History Unlimited Films: 1970 to 1974

British Cinema

If the 1970s were to end with the contrived confrontation of punk, they arrived with an equally shocking flurry from British film studios. In between, a troubled decade saw oil embargos, a three day week, global recession, unemployment, industrial strife, rising racism and violence on the streets and football terraces.

A Clockwork Orange / Stanley Kubrick

1971. Colour. UK. 131 mins. DVD.

Following massive controversy Kubrick withdrew this pretty unpleasant film from circulation during his lifetime. The prophetic fantasy, based on the 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess, attacks on many levels. The depiction of a senselessly violent youth sub-culture in a decaying welfare state has become more recognisable under successive UK governments. The use of torture and aversion therapy by an authoritarian regime was a fairly conventional motif at the time of Burgess’s novel but has achieved worrying currency in the post-Guantanamo West. There is a hint of right wing Cold War paranoia in Burgess’s creation of a Russian-based argot for his delinquent gang. The final cynical compromise between the erstwhile rebel and corrupt politicians completes the nightmare vision of dystopia. Malcolm McDowell overplays the overstated gang leader with support from Patrick Magee, Michael Bates and Adrienne Corri.

A Clockwork Orange / Anthony Burgess

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Get Carter / Mike Hodges

1971. Colour. UK. 107 mins. DVD.

Mike Hodge’s big screen debut is a raw and violent revenge drama played out against a background of small time gangsterism and sexploitation. Michael Caine stars in one his best roles to date as a London hard man who travels to Newcastle to attend his murdered brother’s funeral and stays on to search for his killer. Playwright John Osborne plays a northern crime lord, Ian Hendry is amongst the crew of seedy villains and the female interest includes Geraldine Moffatt and Britt Ekland. Most quoted line: ‘You’re a big man but you’re out of shape. With me it’s a full time job.’

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The Devils / Ken Russell

1971. Colour. UK. 109 mins. VHS.

Nuns behaving badly! Mass hysteria and naughty goings on in a 17th Century French town attract the attention of the Inquisition. Russell’s notorious adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s novel has Oliver Reed as a charismatic priest and Vanessa Redgrave as the leading religieuse. A wild mixture of history, surrealistic fantasy, comedy and horror. Regarded by many as Russell’s finest extravaganza.

The Devils of Loudon / Aldous Huxley

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The Ruling Class / Peter Medak

1971. Colour. UK. 124 mins. DVD.

The ultimate attack on the British class system. Peter O’Toole inherits a peerage and emerges from a lunatic asylum in the role of Jesus Christ. Between periods suspended from an enormous cross he begins to distribute his wealth to the poor. The family naturally set out to regain control of the fortune. In the meantime old retainer Arthur Lowe, who also inherits a sizeable sum, deteriorates wonderfully into a boozy slogan-spouting socialist. Some wildly funny moments. Lowe holds is own against all comers and Alastair Sim is almost as good as a superannuated bishop.

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Straw Dogs / Sam Peckinpah

1971. Colour. UK. 113 mins. DVD.

Sam Peckinpah’s controversial examination of the nature of violence. Mild-mannered American Dustin Hoffman and manipulative English wife Susan George take up residence in a Cornish village. Hoffman attracts the animosity of the locals, including George’s ex –boyfriend. The situation is exacerbated by George’s flirtations and culminates in a somewhat ambiguous rape. Events lead to their farmhouse coming under siege, at which point Hoffman erupts into violence in a brutal and cathartic final scene. Ostensibly concerned with male machismo, the real conflict is between man and wife. Based on Gordon Williams’s The Siege of Trencher’s Farm the cast includes Del Henney, Peter Vaughan, T P McKenna, Sally Thomsett and Colin Welland.

The Siege of Trencher's Farm / Gordon Williams

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Under Milk Wood / Andrew Sinclair

1971. Colour. UK. 88 mins. DVD.

Dylan Thomas’s play for voices is unlikely ever to translate well to a visual medium; and in any event no subsequent version is likely to surpass the original BBC radio broadcast. Richard Burton gives continuity with the classic recording as the narrator, but otherwise wanders rather pointlessly around the streets of a Llareggub (read from right to left!) transposed to Lower Fishguard. Peter O’Toole is Captain Cat, with Elizabeth Taylor bizarrely cast as Rosie Probert. David Jason makes his first screen appearance as No Good Boyo. Colourless rather than Bible Black, it is probably best to close your eyes and relish the language (or buy the original recording!).

