Den forsvundne fuldmægtig (1971)

Off-List: Den forsvundne fuldmægtig

The third off-List movie of 1971 is as usual a Danish movie and the, in my opinion, most interesting movie to come out of Denmark in 1971 was “Den forsvundne fuldmægtig” (“The Missing Clerk”).

The book by Hans Scherfig is very highly regarded in Denmark and most high school student will eventually get to read it, myself included. Oddly enough I never watched the movie version and that is a shame. It is a very good adaption.

When Theodor Amsted (Ove Sprogøe), highly placed clerk in the Ministry of Defense, fails to show up at home, his wife Mrs. Amsted (Bodil Kjer) gets worries. Mr. Amsted is always very precise and never does anything unexpected. Soon after, an exploded body is found just outside town (half a mile from where I live!) and the police concludes it is Theodor Amsted who has blown himself up. For Mrs. Amsted this is a blow, but in her home Mr. Amsted has never been more present and highly respected now that he is dead.

But Mr. Amsted is not dead. Instead he has taken the bus to a little village on the north coast where he rents a room. Mr. Amsted has finally escaped the prison of expectations, respectability and conformity he has lived in all his life. Now he is free at last, but at a loss what to do with this freedom.

Confused, it is almost a relief for him when he is eventually found by the police and imprisoned. In prison he can live the ordered and boring life he has trained for all his life and without being questioned by a nagging wife. He is finally happy.

It is an interesting story with a point, as relevant today as back then. Always doing what you are told, obeying the rules, living inside the box kills something in people and make them automatons. Mr. Amsted wants to be free, desperately enough to fake his death, but he has no clue what to do with it and freedom is scary when you never had any. It is bittersweet to watch Mr. Amsted trying to find the child he lost and being so miserable at it.

The village he ends up in is also full of characters, people of small minds who are terribly busy with everybody else. In particular Karl Stegger as Martin Hageholm, a pensioned postman, is hilarious, zealously looking out for strangers violating… anything. In fact, I could watch this movie just for him. Although as a character he has very little importance for the story, he completely steals the scenes he a appear in and the gentle Theodor Amsted looks very small next to this larger than life busybody.

Another noteworthy character is Bodil Kjer’s Mrs. Amsted. Her life is so entirely defined by her status as wife of the highly respected clerk that nothing is allowed to disturb the order of things. Having her husband return from the grave is most irregular. Already she is busy forming her son Leif in the same image as her father. Throughout the movie she speaks nonstop in all her scenes, while I do not recall Leif saying a word. His little rebellion is to hide the food he does not like under the table. She is a perfect nightmare.

It is also a lot of fun to see places I have grown familiar with the two years I have lived here. Amager Fælled where the body exploded is very close and much nearer the city today than back then and those villages on the north coast are now busy resort towns.  

“Den forsvundne fuldmægtig” is hilarious and tragic, human and diabolic. It is also highly recommended, also for an international audience.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

Vestens syndige par

The second movie on the List by Robert Altman is “McCabe & Mrs. Miller”. Altman was the guy who made “M.A.S.H.” and I could definitely see a connection between these two movies. To me it looked as if he wanted to redo that special way of filming where actors each go around doing whatever their role is and the cameras move around filming whatever it is that is going on. Not, mind you, as anarchistic as in “M.A.S.H.”, but it definitely delivers that particular feeling that there is a lot going on outside the camera, an entire world, of which we only get to see bits and pieces. An elegant method, actually, that brings a lot of realism to a movie, but also, well, difficult to follow. In any case, Altman has here applied this technique on an entirely different setting, the American frontier around the turn of the century. That is, the turn into the 20^th century, of course.

John McCabe (Warren Beatty) is an opportunistic gambler who sets up shop in the small and very new mining hamlet Presbyterian Church in the northwest (filmed in British Colombia, though it is supposed to take place in Washington State). McCabe becomes a bit of an entertainment king with a saloon and a brothel, but his toughness seems to be something he gets from the conspicuous amount of alcohol he is consuming.

