Auteur François Truffaut

Auteur François Truffaut was born 1932 in Paris and died 1984 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. His mother and stepfather sent Truffaut when he was a young boy to live with various nannies as wll as an important loving grandmother, who nurtured his love of the arts. As a teenager, he was an enthusiastic moviegoer, often found in the front row of Henri Langlois et la Cinémathèque française, which was co-founded by Georges Franju and Jean Mitry. Langlois (1914-1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. During the Second World War, Langlois and his colleagues helped save many films that were at risk of being destroyed during the Nazi occupation of France

As a pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema, where his film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often credited with providing the ideals that led to the development of the politique des auteurs (auteur theory) on the generation of young cinephiles and critics who would later become the La Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave). Among the directors included were Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais. The future filmmakers were called les enfants de la cinémathèque (children of the cinémathèque), as they could often be found in the front row of packed screenings.

When Truffaut first took a chair at the cinémathèque he spoke that when the screen lit up, it was the first time he could see films that had been banned, films that he had never been allowed to see, films that he didn’t know had existed, and films that ultimately changed his life – the effect was immense, overwhelming, transformative. Even more so, for Langlois would screen the films, back-to-back, without any breaks between them: westerns by John Ford, comedies by Chaplin, and Josef von Sternberg films with Marlene Dietrich; gangster films by Howard Hawks, musicals by Vincent Minnelli and crime dramas by Robert Bresson and Fritz Lang; and, most importantly, films by Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock, who would become his idols. It was akin to seeing them all at once.

For Godard and Truffaut: In Defense of Henri Langlois et la Cinémathèque française scroll below to post script.

After starting his own film club in 1948, Truffaut met film critic, André Bazin, who had a great effect on his professional and personal life, ultimately becoming his spiritual father. Bazin was the head of another film society and became a personal friend and helped him out of various financial and criminal situations during his formative years. At 18, Truffaut joined the French Army in 1950, but spent the next two years trying to escape, and was arrested for attempting to desert the army and incarcerated in military prison. Bazin used his political contacts to get Truffaut released and set him up with a job at his new film magazine, Cahiers du cinéma (Notebook of Cinema), which allowed Truffaut a platform to echo Bazin’s critical film philosophy, the politique des auteurs, a theory which changed the landscape of film criticism and cinema forever.

For more Auteur, scroll below to post script and see the politique des auteurs.

Composer and conductor Maurice Jauber.

Maurice Jaubert (born 1900 in Nice) was a prolific French composer who scored some of the most important French films of the early sound era. Jaubert grew up in a musical household, and began playing the piano aged five. Jaubert left for Paris and studied law and literature at the Sorbonne, but became seduced by classical music. His music was written in a style of clarity, frankness and freedom, in which he did not seek novelty for the sake of it, where his spontaneity is not weighed down by pedantic formulas.

Maurice Jaubert was the second son of François Jaubert, a lawyer who would become the president of the Nice Bar Association. He followed in his father’s footsteps and upon graduation from the Sorbonne, became the youngest lawyer in his hometown.

After Jaubert was awarded the baccalaureat (a college bachelor’s degree), from the Lycée Masséna in Nice in 1916, he enrolled at the Nice Conservatory of Music, where he studied harmony, counterpoint and piano. He was awarded the first piano prize in 1916.

Although Maurice Jaubert understood and appreciated film composing and scoring, he also had other creative musical outlets. As music director of Pathé-Nathan studio, he conducted musical orchestrations of several other composers, including Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud.

Left to right: Maurice Jaubert, French writer Jean Giono, and Brazilian-French film director, Alberto Cavalcanti, courtesy of Underscore,fr/portraits.L

Jaubert was a French army officer in engineering during World War I, and was demobilized in 1922. The next year he completed his musical education in Paris with Albert Groz, while undertaking a variety of music related jobs such as proof correction and checking Pleyela rolls.

The compositions by Jaubert’s in the early 1920s included songs, piano pieces, chamber music and divertissements. He wrote his first stage music in 1925 for a play by Calderón, Le Magicien prodigieux, using the Pleyela, a revolutionary player piano at the time. He was then hired by Pleyel to record rolls on the Pleyela.

Left to right: Maurice Ravel, French Romantic composer and best man at Jaubert’s wedding; Georges Neveux, devenu secrétaire de La Comédie; and Jaubert as the new smiling husband, courtesy of Underscore,fr/portraits.

Jaubert as a young composer, was attracted by technical innovations that could serve his artistic aspirations. While working on the play, Le Magicien prodigieux, he met a young soprano, Marthe Bréga, who would later sing most of his vocal compositions. They married in 1926, with composer, Maurice Ravel as his best man.

In 1929, while pursuing his work for the concert hall and the stage, Maurice Jaubert began writing and conducting for the cinema. He collaborated with prominent directors such as Alberto Cavalcanti (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge), Jean Vigo (Zero for Conduct and L’Atalante), René Clair (Quatorze Juillet), Julien Duvivier (Carnet de bal and La Fin du Jour), and Marcel Carné’s Drôle de drame, Hôtel du Nord and Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows).

Maurice Jaubert and François Truffaut

Thirty years after Maurice Jaubert’s death, director François Truffaut, purchased the publishing rights to four of his orchestral compositions.

It is believed that Truffaut first discovered Jaubert’s compositional music scores on the radio, but it’s never been determined which score he first heard. Perhaps it was Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, where Jaubert in an early scene asked his musicians play the score backwards, similar to what George Martin would do in The Beatles’ recordings 35-years-later. Or, possibly from the film, Carnet de bal, where Jaubert enhanced director Julien Duvivier’s illusionary imagery with his own brillant use of lyrical imagery in his compositional music soundtrack.

Nevertheless, an emotional bond was set, when Truffaut used four of Jaubert’s orchestral compositions to four of his own films: Le Chambre Verte, L’Histoire d’Adèle, L’Homme qui aimait les femmes and L’Argent de poche.

Le Chambre Verte (The Green Room, 1978) was a deeply personal project for Truffaut, where he spent several years working on the film’s script, played the main character, Davenne, and felt a special connection to the theme of honoring and remembering the dead. In the film, he finds a forgotten, derelict altar, and rebuilds it and rechristens it as his own Altar of the Dead. The film is adapted from Henry James’ 1895 short story, Altar of the Dead and also two other works by James: The Beast in the Jungle and The Way It Came. Inside the chapel Davenne places portraits of people from his own life, which included composer Maurice Jaubert, writer Henry James and actor Oskar Werner, taken from footage of Jules and Jim, when Werner was an Austrian-German soldier during the Great War.

