The Only Way (1970)

          Readily available data on this World War II drama is contradictory, with some sources indicating it’s a Danish production, others describing it as an international coproduction, and still more sources claiming the picture is American (even though the credits plainly state it was shot in Denmark). Adding to the confusion, two of the primary actors are English, whereas most of the players are Danes. Oh, and good luck nailing down when (if ever) the picture was released theatrically in the US. Nonetheless, The Only Way merits attention in this space since it’s a respectable film featuring Jane Seymour’s first significant big-screen role.

          Set in and around Copenhagen circa the 1940s, the movie dramatizes the travails of the Stein family as the German occupation of Denmark escalates. Patriarch Morten (Martin Potter) is a violin dealer who recently acquired a valuable antique instrument, and his daughter, Lillian (Jane Seymour), is a ballet teacher. After Lillian learns from friends that the Nazis plan to evacuate all Jews from Copenhagen, she tells her father it’s time for the family to flee, but he stubbornly refuses, believing that acquiescence to the Third Reich will empower their totalitarian rampage. What ensues is a slow-burn thriller as Morten, Lillian, and members of their extended family take different postures on the issue at hand, leading to domestic strife. Meanwhile, friends of the family explore possible escape routes even as the Nazis tighten their anti-Semitic net. At the same time, opportunists exploit and threaten the Steins.

          Benefiting greatly from extensive location photography, solid period costuming, and workmanlike performances, The Only Way is never less than palatable—yet it’s rarely more than that. The characterizations are thin, the script often sidelines the Steins to focus on peripheral characters, and obvious opportunities for creating deep interpersonal conflict are ignored. The movie starts with Morten refusing to face reality and never really advances that theme until the very last shots. Similarly, despite spending a fair amount of time introducing Lillian’s love for dance, her relationship with the arts ultimately has little impact on the plot. Still, nearly any film celebrating the heroism of WWII resistance has inherent worth, and it’s interesting to watch Seymour as an ingénue prior to her sexualized breakout role as a Bond girl in Live and Let Die (1973).

The Only Way: FUNKY

Pacific Inferno (1979)

The challenge when discussing this abysmal WWII saga isn’t explaining why it’s a bad movie, but picking the best examples to illustrate how it’s a bad movie. Perhaps it’s the way the first seven minutes of this brief action flick almost exclusively comprise stock footage. Or perhaps it’s the way the filmmakers regularly disrupt any sense of 1940s verisimilitude by awkwardly interjecting ’70s soul music, such as Edwin Starr’s furious anthem “War.” Or perhaps it’s the way star Jim Brown frequently slips into anachronistic dialogue straight out of a low-rent blaxploitation joint, as when his enlisted-man character berates a racist superior officer thusly: “Now you wait a minute, my man—you do whatever you want to me when we get outta here, but until then, don’t mess with my life!” Set and shot in the Philippines, the discombobulated and dull Pacific Inferno concerns a group of American POWs forced by Japanese captors to dive for sunken treasure. Among many galling logical lapses, the captors somehow have extensive personnel files on their prisoners, hence their discovery that characters played by Brown, Richard Jaeckel, and others are experienced divers. One would laugh at this degree of cinematic ineptitude if Pacific Inferno were sufficiently interesting to provoke any reaction beyond boredom. Better to keep a safe distance and ignore that fact that Brown did this to himself, seeing as how he’s listed as an executive producer. Hopefully he enjoyed some pleasant time in the sun between takes.

Pacific Inferno: SQUARE

1980 Week: The Last Metro

          Polished and sophisticated but also a bit on the trifling side, the World War II drama The Last Metro was the final major international success for François Truffaut, a titan of the French New Wave and one of the most gifted storytellers ever to work in cinema. Telling the story of theater people who defy the Nazis in occupied Paris, The Last Metro is among Truffaut’s most visually beautiful films, thanks to luminous photography by the great Néstor Almendros, and it pairs French-cinema grande dame Catherine Deneuve with Gérard Depardieu, then a rising star of Gallic films. All participants operate at the height of their powers, creating a movie that’s humane, intelligent, romantic, and suspenseful. The Last Metro is bloated at 131 minutes, and the ending is so tidy that it makes much of what came before seem inconsequential. Yet The Last Metro is unusual among movies about occupied France inasmuch as the material is not inherently depressing or tragic. The Last Metro is an inspirational story about survivors who refuse to compromise their principles, thereby getting the last laugh on their jack-booted oppressors. It’s not quite a feel-good WWII movie, but it’s certainly not a feel-bad WWII movie.

          When the picture opens, actor Bernard Granger (Depardieu) arrives for an audition at a theater operated by the beautiful actress Marion Steiner (Deneuve), who manages the acting troupe and the building because her husband, acclaimed director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent), is Jew who fled Paris to escape the Nazis. Or so it seems. Turns out Lucas is living in seclusion, using the theater’s basement as a hideout. Once Marion begins rehearsals for a new play in which she costars with Bernard, Lucas listens to their acting through pipes carrying sound from the stage to the basement. At night, once everyone else has left the building, Marion joins Lucas to get notes on the day’s work. Lots of things conspire to disrupt this delicate situation. French citizens collaborating with the Nazis discover clues suggesting that Lucas never left the country. Lucas gets stir-crazy in the basement, threatening to risk capture by leaving his hideout. And Bernard becomes romantically attracted to Marion, creating a complex triangle while the actors play lovers onstage.

