50 Years On: 1971, a Year of Great Films

[Stavros]

1971 was one of the best years in film, and 50 years I nominate the following as the best of that year that can still be watched with all the admiration they deserve, and I expect others will fill in the obvious gaps of the movies I don't like (eg, A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs)) and I hope remind me of those I have forgotten.

In No Order re Quaity but by Nationality

1) The French Connection (USA/William Friedkin)
2) Dirty Harry (USA/Don Siegel)
3) Play Misty for Me (USA/Clint Eastwood)
4) Klute (USA/Alan Pakula)
5) The Last Picture Show (USA/Peter Bogdanovich)
6) Get Carter (UK/Mike Hodges)
7) The Devils (UK/Ken Russell)
8 ) Walkabout (UK/Australia/Nicolas Roeg)
9) Il Conformista (Italy/Bernardo Bertolucci)
10) Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (France/Robert Bresson)

[antfagasta]

I agree.
I want to add also:

Clockwork Orange (UK/Stanley Kubrick)
Four Flies on Grey Velvets (Italy/Dario Argento)

[filghy2]

Some others:
McCabe and Mrs Miller (USA/Robert Altman)
Harold and Maude (USA/Hal Ashby)
Murmur of the Heart (France, Louis Malle)

[Stavros]

I agree.
I want to add also:

Clockwork Orange (UK/Stanley Kubrick)
Four Flies on Grey Velvets (Italy/Dario Argento)

No, and No. Even Suspiria now looks dated, and Orange is just offensive.

[Stavros]

Some others:
McCabe and Mrs Miller (USA/Robert Altman)
Harold and Maude (USA/Hal Ashby)
Murmur of the Heart (France, Louis Malle)


No, No, and No.
Malle has a patchy filmography, but the rarely seen series On India made for tv, L'Inde fantôme (1969) is worth seeing, the controversial, Pretty Baby (1978 ) may not be seen in public as I think it is banned in most countries but can be bought on DVD. His best film was Lacombe Lucien (1974). Le souffle au coeur suggests Malle had an interest in sexual issues that are not usually explored. I find it embarrassing to watch.

[Lovecox]

Carnal Knowledge
The Devils
Polanski's Macbeth

[antfagasta]

No, and No. Even Suspiria now looks dated, and Orange is just offensive.

Orange Clockwork just offensive.. Why?

[morim]

"The In-Laws" 1979 Arthur Hiller
The greatest film of all times

[Fitzcarraldo]

Interesting strategy to ask people to name great movies and then tell them they're wrong when they try to participate in the topic.

[broncofan]

Interesting strategy to ask people to name great movies and then tell them they're wrong when they try to participate in the topic.
Wrong! You get one more chance.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Wrong! You get one more chance.

https://media.giphy.com/media/dKJyOhxvZwBfq/giphy.gif

[Stavros]

Interesting strategy to ask people to name great movies and then tell them they're wrong when they try to participate in the topic.


I haven't said they are wrong, the 'No' merely means I don't agree with their choice, just as my list rather obviously does not include films I don't rate. It is a matter of choice, not fact and anyway you should know by now that I can be provocative in this way. And I am sure you enjoy the banter as much as I do.

[Stavros]

Orange Clockwork just offensive.. Why?


A violent man is sent to prison where the State uses violence to cure him of the violence his victims inflict on him when he is released. So what is the point if we never change? There is no point, all change is not change, and any attempt to change the way we are is doomed to fail. Don't be fooled by the technical brilliance of Kubrick movies, at their core, they are a cynical dismissal of humanity, void of any recognition that people actually like each other and have co-operated to iimprove our lives, whether it is in regard to public heath, housing, transport, education -all those boring things Kubrick chose to ignore. A Clockwork Orange, and 2001:A Space Odyssey are the perfect expressions of Kubrick's nihilism, and an offence to the historical record.

