The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972)

          Appraised solely for its political bona fides, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine is impeccable, conveying activist priest Father Daniel Berrigan’s poetic record of his involvement with the illegal destruction of Vietnam-era draft records. Every frame of the picture exudes righteous indignation, and the movie was released at a moment when every voice raised against an unjust war mattered. Seen today, it’s a bit of a slog even though it contains fine work by several terrific actors, especially the great Ed Flanders, who stars as Berrigan. The problem with The Trial of the Catonsville Nine today is that it unfolds as a scattershot expression of rage against the machine—specifically, the American military-industrial complex. Amid glorious speeches are heavy-handed inserts depicting battlefield atrocities and campus protests. It’s all meaningful, but it’s also monotonous and repetitive.

          In 1968, Berrigan and eight other activists snatched hundreds of draft records from an office in Maryland, dragged them to a parking lot, and immolated the records using homemade napalm. The activists remained in place awaiting arrest, hoping their ensuing trial would help draw attention to the antiwar movement. The trial resulted in convictions for all involved, though Berrigan fled, remaining a fugitive until 1970, at which point he was incarcerated for two years. The film opens with a brief dramatization of the crime, then shifts to a stylized courtroom set. Although Berrrigan’s original play was written in verse, the movie employs an alternate script by Saul Levitt, which transposes Berrigan’s text into dramatic scenes. In its best moments, the film has the tension of a proper courtroom drama, alternating heated ethical debates with brazen procedural maneuvers. In its driest moments, the movie becomes a hectoring leftist sermon that portrays the U.S. government as a corrupt empire.

          What redeems the viewing experience, beyond the beauty and passion of Berrigan’s language, is the acting. Flanders conveyed compassion and vulnerability with special grace, so he’s perfect in the leading role. Richard Jordan and Donald Moffat, also deeply humanistic actors, excel as two of Berrigan’s co-conspirators, and William Schallert displays unexpected colors as the trial’s sympathetic judge—what a pleasure to see him in a part this dimensional. It’s also worth noting the behind-the-camera participation of two important figures. Actor Gregory Peck, who does not appear in the film, financed and produced The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, while cinematographer Haskell Wexler, always eager to help an underdog cause, shot the picture.

The Trial of the Catonsville Nine: FUNKY

Underground (1976)

          As the militant branch of Students for a Democratic Society, the Weather Underground was among the most controversial groups to emerge from the American political unrest of the late ’60s and early ’70s. To protest the Vietnam War and other issues, the Weathermen (as they were known colloquially) employed such dangerous tactics as bombing government facilities. By the mid-’70s, the core Weathermen were fugitives from justice. All of this explains why the Weathermen documentary Underground is an interesting historical artifact, even though it’s quite sketchy as a piece of cinema. Co-directed by Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson, and Haskell Wexler—all deeply committed to progressive causes—the picture essentially comprises one long rap session with a group of Weathermen. The radicals are partially obscured from view, appearing in silhouette or sitting with their backs to the camera, and so on.

          Accordingly, this is a talking-head doc without any talking heads, and the archive footage and text graphics that the filmmakers use to spruce up certain scenes are not enough to keep the film visually compelling. Given these limitations, would the material have been more effective as a book or a magazine article? The question is moot, because Underground is what exists.

          Much of what the radicals describe is fascinating and provocative. William Ayers, Kathy Boudin, Bernardine Dorhn, Jeff Jones and Cathy Wilkerson talk about class warfare, the insidious reach of the military-industrial complex, and the need for revolution to change America’s racist culture. The passion these people have for their mission feels completely real, even if some of their rhetoric sounds naïve. The radicals explain how fear is part of their everyday lives because they’re wanted by the Feds—and yet they claim to accept their daily anxiety because it parallels the fear pervading the underclass they champion. White privilege alert! Beyond aesthetic limitations and some dissonance of perspective, Underground has an intention problem. Because the interviewers are plainly sympathetic with their subjects, the movie isn’t remotely objective, which means it wasn’t designed to change the minds of people who consider the Weathermen criminals. So was the movie actually made as some sort of recruiting tool?

          Seen today, Underground serves a useful purpose as a historical artifact. During the time of its release, the value probably wasn’t so clear, which might be why the FBI subpoenaed the filmmakers, hoping to scare them into revealing the whereabouts of the interviewees. The FBI’s interest raises the most basic question about the Weathermen—were they revolutionaries or terrorists? Hearing the activists lay out their platform lets viewers draw their own conclusions.

