic cameraman Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) shift guises several times: They start out as observers, become opportunistic voyeurs, and finally transform into activists once they’re terrified by the prospect of a “China Syndrome,” a nuclear meltdown so severe that a plant’s core burrows through the entire globe. (Science tells us this eventuality is impossible, but the notion is nonetheless a sexy scare tactic.)

          The emotional heart of the movie, of course, is Jack Lemmon’s impassioned performance as the whistleblower, Jack Godell. A normal man pushed past his limit by his employers’ reckless indifference, Jack represents the quiet voice of reason exploding into scared-shitless rage, thus reflecting the tenor of anti-nuclear activists in the era of the No Nukes benefit concerts. Bridges channels this disquieting historical moment through meticulous storytelling, creating a rational narrative framework that counterpoints the edgy behavior of the characters. Furthermore, the picture taps into the conspiracy-theory vibe that permeated many grown-up ’70s flicks, and Bridges orchestrates the work of veteran character actors—including Wilford Brimley, James Hampton, Richard Herd, and James Karen—who balance the stars’ more flamboyant work. Best of all, The China Syndrome is an expertly mounted slow burn with a dynamic payoff, since the tension Bridges generates during the climax is quite potent.

The China Syndrome: RIGHT ON

F.T.A. (1972)

A somewhat interesting artifact from the Vietnam War era, this documentary comprises filmed performances by a roving troupe of antiwar activists who toured small venues located near U.S. Army bases. The reason the picture got a theatrical release, and the reason it survives to this day via DVD and other formats, is the impressive wattage of the key participants. The major players are actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, who also produced the picture (with director Francine Parker). So, even though the skits captured in the film are not particularly inspired, it’s fascinating to see the shag-coiffed “Hanoi Jane” at the height of her controversial campaign against the war. Her passion burns through the screen, even if it sometimes reads as naïve stridency. It’s also compelling to watch the faces of the soldiers in the audience, because one can only imagine what was going through the minds of these young men as they watched a revue nominally titled “Free the Army” but really known as “Fuck the Army.” Most of the sketches, which were written by a cabal of satirists, feature obvious lampooning of military bureaucracy with an undercurrent of humanistic revolt against the bloodshed of a pointless war. Yet not everything in the movie strives for humor. In a particularly arresting sequence, Sutherland reads aloud from Dalton Trumbo’s legendary 1939 antiwar novel Johnny Got His Gun, the story of a World War I soldier wishing for death after losing his facial features and all of his limbs. Elsewhere, folksinger Holly Near performs tunes typical of the earnest era in which the film was made. However, perhaps the movie’s greatest claim to fame is its obscurity. The week F.T.A. opened in America, Fonda traveled to North Vietnam for a trip many perceived as traitorous, immediately making her the right wing’s Public Enemy No. 1. Buckling to pressure, American-International Pictures pulled the film from theaters before it completed its first week onscreen.

F.T.A.: FUNKY

The Blue Bird (1976)

          Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlink’s fantasy about peasant children drifting through a magical dreamworld, originally titled L’Oiseau blue, provided the source material for two silent films and an Oscar-nominated Shirley Temple movie in 1940, all bearing the English-language title The Blue Bird, before venerable director George Cukor helmed this full-color musical version in 1976. Whatever charms the piece has in its previous incarnations are absent from Cukor’s picture, however, which is awkward, dull, and vapid. The whimsical story has two kids whisked away to a trippy fantasyland by a fairy named Light (Elizabeth Taylor) in order to recover the Blue Bird of Happiness, which will enrich the life of a sick child living near the peasants.

          Accompanying the children on their adventure are personified versions of household items like bread and sugar and water, plus walking-and-talking incarnations of their pet cat (Cicely Tyson) and dog (George Cole). During their journey, the kids meet an obnoxious oak tree (Harry Andrews), a demonic creature called Night (Jane Fonda), a seductive woman representing all things luxurious (Ava Gardner), and even cranky old Father Time (Robert Morley). The sheer amount of hokum crammed into one story is numbing, as are the muddled aesthetics of Cukor’s version.

          The costumes are self-consciously artificial (Tyson wears a leotard, a scarf, and half-hearted cat makeup), the settings fluctuate indiscriminately between tacky sets and lush European forests (the picture was shot in Russia), and the songs are so cloying and insubstantial that they barely register as anything more than background noise. The young actors playing the leads (including Patsy Kensit, who years later costarred in Lethal Weapon 2) are weak, and the adults fail to impress—Cukor, who seems to think he’s making a glossy MGM musical in the ’30s, steers his cast toward florid line readings instead of performances, with only Cole offering a glimmer of characterization as a loyal puppy who digs being able to chat with his master.

The Blue Bird: LAME

Comes a Horseman (1978)

Director Alan J. Pakula took a massive misstep after helming the Watergate-themed masterpiece All the President’s Men (1976), venturing into the world of cowboy drama for the pretentious and unsatisfying Comes a Horseman. Yet even with its profound shortcomings, the picture is interesting because of the caliber of talent involved, and because it’s fascinating to watch Pakula try to blend his dark, meditative style into the vibrant milieu of the revisionist Western. So even though this director and this genre aren’t even remotely a good match, Comes a Horseman boasts powerful moments thanks to rich atmosphere and strong performances, two qualities that distinguish all of Pakula’s films. Jane Fonda stars as a second-generation cattle farmer under pressure from a powerful rancher (Jason Robards) to sell her struggling operation so he can expand his empire. Into the story comes a horseman, obviously, who’s played by decidedly Eastern tough guy James Caan; casting city slicker Caan as a cowboy is one of the movie’s many bold stylistic experiments. Caan helps Fonda turn her farm around, leading to a violent confrontation with Robards and his operatives, since the villain is an omnivorous monster who won’t take no for an answer. Fonda is perfectly cast and quite convincing as a child of the frontier, Robards is entertaining if a touch cartoonish as a megalomaniacal baddie, and Caan struggles valiantly to blend into a genre that doesn’t suit him any more than it suits Pakula. All three leads, however, are upstaged by former stuntman Richard Farnsworth, who scored the first of his two Oscar nominations for his gruffly authentic performance as a wise old cowpoke named Dodger. He’s such a strong presence that scenes without him feel insufficient. Pakula benefits from moody photography by cinematographer Gordon Willis, and though neither Pakula nor Willis are particularly adept at shooting action—Willis is one of the great atmosphere guys, not a run-and-gun shooter—they create several memorably stark moments, like the film’s apocalyptic finale.

Comes a Horseman: FUNKY