55. Gandhi (1982)

Plot Intro

In 1893, an Indian lawyer named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) is thrown from a train in South Africa for sitting in a first-class carriage, despite having a valid ticket. This incident leads him back to India, where he does battle against the dictatorial rule of the British Empire, and embarks on a campaign that will change the world forever…

Doug says...

IWe’ve now watched fifty-five films, dating from 1927 up to this one in 1982. That’s a wide range of films, coming from different angles, perspectives and creative paths, and so I sometimes find it hard to rank films against each other. 

That said, this is easily the best film out of all fifty five seen so far. It is, for want of a better word, extraordinary. 

There’s so much to talk about that I don’t know where to start, and I begin fully in the knowledge I won’t even scratch the surface. It’s intelligent, raw, brave and features remarkable performances right across the board. It portrays Gandhi’s non-violent tactics in full view, and makes you understand firstly how revolutionary they were, and secondly how they had such an effect. The first half ends with a horrific massacre of Indian civilians by an unfeeling general. But an example of what elevates this film is that it doesn’t end the half there, but goes on to have a scene where the offending general is then questioned by his army superiors who are openly disturbed by his actions, forced to realise their own horrendous actions simply by the Indian people’s refusal to fight back. 

Another scene highlights this, showing a group of protestors walking up to guards preventing them from entering salt mines, and allowing themselves to be beaten. Wave after wave of protestors approaches and are struck down, until the inevitable reports horrify the world at large, placing the British rulers squarely in the place of ‘abuser’. 

Director Richard Attenborough does not falter once during this three hour epic. There is no scene that feels unnecessary, if anything he slightly rushes over Gandhi’s trip to London to meet with officials. He balances the full, aggressive scenes (never have riot scenes felt quite so unsettling and full of menace) against beautifully calm scenes of rural peace. We see Gandhi both as protestor and as family man, interrupting a meeting with his advisors to go help his granddaughter tend to the goats. So too it is with the people around him - his devoted wife spins quietly in the background but also speaks at public gatherings and openly defies the police. 

All this is without even mentioning the central performance by Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. It vies with  Marion Cottillard in La Vie En Rose as Edith Piaf for the title of Greatest Screen Performance Ever. Feelings and emotion transmit from him, his rage when seeing the aftermath of the massacre, his impish enjoyment of watching the British repeatedly jail him, only to release him, his overwhelming sorrow when holding his dying wife’s hand. It is a performance that many actors would dream to give, and even in the quieter moments, when he is peacefully spinning wool, or chiding his grandchildren (only to immediately pat their head), he is utterly, fully Gandhi. I love particularly how he shows the human: the instances of rage, the humorous jokester, and the caring family man. 

They’re all helped by a script that does exactly what it needs to. It explains what’s happening, but never spoon-feeds, and never feels false, even for a second. Moments such as when Gandhi enters court on trial, and the judge stands in respect, forcing the entire courtroom to follow suit, are not explained or referenced, but allowed to stand on their own, and are all the more powerful for it. 

It’s a film that provokes anger and outrage, and brought me to tears at multiple points - particularly when Gandhi realises his fast to prevent the Muslims and Hindus from fighting has succeeded. Kingsley, without moving a muscle, conveys the heartfelt relief and care that Gandhi has for his country and fellow citizens. 

A film that uses every minute of its three hour time to the best effect. Overwhelmingly powerful, focused and truthful, and a real homage to its extraordinary subject. 

Highlight 

The entire film? The closing shot of the waves lapping with the sunset sinking behind it, captures so much in a simple image. Attenborough proves himself a master with every angle used. 

Lowlight

There isn't one. 

Mark 

If I could, it’d be 11 out of 10. So it’s a begrudging 10.  

Paul says...

Biopics are relatively frequent at the Oscars - they’re usually about great or at least noteworthy people, with strong socio-political connections to the audiences watching at the time of the film’s release. So far, the winning biopics have swung between the trite and dull (The Great Ziegfeld and Patton), and the inspirational (The Life of Emile Zola and A Man For All Seasons). Gandhi sits very firmly in the latter category.

