USCCB - (Film and Broadcasting) - Ten Best List for the Year 1970

Ten Best List for the Year 1970

Five Easy Pieces -- Jack Nicholson gives an outstanding performance as a young man who has lost his sense of identity and is wasting his life searching and unsatisfied. Directed with precision by Bob Rafelson, the movie's best scene is when Nicholson breaks down and confesses his loneliness to his stroke-victim father. The movie's moral ambiguity makes it more suitable for serious viewing rather than casual entertainment. A-IV-adults with reservations (R) 1970
I Never Sang for My Father -- Gilbert Cates directs a solid adaptation of the Robert Anderson play about a grown son (Gene Hackman) who is forced to come to some decision about how to care for his aging father (Melvyn Douglas). Both give remarkable performances filled with compassion and understanding and their scenes together are charged with the love and hate that simultaneously bind them together and make them strangers. It would be fine for adolescents save for a rather frank bedroom scene. A-III-adults (PG) 1970
Kes -- British movie set in a small, drab Yorkshire coal mining town tells the story of a lonely, sullen boy (David Bradley) whose life is momentarily given meaning by his experience in raising and training a baby kestrel, a European falcon. Directed by Ken Loach, the movie is a compassionate study of the blighted conditions and brutalizing life of this youth which in its final scenes indicates the possibility of his rising above his environment. Fine experience for adults and older adolescents. A-III-adults (PG) 1970
Little Big Man -- At age 121, the sole survivor of Custer's Last Stand (Dustin Hoffman) recalls some tall tales of his wild life and woolly times on the frontier. Although not tightly conceived or executed, director Arthur Penn's large canvas provides a major overview of the old West and its conflicts between Indians and pioneers. Some graphic violence and sexual references. A-III-adults (PG) 1970
The Molly Maguires -- Hard-hitting historical drama set in the Pennsylvania coal fields during the 1880s when the mine owners hire an undercover agent (Richard Harris) to ferret out the leaders (Sean Connery and Anthony Zerbe) of a secret band of miners known as the Molly Maguires who use terrorist tactics to obtain better pay and working conditions. Director Martin Ritt has made a thoughtful movie about the futility of violence as a means to redress injustices. More menace than bloodshed. A-II-adults and adolescents (PG) 1970
My Night at Maud's -- After resolving to marry a religiously devout student (Marie-Christine Barrault) he has never met, a 34-year-old engineer (Jean-Louis Trintignant) happens to meet a sensuous woman (Francoise Fabian) with whom he spends the night in talking about everything from literature and mathematics to politics and religion. Intriguing French movie directed by Eric Rohmer, the intellectual talkathon focuses on the cerebral quest for life's meaning while indicating the difficulty of people to live up to the practical aspects of idealism and dogma, whether Christian or Marxist. The third in Rohmer's series of "Six Moral Tales," it has the ambiguity of real life and is a perfect discussion piece. A-III-adults (PG) 1970
Patton -- George C. Scott's complex portrayal of World War II General George S. Patton conveys a paradoxical, multifaceted character whose love of the fray and intense will to win was grounded in a deep-seated hatred of war itself. Director Franklin Schaffner's powerful dramatization is neither a glorification of war nor an anti-war tract but pays homeage to a career military officer who could achieve his destiny, unfortunately, only in wartime. Violence and profanity within a realistic context. A-II-adults and adolescents (PG) 1970
Riverrun -- When a sea-going father (John McLiam) visits the sheep farm where his daughter (Louise Ober) and her young man (Mark Jenkins) live, he is at first amused by their attempt to get back to nature and escape the dehumanization of city life, but when he learns that she is pregnant and not formally married, he is determined to take her away. Written and directed by John Korty, the contrivances of romantic melodrama are evident but the generational theme of value systems is handled sensitively and treated with honesty. A-III-adults (R) 1970
Scrooge -- British musical version of the Dickens Christmas classic concentrates on poor old misanthropic Scrooge (Albert Finney), a thoroughly craven humbug whose disagreeableness is never believable and hence all the more fun to watch. Directed by Ronald Neame, it's light and amusing fun, using song and dance sparingly but well. The ghosts (Alec Guinness, Edith Evans and Kenneth Moore) are especially imaginative and the mood of the piece is caught by Ronald Searle's delightful caricatures appearing with the credits. For all who still have enough of the child within them to enjoy an old-fashioned bit of make-believe. A-I-general patronage (G) 1970
The Wild Child -- Exceptional French dramatization about a young boy who was found in 1798 living as an animal in a forest and the doctor who, rather than place in an asylum, took him into his own home for more intense care. Director Francois Truffaut (who also plays the doctor) creates an austerity of image, settings and music (Vivaldi) to mirror the child's alienation and gradual response to the doctor's openness. Most of all, the moving drama is an affirmation of the tireless efforts of educators to overcome environmental handicaps and an act of faith that humanity will survive in spite of itself. A-II-adults and adolescents (PG) 1970