Although New Year is about looking forward, Cinema Paradiso can't resist a last glance back before 2022 is consigned to history. After all, so many classic films have been released in years ending in a two...
There has long been a debate about cinema's greatest year. For many, this will always be 1939, but cases have been made for 1946, 1959, 1967, 1974, 1999 and 2007. However, we at Cinema Paradiso have noticed how many classics have been released in years ending in a two. Let us jog your memory, as we end our two-part tour through 120 years of screen history.
1972
Falling four years after the ditching of the Production Code and five years before George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) took the blockbuster era into a new stratosphere, 1972 is a pivotal year in Hollywood history. Film-makers had more latitude than ever before to discuss weighty and pressing topics with frankness. Consequently, American film was free to assess the state of the nation and critique its governance and there are already hints of the cinema of moral anxiety that would emerge in the wake of the Watergate break-in, which took place on 17 June 1972.
There was also a greater reflection on screen of the country's racial make-up, although Blaxploitation was as less a sign of cultural extension than a cynical cash-in exercise on the part of studios coming to terms with new business models. Thus, while such 1972 releases as Gordon Parks's Shaft's Big Score, Gordon Parks's, Jr.'s Super Fly, Oscar Williams's The Final Comedown, and William Crain's Blacula were directed by Black men, Barry Shear's Across 110th Street, Robert Hartford-Davis's Black Gunn, Larry Cohen's Bone, and Jack Hill's The Big Bird Cage were not.
While Cinema Paradiso may be able to offer the first Jamaican feature, Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come, and Bruce Lee's final outings, Way of the Dragon and Game of Death, we're more restricted when it comes to 1972 films directed by women. Thank goodness that Jane Arden's The Other Side of the Underneath has been released by the BFI, which also presents her other significant features, Separation (1967) and Anti-Clock (1979). Maybe someone will get round to bringing Elaine May's wonderful comedy, The Heartbreak Kid, to disc some time soon?
One infamous 1972 title we're unlikely to see again is Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat, as Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato explain in their 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat. But it's still possible to rent Ralph Bakshi's landmark animation, Fritz the Cat, which brought new meaning to the term 'graphic art'. John Waters's Pink Flamingos also cast good taste to the four winds in making a superstar of Divine. But there was less to outrage conservative audiences in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) , a sketch picture that stood in stark scattershot contrast to Herbert Ross's Play It Again, Sam, a deftly compact adaptation of the Allen stage play in which he teamed with Diane Keaton.
Indeed, this was a good year for comic pairings, as Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills and Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand muddled their way towards romance in the screwball duo of Billy Wilder's Avanti! and Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? When it came to musicals, however, Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren didn't quite work as Don Quixote and Aldonza in Arthur Hiller's Man of La Mancha, while Liza Minnelli sparked better with fellow Oscar-winner Joel Grey than Michael York in Bob Fosse's Cabaret.
True love also failed to run smoothly in either Charlton Heston's Antony and Cleopatra or Waris Hussein's Henry VIII and His Six Wives, while things ended badly for two of the three eponymous characters in the year's other major historical dramas, Fielder Cook's Eagle in a Cage (which centred on Napoleon Bonaparte's time on St Helena), Richard Attenborough's Young Winston, and Joseph Losey's The Assassination of Trotsky.
The flaws in the US political system were exposed in Michael Ritchie's The Candidate, while further studies of masculinity in crisis were presented in John Huston's Fat City and Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens, as well as in the Michael Caine duo of Mike Hodges's Pulp and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Sleuth. The latter saw Caine and co-star Laurence Olivier make Oscar history by becoming the first entire cast to be nominated for Best Actor.
Psychological strain was also the theme of Sidney Lumet's Child's Play, Robert Altman's Images, and Paul Newman's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, an adaptation of Paul Zindel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play that starred the director's wife, Joanne Woodward, and their daughter, Nell Potts. Close relationships similarly came under strain in Michael Apted's The Triple Echo and Sidney Gilliatt's Endless Night, with the latter Agatha Christie adaptation exhibiting an explicit attitude to sex and violence that was even more flagrantly evident in three features filmed in Britain: Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy;
Sidney Lumet's The Offence; and Jimmy Sangster's Fear in the Night.
In each case, the culprit paid the price. But, with the Code gone, screen crooks were allowed to prosper. The year's standout crime film was Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning take on Mario Puzo's The Godfather. But further light was shed on organised crime in Terence Young's The Valachi Papers, which would make for a fascinating Cinema Paradiso double bill for Charles Bronson fans with Michael Winner's The Mechanic.
Emerging talent Martin Scorsese's went back to the Depression era to chronicle the crimes of Barbara Hershey in Boxcar Bertha, but there was a modishness about the crime capers committed to celluloid in 1972, among them Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway, Michele Lupo's The Master Touch, and Peter Yates's The Hot Rock. In adapting Joseph Wambaugh's bestseller, The New Centurions, however, Richard Fleischer redressed the balance by viewing the urban jungle from a cop's perspective.
