Top Ten Movies of the 1970s

#4
Days of Heaven

1978

Written and Directed by: Terrence Malick
Cinematography by: Nestor Almendros
Edited by: Billy Weber
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Starring: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Linda Manz, Sam Shepard

To start with this Days of Heaven, the opening credits are very memorable. It's the best way to start talking about this movie I believe too, so I will show them first:



It's so beautiful and brilliant. As you can tell too, the music is one of this movie's strongest assets. Ennion Morricone's score as well as the additional music is perfect. By showing defining photos of the era you immediately learn the mood and setting. It's set in the early 20th century, at the time right before the United States entered World War 1 around 1916 or so. Industrialization is really starting to hit the US and the cities are growing at a rapid place as people migrate to look for jobs. At this stage it's really strengthening the divisions between classes. That's precisely what the introduction shows too. It flashes images of poor undernourished (probably unemployed) workers followed by well dressed industrialists. Some people are living better, luxurious lives and some people are barely managing to get by.

The last image it shows is the movie's narrator, the little girl named Linda (Linda Manz). As she describes, her, her brother Bill (Richard Gere) and his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) are "looking for things, searching for things." They are migrant workers, travelling the country looking for work wherever they can. Bill has recently lost his job for fighting with his boss at a steel mill where he worked and is on the run. They find work at a ranch working on the harvest. While there the farm owner (Sam Shepard), who is dying from some sort of disease, falls in love with Abby. Bill knows is informed of both of these facts and convinces Abby to marry the farmer in order to gain his inheritance. This scene shows it all go down:



So Abby agrees and gets married to the Rancher, but she falls in love with him and conventional drama ensues from there as he catches on to the fact that Abby and Bill were an item. Now, of course, Bill is not a good guy. He is not in an amicable position though so you have to feel sorry for him. There is a great scene from the movie where he talks about how when he was young he was always looking forward to the future. He thought that he was smarter than everyone else and that therefore he had a bright future. Eventually he had to come to the realization though that he was no smarter than anyone else. Like so many others from a poor upbringing like his in that era, he had few prospects and had to accept the life he was dealt. Only through this lie could he taste the life of the upper class for a short time.

That's what really gets me about this story. It's as if he was forced into this position whereby the only solution he could see to get out of the gutter was to lie and basically pimp his girlfriend out to this richer man. It's a lack of opportunity which compels people to do terrible things such as this. Nobody in their right state of mind would ever do such a thing. Yet conventional wisdom tells us that Bill is meant to be the bad guy. Most people wouldn't even call to question the fact that it was the rancher who was paying the poor wages and exploiting all those workers who were in an inferior position. Isn't he then partly responsible for Bill committing this act? He was after all creating the circumstances. As the movie shows though, the authorities don't quite view it this way and Bill's life isn't worth nearly as much as the rancher's.

This movie shows the true nature of unbridled capitalism. Everybody learns from their history books about the Great Depression which began in 1929. Unfortunately, too many people understand this as 'the moment' when a crisis led to a collapse in the otherwise stable capitalist business cycle. If one reads further back in the history of capitalism, they learn that it was characterized by boom and bust periods of recessions and depressions since it's inception. One could even say that periodic downturns are a characteristic of capitalism. Along with this of course comes periodic workers revolts as they become fed up with being unable to feed themselves or their family. Full employment was not even imaginable prior to World War 2 though. A world with a pure capitalist economy would most likely resemble the world of this era where families migrated to wherever the work was. After all it's important to remember that one person's fortune is another's misfortune and at the same time one region's fortune is another's misfortune.

Following World War 2 of course, a much more regulatory state began to offset these boom and bust cycles. There are many reasons for this. Workers solidarity and power were at a height. War increased these bonds, people had the feeling that they were fighting for a better life which they expected the state to deliver. But also, with the rise of the USSR and other 'communist' states they had to ensure that people remained loyal to the capitalist model. Either way, this management of the economy manipulated the capitalist business cycle. It was done through redistributatory taxes which had the effect of creating a larger, wealthier middle class thereby increasing the demand of consumer goods. These taxes also gave the state the funds to intervene directly in the economy, propping up some sectors of industry which may have needed restructuring or assistance. Whatever form it took, the main thing is that it provided a safety net to those in jobs which previously may have been unstable. It was considered a right in the post-war era to have a job for life. It worked too for a time with consistent positive growth in the industrialized world up until the recession of 1973. This was when the economic orthodoxy did a complete turn around. Since then, the movement towards state retrenchment has dominated. As this has happened, surprise, periods of boom and bust are becoming common place once again. Only this time they are taking a becoming far more global. Jobs for life are considered a thing of the past. In short, our world is beginning to resemble the world that Bill, Abby, and Linda lived in.