Cécilia, played by Nathalie Baye, then better known as the script girl in Truffaut’s1973 film, La Nuit américaine (Day for Night), plays the role of a young woman who helps him build his alter. Complications arise when Cécilia requests that one of the candles represent her former deceased lover, but is rebuffed by Davenne, due to a betrayal by the deceased man in the past.

Le Chambre Verte was one of Truffaut’s most critically praised films, and considered by some as his most personal, but also one of his least successful financially. From that point on, Truffaut’s films were never quite the same, making more popular mainstream films like the crowd pleasing Le Dernier Métro, a 1980 historical drama film, which won ten César Awards for best film, best actor (Depardieu), best actress (Deneuve), best cinematography, best director, best editing, best music, best production design, best sound and best writing. The box office and accolades were immense, but for many serious critics it spelled the kiss of death of Truffaut’s personal films. Truffaut followed with La Femme d’à côté, a film about adultry, and the detective film, Vivement dimanche!, where he did display his personal vision in his love of genre films. In a sense; one for Renoir and one for Hitchcock.

The 1975 film, L’Histoire d’Adèle (The Story of Adèle H.) is a historical drama directed by François Truffaut, and starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson and Sylvia Marriott, based on Adèle Hugo’s diaries. The narrative is about Adèle Hugo, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, once considered the most famous man in France. Victor Hugo was so famous that Adèle would only use the first initial of her surname to hide her identity. Adèle Hugo’s unrequited love for a military officer leads to her downfall. Throughout the film she is on a quest to find the military officer, but, as the film ends, she has become battered and weary to the point of destitution, that when she finally finds the officer, she passes by him without realizing who he is.

As in all four of Truffaut and Jaubert films, the images, sound and music are profound. But much notice was given to 20-year-old Isabelle Adjani, who justifiably received critical acclaim for her performance as Adele H., which led to her status as a legend on the French screen today.

Truffaut’s 1977 film, L’Homme qui aimait les femmes (The Man Who Loved Women) is billed as a romantic comedy about a man who loves women. The film stars Bertrand Morane, played by Charles Denner, a Truffaut regular who had appeared in his earlier films, 1968’s La Mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black) and 1972’s Une belle fille comme moi (Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me). The movie begins with one the most joyful funerals in film history, where in attendance are all the women with whom Morane loved in his life. The ensemble of female actors is too irresistible not to list, which features, Brigitte Fossey, the former child star of Clément’s1952 landmark film, Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games), Leslie Caron, with no introduction required; Nelly Borgeaud as one of Bertrand’s emotionally unstable lovers; Geneviève as Hélène, a lingerie saleswoman; and Valérie Fabienne, one of Bertrand’s former lovers, who he regrets making her think that he wanted a serious relationship with her.

As noted above, Bertrand Morane loved women, as Truffaut did as well; so, let’s close with the opening of one of the cinema’s most euphoric funeral sequences in L’Homme qui aimait les femmes.

The cast also included, Roselyne Puyo as Nicole, in a bit part as an usherette, who in real life is deaf. Truffaut also served as a passionate voice for those who suffered from disabilities; reminding audiences that they too exist, and to also show those who suffer with disabilities, a pathway to live a relativity normal life and join or re-join “normal society.” This act of courage is best illustrated by T-Boy’s Brom Wikstrom. So take a trek to Machu Picchu in a mobile wheelchair with Brom and his bride, Anne’: Looking Back: Lima, Machu Picchu, Peru – Brom Wikstrom, Traveling Boy

In 1976’s L’Argent de poche, Truffaut mixes the story of his actors with childhood experiences and the challenges of a number of children. Scenes include life at school; a toddler and a cat, playing on an open windowsill but falling down unhurt; a young girl, played by Truffaut’s daughter, causing confusion with a bullhorn; Bruno showing his friends how speak to girls; a double date at a movie theater; a child telling a dirty joke; first love and a first kiss. The main character is the motherless Patrick, who lives alone with his father who uses a wheelchair for mobility and an automatic page turner to read books. His mysterious friend, Julien, lives in poverty, has long unwashed hair and cannot stay awake at school due to long nights without sleep, wandering the empty, dark city streets. Patrick notices Julien constantly refuses to change his clothes for gym class, and his curious why does not.

In the end, Julien and his classmates realize why he doesn’t remove his clothes for gym classes; to hide his bruises that cover his body, making it obvious that he was beaten by his parents. Once the criminal news of Julien’s parent’s cruel abuse becomes public, he is rescued from his family, who are arrested as angry mobs of citizens pound their fists on the police wagon, aware that abusing a child is the greatest crime ever commited by a parent.

L’Argent de poche ends with an important message by one of the schoolteachers, Jean-François Stévenin, in a stunning performance by Jean-François Richet, about child abuse, injustice, children’s rights, hope, love and resilience: Of all mankind’s injustices, injustice to children is the most despicable! Life isn’t always fair, but we can fight for justice… If kids had the right to vote, they would have better schools. Life isn’t easy. You must learn to be tough. I don’t mean ‘gangster-tough’. What I mean is having endurance and resilience… Time flies. Before long, you will have children of your own. If you love them, they will love you. If they don’t feel you love them, they will transfer their love and tenderness to other people. Or to things. That’s life! Each of us needs to be loved.”

François Truffaut’s first feature: Les quatre cents coups

Jean-Pierre Leoud plays a loose version of Truffaut in 1959’s “Les quatre cents coups” (“The 400 Blows”), a film highly influenced by Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct” which paralleled tragic instances in Truffaut’s own childhood. Before the film was made, Truffaut dedicated it to his spiritual father, Andre Bazin, who succumbed to death prior to the film’s release. Photograph courtesy of In a Lonely Place Film, Growing-up is Still Difficult.

