Category: 1970s

Bob Fosse | 1hr 51min

There is something of Lenny Bruce’s rebellious, unorthodox style in Bob Fosse’s 1974 biopic of the comedian’s life which mirrors his own manner, shunning the usual biopic genre conventions to capture the same unruly wit which defined his controversial stand-up routines. Even though his style of black comedy influenced such famous comedians as George Carlin and Bill Hicks, his name is not one often heard today, perhaps since his career preceded theirs by a couple of decades. None of them ever had to wrestle with the same level of cultural conservatism though, and it is in this conflict that Fosse uses Lenny to confront the legacies left behind in the fight for free speech.

It is somewhat baffling that Dustin Hoffman’s performance here is rarely mentioned in the same breath as The Graduate or Rain Man, but evidently Lenny is a little more difficult to digest than either. There is a visible transformation in his physicality and energy, right from Lenny’s early days of bad celebrity impressions to his spiral downwards into addiction, and Hoffman falls into each stage of his life with ease. Most impressive of all is his pure verbosity, leaving audiences hanging on his every word through fast-paced joke setups and then delivering punchlines with a disarming laugh.

But Fosse is always sure to keep a distance from the comedian, looking in from the outside through staged documentary-style interviews with his loved ones and associates trying to make sense of his difficult legacy after his death. In this way, there is a lot of Citizen Kane present in Lenny, and Fosse wields a similarly steady control over this ambitious narrative structure as Orson Welles. What would have otherwise been a rather traditional rise and fall character arc thus becomes an examination of a person who might have always been destined for an early grave, simply due to his own self-destructive tendencies.

Interweaved among these two timelines is one specific stand-up show from the 1960s, in which a bearded Lenny turns his personal struggles into fodder for comedy. Fosse’s editing is a marvel here, as he deftly cuts between dour scenes from the past revealing a failing marriage and a future set that humorously picks apart his own flaws, notably analysing his Madonna-whore complex as well as his proclivity for cheating. There is no doubting his intelligence in the way he analyses his own weaknesses, but it is also evident that his attempts to use comedy as a coping mechanism does little to resolve them in any meaningful way.

Even within each scene though, there is an energetic rhythm to Fosse’s editing, turning each stand-up show into a sort of call-and-response performance between Lenny and his audience. Fosse’s background in movie-musicals is evident here, as is the influence he would have on Damien Chazelle’s own style decades later in Whiplash, as he ricochets all across Lenny’s stage and catches his laughing audience in close-ups, feeding off the man’s exuberance. After Lenny gets in trouble with the law at one point for public obscenity, the police who start lining the walls of the club become part of this dance as well, and the editing becomes a little more tentative in its velocity. That is, until Lenny takes back control of the room’s atmosphere, slyly pushing the boundaries of censorship while incisively deconstructing the very notion of it, and we find ourselves back at the comfortable, kinetic pace we have grown accustomed to.

The beautifully lit black-and-white cinematography from Bruce Surtees here shouldn’t be lost in amongst the praise for the editing though. In clubs and bars, pitch black backgrounds are pierced by spotlights centring Lenny as the target of everyone’s attention, bathing him in wafts of smoke floating languidly through the air. Whether he is caught in close-ups or wide shots, everything in these rooms directs all attention towards him, from the blocking of the audience to the framing of the room’s architecture.

This becomes especially important towards the end in what is certainly the longest take of the film, when a strung-out Lenny delivers a disastrously lacklustre set while high on morphine. No longer are we rapidly cutting around the room or watching excited reactions in close-up, but instead we sit back in a wide and simply observe this barefoot, coughing man in a trench coat mumble his grievances to an unreceptive crowd. The two minutes we remain sitting in this shot feels like much longer, as gradually we begin to notice the silhouettes of audience members get up and leave, and yet we can’t tear our eyes from him.

Given what we have just witnessed, his death that occurs not long after doesn’t come with any great revelation. It is a development Fosse has prepared us for all the way through in the post-mortem interviews, recognising that this bright spark of life could have only ever sustained itself for so long. At the same time though, it is also within this superb narrative structure that his animated verve is kept at the forefront of our minds, as Lenny never stops demonstrating the magnificent power of an act that can reconcile life and entertainment in moments of comedic harmony, no matter how transient they might be.

Lenny is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon Video.

William Friedkin | 1hr 41min

There is a lot resting on the detective instincts of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. If we had any less faith in his assumptions, he might come off as a far more incompetent character than he is. Even though he proves his resourcefulness right from the very first scene in getting the information he seeks from a suspect, we still harbour some reservations around his methods and the extreme lengths he will often go to. At his loudest and most persistent, he will speed down a busy highway, destroying several cars and risking his own life to hunt down a dangerous assassin, though he is also just as willingly to stand patiently outside in the freezing cold for hours on end, waiting to catch sight of a suspect. There is no spectrum of possibility or effort in his work – everything is either a lead worth following to its bitter end, or not worth his time at all. 