Set in the Texas town of Vinegaroon, John Huston's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean did much the same for the Old West. However, the focus fell on rebels with a cause in Robert Benton's Bad Company and Philip Kaufman's The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, while former bounty hunter Clint Eastwood comes to sypathise with the Mexicans calling for land reform in John Sturges's Joe Kidd.
Cattle drives dominate the action in Mark Rydell's The Cowboys and Dick Richards's The Culpepper Cattle Co., while a wagon train is threatened by post-bellum supremacists in Sidney Poitier's Buck and the Preacher. Exploring the bond between freed slaves and the Native American tribes, this revisionist Western considers similar themes to Robert Aldrich's Ulzana's Raid, Michael Winner's Chato's Land, and Sydney Pollack's Jeremiah Johnson, which records the interactions of a Rocky Mountain trapper and the local Crow, Blackfoot, and Flathead tribes.
Steve McQueen played a latterday cowboy in
Sam Peckinpah's rodeo saga, Junior Bonner, while the lure of the great outdoors lands Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ronny Cox, and Ned Beatty in hot water in a Georgian backwater in John Boorman's Deliverance. Gene Hackman and his fellow passengers also find themselves up to their necks in Ronald Neame's The Poseidon Adventure, which launched the early 70s vogue for disaster movies. However, the sci-fi boom was still half a decade in the distance, despite the bold bid to combine past, present, and future in a single storyline in George Roy Hill's adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's dystopian masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky also explored memory and identity in his spaceship odyssey, Solaris, but the pleasures were more earthbound in J. Lee Thompson's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which was the fourth and penultimate part of the original series derived from Pierre Boulle's concept.
Creature features of a different kind, namely Phil Karlson's Ben, George McCowan's Frogs, and Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling led a horror slate that could accommodate traditional fare like Peter Robinson's Asylum, Freddie Francis's Tales From the Crypt, Robert Young's Vampire Circus, and Robert Fuerst's Dr. Phibes Rises Again, as well as more outré offerings like Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, Hollingsworth Morse's Daughters of Satan, and Mario Bava's Baron Blood. Cinema Paradiso has them all, so click away to get your new year off to a spooky start.
While Hammer, Amicus, and Tigon kept numerous British thespians in work during the 1970s, many more found their pay cheques coming from softcore smut and sitcom spin-offs. Fresh from headlining Gerald Thomas's Carry On Matron, Sidney James reunited with the director for Bless This House, which was joined on the big screen in 1972 by another ITV hit, Harry Booth's Mutiny on the Buses, and the BBC's Steptoe and Son, which was directed by Cliff Owen. Many more would follow, but Bruce Beresford's ocker romp, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, only produced a single sequel and, sadly, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (1974), isn't available to rent, in spite of the presence of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage.
Ian MacNaughton oversaw the recreation of some classic sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74) in And Now For Something Completely Different (1972), But the year's most scathing British comedy teamed Peter O'Toole and Alastair Sim in Peter Medak's The Ruling Class, which couldn't have been more different to the same director's adaptation of Peter Nichols's play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which features exceptional work from Alan Bates and Janet Suzman, as the parents of a daughter with a severe intellectual disability. The rich tones of Richard Burton ooze through Andrew Sinclair's take on Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, while Lionel Jeffries brought a touch of enchantment to his interpretation of Andrea Barber's children's book, The Amazing Mr Blunden.
Fantasy of a more grown-up kind informed Barbet Schroeder's The Valley, which lined up alongside Yves Robert's The Tall Blond Man One With One Black Shoe, Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Flic, Jean-Luc Godard's Tout va bien, Éric Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon, and François Truffaut's A Gorgeous Girl Like Me in a very eclectic French selection in 1972. The capital provided the setting for the year's most scandalous picture, as Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris redefined the notion of adult cinema. However, the methods employed in directing Maria Schneider have since tarnished the reputation of an intense erotic drama whose French dialogue was provided by Agnès Varda.
There was an historical feel to three of the year's other Italian offerings, Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Canterbury Tales, and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig, while Federico Fellini put his own distinctive stamp on Roma. Other notable European releases from 1972 include Greek Theo Angelopoulos's Days of '36, Hungarian Miklós Janscó's Red Psalm, and Russian Stanislas Rostotsky's The Dawns Here Are Quiet. Das neue Kino also contributed Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and Wim Wenders's The Goalie's Anxiety At the Penalty Kick. But the standout arthouse titles of 1972 were Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, a deeply poignant Oscar-winning study of three 19th-century sisters and their maid, and Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which gleefully mocks the attitudes and pretensions of a group of middle-class Parisians, whose efforts to dine together are frustrated by a series of bizarre events.