The narrative of Les quatre cents coup is taken from the point-of-view of Truffaut’s cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel, a reacurring character who appeared in four features and one short film, often referred to as the Antoine Doinel Cycle. The film re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, and petty crime, with Antoine Doinel played by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, a veteran of six and a half of Truffaut’s films. Les quatre cents coup marked Truffaut’s passage from a leading film critic to trailblazing auteur of the La Nouvelle Vague. In the 2022 Sight & Sound Critics’ Poll, Les quatre cents coups was ranked 50th as one of the greatest films ever made.

Truffaut and Fatherhood

In both of Truffaut’s public and private life, the concept of fatherhood was an endearing theme; a biological father who abandoned him in his early childhood; Andrea Bazin, his spiritual father; Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock, fathers who mentored his own love and art in cinema; and Jean-Pierre Léaud, who referred to Truffaut as his cinematic father.  Later, after Léaud appeared in Antonie and Collete, he played in a number of Jean-Luc Godard films, and was quoted as saying: If Truffaut is my father, then Godard is my uncle. As Truffaut became older he became obsessed with finding the name of his own biologicall father to the point of hiring private detectives. Eventually the name of his real father was found, a successful French dentist of Jewish ancestry.

François Truffaut: film critic, now director, received the award for Best Director at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1958, François Truffaut was regarded as the enfant terrible of film critics, due to the politique des auteurs, and was banned from the Cannes Film Festival. The next year, he submitted his directorial debut to the festival, Les quatre cents coups and received the award for Best Director and a Palme d’Or nomination. From that year onward, Truffaut’s life dramatically changed forever. 

Truffaut as Actor

English language film director Alfred Hitchcock made cameo appearances in 40 of his 53 surviving major films. Truffaut was also fond of appearing in his own films, but often as a lead character. He also appeared in films made by other directors, such as the playing the role of Claude Lacombe, a French scientist with a bad command of English, in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Later, Truffaut spoke of his own first encounter on the film’s set: When I first arrived on the set of the Spielberg film, I quickly put my book by Stanislawski back into my suitcase.

Jaubert as Composer

As music director of Pathé-Nathan studio, Jaubert conducted the film scores of several other composers, including Arthur Honegger and Darious Milhaud. In the 1930s he gained a reputation as a conductor in France and abroad, most notably for the final season of Marguerite Bériza’s opera company and the season of opéras-bouffes for the 1937 exposition. At the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in 1937, he conducted the premiere of Philippine, an opérette, by Marcel Delannoy with libretto by Henri Lyon and Jean Limozin.

Maurice Jaubert (1900-1940)

Jaubert enlisted in a French army engineering company during World War II which he would command as a reserve captain. When his company mobilized in September 1939, he was fatally wounded after having successfully blown up a bridge. He died at age 45 a few hours later at the Baccarat Hospital on June 1940. His letters to his wife reflected a spirit of sacrifice tinged with deep humanism. Jaubert did not live to hear his last two compositions, written at his base camp. Jaubert’s gravesite rests in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.

Maurice Jaubert left a legacy of written articles about lectures, his musical tastes and political opinions, which included a passionate support of German-born American composer Kurt Weill, who created a revolutionary kind of opera of sharp social satire in collaboration with the writer Bertolt Brecht.

François Truffaut, (1932-1984)

Truffaut suffered from a brain tumor and underwent an operation at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine on September 12. He died just over a year later in the hospital on October 21, 1984 at the age of 56-years-old. At his bedside were Madeleine Morgenstern, film producer and ex-wife; their two children, Laura and Eva; and actress Fanny Ardant, with wholm he lived with from 1981 to 1984 and had a daughter, Joséphine Truffaut (born September 1983). Ardant apeared in Truffaut’s final two films, La Femme d’à côté and Vivement dimanche! As he had requested, his body was cremated and his ashes were buried also in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. Truffaut was an atheisit, but chose to have a Mass celebrated for him at the church of Saint-Roche, believed to be in the honor of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the time of Truffaut’s death, he was considered by many critics and moviegoers as the most popular French film director of his era. Film audiences flocked to his films, whose main themes were passion, women, childhood and awareness of the disabled, which struck a chord with both critics and moviegoers alike.

To hear more about François Truffaut and Maurice Jaubert, consider purchasing the album, Bandes Sonores Originales Des Films, which includes the scores, L’Argent de poche, L’Histoire d’Adèle, L ‘Homme qui aimait les femmes and Le Chambre Verte, available on vinyl and CD.

And don’t miss film critic Walt Mundkowsky’s film review of François Truffaut’s “Stolen Kisses” – A Look Back – Traveling Boy

Also, if you wish to revisit The Film Soundtracks in Our Lives, Part I, see Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western, Once Upon a Time in the West. You can buy, but not on our site, Morricone’s Complete Spaghetti Western Compilation, also available on vinyl or in three-discs or a five-box set on CD.

POST SCRIPT:

Godard and Truffaut: In Defense of Henri Langlois et la Cinémathèque française

In 1968, French culture minister Andre Malraux tried to fire Henri Langlois by stopping funding of la Cinémathèque française, allegedly due to Langlois’ arrogance and iron-fisted rule. Local and international uproar ensued, and even the prestigious Cannes Film Festival was halted in protest that year. Malraux eventually backtracked. Below is an announcement made in 1968 by Jean-Luc Godard and They were once soliders-in-arms in the art of cinema, but as their careers’ progressed, Godard’s films became increasingly political, specifically Marxist, and dismissed Truffaut as a bourgeoisie film director. Truffaut replied, I make personal films, and I can’t remember the last time I took a bus.

READ More: the politique des auteurs – The policy or politics of auteurs: In his 1954 journal, Une certaine tendance du cinéma français (A certain trend in French cinema) Truffaut wrote as a critic for the French film publication, Cahiers du Cinéma (Cinéma Notebook) and introduced the concept that directors should be considered the real creators of the films they create. When translated literally, the French word auteur means author in English. The term is applied to a film director with complete creative control over their work, often defined as a director who has a recognizable personal style, signature and vision which is evident in each film they make. When applied to the other arts, a painting by van Gogh or a symphony by Mahler is instantly recognizable to audiences. When film critic and director, Jean-Luc Godard wrote that Hitchcock was as profround an artist as Dostoevsky, traditional film critics thought he had gone mad. They failed to recognize that Hitchcock was just as profound in his own medium of film as Dostoevsky was in his medium of literature.