          Despite being written, directed, and acted with the utmost care and refinement, The Last Metro has the feel of a soap opera, with characters pursuing crisscrossing agendas while guarding dangerous secrets. And while the pulpy nature of the material probably contributed to the film’s popularity, demanding viewers can’t help but expect more given the level of talent involved and the sprawling length of the movie. Taken for what it is, however, The Last Metro goes down smoothly. Deneuve is so exquisite to behold that she commands the screen even when she’s doing nothing, Depardieu hits the right note of brash arrogance, and Bennent is believable as a high-minded artiste. As always, Truffaut conjures an immersive sense of time and place.

The Last Metro: GROOVY

1980 Week: The Final Countdown

        Happy New Year, and welcome to the final 1980 Week of Every ’70s Movie. (Not to fear, we’re back to regular reviews of movies from the 1970s after this special 1980 Week runs its course.) Here's wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous 2018. Enjoy!

          Basically a second-rate Twilight Zone episode stretched out to feature length, sci-fi thriller The Final Countdown unleashes a hell of a lot of firepower to sustain the viewer’s interest, especially considering how little energy was devoted to the storyline. Beyond a kicky premise, The Final Countdown has nothing to offer on a narrative or thematic level, and the movie’s approach to characterization is a joke. Having said all that, the picture has three solid attributes. First is the basic time-travel notion, second is a cast front-loaded with name-brand actors, and third is an eye-popping array of production values and special effects. The movie looks fantastic, and it contains so many stars working in roles suited to their skills that it seems as if it should eventually gel. It doesn’t. By the time that becomes clear, the movie’s over, so The Final Countdown is entertaining by default. It feels, looks, and sounds like a crackerjack popcorn picture despite a hollow center.

          The flick begins in Pearl Harbor as the modern-day crew of the U.S. Navy supercarrier U.S.S. Nimitz prepares for a routine mission. Much to the consternation of skipper Captain Yelland (Kirk Douglas), the ship’s launch was delayed to await the arrival of civilian Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen), an efficiency expert working for the industrialist who designed technology onboard the Nimitz. Once at sea, Warren clashes with the ship’s top pilot, Commander Dick Owens (James Farantino), a part-time history buff working on a book about the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Nimitz encounters a bizarre electrical storm that blasts the ship with strange phenomena, and then the crew discovers they’ve been transported back in time to Dec. 6, 1941, the day before the Pearl Harbor attack. Proof of their circumstances arrives when the Nimitz crew rescues U.S. Senator Sam Chapman (Charles Durning) from his yacht after the boat gets strafed by Japanese Zeroes flying advance reconnaissance for the invasion fleet. What ensues is the usual what-if jazz stemming from the possibility of using modern weaponry to derail a historical tragedy.

          Unfortunately, the filmmakers never take the premise anywhere, so The Final Countdown is all buildup with very title payoff. Adding to the peculiar quality of the movie is the fact that most of the screen time comprises money shots of the Nimitz, because the filmmakers were given almost complete access to the ship. Long stretches of The Final Countdown feel like excerpts from a training film, with vignettes of planes taking off and landing, sailors running drills, and heavy machinery being operated at breakneck speed. The movie is a nautical gearhead’s wet dream. Douglas, Durning, Farantino, Sheen, and nominal leading lady Katharine Ross are left with little to do except convey wonderment and spout exposition. On the plus side, cinematographer Victor J. Kemper has a blast shooting action footage, the dogfight between jets and Zeroes is memorable, and the FX shots of the strange laser/cloud tunnel appearing during the electrical storm are cool.

The Final Countdown: FUNKY

The Last Escape (1970)

          Strange as it may seem that old-fashioned World War II flicks were still unspooling in American theaters during the climax of the Vietnam War, the evidence is found in disposable flicks along the lines of Hell Boats, Underground, and this drab thriller starring Stuart Whitman, all of which were released in 1970. Brisk, handsomely produced, and watchable, The Last Escape quickly evaporates from the viewer’s memory. Whitman stars as Mitchell, an American spy who leads a collective of international covert agents during a mission to liberate a rocket scientist being forced to work for the Third Reich. All the usual complications arise. Mitchell’s American comrades die before reaching the mission’s rendezvous point, so Mitchell’s British counterpart challenges him for leadership over the mission. Upon liberating the scientist, the group’s path to freedom is complicated by the difficulty of moving extra people through hostile territory—the scientist demands that Mitchell’s team extract numerous family members and friends, rather than just key personnel—and by such practical issues as diminishing fuel supplies. The plot also includes trite romantic elements, as well as the inevitable barrage of chases, shootouts, and so forth.

          Appraised superficially, The Last Escape ticks most of the right boxes, and therefore should make for a satisfying—if undemanding—viewing experience. Alas, that appraisal leaves out the important considerations of depth and originality. The Last Escape has neither. The film’s characterizations are beyond perfunctory, so Whitman’s character is stoic, his love interest detects the sensitivity hiding behind the stoicism, the Nazis are odious, and the scientist represents moral complexity by demanding that Mitchell leaven his determination with compassion. Had this movie been an episode of some World War II-themed TV show or even some 80-minute programmer cranked out by a low-budget studio in the 1950s, the sketchy plotting might have been sufficient. For a proper feature released in 1970, not so much. That said, it’s not as if The Last Escape is intolerable. The picture contains long sequences without dialogue, and there’s something to be said for any movie with elements of pure cinema. Furthermore, once could do worse than hiring next-level scowler Whitman when casting the role of a tight-lipped tough guy.