1982
The big debate about why box-office hits get snubbed at the Oscars seems to have been raging for years. It really started in 1982, when Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extraterrestrial missed out on Best Picture, in spite of having charmed the entire planet. There was no question that Richard Attenborough's Gandhi was a magnificent tribute to a remarkable man. But one suspects that the Academy plumped for worthiness rather than wonderment.
With no Star Wars pictures on the horizon, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was the year's sci-fi titan. However, as Cinema Paradiso members will remember from The Instant Expert's Guide to Ridley Scott, it wasn't a hit on release and went through a tortuous editing process before finally finding its audience. Also keeping the generic end up were Nicholas Meyer's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Steven Lisberger's groundbreaking Tron, Wes Craven's Swamp Thing, and John Carpenter's The Thing. The latter reworked Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks's The Thing From Another World (1951) and added creeping paranoia to the chilling Cold War allegory.
Dread was big in 1982, with audiences who had spooked themselves in cinemas investing in home video copies of Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist to experience the shivers in their own living rooms. Steven Spielberg had hoped to direct this supernatural home invasion classic, but took co-writing and producing credits. Sequels would follow, as Steve Miner's Friday the 13th: Part 3, Tommy Lee Wallace's Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and Damiano Damiani's Amityville II: The Possession all demonstrated the financial common sense of franchise follow-ups.
Revisiting the Jacques Tourneur gem that had been produced by Val Lewton back in 1942 (are you beginning to see what we mean about years ending in two?), Paul Schrader's Cat People attracted a cult following. As did Samuel Fuller's shocking study of ingrained racism, White Dog. There's something more disconcerting about horror in everyday situations. But there's also a place for quirky items like Fred Hohenlotter's enduringly unsettling Basket Case, Philippe Mora's The Beast Within, Roger Christian's The Sender, and George A. Romero's Creepshow, which boasts a screenplay by Stephen King.
It was also a decent year for European horror, with Dario Argento's Tenebrae being joined by Lucio Fulci's Manhattan Baby, Jean Rollin's The Living Dead Girl, and Juan Piquer Simón's Pieces. The fantastical was also well represented, with Jim Henson and Frank Oz's The Dark Crystal, John Milius's Conan the Barbarian, Don Cascarelli's The Beastmaster, and Hal Needham's Megaforce all retaining their fascination for audiences four decades after their initial release. Just click on your choices and let Cinema Paradiso do the rest.
Two very different periods of French history were recalled in Michael Tuchner's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Clive Donner's The Scarlet Pimpernel. But this wasn't a standout year for action flicks, although Sylvester Stallone boxed on valiantly in Rocky III, Kirk Douglas went gold prospecting in the Australian Outback in George Miller's The Man From Snowy River, and Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott sought to refight lost Civil War battles in Andrew V. McLaglen's The Shadow Riders.
There was no trip to the Old West for Clint Eastwood in 1982, but he proved he could hold a tune as a country singer in Honkytonk Man before heading behind enemy lines to steal a prototype plane in Firefox. He was somewhat upstaged by Sylvester Stallone, however, who waged a one-man war against the Vietnamese as John Rambo in Ted Kotcheff's First Blood. The jungle (albeit one in South America) was also the setting for Costa-Gavras's Missing, as Jack Lemmon and daughter-in-law Sissy Spacek go looking for the film-maker son who had vanished while reporting on a military coup.
Lemmon found himself competing for the Oscar for Best Actor with Paul Newman, who excelled as a lawyer taking on an unwinnable medical malpractice case in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict. Lumet also coaxed a fine performance out of Michael Caine, as a playwright with writer's block in Deathtrap. A vein of gallows humour marbled this Ira Levin adaptation and the suspense was also leavened with smiles in Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing, Guy Hamilton's Evil Under the Sun, and Walter Hill's 48 Hrs., which teamed the debuting Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte so effectively as ex-jailbird Reggie Hammond and San Francisco cop Jack Cates that they would reunite for Another 48 Hrs. (1990).
Comedy and crime also clashed in Carl Reiner's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, which made inspired use of some classic film noir clips to pit Steve Martin against some of the biggest names in Hollywood history. Oscar nominee Peter O'Toole discovers that an actor's lot is not always a happy one in Richard Benjamin's My Favourite Year, while the fine art of creation also came under scrutiny in both Arthur Hiller's Author! Author! and Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy. The latter was the first of 13 features that Allen made with Mia Farrow and it earned her a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress. She lost out, however, to Pia Zadora for Matt Cimber's infamous adaptation of James M. Cain's Butterfly.
