We’re in the middle of the Western revival, with 3 solid, potentially great ones happening this year. In addition, those sprawling Western vistas got applied to some of the other films this year, including the film taking place in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
First to a country that doesn’t exist anymore (Czechoslovakia), and a city that does (Prague). The great Milos Forman crafts as best a comedy he can from the working class in a Communist country. It’s sometimes funny, but always peceptive.
Our next stop is some studio lot, or Anytown, Old West, USA, where Jane Fonda spoofs the Western Genre. You know those schoolmarm’s: always gettin involved in robberies and revenge thrillers. Lee Marvin is also a blast playing the beyond drunk “muscle” Fonda hires to help her avenge her father’s death.
We’re in the height of the French New Wave movement, so Jean Luc-Godard (big year for him) takes us to France and into the mind of our crazy main character (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Godard does what he does best here: flip conventional cinema on its head while telling and caring about deeply personal issues at the same time.
Onto Utah, where George Stevens gets the gang together. In this case, the gang is basically a who’s who of Hollywood talent to tell the tale of Jesus (Max Von Sydow). It can be long and dull, but it also looks pretty epic and gives a nice intro into the Hollwyood elite of the time.
Sean Connery was so successful as James Bond at this point, he convinced them to go to the Bahamas for this shoot. It’s all campy, double entendre fun here, with beautiful bombshells, amazing locations, and crazy set pieces that Austin Powers kids like myself will understand how easy it is to spoof a Bond movie.
And Godard is back, taking us to the future, to a city called Alphaville. Like the great New Wave directors, Godard creates a sci fi film noir with whatever budget he had, making a successful blend of the two genres later seen in movies like Dark City or Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Roman Polanski takes us on a journey into the mind of a psychological thriller. Here it’s Catherine Deneuve, a withdrawn woman scared of interacting with men. Polanski dives us headlong into the mindspace of the excellent Deneuve, who views the world not normally, but as a more sinister, paranoid place to be constantly scared of.
The middle of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western Trilogy sends us to the Old West via Italy. Leone and Encrico Morricone are as good as ever, with a great soundtrack and closeups for days. Plus the violence in this one has more of a point than A Fistful of Dollars, fleshing out Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, and giving him a partner as cunning and sharp as he is, Lee Van Cleef.
Onward to a Russia in revolution. David Lean gives us a sprawling glimpse of how the Bolshevik Revolution through the eyes of Omar Sharif’s Yuri Zhivago. With a score to match the epic scope, Lean combines a war movie, a thriller, and a romance into a recipe for movie success, as Hollywood’s premier epic filmmaker weaves through the various story elements like a brilliant Formula One race car driver.
Our final stop is the best one: the Lake District in Austria. Julie Andrews plays a young, lively Nun assigned to be a governess for Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) and his 7 kids. From there, we go on a musical adventure, with at least 5 iconic songs that get stuck in your head, a sweet but important story about love during a time of great hate, and majestic, intimidating shots of the beauty of the Austrian Alps and lakes.
