Golden film anniversaries

This year is a particularly good one for diehard fans of the American New Wave of the 1970s, with a host of films celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year. These three standouts from around the globe from 1973 continue to entertain, intrigue and warm the hearts of cineastes of all generations. 

ARTHOUSE ESSENTIAL:

• La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night) — YouTube

French New Wave pioneer Francois Truffaut was over a decade into his career when the most populist but still quietly stylish and lyrical of the 1960s cinematic disrupters decided to turn his lens on the process of making films.

Truffaut’s chosen subject for his film about films isn’t a wild, energetic, made-on-the-fly 1960s New Wave style project; rather it’s a cliched melodrama, Meet Pamela, that provides the excuse for his energetic, loving and hilarious dissection of the chaos and clashing egos that goes into the collaborative process.

It’s a gentle love letter to the magic of movies and the sometimes mundane reality of what goes into creating the dreamy trickery that you see on screen. It also many pleasures for those obsessed with movies and enough emotional drama and quiet humour for those who just love a good story.

Though it may shirk some of the youthful energy and disregard for the rules that characterised his early New Wave work, there’s no doubting that Meet Pamela is a Truffaut work; one which demonstrates his growth as a filmmaker of quiet economy, deftly comic touches and narrative control.

It’s also one the best films about filmmaking ever and one that’s continued to inspire generations of filmmakers to be part of the magic that turns dreams into hard-won on-screen reality.

Trailer:

STONE COLD CLASSIC:

• The Long Goodbye — Rent or buy from Apple TV +

Though he was of a slightly older generation, nobody took quite as full advantage of the freedom of expressions offered by the 1970s American New Wave than maverick polymath director Robert Altman.

Here in all its laid back, black humoured and cool-as-a-cat, twisty-plotted glory is his 1970s neo-noir adaptation of Raymond Chandler's classic that stars Elliott Gould in a career-defining performance in a completely different version of the Philip Marlowe private eye character made famous decades earlier by Humphrey Bogart.

For cat lovers everywhere, the opening scene alone is worth watching as Marlowe attempts to pass off second-rate cat food on his very fussy feline. There’s also tonnes of smart updating of the outdated misogyny of the original protagonist and a memorably self-destructive performance from veteran Sterling Hayden to keep you scratching your head as you try to follow the turns of Chandler’s labyrinthian murder plot.  

Beautifully photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond whose sun-drenched frames evoke the languid, come-what-may life of sunny Los Angeles and brilliantly scored by John Williams, it all adds up to one of the greatest Chandler adaptations and one of the smartest overall book-to-screen adaptations in movie history.

Trailer:

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH:

• The Harder They Come — YouTube

Enthusiastically received as the first true on-screen depiction of the reality of life in Jamaica upon its local release in 1972, this low-budget mix of social realism, crime caper and music industry drama became a global smash when it arrived in Europe in 1973.

It stars Jimmy Cliff, then an up-and-coming musician and non-professional actor as naive country boy Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin who comes to the big city of Kingston looking for work. The slice-of-life action drama put the sound of reggae firmly on the international map and made a superstar of Cliff, who is still one of the most beloved and recognised elder statesman of reggae five decades later.

Rough and tumble in its production and faithful to a fault with the Jamaican patois of its characters and hard-knock life in the slums of Kingston, director Perry Henzell’s film will also be remembered for its groundbreaking soundtrack. Elevated beyond accompaniment to the action it becomes a character in itself, featuring songs by Cliff, Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Dekker and the Slickers among other musicians. It’s a fabulous celebration and introduction to the sounds of Jamaica that have since gone on to transform music across the globe.

It’s social message about the toughness of people in the face of dire circumstances and their determination to survive, continues to be all too relatable to a new generation of audiences 50 years later. And in Ivan, the poor and marginalised in ghettos and slums all over, continue to find a fiery, stylish, “damn the man”, hero for the ages.

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