Romance also blossomed between Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner during the filming of Sidney Poitier's comic thriller, Hanky Panky. But, despite making 17 films together, including the deliciously dark, Eating Raoul, Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov were only ever good friends. At least there was a happy ending for Ted Striker (Robert Hays) and Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty) in Ken Finkleman's Airplane II: The Sequel.
Steve Guttenberg's relationship with fiancée Sharon Ziman is placed on the line in an American Football quiz in Diner, Barry Levinson's wonderfully nostalgic flashback to 1950s Baltimore. The characters are younger, but no less brash in Amy Heckerling's Fast Times At Ridgemont High, which was scripted by Cameron Crowe and launched the careers of a dozen brat packers. A young Michael J. Fox was among the students teaching music teacher Perry King a few harsh lessons on Mark E. Leser's The Class of 1984. This study of gun-toting delinquency caught a mood that was also evident in Michael Winner's Death Wish II and Tom DeSimone's The Concrete Jungle, with the latter being set in a brutal women's prison.
The conditions inside the institution in which 1940s film star Frances Farmer (Jessica Lange) was treated are similarly exposed in all their misguided grimness in Graeme Clifford's biopic, Frances. Keeping up a façade proves a problem for another actress in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie, which teamed the Oscar-winning Lange with the nominated Dustin Hoffman. And life on set proves no easier for either the stranded cast and crew of a Portuguese project with money troubles in Wim Wenders's The State of Things or for globe-trotting news reporter Sean Connery in Richard Brooks's Wrong Is Right.
Wenders harked back to 1928 in order to follow pulp novelist Dashiell Hammett (Frederic Forrest) turning detective in Hammett. However, producer Francis Ford Coppola's interventions meant the shoot proved tricky, not that is was any easier on Coppola's own One From the Heart, a Zoetrope production that teamed Forrest and Teri Garr. Crystal Gayle and Tom Waits provided the songs for this musical romance, with the latter snagging an Oscar nomination for Best Song Score alongside Ralph Burns for John Huston's Annie. Among the other musical offerings in 1982 were Colin Higgins's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Patrica Birch's Grease 2, Ken Annakin's The Pirate Movie, Franco Zeffirelli's Pagliacci, and Alan Parker's Pink Floyd: The Wall.
The latter featured animated segments designed by Gerald Scarfe that far surpassed the graphic work on show in Martin Rosen's The Plague Dogs, René Laloux's Les Maîtres du temps, Jules Bass's The Last Unicorn, and Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH. All four animations had intriguing storylines, however, and would repay any Cinema Paradiso grown-ups seeking to entertain their kids with something less visually samey than today's CGI movies. Only the latter pair would be suitable for the youngest viewers, however.
Sticking with tradition, Blake Edwards's Trail of the Pink Panther opened with animated credits (by Marvel Productions, no less). But this was the first of the titles released after the death of Peter Sellers and it isn't always an easy watch. The same can't be said for Thomas K. Avildsen's gleefully undemanding Things Are Tough All Over and Garry Marshall's Young Doctors in Love. Ward life is considerably bleaker, however, in Lindsay Anderson's Britannia Hospital, which would make for a splendidly discomfiting double bill with Richard Loncraine's take on Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle. Reprising a role he had created for the 1967 BBC production (that went unseen until 1987 ) Denholm Elliott excels as the father with a guilty conscience and he is on equally good form as the bishop seeking to guide vicar Michael Palin's ministrations in Loncraine's The Missionary. Palin would join his fellow Pythons in Terry Hughes's Monty Python Live At the Hollywood Bowl, which should prove as irresistible to fans of live comedy as Joe Layton's Richard Pryor: Live on Sunset Strip.
Robin Williams continuing to demonstrate that he was much more than just a comedian in George Roy Hill's The World According to Garp, an adaptation of the John Irving novel that brought Oscar nominations to co-stars John Lithgow and a debuting Glenn Close. The former was pipped by Lou Gossett, Jr., who became the first Black man to win the Best Supporting Actor prize for his work opposite Richard Gere and Debra Winger in Taylor Hackford's An Officer and a Gentleman. The uniforms in Alan Bridges's take on Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier were worn on the Western Front during the Great War. But Alan Bates's shell shock seems to pale besides the trauma suffered by the Oscar-winning Meryl Streep's Holocaust survivor in Alan J. Pakula's adaptation of William Styron's Sophie's Choice.
Besides such a harrowing story, the other dramas of 1982 feel insignificant. But Cinema Paradiso urges you to seek out Igor Auzins's We of the Never Never, Jean-Claude Lord's Visiting Hours, Susan Seidelman's Smithereens, and David Schmoeller's The Seduction, if only, in the latter case, because Morgan Fairchild's performance drew a Golden Raspberry nomination.
