20th Century Cinema: 1975 to 1979

British Cinema

Our choice ranges from classic adventure, to high drama, to the best of Python, to musical extravaganza. In the background there were National Front rallies, clashes between police and anti-fascist demonstrators, increasing conflict between unions and government and, ultimately, the ‘winter of discontent’ ...

The Man Who Would be King / John Huston

1975. Colour. UK. 123 mins. DVD.

John Huston had wanted to make this film for many years and Michael Caine is reported as regarding his performance as Peachy Carnehan as his best. Carnehan and Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) are a couple of feckless ex-noncoms in the India of the Raj. The two decide to seek their fortune (and a personal kingdom) somewhere on the wilder margins of Afghanistan. Things move along when Connery is linked with Alexander the Great in the minds of the natives and celebrated as a god. It all ends in tears, of course. The story is related by Caine to Christopher Plummer (playing Rudyard Kipling, author of the original story). Saeed Jaffrey and Shakira Caine are included in a superior cast. A cracking adventure tale that is exalted by a cracking and very funny script.

The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories / Rudyard Kipling

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Tommy / Ken Russell

1975. Colour. UK. 111 mins. DVD.

The Who’s classic album and Pete Townshend’s rock opera get a Ken Russell treatment that mixes rock artists with some questionable casting choices. Ann-Margret, Robert Powell, Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson mingle, sometimes uneasily, with Roger Daltry, Elton John, Tina Turner and Eric Clapton. The Who drummer Keith Moon stands out as a manic pervert.

Tommy / Soundtrack Album

Format: 1 Disc. 25 Tracks.

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Bugsy Malone / Alan Parker

1976. Colour. UK. 95 mins. DVD.

Every stock character and every stock line of every Prohibition gangster movie — with a cast consisting entirely of children! Alan Parker’s feature debut sounds outrageous but credibility is soon suspended, even when the stereotypical gun battles are replaced by splurge guns and custard pies. Jodie Foster gives a strong hint of quality to come, as a showgirl and femme fatale. Strangely for a musical, the music is the least memorable part, with the exception of Foster’s rendition of ‘Tallulah’. Stylish and unique.

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The Man Who Fell To Earth / Nicolas Roeg

1976. Colour. UK/Fr. 140 mins. DVD.

Nicolas Roeg adds to his cult movie portfolio (Walkabout, 1971, qv, and Don’t Look Now, 1973, qv) and prises an enigmatic performance out of David Bowie as an alien in search of water for his desert planet. Bowie constructs a business empire on the back of a number of advanced technologies, intending to finance the building of a ship that will take him home; but the longer he stays on Earth the more he sinks into a moral abyss, assisted by an alcoholic hotel maid played by Candy Clark. With Buck Henry and Rip Torn.

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Equus / Sidney Lumet

1977. Colour. UK. 135 mins. DVD.

Peter Shaffer’s adaptation of his stage play features Peter Firth as a stable boy who has compulsively blinded six horses and comes under the care of a psychiatrist played by Richard Burton. Therapy reveals an obsessive religiosity, absorbed from an over-devout mother (Joan Plowright) and distorted into fetishism. As the revelations increase in intensity Burton is forced to examine his own life. Earnest but stagey treatment with a cast that includes Colin Blakely, Jenny Agutter and Harry Andrews.

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Valentino / Ken Russell

1977. Colour. UK. 123 mins. DVD.

Lavish but ultimately unconvincing biopic, told in flashback as reporters interview mourners at the silent star’s funeral. The multitudes of female admirers are represented by Leslie Caron, Michelle Phillips, Carol Kane and Felicity Kendall, but the film is really only notable for attracting Rudolf Nureyev to the title role …. can’t act, can’t sing, can dance a little ….

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Midnight Express / Alan Parker

1978. Colour. UK. 116 mins. DVD.

Leaving the fantasy world of Bugsy Malone (qv) far behind, Alan Parker immerses himself in the nightmare realm of a Turkish prison. Brad Davis takes the role of Billy Hayes, gaoled for drug smuggling and thrown into a primitive brutal hell where beatings and homosexual rapes are the norm. There are superlative performances from Davis, Randy Quaid, Norbert Weisser, and from Paul Smith as prison guard Hamidou; but special mention should be given to John Hurt as a drug-addicted long term inmate.