All it takes is one of those hunches for Popeye to latch onto a $32 million shipment of heroin arriving in New York in a few weeks’ times, and then he’s off, spinning himself up in a cat-and-mouse chase with a drug syndicate led by French mobster Alain Charnier. Around them is a vision of America’s most populous city grounded in raw cinematic realism, flooded with stagnant puddles of muddy water and coated in at least a few layers of grime. Working in the same vein as the French auteurs of the 1960s who moved their films beyond artificial studio sets to shoot on location, William Friedkin takes to the streets of New York to capture a level of authenticity that cannot be replicated anywhere else, right down to the steam billowing out from underground vents. Its instantly recognisable cityscape looms tall in backgrounds, and he often washes it in a natural blue light which, while certainly beautiful at times in its softness, more frequently works to encase these detectives and criminals in the harsh frigidity of the New York winter. 

It is also a city of remarkable disparity though, and we can gage a lot about where these cops and criminals stand in how Friedkin works to contrast them in his editing. While Charnier is fine dining with associates in a high-end restaurant, Popeye is staking out the building with his partner, Cloudy, standing outside for hours on end, eating nothing but greasy pizza and coffee. At another point while Charnier stands atop skyscrapers overlooking magnificent views, Popeye remains down on ground level, barely allowing himself any time off the job to relax. Where Charnier’s dialogue is refined and mannered, Popeye proves himself to be a true New Yorker in his fast-talking mix of shouts and mumbles, offering a magnificent Gene Hackman the chance to improvise entire sequences with extraordinary vigour and naturalism.

Where the two sides of this city are bound together is in their incredible intelligence and patience, relying on their wits to outsmart each other in this complex dance of crime and justice. Popeye is methodical in his manipulations, shifting his tactics to either befuddle, intimidate, or give his suspects false confidence depending on what the situation calls for, and though this works for low-level crooks who lack judiciousness and restraint, Charnier makes for a fairly equal match in his crafty machinations. In a sequence of pure tension and visual storytelling, Popeye stalks the mobster through the streets and underground stations of New York, and in Don Ellis’ grumbling staccato underscore of cellos and double basses he accompanies each glimpse of Charnier’s silver umbrella with a metal clang. Friedkin’s editing jumps lightly between both men, matching the movements of their legs as if racing the two against each other, and finally ending this dance when Popeye falls a second behind, letting Charnier make his getaway.

A similar juxtaposition is also set out in one of the greatest car chases committed to film, where we see a hitman run onto a train in the chaotic aftermath of a failed assassination, and Popeye defiantly driving after him beneath an elevated railway. It is a great feat of editing, not just in the fast-moving action of his destructive pursuit along the crowded avenue, but also in the intercutting of his target’s actions on the train, growing steadily more desperate until he commits a fatal error in drawing attention to himself. Friedkin achieves a thrillingly tight balance here, once again pitting Popeye against yet another criminal, though one significantly less competent than Charnier.

Outside these high-intensity scenes of life and death, Popeye is playing a game of patience. The same patience is asked of us in Friedkin’s meticulous teasing out of this narrative, with the inbuilt promise that there will eventually be some sort of reward for it, whether that be a victory for the police or the drug traffickers. It is certainly the case in each stake out, as well as the meticulously detailed sequence of a suspicious car being dismantled part by part to discover where the bags of heroin might be hidden, though it also one that Friedkin turns on us in the film’s final minutes, when we find ourselves waiting for the biggest pay-off of all. As we approach the denouement, Popeye’s success in busting the drug operation is abruptly soured by his own need for personal vengeance, chasing after Charnier through a dilapidated warehouse where he inadvertently shoots and kills a colleague. This might as well be a footnote to the rest of the scene though, as the detective barely stops to ponder his guilt before moving onto the next room over. Meanwhile, the camera hangs back, as if finally exhausted by his stubborn persistence.

In this moment, there is no resounding climax where Popeye or Charnier finally face off and decide who dies. Instead, a series of title cards simply informs us of their relatively unspectacular futures, both making it out alive though with nothing to gain or celebrate. In any earlier era of Hollywood filmmaking, The French Connection might have once drawn out this bitter feud to a poetically fateful ending, though in this thrilling tense narrative of sharp, biting cynicism, Friedkin chooses to finally separate us from Popeye’s obstinate need for closure, and instead allows us to simply sit in the disappointment of his demoralising personal failure.

The French Connection is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Woody Allen | 1hr 25min

Two years before Woody Allen left his immortal mark on the romantic-comedy genre with Annie Hall, he pushed another set of narrative and film conventions in Love and Death. Early 19^th century Russia is his chosen setting, and those great Russian novels by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are his inspiration, but this is no insipidly self-serious period piece. Anachronisms abound here, as playfully irreverent as they are pointed in their satire, targeting the quaint pretensions of this era with rapid-fire repartee and a good deal of meta-humour.

Allen continues the trend of starring in his work in Love and Death, playing the part of a Russian literary protagonist reluctant to take part in his war-bound destiny. Boris Grushenko might as well stand in for Allen himself in all his contemporary sensibilities, as he gleefully belittles those around him while suffering the consequences of his own hubris. The Groucho Marx influence on his work has always been evident, but rarely has it been so palpable as it is here in one of his earliest films, when in the most dire of circumstances of being challenged to a duel he continues rattling off quips with all the speed and impudence of a man who possesses both great intellect and great ego, and can’t help letting both show.

