Hal Ashby to Joseph McBride after early Star Wars screening: “What about yours, film critic?”
McBride to Ashby: “The difference is I know it.”
Ashby to McBride: “All right, so we’ll all turn in our Arriflxes and Avid editing machines to the Academy, and we’ll all go to work at Pink’s. Is that it?”
McBride to Ashby: “Not quite yet. [turns to George Lucas, standing nearby] We haven’t heard from your friend here.”
Lucas: “I wouldn’t push too far if I were you. Our fight ain’t with you.”
McBride: “It ain’t with me, Lucas?”
Lucas: “No it ain’t, Joe.”
Ashby: “I wouldn’t pull on Lucas, Joe. [to Will Atkey] Will, you’re a witness to this.”
McBride: “So you’re George Lucas.”
Lucas: “What’s that mean to you, Joe?”
McBride: “I’ve heard about you.”
Lucas: “And what’ve you heard, Joe?”
McBride: “I’ve heard that your movies are injecting an infantile serum into American commercial cinema, and in so doing are helping to destroy a cinematic golden age. You and Steven Spielberg, I mean.”
Lucas: “Prove it.”

The great Jean-Louis Trintignant, 91, has left the earth. In my mind he was the most deeply French actor alive for so many decades, even going back to the ’50s. That unaffected, un-acted manner, that deepish voice and handsome face, that air of casual unpretentiousness. He was a marquee name for seven decades, but mostly in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

The cancer-stricken Trintignant announced his retirement from acting four years ago.

My favorite Trintignant performances are probably the same as everyone else’s. My three all-time faves are Marcello, the snivelling coward, in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s The Conformist (’70); the tough, low-key prosecutor in Costa-Gavras‘ Z (’69); and the elderly, quietly suffering husband in Michael Haneke‘s Amour (’12).

My fourth favorite is his vaguely Humphrey Bogart-like Cote d’Azur detective in Without Apparent Motive (’71), which was based on a 1963 Ed McBain novel.

I also loved his protagonists in Roger Vadim‘s And God Created Woman and Les liaisons dangereuses, “Éric Grandin” in Costa-Gavras‘ The Sleeping Car Murders, the race-car-driving smoothie in Claude Lelouch‘s A Man and a Woman, the Trintignant guy in Ettore Scola‘s La Terrazza and Roger Spottiswode‘s Under Fire (’83)

His last great performance was as the horrified, overwhelmed and finally resigned-to-fate Georges in Amour.

Last night I finally caught Audrey Diwan’s Happening, which is easily the most sobering, harrowing and artful abortion drama I’ve seen since Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which premiered at Cannes almost exactly 15 years ago.

Happening premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival (where it won the Golden Lion), but IFC Films didn’t open it theatrically until last month with streaming set to launch on 6.21. So it’s shooting right to the top of HE’s best of 2022 list.

I wouldn’t call Happening a “horror film,” but in its plain, frank and unfettered way it comes close to that. Honestly? The conservative wing of the Supreme Court should watch it before rendering their final positions on Roe vs. Wade.

Based on Annie Ernaux’s 2011 memoir and set in a small French town in 1963, or 12 years before abortion was finally legalized in that country, it’s about Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a bright 23 year-old college student who finds herself unwelcomely knocked up. “I’d like a child one day,” she tells one of the doctors she goes to, “but not instead of a life.” She wants agency, to possibly write — a woman at least a decade ahead of her time.

The film is about Anne’s agonizing attempts to terminate, and I’m telling you right now what she and the audience go through together at times is not easy to sit through. Three scenes are especially tough. We’re talking graphic, “God, this is awful”, avert-your-eyes stuff.

But it’s the honest truth, and given the film’s low-key, straight-up directness and uncomfortable naturalism there’s no way to respond except with admiration and awe.

The film lasts 100 minutes, and there’s not a single moment that feels theatrical or manipulative or over-cooked.

Vartolomei, 24, doesn’t “play” Anne as much as submit to the reality of the story — she’s just there, quietly alarmed, trying to figure it out, guarded, persistent and going through hell.

In his 5.12.22 review, Newsday‘s Rafer Guzman wrote something very strange: “Whether you condone this film or condemn it, Happening presents a brutal reality.” Condemn it? Who the hell would condemn an honest account of what a young pregnant woman went through 60 years ago? Pro-life fanatics, I suppose, but God.

HE to critic friendo: “Happening is drop-dead brilliant — the best anguish-of-women film since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Have you seen it?

Friendo to HE: “Haven’t yet, will check it out.”

HE to friendo: “I can understand a woman who’s been through an abortion not wanting to see this. A friend has never seen 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days for this reason. I said to her that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days “is not an ‘abortion film’ — it’s a Cristian Mungiu film.’”