It boasts many selling points. The three-hour running time never feels stretched or overlong (if anything, it needed more time, but we’ll deal with that in a moment). Ben Kingsley’s central performance is transformational. He was 39 at the time of the film’s release, but I was completely convinced that he was anywhere between 24 and 78 throughout the film’s chronology. He’s natural, witty, and moving, and proof that whilst he may be relegated to “wise old man” supporting roles now, he is actually an absolute revelation. It also has a phenomenal host of supporting actors - John Gielgud, Terence Howard, John Mills, Richard Griffiths, Martin Sheen, Edward Fox, and Nigel Hawthorne have all answered their mate Attenborough’s call and scrambled eagerly for a few lines. Even John Savident (Fred Elliot in Coronation Street) and Shane Rimmer (the voice of Scott Tracey in Thunderbirds) find their ways in. Whilst it may seem pointless seeing as Kingsley is the fulcrum around which the entire work revolves, it’s still fun to play “spot the star”. 

It’s also a film for a big screen. The crowd scenes render the experience completely immersive. I really felt like I was there at Gandhi’s funeral, or at the horrifying Amritsar Massacre, or on the march to the sea to get salt, or on the over-crowded trains travelling the many provinces of India. At no point did I lose that sense of escapism, and this helped me to cheer on Gandhi’s and India’s efforts towards independence, and despaired during those inevitable times when violence took over. 

As excellent as it is, I am hesitant to give Gandhi a full 10. Controversial, I know, because Gandhi himself deserves nothing but 10’s across the board. But let me explain why. I mentioned earlier that the film could potentially do with more time. Perhaps I’m a product of my time. The best biopics nowadays cover several episodes of a TV show or even several seasons (prime examples are John Adams and Netflix’s The Crown, which will spend an entire hour-long episode on one event in the Queen’s life). In the cinema world, biopics tend to focus on one aspect of an icon’s life and dissect it for all its worth. The Queen starring Helen Mirren, Frost/Nixon, and the Elizabeth films starring Cate Blanchett manage to illustrate their titular subjects through just a small phase of their life- and with moving results. 

Gandhi could have done with a bit of this. His fasting as a result of Indian violence towards British troops, his visit to London, the Hindu-Muslim tensions post-independence (which admittedly take up a majority of the final hour but could have had an entire film dedicated to it), all feel summarised, as if this is the edited highlights of Gandhi’s life, rather than a full study. A TV series could have answered some of my questions such as: what were discussions in UK Parliament like during this time? What truly became of Colonel Dyer, who ordered the Amritsar Massacre? What was life like in Pakistan when it was formed- and what were Gandhi’s thoughts on this in the first place? 

I know, I know, I’m being picky and a quick trip to Wikipedia could solve all of this. I should assert that this doesn’t detract from how marvellous this film is. It dedicates itself entirely to showing Gandhi’s values and philosophy, and has lessons in there that everyone, absolutely everyone, needs to learn. Watch it, learn from it, and, like me, start planning that trip to India right now.

Highlight

The Amritsar Massacre is a terrifying set piece, in which British troops led by Colonel Dyer opened fire on peaceful protestors- men, women and children are brutally slaughtered. Incidentally, Dyer remained popular within those connected to the British Raj, but not in the House of Commons. He was removed from his position, and never allowed employment in India again. He should, really, have been tried for murder.

Lowlight

I felt like the final hour was a bit of a rush through the Hindu-Muslim tensions that came about after India’s independence was established. Attenborough might as well have tried to make an hour-long film about Palestine. 

Mark

8/10

54. Chariots of Fire (1981)

Plot Intro

It’s 1924. Aspiring sprinter, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) pursues his ambitions to win Olympic Gold whilst at Cambridge. He is held back a little, however, by his Jewish heritage and his employment of a coach, Sam Mussabini (Ian Holm), not something usually done at the time. Another aspiring Olympian, Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), also works as a Christian missionary in China, and believes that his running is a demonstration of his faith in God. The two runners, and the rest of their team, head to the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris…

Paul says...

My feelings about Chariots of Fire are similar to those towards Annie Hall. Whilst Annie Hall was not a bad film in the slightest, I found myself pining to be watching its rival for Best Picture in 1977, Star Wars. Chariots, meanwhile, is not terrible, but it defeated an equally bombastic blockbuster, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and if the Academy had voted a different way, we could have been watching Indiana Jones instead.

