Patton (1970)

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Writers:  Francis Ford Coppola, Edmund H. North, Ladislas Farago, Omar Bradley
Cast:       George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Stephen Young

The film charts the career of controversial American General, George S. Patton. It begins with his operations in North Africa and then proceeds to his landings in Italy and subsequent march to Palermo and Messina where he is shown to be in a egotistical race with British General Montgomery to be the first to reach Messina. He gets chided for his actions and loose tongue there and gets sidelined for sometime. He later has his career high moment after Normandy Landings when he marches his 3rd Army through tough winter weather to hold Bastogne.  After the war he is again sidelined due to his lack of diplomatic skills.

Film is basically a character study on its titular character Patton. He is portrayed as someone who loves war and thinks he is destined to achieve great things during it. He is highly knowledgeable about history and claims that he had been involved in historic battles like Carthaginians war and Neapolitan wars. We can see his colleagues listening uncomfortably to these proclamations. He sees battle fatigue as cowardice which doesn't sit well now but was a common thing for Generals to do back then. Film actually did good for Patton's reputation but I came out of it with ambivalence. Sure, you need bastards like that to win these kind of wars, but in the large scheme of things whatever that happened in Western Front during second world war was child's play compared to what happened in Eastern Front. The whole European landings and the race to Berlin by US and UK was more of an exercise to get as much leverage during their negotiations with Russians and this part of war also featured a huge number of causalities because of this race aspect. Behavior by Patton and Montgomery seems very childish and was as dignified as someone who is trying to beat someone on who gets more during a riot loot. Bastogne was my favorite Band of Brothers episode and so that part of the film was very interesting.

Overall the film is a great watch and is done in an ambiguous way so that you can judge Patton favorably or unfavorably depending on your own biases. I had just about finished Dan Carlin's 24 hours long podcast series on first world war (Blueprint for Armageddon) and I guess I was predisposed to think of Patton as a dickwad. Performance by Geroge C. Scott, whose most memorable other role is the one he did in Dr. Strangelove, is excellent and the production quality of the film is very high. It is close to three hours long but you don't feel the length. It is not a traditional war film with a set-piece battle at the end and doesn't bother to make you understand how World War played out at a macro level in an elaborate fashion. That is fine because when Hollywood does that they invariably tend to portray as if US won the war.

Rating: 4/5

                                                                         

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Director: Bob Rafelson
Writers:  Carole Eastman, Bob Rafelson
Cast:       Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Susuan Anspach

A drop-out from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil-rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels and other points of interest. We are shown that he is in a relationship with a waitress who is highly insecure about her significance in the relationship. He is shown to be very impulsive and mean-mouthed but gradually we learn that he was born into a very rich family with sophisticated tastes and he had walked out of these privileges. 

Film is a character study on the protagonist role played by Jack Nicholson, with his typical bordering on psychosis performance, and he totally owns the part. It will be fair to say that the film is unlike any other films I have seen. Actions by Bob comes as no surprise to us, especially the last scene of the film. It is not a character that I can relate with in terms of his thinking but you can understand him when he explains it during that famous conversation scene he has with his paralyzed dad-

Bobby: [finally talking with his paralyzed father] I don't know if you'd be particularly interested in hearing anything about me. My life, I mean... Most of it doesn't add up to much that I could relate as a way of life that you'd approve of... I'd like to be able to tell you why, but I don't really... I mean, I move around a lot because things tend to get bad when I stay. And I'm looking... for auspicious beginnings, I guess... I'm trying to, you know, imagine your half of this conversation... My feeling is, that if you could talk, we probably wouldn't be talking. That's pretty much how it got to be before... I left... Are you all right? I don't know what to say... Tita suggested that we try to... I don't know. I think that she... seems to feel we've got... some understanding to reach... She totally denies the fact that we were never that comfortable with each other to begin with... The best that I can do, is apologize. We both know that I was never really that good at it, anyway...

[sobbing]

The title of the film refers to the name of a Piano book for beginners. There is no better person to play a role like this and one could even say Jack Nicholson got himself typecast by playing too many of these sort of roles. This film was quite significant as a breakout performance for Jack Nicholson  but he displayed more range playing his role in 'Easy Rider' which came before this. Performance by Karen Black is also excellent as the easily pushed around partner. The only other film I have seen from the director is his remake of 'Postman Always Ring Twice, also featuring Jack Nicholson, and it was just about decent at best.

