Tarantino
1970, monumental year

PostED ON OCTOBER 8, 2016 AT 4PM

In 15 films, the American director, a bona-fide global film library squeezed into a single human body, sums up a year of movies that are as frantic, profound and direct as his way of speaking.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun by Anatole Litvak

The program includes exclusively ultimate films, starting with abysses of love: the timeless, teenage (and non-ironic) Love Story by Arthur Hiller and the aqueous romantic meanderings from love to death in the aptly titled Deep End by Jerzy Skolimowski.

Invariably romantic obsessions, a full dose of the bizarre and crimes of passion figure among these picks by the creator of the love-avenging bride in Kill Bill… QT recommends a highly-aesthetic, cutting movie, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L'uccello dalle piume di Cristallo) by Dario Argento, an ultra chic thriller with multiple manipulations and secrets… like the specific and little-known genre escape flick: The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun by Anatole Litvak, a rare melancholy adaptation of French writer Sébastien Japrisot (L'été meurtrier, The Rider on the Rain - Le Passager de la pluie).

French melancholy (still), but very adult and full of 20th century reality: observing without judging, even when exploring the case of a man in a vain pursuit of desire, in genius Eric Rohmer's famous moral tale, Claire's Knee. Another Tarantinesque scholarly choice: the christian-like yet secular potent masterpiece by the great Claude Chabrol, Le Boucher, with Jean Yanne in hairy, virile, full masculine mode as the insane hero in shambles, the overwhelmed criminal.

Classic melancholy, finally - a last trace of splendor of the era of the big Hollywood studios, with passionately breathless and nostalgic movies: The Kremlin Letter by John Huston and his spies who knit (one the finest films of the Cold War), and the endless witty secret to always come back to: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes by Billy Wilder.

Five Easy Pieces by Bob Rafelson

But one needs pure fun and messy chaos too! with the "outsized" Beyond the Valley of The Dolls by Russ Meyer. In Five Easy Pieces by Bob Rafelson, a 30-somthing Jack Nicholson plays a more discreet hero in a marine sweater, who gives up on himself. Post-Five, Nicholson directed his first film, the fiercely titled, Drive, he Said! against the backdrop of the  Vietnam war. It should be noted that Tarantino is also a political advocate who recently marched to bring attention to flagrantly unjustified police violence on African-Americans… QT's consistency can be found in probably the least known film of the selection, The Liberation of LB Jones, the last movie by veteran William Wyler, which takes an unflinching and fierce stand against racism and the use of firearms. In L.B. Jones, Wyler films one of the most harrowing murder scenes ever. Head-on.

We round up the selection with ironic humor, but still political and still American, with the sarcastic and insufferable M.A.S.H. by Robert Altman. M.A.S.H. presents Vietnam and its chaotic mess of a war and the end of naivety about the pure intentions of the US. And lastly, the remotely graceful film, full of reflection, Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Nothing more to add - Tarantino, though his choices, has said it all!