1971-1980

  • Roger Vadim – Hellé (1972)

    Roger Vadim1971-1980DramaFranceRomance

    Synopsis
    Haute-Savoie, 1951. Hellé is a young deaf-mute living among the mountains. She’s ignored by everyone except, now and then, the local woodsmen, who use her for their pleasure. She has no education, no knowledge of right or wrong. One summer, a young man comes to spend the holidays in her village…Read More »

  • Fred Halsted – LA Plays Itself [+Commentary] (1972)

    1971-1980EroticaExperimentalFred HalstedQueer Cinema(s)USA

    Quote:
    Fred Halsted plays himself in his notorious autobiographical portrait of Los Angeles. Two men have a fleetingly idyllic meeting outside of town while Halsted shows a young pick-up the ropes within city limits.Read More »

  • Errol Morris – Gates of Heaven (1978)

    Errol Morris1971-1980CultDocumentaryUSA

    Quote:
    Gates of Heaven is a documentary film by Errol Morris about the pet cemetery business. It was made when Morris was unknown and did much to launch his career.Read More »

  • Monte Hellman – Amore, piombo e furore AKA China 9, Liberty 37 (1978)

    Monte Hellman1971-1980Euro WesternsItalyRomanceWestern

    China 9, Liberty 37 falls halfway between the Hollywood backlot-western school and the Italian “spaghetti” western genre, borrowing the best elements from both. Fabio Testi plays a gunfighter who is saved at the last moment from a hangman’s noose. His liberators are a cartel of railroad men who want Testi to kill farmer (and former hired gun) Warren Oates, who has refused all entreaties to sell his land. As part of the scheme, Testi befriends Oates; on his own volition, he sleeps with Oates’ wife Jenny Agutter. When the railroad barons insist that Testi go through with his mission, he refuses, and helps the farmer fight off the train moguls’ hired thugs. Also known as Gunfire, China 9 Liberty 37 features a cameo by director Monte Hellman’s role model, Sam Peckinpah, who plays a bombastic Ned Buntline-style novelist. And the significance of the title? It’s the location of Warren Oates’ spread: Nine miles from the town of China, 37 miles from the town of Liberty.Read More »

  • Maurice Rabinowicz – Une page d’amour AKA One Page of Love (1978)

    1971-1980DramaFranceMaurice Rabinowicz

    François Karwitch is a young lawyer from a wealthy but stifling Jewish family. His life is meticulously ordered, he does his routine work day after day and is about to marry Fanny, the fiancée forced on him by his parents. One day, from the window of his Brussels practice, he witnesses a scene which will turn his life upside down: the brutal internment of a man in a nearby psychiatric hospital. Shocked by the treatment given to this person he decides to learn more about him. His name is Carlos; he is a revolted blue collar; and if he has been taken to this place, it is because he killed the head of an arms factory.Read More »

  • Alain Robbe-Grillet – Le jeu avec le feu AKA Playing with Fire [+ Commentary] (1975)

    Alain Robbe-Grillet1971-1980ArthouseEroticaFrance

    Philippe Noiret plays a rich, Parisian banker whose daughter, Carolina, is kidnapped by a ruthless organization. They threaten to have her abused by the sadistic clients of a brothel they run if Father doesn’t pay the ransom on time.Read More »

  • Jacques Rivette – Céline et Julie vont en bateau: Phantom Ladies Over Paris AKA Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

    Jacques Rivette1971-1980ArthouseFantasyFrance

    Whiling away a summer in Paris, director Jacques Rivette, working in close collaboration with his stars and coconspirators Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, set out to rewrite the rules of cinema in the spirit of pure play—moviemaking as an anything-goes romp through the labyrinths of imagination. The result is one of the most exuberantly inventive and utterly enchanting films of the French New Wave, in which Julie (Labourier), a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline (Berto), an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama. Incorporating allusions to everything from Lewis Carroll to Louis Feuillade, Céline and Julie Go Boating is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.Read More »

  • Roland Joffé – Play for Today: The Spongers (1978)

    1971-1980DramaRoland JofféThe Wednesday Play & Play for TodayTVUnited Kingdom

    Set against the backdrop of Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, the play depicts a single mother’s struggles in this highly polemical and unremittingly bleak diatribe against government welfare cuts from the poor and disabled. The derogatory term ‘spongers’ is used by British tabloid press to describe people who are dependent on welfare support, however the play presents the case of a family who desperately need the help.Read More »

  • Luigi Batzella – La bestia in calore AKA The Beast in Heat (1977)

    1971-1980ExploitationItalyLuigi BatzellaWar

    HORRIFYING EXPERIENCES IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE S.S..
    In a remote village in occupied Europe, the SS pursue their inhuman treatment of captured partisans in efforts to force them to betray their comrades… while Fraulein Krast, a sadistic biologist, concentrates her efforts on the womenfolk with refined tortures and humiliation, leaving them to the mercy of a sex-crazed half-man, half-beast she has created with experimental injections… And as advancing Allied forces approach the village, Krast herself becomes a victim of her own fiendish rituals…Read More »

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