“My seconds will call on your seconds.”

“Well, my seconds will be out, let them call on my thirds. If my thirds are out, go directly to my fourths.”

Quite unusually for Allen, slapstick rules alongside verbal wit in Love and Death, though once again such a smooth integration of both high and lowbrow humour comes back to his love for the Marx Brothers. A sophisticated conversation over moral imperatives is deflated in an instant when Boris and his wife, Sonja, pause mid-way to hit an unconscious Napoleon Bonaparte on the head with a wine bottle, underscoring the incongruency between the lofty philosophical questions and life-or-death scenarios often presented side-by-side in Russian literature.

Even as Love and Death is drenched in jokes and references to classic novels, Allen’s focus remains on the cinematic applications of his satirical commentary, further building out his movie into a pastiche of European arthouse films. The montage editing of a battle deliberately evokes the Odessa Steps sequence of Battleship Potemkin right down to a shot of broken spectacles, though when Allen cuts to the view of the war from the general’s perspective he amusingly slips in a shot of sheep running together in a flock. Meanwhile, a white cloaked figure representing Death acts a direct allusion to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, even as its austere presence is undercut by Boris’ flippancy, considering his own mortality as little more than an inconvenience.

“Boris! What happened?”

“I got screwed.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Some vision came and said that I was gonna get pardoned, and then they shot me.”

“You were my one great love.”

“Oh thank you very much, I appreciate that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m dead.”

In his fourth wall breaking voiceovers and facetiously subversive attitude, Allen smashes through cultural, narrative, and cinematic convention, fashioning an entirely new kind of artistic statement out of the fragments left behind. Though there is a cerebral and ironic detachment in his attacks upon old-fashioned ideals, it does not possess the sort of savagery that he reserves for his own self-criticisms. Ultimately, it is in that combination of the two where Love and Death reveals itself to be just as much a pointed comment on the way haughty academics and artists interpret history as it is a critique of the foibles of history itself, all the while wryly refusing to take itself seriously on any level.

Love and Death is available to rent or buy on iTunes, Youtube, and Google Play.

Nicolas Roeg | 1hr 50min

To live through the tragic death of your own child is a horrifying enough prospect on its own, but in the convergence of past, present, and future that emerges in architect John Baxter’s unwieldy, indistinct hallucinations, that grief becomes a sea of despair, pulling him down into its cold, all-consuming depths. The layers of subtext and symbolism that flow through Don’t Look Now may take multiple viewings to fully appreciate, but in Nicolas Roeg’s fluid editing which swirls between cryptic images of blood, churches, water, and grotesque representations of death, its feverish atmosphere takes hold, haunting us with the ghosts of events that have already taken place, and some that are still yet to happen.

The supernatural clairvoyance that plagues John’s mind may be considered a curse in this way, but as we witness in Heather, a blind psychic he meets in Venice, such mysterious gifts need not be so detrimental. Though she cannot see, the special vision she possesses allows her more insight into the world than anyone else, and the abundance of mirrors and reflective surfaces surrounding her frame her as such, becoming distorted yet enlightening filters of reality.

Water consequently becomes an especially potent visual metaphor, particularly early on when an upside-down pond reflection of John and Laura’s young daughter, Christine, ominously portends her imminent drowning. She is not the last person in the film to die in such a gruesome manner either, as in a subplot concerning a loose serial killer in Venice we observe bodies being drawn up from the canals, rotted from the time spent submerged in their murky depths. If John’s own supernatural ability can be likened to these bodies of waters that contain splinters of answers, then it is important to recognise the necessity of coming at them from purely figurative angles, and avoid submerging oneself in the overwhelming, suffocating currents of literalism.

It is the latter course of action which tragically defines John’s own arc, as in the wake of Christine’s death he decides to accept a commission in Venice to restore an ancient church, and ironically dig deeper into his own scepticism. Unable to accept the possibility of the supernatural, he takes all his visions at face value, living them as if they were immediately present rather than considering their underlying significance. All around Venice he continues to chase a small figure dressed in a red coat, identical to that which his daughter wore when she died, and warnings of his own impending fate continue to emerge all around him. This city of deep canals, misty alleys, and ancient architecture becomes its own mysterious force in John’s journey, constructed just as much through Roeg’s masterfully inventive editing as it is through the location’s own unique layout of disconnected islands.

In those few moments where the gravity of the present outweighs all else, Roeg delivers weighty, slow-motion sequences, dramatically underscoring John’s discovery of Christine’s body as well as Laura’s fainting in the restaurant. Outside these scenes though, he delivers a masterclass in montage and parallel editing, intercutting the couple’s love-making with their morning routine the day after, and then in the very final of the sequence of the film smashing together the fragments of foreshadowing we have seen throughout the film to form a complete puzzle. Roeg’s magnificently frightening reveal flows in graphic match cuts between symbols, premonitions, and shots whirling across church interiors, all the while bells clang chaotically in the background.