The Last Escape: FUNKY

Soldier of Orange (1977)

          Offering a fresh perspective on the German occupation of Europe during World War II, as well as bracing elements of sex and violence, the epic-length melodrama Soldier of Orange ticks several noteworthy boxes in film history. At the time of its release, it was the most ambitious and expensive Dutch film ever made, earning such international accolades as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film. The picture was a milestone in the career of co-writer/director Paul Verhoeven, and it brought notoriety to leading man Rutger Hauer. (He soon found his way to Hollywood, and Verhoeven wasn’t far behind.) Finally, because the picture looks at World War II through a Dutch prism, Soldier of Orange became a point of national pride, and was, in 1999, named the second-best Dutch film of the 20th century. Tellingly, the first-place winner in that ranking was Turkish Delight (1973), a provocative romantic film that marked the first Hauer/Verhoeven collaboration.

          Based on a biographical novel by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Soldier of Orange tells a complex story that sprawls across nearly a decade of Dutch history. Following a prologue, the movie proper begins at a college in the late 1930s, with ambitious fraternity pledge Erik (Hauer) experiencing brutal hazing at the hands of an older student, Guus (Jeroen Krabbé). Feeling guilty for his behavior, Guus helps Erik get through life, so their fates become entwined even as history nudges the Netherlands toward involvement in the war. The movie also tracks the lives of Alex (Derek de Lint) and Robby (Eddy Habbema), two other members of Erik’s collegiate social circle. Without getting mired in details, the gist is that Soldier of Orange follows the way different men react to the invasion of their country by German forces. Some collaborate, some resist, and some fall victim to the Third Reich.

          In one important episode, Dutch resistance operatives create a pirate radio network to communicate with Allied forces in England. In another, Erik and Guus flee the Netherlands by steam ship, then accept orders from their queen-in-exile, Wilhemina (Andrea Domburg), to return home for a dangerous covert mission. Several highly eroticized love stories get woven into the mix, notably a triangle revolving around a British military secretary (Susan Penhaligon). By turns, the movie features adolescent tomfoolery, exciting spycraft, horrific torture, sexy romantic interludes, and the psychological horror of countrymen turning against each other.

          Nearly everything that happens during the 149 fast-paced minutes of Soldier of Orange is interesting, though tracking all the names and places is challenging. As always, Verhoven’s filmmaking is emphatic and robust, so even though he’s a skillful storyteller, he sometimes plows so brazenly into complicated scenes that it’s tricky to remember who’s doing what to whom and why. It doesn’t help that some of minor characters are interchangeable, or that Verhoeven mostly portrays Nazis as one-dimensional monsters. Yet the strongest elements of Soldier of Orange are world-class. Production values, including re-creations of period costume and design, are impeccable. Hauer and Krabbé give performances that are, respectively, earnest and sly, so key moments are specific and vivid. And if Verhoeven occasionally succumbs to his lower impulses, with overlong scenes of carnality and carnage, that can be forgiven as a way of imprinting the piece with an authorial stamp.

          Whether a resounding theme emerges, however, is another matter; Soldier of Orange has so much of everything that it feels more like an informative miniseries than a purposeful drama. Perhaps that was the idea. Instead of making a Grand Statement about the Dutch experience of World War II, maybe Verhoeven and his collaborators meant to show as many dimensions as possible of that experience. They did so, in forceful and unusual ways.

Soldier of Orange: GROOVY

Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973)

          The ignominious final chapter of Adolf Hitler’s life has inspired several pieces of grim drama, including the extraordinary German film Downfall (2004), the TV movie The Bunker (1981), and this British/Italian coproduction starring the venerable English actor Alec Guinness. Downfall exudes authenticity not least because its German characters actually speak German, and The Bunker features Anthony Hopkins as Der Führer. Yet Hitler: The Last Ten Days is not to be dismissed. Beyond the virtues of Guinness’ performance (more on that later), the film benefits from a rigid aesthetic. The camera never leaves the bunker in which Hitler spent his final days, so whenever director Ennio de Concini references the bigger canvas of the war happening outside the bunker, he cuts to grainy black-and-white newsreels. This cleverly underscores the idea that Hitler was living in a parallel reality of his own twisted imagining, even as those closest to him embraced the truth of the Third Reich’s imminent defeat.

          Set in April 1945, the film begins with the appearance at the bunker’s front gate of one Captain Hoffman (Simon Ward). Though incidental to the main narrative, he provides the audience’s viewpoint. Hoffman discovers a Hitler inexplicably confident that victory is still possible, conspiring and ranting before an audience comprising his lover, Eva Braun (Doris Kuntsmann), and a revolving cast of aides and generals. In some sequences, Der Führer calmly orders military deployments, and in others, he issues maniacal decrees such as commanding that the Hitler Youth engage in suicide missions. The most vivid scenes accentuate the grandiosity of Hitler’s self-image. “The gods give their love to those who demand the impossible,” he rails at one point. “Everything I do and everything I say is history!” Dismissive of the horrific loss of life he has caused, Hitler obsesses about his place in history, for instance demanding accurate portraiture so his likeness isn’t subject to interpretation, like that of Jesus Christ. At his most deranged, Hitler decommissions generals for refusing to execute his (insane) orders, barking to one insolent subordinate: “I will drown you in your own blood!” Everything moves, inexorably, toward the grim ritual of Der Führer leading his closest partisans toward mass suicide.

