A classic year: 1975

IMDB 's Classic Film Board has a thread on the best films of 1975. I submitted my 1975 top twenty - I didn't realise it was such a classic year! and of course in that pre-video, pre-internet world we had to see all those films at the cinema (and London still had plentiful arthouse and revival circuit chains) and read the movie magazines to keep up with them ...  I have written about several of these here, as per labels.

THE PASSENGER - Antonioni 

BARRY LYNDON - Kubrick 

LOVE AND DEATH - Woody Allen 

NASHVILLE - Altman

HISTORY OF ADELE H. - Truffaut 

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS - Fassbinder 

SEVEN BEAUTIES - Wertmuller 

DOG DAY AFTERNOON - Lumet 

THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR - Pollack 

THE STEPFORD WIVES - Forbes 

THE MAGIC FLUTE - Bergman 

INDIA SONG - Duras 

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUI DE COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES - Akerman 

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW - Sharman 

TOMMY - Russell 

ROYAL FLASH - Lester 

SHAMPOO - Ashby 

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK - Weir 

MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL - Gilliam. 

Dreadful but compulsive (for Lee Remick, Barbra Streisand fans!): HENNESSEY / FUNNY LADY. 

In the IMDB poll on 1975, JAWS topped the list, but THE PASSENGER (PROFESSIONE: REPORTER) made a respectable 7th on the top 20, with BARRY LYNDON in second place, and NASHVILLE third followed by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, and also respectable placings for ADELE H and SEVEN BEAUTIES. 

A fascinating year in the mid-70s then, CHINATOWN was the year before, and the following year 1976 had TAXI DRIVER, OBSESSION and Visconti's L'INNOCENTE to fascinate us, while 1977 and beyond took us into CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, ANNIE HALL, NEW YORK NEW YORK and the rest ... not a bad decade at all, the 70s are up there with the 50s and 60s - great to have lived through them as cinema changed and developed so much.

1975 was of course also a great year for music - on those vinyl gatefold albums, like this Joni Mitchell favourite: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns".

Other classic years here, as per labels: 1954, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1970

Pizza with Marcello, Monica, & Romy

A Marcello double-bill: Italian comedy with Monica and a ghost story with Romy ..

THE PIZZA TRIANGLE or JEALOUSY, ITALIAN STYLE or GRAMMA DELLA GELOSIA was a surprise hit in 1970 - Pauline Kael gave it a rave review too, but it had vanished without trace until recently. I should have been watching a new sub-titled disk but it has gone astray in the post (a replacement is on its way), so I am remembering it from back then. It shows Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti as gifted farceurs as this trio of working class lovers clash, the third point of the triangle being Giancarlo Giannini. The prolific Ettore Scola, still writing and directing now, and who also directed Marcello and Sophia's hit A SPECIAL DAY in 1977, and Marcello as Casanova in THAT NIGHT IN VARENNES, fashions a hilarious tragedy as our bricklayer Marcello falls for flower-seller Monica, who then falls for pizza chef Giancarlo. Cue endless farce as they love, fight, bicker, and end up injured in hospital.

As IMDB puts it: An engrossing farce about a love triangle in modern Rome. Bricklayer Marcello Mastroianni meets flower-seller Monica Vitti at a political demonstration. He decides to ditch his fat, older wife for her. All goes well until a pizza, in the shape of a heart, arrives. It is sent to the girl by a young pizza-chef, played by Giancarlo Giannini. The pizza man becomes Vitti's lover, and poor Marcello goes mad with jealousy and attempts suicide, as do each of the other two at some point in this hysterical soap opera. The three lead performers, among the best that the Italian cinema has ever had to offer, are magnificent, as is the direction and comic timing by Ettore Scola creating a tragedy and comedy with political overtones and social satire.

Vitti and Marcello had not been this good in years (they were co-stars in Antonioni's LA NOTTE in 1961). Giancarlo Giannini of course went on to those towering performances in Wertmuller's SEVEN BEAUTIES, Oscar-nominated in 1975, and that chilly lead in Visconti's last, L'INNOCENTE in 1976 (both reviewed at Giancarlo  Giannini label), and again is still working now. 

FANTASMA D'AMORE (GHOST OF LOVE), 1981. 