From Heather’s clarified perspective, these enigmatic icons can be contemplated from a distance, allowing their underlying implications to arise organically. For a man like John though, so wrapped up in his own grief and scepticism, the reckless pursuit of logic only delivers answers after he has plunged right to the gloomy depths of his mysterious visions. And as Roeg’s persistent foreshadowing drives home over and over through Don’t Look Now, there is no hope of surfacing again this far down.

Don’t Look Now is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Stanley Kubrick | 2hr 16min

The labels of cynicism and disillusion often stuck to Stanley Kubrick should not be taken to imply misanthropy, as even here in A Clockwork Orange where he expresses perhaps his most scathing condemnation of humanity, there is still a wonder and adoration of that which makes this species so vulnerable and unique. With our right to free will comes our liberty to conduct truly heinous acts, but tied to it is also our potential to create and appreciate works of art, as well as to stand up against other evil. It isn’t just an inalienable right in this film – it is the very source of human life, as crucial to each person’s welfare as it is vulgar and repulsive. To cut that off is essentially a form of castration, or as Alex DeLarge’s victim, Frank Alexander, puts so succinctly:

“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”

It is from this philosophical reasoning that Kubrick’s inspired, repulsive aesthetic explodes outwards, marking nearly every corner of this dystopian British society with phallic symbols as overt as explicit paintings, lollipops, and bulging jock straps, or as subtly suggestive as long-nosed masks, canes, and Alex’s snake Basil, who mysteriously dies the moment his masculine assertion of freedom is revoked.

From the very first shot in which the camera tracks backwards from Alex’s disturbing gaze and slowly reveals a tableau of young men dressed in white, drinking milk atop tables fashioned out of naked female sculptures, his own character is established by the perversity of the environment. Through his voiceover in a drawling, Russian-tinted dialect we gain a very specific, youth-oriented view of this society that has fallen prey to its pleasure-seeking instincts, and left to rot by weak, materialistic adults who focus more on decorating their homes with garish, mismatching designs than cleaning up the garbage and crime-infested streets outside. They have retreated into their homes out of fear, but even these private spaces are no longer safe as Alex and his droogs make a hobby out of invading and terrorising them, relishing these deeply immoral acts with a wicked sense of humour and a touch of musical irony. At least for the first act of A Clockwork Orange this is well and truly his world, and Kubrick frames him as such in commanding positions that tower over others, or otherwise centres him in shots with wide-angle lenses that seems to radiate his surroundings out from his body. Whether the speed of the film is cranked up to fast-motion in an exhilarating sex scene or slowed right down as he launches a vicious attack on his droogs, everything we see or hear is stylistically in service of Alex’s own dominance and immediate pleasure.

Oftentimes when talking about mise-en-scène it is easy enough to link a film back to its influences, but besides the expressionist impact evident in long, stark shadows and haunting silhouettes, A Clockwork Orange very much stands alone in being a truly original piece of visual art, unbridled in its obsession with depicting sexuality in the most literally objectified manner possible. In rendering such sensitive, personal parts of our bodies in hard, inorganic materials, so too does Kubrick paint out a vision of humanity that has itself become a cheap, manufactured product of its own making, devaluing that which allows us to create life. Even beyond the physical rape that takes place, we watch as Alex weaponises a sculpture of a penis, debasing its artistic purpose by beating a woman to death with it. This is a culture that has slipped over the years into unrestrained hedonism and corruption, and it is only after thoroughly setting up this rotten, futuristic civilisation that Kubrick confronts us with something even more provocative – the notion that physically removing its criminals’ worst impulses will only lead to something far worse.

Kubrick is sure to indicate that the evils we see unfold here are not contained within this one fictional setting, but are rather ingrained in our own history as seen in Alex’s daydream of being a Roman soldier whipping Jesus, and the archival footage of Nazi Germany used to torture him into submission. Consequently, the scientists’ erasure of any desire to commit sin from his mind also inadvertently cuts him off from the rest of the world which shares his sin. These medical, legal, and government authorities who proclaim sovereignty over the laws of nature are just as prone to their own shortcomings as him even if they don’t admit it, though the truth is evident in our witnessing of furtive affairs going on behind closed curtains in hospitals, and the slimy political manoeuvring with which the Minister of the Interior goes about his work. Although Alex is deemed fit to return to society as a reformed citizen, society continues to thrive off the same evil that he too once prospered under, and as such subjugates him to its own depraved torture.

In a show of tremendous narrative form, each person who Alex wronged in the first act returns in quick succession in the third, delivering over-corrective punishments against this man-turned-doormat who no longer has the ability to defend himself. Now visually removed from all traces of phallic imagery, Alex is effectively neutered, unable to sin but also equally unable to fight against the sin of others. Furthermore, his sensitive appreciation of classical music, which was once his last remaining connection to the best of humanity’s potential, has disappeared too. In short, Alex becomes the soulless, mechanical contraption fashioned out of an organic entity that is teased by the title – the clockwork orange, which has the basic essence of life stripped from it so that it may tick along to its manufacturer’s forced rhythm.