Chariots is somewhat reduced from a historical and inspirational film about sports to a piece of extremely famous music and much slow motion running on the beach. There is, of course, more to it than that, but Chariots received only one acting nomination - Supporting Actor for Ian Holm. The leading two actors will appear obscure to most viewers, unless you’re a real film buff. And I challenge anyone in our generation to name one other famous scene than the opening race on the beach. In other words, it’s generally a bit forgettable despite its stylistic aspirations.

I kept comparing Chariots to our other most recent sport-themed movie, Rocky. The boxing classic has serious drive. You really feel that this fight is Rocky’s one last chance at proving that he is worth something in this world- he may be a handsome, golden-hearted, droll giant, but he’s impoverished, under-educated and doesn’t seem to have much else to fall back on. My fundamental problem with Chariots is that it doesn’t have this drive. These heroes are extremely privileged individuals- privately educated, wealthy backgrounds, plenty of other talents to back them up if their dreams of athletic stardom are squashed. Why should I be backing people with such first world problems?

It doesn’t help that only one of them has any real issue holding him back- Harold receives some minor jibes and comments on account that he is Jewish. But none of these seem to stop him. His talents are still recognised, he has plenty of support, and he can evidently afford a Cambridge education and a personal coach anyway. The most extreme form of racism he comes across is when his Cambridge master, played by John Gielgud, bemoans his coach’s Arab heritage (Mussabini was of Syrian, Turkish, Italian and French ancestry), but Harold recovers pretty easily with a well-rehearsed speech and then heads off to the Olympics anyway. I didn’t take much to Ben Cross who played this role either- I found him stiff, and lacking spontaneity.

Big saving graces, however, are enthusiastic performances from a very young Nigel Havers as a fellow athlete, Lord Lindsay, and Ian Holm as Mussabini. Both are evidently having much more fun. There’s an amusing moment when Lindsay practises for the hurdles by placing glasses of expensive champagne on each one and challenges himself not to spill a drop. And Holm felt very real as Harold’s stern, grouchy and warm-hearted coach. 

The slow motion running also provided lovely touches. The runners in these sequences end up being depicted as ethereal, superhuman beings, and it emphasises sports’ display of seemingly impossible feats of physicality. 

But all in all, I found Chariots of Fire to be a bit of an uninvolving piece. It’s a mildly interesting bit of history, and it probably won due to the 80s audience’s love of glamour, glorious costumes and speeches and set pieces that steer dangerously close to trite. Nonetheless, there are sports men and women who have overcome far greater adversities than these blokes. Jesse Owens, for starters.

Highlight

There is an early scene in which Harold and Lord Lindsay first prove their sprinting prowess by attempting to do the Great Court Run. Competitors have to complete a circuit of the court at Trinity College, Cambridge in less time than it takes the clock to strike 12 (approximately 43.6 seconds according to Wikipedia). Whilst Abrahams never actually ran the contest, it’s a stirring and very well-shot little scene.

Lowlight

There’s a great deal of time spent on Liddell’s dilemma when his race is put on a Sunday, and he forbids himself to run it due to his devour Christianity. For most of this plot line, I was thinking “so what? It’s his choice”. And the solution that comes is so simple and anticlimactic that I wonder what warranted the writers to put it in at all.

Mark

4/10

Doug says...

I find myself struggling to write more than a handful of words about this film - it’s well-made and far from atrocious as a piece of work. But on the other hand it’s not massively engaging and as Paul points out, the fact that they’re all privileged Cambridge students, some with titles, means you don’t particularly find any of them to be struggling in the way that cinema like this demands. 

Much like visits to the circus, I found it to be fading from the mind almost immediately after finishing and I attribute this really to a lack of interest in any of the characters. The plot is thin (they want to go to the Olympics - they go to the Olympics - film ends) and I found the heavy emphasis on religion to be a bit of a turn off. 

The heavily Christian Liddell is annoyingly pious and his decision not to run on a Sunday actually feels a bit thick. The Prince of Wales (played by the ever charming David Yelland) makes the pretty solid point that in religion, difficult choices are often put in front of you with no right answer, but Eric Liddell sticks his chin out and refuses to budge. He’s the sort of dullard you’d actively circulate away from at house parties. 