Truffaut referred French directors, Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson and Jacque Tatil as auteurs. He contrasted auteurs with directors of commercial studio films, whom he called, merely “metteur en scène” or stagers of a script created by someone else.

In the US, The Auteur Theory was coined and expanded by New York film critic, Andrew Sarris, the Father of American Auteurism. After Truffaut first introduced this new theory, which was based on film critic, Andre Bazin’s earlier work, it eventually spread to the US in 1963 through the writings of Sarris and film critic/director, Peter Bogdanovich.

But, many US film critics thought the concept was preposterous to the point that a film director should even be called an artist. This applied, in particular, to the highly influential San Franciso based film critic, Pauline Kael, who attacked both the theory and Sarris. The battles between them were legendary, and still discussed today, even though Kael finally embraced the theory and championed her own favorite directions, Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah, Bernardo Bertolucci and even Truffaut. In the end, Sarris said that Kael was not anti-auteur, but anti-genre, and recognized the director as an artist, but still not necessarily the sole artists in a collaborate medium which included cinematographers, edits, art directors, etc. Sarris counter with, who is in charge of all the collaborators who helps the director create their personal vision of a film?

Truffaut on Cinephiles: But the cinephile is… a neurotic! (That’s not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it’s because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, “When you love life, you go to the movies,” it’s false! It’s exactly the opposite: when you don’t love life, or when life doesn’t give you satisfaction, you go to the movies.

Art is not scientific; why should criticism be? The main complaint against some critics, and a certain type of criticism, is that too seldom do they speak about cinema as such.

Every critic should take to heart Jean Renoir’s remark: All great art is abstract. He should learn to be aware of form, and to understand that certain artists, for example Dreyer or Von Sternberg, never sought to make a picture that resembled reality.

The post The Film Soundtracks in Our Lives, Part II: Composer Maurice Jaubert and Auteur François Truffaut appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The genesis of our poll was highly influenced by Christina Newland’s thoughtful piece in BBC Culture, entitled, Why 1971 was an extraordinary year in film – BBC Culture

Number 10: Duck, You Sucker!

(aka Fistful of Dynamite)

Director: Sergio Leone; Writing: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone; Cinematography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini; Music: Ennio Morricone. 

Players: Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Romolo Valli, Maria Monti.    

Synopsis: A Mexican bandit and an I.R.A. explosives expert rebel against the government and become heroes of the Mexican Revolution.

Memorable Lines:

• James Coburn as John H. Mallory: Where there’s revolution there’s confusion, and when there’s confusion, a man who knows what he wants stands a good chance of getting it.
• Mallory: When I started using dynamite… I believed in… many things, all of it! Now, I believe only in dynamite. I don’t judge you, Villega. I did that only… once in my life. Get shovellin’.
• Rod Steiger as Juan Miranda: Please, don’t try to tell me about revolution! I know all about the revolutions and how they start! The people that read the books, they go to the people that don’t read the books, and say “Ho-ho!” The time has come to have a change, eh?”

Behind the Scenes:

• When James Coburn was offered the role of John Mallory by Leone, he was initially reluctant. He had dinner with Henry Fonda (star of Once Upon a Time in the West) and asked him what he thought of Leone. Fonda told him that he considered Leone the greatest director he ever worked with. Coburn then took the part. Similarly, Fonda himself had been reluctant to take the part Leone offered him, but was persuaded by his friend, Eli Wallach, the co star of The Good, The Bad and Ugly (1966). Earlier, Wallach had asked Clint Eastwood what to expect when working with Leone on The Good, The Bad and Ugly. Eastwood replied, Never believe an Italian special effects man when he says the explosion won’t hurt you.
• The chanting of Shon shon shon in composer Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack was the suggestion of Leone’s wife, Carla Leone, who thought it would sound better than the original Wah wah chants. Morricone himself said the chants do not represent the names of characters but are just part of the soundscape like the chants in all the other Sergio Leone westerns. Morricone also said that Leone asked him to compose a film’s music before the start of principal photography – contrary to normal practice. He would then play the music to the actors during takes to enhance their performance.
• Rod Steiger demanded that his scenes be filmed with natural sound. This was virtually unheard of in Italian cinema and led to much tension between Steiger and Leone. Steiger had prepared for the role by taking accent and language lessons with a Mexican woman with the goal to use inflections that would imply Juan’s difficulty with speaking English instead of his native Spanish. To create Mallory accent, James Coburn vacationed in Ireland for five weeks. After the film’s completion, Steiger was content with the final result, and praised Leone for his skills as a director.

CRITICS:

• Underrated large canvas Leone; Steiger and Coburn as a revolutionary odd couple. – Dan King, T-Boy Film & Music
• Though not the towering masterpiece of “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968), but still with Leone’s difficult to imitate directorial style of extreme closeups, generally followed by silence and violence (in this case explosions), and then cutting directly to sweeping panoramic shots of a scorched Spanish desert. And, Morricone, always on board, having contributed to all original musical compositions in Leone’s films since “The Colossus of Rhodes” (1961), including the Leone executive produced, “My Name is Nobody.” (1973). – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Film & Music
• Leone’s means are occasionally too complicated, his themes are rendered with a unique lyrical force as the leitmotifs of Morricone’s memory music. Thus, whereas the theme of “Once Upon a Time in the West” was revenge in all its ultimately futile ramifications, the theme of “Duck, You Sucker” is betrayal in all its hopelessly unresolved ambiguity. Leone is nothing if not ambitious and audacious, and I say more power to him in this era of emotionally paralyzed filmmaking. – Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice

Number 9: Macbeth

(Original title: The Tragedy of Macbeth)

Director: Roman Polanski; Writing: Roman Polanski, Kenneth Tynan, based on play by William Shakespeare; Cinematography: Gilbert Taylor; Film Editing: Alastair McIntyre; Production Design: Wilfrid Shingleton; Art Direction: Fred Carter; Set Decoration: Bryan Graves; Music: The Third Ear Band.

Players: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Terence Bayle, John Stride, Nicholas Selby, Stephan Chase, Paul Shelley.

Synopsis: A ruthlessly ambitious Scottish lord seizes the throne with the help of his scheming wife and a trio of witches in this chilling adaption of William Shakespeare’s play.

