1970s

  • Horace Ové – Pressure (1976)

    1971-1980DramaHorace OvéUnited Kingdom

    A British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad finds himself adrift between two cultures. from imdb

    Review from bfi
    Horace Ov’s landmark films Pressure(1975) and Baldwin’s Nigger (1969), presented together on one disc, form the third DVD release under the BFI’s Black World initiative.Read More »

  • François Reichenbach – Medicine Ball Caravan (1971)

    1971-1980DocumentaryFrançois ReichenbachPerformanceUSA

    Medicine Ball Caravan is a scaled-down Woodstock-ish rock concert documentary. Director Francois Reichenbach followed a large troupe of performers known as the Caravan as they made a nationwide tour in 1970. The avowed purpose was to preach a doctrine of Peace and Love, but most people came to “groove.” Among the featured performers are Alice Cooper, B.B. King and Doug Kershaw.

    Martin Scorsese, who’d previously been a co-supervising editor on Woodstock, both edited and functioned as associate producer of Medicine Ball Caravan.Read More »

  • Fernando Arrabal – L’arbre de Guernica AKA The Guernica Tree (1975)

    1971-1980ArthouseFernando ArrabalFranceWar

    The Spanish Civil War, as experienced by the town of Villa Ramiro. The local count and his Fascist nephews ally with the rebels; the count’s son, indifferent to politics at the outset, later makes a choice; the town’s teacher, Antonio Garcia, a pacifist, tries not to take sides but to inspire the children with ideas; a beautiful eccentric woman, Vandale, brings leadership and strength to the town; dwarfs long for equality. The fictive story of Villa Ramiro is inter-cut with archival footage of the war itself. The town is near Guernica, and the local Republicans draw inspiration from its freedom tree.Read More »

  • Blake Edwards – The Carey Treatment (1972)

    1971-1980Blake EdwardsMysteryThrillerUSA

    Dr. Peter Carey is a pathologist at a Boston hospital. The daughter of the hospital’s Chief of Staff dies after an illegal abortion goes wrong, and Carey’s friend and colleague Dr. David Tao is accused of performing the abortion. Carey doesn’t buy it, and so he digs deeper, angering the girl’s father in the process. Questions abound: Who performed the abortion? Was the girl really pregnant? And what does it have to do with stolen morphine, blackmail attempts, and a mysterious and dangerous masseur?Read More »

  • Jens Jørgen Thorsen – Stille dage i Clichy AKA Quiet Days in Clichy (1970)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDenmarkEroticaJens Jørgen Thorsen

    Quote:
    Joey is a struggling writer with no money. His roommate Carl is a womanizer with a taste for young girls. Together, these insatiable dreamers will laugh, love and screw their way through a decadent Paris paved with wanton women, wild orgies and outrageous erotic adventures. Based upon the long-banned novel by Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy is considered to be the most daring film adaptation ever of one of the most controversial authors in history.Read More »

  • Fernando Arrabal – Viva la muerte AKA Long Live Death (1971)

    1971-1980ActionAmos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtFernando ArrabalFranceWar

    At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father’s arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father’s arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what’s going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad’s natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother’s nature and his father’s fate. Will Fando survive the search?Read More »

  • Werner Herzog – Stroszek [+commentary] (1977)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyWerner Herzog

    Quote:
    In Berlin, an alcoholic man, recently released from prison, joins his elderly friend and a prostitute in a determined dream to leave Germany and seek a better life in Wisconsin.

    Quote:
    Who else but Werner Herzog would make a film about a retarded ex-prisoner, a little old man and a prostitute, who leave Germany to begin a new life in a house trailer in Wisconsin? Who else would shoot the film in the hometown of Ed Gein, the murderer who inspired “Psycho” (1960)? Who else would cast all the local roles with locals? Who else would end the movie with a policeman radioing, “We’ve got a truck on fire, can’t find the switch to turn the ski lift off, and can’t stop the dancing chicken. Send an electrician.”Read More »

  • Melvin Frank – A Touch of Class (1973)

    1971-1980ComedyMelvin FrankRomanceUnited Kingdom

    IMDb wrote:
    Romantic comedy about a pair of clandestine lovers in a London-Spain tryst.

    WarnerBros wrote:
    They thought it would be a simple fling. Instead, they got flung. Being free and easy proves neither free nor easy for already-married Steve and divorced Vickie when they fall in love.Read More »

  • Serhiy Pashchenko – The Beard AKA Barada (1978)

    1971-1980ArthouseSerhiy PashchenkoUkraine

    “A clever parody on a foreign film.”Read More »

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