Underground: FUNKY

The Conversation (1974)

          To fully grasp the hot streak filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was on in the ’70s, it’s necessary to look beyond the titanic accomplishments of The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979). Released the same year as The Godfather: Part II—and, amazingly, also nominated for a Best Picture Oscar that year, giving Coppola two slots in the category—was The Conversation, which arguably represents the purest artistic statement of Coppola’s early career. Whereas Coppola’s other ’70s films are adaptations, The Conversation is an original. Moreover, the picture is so intimate that it demonstrates the filmmaker’s preternatural ability to use image and sound as a means of communicating nearly microscopic details about a protagonist’s inner life. Yet beyond simply being an auteurist showpiece, The Conversation tells a resonant story about themes ranging from paranoia to personal responsibility, and it contains one of the finest leading performances of the decade, by the incomparable Gene Hackman. In sum, The Conversation is a pinnacle achievement whether viewed as personal art, social critique, or even just craftsmanship.

          Set in Coppola’s beloved San Francisco, the movie concerns Harry Caul (Hackman), a surveillance contractor revered by fellow professionals for his skill at secretly recording conversations in tricky situations. The opening scene depicts Harry’s team using a trio of strategically placed microphones to eavesdrop on an exchange between young lovers Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest), who speak while walking in circles through a crowded urban square. Harry merges the recordings until he’s extracted a pristine master tape, and then attempts to make delivery to his client, a director at the CIA. Yet when Harry is denied access to the director, he suspects trouble, so he withholds the master tape. It turns out that in the past, one of Harry’s tapes was used to justify an assassination, so Harry fears history might repeat itself. The problem, however, is that Harry is so reclusive that he has no close friends from whom to seek guidance or support. Therefore, the incredible drama of the movie stems from Harry’s quandary over whether to maintain his personal code of noninvolvement or violate his self-preserving principles in order to serve the greater good.

          Every character surrounding Harry is used by Coppola to illuminate a different facet of the protagonist. Amiable coworker Stan (John Cazale) reveals Harry’s inability to trust; gentle prostitute Meredith (Elizabeth McRae) reveals Harry’s inability to share emotionally; undemanding kept woman Amy (Teri Garr) reveals Harry’s inability to commit; and so on. Meanwhile, edgy supporting characters including ice-blooded functionary Martin (Harrison Ford) and vulgar surveillance-industry competitor Bernie (Allen Garfield) represent the types of avarice and duplicity that first drove Harry to become a recluse. On nearly every textual and subtextual level, The Conversation is a master class in character development.

          It’s also a wonder in terms of technical execution. Coppola and expert cinematographers Bill Butler and Haskell Wexler carve delicate images from light, movement, and shadow, articulating the significance of how different people occupy different spaces. Unsung hero Walter Murch, performing the role of sound designer before that job title existed, works magic with distortion and fragmentation to evoke Harry’s insular life experience, while composer David Shire’s whirling piano figures address the painful tension pervading the story. The performances are uniformly good, from Garr’s slightly pathetic likeability to Garfield’s crass aggression, but, obviously, the brittle textures of Hackman’s work hold The Conversation together. Disappearing behind dumpy clothes, horn-rimmed glasses, and a receding hairline, Hackman sketches Harry Caul with incredible restraint, so the flashes of emotion that the actor makes visible speak volumes. The Conversation isn’t perfect, thanks to occasional directorial flourishes that slip into pretention and thanks to a slightly overlong running time. Nonetheless, in every important way, The Conversation defines what made New Hollywood cinema bracing, innovative, and meaningful.

The Conversation: OUTTA SIGHT

Coming Home (1978)

          Inarguably the best movie made during the ’70s about the unique difficulties facing American veterans returning from Vietman, Coming Home is at once moving, political, provocative, and tender—and it’s also the apex of actress Jane Fonda’s anti-Vietnam War activism, even though it was released three years after the fall of Saigon. While “Hanoi Jane” alienated as many people as she inspired while the war was raging, she used Coming Home—which she developed—to focus her rage at needless conflict through the prism of war’s impact on individuals. Rather than being polemic, even though some detractors saw the film that way, Coming Home is poetic.

          When the movie opens in early 1968, Sally Hyde (Fonda) is happily married to a Marine officer named Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), and both unquestionably accept the rightness of U.S. involvement in Indochina. Once Bob leaves for his tour of duty, Sally begins to hear different opinions about the war, notably from her feminist friend Vi (Penelope Milford); Sally also begins to question the subservient role she plays in her marriage. Eventually, Sally volunteers at a VA hospital, where she meets returning soldiers including embittered but passionate Luke Martin (Jon Voight), who is paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. As part of her larger spiritual awakening, Sally recognizes Luke’s humanity, and they become lovers in a crucial scene that director Hal Ashby executes with a memorable combination of eroticism and poignancy. The fragile world that Luke and Sally build together is upset, however, when Bob returns from Vietnam, having been changed in disturbing ways that echo the film’s theme of how war affects different people differently.

