TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE SEVENTIES
Aug 23 '04 (Updated Dec 23 '04)
The Bottom Line Bottom-Line: Continuing my series of Top Non-English Language Films by decade, here's a Top Ten for the Seventies as well as ten more for a second helping.
I’ve got to be honest here. The Seventies were a weak decade for foreign films – easily the weakest decade of the second half of the twentieth century. Only the upper half of the Top-Ten List are five-star films, in my opinion, but all the rest, as well as the Second Helping list, are good solid four-star films. This is a subjective list – i.e., my personal favorites. It is not intended to represent critical consensus. I hope you find something here that piques your interest and turns into a rewarding viewing experience.
TOP-TEN NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS OF THE SEVENTIES:
#1. Spirit of the Beehive (1973)___Country: Spain___Director: Víctor Erice
Five-year old Ana and seven year-old Isabel are sisters living in Spain near the end of the Franco regime. There father is a beekeeper. There mother writes letters to an unknown person from her past. Both parents, demoralized by war and the totalitarian regime, have largely retreated into their own isolated worlds, leaving the two girls to grow up largely in their own world of make-believe. The village is visited, once a year, by a traveling film company and this year the selection is Frankenstein. Ana is bewildered by the film but comes to believe that it is her destiny to befriend a monster. When a deserter on the run ends up in the old barn where the girls play, she’ll have her chance.
#2. The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972)___Country: France___Director: Yves Robert
An international incident has occurred in New York City. A French intelligence agent has been found in possession of illegal drugs, threatening the job of the Head of French Intelligence, Louis Toulouse. Toulouse and his right-hand man Perrache suspect that the crisis was engineered by Bernard Milan, who figures to take over if Toulouse is ousted. Toulouse needs a “fools trap” that will expose Milan and any secret agents working with him. Milan sends Perrache to the airport to pick out someone at random to bait the hook and let’s the word out that a hot-shot secret agent with incriminating information is arriving from The States. The man selected is an ordinary violinist and a tall, blond man wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe. Soon, bugging devices have been placed all over the poor man’s apartment and every ordinary detail of his past and present life is being imagined to have sinister meaning.
#3. Amarcord (1974)___Country: Italy___Director: Federico Fellini
Amarcord means “I remember” in the dialect of Rimini where Fellini grew up. This film is Fellini’s memories of his childhood, transformed into fantasy. Fellini presents an odd-ball cast of characters in a surrealistic manner that effectively captures the essential quality of memory when it has been tinted rose by nostalgia. Using a cast of amateurs, graceful movement, and the delightful score by Nina Rota, Fellini produced the ultimate nostalgia film and was rewarded with the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1974 as well as the New York Film Critics Circle Award.
#4. La Cage aux Folles (1978)___Country: France___Director: Edouard Molinaro
This classic comedy centers on a nightclub called “La Cage aux Folles” that features transvestite performers. The co-owners, Renato and Albin, have lived together for twenty years as gay partners. The two have raised a son, Laurent, who is Renato’s biological child. Laurent is quite straight and has met the gal of his dreams. They’re planning to marry, in fact, but there’s just one catch. Her parents want to meet his parents and her father is the minister of a political party called the Union for Moral Order. This is the set-up for the main event of the movie – the bizarre meeting of the two families, during which Laurent’s gay parents are under strict orders from their son to fake something resembling a “normal” lifestyle that will satisfy the uptight future in-laws. It’s a barrel of laughs and a good deal more so than the 1996 American remake entitled The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Gene Hackman.
#5. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970)___Country: Italy___Director: Vittorio De Sica
This film portrays anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy beginning in 1938. The story centers on a wealthy aristocratic family, the Finzi-Continis, who lived a cloistered existence behind the high walls of their luxurious palatial estate. We watch the idyllic lives of these appealing characters being shattered – as they tumble from heaven-on-earth to hell-on-earth. De Sica, the great master of the Neo-realism movement in Italian cinema, stated that he made the film “out of conscience”, not because he supported fascism (he didn’t), but because he lived during the period in question and was unable to prevent such horrors from occurring.
