The Big Sleep (1978)

          Three years after playing Raymond Chandler’s famous detective Phillip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), which was set in the 1940s, Robert Mitchum reprised the role in this film, which is set in the 1970s. Making the time-shift between movies even more awkward, The Big Sleep writer-director Michael Winner employs hokey devices straight out of Chandler’s Depression-era fiction, such as femme-fatale types and hardboiled interior monologue presented as voiceover. Yet in other respects, The Big Sleep is quite modern, thanks to ample amounts of gore and nudity. Therefore, it’s an old-fashioned movie filled with things that turn off most fans of old-fashioned movies.

          Moreover, Winner risked walking on hallowed cinematic ground with this project, since the first movie version of The Big Sleep—starring Humphrey Bogart and released in 1946—is considered a classic of the original film-noir cycle. Given this tricky context, it almost doesn’t even matter that Winner’s version of The Big Sleep is an adequate little mystery/thriller. In order to satisfy all concerned parties, the movie needed to be superlative, which it is not. Furthermore, Winner inexplicably changed the location from Los Angeles (as in the original Chandler novel) to London, and then populated the cast with a random mixture of Brits and Yanks. Since nothing inherently English happens, the jump across the pond is a head-scratcher from a conceptual standpoint.

          In any event, the convoluted story begins when Marlowe is invited to the home of a rich American, retired General Sternwood (James Stewart). Sternwood hires Marlowe to scare off a would-be blackmailer. Meanwhile, Marlowe receives seductive advances from Sternwood’s adult daughters, the cynical Charlotte (Sarah Miles) and the provocative Camilla (Candy Clark). As per the Chandler story, the seemingly simple job opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, eventually placing Marlowe in the midst of betrayals, double-crosses, and murders.

           Winner hits the sleazy elements of the narrative hard, as in scenes of Camilla posing nude for a pornographer and various incidents of people getting shot through the skull. The material is so grim and the story is so bewildering that The Big Sleep isn’t fun to watch, per se, even though it boasts abundant sex appeal thanks to Clark, Miles, and costars Joan Collins and Diana Quick. Concurrently, the men in the supporting cast provide gradations of menace, with Colin Blakely, Richard Boone, Edward Fox, and Oliver Reed playing villainous types. (Offering glimmers of gallantry are the characters portrayed by Harry Andrews and John Mills.) However, none of the film’s performances or technical contributions is extraordinary, so Mitchum dominates in the absence of anything more interesting. As in Farewell, My Lovely, Mitchum’s seen-it-all demeanor suits the Marlowe character perfectly.

The Big Sleep: FUNKY

Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

          The only film that venerable director David Lean made in the ’70s, Ryan’s Daughter disappointed people who were expecting something similar to Lean’s previous successes, the blockbuster epics Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). Although Ryan’s Daughter has echoes of both earlier films, Ryan’s Daughter neither coheres as organically nor achieves the same cumulative power as Lean’s ’60s smashes. Seen with fresh eyes, however, it’s an impressive but flawed film that deserved a better reception. Set in Ireland during World War I, the picture follows the emotional journey of Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles), a small-town girl who gets everything she ever wanted and then decides she wants more, with disastrous consequences.
          In the tiny village of Kirray, Rosy marries the much-older schoolteacher Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum), only to discover that marriage isn’t full of the magical romance she expected. Anguished, dissatisfied, and guilty, Rosy becomes even more confused when she meets Major Doryan (Christopher Jones), the new commandant of the British force occupying Kirray. A beautiful creature scarred with war wounds and tortured by PTSD, he’s a kindred spirit to Rosy in that neither of them feels synchronized with the rest of society, so they commence a torrid affair. Their indiscretion leads to trouble when Doryan confronts Tim O’Leary (Barry Foster), a charismatic revolutionary who enlists the aid of Kirray’s entire population for a gun-smuggling operation.
          The original screenplay by frequent Lean collaborator Robert Bolt spins an absorbing yarn, and while it’s tempting to lament that the movie is excessive at its full length of three and a half hours (including entrance, exit, and intermission music), nearly everything onscreen during those three and a half hours is artful and interesting. Lean’s methodical storytelling is wondrous, because he conveys subtle mental shifts through expert juxtapositions of images and sounds; for instance, the myriad nuances contained in the wedding-night scene with Charles and Rosy are excruciating and specific. Additionally, the Oscar-winning cinematography by Freddie Young is indescribably beautiful. Whether he’s shooting a delicately lit interior scene or a spectacular panorama of the wild Irish coast, Young fills the screen with such masterful interplays of light and texture that each shot is like a timeless painting. Even more impressively, Lean manages to make Mitchum, the quintessential macho movie star, believable as a soft-spoken pacifist.
          Having said all that, the picture has significant problems. Inexplicably, John Mills won an Oscar for his vigorous but cartoonish performance as Kirray’s village idiot, and composer Maurice Jarre opts for a distractingly arch style in several of the film’s musical themes. Worse, the characterization of Rosy’s father, Thomas Ryan (Leo McKern), is muddy at best; the second half of the story turns on one of Thomas’ actions, and his motivation is woefully unclear.
          Still, for every shortcoming, the picture has a virtue—while Thomas Ryan is poorly conceived, Kirray’s hard-driving minister, Father Collins (Trevor Howard), is a complex figure who evolves from stern to nurturing. Plus, Ryan’s Daughter has not one but two believable love stories: Rosy’s marriage to Charles is illustrated as effectively as her dalliance with Major Doryan. Ultimately, the fact that Ryan’s Daughter isn’t an unqualified masterpiece shouldn’t detract from the fact that it’s a compelling drama writ large.