Eventually McCabe is joined by the hard and direct Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie), a very professional prostitute who takes over the brothel department. Together they are king and queen of the village until big capital move in to take over the town, something neither McCabe nor Miller are able to cope with.

“McCabe & Mrs. Miller” is sort of a Western but a very different kind of Western. The setting is a bit too late for the Western setting, the frontier has moved all the way out into very inhospitable areas, and civilization is both too close for comfort and too far away to help when hell breaks loose.

It is also different in the sense that there is no heroism here. Or rather, not the heroism we are used to. McCabe is more a parasite than a contributing member of the community. He makes money on other people’s weaknesses and he is more loud than talented or courageous. Same with Miller, she is all tough as nails, but it is a mask that she hides behind together with her opium addiction. Combined they are actually sorry beings. The real heroes are the people of the village who are carving out a meager existence in the wilderness despite all the hardships.

The classic free spirit versus encroaching civilization is here anarchy versus lawless capitalism where big money takes by force what they cannot buy and the “little man” is not much better, just smaller.

All in all, a fairly pessimistic tale with not very likable characters. And maybe that is the attraction of the movie. Because the characters are flawed, because the setting is flawed, because there is no happy ending, this is far more interesting than the average western. There is depth to the characters and we can deal with them even if we do not like them.

The genius of the movie however is neither the sepia filming nor the tale itself, but the soundtrack. It was a brilliant move to include a number of Leonard Cohen songs on it. Although they belong to a different age, there is something in the mood that fits the movie perfectly.

Speaking of Cohen, I recently went to a Leonard Cohen exhibition here is Copenhagen and was very impressed with it. Cohen has real depth in his catalogue and the song in this movie only adds to that.

While “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” started slow for me, it eventually won me over and it ends with a recommendation.

 

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Charlie og chokoladefabrikken

For the past week I have been away on vacation. Not exactly the vacation I had imagined but considering the times it was fine and it was good to get a bit away. Just before I left, I watched “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” but did not manage to do the review. So, slightly delayed…

I know “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, or the story at least, from my childhood. Back then it was a Swedish or Norwegian cartoon with voice-over and was called “Charlie and the Chocolate factory”. I remember it as being an unsettling serial to watch, partly because it was one of these strange cartoons that are really just stills with the camera panning across them, but also because the Willy Wonka character was scary. The 1971 musical I never saw before now and that goes for the Johnny Depp version too. Those childhood memories were holding me back.

This 1971 version is substantially different from the story I remember. First of all the Willy Wonka name is already in the title, presumably because the sponsor of the movie had a chocolate bar called the Wonka bar they wanted to market with the movie (money money money…) but more importantly, Willy Wonka is lovable. Still strange and sort of mean, but in Gene Wilder’s version he is difficult not to like.

“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” is a moral tale about a poor boy, Charlie, who through odd jobs helps his mother take care of his four bed-ridden grandparents. There is room for no luxuries in that home, but Charlie is a good boy.  In the outside world the mysterious chocolate factory run by Willy Wonka launces a competition: Anyone who finds a golden ticket in a chocolate bar wins a tour of the factory and a lifelong supply of chocolate. The world goes mad looking for these tickets and also Charlie starts dreaming, only he cannot afford to buy the chocolate.

Eventually the winners are found and one of them is Charlie who found a coin and bought a bar. The other four children are horrible though. One is eating all the time, another is a spoiled brat used to get what she wants, a third is self-obsessed and the fourth only cares for watching television. On the day of the tour all children show up with a family member (who is not so different from the child) and Willy Wonka gives them the tour.

The chocolate factory is a magical place inhabited by the midget workers, the orange faced Oompa-Loompas, and is more of a garden of temptation than an actual factory. Now Wonka starts weeding out the bad children…

“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” is a musical and a fairy tale so realism is not where this is heading, but instead it allows for wondrously weird scenarios that baffles the mind. The point is that only a child’s wondering imagination can cope with this, whereas an adult’s rational mind balk at all the illogical and silly concepts at the factory. So, to pass the tests you need a child’s imagination and readiness to accept things at face value and be a “good” child. Will Charlie make it?