And while they try to make a point out of Harold Abraham’s Judaism and the reaction it garners (Sir John Gielgud saying some pretty horrendous things), I found the actor Ben Cross to have very little going on. It’s a mercy he’s pretty because he’s not giving us much else. Gentlemen’s Agreement back in 1947 played with anti-semitism far more effectively. 

And that’s really all I have to say on the film. So instead I’m going to talk about Ian Charleson who played Eric Liddell, and who I’ve read up on. He was a renowned stage actor, and in 1989 Daniel Day-Lewis walked out of playing Hamlet at the National Theatre and Charleson stepped in. His subsequent performance is still renowned and appears on several ‘Best Hamlets Ever’ lists across theatre criticism. 

He died eight weeks after closing Hamlet at the age of 40 from AIDS. He requested that his illness be publicised after his death so as to raise awareness of the disease. He was the first celebrity in the UK to publicly die from AIDS and there is a Day Centre at the Royal Free Hospital in his name.

In 1991 Liddell’s friends founded the Ian Charleson Awards, rewarding the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors aged under 30. The awards are now in their 27th year and the judges include renowned actors, critics, and people of significance across every area of the theatre business. 

All in all, a pretty cool guy. 

Highlight

The opening sequence with that music and the iconic running shots are easily the best thing in the whole film.

Lowlight

 I personally found it far from engaging and quite undeveloped, despite it being well made and clearly scripted. 

Mark

6/10 

53. Ordinary People (1980)

Plot Intro

The Jarrett family are an upper-middle class family living in Chicago, consisting of parents Calvin (Donald Sutherland) and Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) and their son, Conrad (Timothy Hutton). But what becomes abundantly clear is that they are grieving the loss of their elder son, Buck, who died in a boating accident that Conrad survived. Torn apart by guilt from not saving his elder brother, Conrad’s mental health has spiralled out of control, he has tried to kill himself, ended up spending some time away in a mental health institution, and now consults a therapist (Judd Hirsch). And his parents aren’t dealing too well with it all either…

Doug says...

One of the strangest things about this project is how neatly the decades encompass radically different styles and themes within the winning films. In the ‘50s it was all glamour and witty phrases, in the ‘60s it was bright bubbly musicals and in the ‘70s it was dark, gritty analyses of masculinity. 

Here, opening our study of the 1980s, is an extraordinarily different beast. Ordinary People is much like How Green Is My Valley in that I’ve never heard of it in any circumstance. It is also like How Green Is My Valley in that it is exceptional. 

The film explores a wealthy family after the eldest son dies in a boating accident. While it focuses mainly on the younger son Conrad - who is severely traumatised - it also deals with the mother and father played by Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland respectively. Conrad receives next to no sympathy from his mother who is cold through and through, and while his father is desperately trying to help him, he is suffering. Enter the therapist - and while it’s now a little obvious to have the therapist be a very human, ordinary person, I can’t help feeling this film was setting a precedent. 

The obvious comparison is Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams made it clear just how brilliant an actor he was - but here the therapy is a strand of the story not the whole thing. It verges at times on being too sentimental, but there is a scene towards the end where Conrad finally starts talking truth, and it’s electrifying. Everyone here is pulling their weight, and it’s bizarre that it was Robert Redford’s directorial debut because the shooting and precise piecing together of this feels the work of a far more experienced director. 

I’m also delighted to say that contrary to last decade, we already have two contenders for Best Actress for the 1980s straight out of the gate. In her film debut Elizabeth McGovern (better known now as Lady Cora of Downton Abbey) is remarkably assured and also looks weirdly like Stockard Channing. But the film’s real talent is Mary Tyler Moore who moves beyond any performance I’ve seen her give previously, and captures the mother who is unable to express sentiment despite occasionally desperately trying to. There’s a scene where she comes out to sit by her son in the garden and you just feel her trying to work out how to connect with him - and then her ultimate inability to is depressingly real. Also - the fact she never says that she wishes Conrad had died instead of her other (favourite) son, and yet it’s all you can think about when she’s on-screen is testament to the performance she gives. 