          Placing Sally’s character at the center of the story was a genius move on many levels. First and most obviously, the role gives Fonda a way to express her deep feelings about the war; she dramatizes the ravages of conflict by meticulously charting Sally’s shifting attitudes. Second, making the central character a witness to the horrors of Vietnam—rather than an active participant—allows the audience to see soldiers as real-world people instead of battleground heroes. What does it mean when a draftee is rewarded for his service by wounds that will last the rest of his life? What does it mean when a career soldier encounters horrors during combat for which he wasn’t prepared? How can those left behind in the homeland ever hope to understand the experiences of soldiers?

          Coming Home is a deeply compassionate film, with Ashby and cinematographer Haskell Wexler capturing a spectrum of complex emotions in soft, painterly images; the movie is a tapestry of souls making connections and, alternately, slamming against insurmountable barriers. Coming Home is also a showcase for spectacular acting. Fonda and Voight both won Oscars, Fonda for her precise demarcations of stages in one woman’s life and Voight for his deeply touching openness. (His show-stopping speech to a group of young people near the end of the picture, while a bit of a narrative digression given its length, is among the finest moments Voight’s ever had onscreen.) Dern, unluckily overshadowed by his costars because he’s playing yet another in his long line of screen psychos, gives a performance every bit as powerful as Fonda’s and Voight’s—portraying a man who’s betrayed by the ideals to which he’s dedicated his life, Dern is frightening and yet also completely sympathetic.

Coming Home: RIGHT ON

Days of Heaven (1978)

          Much of the mythology surrounding enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick stems from the making and aftermath of his sophomore feature, Days of Heaven. Following idiosyncratic artistic instincts rather than Hollywood convention, Malick took nearly three years to craft this moodily poetic work, which treats its simplistic storyline like an afterthought. During that time, rumors spread about the director’s offbeat methods: For instance, he dictated that large sections of the film be shot at dusk, thereby abbreviating many of his shooting days to short bursts of activity. Then, after the film received a mixed critical reception, Malick disappeared from the Hollywood scene for 20 years. His mysterious withdrawal cast Malick as an artist too pure for the crass ways of Hollywood, triggering years of reappraisal and rediscovery.

          By the time Malick resumed directing with The Thin Red Line in 1998, Days of Heaven was firmly entrenched alongside the director’s debut feature, Badlands (1973), as one of the most respected films of the ’70s. Does it deserve such rarified status? Yes and no. Visually, Days of Heaven is unparalleled. Malick and cinematographers Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler mimicked turn-of-the-century paintings and photographs to evoke the supple textures of a Texas wheat farm circa 1916, the movie’s central location. Malick presents several astoundingly beautiful scenes of workers wading through fields, their bodies silhouetted against pastel-colored sunsets, while composer Ennio Morricone’s lilting music evokes a time when life moved at a more contemplative pace.

          Working with frequent collaborator Jack Fisk (credited here as art director), Malick oversaw the creation of a remarkable focal point, the elegant mansion that sits atop a wheat-covered hill, and Malick uses this structure as an effective metaphor for man’s tumultuous relationship with nature: Not only is the house a shelter during weather, it’s a place where relationships that had previously been allowed to roam freely get trapped within the conventions of propriety.

          The main plot, which never quite gels because Malick leaves many details unexplained and/or unexplored, begins in Chicago. Traveling workman Bill (Richard Gere), his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams), and his little sister Linda (Linda Manz) flee Chicago after Bill kills a supervisor during an argument. Upon reaching Texas, the trio accepts work on the wheat farm, which is owned by a sickly man identified only as The Farmer (Sam Shepard). For murky narrative reasons, Bill and Abby pretend to be brother and sister instead of a couple. So, when The Farmer becomes interested in Abby, Bill encourages the romance—believing The Farmer is terminally ill, Bill hopes to seize The Farmer’s wealth through marriage and build a new life for his family. Unfortunately, complications ensue, leading to heartbreak and tragedy.

          Despite the gifts for incisive storytelling he displayed in Badlands, Malcik badly fumbles basic narrative elements in Days of Heaven. His characters are ciphers, his pacing is erratic, and he relies far too heavily on the narration spoken, in character, by Manz. (A similar device was magical in Badlands, but here the narration just seems like a desperate attempt to add coherence.) Thanks to these flaws, the whole movie ends up having the hodgepodge feel of a student film, albeit one with awe-inspiring cinematography. Nonetheless, Days of Heaven casts a spell, which is a rare accomplishment.

