1969 films
Related: film - 1969 - 1960s - 1960s films
Films: The Damned (1969) - Easy Rider (1969) - Femina Ridens (1969) - Kärlekens språk (1969) - The Libertine (1969) - Midnight Cowboy (1969) - Satyricon (1969)
Censorship in Denmark [...]
1969: A new film censorship law is passed. This means that the National Board of Film Censorship must approve all films publicly shown to children aged under 12 and 16. Film censorship for adults ceases to exist with reference to the principle of freedom of expression. --http://www.medieraadet.dk/html/gb/history_gb.htm [Oct 2004]More films
- Une Femme Douce aka Gentle Woman (1969) - Robert Bresson [Amazon US]
A curtain blows near an open window. A limp, crooked arm lays on the street, followed by motionless hands and the back of a head. Finally we see the dead body of a young woman (Dominique Sanda) and the crowd of feet that have gathered around, the scene of a suicide. Her story is related in flashback by her husband (Guy Frangin), a guilt-ridden pawnbroker who paces around her body lying in state. A couple like any other, they attend movies and theater, argue, make up, and make love. But director Robert Bresson shows us only the girl's sadness and systematic smothering under her husband's greed, jealousy, and increasing control. Even when the soundtrack erupts in peals of joy and laughter, such moments are left offscreen. It's Bresson's first color film and he mutes the colors to such a dull flatness that the interiors are like a dark, suffocating prison. Only in the sun do the screen and the girl spark to life. It's as rigorous as any of Bresson's works--the characters, tellingly, are not given names and there's a marvelous tension between the claustrophobic home life and the busy world of city streets and art galleries outside--but the picture lacks the understated beauty of his previous films until the climax. Bresson plays her suicide as a lovely, delicate gesture of freedom, a powerful, painful, achingly beautiful moment of resignation and transcendence all in one graceful gesture. --Sean Axmaker - Salesman (1969) - David Maysles, Albert Maysles [Amazon US]
Arguably the best American documentary of the 1960s, Salesman was the pivotal film of the "direct cinema" movement championed by such influential filmmakers as Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and (in this case) the Maysles brothers and their longtime collaborator Charlotte Zwerin. It catapulted Albert and David Maysles to international fame (later intensified with Gimme Shelter), and it remains the most powerful document of working-class America in the post-Kennedy era. As compelling as any fictional drama, the film follows four salesmen (nicknamed the Badger, the Gipper, the Rabbit, and the Bull, based on their particular on-the-job attributes) from Boston to Florida as they struggle to sell lavishly illustrated Bibles to reluctant, blue-collar customers as desperate to keep their money as the salesmen are to take it. The film focuses on the anguished plight of Paul "the Badger" Brennan, an aging Boston-Irish veteran of the salesman circuit, weary of his job and unable to hide his exhaustion from customers and colleagues alike. "I don't want to seem negative," he says in one of the film's many dreary motel rooms, but Paul is negative, and meager sales reflect his attitude. The resulting portrait serves as a two-way mirror of hard-scrabble American survival, simultaneously humorous and heartbreaking, and so honestly revealing that no performance (with the possible exception of Jack Lemmon's in Glengarry Glen Ross) could ever hope to match its level of richly nuanced humanity. Door-to-door salesmen became dinosaurs with the advent of telemarketing and Internet retail, but Salesman is a timeless masterpiece of cinematic truth. --Jeff Shannon for Amazon.com - De Sade (1969) - Gordon Hessler, Roger Corman [DVD, Amazon US]
