THE MICHIGAN DAILY Saturday, January 10, 1970 TH IHGNDIL audy anay1,17 cinema I 4 glance at By NEAL GABLER Recently a friend asked me if ever panned a film. "You eem to like them all." Mad- roman of Chaillot to the con- rary, e. is almost right; I love he mediun of film so much hat I do occasionally confuse tim content with the medium f film itself. So before I launch nto a discussion of cinema- 969; I think I owe the reader n explanation of just how I ,pproach -a film. First of all 1 fully realize that ot all films are masterpieces. 3ut unlike many reviewers I al- o realize that few films aspire o be ,Citizen Kane-1969. When n awful movie has such pre- ensions Ifeelobliged to shoot t down; there is nothing worse han an insignificant little film rying to pass itself off as im- ortant Yet, there are very few de- ,ded chaps who lay down their 2.00 and expect to see The 3reat American Film every time whey enter a movie house. Most people still go to the theater to scape from society's pressures nd live in. the fantasy world up here Qn the big screen or mere- y to be entertained or even, to eck. I& a film's intention is to ntertain, and it succeeds, who ares if it educates us or stirs ur emotions? Thus, when I ive both Buth Cassidy and Easy alder good reviews I do not :nean to say they are equally rood, Butch Cassidy is fun and rnd of the best of its kind, but as y Rider is a significant film, classic that provides much nore than placebo entertain- Al this leads to my list of the en best pictures of 1969. It is i reviewer's prerogative to rate he year's films, and this is an ndulgence that, quite frankly, trelish. However, all is not gory there is -also travail. I cad to decide which films to in- Ph de. Since imany films released ls year play only in New York, mother classification besides re- ease date had to be found. On the other hand, I couldn't rate only those pictures released x. Ann Arbor during the year, Pecause some films, like 2001 re close to two years old, and miyone with - any love for the stnema would have seen them efore this year. So I arbitrarily ejtled on including all the films .had seen for the first time lurIng 1969 that were made no arlier than 1968. Every film Sat played in Ann Arbor during 1969 that fits the stipulation abve is included. Also, a~word on how I chose te films. My chief criterion utside of artistic merit was so- ial significance - Is this a film which intelligently tells us someting about the human >redicament? Obviously, films .ke Goodbye, Columbus and ake. the Money and Run are 5hert on social relevance. But Ufelt these two films were par- icularly outstanding for their 'espective types of film, and I- rould feel remiss if I excluded hem in favor of shoddy films witb erzatz social significance. COW, with no further adieu, let he superlatives roll: 1. Shame-Bergman ventures utsicle the cell of the mind and n an important film of our imes raises questions about irt'g role amidst social upheaval nd individual responsibility for he actions of one's society. Os- ensibly an anti-war film, it is nuch more. It presents a world 4 fespai' where we are "living I* somne.else's dream." It is hocklngly effective; se 1 d o m Wave' I seen an entire audience screenplay, Zeferelli enhances Shakespeare's verbal imagery with the camera's visual ima- gery. The result is one of the finest and most immediate adaptations of Shakespeare to the screen that I have ever seen. 6. Easy Rider - A look at America the money culture where men are judged by how long they wear their hair. and where freedom is thought to be a commodity available to any- one who has the bread to buy it. It may lack the depth of the above films, but it has probably reached more people than any other picture this year. 7. Goodbye, Columbus - This peek at the Jewish subculture is in pretty heady company, but I liked it very much. Besides being one of the truly K funny sophisticated'comedies, it star- red one of the best looking chicks ever. (and I don't mean Nan Martin.) 8. Take the Money and Run -One of the best comedies I've ever seen. It ranks with the finest of Chaplin, Fields and the Marx Brothers. When just about everyone in the theater is delirious with laughter can you ask for more? 9. If .... - Lindsay Ander- son's film could have been near the top of the list if he hadn't botched it. Maybe it's true that if you cut the fantasy all that's left is an upper class Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, but I can't.help but feel that while there are many flashes of genius throughout, the f 1 m never quite reaches the heights its early moments, promise. 10. Stolen Kisses- Granted this is a frivolous film, but Truffaut is still infinitely bet- ter in his lighter moments than most film-makers are at their most creative. Looking over the year, I have a feeling that 1969 may very well turn out to be a pathbreak- ing period in cinema, especially American cinema. It was a- year in which major motion picture companies realized that there is a sensitive, intelligent young audience who reject the feigned social concern of Guess Who's Held Over 3rd Week C the b Coming to Dinner? or In the Heat of the Night, an audience who increasingly demand films dealing with real problems in a realistic way instead of films which simply provide a few hours of innocuous pap. The promise of a return to naturalism which 1967 held out and 1968 frittered away was closer to fulfillment by the end of 1969. This is most obvious in films like Alice's Restaurant, Easy Rider and Medium Cool where the use of non-profes- sionals underscores the sense of real occurrence. But even a highly commercial film like Goodbye, Columbus gives us glimpses of a seedy side of American life. Our society is in convulsions, and for the first time in a long while films aren't trying to let us get away from it all; they are pushing our