          Presented as a dark chamber piece within a handful of shadowy rooms, the picture employs music sparingly, with a well-chosen Wagner excerpt providing mournful atmosphere during a few key moments. The acting is as respectable, and occasionally as mannered, as the dialogue, but everything is merely background to Guinness’ performance. Despite never achieving true frothing-at-the-mouth abandon, Guinness works up a good head of steam during unhinged monologues, and he spews final-solution venom with unnerving conviction. The sum effect avoids the easy traps of exaggerating Hitler’s tics or recklessly softening him in the name of humanizing a character. Rather, Hitler: The Last Ten Days presents a sober depiction of a hateful demagogue whose grip on reality is inexorably tethered to his grip on power. As one weakens, so does the other, forcing those in his orbit to choose between loyalty and salvation.

Hitler: The Last Ten Days: GROOVY

A Special Day (1977)

          “I don’t think I’m anti-fascist,” the well-dressed man remarks. “If anything, fascism is anti-me.” Those simple words, revealing a world of sociopolitical significance, epitomize what makes the Italian drama A Special Day so resonant. By viewing cataclysmic historical events through the prism of one very specific relationship, the picture brings the past to vivid life while also conveying timeless truths about subjects ranging from compassion to tyranny. A Special Day is also noteworthy as one of the best collaborations between classic Italian stars Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Whereas many of their celebrated onscreen pairings are romantic comedies, A Special Day uses their easygoing chemistry in a more imaginative way, which nets powerful results.
          Set in 1938, the movie takes place in Rome on the day Adolf Hitler made a state visit to confer with Italy’s fascistic strongman, Benito Mussolini. The action revolves around a huge apartment building with a massive inner courtyard. In the morning, bedraggled housewife Antonietta (Loren) rouses her large family. Her husband, Emanule (John Vernon), is a staunch Mussolini supporter, so he plans to take all their kids to a rally celebrating Hitler’s visit. Given her backbreaking obligations of cleaning and cooking for the big family, Antonietta stays home. Once the apartment building is nearly empty, she happens into a conversation with a neighbor from across the courtyard, Gabriele (Mastroianni). We discover things about Gabriele gradually, learning that he’s a radio announcer recently fired from his position for mysterious reasons, and that just before he encountered Antonietta, he was close to attempting suicide.

          Giving away the other revelations about his character would diminish the experience of watching A Special Day, so broad strokes must suffice—over the course of a long day comprising conversations, flirtations, and intimacies, Antonietta discovers through her new friend a world of emotion and ideas and nonconformity that rocks her existence. By the end of the day, she’s almost a completely different person than the woman who first met Gabriele. And because the things we learn about Gabriele speak directly to the dangers of living under a totalitarian regime, he changes, too, if only in the sense of emerging from shadows by sharing provocative secrets with a friend.

          Directed by the acclaimed Ettore Scola, A Special Day achieves that rare trick in movies, presenting characters who are so fully realized they seem like real people; accordingly, even the most fanciful turns in the movie’s central relationship have credibility and depth. At different times, we experience Antonietta’s fear, loneliness, pride, and warmth, just as we experience Gabriele’s dignity, humor, joy, and sadness. Loren downplays her signature glamour, hewing closer to the earth-mother aspect of her screen persona, while Mastroianni effectively tweaks his urbane image. (Modern viewers may flinch at some aspects of the characterizations, but the portrayals fit the period during which the story takes place.) Also worth noting is the picture’s unique visual style. Scola and cinematographer Pasqualina de Santis employed a desaturated color scheme, putting the look of A Special Day somewhere between black-and-white and color, and while the look is jarring at first, it makes sense after a while; this is a story that exists between the margins of history, so it warrants an offbeat presentation.

          Given the way the horrors of World War II loom just outside the narrative, there’s something fundamentally grim about A Special Day. Surely, not every character we meet is destined to survive the next few years. Yet within the darkness, A Special Day provides much that is bright and uplifting, conveying how real human connection is the only way to bridge divides. Many well-deserved accolades came the film’s way, including two Oscar nominations (for Best Foreign Film and for Mastroianni as Best Actor), as well as a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

A Special Day: RIGHT ON

Seven Beauties (1975)

          A nasty piece of business from Italy’s provocative Lina Wertmüller, Seven Beauties tells the grotesque story of a man who survives a violent life as a pimp only to become an inmate in a World War II concentration camp. The film is so deliberately vulgar that the climax involves the protagonist struggling to summon an erection with which to service a morbidly obese prison matron, even though she’s a despicable sadist. One of the overt themes in the challenging picture is that only whores can survive life on the sidelines of a war. Given Wertmüller’s proclivity for threading leftist politics into her narratives, it’s a fair statement of sorts; her movies depict the world as a battle zone pitting the apathetic against the engaged, with her sympathies clearly favoring the engaged. Therefore, a generous reading of Seven Beauties might identify the protagonist as a representation for everything Wertmüller finds craven in society. After all, the movie begins with a weird tone poem/dedication listing various types of people: “The ones who don’t enjoy themselves even when they laugh. Oh, yeah. . . . The ones who listen to the national anthem. Oh, yeah. . . . The ones who at a certain point in their lives create a secret weapon: Christ. Oh, yeah.”
          Seven Beauties is a Grand Statement, but it’s not the easiest one to decipher.