Midnight Express / Billy Hayes & William Hoffer

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Monty Python's Life of Brian / Terry Jones

1979. Colour. UK. 89 mins. DVD.

The most consistent and sustained of the Python films, Life of Brian takes some hilariously serious cracks at religious and political zealotry, bigotry, corruption and the abuse of power. Thirty three years after being mistaken for the Christ child by three wise men, Brian Cohen is again confused with the Messiah when escaping from the Romans after a bungled attempt to kidnap Pontius Pilate’s wife. His fanatical following grows in spite of his denials. All of the cast take on multiple roles and there is enough of the obligatory cross-dressing to satisfy any Python fan. The film was, sight unseen, greeted with outrage, picketing and calls for a ban by the religious right in the UK and USA. Which rather proves the point.

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Quadrophenia / Franc Roddam

1979. Colour. UK. 115 mins. DVD.

The energy of vibrant youth with no discernible future is translated into tribal faddism and ritualised tribal violence. One of the better films about youthful subcultures, set in the early 1960s when Mods and Rockers engaged in prearranged combat on the promenades of south coast resorts. The sound track was written by Pete Townshend and performed by The Who. The cast includes Phil Daniels, Mark Wingett, Philip Davis, Toyah Wilcox , Sting …. and Leslie Ash ….

Quadrophenia / Soundtrack Album

Format: 2 Disc Set. 17 Tracks.

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Tess / Roman Polanski

1979. Colour. UK/Fr. 164 mins. DVD.

Thomas Hardy’s was a dark vision and Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, visually stunning as it is, adds only a slight veneer of gloss to the classic tragedy. Nastassja Kinski is beautiful as the country girl who is exploited and abandoned by local aristo Alec d'Urberville (Leigh Lawson) and then rejected on her wedding night by Angel Clare (Peter Firth). Superb production values pay much more than lip service to Hardy’s nostalgic passion for a vanishing rural England, although Kinski’s accent belongs to a Dorset that never existed!

Tess of the D'Urbervilles / Thomas Hardy

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American Cinema

Drama and comedy are frequently mixed as Hollywood attracts new directorial talent; and the late 1970s also saw a burst of ground-breaking sci-fi movies. As importantly Hollywood began an exploration of recent history and the psychological scars that were to haunt American consciousness: the trauma of Vietnam shifts from allegory into stark realism; and speculation on the assassination of JFK provokes a new political scepticism that is magnified by Watergate.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More / Martin Scorsese

1975. Colour. US. 112 mins. VHS.

Slice of life drama that gave Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for one of her best performances. An unhappy housewife is widowed and heads off for California with her son, intent on a career as a singer. When her car breaks down in Arizona she is forced to take a job in Mel’s Diner, run by grumpy Vic Tayback. She forges an alliance with feisty fellow waitress Diane Ladd and is wooed by a necessarily persistent Kris Kristofferson. With Harvey Keitel and Jodie Foster.

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Dark Star / John Carpenter

1975. Colour. US. 79 mins. DVD.

One of two films directed by John Carpenter before he hit the bigtime mainstream with Halloween in 1978. This was a patched up version of his film school thesis project, co-written by Dan O’Bannon who went on to write Alien (1979 qv). Four bored hippy astronauts are twenty years into their roving mission to find and destroy planets that are about to go supernova. The tedium is only slightly relieved by a shortage of toilet paper and a pet alien that most closely resembles a beachball. Add in a deceased and deep-frozen commander who gives resentful advice, a planet-busting bomb that develops a god complex and a climax that has one of the crew surfing a piece of debris through space and you begin to get the idea.

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The Day of the Locust / John Schlesinger

1975. Colour. US. 144 mins. DVD.

Hollywood has a penchant for navel watching and, perhaps surprisingly, often does it rather well. Nathaniel West’s novel about the seamy side of tinsel town loses none of its power in Schlesinger’s exploration of the misfits that populate the margins of the movie industry. Karen Black lives with father Burgess Meredith, he a time-expired vaudevillian, she a talentless actress trying to rise above walk-on parts via the casting couch. Black plays cynical games with art director William Atherton and with perpetual victim Donald Sutherland as the grotesques move inexorably towards a disturbing apocalypse.

The Day of the Locust / Nathaniel West

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Dog Day Afternoon / Sidney Lumet

1975. Colour. US. 119 mins. DVD.

Based on a true incident, this is one of the more accessible of the Sidney Lumet movies featured on these pages. Bisexual Sonny (Al Pacino) sets out on a bank robbery intended to pay for a sex change operation for his lover (Chris Sarandon). Things go badly wrong and a siege develops, with Sonny and his slow witted partner-in-crime Sal (John Cazale) holding staff and customers hostage. As negotiations proceed through a blistering afternoon, Sonny captures the sympathy of the crowd and the local media. Charles Durning plays the police chief in charge of the siege and there are good supporting performances in this tragi-comedy of the absurd.

