(0029) Klute

June 27, 1971 | 1 week at #1

Seen by Martin before? Yes

What did I expect? A sinewy, bracingly intelligent thriller.

What did I get? A masterpiece. It’s difficult to think of a Hollywood product as pervasively acute and well executed as Klute. By sheer alchemy it manages to be a thoroughly mesmerizing document of its time (without ever feeling limited by it) as well as a compelling study on the nature of intimacy, the movie’s real subject. It’s “just” a thriller, but Klute gives genre movies a good name.

(0001) They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

January 4, 1970 | 4 weeks at #1

Seen by Martin before? No

What did I expect? A grueling workout of a movie that makes a blisteringly downbeat point about American society.

What did I get? They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a very impressive piece of work indeed, attention-getting and disturbing. It’s intense and expertly crafted, but it’s ultimately undermined by the shallowness and obviousness of its central point — that American capitalism inevitably leads to extraordinarily crappy relationships between human beings. According to Pauline Kael, the filmmakers made the plot considerably more cynical than the source novel, by Horace McCoy (in the book, the organizers of the dance marathon behave in a relatively honorable way). I think the limitations of the movie become clearer if one asks, What would a “realistic” and untendentious version of this movie look like? I think it’s inescapable that such a hypothetical movie would be richer and more engrossing. Perhaps our age is more immune to message-y movies — I don’t know.