I'm not a writer. I probably will never be a writer. But if I were, I would want my movies to sound like Robert Towne. During his run from Bonnie and Clyde to Shampoo, Towne operated in a zone of moviespeak nirvana. Working somewhere between the literary and spoken word, his dialogue was sharper than the way we speak yet close enough to our rhythms and words as to be utterly recognizable.
Don't get me wrong, I think Roman Polanski is an extraordinary filmmaker. But when I'm honest about why I like Chinatown so much, I have to give just as much credit to Towne. Not only does he manage to create one of the very best of all the noir stories, but somehow he's able to work in a history of Los Angeles at the same time.
The look of the film actually doesn't blow me away. The magic for me, aside from Towne's work, is in the casting (the choice of John Huston has to rival the genius of Brando in The Godfather), the locations, Jerry Goldsmith's incredible score, and Nicholson's dead-on performance. And the ending. Probably my favorite in the history of the medium.
As someone who loves noir and will probably make more of them in his career, this one is a bit of a thorn. I just feel like no matter what I or anyone else does, you can't really top it.
Other contenders for 1974: I still have quite a few titles to see. These include: Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us, Jean Eustache's Mes Petites Amoureuses, Werner Herzog's The Mystery of Kasper Hauser, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Maurice Pialat's La gueule ouverte, Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac, John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence, Monte Hellman's Cockfighter, Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien, Abbas Kiarostami's The Traveller, Alain Resnais' Stavisky..., Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and Peter Watkins' Edvard Munch. I need to revisit both Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein and Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating as it's been too long since I've seen either of them to know where they'd place on this list. From this year though, I really like Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Orson Welles' F for Fake, and Karel Reisz's The Gambler. I love Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and The Godfather: Part II, as well as Robert Altman's California Split and Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise. And my closest runner-up is Wim Wenders' Alice in the Cities.
6/12/11 I watched Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. At times, the most sexual of all the Altman pics I've seen and certainly one of the most interesting. Feels like a movie that Altman really cares about; it's extremely unconventional stylistically, just like McCabe, and in a strange way it almost feels like a precursor to the free-form style Michael Mann would take on with Collateral, Miami Vice, and especially Public Enemies. An Altman film I would need to re-visit as it feels extraordinarily complex. And if it's such a cliche at this point that Hollywood doesn't make 'em like they once did during that special period in the seventies then this film is as much an example as any.
10/16/11 I watched Maurice Pialat's La gueule ouverte. Who is Maurice Pialat and what makes him special as a filmmaker? Some have called him the French Cassavetes. But I think that tag is a bit misleading. Pialat, like Bresson, was a painter first before trying his hand at film, and his work is much more visually striking than that of Cassavetes. Where their paths converge is in their raw approach, lack of music, and predilection for loose, extremely natural performances. Pialat only made ten features in his career, and this is the sixth that I have seen. It's the one time he collaborated with the masterful cameraman, Nestor Almendros, and the partnership lends poetry and lyricism to Pialat's heavy, uncompromising cinema. I think this is one of (if not) the strongest film(s) of Pialat that I have seen. And I hardly ever throw the word out there, but I think this film is a masterpiece.
7/3/17 I watched Richard Rush's Freebie and the Bean. A movie that had never hit my radar until about a week ago even though it stars James Caan and Alan Arkin and was made during my favorite period of American film, the Seventies. The Stunt Man was the only movie I had seen by Rush, and though it had a huge reputation, it never meant very much to me. Freebie is a bit of a challenge, a loose, messy installment in the buddy cop movie that cares less for plot and narrative logic and more for feel and character. It has great feel, for instance, for San Francisco and shows us areas of the city I don't feel I have ever seen before on film. And it has great feel for character. The bond between Freebie and Bean is deep and most remarkable is that Rush makes us feel the bond simply by having us hang out with them for a couple of hours.
7/8/17 I watched Peter Hyams' Busting. Another installment in the 70's buddy cop movie that is mostly noteworthy in how far it pushes the nudity in certain scenes and as a spin-off on the formula that worked so well for The French Connection.
7/21/17 I watched Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Shire's music swings and Matthau pitted against Robert Shaw is never a terrible thing but it never fully grabbed hold of me in any way.
10/1/17 I watched John Sturges' McQ. A decently interesting noir with a good Elmer Bernstein theme. It feels like a moderately achieved hybrid of Bullitt and The French Connection.
10/7/17 I watched Jean Eustache's Mes Petites Amoureuses. I have long been a fan of Eustache's The Mother and the Whore but have had some difficulty tracking down the rest of his work. And I just took a quick peek at Wikipedia and had no idea this was his only other feature. I knew he had committed suicide young but never knew he only ever made just two features (and a good number of shorts). This film is extraordinary, capturing a thing that I never before seen captured on film. The best way I can describe it is the very early awakening of the male interest in females. It gets into the awkwardness but more than that it gets into the deep yearning and romantic creation that goes in the head of many young boys. There are a number of flat out brilliant sequences including Daniel's first imaginings while on a train and his encounter with the young girl Francoise in the neighboring town.
11/4/17 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's The Traveler. In its one track pursuit and its tunnel focus on the young main character, it feels like a black and white predecessor to Where is the Friend's Home. It is quintessential Kiarostami in its lyricism, its softness, its feel for the land and its rhythms. A couple of scenes, like the photography session in the schoolyard, rank as Kiarostami at his most inventive and most cinematic. Kiarostami would later become a little more rigorous with his filmmaking, longer takes, less music but already in this, his first film over an hour, he announces himself as a great, new humanistic force in the medium.
5/27/18 I watched Luis Bunuel's The Phantom of Liberty. One of Bunuel's most free-flowing and "liberated" films is pure sexual and unpredictable fun. There are a number of all-time great moments but for me it was the unconventional dinner party and the final sequence at the zoo. Bunuel's key themes are still there - anti-establishment, anti-Catholic church, surrrealistic flights of fancy - but the contemporary setting gives them a lightness and impact that I have rarely felt while watching his other work.
10/20/19 I watched Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. I still am not all that familiar with Fassbinder's work with this only being the third or fourth of his films that I have seen. But of what I have seen this one impressed me the most. It is unusually artful in its framing and exquisitely attuned to the evolving feelings between a new couple. It is restrained, uncompromising and rigorous in all of the best of ways.
3/31/20 I watched Jacques Tati's Parade. I will admit - I do not know all that Tati is saying in the last feature of his career. But there is a magic and an otherness about it (I cannot think of any other movie like it) that give it a power. The way it is shot, with the performers alone from one angle and the crowd in the background of another, suggests the loneliness of performance and the circus-like world that feeds it. It feels like a celebration of the entertainer and a moving summation of Tati's unique abilities and perspective.
5/8/21 I watched Gordon Parks Jr's Thomasine & Bushrod. More interesting than fully involving as an African-American variant of Bonnie and Clyde.
6/6/21 I watched Mostafa Derkaoui's About Some Meaningless Events. Interesting in that it might be one of the first Moroccan films I have seen. It strikes me as this mix between Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer and early Kiarostami but without the esthetic force of either.
11/7/22 I watched Martin Davidson and Stephen Verona's The Lords of Flatbush. Stallone steals the film with a few remarkable scenes where he lets his guard down and shows that he's got real acting chops. Overall, a bit meandering and we never feel deeply connected to anyone but fun to see for any Stallone or American New Wave completist.