noses into the decay beneath the affluent crust. Kazan's On the Waterfront, Ray's Rebel Without a Cause, Brook's Blackboard Jungle all tried to break through the quiescent Eisenhower years, but somehow they all came out like cooked vegetables with all the vitamins boiled away. During the Kennedy years with their feeling of purpose and hopeful- ness, angry, introspective films just couldn't flourish. For bet- ter or worse Johnson and Nixon have aroused sufficient ire to put the fire back into some old film-makers and, what's more, to spawn a new breed of pas- sionate film-makers. Society has exploded, and the screen is searing. It was an important year in movies not only because the young adopted film as their art form and the entrepreneurs have finally recognized it or Pest fil even because of our falling- apart-at-the-seams s o c i e t y. Rather, it was something as mundane as tight money which might have had the greatest ef- fect on making American films what they are today. Studios uable to afford the gigantic Charlton Heston-as-God road- show spectacles were forced to welcome people like Peter Fonda and Frank Perry who could bring home a film for under a half a million dollars and gross at least ten times that. (Easy Rider when all is said and done is expected to gross over $50 million.) It is tight money that has really provided the impetus for the naturalistic film on a com- mercial scale, and it is the "cheap" movie that may have a lasting impact ton the Amer- ican film industry. No longer can a producer live in a Busby Berkeley world - "I need/ one hundred girls, all beautiful and fifty sets." The facility of even such excellent films as The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde is being ripped away to expose the musculature underneath the Vms of American sun-tanned skin. Now the film-maker has to grapple with a real world, often sordid, a world where happy endings cannot be manufactured even with Julie Andrews in your pic- ture. How many happy endings have you had lately? (If you feel perfectly happy with Nix- on's finger on the button let me know what you're on to.) 1969 was only slightly above average as far as the number of quality films goes. A filmic Mailer or Wolfe has yet to come along to capture our times. The important thing is that film is moving away from The Sound of Music and toward Alice's Restaurant. At present we're on- ly in the infancy of a Golden 1969 Era in American cinema. The outlook is exciting. My other best are: Actor-Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy) Actress - Vanessa Redgrave (Loves of Isadora) Suporting actor-Jack Nich- olson (Easy Rider) Supporting actress - Cathy Burns (Last Summer) Director-Costa-Gavras (Z) Cinematographers - Raoul Coutard (Z) and Haskell Wex- ler (Medium Cool) Screenplay - Francois Truf- faut, Claude de Givray and Bernard Revon (Stolen Kisses). BEEN SCREWED by the BOOKSTORES? Buy and sell your used books at the non-profit MARKLEY BOOK EX- CHANGE (thru Wednesday). OPEN 11 A.M.-5 PM. Dining Room No. 1, MARKLEY RESIDEN(E HALL - F Is THE FIRST ANNUAL, AMAZING ONE-MAN WyALL SALE ALL Posters 50% or More Off! * APHRODITE'S CLOSET 1309 S. University, No. 6 761-7192 AFTER 5 P.M. & WEEKENDS I The Michigan Daily, edited and man- aged by students at the University, of Michigan. News phone: 764-0552. Second Class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Mich- igan, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104. Published daily- Tues- day through Sundaymorning Univer- sity year. Subscription rates: $10 by carrier, $10 by mail. Summer Session published Tuesday through Saturday morning. Subscrip- tion rates: $3.00 by carrier. $3.00 by mail. i-mm- rr ww -GORGe HARRISOfl (Kng hM,,,t All ~gnt AM~tf APPLE FIL.MS presents a KING FEATURES production m okCOLOR bv~eluxeo United Artists i 0 (4- hi AUDITION for, Arts Chorale. AUD C-ANGELL HALL T & Th-3-5 or Phone 764-2506 Sat. and Sun., Jan. 10,11 Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1962 Fascinating Bergman film explores question of God's existence! Harriet Anderson plays schizophrenic. &r662-88715c Auditorium j i I Ai .I I The Colorful Adventures of..- ! THE BEATES! ore more Colorful than ever...in COLOR! EASTMANCOLOR A UNITED ARTISTS RELEASE SATURDAY AND SUNDAY MATINEES ONLY not continuous with "MEDIUM COOL" *1 Sub-12:30 p.m. Help-2:00 p.m.. Sub-3:30 p.m. Help-5:00 p,m. odults-$1.50 children-75c I IH'"I o * M PANAVISION5'TECHNICOLOR Uinited Artists SHOWS AT 1:00, 3:40, 6:20, 9:00 P.M. Order Your Daily Now- Phone 764-0558 r 2. Alice's Restaurant - This by no means a perfect film, t it deals with an important d difficult problem - the arch for security rooted in a nse of community and the ob- aeles to such community. Bet- r than any film this year I Ink it captures the American ood in 1969 of dreams de- oyed and hope lost. 3. Medium Pool - A look at nerica the dispassionate so- ty and the part the media 4y in de-sensitizing us as we. ter our emotions through a aghetti of wires. 4. Z-A gem of a film. A polit- I thriller examining power d justice, it may be the most 11-made offering of the year. have more to say in my re- 5. Romeo and Juliet - Al- ough I hate to use theword, is is a "beautiful" movie. orking from a pretty good If you're CHICKEN Then don't join the DAILY I i " f .-- . ; BUSINESS STAFF (It takes guts to tolerate our staff I CANTERBURY HOUSE Presents TICKETS G0 ON SALE MONDAY-AT Hill Auditorium MNAYA4 If}mSTUDENT 8:30 P.M ACTIVITIES $2.50,3.00,350 BUILDING rT he Byrds in their present incarnation are A genius outfit that has contributed more as solid a live act as is to be found, both to rock than any other group this side of instrumentally and vocally. the Atlantic. -L.A. TIMES, Nov. 25, 1969 -PRIL I iGSTONF Nov 1969 NMI MON.-FRI.-7 :15-4:15 SAT. & SUN.-1 :30-3:20- 5:15-7:15-9:15 "TA YEAR'S RET OMufY P I I