Screen writer Richard Matheson [Stir of Echoes (1999); Omega Man (1971)] tells the tale of an elderly Marquis de Sade [played by Keir Dullea / Black Christmas (1974); 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)] laying in his death bed thinking about his life and his struggles for freedom. Twenty-eight of his seventy four years were spent in prison, as he was often "...hounded by the police on charges of inflammatory writings..." Telling the story of de Sade from childhood to manhood through flashbacks and surreal theatre sets; the movie gives a look at the innocent boy who was too often a victim of the "perverse brutality" of others. As he grows, so do his tastes. "...He exacts his sexual pleasure from the tender flesh of the women of France..." Filmed under heavy German guard at the royal palace of Charlottenburg and Saint Nikola's Cathedral in West Berlin the movie's sets and costumes are incredible. Like the Hammer Studios horror films, the movie is more a period piece than pure exploitation, yet it's subject matter alone is irresistible trash for any collector of bad movies. Uniquely a 1960's film, it was aimed at the Samuel Z. Arkoff produced Roger Corman [The Trip (1967) / Wild Angels (1966)] drive-in crowd. Surprisingly low on violence and / or nudity, and any that still remains has been filtered with an annoying purple jel over the camera lens to avoid censorship from the higher ups. Little xtras on the disc besides a trailer and short interview with Richard Matheson. A commentary track would have been interesting, but still grateful that MGM dusted this one off the shelf in the first place. Collectors should be on the lookout for Peter Brook's Marat / Sade (1966) also released on the under the Avant-Garde Cinema collection. --Tony Crosgrey [ Fringe Video Fanzine Issue #005] for amazon.com - The Honeymoon Killers (1969) [DVD, Amazon US]
Martha Beck is an obese nurse. Through a Lonely Hearts club, she meets and falls in love with Raymond Fernandez. But Raymond is not the nice guy he pretends to be : he uses to use those clubs to meet lonely women and steal their savings. From now on, Martha and Raymond will choose together their victims. They will also start to kill them... Martha and Ray really existed : they have been put to death in 1951. --yepok for imdb.comThere's Bonnie and Clyde--then there's Martha and Ray. One-shot writer-director Leonard Kastle set out to make a film about lover-murderers that was everything Arthur Penn's movie was not. He succeeded. Consequently, The Honeymoon Killers, based on the Lonely Hearts Killers case of 1949, may be too lurid for some. But there's a heart beating inside its (tawdry) chest and Kastle clearly cared about these two crazy, mixed-up kids who should never have met. But met Martha (Shirley Stoler) and Ray (Tony LoBianco) did and proceeded to fleece several widows before doing them in. The film isn't graphic in its violence, but each murder is increasingly disturbing. Dramatic lighting and dark passages from Mahler keep the mood close and clammy throughout. Keep an eye out for Everybody Loves Raymond's Doris Roberts in a sharp cameo--and for shots directed by original helmer Martin Scorsese (fired for working too slowly). --Kathleen C. Fennessy for amazon.com
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Kiss Me Monster (1969) - Jesus Franco [Amazon.com]
It's hard to tell whether Spanish exploitation legend Jess Franco actually planned to make a surreal spy movie, but Kiss Me Monster (originally titled Besame Monstrou) plays like a psychedelic parody of secret-agent thrillers and Hitchcock mysteries. A pair of stripteasing artist roommates, who bunk in a groovy little bungalow practically lost in deep shag carpets, turn freelance detectives when they stumble upon a secret message hidden in the strains of a song. Before you know it they've tracked the source to a Caribbean island where an ancient castle hides a mad scientist experimenting on (usually naked female) captives in his bid to create a strain of supermen. It's almost impossible to follow this incoherent mix of horror, sexploitation, and science fiction-a-go-go, but the absurdist dialogue (seemingly translated by someone who speaks English as a third or fourth language) and simply ridiculous situations are only enhanced by the overripe acting and clumsy dubbing. Flashy editing, garish sets, a terrific score that runs the gamut from lounge to big band to Latin to rock instrumentals, and enthusiastically awful performances by Janine Reynaud and Rossana Yanni help raise this entertaining mess to the level of guilty pleasure. Also stars German romance idol Adrian Hoven, who coproduced the film. Reynaud also appears in Franco's equally surreal but altogether more serious Succubus. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com