Based on Sam Greenlee’s novel, The Spook Who Sat by the Door tells the story of Black CIA agent hired to showcase agency integration in order to boost a white senator’s re-election campaign. After going undercover as a Black nationalist, he abandons the agency in order to train young recruits in Chicago to become urban guerrillas. Though filmed mostly in Gary, Indiana due to Mayor Daley’s personal distaste for the subject matter, the landscape of Chicago casts a strong shadow over the movie.
Tag: 1970s
In this comedy special, Lily Tomlin plays familiar characters such as young Edith Ann, housewife Judy Beasley, and telephone operator Ernestine, while debuting a new character, Wanda V. Wilford. Lily opens the show by talking about how there’s “more to life” than being a gifted actress, and how, as a youth, she dreamed of becoming “a big city waitress.”
This puppet animation film is based on Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. A 1936 symphonic fairy tale for children, the piece tells the story of Peter and a little bird who outwit and catch the dangerous wolf and take him to a zoo.
Francois Truffaut in conversation in 1977 with Richard Roud, then Director of the New York Film Festival. Truffaut, director of “Jules and Jim,” “The Four Hundred Blows, etc. was in America for the premier of “The Man Who Loved Women” at the 15th NYFF. The film director speaks of his childhood, the moral challenge of World War Two, the real meaning of the “auteur theory”, how the conservative French film industry was forced to change, Truffaut as a “culture hero” in the US, making a film that is as personal as a novel, the difference between French and American approaches to cinema, and many other themes.
America’s great film director-actor Buster Keaton, discussed by film critic Andrew Sarris and Raymond Rohauer, cinema historian, with some unusual perspectives on his goals and motivations. Illustrated with many film excerpts from 1917 to 1928. Rohauer knew Keaton and was partly responsible from rescuing many of his old films from destruction. Sarris is a leading film critic who has often written about Keaton. Excerpts include portions of “The General”, “Cops”, “Frozen North”, “The Boat”, “Sherlock, Jr.” and others. Rohauer also describes rescuing Keaton’s films from a garage and talking with Keaton at the end of his life when he had been forgotten.
A story from Victoria, British Columbia, of one young man who, despite a crippling malady, is determined to experience as many of life’s offerings as possible. Brian Wilson is spastic, confined to a wheelchair, but he works at a job, looks after himself, and moves about from place to place on his own. Every day has its challenges and victories, and sometimes defeats. With this example of personal courage, the film provides insight into the private and daily struggle of the disabled.
A metaphysical mystery based on the novel by Leonardo Sciascia, Todo modo is the most curious and puzzling of Petri’s films and offers a not-so-veiled critique of Christian Democratic political power. Italy’s most successful politicians go on a monastic retreat at the convent of Don Gaetano to contemplate their notable careers and secretly devise a new power structure. After a series of mysterious crimes, the consortium becomes divided and, ultimately, depleted. The film’s unabashed leftist politics are given vivid articulation through the work of noted production designer Dante Ferretti.