Memorable Lines: 

• Jon Finch as Macbeth: False face must hide what false heart doth know.
• Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth: Things without all remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done.
• Macbeth: Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day. And with thy bloody and invisible hand cancel and tear to pieces that great bond which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse while night’s black agents to their prey do rouse

Behind the Scenes:

• Director Roman Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by members of Charles Manson’s Family two years before the making of the film. It is believed that due to this traumatic event, Polanski developed the story to be a more violent representation of Shakespeare’s play. For instance, the scene in which Macbeth murders King Duncan was not in the original play and was instead implied.
• The scene in which Macbeth’s thugs massacre Macduff’s household was based on Roman Polanski’s memory of Nazi SS officers ransacking his house as a child.
• Filming began with four grueling weeks in Snowdonia National Park. Richard Vetter’s TODD-AO 35 lenses won an Academy Award for reducing anamorphic distortion in close-ups.

Critics: 

• Polanski’s “Macbeth” is more interesting than if he had done your ordinary, respectable, awe-stricken tiptoe around Shakespeare. This is an original film by an original film artist, and not an “interpretation.” It should have been titled “Polanski’s Macbeth,” just as we got “Fellini Satyricon.” – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com
• We’ve had remarkable film adaptions of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in the past with Orson Welle’s “Macbeth”  (1948) and Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” (1957) which both remained true to their own directorial sensibilities. This is also the case of Polanski’s adaptation where, in many respects, the images are jolted up to an almost hypnotic and hysterical level. Yes, the period detail and violence are profound; as it often was in the Middle Ages – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• People ask why I do things, this or that film. Why? Why do I eat fish and not steak for lunch? I don’t know why. There are layers of experience, and not only artistic experience. Making a film is separate from life, but it is made by a human being and whatever happens to me has got to have an influence in what I do. A film sums up the experiences of my life. You absorb the experience, you assimilate it and you make a decision. A film sums up everything—whom I see, what I drink, the amount of ice cream I eat. It is everything. Do you understand? Everything. – Roman Polanski, taken from interview with  Bernard Weinraub of the NY Times after the release of Macbeth.

NUMBER 8: Murmur of the Heart (Le souffle au Coeur) 

Director/Writer: Louis Malle; Cinematography: Ricardo Aronovich;  Music: Sidney Bechet, Gaston Frèche, Charlie Parker, Henri Renaud.

Players: Léa Massari, Benoît Ferreux, Daniel Gélin, Michael Lonsdale, Ave Ninchi.

Synopsis: As France is nearing the end of the first Indochina War, an open-minded teenage boy finds himself torn between a rebellious urge to discover love, and the ever-present, almost dominating affection of his beloved mother.

Memorable Lines:

• Léa Massari as Clara Chevalier: I don’t know. Begin at the beginning. Wait to experience things yourself. And there’s plenty of time. I’m not rushing you. Everyone has to discover love for himself. Lots of things can happen between a man and a woman. Better to find out for yourself, not from a book.
• Benoît Ferreux as Laurent Chevalier: I’m tired of the old jazz. Always the same thing.
• Laurent Chevalier: The music store has the new Charlie Parker. Let’s go.

• Louis Malle based many aspects of the protagonist Laurent’s life on his own experiences growing up. This included his love of jazz, curiosity about literature, the “tyranny” of his two older brothers who tried to introduce him to sex, and having a heart murmur.
• While the incest aspects of the story were not autobiographical, Louis Malle did in fact end up sharing a hotel room with his mother as a child while on a trip to treat his heart murmur due to “bizarre” circumstances.
• Malle asserted in interviews that the incest, in particular, is fictional. He claimed that in writing the script, he had no intention to include incest, but ended up doing so as he explored an intense mother-son relationship

Critics: 

• Breaking a taboo, ever so gently, is just part of the magic of this very French take on coming of age. – Stephen Brewer, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• “Murmur of the Heart”  is mellow and smooth… but with the kick of a mule—a funny kick, which sends you out doubled over grinning.- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker.
• The boy is played by a nonactor, Benoit Ferreux, whose puzzlement about growing up, and whose admiration at the possibilities of life, remind us of young Jean-Pierre Leaud in Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows.” The two movies deserve comparison in more ways than one. And yet “Murmur of the Heart” isn’t really about the boy, but the mother. Lea Massari (you may remember her as the girl in “L’Avventura”) is so irrepressible, so irresponsible, so much a girl and not quite an adult, that her performance takes scenes that might have been embarrassing, and makes them simply magical. – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com

Number 7: Straw Dogs

Director: Sam Peckinpah; Writers: Sam Peckinpah, David Zelag Goodman, based on novel by Gordon M. Williams; Cinematography: John Coquillon; Music: Jerry Fielding; Film Editing: Paul Davies, Tony Lawson, Roger Spottiswood.

Players: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna, David Warner.

Synopsis: A young American man and his English wife come to rural England and face increasingly vicious local harassment.

Memorable Lines: 

• Susan George as Amy Sumner: Those straw dogs were practically licking my body outside, so… Dustin Hoffman as David Sumner: I applaud their good taste. Amy Sumner: It’s not funny. David Sumner: We’ll, maybe you should wear a bra.
• David Sumner to brutes: Ok, you’ve had your fun. I’ll give you one more chance, and if you don’t clear out now, there’ll be real trouble. I mean it.
• David Warner as Henry Niles: I don’t know my way home. David Sumner  (last line in film): That’s okay. I don’t either.

Behind the Scenes:

• Sam Peckinpah’s adaptation of the novel drew inspiration from Robert Ardrey’s books, African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative, which argued that man was essentially a carnivore who instinctively battled over control of territory.
• Before shooting, Sam Peckinpah instructed Dustin Hoffman and Susan George to live together for two weeks, with co-writer David Zelag Goodman in tow. Some of their interactions during this period were worked into the film’s script.
• In the scene where David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) first enters the local pub, director Sam Peckinpah was unhappy with the other actors’ reaction to this stranger entering their world. Eventually, he decided to do one take where Hoffman entered the scene without his trousers on. He got his reaction, and these are the shots shown in the final film.