It’s also a film that doesn’t play to the obvious. When the therapist tells Conrad he has to forgive a certain person in his life, we assume (along with Conrad) that it is obviously Conrad himself (I mean, obvious right?). Wrong. And when we find out who the therapist is actually talking about, it’s both surprising and very accurate. If this was a film made now, there would be a moment when the mother finally breaks down and everyone starts to heal. Here, they take a more realistic path that is more upsetting but also more valuable for its truthful angle.

What’s bad about it? Not much, but there are a few too many hammy moments, and I’m wondering (from what I know of the ‘80s) whether this may be a constant issue. This film felt refreshingly modern most of the time (I drew a lot of comparisons with 2018 Oscar nominee Lady Bird) and so the moments that it proved its age were jarring. 

As an opening to this new decade? Cracking. It was powerful, made its points well, addressed things like suicide and social pressures with ease and real truthfulness, and I didn’t want to check Instagram or stare out of the window once. 

Highlight 

Mary Tyler Moore proving her acting chops was an unexpected delight. It’s a brilliant, savage performance and better than anything the ‘70s provided. 

Lowlight

A few too many hammy moments (people sighing too dramatically or overacting in the background) kept this from being flawless. 

Mark 

9/10 

Paul says...

I thought the more obscure Best Picture winners were far behind us, but here comes another one just 9 years before I was born. Despite its high regard, Ordinary People is not an '80s movie that gets discussed much, unlike other Best Picture winners from around this time such as Chariots of Fire, Out of Africa and Platoon. Perhaps it has become overshadowed by its fellow nominees such as The Elephant Man and Raging Bull, both stiff competition and are much more publicly known amongst younger generations. 

But whatever the reason, it’s an unfair one, because Ordinary People is a lovely, emotional movie. It displays a transition period between the '70s and '80s, because it is both an intense psychological study of a family falling apart due to grief, but we’re seeing much bigger expressions and occasional movements into melodrama that are much more reflective of the 80s ethos (we are, of course, in the Dallas/Dynasty era now). 

It’s odd that Timothy Hutton was nominated for and won Best Supporting Actor rather than Best Actor (fun fact: he is still the youngest ever recipient of this award, at just 20 years old). The film is far more focussed on Conrad than on his parents, but I suppose Sutherland and Moore had more cultivated careers, hence their top billing. Hutton is outstanding, perfectly displaying the extreme forms of grief. I was totally convinced that we were watching someone so riddled with guilt, trauma and helplessness, that he feels he has no option but to take his own life. He swings wildly between putting on a brave face, and having a panic attack, and this is helped by Redford’s controlled direction, in which we discover this character’s past through rapidly-cut flashbacks and literally seconds of memory. It’s a deserved win for Hutton, but really his volume of screen time should have got him more than Supporting Actor.

I also loved the character of his therapist, Dr Berger, played superbly by Judd Hirsch, who was also nominated for Best Supporting, and 90s kids may recognise him as Jeff Goldblum’s panicky father from Independence Day. The beauty of the scenes between him and Hutton are that they steer clear of the sentimental. Berger is a confrontational, hard-hitting therapist, who isn’t afraid to ask uncomfortable questions, challenge his patients and force them to face up to their own faults as well as those of people around them. I feel like we all need a Dr Berger in our lives, whether you’ve just watched your elder brother drown or not. 

I’m also tremendously excited that Mary Tyler Moore has made her way into this project. For me, she can do no wrong, neither as a ditzy 60s housewife in The Dick Van Dyke Show, or as a plucky single career woman in her own groundbreaking '70s sitcom, the aptly-named Mary Tyler Moore Show. Here, she plays totally against her Bridget Jones-esque type, as the sort of upper-middle class house-proud wife who desperately wants to maintain her image of control, affluence and serenity. She sees pitying Conrad as “indulging”, and is furious when her husband tells a friend that Conrad is seeing a psychiatrist. To her, mourning and bad mental health is shameful. The film’s biggest failing for me was the way in which the script lets her down. Hutton gets so much time with Dr Berger that we see the full spectrum of his character, and Donald Sutherland gets a huge amount to work with too. Moore, even by the end of the film, remains a cold, emotionally-stunted wife, and has no breakthrough moment. I see that the film was meant to do this, to show that sometimes people don’t change regardless of the consequences of their actions. But I wanted to know more about her- why is she like this? What are her memories of the family’s past events? What is her background here? It’s a testament to Moore that she conveys so much, when the script gives her character so little compared to her husband and son. It was totally dissatisfying to see their characters so well-rounded and hers being so simple. Nonetheless, she got a Best Actress nomination that is well deserved- she lost to Sissy Spacek.