          The movie jumps back in forth in time, juxtaposing the main character’s civilian life with his military experience. Prior to the war, Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini) is a sharp-dressed hustler who seems conflicted about the carnal adventures of his sisters. He carries the pejorative nickname “Seven Beauties” because each of his siblings is unattractive. Pasqualino spends lots of time yelling at his sisters for their low morals, even though he’s a criminal. In one of the film’s many tasteless sequences, the dismembering of a corpse is played for laughs. In another, Pasqualino rapes a mental patient. If you’re wondering what the point is of watching a monster like Pasqualino, I don’t have a good answer for you.

          The protagonist’s wartime experiences are gruesome. Inside the concentration camp, he watches a rotund matron (Shirley Stoler) push inmates past their physical and psychological limits, then bonds, sort of, with a poetic activist named Pedro (Fernando Rey). That character’s ultimate fate is so vile as to approach the realm of perverse comedy. As noted earlier, the crescendo of the picture involves Pasqualino trying to gain favor with the matron through sex. Throughout Seven Beauties, Wertmüller devotes as much energy to provoking revulsion as she does to showcasing ideology. The sheer number of repugnant images and situations is distracting, as is dissonance between content and style.

          Like all of Wertmüller’s movies, Seven Beauties is beautifully photographed, and the production design is impressive. Moreover, frequent Wertmüller collaborator Giannini contributes his usual impassioned work. Seven Beauties is among Wertmüller’s most acclaimed films, having garnered accolades including four Oscar nominations, so, clearly, discerning viewers found much worth examining here. To these eyes, however, the picture has not aged as well as some other Wertmüller’s efforts. Seven Beauties speaks with more confidence than clarity, though a hint of the picture’s deeper meanings might come from Rey’s character, who claims that “a man in disorder is our only hope.” Disorder is something that Seven Beauties has in abundance.

Seven Beauties: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Tin Drum

          Allegorical, profane, ridiculous, and surreal, The Tin Drum describes the bizarre life of a character who magically stunts his own physical growth at the age of three because he finds the world of adults repulsive, then becomes first a medical curiosity and later a freak-show attraction who travels with a group of performing dwarves. All of this material is set against the backdrop of the Third Reich’s rise to power, because The Tin Drum—adapted from the Günter Grass novel of the same name—is about politics as much as it’s about childhood, disappointment, fantasy, and other themes. Lavishly produced and sprawling across a 142-minute running time (never mind the latter-day director’s cut that runs even longer), The Tin Drum is challenging at best, impenetrable at worst. It’s a marvel that the picture earned widespread acclaim, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 1980 and the Palme d’Or at the previous year’s Cannes Film Festival, because some vignettes contain the sort of grotesque weirdness that one typically associates with, say, the films of David Lynch.

          For instance, what is there to make of the elaborate birth scene that begins with shots of a fully grown boy flopping around a special-effects vision of his mother’s womb, and then continues with a roller-coaster-style POV shot hurtling from the womb, through the walls of a mother’s vagina, and into the waiting hands of a kindly doctor? Or how about the gleefully disgusting sequence in which the protagonist’s father walks along a shoreline and discovers a decapitated horse’s head that’s filled with squirming eels? Just for good measure, the protagonist’s mother stands nearby, vomiting onscreen as the father happily extracts eels through the horse’s mouth and eye sockets, and in the next scene, the father decapitates the live eels before cooking and eating them.

          Anyway, the title refers to a beloved toy that the story’s hero, Oskar, is given on his fateful third birthday. He pounds the drum day and night, even as he inevitably transitions from childhood to adolescence and adulthood. Through actions, dialogue, and voiceover narration, Oskar conveys contempt for the behavior of “normal” Germans, as represented by his father’s enthusiastic participation in the Nazi Party and his mother’s affair with her husband’s brother. Oskar searches in vain for like-minded individuals until he meets the wise, middle-aged dwarf who runs the performance troupe; sensing Oskar’s specialness, the showman makes an attraction out of Oskar’s drum-playing as well as Oskar’s peculiar superpower, the ability to break glass simply by shrieking.

          From start to finish, The Tin Drum is loaded with heaviosity, metaphor, satire, and symbolism, so admirers and scholars can undoubtedly spend inordinate amounts of time unpacking the implications of the film. I must confess that I’m not among the film’s admirers, and whether I’m a scholar is for others to say, so I will instead remark that my attempt to consume the picture as pure narrative was not enjoyable. The movie is so brisk and strange that it commands attention, but the absence of accessibility and warmth created problematic opacity, at least for this viewer. Given that the picture is shot through with betrayal, despair, and tragedy, I’m comfortable acknowledging that The Tin Drum represents the sophisticated delivery of worthy literary material. As to what any of it means, or why the experience of watching the picture should be deemed edifying, I’m at a loss. Like those eels the protagonist’s father extracts from a rotting and waterlogged carcass, this movie is an acquired taste.