Critics: 

• I can think of no other film which screws violence up into so tight a knot of terror that one begins to feel that civilization is crumbling before one’s eyes. – Tom Milne, Sight & Sound 
• Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” is the first American film that is a fascist work of art. The movie follows an American mathematician (Dustin Hoffman) and his wife (Susan George), who become the subject of an escalating series of attacks by a gang of locals; its graphic depiction of rape and murder crystallized the filmmaker’s worldview that humans are instinctively attuned to violence. – Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
• You have to understand, first of all, that the movie ends with maybe 20 minutes of unrestrained bloodletting, during which people are scalded with boiling whisky, have their feet blown off by shotguns, are clubbed to death and (in one case) nearly decapitated by a bear trap. The violence is the movie’s reason for existing; it is the element that is being sold, and in today’s movie market, it should sell well. But does Peckinpah pay his dues before the last 20 minutes? Does he keep us feeling we can trust him? I don’t think so. – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com

Number 6: The French Connection

Director: William Friedkin; Writing: Ernest Tidyman, based on the book Robin Moore; Cinematography: Owen Roizman; Music: Don Ellis; Editing: Gerald B. Greenberg; Art Direction: Ben Kasazkow. 

Players: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco, Marcel Bozzuffi.

Synopsis: A pair of NYC cops in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a drug smuggling job with a French connection.

Memorable Lines: 

• Gene Hackman as Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle: All right, Popeye’s here! Get your hands on your heads, get off the bar, and get on the wall!
• ‘Popeye’ Doyle: Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?
• Roy Scheider as Buddy ‘Cloudy’ Russo: Mulderig! You shot Mulderig! (a police detective). ‘Popeye’ Doyle (Ignoring him, last line in film): That son of a bitch is here. I saw him. I’m gonna get him.

Behind the Scenes:

• Cameras and equipment would often freeze during shooting due to near-freezing temperatures during the winter shooting in New York City and Brooklyn.
• According to William Friedkin, the film’s documentary-style realism through hand-held photography, use of real locations and editing style were inspired by the movies, Z (1969) by Costa Gavras, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. (1960).
• The famous shot of the chase is made from a front bumper mount and shows a low-angle point of view shot of the streets racing by. Director of photography Owen Roizman, said that the camera was undercranked to 18 frames per second to enhance the sense of speed. Roizman’s contention is borne out when you see a car at a red light whose muffler is pumping smoke at an accelerated rate. Other shots involved stunt drivers who were supposed to barely miss hitting the speeding car, but due to errors in timing accidental collisions occurred and were left in the final film.

Critics: 

• “The French Connection” answered the question, can Gene Hackman do anything bad? No, some films may not be great, but Hackman, always committed and solid. – Jim Gordon, T-Boy Society of Film & Music.
• The movie is all surface, movement, violence and suspense. Only one of the characters really emerges into three dimensions: Popeye Doyle’s Gene Hackman, a New York narc who is vicious, obsessed and a little mad. The other characters don’t emerge because there’s no time for them to emerge. Things are happening too fast. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com 
• A hugely successful slam-bang thriller that zaps the audience with noise, speed, and brutality. The movie, about police detectives tracking down a shipment of heroin in New York City, is certainly exciting, but that excitement isn’t necessarily a pleasure. The ominous music keeps tightening the screws and heating things up; the movie is like an aggravated case of New York. It proceeds through chases, pistol-whippings, slashings, murders, snipings, and more chases for close to two hours. This is what’s meant to give you a charge. – Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Number 5: Death in Venice

Director: Luchino Visconti; Writing: Luchino Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, based on novella by Thomas Mann; Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis; Film Editing: Ruggero Mastroianni; Art Direction: Ferdinando Scarfiotti; Costume Design: Piero Tosi; Music: Gustav Mahler.

Players: Dirk  Bogarde, Romolo Valli, Björn Andrésen, Silvana Mangano, Marisa Berenson, Mark Burns, Nora Ricci, Carole André, Franco Fabrizi.

Synopsis: In Visconti’s adaptation of the Thomas Mann novella, avant-garde Composer Gustav von Aschenbach travels to a Venetian seaside resort in search of repose after a period of artistic and personal stress. But he finds no peace there, for he soon develops a troubling attraction to an adolescent boy, Tadzio on vacation with his family. The boy embodies an ideal of beauty that Aschenbach has long sought and he becomes infatuated. However, the onset of a deadly pestilence threatens them both physically and represents the corruption that compromises and threatens all ideals.

Memorable Lines: 

• Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach: You cannot reach the spirit with the senses. You cannot. It’s only by complete domination of the senses that you can ever achieve wisdom, truth, and human dignity.
• Gustav von Aschenbach: Madame, will you permit an entire stranger, to serve you with a word of advice and warning, which self-interests prevents others from saying. Go away! Go away, immediately. Don’t delay. Please, I beg you.
• Gustav von Aschenbach: You know sometimes I think that artists are rather like hunters aiming in the dark. They don’t know what their target is, and they don’t know if they’ve hit it. But you can’t expect life to illuminate the target and steady your aim. The creation of beauty and purity is a spiritual act.

Behind the Scenes:

• Second part of Visconti’s German Trilogy, which also included The Damned (1969) and Ludwig. (1973).
• In the Thomas Mann novella, Gustav von Aschenbach is an author, not a composer.
• While Gustav Mahler may have inspired the character of Gustav von Aschenbach, many of the plot points in the novella were inspired by Thomas Mann’s own experience. According to Mann’s widow Katia, the two were vacationing in Venice in 1911, when Mann noticed a beautiful young boy staying at their hotel.

Critics: 

• Lots of self-obsessed pondering on beauty and intellect is set against a soundtrack by Mahler, with moody canals and crumbling palazzi as backdrops. – Stephen Brewer, T-Boy Society of Film & Music.
• While “Death in Venice” is indifferent to the plague (“Asiatic cholera”) as a condition in itself, the film’s intensive focus on its protagonist vividly raises the question of self-isolation. As the sole three-dimensional character, Aschenbach is necessarily solitary; his standoffish personality follows on this structural sequestration: he has to be a loner. Even in flashbacks to more gregarious times with wife and daughter, he is “a man of avoidance,” the “keeper of distances.” The friend who makes these charges gets even blunter: “You are afraid to have direct, honest contact with anything!” D. A. Miller, from My Lockdown with Death in Venice.
• The physical beauty of the film itself is overwhelming. The world of the Lido of sixty years ago has been re-created in painstaking detail. The fashions, the entertainments, the table settings reveal Visconti’s compulsion for accuracy. The photography is almost the first I have seen that is fully worthy of the beauty of Venice; the pink-and-gray city rises from waters of a glasslike smoothness, so that the water and the quality of light itself seem to suggest the presence of the plague-bearing sirocco wind. The wind brings both plague and beauty, which is its function in the Mann novel, and Visconti’s mastery of visual style almost succeeds in creating the very ideas and feelings that his heavy-handed narrative entirely misses. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com

Number 4: Dirty Harry

Director: Don Siegel; Writing: Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink and Dean Riesner, based on story by Harry Julian Fink & Rita M. Fink; Cinematography: Bruce Surtees; Music: Lalo Schifrin; Film Editing: Carl Pingitore; Art Direction: Dale Hennesy; Makeup Department: Gordon Bau.