“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” worked a lot better than I had expected. Both as a story and on the technical level. The factory is a magical place come to life and the musical elements do not feel overtly disturbing, but most importantly, the acting all round is good. I had my doubts thinking of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, but in hindsight I can think of nobody else, and for once the child actors were good. Or rather, as intolerable as they are supposed to be.

This is however a family movie, so the real test is how it works with children. For the second half of the movie I was joined by my 10-year old son who got so much into it that he wanted to watch it from the beginning. Turns out there are a number of memes out there referring this movie.

This is a movie that still works today and a recommendation from me to children of all ages.

 

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Off-List: The Andromeda Strain

It is time for my second off-List movie of 1971 and I dare say I could not have found a more fitting movie. A strange new disease, doctors working frantically to understand it and find a way to treat it and politicians who fail to grasp the gravity of the situation. Hmmm… sounds so familiar, but this is not about the Corona virus but the 1971 movie “The Andromeda Strain”.

Based on a novel by Michael Crichton (whom we all know from “Jurassic Park”) this is about a satellite bringing back something mysterious from space that kills of an entire village literally in their tracks except for an old drunk and an infant. Dr. Stone (Arthur Hill) has established a secret underground government laboratory called Wildfire to work as an ultra-high security laboratory and now it is coming into use for the investigation of this mysterious passenger on the satellite. Experts Dr. Hall (James Olson), Dr. Dutton (David Wayne) and Dr. Leavitt (Kate Reid) are called in, initiated to the lab and set to work on the project. Meanwhile on the outside the politicians a stalling on what to do and the military are failing to take it seriously.

The core of this movie is the investigation of the organism from space, the Andromeda Strain. To some this may sound boring, but to an old scientist (sort of) like me this is heaven. There are tons of police procedure movies around but precious few scientific procedure movies. Usually the scientific process is handled in a montage and voila, problem solved, or it is dealt with so ridiculously it is an insult to call it science. In this case however the producers took it very seriously and involved the scientific community and actually listened. Everything they do in “The Andromeda Strain makes sense. Even the high security facility is logical and my guess is it is not so far off modern top security laboratories.

In fact, the art direction is outstanding. The computer graphics are very impressive for 1971 and the set design is very futuristic. Apparently, they got the people from “2001: A Space Odyssey” to work on this movie and it shows. “The Andromeda Strain” was nominated for Best Art Direction.

The only thing that worked less realistically was the time frame involved. I should think such investigations would take just a bit longer. Also the dramatic plot itself suffers. In the frenzy of getting the science right the screenplay writers seemed to have forgotten that this is a movie and as such need a dramatic climax. What they did come up with comes very late and feels almost pasted on and the resolution is something that happened literally while the hero slept. That part was a bit underwhelming and I cannot say if the movie managed to justify all the precautions made or ridiculed them. For all the scientific and security rigor it was mundane errors and human interaction which both caused the problems and solved them

The current Corona crisis makes a movie like “The Andromeda Strain” both interesting and relevant. When we do not know what we are facing we have to be careful and we only get the right answers by considering it scientifically. COVID-19 may not be as deadly as the Andromeda Strain, but it is loose out there and it has changed everybody’s life.

For all its flaws “The Andromeda Strain” is my kind of movie and for nerds like me highly recommended.

The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitie) (1971)

Nabohuset

The Sorrow and the Pity (La Chagrin et la Pitié) is a documentary by Marcel Ophüls about the Second  World War in France. It is a massive, two-part, four hour long story about people in France, particularly in and around the city of Clermont-Ferrand and their experiences during the war.

There is very little historical context in this documentary, if you are not fairly familiar with the larger historical picture it is very easy to get lost in the movie. Instead Ophüls mixes authentic clips from the forties with present (early seventies) interviews with people who were there.

These people range from politicians to farmers, resistance fighters and former fascists, even former German soldiers and British politicians and airmen.