[broncofan]

Don't be fooled by the technical brilliance of Kubrick movies, at their core, they are a cynical dismissal of humanity, void of any recognition that people actually like each other and have co-operated to iimprove our lives, whether it is in regard to public heath, housing, transport, education -all those boring things Kubrick chose to ignore.
I'm at a loss because I didn't actually like A Clockwork Orange, but I wonder if your knowledge of who a director is interferes with your ability to enjoy movies where the themes of despair or futility may feel appropriate. For instance, on the subject of nuclear war, mankind has tried to buffer itself against the use of deadly weapons by designing elaborate fail-safes to deter by the threat of mutual destruction. What can one say that is optimistic? That we're not yet glowing?

Dr. Strangelove was less a commentary about humanity and more a commentary about the dangers of weapons controlled by few but devastating to everyone. It used satire to make the point but it played well as satire because it showed the limits of razor sharp intelligence (and plenty of stupidity as well) when it is used in the service of complicated, game theoretic strategies that impact whether we survive as a species. Lots of brainpower in the service of diabolical stupidity. That made it an enjoyable satire I thought.

So Kubrick tended to be negative and it could be out of place or inappropriate. I thought it worked in Dr. Strangelove and in Paths of Glory though it's been years since I've seen the latter.

[Stavros]

Fine if you like Dr Strangelove, I don't. In part it is because the film is undermined by ham-in-chief Peter Sellers, but mostly because it is not so much satirical as cynical. As for the real world, a member of Her Majesty's Armed Forces once explained to me how it is now possible to use tactical nuclear weapons in order to, in his words 'take out a target'. He assured me the extent of the nuclear fall-out would not be great, as the nuclear load is much smaller than the H-Bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. This was a man who had seen active service in the Dhofar rebellion in Oman in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for all I know, he would have approved of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, indeed it is the fear I have that Trump wants to use them. So we have moved on from the one-bomb-kills-all scenario of Dr Strangelove, and in this real world, nuclear weapons are just a button push away from being used.

Paths of Glory is a very fine film, I can watch it numerous times. But at the end, and after the implication by Broulard that Mireau, responsible for the misery of the Ant-Hill wiill be investigated, there is no just resolution: Kirk Douglas is sent to the Cafe to tell the men that the next day, the war resumes, and it is their turn to go 'over the top' for some, to certain death. And so it goes on, day after day, and nothing can be done to stop it. The peace movement that emerged in the aftermath of the 'War to end all wars' led to the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, yet within ten years of that, Europe was plunged into an even more destructive war. EH Carr's The Twenty Years Crisis (1939) pours a bucket of cold water on 20th century idealism, just as Kubrick would have laughed his head off, or just wagged his finger and say 'I told you so'.

[Fitzcarraldo]

He assured me the extent of the nuclear fall-out would not be great, as the nuclear load is much smaller than the H-Bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

No. H-bombs didn't exist then. An atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), not a hydrogen bomb.

[antfagasta]

A violent man is sent to prison where the State uses violence to cure him of the violence his victims inflict on him when he is released. So what is the point if we never change? There is no point, all change is not change, and any attempt to change the way we are is doomed to fail. Don't be fooled by the technical brilliance of Kubrick movies, at their core, they are a cynical dismissal of humanity, void of any recognition that people actually like each other and have co-operated to iimprove our lives, whether it is in regard to public heath, housing, transport, education -all those boring things Kubrick chose to ignore. A Clockwork Orange, and 2001:A Space Odyssey are the perfect expressions of Kubrick's nihilism, and an offence to the historical record.

Yours is an interesting point of view. But it is precisely what you say that is the strength of the film.
Kubrik makes all the scenes surreal, and he enjoys altering the linear logic of the spectators, disorienting them to the point that at a certain moment in the film he almost cheers for Alex because it seems that the people around him are even more horrible than him. Society gives birth to a monster that when it loses its violent instinct becomes society's victim and potential suicide. The particular shots, the photography, the classical and sometimes cheerful music mixed with sequences of violence, the jokes of the actors, the "stylized" violence and the surreal atmosphere are "new" aspects that harness our logical way of thinking. This is a great movie.