It is just like Kubrick to omit the source novel’s last chapter to avoid any hint of a potentially bright future in this hauntingly pessimistic ending. “I was cured alright,” Alex teases upon regaining his former glory and finding his new place in society as a political poster boy. The Minister of the Interior feeds him like a servant, as with the return of Alex’s free will comes power, and his connection to a world that has no place for pushovers. These different forms of evil may possess separate objectives, but Kubrick recognises in this finale of A Clockwork Orange how similar it all really is in its origins and, quite cynically, how necessary it is for humanity to have any hope of moral salvation.

A Clockwork Orange is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Stanley Kubrick | 3hr 5min

Stanley Kubrick has never been one to engage empathetically with his characters and their deep sentiments of love and pain, but it is ironically in his single most focused character study (at least on par with A Clockwork Orange) that he expresses his utmost disdain for humanity in all its self-aggrandising monuments and traditions. The ironic detachment with which he approaches Barry Lyndon is several layers removed from any genuine attempt at historical appreciation of the man himself, or the high society surrounding him. After all, this a 20^th century film adapting a 19^th century novel that narrates fictional events from 18^th century Britain, and much of the text as written by author William Makepeace Thackeray is preserved in the form of narration, archaic and reserved in manner. It warns us of narrative developments before they occur, keeping us from identifying too strongly with any characters, and yet even this filter through which we interpret the past is rendered entirely obsolete by its own self-importance, and its desperate attempts to insert itself where it is not needed. Just as the voiceover will often speak over character dialogue, so too does Kubrick fade out its rambling into silence as Barry Lyndon approaches its intermission, condemning it to its own antiquated spot in history for matching the vapidity of its subject of interest with its own equally insipid musings.

Barry Lyndon was not a well-loved film upon its initial released. Begrudgingly respected, perhaps, but ultimately condemned for its self-conscious arrogance and emotional distance, the exact same qualities that were celebrated in previous Kubrick films. Perhaps it was the glacial pace that frustrated audiences, combined with its colossal three hour run time which was typically reserved for epic, action-packed Hollywood blockbusters like Ben-Hur. Or perhaps it was the tension between Kubrick’s astonishingly beautiful visual compositions and his scorn for the subjects of these cinematic paintings that rubbed people the wrong way.

If anything though, this grating contrast only lends itself to his wickedly dry sense of humour. Whenever Kubrick cuts to a new scene, we are often immediately struck by the sheer artistry of the frame, whether we are laying eyes upon the green, rolling hills of Ireland, shaded and textured as if gone over with a fine brush, or the interior of an exquisite manor lit entirely by candles, adorned with giant paintings stretching across walls as magnificent backdrops. The camera’s stiff, controlled movements are as equally rigid as those formations in which Kubrick blocks his cast, maintaining a stillness that turns each scene into oil paintings, much like those hanging in the characters’ chambers and galleries.

Often the only movement to be found is in a slow zoom out from a close-up, this specific aesthetic device not only keeping intact the two-dimensional, painterly quality of each image that an alternative dolly shot might destroy, but also physically expanding Barry’s world around him, revealing immaculate compositions that appear almost too perfect to be real. But then, every now again, there are small breaks in the performances – Captain John Quin’s attempt to charm a woman through a ridiculous dance, or Ryan O’Neal’s meek line delivery of “I’m not sorry”, feebly asserting Barry’s refusal to back down from courting his own cousin.

It is towards this conflict between the perfectionistic standards of British high society and the messy, flawed beings who built them that Kubrick angles his most significant cultural critique of humanity in all its inflexible customs and traditions. It isn’t that he can’t engage with Barry emotionally, but why should he when it is evident from his behaviour that he is not a figure worth taking seriously on any level? As a young man, Barry’s cocksureness and imprudence are qualities which allow him to work his way up the ranks of aristocracy, engaging in fights and duels bound by rules which attempt to boil down the savage human instinct for violence into civil demonstrations of strength and marksmanship. He joins an army of redcoats in the midst of the Seven Years’ War, and as these stoic Brits march defiantly towards the enemy’s ranks and are picked off one by one, they maintain their worthless honour even in the face of certain death. Fortunately for Barry, he will only play the part for as long as he is held accountable for it, and with no sense of loyalty to any nation, leader, or woman, he finds himself rising up this dishonest society as a con artist.

It is here where Kubrick bisects his narrative right down the middle in a show of great formal ambition. Where Part I is named “By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon”, Part II is titled “Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon”. His new stepson, Lord Bullingdon, is the first person we meet to call him out on being a “common opportunist”, but before we attach to him for his apparent insight, Kubrick is sure to identify him as simply another fop caught up in a pallid social hierarchy. It is a little surprising that Barry is earned a shred of our sympathy in the way he lovingly interacts with his biological son, Brian, though even this relationship gets caught up in questions of how it simply propagates his own empty legacy, and one that he nevertheless has some part in destroying through his own coddling and overindulgence. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,” recites a priest at Brian’s funeral, though it might as well be a summation of Barry’s own life as he continues into this downward trajectory, finally ruined by his own hubris, gluttony, and cowardice.

