Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)

"A must. Is it completely successful?: Possibly not. Is it partially a mess of a film?: Yes, but the material is by nature messy. Is it heavy-handed?: Generally, yes, but life can be heavy-handed. I’ve seldom come across such a film – it continues to receive mixed reactions or is often shrugged off as mere sensationalism. It is also considered by many to be one of the most disturbing films ever. (That ending!) And, of course, that was the intention. I can’t recall whether I read Rossner’s book – I may have – but Ebert makes the curious point that Keaton’s character, the real-life victim, was apparently a masochist with a death wish (could that, in this case, be known?) and also says Brooks does not present her that way. Perhaps that’s why many people who see this film identify it simply as ‘a morality tale’ – that bad tends to result from unbridled sexuality. Personally, I don’t see the film as such. I see it more along the lines of ‘Life can be a trap if we allow it to be.’ (In that sense, ‘Goodbar’ covers ground similar to Brooks’ version of ‘In Cold Blood’.) The woman Keaton portrays keeps making the same mistakes in life and, if she isn’t overtly portrayed as a masochist, her mind-split actions hint that she is punishing herself, possibly without realizing it. So many of us have damaged pasts – if the film is cautionary, it could be warning against reliving personal history. As a film experience, I find it – warts and all – shattering. And, yes, Keaton’s performance alone is reason enough to see it."

http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/?p=1739
Goodbar on youtube

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It's a shame this film has virtually been lost to a generation. It's messy -- in a way many great films of the 1970s were, breaking away from the rigid structure and style of "Hollywood era" films. But, it's a great film. Arguably, part of the reason Keaton won the Oscar in 1977. You can only be nominated for 1 movie, after all. Weld was a revelation. I could go on forever. If you have a chance to see it, do so. Love it or hate it, it's a something else.

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I gave ****! Two ****s! Healthy, fiber-filled! I sing this movie's praises whenever I can. I even have the (rare i've been told) soundtrack album.

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Well,I HAVE seen Kathleen Turner and Cheyenne Jackson naked. So,maybe I am.

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The girl wants to get on down!

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Don't hold your breath, taz. It's a shame, though.

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Namo basically echoed my thoughts. I find it a very problemactic film--much more so than when I first saw it when I was 13 or so and mainly loved its disco soundtrack--since I was just getting into that.

I think, while yes based on a true story, it is a film that is a scared reaction to the gay movement, but more so, feminism (a less popular opinion I have is of another film from the era--Network which I do see as anti feminist as well.) Terrific performances, stylish direction...

I blame Richard Brooks--he was a talented and interesting director, but chose some works to adapt that he simply had, IMHO, the wrong mentality to do fairly. (While good films in a standard Hollywood way, the fact that he says his versions of Sweet Bird of Youth and especially Cat On a Hot Tin Rooff improved their plays says a lot--in those cases, of cours, he was partly controled by censorship of the time, but he did think greatly diminishing to nearly cutting homosexuality or repressed homosexuality as a theme for Cat, for example "clarrified" it).

Taz, if you simply want to see any copy of it, there are some pretty good quality torrents out there. I'm a little surprised by the soundtrack issue--most of the acts (a big chunk of Donna Summer, etc) have had no issue with their labels with lesser known movies on DVD (like the guilty pleasure Thank God It's Friday which has a huge soundtrack with Donna, Diana Ross, etc, throughout the entire film and had no issue).

I have a love/hate thing for In The Cut, but have never read the book. Awkward, is a good way to describe the movie, though.

I'll have to read Perfidia--I'm a big fan of most of the female writers you mentioned--Angela Carter especially (and I do think Neil Jordan's Company fo Wolves does justice to Chamber of Blood, even if many don't).

And you're precisely right. Hollywood's "second golden age" gets tons of praise--and much boohooeying about how nothing has been the same in film since. And to an extent I agree with that, at least the praise (Hell, for all I have said about how even misogynistic many of these classics are, I admit to loving every single one of DePalma's 70s films which are far from, umm, un-problematic in that context). But it very much was a second golden age for straight, white, men--and largely straight, white, male based films.

Yeah, seventies cinema was one friction-heavy time of ideas. So much of it was about white male problems, but they were truthful.

STRAW DOGS, for instance, is a movie that will leave your jaw hanging open in terms of its misogyny...it makes GOODBAR look like AN UNMARRIED WOMAN. But there is something so truthful in the way it portrays the paranoia of being emasculated that feels primal, urgent and real to me. I can't resist it, much less dismiss it.

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3 Women is another one. Even in its obscure storytelling (""dreamlike" some say, when they can't figure out just WHAT is being said) a feminism viewpoint comes through. Not a completely well thought feminism in the traditional sense. The studios tried to get on the curve as corporations do, through the lens (literally) of a male viewpoint.

Eric, see Hester Street if you can.

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I remember being really creeped out by this movie when it came out. I was just moving into the East Village from college and her apartment a block away from mine on St. Marks Place.

At any rate, I was a bigger slut than she was back then, and whenever I would walk back to my apartment late at night from the St. Marks, um, Health Club, I would look at it and think that what happened to her was going to happen to me next.

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I could never watch this movie again. The sex-shaming aspect of the lead and gay characters was bad enough, but the final scene gave me nightmares. I still think it is the single most disturbing scene I've witnessed in a film. I remember my father always commenting that it was the movie he hated the most, so naturally I was curious to find out why. And because of that movie, he couldn't stand to see Diane Keaton in anything else.

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Did she wear fullon bondage gear in the book? Don't get me wrong, I do think it's a powerful film--if that makes sense, that's never been my issue with it (it certainly made a strong impression on me as ayoung teen--it was on re-viewing it that I had more issue, probably not helping that I knew more about Brooks then and how he did feel his films had important lessons to teach).