[filghy2]

A violent man is sent to prison where the State uses violence to cure him of the violence his victims inflict on him when he is released. So what is the point if we never change? There is no point, all change is not change, and any attempt to change the way we are is doomed to fail. Don't be fooled by the technical brilliance of Kubrick movies, at their core, they are a cynical dismissal of humanity, void of any recognition that people actually like each other and have co-operated to iimprove our lives, whether it is in regard to public heath, housing, transport, education -all those boring things Kubrick chose to ignore. A Clockwork Orange, and 2001:A Space Odyssey are the perfect expressions of Kubrick's nihilism, and an offence to the historical record.

A typical Stavros overstatement - you really have a fondness for overly black and white judgements. Your primary objection to Kubrick seems to be the lack of positive messages in his work. But life is often bleak and/or meaningless and lacking positive endings. Surely it's a valid artistic choice to portray these things. Surely disturbing subject matter does not preclude a film from being great.

I'm also wondering how some of the films you nominated fit in with the criteria you are applying to Kubrick. What has the positive message in The Conformist - that being molested as child turns you into a fascist with strange fixations? What was the positive message in Dirty Harry - the system lets dangerous criminals off so people should take the law into their own hands? The French Connection also had a bleak ending.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Vanishing Point (USA/Richard C. Sarafian)

https://images.amcnetworks.com/ifccenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/vanishing-point_1280x720.jpg

[Fitzcarraldo]

Two Lane Blacktop (USA/Monte Hellman)

https://www.streetmusclemag.com/image/2016/04/2016-04-15_03-00-25.jpg

[Stavros]

Yours is an interesting point of view. But it is precisely what you say that is the strength of the film.
Kubrik makes all the scenes surreal, and he enjoys altering the linear logic of the spectators, disorienting them to the point that at a certain moment in the film he almost cheers for Alex because it seems that the people around him are even more horrible than him. Society gives birth to a monster that when it loses its violent instinct becomes society's victim and potential suicide. The particular shots, the photography, the classical and sometimes cheerful music mixed with sequences of violence, the jokes of the actors, the "stylized" violence and the surreal atmosphere are "new" aspects that harness our logical way of thinking. This is a great movie.


You make valid points because as I have said, Kubrick's films are technically brilliant, it may even be the case that the technology of making films sometimes interested him more than he film itself. In the specific case of A Clockword Orange, people when it was released were not sure what the purpose was of playing classical tunes when people were being raped or beaten up, but it does to some extent fit in with filghy2's point about the cruelty of real life, and one can argue that it is not so far from an Auschwitz Commandant overseeing the deaths of Jews by day, and going home to listen to Schubert after dinner. It is your choice if this fits with a view of the world you understand, as I do- I don't like it though, and it is the cynicism on the film that I reject.

[Stavros]

A typical Stavros overstatement - you really have a fondness for overly black and white judgements. Your primary objection to Kubrick seems to be the lack of positive messages in his work. But life is often bleak and/or meaningless and lacking positive endings. Surely it's a valid artistic choice to portray these things. Surely disturbing subject matter does not preclude a film from being great.

I'm also wondering how some of the films you nominated fit in with the criteria you are applying to Kubrick. What has the positive message in The Conformist - that being molested as child turns you into a fascist with strange fixations? What was the positive message in Dirty Harry - the system lets dangerous criminals off so people should take the law into their own hands? The French Connection also had a bleak ending.


Intent, is the key. Dirty Harry is a great film because it tells a story well, and is politically provocative. I ought not to like the film because of its Rogue Cop and the attack on the Miranda ruling that shapes the film -but it is because it does provoke questions about it that the film remains so compelling. Of course, by using Scorpio as the example, Siegel chose a particularly nasty man whose lawlessness and violence appears to beg the question, why should he have rights under the law which, if not observed to the letter, let him go free to commit more crimes? But that is precisely what Miranda was about, not to let criminals off the hook, but to make the legal relationship between law enforcement and the accused balanced and rigorous in the application of the law, the sad irony being that few of the America citizens shot dead in recent years ever reached the point where their Miranda rights were read to them -with a result far more negative in real life than the death of Scorpio. By the end of the film, Callaghan has ceased to be a policemen and more the Avenging Angel -the moment when we see him standing on the wall outside the mine waiting for Scorpio to arrive is one of the most arresting images in cinema history, it is that good. And the fact that the debate on the politics endures is also testament to its power.