This is not about specific event during the war, but more about what people thought at the time, why they did what they did and their explanations for why they did it. Lots of excuses, incriminations, explanations, lies and common sense in the mix.

In 1940 France was attacked by Germany and whereas WWI led to a four-year long stalemate, France was defeated in a swift campaign. Why? How? And what did that defeat do to the French and their self-understanding? Turns out a large part of the higher echelon in the military actually welcomed the German regime, preferring it to the leftist bickering in France. Or is that just an excuse? Germany went on to occupy the northern part of France, including Paris, while the southern part was run by a French puppet government led by Laval and the hero of WWI Marshal Pétain, now an old man. Was this treason? How did supporters of this excuse this?

In this environment a partisan resistance slowly grew up fighting the Germans and the collaborators and eventually Germany took over the entire country. Who were these people, fighting the Germans and what about the Germans fighting the Resistance?

Finally, there was the liberation and the mayhem that led to, revenge on all the traitors, or simply an excuse to settle scores?

The strength of this documentary is that it is simply about people. There is a face to everybody, it is very personal, and it is mostly about the narratives that these people have constructed for themselves. It is difficult to say that these people are delusional, it is merely human nature to place yourself in a context where you can live with yourself and it is in that light this documentary becomes very interesting. It is simply fascinating to get all these first-hand accounts on a period that was so traumatic and because of this personal element it also becomes interesting for non-French viewers.

Marcel Ophüls himself has an interesting story, being actually a German Jew who fled to France in the thirties with his family and then, after the French defeat, fled again through Spain to America. Later in the fifties Ophüls went back to France and became a highly skilled documentarist. If the name sounds familiar then it is probably because of his father, Max Ophüls, a famous movie director who did several films on the List, such as “Letter from an Unknown Woman” and “Madame de…”.

In its day “The Sorrow and the Pity” became a great success, largely because it was considered controversial. Apparently, it was questioning the official, heroic narrative. But I think its lasting power is not due to controversy but because of all these personal contributions. This is simply interesting to watch and listen to.

Highly recommended.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

 

A Clockwork Orange

Like so many other people I grew up knowing about the reputation of “A Clockwork Orange” as a deeply subversive and somewhat illegal movie. One that you should be careful watching. Then in the mid-nineties I got the opportunity to attend a screening of it… and was sort of disappointed.

Few movies can live up to a special reputation and in my mind I had expected something far more revolutionary.

I do not recall watching it since so it felt like a new movie to me now that I had to re-watch it. I only really remembered the rape scene and as it turned out not very well. Frankly, I dreaded watching it again, mostly because I feared it would be boring, but either my expectation level has been properly adjusted or I have simply matured. This time round was a far more interesting experience.

“A Clockwork Orange” is still a dystopic and pessimistic movie and certainly not one to leave you happy. In fact, it is difficult not to sit back with a bad taste in the mouth, but there is also something fascinating about watching a topic as ruthlessly explored as Stanley Kubrick did with this movie.

One of the interesting things about Stanley Kubrick is that he never makes the same movie twice. In that sense he is the antithesis of Hitchcock. A second thing is that he always dives 100% into his movies, making each of them have layers of depth. In “A Clockwork Orange” Kubrick has created an at once very familiar but also very alien environment and let his theme of nihilistic violence run amok in it.

Alex (Malcolm McDowell) is the leader of his gang of four, his droogs. The gang spends its time seeking thrills by stealing cars and beating people up. They are dressed up in white pajamas and bowler hat and speak an odd mix of Cockney English and Russian. The remarkable thing about them is how casually they exact violence on other people. They are completely lacking empathy when they break in, beat up and rape innocent people and this lack of empathy is more shocking than the actual acts of violence. Alex is clearly intelligent, more intelligent than his droogs and his parents, but this complete lack of empathy makes him look… handicapped enough to seem vulnerable.