The Tin Drum: FREAKY

Love & Anarchy (1973)

          Like her mentor Federico Fellini, Italian director Lina Wertmüller generally avoids understatement. Although technically brilliant and unrelentingly intense, her movies are often so loud, overbearing, and vulgar that it’s hard to sift the artistry from the assault. Plus, because she’s among the most deeply political filmmakers ever to achieve international fame, her pictures exist on literal and metaphorical levels, meaning that themes one discovers upon reflection add depth to what initially seem like undisciplined statements. In other words, it’s never prudent to dismiss a Wertmüller movie. Unfortunately, it can often be difficult to actually enjoy a Wertmüller movie. So it is with Love & Anarchy, which I found almost interminable until the final act. Given the film’s rarified critical status, it’s possible that I’m either in the critical minority or that I just plain missed something important during the setup phase of the narrative. In any event, watching Love and Anarchy felt like having Wertmüller scream at me for two hours, even though I eventually found a grudging respect for the way the piece resolved.

          Wertmüller’s favorite leading man, Giancarlo Giannini, plays Antonio, a provincial type who travels to Rome during Mussolini’s reign. (Backstory: Antonio became radicalized when Mussolini’s thugs killed one of his friends, so he’s determined to assassinate Il Duce.) Giving the would-be killer sanctuary while he plans the murder is a prostitute name Salomé (Mariangela Melato). Telling fellow sex workers at a bordello that Antonio is her cousin, she lets Antonio stay in her chambers and even proffers carnal favors. The first two-thirds of Love and Anarchy follow romantic-comedy rhythms as the cynical Salomé falls for the guileless Antonio, even as he becomes enamored of another prostitute, Tripolina (Lina Polito). Eventually, the film catches fire because Antonio reveals that he’s terrified about trying to kill Mussolini, leading the women to passionately argue against Antonio throwing his life away on a likely futile assassination attempt.

          This material gives Wertmüller a fine dramatic vehicle for exploring the costs of idealism and the roles of individuals in oppressive times. Just as the film comes to life in its last stretch, Giannini’s performance crystallizes. His suave good looks buried behind huge freckles and wild red hair, Giannini spends the first two-thirds of the movie looking lost, his eyes bulging stupidly, but then we realize he’s simply been scared out of his wits the whole time. Why withhold that insight from the audience? Why waste time on Fellini-esque scenes at the bordello, replete with grotesque images of painted ladies? And why get so caught up in the romantic-triangle contrivance? Such are the mysteries of Wertmüller’s work.

          Dubious narrative choices notwithstanding, Love and Anarchy is gorgeous from a technical perspective, with Giuseppe Rotunno contributing characteristically vivid camerawork and a number of vibrant locations providing texture. Visual splendor aside, so much of what makes this movie hard to watch is contained in Melato’s performance. Her makeup is extreme, all bleached hair and pale skin, so she looks like a vampire, and she never stops talking or lowers her volume to less than a caterwaul. She incarnates all the extreme things that make Love & Anarchy challenging to endure, even though the film contains many provocative insights.

Love & Anarchy: FUNKY

The Triple Echo (1972)

          Adapted from a short story by H.E. Bates, offbeat WWII drama The Triple Echo would be easier to swallow had it been extrapolated from real events, because the central premise is as far-fetched as the relationships that drive the storyline. Set in the English countryside, the picture concerns Alice (Glenda Jackson), the lonely wife of a soldier being held prisoner overseas by the Japanese. One day, a young solider named Barton (Brian Deacon) wanders onto her remote farm, so she offers him food and lodging. He’s a deserter. Over the course of several weeks together, they fall in love, but Alice worries that neighbors might discover Barton’s presence and shatter their romantic idyll. She contrives the peculiar idea of disguising Barton as her sister, “Jill,” by way of cross-dressing. This works until yet another soldier wanders onto the farm. Arriving astride a tank, he’s a bearish sergeant played by Oliver Reed. (The character never gets a proper name.) Improbably, the sergeant becomes obsessed with “Jill,” and even more improbably, “Jill” accepts an invitation to a military party even though it’s plain the sergeant expects more from “her” than a dance. All spongy narrative contrivances and inorganic motivations, he story wends its way toward a strange type of romantic tragedy, with the gloomy pastures of the hilly countryside serving as some sort of visual metaphor representing loneliness.

          As directed by Michael Apted, whose work is always competent, The Triple Echo moves along as well as it can, given the episodic and incredible storyline. One feels the strain of screenwriter Robin Chapman stretching Bates’ vignette to feature length, and what might have seemed believable on the page is less so onscreen. Jackson attacks behavior and dialogue with her usual consummate skill, but she’s far too chilly to provide the level of emotion necessary for putting the illusion of The Triple Echo across. Likewise, Deacon is a cipher at best and a simpering twit at worst, because his performance gets more and more unsteady as the stakes of the narrative rise. Reed, as was sometimes his wont, barrels through the picture with more energy than nuance, so while he’s credible as an overbearing monster, he steamrolls past the central problem of making viewers believe the sergeant can’t see that “Jill” is a man. Other shortcomings include pedestrian camerawork and some truly atrocious music during upbeat passages—overwrought and twee was not the way to go for scoring what is essentially a tragic chamber piece.