Another Rogue Cop, 'Popeye' Doyle bends the rules to obtain information, but in this case it is the appearance of reality that distinguishes The French Connection from Kubrick -in real life, the men at the top of the drug trafficking business have tended to get away with it while the 'Mules' end up in prison, but if this was a depiction of how smart the top guys can be, it does not have the cynicism that I find in Kubrick's films, which is a deliberate cultural mark rather than a natural part of life as we know it. Kubrick is not interested in real life situations, but those manufactured by him to eliminate all hope for humankind.

As for The Conformist, if we set aside the supern visualization that was a characteristic feature of Bertolucci's early work (sadly he made few films worth watching after The Conformist, and it is a pity The Spider's Stratagem is not available on DVD), the film is primarily about how a man decides to survive in Fascist Italy by 'conforming' to its political programme even though he doesn't agree with it, a form of what Sartre called 'Bad Faith'. In its broader form, it is Bertolucci asking how the Fascists in Italy lasted so long, with the grim answer, 'because so many people supported it', which was not something Italians wanted to know in the 1970s. The sexual component is there to suggest that repression and perversion may be part of the 'fascist personality' but I am not sure it is that important though it does give the film an additional layer of meaning to the drama. I would rather watch The Conformist than any of Kubrick's films.

[broncofan]

Stavros, I'm not sure who you spoke to about nuclear weapons or when but I don't think the potential use of "tactical nuclear weapons" made the cold war nuclear standoffs any less of an existential threat. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had developed second strike capabilities to ensure they could deter an attack that would annihilate them by being able to launch a retaliatory strike using either strategic bombers, submarine launched ballistic missiles, or icbms.

The automation of responses and ways of ensuring second strike in the case that command were decapitated was probably overstated for purpose of satire in Strangelove but these were all strategies that had been considered by the Soviets and the U.S.

I also don't mind you didn't enjoy it or found it cynical. I think you're wrong if you've convinced yourself the threat to humanity was mostly overblown. It's just you can never prove the extent of an apocalyptic threat because when it occurs you aren't here to write a film review;.

I think liking Dirty Harry more than Dr. Strangelove has to be a cautionary tale against over-intellectualizing the film watching experience.

One last question: I know this is a 1971 movie thread but we've discussed Kubrick's oeuvre. What did you think of the movie The Killing? I enjoyed it as a heist movie though Kubrick being Kubrick it doesn't have a happy ending.

[Fitzcarraldo]

One last question: I know this is a 1971 movie thread but we've discussed Kubrick's oeuvre. What did you think of the movie The Killing? I enjoyed it as a heist movie though Kubrick being Kubrick it doesn't have a happy ending.

What's the difference? ;)

[filghy2]

Intent, is the key. Dirty Harry is a great film because it tells a story well, and is politically provocative.

Kubrick is not interested in real life situations, but those manufactured by him to eliminate all hope for humankind.

Films are works of imaginations, not political manifestos. Why does a work of imagination need to be realistic and have some social/political purpose? Dr Strangelove is not responsible for the continued threat of nuclear weapons. Paths of Glory is not responsible for continued wars. There have been many well-meaning films on both subjects and none has made any difference.

[Stavros]

Stavros, I'm not sure who you spoke to about nuclear weapons or when but I don't think the potential use of "tactical nuclear weapons" made the cold war nuclear standoffs any less of an existential threat. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had developed second strike capabilities to ensure they could deter an attack that would annihilate them by being able to launch a retaliatory strike using either strategic bombers, submarine launched ballistic missiles, or icbms.

