Feelin’ Groovy: Going deep, deep, deep into their library to issue the next wave in their “Martini Movies” series, Sony has plucked some fascinating obscurities for public DVD screenings. They are from the 1960s and 1970s, which designates them as Groovy Movies of sorts.
In this batch of titles are:
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973): An exquisitely filmed romantic drama in which sheltered Timothy Bottoms meets older Maggie Smith during a bicycle journey through Spain. The two carry on a romance, but Smith eventually gets ill. Alan J. Pakula helmed this change-of-pace effort.
Model Shop (1969): The first English-language effort fromJacques Demy is an unusual music-filled romancer starring Gary Lockwood as a bored Los Angeles resident who gets romantically entangled with older French model Anouk Aimee while awaiting his call to Vietnam.
The Pursuit of Happiness (1971): Michael Sarrazin is the disenchanted college student arrested for vehicular homicide of an old woman, and opts for prison rather than participate in his own defense. While serving his sentence, Sarrazin gets involved with jailhouse violence, and plots an escape—to Canada with girlfriend Barbara Hershey. Robert Mulligan directs.
Summertree (1971): As soldier Michael Douglas lies wounded in Vietnam, he recalls his life, girlfriend Brenda Vaccaro, his battles with his parents and his childhood in this sensitive counterculture drama directed by Anthony Newley (!?).
The Buttercup Chain (1970) : Odd (to say the least) look at relationships from England stars Hywel Bennett as a young man who frets that his bond with cousin Jane Asher is getting unhealthily close, so he fixes her up with Swedish architect Sven-Bertil Taube, and turns to promiscuous American student Leigh Taylor-Young for himself. It gets even more complicated from there in this memorable roundelay from director Robert Ellis Miller.