The fight that earned him respect in the first half is mirrored here with one that reveals a degrading loss of control, and just as he once came out on top in an earlier duel, here a similar conflict marks the loss of everything he had remaining – his title, his home, even one of his legs. How cruel it is as well that this duel might have actually gone his way thanks to the same random chance that lifted him up the ladder of success, had he not chosen that moment to do the first noble, fair thing in his life and let his opponent shoot again. In a final display of acerbic irreverence, Barry is sent off on his way out of high society with a zoom into his behind, and a freeze frame immortalising this image of him as his final appearance. The narration does not get the last say either though, but rather simple some plain text reading:

“It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now.”

If we were to entertain the slightest notion that Barry or this empty culture he lives within possess any substance whatsoever, Kubrick cuts it down at the stem with this derisive jab. Like the voiceover fading into obscurity, the pomp and circumstance of these histories and cultures fade over time, unable to live up to the impossible standards of perfection set by humanity’s own foolish ambitions as displayed here in Barry Lyndon.

Barry Lyndon is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Dario Argento | 1hr 39min

As brutal as the gore and carnage may be in Suspiria, Dario Argento’s assault on the senses in his Technicolour cinematography and imposing set pieces is more confronting than anything else we witness. The film is brimming with subtextual readings of fascism and sexuality, and yet the Italian director is no slave to his subject matter. Instead, he constructs one of the most audacious displays of stylistic horror to emerge from the genre since its cinematic inception, breaking from the tradition of dark, dreary aesthetics by reinterpreting its expressionist roots through an entirely different filter altogether – one that tunes into the striking contrasts of opposing colours rather than low-key shades of black and white. Most predominantly, conflicting neon tones of red and blue battle it out across Argento’s wildly violent mise-en-scène, lighting up this vibrant German dance school and its ugly, demonic heart.

Suzy’s arrival at Tanz Dance Academie is not a welcome one, as she is immediately met by another student running away in the rain, muttering obscure words. By the end of the film we will have learnt the meaning of the clues “secret” and “iris”, but until then we are strung along a series of mysterious hints and murders, many of which hold little significance other than an immediate, visceral impact. In other words, Suspiria operates on dream logic, where a maggot infestation and a room full of barbed wire exists for no other reason than reaching deep into our subconscious and drawing out our deepest, most disturbing fears. On this primal level, the Hitchcock influence is immense, particularly in the suspenseful sequences of various characters wandering long, haunted corridors, many of which are ruptured by terrors emerging from the most unexpected places.

Running beneath these images of sensory and symbolic significance is a high-pitched, eerie score from progressive rock band Goblin, ringing out like an inescapable music box where ballerinas are manipulated, trapped, and forced to dance to the point of exhaustion. As each victim runs towards their grisly fates, its frantic pace keeps driving up our anxiety, flooding the atmosphere with a psychological terror that matches Argento’s wandering tracking shots and unnervingly fluorescent hallways. His disturbing sound design refuses to let up even when the music is absent, reverberating in a seemingly never-ending drone of disembodied echoes, and in one particularly haunting scene becoming a rattling, raspy snore emerging from the silhouette of the sleeping headmistress on the other side of bright red drapes.

Even as Suspiria begins to move into extreme violence, realism is the least of Argento’s concerns, as he focuses his camera on rubbery skin being torn and bright orange blood spilling forth from his victims. One particularly monstrous figure whose skin is peeling off in coarse, grey flakes is horrifying to look at from a wide shot, but even more so when we cut from its gaping mouth, to its rolling eyes, to its trembling, clawed hands in a montage of extreme close-ups. Of course, all of this serves to corrupt an innocent fairy tale world of ballerinas and adventures, plunging us into a hellhole that is only revealed for what it is when it goes up in flames, destroying both witches and schoolgirls alike in an image of infernal punishment.

Indeed, this is a bold experiment in stylistic horror that Argento doesn’t spare any effort in fashioning according to his very specific Art Deco-inspired vision. The yellow rehearsal room with stained glass windows, the red, black, and white geometric shapes of the cavernous entrance hallway, the massive mural of stairs and doorways that look as if they have been ripped straight from the mind of M.C. Escher – this school is a piece of architecture built to look like an inescapable trap, and then when the fluorescent lights are added to this aesthetic, it becomes even more confounding. Even the world immediately outside this school seems to exist beyond the natural realm, as a storm rolling by flashes through windows in similarly vivid colours as those which wash its interiors. Virtually any director who has worked with neons, from Nicolas Winding Refn to Gaspar Noe, has credited Suspiria as a major influence, particularly those who have also worked to destabilise our sense of security. But in working within Italian Giallo cinema, Argento effectively delivers a colourful electric shock to a film genre otherwise known for its dreary aesthetics, mapping a carnal nightmare onto a fable of witches, magic, and dancers.