Friendo to HE: “But it’s totally an abortion film. I think 4 Months is an unassailable work of cinema, although I found it painful to watch and, truth to tell, a touch arduous, though I don’t deny that it’s superbly done. If you look at the box office grosses for Happening, you’ll see it’s not a film that even what’s left of the art-house audience has much interest in seeing.”

HE to friendo: “But it’s a forecast of what’s to come after Roe is trashed.”

Friendo to HE: “I think that political issue transcends movies. Frankly, I have not seen a drama about abortion that truly confronts what I think is the most complicated factor in the issue: how much certain women are haunted by having abortions, and in any number of cases regret it.”

Another, very human side of Tom Hanks…understood, sympathized with, HE-approved.

Tom Hanks momentarily, and understandably, loses his nice guy persona as over eager fans practically knock over his wife Rita Wilson. pic.twitter.com/vS2xfCqOIO

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 16, 2022

Last Saturday (6.11) marked the 40th anniversary of Steven Spielberg‘s E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial. It opened exactly one week after Poltergeist (6.4), which was partly directed by the late Tobe Hooper but mostly directed (or certainly overseen) by Spielberg.

E.T. and Poltergeist each cost roughly $10.5 million to make. Both were hugely successful, but E.T. left a much bigger box-office footprint with a grand total to date of $792 million. Poltergeist wound up earning $121.7 million.

I was the managing editor of The Film Journal at the time, and I distinctly recall that the promotional build-up for Poltergeist (“the beast!”, ghosts seeping out from Native American burial grounds, little girl sucked into a television) was louder than the E.T. drumbeat.

When the first E.T. screening happened I sent a stringer (Mark Kane, who went on to become a hotshot L.A. attorney) to cover it rather than see it myself. When Kane returned to the office later that day he had this funny little grin on his face. He didn’t say “this movie is going to make box-office history” or “it brought tears to me eyes” or anything like that, but he was definitely charmed.

Bottom line: There wasn’t much advance hoopla for E.T. The pre-screening buzz was that it was a “little movie” — a film that was basically about kids and divorce and suburbia and so on. There were no mentions of a toy-sized, big-eyed alien living in the closet of a little boy’s bedroom, etc. E.T.‘s p.r. materials were very restrained and neutral-sounding.

And then it opened and within a week or two everyone was saying “holy shit…how many times have you seen it?…I have to take my kids.”

The E.T. vibe before it opened (i.e., when it was just screening for Manhattan journos) was very cool and contact-high. I was in love with it. I saw it three times before it opened. And then it opened and the unwashed masses poured into theatres and it was suddenly less of a cool thing.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to name other big hits that nobody saw coming…movies that no one expected anything stupendous from in terms of emotional content or box-office revenue but wound up surprising the handicappers.

Okay, I’ll name one — Ted Kotcheff‘s First Blood. Early buzz was flat, just another Stallone flick, a difficult production history, a re-shot ending, mixed reviews, etc. But it wound up earning a gross of either $125 or $156 million (serious money back in ’82) and of course launched a franchise.

None of the Rambo sequels have been as good as the original.

So Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix, 9.23) was primarily shot in black-and-white (which I love) and at times within a 1.37 aspect ratio. But not entirely. Occasional color sequences used for…what, replicating sequences from her color films?

HE theory: The black-and-white conveys the sad and vulnerable stuff, the widescreen black-and-white is used for public appearances, and color pops in every so often for snippets of Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, River of No Return, The Seven-Year Itch, The Prince and the Showgirl, Let’s Make Love, etc.

Marilyn Monroe‘s best films were in black-and white, of course — The Asphalt Jungle, All About Eve, Clash By Night, Don’t Bother to Knock, Some Like It Hot, The Misfits.

From Ben Dalton’s Dominik interview in 2.12.22 Screen International: “In summer 2021, reports emerged that Netflix was unhappy with the more controversial aspects of the film, including a scene featuring bloody menstrual oral sex. ‘That’s not true!’ laughs Dominik, who describes the claim as ‘hilarious’.

“Dominik does confirm, though, that a rape scene in Joyce Carol Oates’ book appears in the film. There was a back-and-forth with the streamer — which has yet to comment on the situation — about what was acceptable to include.

“‘It’s controversial, there’s a bit for [Netflix] to swallow,’ says Dominik. ‘It’s a demanding movie — it is what it is, it says what it says. And if the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office.’”

Jordan Ruimy is reporting (and Netflix has confirmed) that Blonde‘s running time is 166 minutes.

I’m presuming that Blonde will screen at both the Venice and Telluride festivals, which will kick off, respectively, on 8.31 and 9.2.