Take One (Jul 1978)

Petulia—remarkable third-place finish. films I enjoyed more on a first viewing, but they haven’t held up as well. I wanted to include a broad range of films and major filmmakers. I haven’t seen enough Third World films to complete that category.’’ Films are listed in chronological order. MICHAEL GOODWIN American Films: 1) Coogan’s Bluff—‘‘Hello Don Siegel, Hello Clint Eastwood;’’ 2) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls—‘'no comment;’’ 3) 2001: A Space Odyssey—‘‘ultimate Cinerama travelogue;’’ 4) Petu/ta—‘‘Goodbye 1960s;’’ 5) The Last Movie—‘‘Goodbye Dennis Hopper;”’ 6) The Last Picture Show—‘‘Goodbye Howard Hawks;’’ 7) Mean Streets—‘‘Hello Robert De Niro;’’ 8) The Legend of Lylah Clare—‘‘Goodbye Hollywood;’’ 9) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—‘‘Goodbye 1970s;’’ 10) The Shootist —‘‘Goodbye John Ford.’’ European Films: 1) Claire's Knee, 2) A Very Curious Girl, 3) Aguirre: The Wrath of God, 4) Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street, 5) The Immortal Story, 6) Performance, 7) Le Boucher, 8) Jonah, Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000, 9) Scenes from a Marriage, 10) Juggernaut. Third World Films: 1) The Hour of the Furnaces—‘‘not a narrative film, but too vital to omit;’’ 2) The Harder They Come, 3) Heroes Two, 4) The Battle of Chile—‘‘see comment on Hour of the Furnaces;’’ 5) Antonio das Mortes. Method of Evaluation: .‘‘Collective and idiosyncratic.’’ Films are listed in no order. MOLLY HASKELL American Films: 1) Nashville, 2) Petulia, 3) Barry Lyndon, 4) Blume in Love, 5) Annie Hall, 6) All the President's Men, 7) The Godfather I, II, 8) Klute, 9) Faces, 10) Madigan, 11) Mean Streets. European Films: 1) Belle de Jour, 2) Once Upon a Time in the West, 3) Le Boucher, 4) La Marquise @’O, 5) The Last Woman, 6) The Merchant of Four Seasons, 7) Deep End, 8) My Night at Maud’s, 9) A Piece of Pleasure, 10) The Touch, 11) The Sorrow and the Pity. Third World Films: 1) Charulata, 2) Memories of Underdevelopment, 3) Black Girl. Method of Evaluation: ‘‘These are the pictures I have taken the most pleasure in, that I have been impatient to see more than once; that I consider the richest expression of directors I most admire and, in their idiosyncratic way, of the last decade.”’ DIANE JACOBS American Films: 1) American Graffiti, 2) Annie Hall, 3) Badlands, 4) The Godfather, 5) Harry and Tonto, 6) The Man Who Would Be King, 7) McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 8) Mean Streets, 9) Midnight Cowboy, 10) Smile. European Films: 1) Amarcord, 2) Claire's Knee, 3) Lancelot du Lac, 4) Le Boucher, 5) The Merchant of Four Seasons, 6) The Mother and the Whore, 7) The Passenger, 8) Scenes From a Marriage, 9) The Spider's Strategem, 10) Two English Girls. Third World Films: 1) Days and Nights in the Forest, 2) Distant Thunder, 3) Memories of Underdevelopment. RICHARD T. JAMESON American Films: 1) 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2) Petulia, 3) The Wild Bunch, 4) Topaz, 5) Performance, 6) The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 7) Chinatown, 8) The Parallax View, 9) Nashville, 10) The Man Who Would Be King. European Films: 1) My Night at Maud’s, 2) Once Upon a Time in the West, 3) Le Boucher, 4) The Conformist, 5) Red Psalm, 6) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,7) The Merchant of Four Seasons, 8) Lancelot du Lac, 9) The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, 10) Kings of the Road. Third World Films: 1) Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Method of Evaluation: ‘‘Within each category I determined to limit directors to a single film. Criteria were more intuitive than rational or specific. Autumnal masterpieces are as valuable to their time as more explicitly contemporaneous works that herald the arrival of important new talents, visions, and styles. It mattered a lot to me in the seventies that Sam Peckinpah could be so intransigently personal, and fashionability of outlook be damned; that Alan Pakula could be so awesomely classical while a lot of neoclassicists were beginning to give the hommage a bad name; that Lester and Roeg could translate the fragmentation of modern life into a challenging, illuminating form and grammar; that Eric Rohmer could make literate conversation cinematically viable; that Altman, Jancso, and Leone could disclose new horizons within known movie spaces; that all of these directors made the films that only they could have made and kept film alive and growing, no matter how hard the industry, an unadventurous public, and 90% of the new academicians labored to kill it off.’’ STANLEY KAUFFMANN American Films: 1) Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 2) The Conversation, 3) Desperate Characters, 4) Harlan County, U.S.A., 5) The Hired Hand, 6) Midnight Cowboy, 7) Mikey and Nicky, 8) Payday, 9) Wanda, 10) The Wild Bunch. European Films: 1) Amarcord, 2) The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, 3) How I Won the War, 4) The Marquise of O, 5) The Milky Way, 6) The Passion of Anna, 7) The Red and The White, 8) The Rise of Louis XIV, 9) La Salamandre, 10) The Sorrow and the Pity. Third World Films: 1) Blood of the Condor, 2) Hour of the Furnaces, 3) Memories of Underdevelopment, 4) Ramparts of Clay. Method of Evaluation: ‘‘These are favorite films, not necessarily ‘best.’’’ GREIL MARCUS American Films: 1) The Godfather, Part II— «Jacks the control of the first movie, but it also withholds the forgiveness the first movie offered to its characters and to its audience;’’ 2) The Godfather, Part I—‘‘. . .may be the most exciting melodrama ever made;’’ 3) Thieves Like Us, 4) The Man Who Would Be King—‘'. . .is not only spookier than The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it’s more fun;’’ 5) Across 110th Street— ‘« you can see it as a black footnote to The Godfather, II, or you can suffer it on its own terms, as the most violent commercial movie of the decade;’’ 6) The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, 7) McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 8) Spend It All—‘‘shows how Cajuns spend it mostly on food;’’ 9) Mean Streets, 10) Chinatown. European Films: 1) Weekend—'‘. . .prophesy for the seventies;’’ 2) The Battle of Chile— «the only film I’ve ever seen that can be Claire’s Knee—Rohmer heads European lst. compared with Intolerance ;’’ 3) Vladimir and Rosa—‘‘. . .is the most honest film anyone has made about sixties and seventies realities;’’ 4) Burn!—'‘‘. . .the colonialist version of the same vision as Across 110th Street;’’ 5) Jonah, Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, 6) The Wild Child, 7) The Harder They Come, 8) Scenes from a Marriage, 9) We All Loved Each Other So Much, 10) Last Tango in Paris. Preferential ratings really apply to only the first two choices in each category. JANET MASLIN American Films: 1) Nashville, 2) Taxi Driver, 3) Bad Company, 4) Blume in Love, 5) September 30, 1955, 6) The Last American Hero, 7) Annie Hall, 8) Rosemary's Baby, 9) Dirty Harry, 10) Sugarland Express. European Films: 1) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 2) Day For Night, 3) Scenes from a Marriage, 4) Le Boucher, 5) Two English Girls, 6) The Devils, 7) Petulia, 8) Z, 9) The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, 10) The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. Films are listed in no particular order. JAMES MONACO American Films: 1) Petulia, 2) Medium Cool, 3) The Godfather, 4) Blume in Love, 5) Hearts and Minds, 6) Nashville, 7) Downhill Racer, 8) All the President's Men, 9) 2001: A Space Odyssey, 10) Barry Lyndon. European Films: 1) Stolen Kisses, 2) The Wild Child, 3) Fellini Satyricon, 4) The Sorrow and the Pity, 5) Tout va bien, 6) Emigrants/The New Land, 7) The Mother and the Whore, 8) Jonah, Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000, 9) Ca va, ¢a vient, 10) Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition. Third World Films: 1) Sweet Sweetback's Baadass’s Song, 2) Ganja and Hess, 3) The Harder They Come, 4) A Touch of Zen, 5) The Promised Land. GENE MOSKOWITZ American Films: 1) American Graffiti, 2) Easy Rider, 3) The Wild Bunch, 4) The Shootist, 5) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 6) The Godfather, Part II, 7) Fat City, 8) Taxt Driver, 9) Duel, 10) Nashville. European Films: 1) In the Realm of the Senses, 2) Love (Szerelém), 3) If, . ., 4) Lancelot du Lac, 5) Conversation Piece, 6) Providence, 7) The Phantom of Liberty, 8) The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, 9) La Grande Bouffe, 10) 1900. Third World Films: 1) Distant Thunder, 2) Xala, 3) A Touch of Zen, 4) Antonio das Mortes, 5) Chronicle of the Year of Embers. Method of Evaluation: ‘‘First those that have stayed with me and then I weeded some out. Also, those films reflecting the 70s got preference.’’ Films listed in no particular order. continued on page 45 29