Suspiria is currently streaming on Kanopy, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Bernardo Bertolucci | 1hr 51min

Bernardo Bertolucci’s carefully-curated geometric shapes and patterns of The Conformist construct an expressive yet inflexible world around Marcello Clerici, a man who seems to shift and meld to whatever his environment requires of him. Is he a fascist? An anti-fascist? Does it matter? Well, only insofar as it gives him social credit, even if it means taking out an old acquaintance should his superiors call for it. We keep returning to parallel tracking shots that follow him along unbending corridors in immaculately designed tableaux of wartime Europe, its sharp angles and lines as equally unyielding as the dogmatic socio-political landscape they make up.

Clerici strikes a respectable figure in his suit and fedora as he walks through this world’s monochrome architecture, and yet there is also something slightly off about his appearance. Perhaps it is the leather gloves he so often wears, as if to suggest a penchant for erasing traces of old loyalties whenever there is a change of guard. Being a man of little substance, he prefers not to handle these matters directly.
 
Much of The Conformist consists of flashbacks conjured up in Clerici’s drive to a secluded destination, where he is expected to assassinate Professor Quadri, a teacher with leftist ideals who he associated with at college. For much of this present-day plot thread, there is little that actually happens. Instead, the frequent cutting to memories of how he ended up here seems to slow down time, prolonging his dread over the murder that waits for him down the road.

Clerici’s earliest recollection is one of seemingly killing his family’s chauffeur, Lino, after the man molests him and suggestively lays a pistol between his legs, a merging of sex and violence. Indeed, this is the appeal of fascism within The Conformist, allowing its followers to indulge in their most perverse impulses, while injecting a heavy dose of shame into the mix, allowing for easy manipulation. Pistols continue to appear throughout the film, often in Clerici’s hands as pitiful demonstrations of masculine power, though both times we expect him to kill someone with them, Bertolucci subverts the outcome. By the end, the only deaths Clerici is responsible for are those which he sits back and watches unfold, his pathetic inaction eventually leading to the assassination of his own mistress.

Though he moves between ideologies without conviction, Clerici finds himself especially at home within the fascist regime of Italy, and it isn’t heard to see why. Quadri draws a line between Plato’s allegory of the cave and the hollow baselessness of totalitarianism, whose followers show a lack of interest in the world around them much like the figurative cave-dwellers that believe that the shadows they see on the wall make up all of existence. When the illusion eventually dissipates Clerici is left a raving madman on the streets of Italy, proclaiming whatever incendiary statements might bring him into the folds of this new society.
 
There is a soothing indigo hue that Bertolucci often washes over his day-for-night exteriors, tempering the black-and-white palette that otherwise dominates his architectural and costume designs. Its effect is softening, perhaps even a little romanticising, but the gorgeous, noir-tinted austerity of The Conformist continues to come out on top, forcing Clerici along fixed paths and into rigid boxes. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this one of the great defining achievements of mise-en-scene in cinema history, though the incisiveness with which Bertolucci tears into unthinking fascist ideologies also lends this imagery an extra edge of bitter resentment.

The Conformist is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

John Huston | 2hr 9min

In an era when American directors like Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman were pushing the boundaries of cinema with the cynical and risqué artistic expressions of New Hollywood, John Huston was still finding joy in the classical Technicolor adventures that were more popular in the industry’s Golden Age. At the same time, it is important to note that this particular adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s novella The Man Who Would Be King could not have been made under the censorship of the Production Code, especially given the debauchery and outright irreverence of its two central characters, Daniel and Peachy. On page, neither are entirely likeable in their overt representations of imperialistic British hubris, and yet the performances of Sean Connery and Michael Caine tactfully draw out the self-deprecating, even endearing foolishness of both men, setting up a pair of boisterous egos we wouldn’t mind seeing knocked down a few pegs.

After being mistaken for a god by the locals of a Kafiristan village, Daniel quickly latches onto delusions of grandeur, becoming a literal manifestation of British colonisation that asserts itself as superior to those foreign cultures they invade and dominate. The greed of men has often been a primary preoccupation of Huston throughout his oeuvre, but never has he expanded it to the large-scale, godlike proportions we witness here, matching the epic historical backdrop against which it is set. Huston has rarely ventured so far into such pure, cinematic spectacle, using sweeping long shots to isolate Connery and Caine upon the snowy Khyber Pass, filling his frames with extras in kinetic battle scenes, and later, simply letting us gaze upon the holy city of Sikandergul, sitting high up on the peak of a rocky mountain range. With the whole world laying itself at their feet, Daniel and Peachy quickly grow carried away with megalomaniac aspirations of wealth and power.

“The two richest men in England.”

“The empire.”

“The world.”

But just as we observe, the path to glory is through a precariously stacked tower of falsehoods. At Daniel’s wedding to a beautiful local woman he barely knows, Huston builds a frenzied pace in his cutting, reminding us of a holy statue’s all-seeing eye caught in intimidating low angles, all the while the percussive beats played by black-clad musicians build to a feverish crescendo. We fully expect the artifice to come tumbling down around them in this moment, but given the light, reckless tone with which Daniel and Peachy have ripped through these foreign lands and cheapened cultural customs, we aren’t prepared for the heavy weight of the comeuppance when it finally arrives, revealing the true devastation which Daniel and Peachy have wreaked in their careless endeavours.