Days of Heaven: GROOVY

Bound for Glory (1976)

          A beautifully made biopic with a few peculiar flaws, Bound for Glory represented yet another artistic high point for editor-turned-director Hal Ashby, whose ’70s output was as eclectic as it was impressive. This time, Ashby tackled the life story of pioneering American folksinger Woody Guthrie, whose enduring anthem “This Land Is Your Land” reflected his humanistic fascination with the downtrodden people he met during his vagabond adventures circa the Great Depression. Perfectly timed to tap into counterculture themes of reappraising priorities and questioning authority, Bound for Glory could easily have become a vanilla celebration of an iconic singer. Instead, it’s a rougher piece, demonstrating the strange conflict between Guthrie’s devotion to “the people” and his inability to fulfill familial obligations.

          The story begins in small-town Texas, with Woody (David Carradine) working as a freelance sign painter even though his real passion is playing music (he moonlights as a honky-tonk band’s guitarist). After one day too many without making a living wage, Woody skips out on his wife (Melinda Dillon) and becomes a hobo, stealing rides in the cargo cars of westbound trains as he makes his way toward the promised land of Southern California. Along the way, Woody sees enough deprivation and hardscrabble dignity to inspire a lifetime’s worth of original songs, and he finds himself drawn to the plight of the working men who are oppressed by callous business owners.

          Once in California, Woody is radicalized through his friendships with a fruit picker (Randy Quaid) and a union-organizing country singer (Ronny Cox). Picking up a guitar again after a long musical drought, Woody starts writing incendiary rabble-rousers. Then, after he’s hired to perform on the radio, he stumbles into an existential crisis when he’s forced to choose between integrity and a steady paycheck. The willingness on the filmmakers’ part to display Guthrie’s unattractive qualities gives Bound for Glory gravitas, complicating our idea of what Guthrie represents.

          This storytelling choice also gives Carradine the most multidimensional role of his career. He seizes the opportunity with a vibrant performance, crooning and philosophizing his way to an earthy incarnation of Guthrie’s troubadour spirit. Ashby surrounds Carradine and the rest of the strong cast with wonderfully evocative physical details, from the antiseptic milieu of recording studios to the heartbreaking ugliness of labor camps. Capturing all of these rich visuals is cinematographer Haskell Wexler, a diehard lefty who actually knew the real Guthrie back in the day; Wexler’s graceful camera movements and naturalistic lighting make Bound for Glory look like classic Depression-era photographs come to life.

          That said, Bound for Glory has strange shortcomings. Ashby bizarrely cast Dillon in two roles (she also plays a country singer who performs on the radio with Guthrie), and the ending isn’t particularly satisfying. One gets the impression Ashby couldn’t decide whether Guthrie was a heel or a hero, or both. But if the worst that can be said about a movie is that it embraces ambiguity, is that really much of a criticism?

Bound for Glory: GROOVY

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

          Despite being one of the seminal dramas of the 1970s and an almost universally praised Oscar winner for Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has its detractors, not least of whom was the late Ken Kesey, who wrote the book upon which the film is based. Kesey, a counterculture legend who extrapolated the narrative from his experiences as a participant in LSD experiments at a military hospital, said he never saw the picture because the filmmakers informed him they were taking liberties with his story. Notwithstanding Kesey’s misgivings, Cuckoo’s Nest is an extraordinary piece of work that might not necessarily capture Kesey’s unique voice, but substitutes something of equal interest and power. Jack Nicholson plays R.P. McMurphy, a prison inmate who feigns insanity to dodge a work detail, then gets sent to a mental asylum for his trouble. Once there, he becomes the charismatic leader for a group of lost souls, uniting them against their common enemy: tyrannical Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).
           Under the audacious and sensitive direction of Milos Forman, a Czech native who lost his parents in the Holocaust and fled Czechoslovakia during a violent communist takeover, Cuckoo’s Nest plays out as a profound metaphor about the hardship and necessity of fighting fascist regimes; McMurphy personifies the rebellious soul of the free populace while Ratched represents the heartless machine of the oppressive overmind. The mid-’70s were just the right moment for this intense counterculture statement, and what makes Cuckoo’s Nest so extraordinary is that it meshes its idealistic themes with raucous entertainment. Whenever McMurphy leads his fellow patients in mischief, he’s like a high-art version of the sort of anarchistic rabble-rousers Bill Murray played in his comedy heyday. This irresistible charm (both McMurphy’s and Nicholson’s) makes the downbeat path the story follows totally absorbing, just like the work of the splendid cast makes ensemble scenes intimate and vivid.
          Fletcher and Nicholson won well-deserved Oscars, and they’re matched by artists working in top form: Actors Brad Dourif and Will Sampson are heartbreaking as two key patients; composer Jack Nitzsche’s score is subtle and surprising; and the loose, documentary-style images by cinematographers Bill Butler and Haskell Wexler are indelible. Incidentally, Cuckoo’s Nest netted Michael Douglas his first Oscar, because he produced the film, and watch out for future Taxi costars Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd as two members of McMurphy’s merry band.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: OUTTA SIGHT