Take One (Sep-Oct 1972)

The jury (which, by the way, included Sergei Bondarchuk, Frank Capra, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, James Mason and Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson) awarded their Special Prize to another Iranian film, The Mongols, directed by Parviz Kimiavi, which (to a certain amount of confusion in the theatre) paralleled a number of linkages: that between a young tv director and his wife (who is doing her thesis on the 13th Century Mongol invaders of Persia/Iran); that between Iran’s bold past (symbolized by the Mongols) and its plastic present; and that between cinema and tv, agents of the change from past to present. A group of Mongols have somehow come back to life (in the tv director’s imagination? in a film he’s making?) and “invade” a desert town as living momento mori. One final para-lranian film was shown to a small group of us on the last morning of the festival: Bad-e Saba, Bad-e Asheqan (The Lover’s Wind), directed by Albert Lamorisse. A celebration of Iran’s land and people, the stunningly beautiful film is narrated by one of the country’s many winds as it travels about looking for a place to live. Slightly corny perhaps (more so in English than it would have seemed in French), but an excellent device to allow Lamorisse (whose best-known feature is The Red _ Balloon) once again ample opportunity to demonstrate his ‘“Hélivision” technique of swooping over the landscape with his camera. Lamorisse completed the film in 1970, but the Iranian government (which seems to have a bad habit in this regard: Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow was totally banned for a year before it started winning awards at Venice and Chicago in 1971) decided that — with all that footage of deserts, minarets and tombs — the results of the White Revolution weren't nearly visible enough and so directed Lamorisse to include some more-modern footage before they’d allow his film out of the country. It was while Lamorisse was filming a dam that his helicopter hit some power lines, tumbled into the water, and he was drowned. Peter Lebensold Endless Movie The Black Shadow Awards for Excellence in Moving Pictures: 1973 All the films noted below were seen, by me, for the first time in 1973. Some of them have been around for a few years; others are ‘official’ 1973 releases. Unfortunately, due to my being out of the country for nearly five months, | missed a number of early ’73 releases. Such is life. | suspect that 36 even had | been here, I'd still find it hard to come up with ten great movies; ’°73 was a thin year. For openers, a Ten-Best list (which has only eight films on it) in alphabetical order: AMERICAN GRAFFITI (dir. George Lucas) CHARLEY VARRICK (dir. Siegel) EMPEROR OF THE NORTH Robert Aldrich) THE EXORCIST (dir. William Friedkin) THE HARDER THEY COME (dir. Perry Henzell) THE LONG GOODBYE (dir. Robert Altman) MEAN STREETS (dir. Martin Scorsese) STATE OF SIEGE (dir. Costa-Gavras) The Close-But-No-Cigar Award goes to five films this year: Bang the Drum Slowly (dir. John Hancock), Day For Night (dir. Francois Truffaut), Dillinger (dir. John Milius), Sleuth (dir. Joseph Mankiewicz) and Student Teachers (dir. Jonathan Kaplan). Max Schreck Award for Best Horror Film: The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin) Dziga Vertov Award for Best Political Film: A tie between Tupamaros (dir. Jan Lindquist) and Los Traidores [The Traitors] (Grupo Cine de la Base) Howard Hawks Award for Best “Old” Film Seen This Year: The Golden Coach (dir. Jean Renoir) Torn Curtain Award for Worst Film by a Good Director: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (dir. Sam Peckinpah) Keep On Keepin’ On Award for Continuing Achievement: Donald Siegel for Charley Varrick Henri Langlois Award for Service to Students of Film History: Richard Schickel for two TV programs: Hollywood /n the Forties and the Alfred Hitchcock segment of Men Who Made the Movies Special Johnny B. Goode Award for Rock ‘n’ Roll: American Graffiti (dir. George Lucas) Special Chelsea Girls Award for Creative Use of Split-Screen: Let the Good Times Roll (dir. Sid Levin and Robert Abel) Special Assbreaking Award for Amazing Stuntwork: Magnum Force (dir. Ted Post) Bernard Herrmann Award for Best Music: Toots and the Maytals, Jimmy Cliff, Desmond Dekker et a/ for The Donald (dir. Harder They Come Billy Bitzer Award for Creative Cinematography: Sven Nykvist for Cries and Whispers Ben Hecht Award for Excellence in Screen Writing: Unawarded Best Performance by an Actress: Unawarded Best Performance by an Actor: Laurence Olivier for Sleuth Best Director: Robert Aldrich for Emperor of the North Best Film of 1973: Emperor of the North Michael Goodwin Letter from New York Horizons by Larry Gottheim In a previous column | spoke about the earlier work of Larry Gottheim (Doorway, Fogline, Harmonica and _ Barn Rushes). All, with the exception of Barn Rushes, were beautifully conceived and disciplined films showing fine visual sensitivity. At that time, | wondered why such a film as Barn Rushes, a sloppily executed and visually insipid work, was included on the programme. It was one of those conceptual or structural films that is 95 per cent idea and five per cent effort in the realization of that idea. His new film Horizons unfortunately follows in this tradition. | knew that we were in for trouble the moment Gottheim decided to preface his work with a _ long-winded rationalization of what we were about to see. Whenever a filmmaker feels it necessary to preface his films with such voluminous explanations, it usually means that the films cannot speak for themselves, or are so unresolved that they cannot exist without the accompanying remarks. Meanwhile, back to Horizons. The camera movement in all sequences had the jitters, the result being, whatever movement existed within the image itself (grass blowing in the wind, figures in the fields, clouds, trees), was completely dissipated by the shaky and mediocre camera work. He seemed to be so preoccupied with attempting to tie the film to some kind of academic structure that he never really bothered to examine the imagery in front of him. There was no sense of visual discovery. All previous awareness of the qualities of colour, spatial movement, texture that was seen in his earlier work had vanished and what we were left with was a crudely photographed set of dead images, edited together in academic progression. Serene Velocity by Ernie Gehr Serene Velocity is one of the few really unique films | have seen during the last few years. It is so emphatically single-minded and complete in its exploration of the various ironies and multiple levels of its imagery that it leaves one stunned. Just when you have settled into a one-groove visual interpretation of the given space you are viewing, Gehr transforms this space in such a way that your awareness of it becomes something entirely different. Surprises and transforma