In a moment of poetic justice, the tearing down of Daniel’s greatest infrastructural achievement during his time as King brings about his own personal, literal downfall as well. Huston offers some sympathy for the death of this rollicking friendship between two arrogant, irresponsible adventurers, though he has no misgivings regarding how it came about. The men and women of Kafiristan may have dealt the final blow, but the fault lies entirely at the feet of these two pompous Brits who believed the world was theirs to own.

The Man Who Would Be King is available to stream on The Criterion Channel, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

William Friedkin | 2hr 12min

Though it is the scarred, pale face of a possessed Regan MacNeil which has culturally persisted as the image most closely associated with The Exorcist, the film reveals its most central concern right there in its title – this is about Father Karras, a priest tasked with saving the soul of a 12-year-old girl, and his disturbing confrontation with his own lack of faith. He is not alone in his efforts, as late in the film he is joined by Father Merrin, an older priest whose past with the demon Pazuzu offers a bolstering of spiritual conviction, and the full-frontal revulsion with which the fiend provokes them is similarly contained mostly within that final act. Up until this unleashing of supernatural horror, William Friedkin builds a creeping slow-burn of a narrative, quietly drawing together Karras’ spiritual crisis and its formal counterpoint in Regan’s gradual possession.

As Regan’s mother, Chris, walks through the suburban streets of Georgetown early on, The Exorcist’s famous tubular bells theme rings throughout, imbuing this seemingly benign location with a threatening eeriness. No longer do we have to venture into Gothic castles and creepy motels to find terrifying monsters, as the catalyst for Regan’s possession remains largely ambiguous. All we can gage is that this is an ancient spirit which humanity has wrestled with for millennia, as indicated by the opening scene set in an Iraqi archaeological dig site, and that it has invaded a corner of our modern society presumed to be a safe place for our children. The paranoia of 1970s America is well and truly alive in The Exorcist. 
  
As Regan’s mother, Chris, passes by the local church, we smoothly latch from her storyline onto the parallel plot thread of Father Karras, whose disconnection to his faith is mirrored in the physical distance between him and his elderly mother. As a devout Catholic woman, she is one of the few remaining links holding him to his religious belief, and the guilt he harbours over living too far to care for her properly is thereby associated closely with his own personal spiritual crisis. When she passes away, his shame and doubt only intensifies, further feeding his personal demons and thus putting him at an immediate disadvantage when he is enlisted to exorcise someone else’s.

When he finally arrives at the MacNeils’ house, these once-dainty, wallpapered bedrooms and corridors have been overtaken by the unholy force inhabiting Regan’s body. Rather than turning it into a red-hot, torturous hellscape, it instead manifests as an icy-cold wasteland, void of life or anything sacred. The demonic being which Karras is confronted with is intelligent and psychologically invasive, recognising and playing on his crisis of faith by deliberately failing his tests intended to determine whether Regan’s spiritual sickness is truly supernatural. Through vulgar acts of sex, violence, and blasphemy, it continues to force upon him questions of how this thing, whether it be paranormal or not, could exist in a world with a loving God.

As Karras’ strength dwindles, the arrival of Father Merrin heralds some little bit of hope. Silently anticipating the coming of its old foe, the demon’s eyes narrow, and we slowly dissolve from this extreme close-up to the street outside, where the elderly priest’s taxi pulls up. Chillingly silhouetted in the pale blue mist that has now spilled out from Regan’s bedroom and onto the footpath, Merrin finally enters this godless space.

It is an exhausting ten minutes that we spend watching the two face off – Pazuzu spewing green bile, cursing, levitating, flicking out its long, black tongue, all the while Merrin remains steadfast in his devotion, barely reacting to its provocations. No music is needed to emphasise this frightening battle of faith and corruption. Instead, it is simply underscored by Pazuzu’s rough, grating voice, Merrin’s prayers of conviction, and the violent rattling of furniture. Much of the repulsive imagery which The Exorcist is remembered for takes place here, but it is easy to forget how just about every other element of this scene, from its stark lighting to performances, is designed to wear its audience down into a state of hopelessness not unlike Karras’. 

The restoration of faith for this lost believer eventually comes not in his victory over fear, but in his literal absorption of another’s sins and subsequent sacrifice, thus destroying this evil once and for all. Friedkin paints the allusion to Christ’s redemptive death in broad strokes, but after the brutally unapologetic confrontation we have witnessed, an equally unapologetic metaphor of absolution serves to bring about a perfect balance. It is in the patient narrative progression towards this shocking test of faith that Friedkin accomplishes something remarkable, bit by bit letting his demented, expressionistic imagery seep into the quiet suburbs of America, and thereby crafting not just a controversial cultural touchstone, but a masterwork of cinematic horror.

The Exorcist as available to stream on Netflix Australia, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon Video.