What I find so amazing about Days of Heaven is that it communicates so much, but with such little dialogue. Indeed, the movie has been called a 'visual poem', relying instead on images to push the plot and subplot. We may not hear the characters talk about their hard times, but we see the looks on their faces, their dress, and their plight for ourselves. It's quite refreshing watching this movie and not being told the story by the characters, it's up to our imagination to fill in the holes. Just listen to this narration provided by Linda's character and notice how sparse and uninformative it is:



The dialogue fades to the background and it's the pictures which drive the movie forward. It's a terrible cliche, but this movie shows that a picture says a thousand words. Which is good too because every image in Days of Heaven is so beautifully shot. If for no other reason, watch Days of Heaven to see some of the best cinematography you will ever see, accompanied by one of the greatest scores.

For beautifully showing an ugly life, Days of Heaven is in my opinion the 4th greatest movie of the 1970s.

Top Ten Movies of the 1970s

#5
Solaris

1972

Directed by: Andrei Tarkovsky
Written by: Andrei Tarkovsky and Fridrikh Gorenshtein
Based on the novel by: Stanislaw Lem
Cinematography by: Vadim Yusov
Music by: Eduard Artemyev
Starring: Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, Jüri Järvet, and Anatoly Solonitsyn

I would not advise you to watch Solaris if you expect a fast paced sci-fi thriller in the style of Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay. That's just not Tarkovsky's style. Solaris instead can be described as a slow moving psychological drama. Unlike modern sci-fi action movies which seek to distract you with special effects or keep your interest with its fast paced sequences and shortage of meaningful dialogue, this movie draws you in to the story and devastatingly existential subplot.

The first half of the movie centers on Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) who is a psychologist sent on a mission to a space station which in orbit over a recently discovered oceanic planet called Solaris. Those who on board are in the grip of emotional crises and Kris is sent there to survey the scene. As he finds out from the two remaining scientists aboard the space station, the planet is some sort of conscious being and creates psychological constructs to drive those in the station insane. These take the form of people from the people's past. Once they are created they believe they are the real thing and convince those for who they were created the same.

So for Kelvin, in the movie's second half, his ex wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) who had committed suicide appears in the space station. She is completely unaware of having died in the past and, while Kris is at first reluctant to accept it, he falls in love with her again and refuses to accept that it is not a real person he is connecting with. This is the main tragedy of the movie. It's painful watching both of these characters deal with their dilemma. Kris is caught in the past and looses interest in what he was sent to the station to do in the first place. Hari's plight is even worse as she slowly learns that she is nothing more than a psychological construct, not a real human. She tries unsuccessfully many times to kill herself.

Science fiction usually focuses on the great possibilities that space exploration can lead to. The search for intelligent life is expected by many to one day yield results. However, Solaris paints a very different picture. The movie takes the opposite point of view refusing to praise the life of a space explorer and instead suggesting that human contact is first and foremost important. After all, the space station is a wreck, there is no indication that the cosmonauts are living the sweet life. Kris clings onto the bond he rebuilds with Hari and refuses to let go. All of this is outlined in this great scene. It's a little long, and maybe hard to watch without the context of the whole film, but I urge you to give it a chance:



All four of those at the meeting in this clip have a different idea of what human nature is and what humankind should strive to. Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) sums up the basic idea of the movie perfectly though as he describes that humans have no innate desire to conquer the cosmos, but to extend the Earth to the border of the cosmos. In the end he is suggesting that we all crave the comfort of our home and are lost without it. Even if we leave for a certain time, we need it as a comfort to fall back on in times of trouble. “We don’t need other worlds. We need a mirror,” Snaut claims. Dr. Sartorious (Anatoly Solonitsyn), playing the role of the stereotypical scientist, claims that this both false and cowardly. For him all that matters is the endless search for truth. The relationship between Kris and Hari goes against everything he is saying though. He knows that she is nothing but a construct but cannot let go as shown in this scene which takes place immediately after the previous scene:



On a side note, that's probably my favourite scene in the whole movie. It's just so beautiful. It may be paying homage to that painting by Pieter Bruegel with a score by Bach, but it shows ultimately how film is a mature medium of art. Able to take past works and make something completely new out of all of them simultaneously.