Under Milk Wood / The Original 1954 BBC Radio Dramatisation

Format: 1 Disc. Continuous Track.

Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices / Dylan Thomas

Collected Poems 1934-1953 / Dylan Thomas

The Collected Stories / Dylan Thomas

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Don't Look Now / Nicolas Roeg

1973. Colour. UK/It. 105 mins. DVD.

A sinister offering from Nicholas Roeg based on a story by Daphne du Maurier. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland are a loving couple who are devastated by the accidental death of their young daughter. While the husband is working in Venice the pair meet two strange sisters who claim to have had visions of the dead child. Sutherland himself seems to catch glimpses of his daughter, alongside hallucinatory premonitions. The cinematography and the canals, bridges and backwaters of a decaying Venice create an atmosphere of impending menace, but the denouement still comes as a shock.

Don't Look Now and Other Stories / Daphne du Maurier

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American Cinema

All of the enduring themes are represented in our selection. There is a noticeable nostalgia for lost innocence, arguably rising out of disillusionment with the US involvement in Vietnam; and the Vietnam war provided an underlying strand that was able to merge imperceptibly with a revisionist approach to the Western. The gangster movie was elevated to epic status with The Godfather. And nostalgia for the past of Hollywood itself began to produce richly referenced projects ...

The Balad of Cable Hogue / Sam Peckinpah

1970. Colour. USA. 1970. 121 mins. VHS.

Sam Peckinpah temporarily abandons high drama and extreme violence in this gentle and humorous elegy to the passing of the Old West. Jason Robards gives one of his best and most sympathetic performances as a prospector abandoned by his partners who opens a desert water stop. Stella Stevens is superb as the whore who comforts Robards before departing for newer and richer pastures; and David Warner comes and goes as a preacher torn between his vocation and a life of self-indulgence. Strother Martin plays nicely to type and Western fixture Slim Pickens also lends support.

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Little Big Man / Arthur Penn

1970. Colour. USA. 134 mins. DVD.

There had been the occasional sympathetic treatment of American Indians in the past, but the 1970s saw a major revision of perspective, whereby Native Americans were portrayed victims of a voracious ‘civilisation’. Dustin Hoffman, in tortuously applied make up, is the 121-year-old who narrates his earlier life, beginning with boyhood capture by the Cheyenne and ending with him as the only white survivor of Custer’s Last Stand. In the intervening years Jack Crabb is forced by circumstance to alternate between his Indian and American personas. In doing so he reprises many stock characters of the Western including snake-oil peddler, gunfighter, town drunk and army scout. Richard Mulligan recurs throughout as a narcissistic George Armstrong Custer; Jeff Corey is Wild Bill Hickock; and Faye Dunaway is the preacher’s wife who takes a young Jack Crabb to her bosom. But the best support comes from Chief Dan George as Hoffman’s Cheyenne adoptive grandfather who is perpetually confused by the passing of a traditional way of life and finds his mystical world view irrelevant. Tragedy underlies the humour, and the genocide theme was a deliberate reflection of the war in Vietnam.

Little Big Man / Thomas Berger

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M*A*S*H / Robert Altman

1970. Colour. USA. 111 mins. DVD.

Antiwar comedy-drama that spawned a hugely successful and long running TV series. Surgeons Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerrit et alia are conscripted into the army during the Korean War. Irreverent and hard drinking, but capable nonetheless, they alternate between frantic surgical procedures and the systematic deflation of the by-the-book pomposity of Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) and head nurse ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan (Sally Kellerman). The comedy and the schoolboy attacks on authority only thinly disguise the underlying compassion. This salvo against the horror and pointlessness of war coincided with the height of US involvement in Vietnam. Gary Burghof, as ‘Radar’ O’Reilly, was the single cast member to transfer to the TV series and continued to the bitter-sweet end.