#6. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)___Country: Germany___Director: Werner Herzog
In 1560, Gonzalo Pizarro led an expedition over the Andes Mountains of Peru into the Amazon jungle in search of the legendary city of gold – El Dorado. Reaching a wide raging river, Pizarro decides to send a scouting party of forty men down the river on rafts. Second in command of the party is Don Lope Aguirre, played by Klaus Kinski. The scouting party confronts one disaster after another, including a whirlpool that catches one raft, the loss of most of their supplies and equipment when the level of the river suddenly rises while they sleep, and a successful mutiny led by Aguirre. Aguirre is a man possessed with the single-minded purpose of finding the gold city, and his obsession spurs the dwindling party on into a nightmare of madness.
#7. Scenes from a Marriage (1973)___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
Originally produced as a six-part mini-series for Scandinavian television, the series was so popular in Sweden that the streets nearly emptied for the airing of each installment . . . and the offices of divorce attorneys all over Scandinavia filled up after each installment! This film is about the deterioration of a marriage caused by the emotional baggage of the two participants. Looking very much like the ideal couple in the beginning, the pair descends through squabbles and infidelities into divorce and despair. Emphasizing, once again, his hallmark close-up shots, Bergman fashioned one of the most intense and painful looks at two people and their marriage ever put on film. The performances by Ullman and Josephson cannot be praised too highly.
#8. Dersu Uzala (1975)___Country: Japan___Director: Akira Kurosawa
This unique Soviet-Japanese co-production was Kurosawa’s sensitive tone poem exalting both the wonders of nature and the glory of human friendship. Based on the memoirs of Captain Vladimir Arseniev, a Russian explorer in the first decade of the twentieth century, it tells of his party’s encounter with a nomadic Goldi hunter named Dersu Uzala. The Russians soon discover that this simple man possesses uncanny instincts and keen observational powers. On the trail, he is able to deduce from tracks and debris what manner of people have recently passed. Uzala's interactions with nature are pantheistic in nature. He views all things as animate, referring to the trees, the wind, the animals, and the river as “men” and affording each the respect due to equals. A profound friendship evolves between Captain Arseniev and this man of the wild.
#9. Cria! (1975)___Country: Spain___Director: Carlos Saura
This film successfully combines psychodrama and political allegory. Ana, an inquisitive, angelic girl of seven, has to deal with issues relating to death at a very early age. She has already lost her mother to depression and illness when she awakens one night and overhears her father having a heart attach while in the midst of a tryst with a lover. Ana and her two sisters must now adjust to life with their aunt, who, though caring, prefers a life of formality and disguise to open discussion of the kinds of issues with which the children are grappling. This film is an exceptionally intimate and touching portrayal of the inner turmoil of childhood. Ana Torrent, who also starred in Spirit of the Beehive, delivers her second magnificent performance as a child actress.
#10. The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)___Country: Germany___Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
This film brought Fassbinder international recognition. In the waning days of World War II, Maria marries her true love, Hermann Braun, after a whirlwind three week courtship, just before he is shipped off to the front. Hermann is soon missing and presumed dead. Maria waits and hopes, but finally takes comfort in the arms of a black American G.I. When Hermann suddenly returns, catching Maria and her G.I. undressing, Bill is accidentally killed by Maria in the ensuing altercation. Hermann claims responsibility and is sentenced to a long prison term by a harsh American court. Maria promises Hermann that she will build a life for the two of them so that they can make up for lost time when he is ultimately released. True to her word, she weds herself single-mindedly to building a successful life, even as Germany is rebuilding itself as a country. In doing so, she becomes assistant and lover of a wealthy French/German industrialist, while never abandoning her deeper love for her imprisoned husband. Fassbinder uses this scenario to explore critically the nature of post-War Germany and the changing role of women in German society.
TEN MORE FOUR-STAR FILMS FOR A SECOND HELPING (CHRONOLOGICALLY):
Cries and Whispers (1972)___Country: Sweden___Director: Ingmar Bergman
Solaris (1972)___Country: Russia___Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
The Clockmaker (1973)___Country: France___Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Effi Briest (1974)___Country: Germany___Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Swept Away (1974)___Country: Italy___Director: Lina Wertmüller
Black and White in Color (1976)___Country: Ivory Coast___Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Madame Rosa (1977)___Country: France___Director: Moshe Mizrahi
Peppermint Soda (1977)___Country: France___Director: Diane Kurys
Messidor (1979)___Country: Switzerland___Director: Alain Tanner
Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears (1979)___Country: Russia___Director: Vladimir Menshov
Please check out my other decade lists:
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Thirties and Forties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Fifties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Sixties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Eighties
Top-Ten Non-English Language Films of the Nineties
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