Players: Clint Eastwood, Andrew Robinson, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon.

Synopsis:When a madman calling himself the Scorpio Killer menaces the city, tough-as-nails San Francisco Police  Inspector Dirty Harry Callahan is assigned to track down and find the crazed psychopath.

Memorable Lines: 

• Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan: Now you know why they call me “Dirty Harry”…
  every dirty job that comes along.
• Harry Callahan: Uh uh. I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk??
• Harry Callahan: You know, you’re crazy if you think you’ve heard the last of this guy. He’s gonna kill again. Josef Sommer as District Attorney Rothko: How do you know? Harry Callahan: ‘Cause he likes it.

Behind the Scenes:

• Serial killer Scorpio was loosely based on the Zodiac Killer, who used to taunt Police and media with notes about his crimes, in one of which he threatened to hijack a school bus full of children. The role of Harry Callahan was loosely based on real-life detective David Toschi, who was the chief investigator on the Zodiac case.
• Before each of Harry’s three combative encounters with the Scorpio Killer, there is a cross and or a reference to Christ. The Scorpio Killer (Andrew Robinson ) wears a belt with a peace symbol buckle throughout the movie. According to producer and director Don Siegel, It reminds us that no matter how vicious a person is, when he looks in the mirror, he is still blind to what he truly is.
• Don Siegel ultimately directed Clint Eastwood in five films, and also appeared as an actor in Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty for Me (also released in 1971).

Critics: 

• Eastwood as the definite Siegel outsider struggling against the system. – Dan King, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Dirty Harry” is very effective at the level of a thriller. At another level, it uses the most potent star presence in American movies — Clint Eastwood — to lay things on the line. If there aren’t mentalities like Dirty Harry’s at loose in the land, then the movie is irrelevant. If there are, we should not blame the bearer of the bad news. – Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com
• Don Siegel’s cop movie was received as a right-wing fantasy on its release in 1971, and it probably made a lot of money on that basis. But now that the political context has faded, it’s easier to see the ambiguities in Clint Eastwood’s renegade detective-who, in the usual Siegel fashion, is equated visually and morally with the psychotic killer he’s trampling the Constitution to catch. A crisp, beautifully paced film, full of Siegel’s wonderful coups of cutting and framing.- David Kehr, Chicago Reader

Number 3: Just Before Nightfall (Juste avant la nuit)

Director: Claude Chabrol; Writing: Claude Chabrol; based on Edouard Atiya’s crime novel, The Thin Line, later issued as Murder, My Love. Cinematography: Jean Rabier; Music: Pierre Jansen; Film Editing: Jacques Gaillard.

Players: Michel Bouquet, Stéphane Audran, Marina Ninchi , François Périer, Jean Carmet.

Synopsis: Charles Masson, an upper-class French advertising executive, is having an affair with Laura, the wife of his best friend. Charles strangles Laura when one of their S&M games crosses the line and she dies. Though reeking in remorse, Charles realizes that the police do not seem to have any clues about the crime, but has difficulties coping with the situation, trying to live a normal life with his two children and loving wife. Just Before Nightfall is another Chabrol film that focuses on infidelity and again it’s an intriguing drama and an excellent exploration of the human condition.

Memorable Lines: 

• Michel Bouquet as Charles: My darling, I’d like you to understand. With you, love is simple and clear. With her it was a sort of…insane drama. She forced me…she made me participate. It wasn’t love, it was violent and humiliating. She wanted me to rape her. She forced me to be brutal to her. That’s what was so horrifying… it was she who tortured me and took pleasure in seeing me suffer.
• Charles: Justice doesn’t spare a guilty man because his family will suffer.
• Charles: I confessed. I unburdened my conscience. And you absolve me. I could have committed suicide. It would have been better for all. But I would’ve been a coward… a coward.

Behind the Scenes:

• This is the last film of Claude Chabrol’s Hélène cycle, in which actress Stéphane Audran starred, playing characters called Hélène in La femme infidèle (1969), Le Boucher (1970), and La Rupture (1970).
• Stéphane Audran appeared in 24 Chabrol films. In 1964 they were married which lasted for 16 years until divorce.
• Claude Chabrol, initially a film critic for Cahiers du Cinema, became one of the cornerstones of the French Nouvelle Vague.

Critics: 

• Former French film critic Claude Chabrol is the ultimate Hitchcockian director, but with a profound Gallic twist. Along with Éric Rohmer, he wrote the very first book about the Master of Suspense: ‘Hitchcock – The First Forty-four Films.’ Like the Beatles and the British Invasion, who taught North Americans about their own music, the French Nouvelle Vague directors made us appreciate our own Hollywood films. Unlike Brian De Palma, Chabrol used his Hitchcockian influences as a starting point to transcend his own style and meaning. And, of course, there is a Hitchcock thing called, ‘Guilt.’ – Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• His (Chabrol’s) characters are the molds from which the French bourgeoisie is cast. They’re terribly respectable, they live in comfortable homes and work in well-paying professions, they present a facade of total respectability. But underneath there are dark passions and well-kept secrets and, frequently, the ultimate embarrassment of murder. They aren’t killers; that’s the whole point. They’re people who commit murder to their own astonishment. – Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com
• One of the great films of the 1970s, this is Chabrol’s most representative film, and arguably his masterpiece. The first moments of the movie, with the camera intruding upon a blinds-drawn window, again invites comparisons with Hitchcock, and the opening shot of “Psycho.” But that tip of the hat only serves to underscore the extent to which Chabrol has moved on, as “Just Before Nightfall” situates us in a fully realized and now plainly recognizable Chabrolian universe. – Jonathan Kirshner, Bright Lights Film Journal

Number 2: A Clockwork Orange

Director: Stanley Kubrick; Writing: Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess dystopian satire novel; Cinematography: John Alcott (lighting cameraman); Film Editing: Bill Butler; Production Design: John Barry; Costume Design: Milena Canonero; Music: Wendy Carlos, electronic music, realized by Walter Carlos.