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The Reivers / Mark Rydell

1970. Colour. USA. 107 mins.

Slight but charming adaptation of William Faulkner’s comic novella. An irresponsible hired hand (Steve McQueen) borrows the new family automobile for a trip to the fleshpots of turn-of-the-century Memphis, with young cousin Lucius and a black stablehand in tow. McQueen works on introducing a ringer into a local horse race as the trio establish themselves in a friendly brothel. In the meantime the boy’s family are in pursuit. Faulkner’s unique dialogue style can be glimpsed from time to time.

The Reivers / William Faulkner

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Soldier Blue / Ralph Nelson

1970. Colour. USA. 109 mins. DVD.

Not so accomplished as Little Big Man (qv), the message is similar and the context the same. Candice Bergen is a recently freed captive of the Cheyenne and Peter Straus a raw private. The two survive an Indian attack on an army detachment and are forced to trek across the Badlands. Bergen is distinctly unladylike but has acquired skills that help them survive encounters with hostiles and a gunrunner (good cameo from Donald Pleasance). The core of the film is a basic romantic comedy until the infamously violent final scenes, based on the unprovoked massacre of Black Kettle’s Cheyennes at Sand Creek (see Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and other titles available from our Bookshop.)

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The French Connection / French Connection II / W Friedkin / J Frankenheimer

1971/1975. Colour. USA. 213 mins. DVD.

Two brilliant crime dramas, the second matching the quality of the first. Gene Hackman plays Popeye Doyle, a detective who pursues an obsessive vendetta against drug pushers. The first film sees Doyle in conflict with federal agents as massive surveillance of a major drug deal is put in place. Fernando Rey is the French drug baron who is setting up the deal and outwits Hackman in the end, after one of the all-time-great car chases. The sequel has Hackman pursuing Rey to Marseilles, where the American’s crudeness rapidly alienates French counterparts whose only interest is to lure Rey into the open. In both films Doyle’s stop-at-nothing brutality matches that of the criminals he hates.

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The Godfather / Francis Ford Coppola

1971. Colour. USA. 167 mins. DVD.

The first and best of Francis Ford Coppola’s great generational trilogy, a monument to the schizophrenia that is at the core of the American Dream. In the demi-monde of organised crime old fashioned family and community values are perverted into a ruthless disregard for society at large. The underworld is a mirror image of corporate America, with similar commercial imperatives and employing essentially similar methods. The Mafia is inextricably intertwined with American life — commerce, show business, politics. Are the Corleone ‘family’ in pursuit of money for power or power for money? Perhaps the principle driving force is self-preservation and the survival of the group, exemplified by Al Pacino’s clean cut college graduate and war hero who is drawn irretrievably into the family business following a murder attempt on his father. Marlon Brando shines in his best known role, amidst a shining cast that includes James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Richard Castellano, Richard Conte and Sterling Haydn.

The Godfather Trilogy - The Coppola Restoration / Francis Ford Coppola

2008. Colour. USA. 549 mins. DVD.

This 5 disc set includes first-time re-mastered versions of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, both under the supervision of Francis Ford Coppola. The set has many extras and special features, together with a director’s commentary on all three films. The ultimate collection for Godfather fans. For the less fanatical, an individual edition of The Godfather Part II can be found further down this page, while Godfather III is available from the 1990-1994 page of the Film Store.

The Godfather / Mario Puzo

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The Last Picture Show / Peter Bogdanovich

1971. BW. USA. 114 mins. DVD.

Peter Bogdanovich’s second feature is a fine visualisation of the passing of 1950s small town America. Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is the self-appointed protector of retarded Billy (played by Bottom’s brother Sam) the butt of cruel practical jokes. Jeff Bridges is Sonny’s best friend, heading up a supporting cast that includes Cybill Shepherd and Ellen Burstyn. Ben Johnson turns in a sympathetic performance as Sam the Lion, the pool hall/theatre proprietor who stands as a beacon of timeless virtues in the decaying Texas town. The social and sexual politics of youth are nicely observed.

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Silent Running / Douglas Trumbull

1971. Colour. USA. 86 mins. DVD.

A thoughtful sci-fi movie in which the last surviving forests from an ecologically bankrupt earth are conserved in massive bio-domes in orbit around Saturn. When the four crew members receive orders to destroy the domes and return to earth, Bruce Dern disposes of his companions and resigns himself to a solitary existence devoted to the preservation of the artificial eco-system in his care. In this he is assisted by two lovable robots, Huey and Duey, who emerge as characters in their own right. Joan Baez sings the title track.