Although it couldn't have felt more English, there was a continental feel to Welsh-born, Dutch-based Peter Greenaway's masterly tale of deception in plain sight, The Draughtsman's Contract. There was further cross-pollination in Jerzy Skolimowski's Moonlighting, which followed Jeremy Irons and his fellow Polish workers to London at the time of the Solidarity uprising. The domestic situation being challenged is unflinchingly depicted in Interrogation, Ryszard Bugajski's bruising example of the Cinema of Moral Anxiety. Reflecting on the failure of the 1956 Hungarian insurrection, Károly Makk's Another Way considers the lingering effects of totalitarianism. The abuse of absolute power is also explored in Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog's epic account of an operatic folly that should be seen in tandem with Les Blank's 'making of' documentary, Burden of Dreams. Talking of unspoilt terrain, 1982 also showed us parts of the world as they had never been seen before, thanks to Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, which is available from Cinema Paradiso alongside Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002).
Another worthwhile doubling would span the globe, as notions of freedom unite Malian Souleymane Cissé's Finye and Chilean Miguel Littin's Alsino and the Condor. Liberty brings its problems for a warrior coming home after a medieval war in Daniel Vigne's The Return of Martin Guerre, which stars Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye. She is on equally good form as a prostitute in Bob Swaim's La Balance, a noirish treatise on underworld treachery that reveals a very different France from the one depicted in Éric Rohmer's Le Beau Mariage, as Béatrice Romand sets her cap at prospective husband, André Dussollier.
Making the right choice is also crucial for film director Tomás Milián, as he seeks to find a female lead and a romantic partner in Michelangelo Antonioni's Identification of a Woman. Knowing who to trust is also the theme of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's The Night of Shooting Stars, which is set in wartime Italy and examines the divisions that followed the fall of Benito Mussolini and the arrival of the Allied forces. The postwar period also concerns Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Veronika Voss, as fading film star Rosel Zech tries to rebuild her career in mid-50s Munich, amidst rumours she had slept with Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels.
This would be the last film released during Fassbinder's lifetime before the posthumous Querelle featured Brad Davis in an adaptation of Jean Genet's novel about a brothel for sailors in the French port of Brest. As we noted in our Instant Expert Guide, Fassbinder died in June 1982 without ever receiving an Oscar nomination. By contrast, Ingmar Bergman completed a hat-trick of Best Foreign Film wins - after The Virgin Spring (1960) and Through a Glass Darkly (1961) - with Fanny and Alexander, an autobiographical saga that was released as a theatrical film and a TV mini-series (which also found its way into cinemas). The version available from Cinema Paradiso converted four of its six Oscar nominations, with the other wins coming for Cinematography, Costumes, and Art Design.
1992
A former video store clerk took Hollywood by storm in 1992, as Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs brought wit and edge to the crime movie and, in so doing, prompted dozens of indie wannabes to produce cheap imitations full of postmodern wisecracks and visceral violence. An Australian film, Geoffrey Wright's Romper Stomper, took an equally unflinching look at human brutality and intolerance and helped launch the career of Russell Crowe.
Hong Kong auteur John Woo made evocative use of slow-motion to heighten the impact of the 'heroic bloodshed' gun play in Hard Boiled, which contrasted with the martial artistry on display in Raymond Lee's New Dragon Gate Inn and Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China 2, as well as Dwight H. Little's Rapid Fire, in which Brandon Lee revived elements of father Bruce's famous Jeet Kune Do fighting style. By contrast, the thrill of the new led to Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi becoming the lowest-budgeted film ever to make $1 million at the US box office and nudge audiences in the direction of such other Latino crime features as Arne Glimcher's The Mambo Kings and Edward James Olmos's American Me.
A vogue for African American crime films also developed over the course of the year, with Ernest R. Dickinson's Juice adopting the abrasive New Black Cinema aesthetic, while the likes of Carl Franklin's One False Move, Bill Duke's Deep Cover, Peter MacDonald's Mo' Money, and Walter Hill's Trespass were more classical in their construction without resorting to the stereotyping of Blaxploitation. The same could be said for buddy cop capers like Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon 3, as well as such thrillers as Bruce Robinson's Jennifer 8, Carl Schenkel's Knight Moves, and Irwin Winkler's Night and the City. The latter was a remake of a 1950 Jules Dassin noir of the same name, while Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) had a clear influence on Brian De Palma's Raising Cain.
Bolstered by outstanding performances by Harvey Keitel and Willem Dafoe, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant and Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper went further out on the limb. But nobody pushed the envelope further when it came to jaw-dropping moments than Sharon Stone in Paul Verhoven's Basic Instinct, which spiced up the erotic thriller while being denounced by sections of the LGBTQ+ community. Sensuality and suspense were also shackled in Louis Malle's Damage, Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, Phil Joanou's Final Analysis, and Alan J. Pakula's Consenting Adults, while the sanctity of the home and hearth was violated in such seat-edge thrillers as Curtis Hanson's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Barbet Schroeder's Single White Female, and Jonathan Kaplan's Unlawful Entry.