The Triple Echo: FUNKY

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970)

          Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, stately drama The Garden of the Finzi-Continis explores tensions among wealthy Italian Jews during the run-up to World War II, when Benito Mussolini escalated an ethnic-cleansing campaign in lockstep with the anti-Semitic purge wrought by the Nazis in Germany. Adapted from a novel by Giorgio Bassani and directed with rarified style by Vittorio De Sica, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a melodrama with a social purpose, so every scene of interpersonal friction and romantic strife is shot through with foreshadowing. Some characters see where things are headed while others play ostrich, so viewers get a close view at what happens when citizens rebel against totalitarianism and what happens when citizens spend too long ignoring the storm clouds gathering overhead. Many, many films explore similar terrain, and some—notably Bob Fosse’s Cabaret (1972)—inject the American perspective for a broader geopolitical view. Perhaps because of its narrow focus on the moneyed class, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis lacks gut-punch impact. Nonetheless, the question of how societies allow demagogues to gain power is one of timeless importance, and De Sica dramatizes issues with intelligence and precision.

          At the beginning of the story, young adults from throughout the city of Ferrara meet in the sprawling private estate of the Finzi-Contini family for leisurely games of tennis. (Among the story’s central metaphors is the notion of a walled-in compound as a island of tolerance in a sea of hateful madness; it’s the familiar binary argument of involvement versus isolation.) Though he inhabits a slightly lower social station, Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio) is in love with Micòl (Dominique Sanda), eldest daughter of the Finzi-Contini family and also his friend since childhood. Yet she’s drawn the handsome and politically expedient Malnate (Fabio Testi), and the situation is complicated by Micòl’s concern for her frail brother, Alberto (Helmut Berger), another childhood friend of Giorgio’s. Adding more layers to the narrative are scenes set in Giorgio’s home, since his father (Romolo Valli) champions Mussolini. In fact, the father joins the Fascist Party, somehow believing he can stop the spread of anti-Semitism from within the political machine.

         Those with a strong grasp of world history will get more from The Garden of the Finzi-Continis than others, since the movie’s philosophical debates occur on an elevated plane. Similarly, the narrative’s symbolism is intricate and subtle, so those looking to be lead by the hand toward one viewpoint or another will be lost. The broad strokes are plainly evident, but The Garden of the Finzi-Continis explores incremental differences between people who share many common values, rather than outright conflict between oceans-apart enemies. Undoubtedly, that’s why the picture enjoys its enviable reputation. By surgically extracting a sample of diseased tissue, De Sica and his collaborators explore something even more troubling than the rise of tyrants—the ease with which tyrants can seize control while those with the most cultural and economic influence are distracted by petty strife. 

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis: GROOVY

1900 (1976)

         While much has been written about American auteurs of the ’70s derailing their careers with overly indulgent projects, the phenomenon was not exclusive to the United States. After notching a major international hit with the controversial Last Tango in Paris (1972), Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci created 1900, a five-hour epic tracking the course of Italian politics from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of World War II. The movie has all the heaviosity and scale it needs, and Bertolucci’s central contrivance—following an aristocrat and a peasant who were born in the same location on the same day—gives the sprawling narrative a pleasing shape. The film’s images are lustrous, with regular Bertolucci collaborator Vittorio Storaro applying his signature elegant compositions and painterly lighting, and the film’s music is vibrant, thanks to the contributions of storied composer Ennio Morricone. Beyond that, however, 1900 is frustrating.

          The presence of American, Canadian, and French stars in leading roles diminishes the authenticity of the piece; a subplot about a sociopath becoming a sadistic Axis agent leads to laughably excessive passages of gore and violence; and Bertolucci indulges his sensuous aspect to such an extreme that he comes off like a fetishist obsessed with, of all things, excrement and penises. The movie has too much of everything, eventually devolving into a lumbering procession of strange scenes expressing a trite political message about poor people having morals and rich people being assholes.

          The first stretch of the picture, essentially a lengthy prologue, introduces the grandfathers of the protagonists. Alfredo Berlinghieri the Elder (Burt Lancaster) is the benevolent padrone of an estate, and Leo Dalcò (Sterling Hayden) is a peasant in his employ. Both welcome grandsons on the same day in 1900. The children grow up to be close friends, despite one enjoying privilege and the other doing without. Later the boys become young men. Alfredo (Robert De Niro) has learned from both his humanistic grandfather and his scheming father, so he enjoys crossing class lines while also treasuring power and wealth. Olmo (Gérard Depardieu) is a political firebrand, resentful of the ruling class no matter what face it wears.

          As life pushes the childhood friends apart, they watch Italy split along similar lines, with aristocrats forming the backbone of the Fascist movement while laborers suffer. Personifying the rise of the Fascists is Atilla Mellanchini (Donald Sutherland), whom we first meet as an enforcer helping Alfredo’s father maintain discipline on the estate. Naturally, the movie has a love story, revolving around Alfredo’s relationship with the unhinged Ada Chiostri Polan (Dominique Sanda). After many twists and turns, the story transforms into a politicized morality play as vengeful workers reclaim power from the Fascists.

          Bertolucci and his collaborators present some meaningful insights about important historical events, so the film is strongest when it sticks to polemics. Matters of love, lust, and madness are handled less gracefully. The most extreme scenes involve Atilla performing grotesque acts of violence. Rather than shocking the viewer, these sequences render Atilla so inhuman as to be one-dimensional, which stacks the political deck unfairly. Bertolucci is just as undisciplined with bedroom scenes. It’s quite startling, for instance, to see an actress playing an epileptic hooker manually pleasuring De Niro and Depardieu in full view of the camera. Wouldn’t suggesting the action have communicated the same narrative information? Similarly, do viewers need to see the actors playing the younger versions of the leads examining each other’s genitals? And what’s with the scene of Lancaster stalking a young girl into a barn, asking her to milk a cow because it turns him on, rhapsodizing about life while squishing his feet up and down in pile of feces, and then forcing the poor girl to slide her hand into his pants?

