'70s double feature: alice doesn't live here anymore and the hunting party

*SPOILER ALERT, both films*

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore: (1974. dir: Martin Scorsese) How strange, in retrospect, that sandwiched in between Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, the acme of the '70s tough-guy double feature, Scorsese made what used to be called "a woman's picture". While never as good as his tough-guy films, it stands head and shoulders above today's "chick flicks" in its portrayal of a real woman (Ellen Burstyn, who is amazing, and looks like an attractive but real woman, by which I mean that she never would have been considered for the role if it were cast today because she looks like a real woman, attractive but imperfect) embarking on life as a widow and single mother.

Most of the attempts at humor fall flat, with the notable exception of exchanges between Burstyn and Diane Ladd as Flo, who have a great chemistry. Kris Kristofferson is the cowboy/lover who is so damned perfect that he is completely unbelievable, but he and Burstyn share a nice enough chemistry that they're fun to watch. Especially the first morning-after scene we get, where they're giggling and telling stories and laughing like teenagers.

The ending is too crazy to believe. Kristofferson, a rancher, tries to woo Burstyn back, acquiescing to her demand for change, and offers to choose her over his ranch: "I don't give a shit about that ranch. I'll take you to Monterey right now." They are the words which win her, but any audience member who's ever, I don't know, had any dealings with men at all, will know it's a ridiculous statement, either an outright lie or else there's important backstory about this guy we need to know, like why he's faking being a rancher if he doesn't give a shit about it.

Along with Burstyn and Ladd, the other high point of the film is the very young Jodi Foster, fresh off of playing Becky Thatcher in my generation's version of Tom Sawyer. She's tough as nails and funny, to boot ("So long, suckers!"), with her continued invitations to "get high on ripple."

the Hunting Party: (1971. dir: Don Medford) This (the early seventies) was the age of ultra-violence heaped ignominiously on top of the usual misogyny of the Western. It's as if the Spaghettis threw everything into disarray, Hollywood moved in and stole all the wrong things from the Italians, co-opting the heartlessness and big violence but ignoring all the quirky things that make those classics great (the silences, the close-ups of sweat and flies, the weird character choices and odd twists, like a guy dragging a coffin behind him, or another guy choosing to shoot the thumbs off his foes instead of killing them).

Oliver Reed is the hero of this movie; you know that because, when he rapes Candice Bergen, it is less brutally then when Gene Hackman or LQ Jones do. And that's about all you need to know about this movie.

It's also related to the "Most Dangerous Game" genre of humans-being-hunted films, but you wouldn't call it one of the best. Mostly it's a love story between Stockholm-Syndromed Bergen and her darkly dangerous outlaw captor, and not a very enjoyable or convincing one.

Gene Hackman, of course, is entirely convincing as the going-all-Ahab-getting-vengeance-on-your-ass pissed-off rich-man husband. It has some interesting musical breaks and some daring editing choices at the beginning, and a richly rewarding cast of journeyman actors playing bad guys of both stripes: the rich kind, and the poor kind.

And, because it was made at that turn of the seventies when existential angst was reaching the fullness of its blossom in Hollywood, it leads up to one of those "aw, what's the use?" endings, in which the only humans (or horses) left standing are the ones who threw in the towel early on, wisely deciding the game wasn't worth the price.