The Moviegoer Ten Best Films of 1969

If nothing else, 1969 has been a great year for going to the movies. Around Cambridge (and largely with help of the well stacked booking policy of the new Orson Welles Cinema), one could stay in the dark enough hours on any given day to miss whole political upheavals, all lectures, and the daily suicide threats of close friends. Unfortunately, the best movies of 1969 were about polities and violence-but what can you do?

Following the tradition behind lists like these, I have selected movies only from those released commercially in the United States during 1969. Not all of the best films hate yet reached Boston, but hopefully they will before we die. Movies are listed more or less in order of preference.

ALICE'S RESTAURANT. In 1967 it was not The Graduate, but Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde which had something to say about those Americans who are lost in their homeland. And this year it is not Easy Rider, but Alice's Restaurant.

Penn's newest film is in all important ways a sequel to his last. Only this time the heroes are not violent bank-robbers but potent, generous people with good minds and an ability to love. And the setting is not an America of depression but one of abundance.

The film's story, unlike that of Bonnie and Clyde. is almost non-existent; it revolves around the attempts of the alienated heroes to find community in and around a Stockbridge, Massachusetts church. And while Alice's Restaurant has the feel of a comedy (after all, it is based on Arlo Guthrie's humorous song. "Alice's Restaurant Massacre"), it is nonetheless one of the most depressing films of this year or any other. Love dope, sex, money, utopianism, political action-none of these phenomena can offer salvation to Arlo and his friends. And, unlike Easy Rider, this film does not provide vicious villains to blame all our troubles on.

As the song goes. "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant, exceptin' Alice"-and that's the whole story. We can't get at that central heartbeat that is the real spruce of life any better than Richard Nixon can. And if we can't get at that, we might as well be dead.

Penn's work on the film is nicely augmented by that of editor Dede Allen co-screenwriter Venable Herndon and actors Arlo, James Broderick and Pat Quinn. Pete Seeger is also on hand to remind us how little things have changed since his generation's attempt to find a better America.

TOPAZ. Alfred Hitchcock's newest film is hardly his most entertaining or suspenseful work, but still it stands as a monument to the vision, brilliance and sheer force of America's greatest working director. Hitchcock's visual narrative and moral stance dominate the picture from first shot to last-so much so, that one is oblivious to plot inanities inherited from the Leon Uris novel and the largely clodlike performances of the cast (Michacl Piccoli, Philippe Noirct and Rocoe Lee Browne excluded).

The movie revolves around the Cuban missile crisis and the espionage intrigues that went on behind the headlines. While the heroes are pro-American and the villains pro-Russian, Hitchcock looks down his nose at all of them. The hero, for instance, sacrifices his wife, lover and (almost) his son-in-law to obtain information for the American government.

Throughout, Topaz is resolutely anti-political. The finale, when shots of all the dead heroes and villains are superimposed on a newspaper bearing the headline "Cuban Missile Crisis Over" ends with that newspaper being discarded on a park bench. In other words. Hitchcock says "so what?" to the entire enterprise. (The film is amusing in that way.)

In addition, the picture is full of small ironies and is dotted with nostalgic references to other movies in the master's long career. In this respect, a particularly great sequence is an embrace-assassination scene, which, besides recalling Notorious and North by Northwest, reminds us of the debt Chabrol, Truffaut and countless others owe to this Hollywood filmmaker.

Playwright Samuel Taylor wrote Topaz's unimportant screenplay, and Maurice Jarre composed the nifty musical score.

THE DAMNED. Surely one of the most perverse and decadent movies in recent film history, director Luchino Visconti's picture is a long and stunning tapestry of murder, corruption, sexual abberation and power-lust.