Ordinary People, as Doug says, is a great way to start off the '80s. It’s a touching dissection of a family under great emotional strain and teaches audiences that sometimes, the best way to deal with grief is to discuss it rather than avoid it. It’s a less-known winner, but a strong one.

Highlight

Any of the scenes involving Judd Hirsch as Dr Berger. I almost wanted the film to be entirely set in his office, with every character getting a moment with him. This would at least have fleshed out Mary Tyler Moore’s character more satisfyingly.

Lowlight

The film steers dangerously close to '80s-style platitudes. A prime example is when Conrad is on a date (with Cora from Downton Abbey, no less!). She asks him what it’s like to try to commit suicide, and he embarks on a speech about it feeling like a “deep dark hole” or something like that. I find it hard to believe that someone as downtrodden as he could so eloquently use this imagery to describe suicide. But I feel this is something that becomes fashionable during the overstated '80s.

Mark

8/10

The PAD Awards: 1970s

Yes, it's that time again, the most illustrious awards of the decade: the Paul and Doug (PAD) Awards. This year, as we celebrated the 1970s, we were joined by many stars from Hollywood for a night of dazzling and extravagant celebration. 

Meryl Streep (above, with us) was particularly on fine form, smashing a vodka bottle against a wall and punching Winona Ryder in McDonalds afterwards because she tried to cut the line. As she herself drunkenly roared 'never cut a Meryl'. 

So who won? We started the night with our notoriously savage award...

Least Favourite Film 

Paul says: The Godfather Part II

The ‘70s phase of our project was a period of extreme highs and extreme lows for me, with most films either scoring 8 and above, or 3 and below, and only Annie Hall sits in the middle of the road. Two particular films have proving to be absolute wastes of time for me, one of them being the slow, excessively American slog that was Patton. But my “bottom of the pile” winner has to be The Godfather Part II, and I’ve chosen it because I get a real kick out of hating films that everyone reveres. The first Godfather at least had a juicy, tense tale, but its sequel jumps between two very dreary tales that, as far as I could see, did not compliment each other at all. And just as either time line got going, it was halted by jumping back into the other. It was like a car breaking down every time it hit third gear. If you’re into dark, monologue-laden, slow-moving art-for-the-sake-of-art films, then go for it, but I’m convinced that most people who gush over the Godfather trilogy are just pretending.

Doug says: The Deer Hunter

For me, the 1970s has been a period of awful, dull films punctuated by an occasional burst of light. It’s been centred around themes that I find utterly uninteresting: masculinity, tough guys, war, and fraternities. In short: it’s been all about men. Men - in my opinion - are dull. They’ve had the upper hand for so long that any struggle on their part is far less powerful that that of women’s. So when it comes to choosing my least favourite, I’m really spoilt for choice. But while The Godfather Part II, Patton and The French Connection all bored me to tears (seriously, I’ve done so much staring out of the window during these films), it has to be The Deer Hunter which went above being simply boring and managed to be racist, and sickeningly patriotic too. The scenes with Russian Roulette are ridiculous and while it may have hit home at the time, it has not dated well. 

Favourite Male Performance 

Paul says: Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

I briefly touched on Ken Kesey’s novel at school, and my English teacher once said that there was no one else who could have played Randle McMurphy other than Jack Nicholson. She’s been proven wrong, to be fair, because Christian Slater played him on stage to great acclaim. But Nicholson engulfs himself in the character anyway, evidently improvising sometimes, evidently having a great time, and evidently getting along with his cast mates like a house on fire. He’s a great character to get behind, and gives his audience a release from social constrictions due to his anarchic, emotion-driven nature. Whilst I could never be friends with him, I did enjoy watching him. Close second-places were Sylvester Stallone in Rocky and Gene Hackman in The French Connection along with, begrudgingly, Woody Allen in Annie Hall and Dustin Hoffman in Kramer Vs Kramer.