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Deliverance / John Boorman

1972. Colour. USA. 104 mins. DVD.

For once Burt Reynolds delivers a serious performance in this powerful drama about urban man confronted with the primitive. Reynolds and three companions (Jon Voigt, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox) embark on an adventurous canoe trip down an Appalachian river. Their planned idyll in an unspoilt but disappearing wilderness turns to nightmare when they fall foul of cretinous mountain men and abandon their civilised veneer in order to survive. The famous early ‘Duelling Banjos’ sequence gives a hint of the conflict to come.

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The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean / John Huston

1972. Colour. USA. 120 mins. VHS.

A warm and affectionate, if occasionally violent, tribute to the high days of the West. Paul Newman stars in the saga of folk legend Roy Bean, the self-appointed judge with a law book and a gun whose mission is to bring ‘law west of the Pecos’. Bean’s law consists mainly of hanging those who commit even minor transgressions. More a series of short vignettes than a continuous narrative, the eventual return of Newman to the developing oil town is probably an act too many. Cameos by Stacy Keach, Jacqueline Bisset, Roddy McDowall, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins and John Huston. Ava Gardner makes a guest appearance as ‘Jersey Lily’ Langtree, the subject of Roy Bean’s lifelong obsession.

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American Graffiti / George Lucas

1973. Colour. USA. 107 mins. DVD.

In the days before his infatuation with special effects George Lucas produced this flickering montage of the USA in the early 1960s. Rites of passage are intertwined as a group of high school leavers pass a single summer night of hot-rodding and cruising, accompanied by sounds from the local radio station. The film brought many of the youthful cast to attention: Richard Dreyfuss, Paul LeMat, Mackenzie Phillips, Harrison Ford, Kathleen Quinlan; and provided future director Ron Howard with a leading role that led to the creation of the TV series Happy Days. DJ Wolfman Jack appears as DJ Wolfman Jack and the classic music tracks provide continuity.

American Graffiti / Soundtrack Album

Format: 2 Disc Set. 41 Tracks.

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High Plains Drifter / Clint Eastwood

1973. Colour. USA. 101 mins. DVD.

Under his own direction Clint Eastwood’s stock character from his spaghetti Western days is ratcheted up to a new level of intensity with the addition of a hint of the supernatural. A mysterious stranger arrives in a mining town and in short time dispatches a trio of gunmen and rapes a flighty townswoman. The faint-hearted townsfolk hire him to defend them against a bunch of escaped convicts who are heading their way. But is the stranger just a casual itinerant or is there something else going on?

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Mean Streets / Martin Scorsese

1973. Colour. USA. 103 mins. DVD.

Martin Scorsese made his mark with this low budget gangster movie. Four young Italian-Americans are variously involved with local Mafiosos in New York’s Little Italy. Brilliantly shot and brilliantly acted, there are moments of pure hilarity as the quartet work through their idiosyncracies. Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, David Proval and Richard Romanus comprise the aspirational quartet, Cesare Danova the local Don and Amy Robinson the romantic interest.

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Papillon / Franklin J Schaffner

1973. Colour. USA. 144 mins. DVD.

Blockbusting escape drama based on a fictionalised interpretation of Henri Charriere’s autobiographical novel, a grim indictment of the French penal system. Charriere/Papillon (Steve McQueen) is convicted of murder and sent to the prison colony on Devil’s Island. During the voyage out he takes white-collar criminal Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman) under his protective wing and the two begin an unlikely friendship. Papillon is driven by thoughts of escape, Dega becomes increasingly institutionalised and all the while captives and gaolers grow old together. McQueen turns in one of his best performances. Hoffman continues his quest to avoid type-casting, producing a stunning character study.

Papillon / Henri Charriere

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The Sting / George Roy Hill

1973. Colour. USA. 124 mins. DVD.

Over-contrived in retrospect, The Sting was hugely successful at the time and incidentally brought the music of Scott Joplin to public awareness (see our Jazz/Ragtime Pages). George Roy Hill, Paul Newman and Robert Redford re-formed the winning team that gave us Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969 qv) to produce this glossy piece of Thirties nostalgia. Petty con artists Redford, Robert Earl Jones and Jack Kehoe fall foul of racketeer Robert Shaw. To revenge Shaw’s murder of Jones, Redford recruits a team, including Paul Newman, and sets up an elaborate scam. Art direction, sets and costumes bring the period to life even if the intricate swindle stretches credibility.