The automation of responses and ways of ensuring second strike in the case that command were decapitated was probably overstated for purpose of satire in Strangelove but these were all strategies that had been considered by the Soviets and the U.S.

I also don't mind you didn't enjoy it or found it cynical. I think you're wrong if you've convinced yourself the threat to humanity was mostly overblown. It's just you can never prove the extent of an apocalyptic threat because when it occurs you aren't here to write a film review;.

I think liking Dirty Harry more than Dr. Strangelove has to be a cautionary tale against over-intellectualizing the film watching experience.

One last question: I know this is a 1971 movie thread but we've discussed Kubrick's oeuvre. What did you think of the movie The Killing? I enjoyed it as a heist movie though Kubrick being Kubrick it doesn't have a happy ending.


The point is not that the world doesn't face annihilation from nucear war as suggested in Dr Strangelove, that threat is still real. Rather, I was making the point that military strategy has moved on since the film, and we should probably now be as, or more concerned with the potential use of 'tactica' nuclear weapons.

The Killing is ok as a film, stock Film Noir villains and molls. Something you might watch in the early hours when nothing else is on tv.

[Stavros]

Films are works of imaginations, not political manifestos. Why does a work of imagination need to be realistic and have some social/political purpose? Dr Strangelove is not responsible for the continued threat of nuclear weapons. Paths of Glory is not responsible for continued wars. There have been many well-meaning films on both subjects and none has made any difference.


A surpising comment, because so many films are made with political intent, Birth of a Nation being one of the most notorious, along with Gone with the Wind -and To Kill a Mockingbird. Dirty Harry doesn't refer to the Miranda ruling by accident or as an incidental issue, it is the key plot device in the film, just as the defence of private property is fundamental to so many Westerns, and in some, White People's property -it is hardly incidental to the films that the bad guys are Commanche or Apache or any other 'Injun tribe' you care to mention. The sharp point of issue in John Ford's The Searchers is precisely the way in which 'Race' has shaped American society, for just as it has a visual briliance you can find in Dirty Harry, the politics is deeply controversial, as is the case with a lot of Ford's work.

For the record Kubrick is one of those directors who provoke me, perhaps because of his (inflated) reputation, but also because I can't deny his films often look so good. Another is Jean-Luc Godard, who now has a special issue of Sight and Sound as he was 90 last December but I am not sure you want to know what I think of this ridiculous, pompous Franco-Swiss prick.

[filghy2]

A surpising comment, because so many films are made with political intent

You haven't answered my question - why does a film need to have some social or political purpose to be considered great? More examples of films with some political intent is not logically an answer.

[Stavros]

You haven't answered my question - why does a film need to have some social or political purpose to be considered great? More examples of films with some political intent is not logically an answer.

My apologies, you are right to ask the question. To which the answer is that a film's value need not be determined by its politics, it just happens that in 1971 I think the best films that year had those qualities. There are some hugely enjoyable films that one can watch again and again that have no real politics in them -Ghost (1990) is not just a great film but is Whoopi Goldberg at her best. Kevin Spacey may now be sidelined, but The Usual Suspects is always worth watching, as are the Spielberg classics like Close Encounters and Jaws. Films about families and family life can also be classed among the very best fims ever made, think of Ozu, easily one of the finest film directors of all time. I suppose I do get carried away at times. I love films, simple really, but react badly to charlatans like Godard and Kubrick.

[Fitzcarraldo]

[i]2001[/1] could have been a lot worse if this single had been released:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF_pEIsFOI4

[Stavros]

[i]2001[/1] could have been a lot worse if this single had been released:


Atonishing! I had no idea it had been written, and at Kubrick's request, but not surprised it was not used. In addition to his skill with the technology of film-making, Kubrick had an excellent ear for music and often chose wisely, most noticeably in his best film, Barry Lyndon.

[Rcrxjlb]

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[Rcrxjlb]

1294499

[sd123223]

Duel
Wake In Fright (Australian Movie)