Doug says: Sylvester Stallone in Rocky

We are now in #metoo territory. Films this decade include Dustin Hoffman, Sylvester Stallone, Woody Allen. Both my favourite performances come from alleged abusers, which is a bitter thing to admit. While Dustin Hoffman in Kramer Vs Kramer presents an extraordinary performance, the best performance easily belongs to Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. I take small comfort in the fact that several of the abuse allegations against him have been positively disproved, but in June of this year, there have been new cases against him that are being actively reviewed by special task forces. Stallone’s performance is brilliant, he portrays a tender, loving character with a real drive for good, and in an era of overt macho-ness, he is not afraid to show feeling or kindness. As we progress through this era, I am more wary than ever of expressing praise for actors, as more and more of them have sections on their wikipedia titled ‘Sexual Assault Allegations’. As Hannah Gadsby in Nanette says: ‘to the men in the audience, particularly the white men, especially the straight white men: pull your fucking socks up.’ 

Favourite Female Performance 

Paul says: Talia Shire in Rocky

This is a tough one because the 1970s Best Picture winners are very, very macho. All of them are male-centric, and many are about men taking matters into their own hands when society fails them. At a time when American politics was under such scrutiny post-Watergate and post-Vietnam, this is no surprise. The country must have felt very emasculated. But I’ve picked Talia Shire in Rocky because she managed to be tender, quiet, and understated but use those qualities to become a focal point of the film. To modern eyes, she suffers horrendous abuse from her over-protective brother, and the scene in which Rocky seduces her is dangerously close to sexual abuse. But I was behind her all the way, and she shines in this far, far more than she does in the Godfather movies. Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was pretty much my only other option.

Doug says: Talia Shire in Rocky

I agree with Paul! This is a wonderfully understated performance that is somehow gripping. She’s not a doormat, but she is tyrannised by her horrific brother, and there’s a tremendous scene where she finally snaps and roars at him. It’s brilliantly built up, and superbly portrayed by Shire. It’s rare to see someone take such a quiet role and deliver in such a magnetic way. There’s a lovely scene at the ice rink where Rocky has persuaded them to open late so she can skate. Rocky runs alongside her on this first date, easing her into conversation, and we see her begin to open and bloom from someone taking real interest in her. Beautifully done.  

Favourite Film 

Doug says: Rocky

This one was easy. It’s the only film from the 1970s besides The Sting to feature anything approaching light-heartedness, and it’s surprisingly modern. Rocky delivers a monologue to a teenage girl about how she should behave, and she rebounds with an effective ‘fuck off’. Rocky doesn’t win the big match, but he does earn the love of a shy woman who he alone was able to see was interesting and clever. It’s a sweet, uplifting film and brilliantly written by Stallone in three days. I found myself really enjoying the film, opposite to the majority of this decade which has had me trudging through grim ‘epics’. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was a close second, with a gritty but absorbing take on mental health institutions, but in the end (as ever, with me) a film that manages to weave in lightness among the dark triumphs. 

Paul says: The French Connection

I’ve actually started a Twitter poll to decide this one because I’ve been struggling to decide between my four highest-scoring films, which are The French Connection, Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky and Kramer Vs Kramer. All hit the spot in different ways and all tackle the stereotypical '70s theme of man vs society from a different perspective. The ever-popular Cuckoo’s Nest ended up being the poll winner, but I’m going to give that one the title of Miss Congeniality. Instead, I’m choosing The French Connection as my absolute favourite because it jumped out of the collection and surprised me completely. I spent much of it trying to work out if we’re supposed to like this ruthless, abusive prick of a cop, and then, via the unconventionally inconclusive ending, I realised that this is the point. The film illustrated man’s desperate desire to assert himself in a world fraught with crime, corruption and symbolic dilapidation, and how self-destructive this is. It’s also one of the most exciting films I’ve seen, working at a furious pace and makes chasing criminals, whether by car or on foot, very intense stuff. I gave it a 9, but I keep thinking about it, so if the laws of Movie Criticism allow me, I would change it to a 10.   

Average Film Scores 

Paul: It was Paul's second highest scoring decade with 6.9

Doug: It was Doug's lowest scoring decade so far with 4.9