While Sharon Stone became an icon in partnership with Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith landed a Razzie for her performance alongside him in David Seltzer's Shining Through, whose denunciation of anti-Semitism finds an echo in the critique of apartheid attitudes faced by Morgan Freeman and Stephen Dorff in wartime South Africa in John G. Avildsen's The Power of One. The year's only other film set during the Second World War was Keith Gordon's A Midnight Clear, in which a truce between American and German soldiers breaks down over a misunderstanding. The French and Indian War provides the backdrop for Michael Mann's adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, while the action comes forward from 1757 to 1881 for Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, which chronicles the showdown between reformed outlaw William Munny (Eastwood) and Sheriff 'Little' Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman). Coming more up to date, the ramifications of the frontier era could still be felt in two tales of law and order, Michael Apted's Thunderheart and Roger Donaldson's White Sands.
Dispensing justice is no easier for a superhero or a designer warrior, if Tim Burton's Batman Returns and Roland Emmerich's Universal Soldier are to be believed. And there's more bio-enhancement in Albert Pyun's Nemesis, which is set in 2027 (now only four years away - spooky). Then again, Tony Maylam's Split Second takes place in 2008 in a London that has been largely flooded following torrential rainfall. Maverick cop Rutger Hauer is detailed to reel in a serial killer who is influenced by the lunar cycle.
Thank goodness for more everyday heroes like cook Steven Segal in Andrew Davis's Under Siege and security consultant Wesley Snipes in Kevin Hooks's Passenger 57. But upholding the law becomes trickier after emotional lines have been crossed, as Kyle MacLachlan's Special Agent Dale Cooper and Kevin Costner's ex-Secret Service operative Frank Farmer respectively discover in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Mick Jackson's The Bodyguard. CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) manages to keep a cooler head in Phillip Noyce's Patriot Games, while Robert Redford relies on the wits of his team of renegade hackers to keep a system-busting black box out of the clutches of ne'er-do-wells in Phil Alden Robinson's Sneakers.
Hinting at future crimes, this would make for a splendid Cinema Paradiso double bill with Brett Leonard's The Lawnmower Man, which was one of the first films to explore Virtual Reality. After dominating the box-office for much of the previous 15 years, sci-fi had something of a sabbatical in 1992, although there were still quirky offerings like John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Peter Manoogian's Seedpeople, and Mick Garris's Sleepwalkers, as well as a genuinely iconic sequel, in the form of David Fincher's Alien 3.
Horror had a more consistent year, with classical contributions like Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula and John Landis's Innocent Blood appearing alongside such modern gems as Fran Rubel Kuzul's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bernard Rose's Candyman. There were also accomplished sequels like Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness and Mary Lambert's Pet Semetary Two, as well as darkly left-field creations like New Zealander Peter Jackson's Braindead. Wonder whatever happened to him?
There was also something of the sublime and the ridiculous about two of the films celebrating 1992's big anniversary. Even by Cinema Paradiso standards, Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Gerald Thomas's Carry On Columbus would make for an odd double bill. The year's other biopics were more conventional, however, as Robert Downey, Jr. played Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin, Jack Nicholson essayed union boss Jimmy Hoffa in Danny DeVito's Hoffa, and Denzel Washington made screen history by filming inside Mecca for Spike Lee's Malcolm X.
Venturing into the sporting arena, John Goodman took on the mantle of legendary slugger Babe Ruth in Arthur Hiller's The Babe, while Geena Davies and Madonna took to the diamond in Penny Marshall's splendid celebration of women's wartime baseball, A League of Their Own. Elsewhere in 1992, Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson shot hoops in Ron Shelton's White Men Can't Jump, Cuba Gooding, Jr. donned boxing gloves in Randy Harrington's Gladiator, Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney strapped on their skates in Paul Michael Glaser's The Cutting Edge, and Will Porter (Matthew Modine) tacked in pursuit of America's Cup glory in Carroll Ballard's Wind.
Fly fishing is the leisure pursuit of choice for siblings Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt in Robert Redford's adaptation of Norman Maclean's semi-autobiographical novel, A River Runs Through It. And Terence Davies allows his childhood passion for cinema to shape the consciousness of 12 year-old Liverpudlian Leigh McCormack in The Long Day Closes. Zach O'Malley Greenburg also impresses as the five year-old enduring a potentially life-threatening disease in George Miller's Lorenzo's Oil, which co-stars Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon as real-life parents Augusto and Michaela Odone. Likewise, Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazzello deliver touching performances as the brothers finding ways to cope with their stepfather's occasionally abusive alcoholism in Richard Donner's Radio Flyer, which is narrated by Tom Hanks.