The Damned takes place almost entirely within the mansion of a German industrialist family (the Krupps?) during the years when Hitler was consolidating his power within Germany. Presumably what happens within the confines of the mansion is a microcosm of what is happening in the nation outside-but that's neither important nor worth thinking about. What is important is the incredible richness of the film visually: blood, transvestism, child molestation and all the rest come together to form a lushly orchestrated grand opera of emotional sickness. To be sure, Visconti has indulged himself to the fullest: he takes his sweet time in depicting each sick ritual of his metaphorical family. But while you may be revolted by it, you might love it-and, God, in either case, there is no chance you will forget it. Ingrid Thulin, Dirk Bogarde and a fine actor named Helmut Berger star.

STOLEN KISSES. Francois Truffaut takes time out from paying homage to Hitchcock ( The Bride Wore Black and his most recent film, yet to be released in this country, The Mississippi Mermaid) to provide a deceptively simple piece about unfulfilled love that is as fine as any movie he has made to date.

In it, Jean-Pierre Leaud plays Truffaut's autobiographical persona of The 400 Blows grown up-and he is great as he takes a variety of jobs in Paris and tries to romance with the boss' wife, a whore, and the proverbial girl-next-door. While Stolen Kisses is beautiful as a pure romantic ballad (the film unfolds within the context of the song "I Wish You Love"), Truffaut throws in enough wildly dissonant notes (the pathetic clients at the detective agency where Leaud works, the strange man who confesses love to the heroine at the end) to undermine one's hope that love can ever be as idyllic as popular songwriters and moviemakers would have it.

Z. This thriller, based on some tragic real-life events in recent Greek history, is good in so many ways, one is inclined to forgive its shortcomings.

The screenplay, by Jorge Semprum and Costa-Garvas, is taut and suspenseful. Raoul Coutard's photography cannot be faulted and is particularly adept in its use of cold steel-like colors to add to the cauchemar feeling of the film. Costa-Garvas' direction is lickety-split and sometimes brilliant (his groupings of the pacifist heroes to show simultane-ously their solidarity, strength and fear; the demonstration scenes, which accomplish effortlessly what Haskell Wexler wasted a whole film on in Medium Cool. )

What keeps Z from being the masterpiece we all hoped for is its failure to establish a psychological level for its exciting characters and situations, Z really adds nothing to our understanding of human beings who lead political lives. We deify the assassinated opposition leader because of his ideas and public poses. We admire the investigator because the story shows us he is brave under fire. The pigs look and talk like pigs, and that is that.

The few attempts to provide depth in characterization are the weakest parts of the film: a few quick flashback shots for Yves Montand, as useless as John Schlesinger's attempt to create a past for Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy; Costa-Gravas's seeming attempt to link one character's villainry with homosexuality.

Still, Z is a powerful document of our political world. And one can only marvel at the screen personalities of Montand and Irene Papas-and the acting of Jean-Louis Trintignant (who with Z, Les Biches, and Rehmer's Ma Nuit Chez Mand proves himself one of the best French actors) and Charles Denner (even more impassioned than he was in The Two of Us ).

LA FEMME INFIDELE. A beautifully shot and plotted film by Claude Chabrol, which, as we have learned to expect from this New Wave director, zeroes in on a complex human relationship. This Time around, the people involved are an upper middle-class couple and the wife's extracurricular lover.

The picture is witty (particularly in its cinematic references to Hitchcock's Psycho ), suspenseful, and edited to absolute perfection. It is cleaner filmmaking than Les Biches, and, for that reason, is probably less interesting. (Nor is the relationship of the characters as intriguing as that of the earlier film).

Stephanie Audran and Michel Bouquet contribute grand Chabrolesque performances, and, as usual, there is a murder which radically changes the characters' perceptions of themselves and each other.

IF. . . Lindsay Anderson directed this flamboyant, and sometimes sloppy, film about all the fantasies-political, sexual and mystical-that keep us going in a civilization built on dehumanizing concepts of order. As an example of this civilization, the film presents the milieu of a British public school. For us, it provides a triumverate of students who dream of bloody mass assassination and wild sexual escapades.

