Nothing seemed new in `92, as the established trends of the decade continued their depressing progress. Hollywood films became bigger and more anonymous, as directors lost more and more power to studio executives, and foreign films became more timid and scarce, as Hollywood`s worldwide dominance continued to devastate local film industries.
To make a personal film within the Hollywood system these days, it is necessary to be a clout-heavy actor-auteur on the level of Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford, and even Redford had trouble finding distribution for ”A River Runs Through It,” as cuddly and conventional as it was.
The one glimmer of hope on the horizon came from the American independents, a new breed of filmmakers who, operating on a complicated financial network of low overhead, underwriting from the video companies and complex foreign sales arrangements, managed to bypass the studios and produce some work of genuine substance.
It`s to the independents that we owe ”Reservoir Dogs,” ”Laws of Gravity,” ”Deep Cover,” ”The Living End,” ”One False Move,” ”Bob Roberts,” ”The Waterdance,” ”Mississippi Masala,” ”Daughters of the Dust” and ”The Player”-in other words, most of the movies that, for better or worse, took a chance in 1992.
A 10-best list is a game first and foremost, and the rankings that follow are not meant to be precise or permanent. Though all of these films played commercially in Chicago for at least one week during the calendar year, few of them were widely seen; if this excerise has any effect at all, I hope it will be to encourage a few more readers to check out these titles on video.
1 Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood). Directed by and starring 62-year-old Clint Eastwood, this crepuscular western takes place at a point where both a great movie genre and a great star career are drawing to a close. Yet the film, as chiseled and clear-eyed as its star, betrays barely a hint of nostalgia or regret. Eastwood remains as fiercely self-critical as ever, acknowledging and exploring the addiction to violence that lies behind America`s hero myths. One of the marks of a great film is its ability to balance the most disparate moods, to find a line of continuity between the most radical extremes of emotion. ”Unforgiven” is both lyrical and terrifying, a celebration and an exorcism.
2 La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette). For Rivette, one of the founding members of the French New Wave back in the 1960s, this was his first international hit-a development that may have had something to do with the fact the film`s female star, Emmanuelle Beart, was naked for two of the movie`s four hours. But whatever the reasons for its success (and the cries of sexism that accompanied it), ”La Belle Noiseuse” stands as a rich speculation on the erotic-inspirational-competitive relationship between filmmaker and actress, here disguised as a struggle between a painter (Michel Piccoli) and his model (Beart). Playing with conventional cinematic notions of time (which Rivette spins out to a rhythm that approaches everyday life) and space (which the film gradually reduces to a single corner of a darkened studio), Rivette creates one of the most provocative movies-about-movies ever made.
3 Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino). An amazing debut for the 28-year-old Tarantino, who hits on all three levels-narrative construction, visual style and direction of actors-in a way no young American filmmaker has managed in years. The story of a bungled jewel heist, told in jigsaw- puzzle flashbacks from its bloody aftermath, this independently financed feature is a return to the male action movies of the 1950s-by Howard Hawks, Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann-with a pronounced post-modernist twist. Tarantino may no longer believe in the situations he creates, but he is passionately committed to the forms and rituals of the genre, which he now treats as theatrical abstractions, pure and beautiful in themselves.
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4 The Hairdresser`s Husband (Patrice Leconte). The most deliriously romantic film of the year, and also one of the most formally controlled, demonstrating that discipline and expansiveness go hand in hand. Leconte, the French director responsible for the dark and brooding ”Monsieur Hire,” here radically alters his register, composing a sunlit tale of a youthful obsession-that of a little boy for the women who cut his hair-that pays off effortlessly and gloriously in the hero`s adulthood. Featuring a warm and inventive performance by Jean Rochefort, and a very promising debut from Italian actress Anna Galiena.
5 Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg). A 1991 release on the East and West Coasts, but last January in Chicago, David Cronenberg`s Canadian feature demands to be remembered for its black wit, narrative ingenuity and creepy insights into the creative process. Not so much an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs book as a speculation on its chemically-induced creation, the film presented the inner reality of its deadpan protagonist (Peter Weller) as projected upon the lower Manhattan of the 1950s, resulting in a delirious double vision. In a double role, as the hero`s murdered wife and imagined mistress, Judy Davis offered an indelible performance that, with her equally impressive turn in
”Husbands and Wives,” makes her the actress of the year.