Brendan Fraser gives a fine performance as a Jewish student at an elite 1950s school in Robert Mandel's School Ties, while classmate Chris O'Donnell holds his own against an Oscar-winning Al Pacino as blind ex-Army officer Frank Slade in Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman. Pacino was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his turn as real estate salesman Richard Roma in James Foley's adaptation of David Mamet's imposing ensemble drama, Glengarry Glen Ross.
Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke pair effectively in Stephen Gyllenhaal's take on Graham Swift's Waterland, while Ray Liotta and Kiefer Sutherland show well as hard-pressed hospital doctors in Howard Deutsch's Article 99. Petty thief Dustin Hoffman is a more reluctant angel of mercy in Stephen Frears's Accidental Hero, while naval lawyer Tom Cruise discovers that the truth isn't always convenient while questioning superior officer Jack Nicholson in Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men.
Cruise and Nicole Kidman leave Ireland for 1890s America in Ron Howard's Far and Away and the Emerald Isle also features in Mike Newell's Into the West, Charlie Peters's Passed Away, and Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
The Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay went to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, as James Ivory's take on E.M. Forster's Howards End earned Emma Thompson the Best Actress prize. Tilda Swinton could count herself unlucky for having been overlooked for her assured display as the cross-dressing hero (ine) of Sally Potter's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Joan Plowright drew a Best Supporting nomination for Mike Newell's Enchanted April, which was based on a 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim. Completing the pick of 1992's literary adaptations were Peter Kosminsky's Wuthering Heights and Gary Sinise's Of Mice and Men, while the other notable original dramas included Alan Rudolph's Equinox, Steve Miner's Forever Young, Norman René's Prelude to a Kiss, Allison Anders's Gas Food Lodging, and Katt Shea's Poison Ivy.
The edginess of the latter could also be felt in Allan Moyle's The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag, a screwball comedy that would team amusingly with another romp in the Cinema Paradiso catalogue, Roger Spottiswoode's Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot, which paired Estelle Getty and Sylvester Stallone. It was panned by critics, as was Thom Eberhardt's Captain Ron, but Kurt Russell's performance as an irresponsible boat skipper is well worth (re) discovering. The same is true of Tate Donovan and Sandra Bullock's collaboration in Dale Launer's Love Potion No.9, which pretty much had the field to itself when it came to romcoms in 1992, although also worth catching are Cameron Crowe's Singles and Bob Rafelson's Man Trouble, which respectively paired Campbell Scott and Bridget Fonda and Jack Nicholson and Ellen Barkin.
Many of America's leading comic actors had irons in the fire during 1992, including Steve Martin (Frank Oz's HouseSitter & Richard Pearce's Leap of Faith), Eddie Murphy (Reginald Hudlin's Boomerang & Jonathan Lynn's The Distinguished Gentleman), Dudley Moore (Mark Harman's Blame It on the Bellboy), and Robin Williams (Barry Levinson's Toys). But they were upstaged by Whoopi Goldberg, as lounge singer Deloris Wilson takes over a convent choir as Sister Mary Clarence in Emile Ardolino's Sister Act. Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn also had fun with the special effects, as they competed for the attention of Bruce Willis in Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her.
Goldberg and Willis cropped up in Robert Altman's coruscating Hollywood satire, The Player, which starred Tim Robbins as studio boss Griffin Mill. And Robbins was equally amusing under his own direction as a singing politician in the pointedly witty Bob Roberts. Seizing a moment in the spotlight was also the theme of Billy Crystal's Mr Saturday Night and Barnet Kellman's Straight Talk, which each focussed on TV shows. It's a misfiring theatre production that falls in the spotlight in Peter Bogdanovich's Noises Off, while no one will need reminding of the subject of Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom.
Family and friends prove more trouble than they're worth in Jonathan Lynn's My Cousin Vinny (which earned Marisa Tomei an Oscar), Ted Kotcheff's Folks!, Kenneth Branagh's Peter's Friends, and Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, with the latter being the last of the director's collaborations with Mia Farrow before their relationship soured over his affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.
The comedy takes a darker turn in Eugene Levy's Once Upon a Crime and Andrew Bergman's Honeymoon in Vegas. But it veers off into cult corner with Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup, Gregg Araki's The Living End, and Ralph Bakshi's Cool World. They're all as marvellously quirky in their way as one of the year's biggest hits, Penelope Spheeris's Wayne's World. In commercial terms, however, it still lagged some way behind John Musker and Ron Clements's Aladdin, as Disney continued its revival with Robin Williams at his motor-mouthed best as the genie.
Competing animations, Bill Kroyer's FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso, couldn't have been more different. And the same was true of 1992's biggest-hitting kidpic, Chris Columbus's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and its humbler rivals, Brian Levant's Beethoven, Randal Kleiser's Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, and Brian Henson's The Muppet Christmas Carol. Only one was reissued in cinemas to mark its 30th anniversary, however.