          It’s tempting to believe there’s a clue about the source of the film’s excess during an elaborate wedding scene, because a character presents the gift of a white horse named “Cocaine.” After all, doing too much blow was the creative downfall of many a Hollywood director.

          Whatever the reason, Bertolucci lost control over 1900 as a literary statement fairly early in the movie’s running time. Perhaps no single moment captures the ugly bloat of 1900 better than the harshest Atilla scene. After Atillia rapes a young boy, Bertolucci shows Atilia killing the child, lest a potential witness to his crimes survive. Fair enough. But instead of simply shooting the child, Atilla picks up the boy by his feet, spins him around the room, and repeatedly smashes the boy’s head against a wall until it cracks open like a watermelon. In the twisted aesthetic of Bertolucci’s 19oo, too much is never enough.

1900: FUNKY

Massacre in Rome (1973)

          The European-made World War II drama Massacre in Rome depicts a 1944 incident during which the Third Reich killed 335 citizens in reprisal for a partisan attack that left about 30 German soldiers dead. The so-called “Ardeatine Massacre” carried sociopolitical implications extending beyond the war itself, since the Vatican was asked to intervene but refused to do so. Written and directed by George P. Cosmatos, who adapted a book by Robert Katz, Massacre in Rome is a serious attempt at cataloguing the myriad factors that led to the slaughter, although the process of dramatization led Cosmatos toward both oversimplification and turgidity. Regarding the first extreme, Cosmatos transformed historical figure Herbert Kappler, the German officer tasked with organizing the reprisal, into a cinematic protagonist, which necessitated some sanding of edges. In the movie, Kappler—as played by Richard Burton—is a pragmatist who urges his commanders to exercise restraint not out of any great wellspring of human compassion, but because he knows that an excessive response will energize opposition among the Italian citizenry. Historical accounts suggest that the real Kappler had no such reservations about following the company line.

          Regarding the second extreme, that of turgidity, Cosmatos created a composite character, Father Pietro Antonelli—portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni—to represent the tricky relationship between the church and Italian partisans. Many scenes involving the priest devolve into pretentious debates about morality. Worse, the priest ultimately serves no discernible narrative function—despite fretting a lot, he never impacts the action in a meaningful way. Given these problems, Massacre in Rome is a middling film even though it’s also a sober undertaking with terrific production values. At his best, Cosmatos conveys a vision of the Third Reich’s high command as a dysfunctional family, with insane leader Adolf Hitler (who is never shown onscreen) creating a top-down climate of paranoia and savagery while more rational people eye the inevitable future after Hitler’s power structure collapses. Marginalized in this treatment of the story are the people affected by the massacre, because Cosmatos doesn’t spend enough time with the partisans or with the common people of Rome. That said, Cosmatos and producer Carlo Ponti honor the dead with a closing text crawl featuring the names of the victims.

Massacre in Rome: FUNKY

Shock Waves (1977)

          The lingering image from this low-budget shocker depicts a squad of expressionless zombies wearing goggles and World War II SS uniforms as they emerge from bodies of still water, intent on spreading bloody mayhem. As one of the film’s supporting characters notes, “The sea spits up what it can’t keep down.” Utterly loopy in conception, and yet compelling because of its no-nonsense execution and the unnerving synthesizer music on the soundtrack, Shock Waves is reminiscent of John Carpenter’s early work. What the film lacks in depth and logic, it makes up for with menace and mood. And while writer-director Ken Wiederhorn is no John Carpenter, as evidenced by the unimpressive nature of Wiederhorn’s subsequent career, Shock Waves works quite well as an offbeat horror show.

          The picture begins when the crew of a sea vessel discovers Rose (Brooke Adams) floating alone on the ocean in a battered dingy. In voiceover, Rose describes the ordeal she just experienced. Along with several other folks, she took a pleasure cruise on a low-rent boat skippered by Captain Ben Morris (John Carradine). One night, Morris’ boat encountered the wreck of a massive ship. Soon thereafter, strange things started happening, culminating with the death of Captain Morris under mysterious circumstances and the scuttling of Morris’ boat. The passengers found refuge on a remote island, the only resident of which was a mystery man (Peter Cushing) with a scar across his face. Revealed as a former SS commander, the man explained the nature of the ship the passengers encountered. During World War II, the commander oversaw the “Death Corps,” a squad of genetically engineered zombie soldiers capable of breathing air and water. Deemed too dangerous for deployment, the “Death Corps” were decommissioned, and the commander sunk the boat containing his inhuman soldiers. For some reason, the “Death Corps” resurfaced at the moment that Morris’ boat arrived, and carnage ensued.

          The plot is ridiculous, and Weiderhorn succumbs to a few lowbrow impulses (such as squeezing Adams into a bikini for most of the picture). Nonetheless, Weiderhorn delivers a fair measure of creepy weirdness. Zombies stalk people through swamps. Survivors struggle to find hiding places in an old mansion, adding claustrophobia to the mix. Cushing unfurls the requisite expositional monologue. And so on. Thanks to its eerie music, familiar actors, grainy photography, and gruesome premise, Shock Waves could either haunt you or strike you as silly, depending on your receptivity to this type of dark fantasy. Either way, it’s vivid stuff.

Shock Waves: GROOVY