Players: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke.

Synopsis: In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn’t go as planned.

Memorable Lines: 

• McDowell as Alex: There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
• Alex: It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it the perfect ending was a bit of the old Ludwig van.
• Alex: So I waited. And O, my brothers, I got a lot better, munching away at eggi-wegs and lomticks of toast and lovely steaki-wakes. And then one day, they said I was going to have a very special visitor.

Behind the Scenes:

• Because of the limited budget, various techniques had to be used such as dolly shots on wheelchairs, sound recorded live on set, the use of natural light and some scenes in handheld cameras. However, at that time the new camera zoom control was first used in the picture.
• Malcolm McDowell’s eyes were anesthetized for the torture scenes so that he would film for periods of time without too much discomfort. Nevertheless, his corneas got repeatedly scratched by the metal lid locks.
• The film was unavailable for public viewing in the UK from 1973 until 2000, due to Kubrick and Burgess death threats. British video stores were so inundated with requests for the movie that some took to putting up signs that read: No, we do not have “A Clockwork Orange” It was released the year after Stanley Kubrick’s death.

Critics: 

• Whereas Altman’s style was loose and free, Kubrick was the new visionary whose attention to detail in every aspect of his film rivaled that of Hitchcock. Where Altman pulled his audiences in with small, nuanced answers, Kubrick pushed his audiences with big bold questions. Kubrick saw a dystopian future where government gaslighted and conditioned the minds of the youth, ironically set to classic works by Beethoven and Purcell. “Clockwork” is a nightmare, but never a horror.  Mike Rand, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Stanley Kubrick’s ninth film, “A Clockwork Orange,” which has just won the New York Film Critics Award as the best film of 1971, is a brilliant and dangerous work, but it is dangerous in a way that brilliant things sometimes are. -Vincent Canby, New York Times
• “A Clockwork Orange” manifests itself on the screen as a painless, bloodless, and ultimately pointless futuristic fantasy. The first third splashes out of a wide-angle lens like a madly mod picture-spread for Look magazine where Kubrick toiled briefly long, long ago. The middle third provides a moderately engrossing indictment of B. F. Skinnerism in action. But the last third of the movie is such a complete bore that even audiences of confirmed Kubrickians have drowned out smatterings of applause with prolonged hissing. – Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice

Number 1: McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Director: Robert Altman; Writing: Robert Altman and Brian McKay, based on novel McCabe (1959) by Edmund Naughton; Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond; Film Editing: Lou Lombardo; Music: Leonard Cohen; Production Design: Leon Ericksen; Art Direction: Al Locatelli, Philip Thomas; Sound Department: John W. Gusselle.

Players: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck, Corey Fischer, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Hugh Millais.

Synopsis: A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Pacific Northwest mining town in 1902, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.

Memorable Lines: 

• Warren Beatty as John McCabe: I tell you, sometimes, sometimes when I take a look at you, I just keep looking and a-looking. I want to feel your body against me so bad, I think I’m going to bust. I keep trying to tell you in a lot of different ways. If just one time you could be sweet without no money around. I think I could – well, I’ll tell you something. I’ve got poetry in me. I do. I’ve got poetry in me!
• Julie Christie as Constance Miller: Listen, Mr. McCabe. I’m a whore, and I know a awful lot about whorehouses. And I know that if you had a house up here, you’d stand to make a lot of money. Now, this is all you’ve got to do: put out the money for the house. I’ll do all the rest. I’ll look after the girls, the business, the expenses, the running, the furnishing, everything. And I’ll pay you back any money you put in the house, so’s you won’t lose nothin’. And we’ll make it fifty-fifty.
• John McCabe: If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass so much, follow me?

Behind the Scenes:

• For a distinctive look, Robert Altman and Vilmos Zsigmond chose to “flash” (pre-fog) the film negative before its eventual exposure, as well as use a number of filters on the cameras, rather than manipulate the film in post-production; in this way the studio could not force him to change the film’s look to something less compelling. However, this was not done for the final 20 minutes of the picture, as Altman wanted the danger to McCabe to be as realistic as possible. Note the change when McCabe wakes up, grabs a shotgun, and starts off to the church.
• Though the film takes place in the fictional town of Presbyterian, Washington State, it was actually shot outside of Vancouver, BC.
• During post-production, Altman was having difficulties finding a proper musical score, until he attended a party where the album Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) was playing. He noticed that several songs from the album seemed to match the mood and themes of the movie. Cohen, who had been a fan of Altman’s previous film, Brewster McCloud (1970), allowed him to use three songs from the album: The Stranger Song – which Cohen added a bridge – Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady. Altman was dismayed when Cohen later admitted that he didn’t like the movie. A year later, Altman received a phone call from Cohen, who told him that he changed his mind after re-watching the movie with an audience and now loved it.

Critics: 

• A rich kaleidoscope of landscape, rain and smoke; a family of regular Altman players speaking in overlapping sound, accompanied by the haunting music of Leonard Cohen makes “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” feel like an opium induced dream.- Ed Boitano, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Altman’s cool, loose style lets his camera lens roam in and out of the lives of his characters while his soundtrack captures every little nuance in the social landscape of the Pacific Northwest during the end of the Old West. Altman’s melting pot of sights and sounds is every bit as American as Ozu’s Tatami- style camera setup is Japanese. Without the flash of Scorsese or the drama of Coppola, Altman carved his footprints into America’s modern cinematic landscape. – Michael Rand, T-Boy Society of Film & Music
• Less Altman’s take on the Wild West than life in an isolated Wild West community. – Dan King, T-Boy Society of Film & Music

See The 20 Best Films of 1971, Part One 

If you have a favorite film from 1971 and it’s not listed above, you can access it on IMDB’s  Feature Films released between January 1, 1971 through December 31, 1971. (Sorted by Popularity Ascending)
Send us your own list, at ad*@Tr**********.com and we will publish it in our Readers’ Poll.

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