Ryan’s Daughter: GROOVY

The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973)

Although Burt Reynolds filmed hours upon hours of cowboy stories for film and television in the ’60s, he only starred in one Western during his peak period of the 1970s and early ’80s, and the picture pales in comparison to similar films of the same period starring Reynolds’ buddy Clint Eastwood. Part of the problem is an episodic storyline with too many villains, and part of the problem is the movie’s indecision about whether it’s an action picture with a romantic subplot or a romantic drama with action scenes. It also doesn’t help that the misogyny quotient is off the charts. Reynolds plays Jay, an outlaw reeling from the rape and murder of his Native American wife, Cat Dancing. When Jay’s accomplices Billy (Bo Hopkins) and Dawes (Jack Warden) kidnap a woman (Sarah Miles) they find wandering in the wilderness, Jay prevents the thugs from raping her, and takes her with him when he abandons the gang. The woman, Catherine, is running from her monstrous husband, Crocker (George Hamilton), so eventually Jay and Catherine are stalked by Dawes, Crocker, and even a bounty hunter (Lee J. Cobb), whom Crocker hires. It’s all very convoluted, and the idea that Catherine falls for Jay because he reveals his tragic past is trite. Making matters worse, Reynolds and Miles lack chemistry, so the only sparks are between Reynolds and Warden, whose climactic confrontation is memorably brutal. A priceless actor no matter how he was cast, Warden contributes one of his most odiously villainous performances in Cat Dancing, so he’s almost worth the price of admission. The location photography is handsome, especially scenes in a snowy forest toward the end of the picture, but the narrative’s stop-and-start-rhythm prevents Cat Dancing from building up a head of emotional steam. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing: FUNKY

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976)

          A strange meditation on the nature of man adapted from a Yukio Mishima novel, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea earned a certain degree of notoriety during its original release because of rumors that costars Kris Kristofferson and Sarah Miles weren’t faking when they shot their love scenes. Setting aside the fact that the scenes in question are tame by modern standards, it’s a shame this dark drama is mostly known for risqué content—for while the love story between a lonely English widow (Miles) and a world-weary American sailor (Kristofferson) is intense, another thread of the story is much more interesting. The widow’s son, Jonathan (Jonathan Kahn), is a disturbed teenager who has fallen under the influence of an even more disturbed peer, known only as “Chief” (Earl Rhodes). Chief lords over a small clique of malicious youths, because he’s a sociopath who envisions himself the only child capable of seeing dark truths about the merciless adult world.
          Writer-director Lewis John Carlino—who scripted the equally offbeat films Seconds (1966) and Resurrection (1980)—helms this picture with a sure hand, using graceful camera moves, slow dissolves, and an intimate score to create a poetic mood. He’s especially strong at filling the scenes of Chief’s clique meeting in secret places with foreboding. Richly hued cinematography by Douglas Slocombe enlivens Carlino’s stark frames, and the two use magnificent coastal locations in Devon, England, to great effect.
          Kristofferson’s restrained acting style matches the movie’s cryptic vibe, and Sarah Miles’ tendency toward weirdly indistinct facial expressions suits the piece as well, indicating that her character is lost in a world of dreams and longing. However, two adolescent performers dominate the picture. Kahn’s haunted stares are worthy of a Kubrick movie, and Rhodes works a disturbing Aryan-youth groove that makes him compelling in a stomach-turning sort of way. In sum, the narrative road this movie travels is guaranteed to polarize viewers, but for those who accept the piece as a dark parable, Sailor is a provocative experience.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea: GROOVY