A decade later, in 1981, we see an older Marcello with an older Romy Schneider - a year before her death (aged 43 in 1982). This for some reason, despite its two European stars, never played in London as I would have wanted to see it. It was only in Italian but I have now sourced a sub-titled print, 

I don't usually go for ghost stories, but this turned out to be a totally absorbing drama, with supernatural tones, which kept the interest, It is set in Pavia, a gloomy city as shown here, as Marcello's accountant catches the bus for a change, and an ill-looking, shabby woman boards the bus and does not have the fare, so he gives her a 100 lire coin. She thanks him and runs away and seems to know him. Then she rings him at home, where he and his wife lead separate lives. He did not recognise her, the woman on the bus, as she had changed so much due to illness, but she is Anna, his long lost love who has come back. He is astonished but agrees to meet her. 

She is now looking like her usual attractive self .... it turns out though she is married. Then he is told by a doctor friend that she died 3 years ago, which he cannot believe. They meet again and go out on the river in a boat, but she falls over and drowns .... there is also a mysterious murder where a man who abused Anna kills his aunt. It turns out Anna is unrepentant about that (before she falls into the river) .... then a body turns up, but it is not Anna but the man who abused her and who killed his aunt, who was also unpleasant to Anna. Is she a vengeful ghost bent on revenge? He has to find out and goes to see her husband, who also confirms that Anna died 3 years ago. Her aged servant also takes him to where she is buried ..... So what is the real truth.  The aged ill Anna turns up again on the bus - she keeps being drawn back to him as he keeps remembering her, and what does that odd priest know about it all. They have to part one more time ...... 

Ok, it is a ghost story, one can accept that. But what does one make of the final scene, where he returns to a large house (which may be a hospital or asylum) and the nurse in white uniform coming towards him is Romy/Anna too and she smiles as she leads him back in. It is all the ravings of a lunatic? or has he simply gone mad from it all? We have to make up our own mind .... Its an endlessly fascinating puzzle well directed by Risi, and made bearable by the stars, Marcello is fine as usual; Romy transcends the material and is a fascinating presence. They are a perfect team too, like Marcello with all the others: Sophia, Anouk, Gina, Anita, Monica, Silvana, Faye, Catherine, Brigitte, Belinda, Claudia etc. 

In due course, more Marcello rarities: with Silvana Mangano (DARK EYES, her last, in 1989) and maybe two dreadful ones, long unseen here: A FINE ROMANCE with Julie Andrews, and USED PEOPLE with Shirley McLaine, both from 1992. There is also something called MACARONI, another late '80s Marcello comedy also by Scola, with Jack Lemmon in crabby, annoying mode as an American in Naples (shades of AVANTI ?) ....I will have to resist that.
More Romy coming up too, and Catherine Deneuve.

Summer re-runs: Seven Beauties

I was worried about seeing SEVEN BEAUTIES again ... it stunned me when I saw it in the '70s, its powerful images stayed with me - it was one of those arthouse big movies of the era (along with PADRE PADRONE, THE AMERICAN FRIEND etc), but what if I no longer liked it? I do. It is still a key Italian films of the '70s and probably Lina Wertmuller's masterpiece. Other films that try to tackle the holocaust and life in concentration camps, whether revered like SCHINDLER'S LIST or reviled like THE NIGHT PORTER, have their admirers but SEVEN BEAUTIES (1975) should be much better known. It also contains one of the great performances in all cinema - Giancarlo Giannini's Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties). 

The seven beauties are his sisters and Pasqualino is the only man in the family so he has to defend their honour. The early scenes in a sunny Naples have a warm glow and it is bliss watching Pasqualino, a cheap hood, with his suit and hat and gun, strutting around and bossing his sisters around, and his adoring mamma.  There is also that nice girl who has her eye on him. One of his sisters though brings shame on the family as her lover makes her a prostitute so Pasqualino has to kill him .... this is all hilariously accomplised and the body despatched in 3 parcels, but Pasqualino cannot claim self-defence as his gun went off accidentally before the greasy obese hood could reach for his.  He fakes insanity, gets sent to an institution, escapes by joining the military, deserts, gets caught, and is put in a concentration camp. There, he seduces his grotesque female camp commander in order to survive. Giannini makes his character wholly believable, and his presence on-screen (in nearly every scene) keeps the story going from one plot twist to the next, he is simply everyman who will do anything to survive.