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Jaws / Steven Spielberg

1975. Colour. US. 119 mins. DVD.

The monster movie was brought up to date and brought in monster receipts as Steven Spielberg found the mother lode. A seaside town is terrorised by a Great White shark. Local sheriff Roy Scheider forms a creaky alliance with oceanographer Richard Dreyfuss and horny-handed son of the sea Robert Shaw to hunt the beast. All the time the local mayor is more worried about damage to the tourist trade. One of the most intimidating (and most parodied) soundtracks of all time was scored by John Williams. Ultimately a sort of provincial Moby Dick (1956 qv) with an hubristic Shaw as Ahab pursuing his destiny. The sequels were rubbish.

Jaws / Peter Bentley

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest / Milos Forman

1975. Colour. US. 128 mins. DVD.

A beautifully crafted tour de force and a tailor made vehicle for Jack Nicholson, who is transferred from a prison farm to a mental institution after faking insanity. Nicholson’s McMurphy soon emerges as a major disruptive force and stirs his fellow inmates to rebellion against the establishment, led by the unctuous and sadistic nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). The bewildered residents are brilliantly played by an ensemble cast: Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, Brad Dourif, Michael Berryman, etc., with Will Sampson as the giant mute(?) Indian. Louise Fletcher holds her own against all comers as the creepily sinister nurse and received an Oscar along with Nicholson.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest / Ken Keysey

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The Sunshine Boys / Herbert Ross

1975. Colour. US. 111 mins. VHS.

Surely a comedy dream team: Walter Matthau and George Burns bring Neil Simon’s stage play to the screen in grand style. The veterans play a pair of ex-vaudevillians who were daggers drawn when they were in partnership and who haven’t spoken for decades. Matthau’s nephew and agent Richard Benjamin tries to reunite the comics for a nostalgic TV special. Highlights include the curmudgeonly Matthau’s contemptuous attempts to record a commercial; and the duo’s rehearsals that cannot progress beyond the first line of their most famous sketch.

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All The President's Men / Alan Pakula

1976. Colour. US. 133 mins. DVD.

Hollywood’s fictionalising of political conspiracies and stalwart journalism suddenly came into sharp focus with this landmark account of the exposure of Watergate. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford play reporters Bernstein and Woodward in pursuit of sources and confirmation as the various elements of the conspiracy are revealed. Jason Robards is Washington Post editor Ben Bradley. William Goldman wrote the script that made paranoia not only acceptable but mandatory.

All The President's Men / Carl Berstein & Bob Woodward

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Assault on Precinct 13 / John Carpenter

1976. Colour. US. 87 mins. DVD.

Menace flits through the shadows in John Carpenter’s second film. A lone cop, a couple of secretaries, a trio of prisoners and a traumatised citizen come under siege in a precinct station on the eve of closure. The street gang are seldom glimpsed and the pressure grows as night falls and the electricity supply is cut. A clever twist is Carpenter’s rejection of ear-splitting artillery in favour of silenced weapons: the tension throughout is created by what is unseen and unheard.

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The Outlaw Josey Wales / Clint Eastwood

1976. Colour. US. 130 mins. DVD.

Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) is drawn into the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy when Union irregulars wipe out his family. When the war ends he refuses to surrender to the man who led the raiders (Bill McKinney) and escapes with Sam Bottoms, with McKinney and a reluctant John Vernon in pursuit. The two fugitives pick up a couple of Cherokees (Chief Dan George, Geraldine Kearns) and rescue Paula Trueman and Sondra Locke from Commanches. The little group settle down, but Wales is still being hunted. Eastwood at last provides a context for his dour outsider: a family lost and a community gained. Chief Dan George is, as always, a delight.

The Outlaw Josey Wales / Forrest Carter

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Robin and Marian / Richard Lester

1976. Colour. US. 102 mins. DVD.

In some versions of the Robin Hood legend the outlaw spends his last days at Kirklees Abbey. In at least one version he is poisoned by the abbess. With Richard Lester’s treatment the abbess turns out to be an elderly Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn). An ageing Robin (Sean Connery) returns from the Crusades after the death of King Richard and finds King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham up to no good. Old love and old antagonisms are rekindled. A strong and mainly British cast includes Nicol Williamson, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris and the late lamented Ronnie Barker.

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Taxi Driver / Martin Scorsese

1976. Colour. US. 109 mins. DVD.

One man’s alienated vision of the world leads him on a killing spree intended to purge the evil from the night-time streets of New York. Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and writer Paul Schrader set their stamp on the 1970s with this disquieting but plausible study of a traumatised Vietnam veteran who seems incapable of making contact with anyone other than 12-year-old runaway and prostitute Jodie Foster, in excellent and disturbing form. With Harvey Keitel and Cybill Shepherd, and with Scorsese himself making an appearance.