6 Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yi-mou). As his career progresses, it appears that Zhang is not the radical he first seemed to be, among the ”Fifth Generation” of Chinese filmmakers who broke with the party line, but a full- bodied, classical filmmaker, more George Stevens than Jean-Luc Godard.
”Raise the Red Lantern,” about a young, university-educated woman (Gong Li) who is forced to become the fourth wife of a provincial nobleman, is a
”women`s picture” classical enough in its themes and presentation to have fit in at Warner Brothers in the 1940s. With his strict control of color and framing, Zhang creates a mood of mounting hysteria, but cunningly substitutes a cool, underplayed finale.
7 Proof (Jocelyn Moorhouse). The New Zealand-Australia film-school axis continues, after Jane Campion and Alison Maclean, to produce greatly skilled female directors. This debut film, written and directed by Moorhouse, is an ingeniously constructed yet emotionally potent psychological study, a volatile standoff among a fiercely independent blind man (Hugo Weaving), his amorous housekeeper (Genevieve Picot) and the young drifter (Russell Crowe) whom he warily befriends.
8 Edward II (Derek Jarman). Christopher Marlowe`s historical tragedy of 1592 becomes a powerful political statement for 1992, in the hands of British gay filmmaker Jarman. Introducing anachronistic details into his spare, exquisitely designed images, Jarman broadens this tale of a British king
(Steven Waddington, of ”The Last of the Mohicans”) who abandoned his queen for a male lover into a fable of homophobia across the centuries. Pointed but not shrill, committed but not single-minded, Jarman`s film is a model of enlightened message mongering.
9 Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis). An unholy mess, with long dull stretches and a tacked-on ending, yet Robert Zemeckis` black comedy was the only Hollywood film of 1992 with the courage to offend. And so it did, with its aggressively ugly tale of body sculpting and body snatching in Southern California, played out between an aging movie star (Meryl Streep) and an envious romance novelist (Goldie Hawn). Between hits (”Back to the Future,” ”Who Framed Roger Rabbit”), Zemeckis continues to work in the blissfully tasteless vein of Mad magazine and the cartoonish features of Frank Tashlin
(”Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?”), demonstrating once again that comedy isn`t pretty.
10 One False Move (Carl Franklin). Thanks to critic Sheila Benson, who discovered this made-for-video feature and placed it on the film-festival circuit, one`s faith in low-budget genre filmmaking-a mainstay of American filmmaking that has lately fallen on hard times-has been somewhat restored. An inventive interracial remake of ”High Noon” as a cross-country police pursuit, Franklin`s film demonstrates how emotionally effective the action film can still be once it is freed from the campiness and condescension that currently rules the Hollywood output. Franklin takes his characters and situations seriously, building a drama instead of a shooting gallery.
Mention should also be made of such committed efforts as Andrei Konchalovsky`s ”The Inner Circle,” Mira Nair`s ”Mississippi Masala,”
Jonathan Lynn`s hilarious ”My Cousin Vinny,” John Mackenzie`s funny and bizarre ”Ruby,” Ron Shelton`s ”White Men Can`t Jump,” Jim Jarmusch`s plangent ”Night on Earth,” Jon Jost`s ”All the Vermeers in New York,”
”Howards End” with its fine performance by Emma Thompson, Tim Burton`s kinky ”Batman Returns,” the deftly romantic ”Prelude to a Kiss” by Norman Rene and Craig Lucas, Cameron Crowe`s compromised but sweet-tempered
”Singles,” Howard Franklin`s Quasimodo tale ”The Public Eye,” James Foley`s roaringly performed ”Glengarry Glen Ross,” Steve Anderson`s level headed ”South Central,” Paul Schrader`s unexpectedly moving ”Light Sleeper,” Jean de Segonzac`s incredible hand-held camera work in ”Laws of Gravity” and Alain Corneau`s handsome ”Tous les Matins du Monde.”
Reissues and restorations continue to boom, in what is certainly the most encouraging trend of the decade; it would have been a far less rewarding year at the movies without the shiny new prints of Jean Renoir`s ”The Golden Coach” (1952), Luchino Visconti`s ”Rocco and His Brothers” (1960), Frank Capra`s ”Broadway Bill” (1934), H. G. Clouzot`s ”The Wages of Fear” (1952) and Yves Allegret`s ”The Proud Ones” (1953) presented at the Music Box theater, and, at the Fine Arts, Orson Welles`s ”Othello” (1952) and Ridley Scott`s ”Blade Runner” (1982).