Others won't - it is still stunning seeing how Fernando Rey commits suicide after deciding he cannot stand it anymore after he rails against the Nazis, also Pasqualino has to shoot his comrade ... after the Nazi Commandant (Shirley Stoler in a mesmerising performance) makes our hero head of his unit and he has to choose 6 to be killed or else they all will. Now he really has to show how he will do anything to survive. Stoler succeeds in making him one of them. The scenes where he attracts her interest and has to try to get excited to have sex with her are stunning done. She feeds him and then he has to perform, or else ....  These scenes in the concentration camp are like a descent into hell or a universe created by Hieronymous Bosch.  Also that early scene before his capture when he and fellow deserter are in the woods wondering where they are and witness Nazis shooting people is both horrifying and captures the feelings of guilt our witnesses experience but if they intervene they will be shot too ... in the camp Stoler knows they will lose the war but she hates the Italians and continues killing them. For Pasqualino though survival is everything and he does what he has to ... but at what price? He seems dead behind the eyes in that final shot.

Finally the war is over and he has survived. He is back in sunny Naples. His mother and sisters are delighted he is home. They are all whores now of course and so is the pure girl he was attracted to. He asks if she is doing well and she says yes, so he says Good - they will now get married and start producing children, as many as possible as its going to be a grim world out there, with everyone struggling to survive. I don't want to make SEVEN BEAUTIES sound grim or depressing - it isn't, there is lots of slapstick and humour as Wertmuller paints on a broad canvas, all of life is here, its a stunning, engaging film which one will be drawn into. Not many movies today can affect me like this. See it too for Giancarlo Giannini - this performance and his role in Visconti's L'INNOCENTE (Visconti label) are among the best on film, and he has a great comic role with Vitti and Mastroianni in Scola's THE PIZZA TRIANGLE (DRAMMA DELLA GELOSIA) 1970, too long unseen. He was nominated for best actor that great year 1976 but of course it was the year of TAXI DRIVER and NETWORK ... Good too to see he is still acting. Praise too to Shirley Stoler (1929-1999) for her astonishing role here - she was also stunning in THE HONEYMOON KILLERS (1969) and also pops up in KLUTE among others.

L'Innocente - Visconti's final film, 1976

L'INNOCENTE, 1976 - Luchino Visconti's final film (he shot most of it from a wheelchair) is both an intense drama and also one of the most ravishing costume dramas ever committed to celluloid. [It sits next to BARRY LYNDON in my cabinet shelf of 70s movies as the 2 most perfect costume dramas of that decade].
Giancarlo Giannini is Tullio, a wealthy and arrogant aristocrat openly having an affair with another woman (Jennifer O'Neill's Teresa Raffo), thus driving his wife (Laura Antonelli's Giuliana) to start her own affair with a writer Filipo D'Arborio (Marc Porel) that leads to a pregnancy and baby. Giannini is magnificent in a role that instills in the viewer zero sympathy and outright hostility. The film heads into what can only be described as one of the most memorably tragic conclusions since Shakespeare, and is also one of the most beautifully filmed and costumed movies ever (Antonelli with that veil across her face...), with sumptuous costumes, rooms and sets. Surprising nudity too - male as well as female as Guiliana is undressed a few times, and Tulio glares at the naked D'Arborio in the shower. One can see how this lush, opulent film stately directed by Visconti with slow zooms and tracking shots must have influenced Scorsese's AGE OF INNOCENCE, played out as it is in stately drawing rooms for piano recitals, fencing classes, summer villas and mansions at dawn, in that "fin de siecle" era.


Jennifer O'Neill (dubbed in Italian - did Luchino need an American name in the cast?) is devastatingly beautiful and seductive as the self-assured, selfish, spoiled, ambitious, self-seeking lover, as much as Laura Antonelli is the opposite side of the coin but in a lower key, as the humble and insecure, betrayed, embittered, resentful wife, but also devastatingly gorgeous. (Below: Visconti on set).



The drama increases as Guiliana becomes pregant as her husband desires her all over again and wants her back, D'Arborio having died of a tropical disease, but he does not want the baby, the innocent of the title (we never see the wife and lover together, that affair is played out offstage). She pretends not to care for the baby to keep it safe but Tullio is too jealous of it, leading to ultimate tragedy. Then after a final confrontation with the glacial Teresa .... there is that great last shot of her leaving in that chilly dawn. The novel is by the great Gabriele D'Annnunzio, and script co-authored by Visconti regular Suso Cecchi D'Amico (who died last year aged 96), photography by Pasqualino De Santis. The costumes are ravishing and the cast including Rina Morelli, Didier Haudepin, Massimo Girotti, ideally cast even to the smallest part. It's a lasting pleasure and Visconti's farewell to the class and way of life he knew. Giannini was also ideal in those Lina Wertmuller films like SEVEN BEAUTIES.