Julie Christie

  • Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) I am of two complementary minds about the 1967 version of Far from the Madding Crowd. The first, having already been exposed and (mildly) bored by the 2015 version, is a lack of enthusiasm at the freshness of the story. I really didn’t care enough about the twenty-first century version to be able to dig deeply into the differences between the two — it was enough knowing that this is not a kind of story I respond too deeply to (although I note that a similar story in French-Canadian setting, Maria Chapdelaine, has become a bit of a classic) and letting a 1960s-style take on the story take its turn in 169 languid minutes. The other part of me is tempted to point at both versions of Far from the Madding Crowd, adapting an 1874 novel, and say, “See, this is how you learn about how different eras of filmmaking adapt similar non-contemporary material!”  There’s no big reinterpretation à la action-movie rethinking of Les Trois Mousquetaires — while both versions of Far from the Madding Crowd place different emphases on elements of the whole, they’re still very much the same recognizable story set in very much the same kind of setting. While the 1960s version it noteworthy for cast and crew having become famous later on—Julie Christie in the lead role, Terence Stamp as a suitor and Nicholas Roeg as cinematographer—it’s also notable for bucolic rendition of the 19th century English countryside as interpreted by the sensibilities of the time, and that’s not insignificant. This being said, Far from the Madding Crowd is best suited to those willing to sit slightly less than three hours to hear all about romance in rural Victorian England.

  • McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

    McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) In retrospect, it makes sense that the western genre—for years the stereotypical Hollywood exemplar, would have been one of the most deconstructed genres by the 1970s. New Hollywood was eager to show how different it was from the old one, and in that context it’s not surprising to see Robert Altman squarely taking on the genre in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Though technically a western, it’s almost at the opposite end of the usual Western iconography. It’s set deep in a forest in snowy cold northwestern American, with flawed characters unable to resist the corrupt business interests against them. Visually, nearly every optical trick in the cinematographic art is used to give a distressed look to the film: Washed-out colour, rainbow highlights, hazy soft focus and so on. It’s all gritty and dirty and colour-muted like many 1970s films, which viewers are liable to love or hate. To be fair, the period recreation is a lavish representation of a western work camp—it’s just the way it’s captured that’s liable to make some viewers crazy. Warren Beatty is quite good as McCabe (it’s a kind of role he’d often play in his career, all the way to the tragic conclusion), while Julie Christie is also remarkable as the other half of the lead sort-of-couple. Even with nearly fifty years of subsequent Western deconstruction, there is still something in McCabe & Mrs. Miller that feels unique—perhaps because no one else since has dared to be so resolutely indifferent to audience expectations. The early 1970s were another time entirely in Hollywood history, for better or for worse.

  • Demon Seed (1977)

    Demon Seed (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Considering what came out of Hollywood during the hazy 1970s New Hollywood era, it’s probably an exaggeration to call Demon Seed one of the wildest movies of the decade. But that doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near sedate—even by the entire Science Fiction genre’s standards, it remains way outside the norm. Much of it stems from the primal premise of the film (adapted from an early Dean Koontz novel), in which a malevolent artificial intelligence impregnates a young woman to ensure its immortality. Or would that be its mortality? This is one of those movies where you really shouldn’t waste brain cells examining the premise—just run with “woman impregnated by computer” and that’s enough. This ludicrous starting point isn’t helped at all by the now laughable 1970s execution—Demon Seed is all unconvincing special effects, moronic gadgets and eerie music. And yet, and yet—considering that the whole fear-of-AI thing is not growing any less urgent and the evergreen moral quandaries about reproductive plot elements, it’s almost shocking that there hasn’t yet been a remake re-examining those elements in light of contemporary developments. But I’m sure someone is working on it. In the meantime, you can enjoy the vintage 1977 film as a wacky ride of its own, both ridiculous and yet unnerving. Julie Christie gives it all she’s got even in being stuck in such a film, and she’s an essential component of why viewers won’t immediately collapse in laugher when confronted to such bonkers nonsense. Demon Seed, against all odds, remains surprisingly entertaining in the sense of keeping your attention, even if you may feel slightly dirty afterwards and never revisit it.

  • Don’t Look Now (1973)

    Don’t Look Now (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, August 2019) I got a bit more out of Don’t Look Now than I expected. I was anticipating a weird early-1970s horror movie and I got that for sure, but I also got a haunting portrait of a couple grieving their dead daughter. I don’t deal well with that kind of topic matter, and so the first few minutes of the movie were difficult to watch. It does get into a more comfortable groove later on, as our two protagonists go around Venice renovating a church, being terrorized by a serial killer and escaping narrow death. The thematic concern of grief is never too far away, though, and it’s this heft that does make Don’t Look Now a bit more substantial than many other horror movies of its time, especially when its supernatural components remain ambiguous. Interestingly enough, while I’m usually a convinced backer of the most fantastic interpretation of any given borderline film (to the point of denying non-fantastical interpretations when available), I think that Don’t Look Now works better when considered as a weird psychological thriller with few or no occult elements. What does blur the line effectively between twisted realism and the fantastic is the film’s then-innovative and still-effective editing style, using associating editing techniques to take us effectively inside the protagonist’s mind as he flashes back to previous events and how they relate to his current situation. There’s a long death sequence, for instance, made more effective through the use of flashes of past events as we imagine the character’s mind grasping onto what just happened. It’s that kind of sequence that makes writer-director Nicholas Roeg’s work feel more daring and effective than more traditional approaches. The cinematography helps, as Venice is depicted as a sordid, humid, grainy hotspot of violent death at every turn. As protagonists, Donald Sutherland and his moustache are impressive, while Julie Christie is an able partner. Given the film’s success in terms of atmosphere, tone and cinematographic impact, it’s a shame that the story itself feels so thin and pointlessly cruel. It’s a weak spot in an otherwise better-than-average film with some curious emotional impact.

  • Doctor Zhivago (1965)

    Doctor Zhivago (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2018) I have little patience for anything these days, so getting me to sit down for three-and-a-half-hours to watch a Russian novel turned into an epic movie, even a David Lean movie, is asking too much. It took me four days to get through Doctor Zhivago, and I kept going only because the film is of some historical interest. Even then, the journey was gruelling. It’s not that the film is 193 minutes long—it’s that even for that amount of time, not a lot actually happens. It is a generational romance set against the backdrop of early-twentieth-century Russia, and yet it feels uncomfortably small, with a handful of characters bouncing against each other even in a country as large as Russia. To be fair, Omar Sharif is fantastic as the titular Zhivago, and Julie Christie isn’t bad as the lead female character. This being said, the show is stolen by smaller roles: Rod Steiger is delightfully evil as a well-connected politician, while Tom Courtenay has a great arc as the initially meek Pasha. Still, much of Doctor Zhivago unfolds slowly, with characters having intimate conversations while the country goes up in flames somewhere in the background. For an epic, it feels curiously small-scale and focused on melodramatic plot threads. Reading about the film, its troubled production and the historical context of the original novel is more interesting than the film itself—as I was wondering how a Russian film could be produced by a big Hollywood studio in the middle of the Cold War, the film doesn’t exactly act as pro-Soviet propaganda … and adapting the novel was seen as a big gesture against the USSR given that it had banned the book. Still, the result is an often-exasperating experience as nothing happens for a very long time. The film’s high points (such as the moments immediately preceding its intermission) aren’t, quite enough to make up for the rest, including an even more punishing framing device that adds even more minutes to an already bloated result. But at last it’s done: I have watched Doctor Zhivago and don’t have to watch it ever again in order to say that I did.