The Sting / Soundtrack Album

Format: 1 Disc. 14 Tracks.

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Chinatown / Roman Polanski

1974. Colour. USA. 125 mins. DVD.

Superlative noir that revisits and refreshes the genre, one of the best films of the 1970s. Jack Nicholson plays a private eye who is drawn unwittingly into a morass of political graft and treachery revolving around the supply of water to an expanding Los Angeles. Faye Dunaway plays the soon-to-be-widowed wife of the city’s water commissioner and daughter of an unscrupulous John Huston who plans to use the water supply for his own ends. The film is loosely based on the achievement of William Mulholland, who created the Owen Valley viaduct. Tantalisingly, the Chinatown of the title never appears but its significance becomes clear as the film progresses. Polanski appears briefly as a switchblade-wielding hood.

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The Godfather, Part II / Francis Ford Coppola

1974. Colour. USA. 190 mins. DVD.

The sequel to Ford Coppola’s 1971 blockbuster comes close to the quality of the original and adds depth and texture by interweaving the backstory of a young Vito Corleone (the original Brando role now played by Robert De Niro) with the continuation of the family saga. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) takes control of the family business and works towards settling the scores that remain from the power struggles of his father Vito’s day. His ruthlessness parallels that of his father’s during his rise from peasant immigrant to Don. Early and middle 20th Century alternate, subtly differentiated by the cinematography. Many of the original cast reprise their roles and De Niro adds a brilliant performance alongside other new entrants, including Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth.

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Young Frankenstein / Mel Brooks

1974. BW. USA. 105 mins. DVD.

Mel Brooks tackles the horror genre with this affectionate send-up of the James Whale classics (Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, 1931 and 1935 qv). Gene Wilder is at his hilarious best as the grandson of the original baron, who inherits the Transylvanian castle and discovers his grandfather’s ‘How I Did It’ guide to monster-making. Predictably, he sets out to repeat the experiments. Marty Feldman is Igor, the retainer with disturbing eyes and an alternating hump; and Teri Garr is Inga, the doctor’s slightly dim assistant. The comedy is sustained by Madeline Khan, Kenneth Mars and Cloris Leachman, with Gene Hackman in a cameo as the blind hermit. This hommage to the 1930s is sustained by black and white photography and the use of the laboratory equipment created for the original films.

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Australian Cinema

One film brought an already mature Australian film industry to international attention. There was more to follow.

Walkabout / Nicolas Roeg

1971. Colour. Australia. 96 mins. DVD.

A minimalist masterpiece, one of Nicholas Roeg’s finest accomplishments. A young girl (Jenny Agutter) and her younger brother (Lucien John) find themselves abandoned in the Australian outback after the suicide of their father. They survive with the help of an adolescent aborigine (David Gulpilil) who is embarked on his own, ritualistic, rite of passage. The sexual tension between Gulpilil and Agutter becomes palpable as the little group progress through the beautifully photographed backdrop of the desert and its denizens. But the ultimate tension is between civilisation and its opposite, brought into high relief by the final shot that has an older Agutter as a wistful urban housewife.

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Foreign Cinema

The Method meets European art cinema. A mixing rather than a clash of cultures.

Last Tango in Paris / Bernardo Bertolucci

1972. Colour. Fr/It. 124 mins. DVD.

Highly controversial in its day, Bertolucci’s obsessive film can still shock with its violation of sexual conventions. Marlon Brando plays a writer whose wife commits suicide for no apparent reason. Maria Schneider is the wealthy Parisienne engaged to film-maker Jean-Pierre Leaud. Brando and Schneider meet and immediately embark on a torrid sexual affair, which is carried on without reference to the outside world of either. Is this a reflection of Brando’s ignorance of his wife’s wider life and Leaud’s attempts to discover more about Schneider? Perhaps a comment on urban isolation, perhaps an existentialist testament, more likely something of the two.

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