Rating: 4/5

                                                                             

Le Genou de Claire (Claire's Knee) (1970)

Director: Eric Rohmer
Writer:    Eric Rohmer
Cast:       Jean-Claude Brialy, Aurora Cornu, Beatrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan
Language:French

On a holiday, a conflicted man lusts after beautiful stepsisters despite his betrothal to a diplomat's daughter. As the testimonial in the film's attached poster says, any attempt to explain the film with words will just diminish it just like the previous sentence did.

Jerome is spending his last holidays as a bachelor at Lake Annecy where he meets Aurora, an Italian writer and old friend. She tells him that her landlady's youngest daughter, Laura, has a crush on him and talks him into flirting him with her just to prove that he is interesting enough to be a subject for her in her writings. He claims that he is doing it just for her like a guinea pig but eventually falls for Laura's half-sister Claire and develops a desire to caress her knee. All this to give his writer-friend some interesting ideas and source material. All this is interspersed with chatter on love, friendship, importance of friendship in love, which comes first or should there be an order, analysis of feelings etc. 

Eric Rohmer is not for everyone but if you like Richard Linklater's 'Before Trilogy' then this should be right up your alley. Unlike Linklater films, there is at the same time a rawness as well as artificiality in some of the dialog which might sound contradictory. It had to do with the writer character but after I saw the film I came to know that she is supposed to be Italian which explains her French accent and the slow way in which she delivers it. Jerome might very well be using her as an excuse to push the boundaries. Film has got lots of subtle humor which can be contrasted with Kubrick's Lolita which is another one that dealt with similar kind of relationship at least in terms of age difference. I can't see a film like Claire's Knee coming out these days since it treads a fine line between teenage crush and pedophilia and this ambiguity will attract criticism if it was released now. The conversations between the writer and Jerome reminded me of Lars Von Trier's 'Nymphomaniac' even though the subjects are very different.   

Film is fifth one in Rohmer's 'Six Moral Stories' series. The only other film I have seen from Rohmer so far is 'A Summer's Tale' and I thought that was great as well but is more ambiguous. One thing I have noticed in the film is Rohmer lingering the camera on the character who is listening with a delayed attention on one who is talking. I intend to watch his other major works. He was a prolific director and made his last film in 2007 at an age of 87. He died in 2010 at the age of 90.

Rating: 5/5

Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Writer:    Jean-Pierre Melville
Cast:       Alain Delon, Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonte
Language: French

After leaving prison, master thief Corey(Alain Delon) crosses pass with a notorious escapee (Volonte) and an alcoholic former Policeman who is also an expert marksman. The trio proceed to plot an elaborate heist even as the Commissioner of Police is making plans to catch the escapee.

The film starts with the following: 

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: "When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle."

It really didn't look like something Buddha would say and that turned out to be true since Melville made the whole thing up, like he did in his masterpiece-'Le Samourai'.  He just made that up to give some philosophical underpinning to the things that happen in the film even though it makes no fucking sense. The three men in question as per the quote are the Commissioner of Police, Corey and the escapee. They inadvertently cross path with each other in the beginning parts of the film and by a matter of chance do the same at its climax sequence. No elaborate back story is given to any of the main characters and there is no justifying reasons given to commit the heist. Still we root for the criminals and are saddened by the end, when it goes tits up during the fence portion of the heist. The moralizing tone of older films is something that I always have gripe with and in this film it kind of inverts it by making us feel saddened by their fate even though they are for whom we should ideally have no sympathy. This is achieved with minimal dialog between the criminals but one has to say their behavior towards each other is noble and mannerisms minimalistically stylish, which is in contrast with the Commissioner.

The film is very self-aware and at many points it has got characters thinking out loud for the audience (Corey and the marksman discussing about the bullet the latter used to disable the alarm system, for eg). Film's highlight would of course be the twenty five minutes heist scene without any words spoken. This will of course get compared to the French classic heist procedural from the 50s-'Rififi' which also featured a 32 minute heist sequence without dialog or music. Melville had conceived the idea to make a heist film in the 50s but delayed it due to the success of 'Asphalt Jungle' and 'Rififi'. In Rififi, it was the human mistrust that leads to their downfall which is often the case in film noir. That cliched aspect is also conspicuous by its absence in Melville's film. Michael Mann's 'Thief' is another one which I loved and in that film also it was during the 'Fence' portion of the heist that things go awry. 

To sum up, it is a slow burning heist procedural with a running time of close to 140 minutes. If you are a fan of heist films or procedurals or of Melville, it is a must watch. I didn't like very much Melville's 'Army of Shadows' when I watched it for the first time. Would like to check it out again since the slow burn aspect with minimal dialog of Melville films is something that I have got familiarized by now.

Rating: 4.5/5