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind / Steven Spielberg

1977. Colour. US. 131 mins. DVD.

Premonitions and dancing lights in the sky herald the arrival of visitors from outer space. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) and Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) are among the ordinary earthlings that are drawn towards a mysterious mountain. Here a secretive government has constructed a reception centre under the guidance of scientist Claude Lacombe (French director Francois Truffaut). Beautifully filmed with a restrained use of special effects, Spielberg finds some of the signature devices (brilliant white light spilling into the scene, the innocent child, a sublimated religiosity, etc.) that were to serve him well in the future. The arrival of the spaceship, moving endlessly into shot, was stunning at the time and young Cary Guffey is wonderful as Dillon’s abducted son, all wide-eyed curiosity. An intelligent (if syrupy and optimistic) sci-fi movie, released in the same year as that masterpiece of the cliche, Star Wars.

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The Deer Hunter / Michael Cimino

1978. Colour. US. 176 mins. DVD.

A trio of friends from a Pennsylvanian steel town stand in for America as a whole in this drama of the Vietnam war. Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) abandon ordinary lives for service in Vietnam. Captured by the Viet Cong, they are subjected to physical and mental torture that includes enforced Russian roulette. In the aftermath adjustment to the ordinary world is difficult. Steve is disabled and embittered. Nick chooses to remain in Vietnam. Michael returns to the east in search of Nick as Saigon is about to fall. Powerful and emotional parable of a traumatised generation.

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The Last Waltz / Martin Scorsese

1978. Colour. 112 mins. DVD.

Martin Scorsese combines a passion for film with a passion for good old rock ‘n’ roll in this memorial to the passing of The Band. The 1976 farewell concert is intercut with interviews and back stage footage. The concert line-up is awe inspiring: Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, etc., etc; and Muddy Waters is in masterly form with ‘Mannish Boy’. Scorsese had previously worked on Woodstock. As recently as 2005 he directed the Dylan documentary No Direction Home (2005 qv) and produced a history of the blues, available on our Blues Pages.

The Last Waltz / Soundtrack Album

Format: 2 Disc Set. 30 Tracks.

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Alien / Ridley Scott

1979. Colour. US. 116 mins. DVD.

Alien piles on the interest as the crew of the Nostromo investigate a massive spaceship that has crashed on an inhospitable planet. Ridley Scott’s second feature erupts, literally, as crew member John Hurt inadvertently incubates an indestructible and totally malignant lifeform. The gradual elimination of the crew, including android Ian Holm, leaves Sigourney Weaver to face the creature alone, apart from the ship’s cat. The alien spaceship was remarkable for the set design, and the creature was an equally remarkable animatronic nightmare. An original and influential work. Several sequels were to follow, of which the first, Aliens (1986 qv) is the best.

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Apocalypse Now / Francis Ford Coppola

Apocalypse Now Redux / Francis Ford Coppola

1979. Colour. US. 139/194 mins. DVD.

An hallucinatory voyage into the madness that was Vietnam, accompanied appropriately by music from The Doors and based loosely on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with a more than passing reference to Sir James Frazer’s Golden Bough (available from our Bookshop). Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) heads upriver to assassinate renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has created a private army among the Montagnard tribesmen of the interior. Surrealism becomes the norm as Willard and his gunboat crew encounter surfing-mad colonel Robert Duvall (‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning.’), Playboy Playmates in the jungle and Kurtz himself, a godlike figure, the subject of totem and taboo. Sheen was, apparently, going through something of a breakdown when the early hotel scene was shot; Dennis Hopper, Kurtz’s sycophantic war photographer, seems to have been similarly afflicted; and Brando’s brooding performance also raises questions. Coppola went massively over budget and the filming in the Philippines was horrendous. Coppola’s wife Eleanor was to produce a documentary account of the production in Hearts of Darkness (1991 qv). The narration was written by Michael Herr, author of Dispatches (available from our Bookshop). The director added 50 minutes of footage and three substantial additional segments to the original cut for the Redux edition.

Apocalypse Now / Soundtrack Album

Format: 2 Disc Set. 28 Tracks.

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The China Syndrome / James Bridges

1979. Colour. US. 122 mins. DVD.

Prescience has never been more prescient. Within a matter of weeks of the film’s release its basic premise became reality when the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor suffered a near catastrophic breakdown. Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) and Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) are a television reporter and cameraman who witness and film a near-accident at a nuclear plant while making a documentary. Their TV station refuses to air the story. In the meantime engineer Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) traces the cause of the incident to cut-rate construction work. The information is passed on to the reporters and corporate shenanigans follow. The essence of the film is Fonda's transition from ambitious careerist to political activist, in many ways reflecting her own life; but the storyline remains disturbingly relevant.

