Roman Polanski's first student film. Eighty-seven seconds long, and the opening credits take up nearly 14 seconds. The "Koniec" at the end was another eight seconds.
Not much of a narrative arc, but I liked the close-up of the Polish door handle. In its brevity, Polanski avoided the pitfalls of seemingly more ambitious student films.
Here it is, posted 17 years ago on YouTube.
Made in 1971. A somewhat aged William Holden and a relatively young Ryan O'Neal are cowboys. After one of their fellow cowboys is killed in a freak accident, they discuss how bad it is being cowboys and mortality in general and William Holden makes an idle comment about bank robbery as a way out.
They work for rancher Karl Malden whose sons (Joe Don Baker and Tom Skerritt) pursue them into Mexico where they go to start a new life with their stolen money.
Bank robberies are pretty standard for westerns. The one in this movie was a little unusual, involved hostages. The barroom brawl was on a small scale with only five or six guys fighting for no reason. They talk a lot and are slow to get to the point. Every conversation drags on longer than necessary. They go on and on about Ryan O'Neal bringing a puppy with him.
Later, they need another horse, so they lasso an innocent wild horse and quickly break him in. Maybe you can really do that, but I wouldn't take the movie's word for it.
With Little House in the Prairie's Victor French, Joe Don Baker, Tom Skerritt, Moses Gunn, Ted Gehring, Bruno VeSota. With Blake Edwards' son, Geoffery (Julie Andrews' stepson).
I never noticed Ryan O'Neal was left-handed.
Reportedly, Edwards intended this as a three-hour epic. The studio cut it down by 40 minutes and altered the ending causing him to disown it.
Free on Tubi.
+ Before JD Vance’s conversion to MAGA, this is what he had to say about Trump…
“Might be America’s Hitler”
“I’m a never Trump guy”
“Never liked him”
“Terrible candidate”
“Idiot if you voted for him”
“Might be a cynical asshole”
“Cultural heroin"
“Noxious and reprehensible”
+ Of course, none of these aspersions bother Trump. Vance has surrendered, bent the knee and kissed Trump’s feet. And Trump will parade him around like a captured warlord, until he tires of him and begins subjecting him to ridicule and humiliation. [emphasis added]
And it has begun. I think Vance said something about Jeffrey Epstein that turned out to be unhelpful to Trump, so Trump posted an unkind meme of an overweight J.D. Vance.
“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”--San Diego, June 2016.
“It’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”
“I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”