On the arthouse front, French veterans Éric Rohmer and Claude Sautet delivered peerless charmers in A Tale of Winter and Un Coeur en hiver, while Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover and Régis Wargnier's Indochine (which brought Catherine Deneuve an Oscar nomination) reflected upon the country's imperial past. A nostalgic vein also marbled Fernando Trueba's Oscar-winning Belle Époque, which introduced audiences to Penélope Cruz, who also teamed with future husband, Javier Bardem, in Bigas Luna's Jamón Jamón.
Equally scathing in its wit was Julio Medem's Cows, which sought to disconcert in a similarly abrasive manner to Belgian Rémy Belvaux's Man Bites Dog and Austrian Michael Haneke's Benny's Video. Eschewing such stylistic bravura, Gianni Amelio's The Stolen Children took a neo-realist approach to a cop's attempt to show a jailed prostitute's kids that life is to be enjoyed. By contrast, Bille August's The Best Intentions (which was scripted by Ingmar Bergman) and Alfonso Arau's Like Water For Chocolate, both took the heritage approach to stories set at the turn of the last century, in Sweden and Mexico respectively. Yet neither tugged on the heartstrings with quite the same delicacy as Abbas Kiarostami's And Life Goes On, a study of the impact of an earthquake on the Iranian town of Koker that forms part of a trilogy, along with Where Is the Friend's House? (1987) and Through the Olive Trees (1994). Trust us, these are brilliant films by an auteur whose genius has been much missed these last six years. Start 2023 with something a bit different. You won't be disappointed.
Millennial Twos
That completes our survey of 20th-century twos. You'll agree that there are numerous classics in each year and we're asking you to make the definitive choice once more. Get in touch with Cinema Paradiso to let us know which film you consider to be the pick of 1972, 1982, and 1992 - and we'll post the result on social media.
What about the 21st century, you ask? Well, as so many films - both major and minor - have been released on high-quality DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K since the turn of the millennium, we'd need individual articles for each year. And, besides, only a fraction of the titles that reached cinemas in 2022 have so far been issued on disc. So, we'll keep our powder dry for now.
Being ever ready to help Cinema Paradiso users, though, we can dip into the first two twos of the 2000s and point you in the direction of the award winners and box-office behemoths that will likely shape how each year is remembered.
According to IMDB, 4336 films were released in 2002. The majority will have already faded from memory, especially as so many film-makers lack the gumption to keep their work alive and their names in people's minds by posting items online so that they can be enjoyed and shared rather than develop cyber-vinegar syndrome in embittered obscurity.
Of the films making up the Top 10 highest grossers of 2002, only Joel Zwick's My Big Fat Greek Wedding will come as a surprise. Racking up ticket sales of $936,689,735, Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers led the way, with Chris Columbus's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets close behind. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was also in the $800m bracket, but there was quite a fall off to George Lucas's Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones at $650 and even bigger fall to Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black II, Lee Tamahori's Bond movie, Die Another Day, and M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, which all amassed over $400m.
Joining the Nia Vardalos comedy in the $300 millions were Chris Wedge's Ice Age and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. But few of these pictures proved to be genuine contenders during awards season, which was dominated by Roman Polanski's The Piano, Rob Marshall's Chicago, Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, Stephen Daldry's The Hours, Alexander Payne's About Schmidt, Spike Jonze's Adaptation, Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, and Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven.
Among the year's other highlights were Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her. Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine, Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile, and Julie Taymor's Frida. The big festival winners were Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday (Berlin), The Pianist (Cannes), and Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters (Venice).
Moving on a decade, the festival favourites for 2012 were Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die (Berlin), Michael Haneke's Amour (Cannes), and Kim Ki-duk's Pietà (Venice). All three are available from Cinema Paradiso, along with such award bait as Ben Affleck's Argo, Tom Hooper's Les Misérables, Ang Li's Life of Pi, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, and Malik Bendjellouf's Searching For Sugar Man.
Naturally, none of these made the box-office Top 10, which was propped up by Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black III, whose $624 million was eminently respectable for a 15 year-old franchise. Gary Ross's The Hunger Games did $70m better business, but lagged behind Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon, and Tom McGrath's Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted and Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man, which both coined around $750m.
Bill Condon's The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 garnered a healthy $829, but it was $50m down on Steve Martino and Michael Thurmier's Ice Age: Continental Drift. Soaring above the year's highest-grossing animation was Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which drew $1,017,003,568. It was pipped by Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises and Sam Mendes's 007 outing, Skyfall. But nothing came within $400m of Joss Whedon's The Avengers, which tipped $1,518,815,515 into the coffers at Disney.
If you get the feeling some of these post-2000 titles feel like they came out yesterday, you're not alone. But time will tell which will become genuine classics to join Cinema Paradiso's All the Twos pantheon.