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Escape From Alcatraz / Don Siegel

1979. Colour. US. 112 mins. DVD.

A straightforward and effective character-led drama based on an actual escape from the prison island of Alcatraz. Escape from Alcatraz was the fifth Clint Eastwood film directed by Don Siegel, a major influence on Eastwood’s own directorial career. Eastwood arrives at ‘The Rock’ to be met by complacent warder Patrick McGoohan. The subsequent escape organised by Eastwood’s Frank Morris led to the gaol’s closure.

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Winter Kills / William Richert

1979. Colour. US. 86 mins. DVD.

A taut black comedy based on a novel by Richard Condon (author of The Manchurian Candidate, 1962 qv) and echoing the American obsession with the death of President Kennedy. Jeff Bridges plays the younger brother of a president who was killed, supposedly by a lone gunman, nineteen years earlier. Bridges has resisted the efforts of overpowering patriarch John Huston to involve him in politics in the footsteps of his brother. The dying confession of the second rifleman at his brother’s assassination plunges Bridges into a political morass. Huston aside, the film has an impressive line-up of stars including Anthony Perkins, Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach, Dorothy Malone, Belinda Bauer and Toshiro Mifune.

Winter Kills / Richard Condon

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Australian Cinema

It is, perhaps, the subliminal influence of the desolate interior that gives the most innovative of Australian cinema its hard edge — mirroring the mystical aboriginal relationship with landscape as sacred milieu.

Picnic at Hanging Rock / Peter Weir

1975. Colour. Australia. 110 mins. DVD.

An ethereal and puzzling offering from a director who made a considerable contribution to the growing status of the Australian film industry. Set in 1900, a party of girls from a finishing school go on an excursion to nearby Hanging Rock. Three of the girls and their teacher, Rachel Roberts, go missing and elude discovery. A beautiful and somnambulant piece of atmospheric film-making, so mysterious as to defy description.

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Mad Max Trilogy

Mad Max / George Miller

Mad Max II / George Miller

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome / George Miller

1979/81/85. Colour. Australia. 90/94/106 mins. DVD.

The history of Mad Max is not dissimilar to that of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, the first of which appeared some 15 years earlier. Initially disregarded in the northern hemisphere as low budget pulp, George Miller’s originality was soon recognised and post-apocalyptic punk entered the vocabulary of directors and designers. And as with the ‘Man With No Name’ trilogy, the Mad Max movies increased in complexity and sophistication as Miller created a not-so-distant future in the parched Australian interior. The first film is a fairly straightforward chase/revenge drama, albeit in a post-nuclear setting. Disillusioned cop Mel Gibson pursues the road gang that killed his wife and child. Mad Max II (The Road Warrior) reprises a classic Western fort-under-attack mis en scene, but with echoes of Homer’s Illiad: a petrol-producing community is under siege from roving desert pirates who need the gas to fuel their high-octane ravaging. In Thunderdome there is a hint of civilisation returning as Max finds his way to Bartertown, a methane-dependent trading centre run by dictatorial Tina Turner. Expelled to the wilderness, he is rescued by a tribe of children who are struggling to hang on to a half-remembered past. With Max’s help the group find their way back to the wreckage of urban civilisation and begin to lay the foundations for future generations. All three films are notable for spectacular stunt work, cinematic and literary references and for underlying mythical structures. Mad Max is the archetypal outsider who acquires heroic status before disappearing into the sunset. Thunderdome draws its most potent mythic content from ethnic roots. The children are sustained by evolving customs and a continually evolving and ceremonially repeated history in the care of the tribal ‘Teller’: a more than passing reference to Aboriginal oral tradition and the mystical Dreamtime.

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Foreign Cinema

An engaging classic offering from France.

La Cage aux Folles / Edouard Molinaro

1978. Colour. Fr/It. 87 mins. DVD.

A bubbling French farce in which a young man brings home his future parents-in-law to meet the gay couple who have raised him. Laurent is the result of an uncharacteristic heterosexual one night stand. His father Renato runs the Cage aux Folles, a night club that stars his long term lover, drag queen Albin. The father of Laurent’s fiancée is a homophobic official of the Union of Moral Order. Laurent has told his parents-to-be that his father is a cultural attaché. Guess what happens next. The 1996 remake, The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, is merely competent in comparison.

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