The film is at its best in evoking the school's atmosphere and the exuberance of the heroes' visions of revolution. If. . . is also very funny and pathetically sad on occasion. The random sloppiness involves the ambiguity of some of the images (notably, a sudden fetus) and the lack of followthrough with some of the characters (a "new boy" who dominates the film's first five minutes, a new and seemingly benevolent headmaster introduced later on).

If. . . is also one of the few British disillusionment-with-old-England films in recent years that is not heart-on-sleeve-a syndrome that applies to 1969's lamentable Oh, What a Lovely War. And in the film's ability to get us to cheer and revel in its violent dreams of destruction, it is positively startling.

PUTNEY SWOPE. Recommended for acid heads and those with good peripheral vision, this movie shares with If. . . a distrust of all systems of social order. Robert Downey, an underground ( Chafed Elbows ) filmmaker, wrote and directed Swope, which explains what happens when a group of militant blacks take over a Madison Avenue ad agency.

The film's form-it literally bursts at the seams with irrelevancies, obscenities, improvisations and chaotic editing-fits its message: if we dislike systems, we mustn't fight them but ignore them.

Putney Swope is not for people who hate Stanley Kubrick or for those who believe in common decency and/or logic; some of it is filthy, and the whole film practically disintegrates before your eyes, like Alka-Seltzer. But the commercials-within-the-movie will be cherished by all.

THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?. Taking place during the same year as The Damned (1933). They Shoot Horses also uses its more or less single setting (a depression dance marathon) as a microcosm for a whole society.

The unrelenting emotional violence of the dark America the film shows is staggering in impact. In fact, the whole thing is so claustrophobically seedy that one cannot help but hate and love the film at the same time. An unfortunate ending and about five minutes of execrable dialogue about the point-of-it-all mar the work-but the rest of the movie makes it easy to forgive the mistakes. The director is Sydney Pollack. Jane Fonda, hard as nails, and Gig Young, con man par excellence, give devastating performances.

LION'S LOVE. Director Agnes Varda has some fun with this overlong, weird comedy. There is no plot and a lot of talk as Viva (superstar). James Rado and Gerome Ragni (co-authors of Hair ), and Shirley Clarke (underground filmmaker) gather in a Beverly Hills hacienda the weekend Robert Kennedy was shot.

Yet despite the self-indulgence of about half the film, Lion's Love is remarkable for several things: its depiction of Southern California's plastic sunniness; it's screamingly hilarious treatment of political assassination (sick, you say?); its exploitation of the considerable assets of Viva, who is a freaky latter-day Jean Arthur; and its endearing. cozy ambiance throughout.

Why one film should be included over another in a list such as this is a highly personal matter. For that reason, I'd like to list a few more admirable films released in 1969, which, on another day, might just have easily appeared among the "Ten Best."

The Wild Bunch and Tell Them Willie Boy is Here. Two American westerns, one a graphic epic on violence by a young director (Sam Peckinpaugh), the other a psychological exploration of racial genocide by an old and, for twenty years, blacklisted filmmaker (Abraham Polonsky). Lucien Ballard's color photography in the former and Robert Redford's performance in the latter are added treats.

Skidoo. Otto Preminger's idiosyncratic (naive, if you like) comedy about American youth. A mammoth ugly crime syndicate is used to symbolize the establishment; LSD and a draft-card burner save the day. All Preminger and all crazy.

Salesman. The Maysles brothers' pseudo-documentary about door-to-door Bible salesmen on the job. It doesn't all hold together, but the technique is quite something and the real-life characters unbearably sad.

Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. A Hollywood comedy about Esalen-inspired liberation in California. The philosophical outlook is solidly middle-class, but the script (by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker) and the performances of Elliot Gould and Dyan Cannon are witty and sometimes surprisingly perceptive.

Take the Money and Run. Woody Allen co-wrote and directed this flimsy vehicle, which somehow manages, despite all its lulls, to have more laughs than any other movie this year.

That's it, folks. Send in the old hate mail if I failed to include that one film which made your 1969 worthwhile.