Kris has to make a choice between his uncomfortable reality back on Earth, or descending to the islands of Solaris to live in an artificial reality with everything he has loved in the past existing once again and coming together. Faced with that prospect who knows what any one of us would do. We trick ourselves all the time. We tell ourselves that things are the way they are for a certain reason despite definitive evidence of the contrary. Religion and spiritual beliefs make it easier for people to come to terms with a troubled existence and their own immortality. The question of truth or comfort is central to this movie and the insight it provides is what makes it such an amazing movie. The final scene is one of the greatest too and can be said to define the whole movie. I highly recommend watching it, don't consider it being a spoiler. Deep down you know that Kris, like most of you who are reading this, choose comfort over truth. He descends to Solaris and lives happily:

For insight fully discussing the dilemma between living an uneasy life in reality versus living comfortably in a false one, Solaris is in my opinion the 5th greatest movie of the 1970s.

Top Ten Movies of the 1970s

# 6
Annie Hall

1977

Directed by: Woody Allen
Written by: Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman
Edited by: Ralph Rosenblum
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Paul Simon, and Christopher Walken

Woody Allen considers Annie Hall to be the movie where he went from making simple comedies to deeper, more intimate comedies. The reason that Annie Hall might be my favourite Woody Allen movie (I say might because I had trouble picking it over Manhattan) is because it was made during this period of transition it has the best of both worlds. It's the same reason why favourite Beatles albums are Revolver and Rubber Soul. The movie has got both the laughs and the heart. It's one of the greatest movies ever made about relationships without a doubt.

The story is simple enough as the movie follows the ups and downs of a relationship between Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). The way it's shot though makes it seem like a compilation of short films on relationships. There are flashbacks of Alvy's childhood and early family events to explain the psychological effect that his upbringing had on his current neuroses. There are also elements of French New Cinema, for example one scene where as the two are conversing their thoughts appear as subtitles on the screen. One scene is even animated. The fourth wall is also constantly broken in the film with Alvy addressing the audience directly. In this great scene Alvy and a character with a minor role clash as they both attempt to appeal to the audience:



As you can tell from this clip too, Woody's quite the intellectual. Sure it can be annoying at times as it seems like he name drops a little too much. But a lot of the time it serves to add extra emphasis to whatever argument he is making. Also, because he pays homage to Ingmar Bergman (or Fellini as in this scene) in most of his movies and always drops his name, I consider it all perfectly acceptable.

If it had to rely on its technical achievements alone, the film would still be amazing. It's obvious from watching it that Woody Allen is well spoken and that he is highly knowledgeable of film theory. The presentation is extraordinary. The film also succeeds and really hitting the emotions though. It's genuinely funny for one. Is laughter or humour and emotion? Maybe not. Either way there are some really memorable scenes. Their not cheap laughs either. The character Alvy is a comedian and is always deriding the manufactured laughs of the television industry, as one great scene about the artificiality of laugh tracks shows. The movie instead builds up to great gags and gets laughs through unbearably uncomfortable situations. This next scene is one of the best and features and young Christopher Walken. It was this scene in which he first showed the creepy dead pan that would define his whole career:



So it's funny as that scene undoubtedly shows. It's a great love story too. One that's far more real and genuine (key word for this movie) than any other in the decade. The chemistry between Allen and Keaton is great, and why not they actually did date for a while in the 70s. The former denies that the movie is semi-autobiographical though. The relationship is charted from it's beginning through to its end. Although, not in that order. Scenes are a little mixed up. For instance, immediately after the characters meet is a scene in which they move in together. They are breaking up in one scene, and without any mention of anything otherwise are getting along great in the next scene. It's in this way that relationships are shown to be entirely predictable. Allen assumes that the audience will follow the movie and understand the ups and downs of the couple. I enjoy a director who respects the audience enough to challenge them and not treat them as mindless sheep. The reason that some scenes pack such an emotional kick though is due to the use of long takes. Scenes just go on for a matter of minutes forcing the viewer to get involved in the conversation and situation. Take for example this next scene:



That's a sad one isn't it. If you were to watch the whole movie it has an even greater effect. That's why (as in all of the other movies on this blog) I am recommending this movie to you! Relationships can be very sad affairs. But as Allen's knack for comedy shows, they can also be quite funny. Ultimately he is a bit of a fatalist though so they are mostly depressing. At the same time though, Allen's great at putting things in perspective. One of the things which I appreciate about all of his movies as how after your finished watching them, you feel as if you've been given a new lease on life. Annie Hall has this effect too. You see life in a new way and you feel as if you have the opportunity to start over again.

For being one of the greatest movies about relationships in the history of the world, in my opinion Annie Hall is the 6th greatest movie of the 1970s.