When Alex is caught for murder and imprisoned the movie shifts. Up to this point it is Alex who had been casual about violence. Now it is everybody else. We learn that violence is everywhere. In the police, from politicians, even his parents lack empathy not to mention his former victims. A major act of violence is when Alex is subjected to a treatment to take violence out of him. While it may sound like a good idea, he is effectively lobotomized and the procedure is extremely invasive, taking away his free will and creating the eponymous clockwork orange.

While the first part builds up the sentiment that Alex need to be stopped and punished, I certainly felt some righteous anger, if anybody deserved what was coming to him it was Alex, the second part invalidates this punishment because how does a violent society have any right to punish violence?  If lack of empathy is met with lack of empathy, how can we condemn the first?

There is enough to think of in “A Clockwork Orange”, if is fascinating stuff that messes with your brain, but it is also ugly to watch. The acts of violence are terrible, and the black humor thrown in just makes it feel even worse. When Alex sings Singin’ in the Rain while raping a woman, it shows how much he is enjoying it and how little he feels with his victims. That is tough to watch.

I have yet to meet a Kubrick movie that did not impress me, but at least here I have one I did not like. It is impressive as hell, though.

 

Vanishing Point (1971)

Off-List: Vanishing Point

After a lackluster start on 1971 it is time for the first of my three off-List movies.

When I did some research on the year, I found that all the movies I really wanted to watch were already on the List. That opens the door for movies that merely sounds interesting with the risk of course that it is utter junk. “Vanishing Point” was such an obscure movie with an interesting premise that caught my attention. Fortunately, as it turned out, it did deliver.

Road racing movies were popular in the seventies and into the early eighties. In these movies people were driving very fast on the highways and the highway patrols were the enemies. Exactly where this started, I do not know but I would not be surprised if “Vanishing Point” was one of the first movies in this genre. It certainly sticks to many of the themes of this genre.

Kowalski (Barry Newman) must deliver a car from Denver to San Francisco. For reasons not elaborated on Kowalski wants to deliver the car much earlier than required, forcing him to drive very fast and practically non-stop. The police soon want to pull him over and when he refuses the hunt starts. Soon Kowalski is the freedom loving cowboy insisting on his right to drive fast, promoted by a radio host Super Soul (Cleavon Little) who is very well informed (tapping into the police radio frequency).

Early in the movie I was wondering if this was really the story and frankly “Vanishing Point” lost a few points right there. It is to me a weird idea that driving very fast on the highway is a right or an applaudable expression of freedom. There are enough assholes risking other peoples lives by their insane driving.

As the movie progressed however, I realized that there were layers beneath this superficial story. From the talk of the police people it will appear that Kowalski actually has not broken any laws, not even that of speeding. I had no idea there was no speeding limit on these roads back then, but there your go. Kowalski’s offense is that he refuses to respect the authority of the highway patrols and that pisses them off. Now it is no longer the right to drive fast, but a rebellion against the authorities, and that fits a lot better to the hero picture painted by Super Soul, himself a minority in what appears to be a very white and conservative Western setting. Kowalski also meets a number of anti-authoritarian people on his way, hermits, religious groups, other racers, who are sympathetic to him.

But it goes deeper still. En route we get a number of flashbacks that help tell the backstory of Kowalski, though none of them are conclusive. We learn that he came back from the Vietnam War with distinction and was a police officer. From there he was dishonorably discharged, though we learn that as a police officer he was opposed to other police officers abusing their power. Something that resonates with the world of today. Kowalski’s girlfriend or wife died in a surfing accident and in the years since Kowalski has been a racecar driver. Not the best but completely fearless.

This is not spelled out, and that I love about those flashbacks, but it seems to me since losing wife and job Kowalski has not cared about his life but rather challenged death, pushing the envelope in the hope of some redemption. This fits with the ending, which otherwise may be quite shocking. Kowalski is not a cowboy fighting the authorities, he is a man with a death-wish looking for that vanishing point where it all ends.

I did not see it coming, but this is a far more interesting and complex movie than it appears to be and one I am happy to have picked. It is also a far more worthy entry to the List than what I have watched so far.