1975 Movie Project

1. The title of our movie is The Road to Revenge. In it, Clint Eastwood plays an ex-cop from New York. After his partner is accused of terrible things such as dealing drugs, Clint is ordered by higher members of law enforcement to kill his partner. Upon refusing to do so, Clint’s entire family and partner are mysteriously killed. In his quest for revenge, Clint is taken on a cross-country rampage where he and a group of young rebels that he recruits discover some of the dark secrets of the society that they live in. Ultimately, the goal of this band of rebels is to exact deadly revenge upon society.

We thought that this would be an interesting movie for the time period seeing as it represents many common 70’s elements of film. For example, this film is very artsy as well as bold. Very little in this movie is censored, thus viewers are able to see a movie that is very true to real life. Also, stylistically this movie is artsy not only in its message but also the production. We thought that this was important because it would better show the powerful impact that experimental film had on other mainstream movies of the time.

This film also is full of social commentary. The most important message that the film is trying to represent is that of questioning authority. Much unlike earlier films, this movie definitely views the government and institutions and the enemy. Thus, an antihero is born in Clint Eastwood as he is an advocate for his own beliefs even if that means engaging in dangerous and illegal behavior. 

2.  In terms of genre, this film is a bit of a hybrid. On one hand, it is very much a sort of gangster/crime film in terms of the rebellion against the government and law enforcement. However, at the same time, it is almost a drama since it incorporates large personal aspects of Clint Eastwood’s life and inner struggles and dilemmas.

3.  The studio we chose for this film is Malpaso Productions. The main reason that we chose this studio is because it was founded by Clint Eastwood in 1967. Because of this, it would made good sense for our lead actor to be Clint Eastwood. Also, Warner Brothers is commonly known for distributing these films, which is important since Warner Brothers has a reputation for dealing with gangster films as well as films dealing with social commentary. In addition, the scale of this movie is relatively large. We decided to do this because with the rise in other auteur films, we wanted this film to really stand out and bring in a large viewing audience.

4.  The lead actor in this movie is Clint Eastwood-playing the ex-police officer. We thought that Clint Eastwood was a good choice because at this time in his career, he has a good reputation as being a believable antihero. This was seen in some of his other roles in films like Dirty Harry. Next, we chose Jon Voight to be Clint Eastwood’s partner. We made this choice because Voight is typically known for being an actor that works with films involving social commentary such as Midnight Cowboy. Also, he has been known for films where common people are mixed up in dangerous murders. This is perfect seeing as that is a large theme in most of this movie. Also, we picked Robert Shaw to be the high government official because of the intimidating persona that he has. Based on his roles in Jaws and The Sting, we were pretty confident that he could pull of being the bad guy in our film.

Directing this film we have Ingmar Bergman. Bergman is actually a Swedish director, writer, and producer. He seemed like a smart choice seeing as some of the main subjects that he has been known to deal with are death and betrayal-very prevalent in this film. Also, we learned that during Bergman’s own career, he was caught up in an alleged tax evasion that placed him in the middle of a criminal investigation. We thought that this was important because it proves that a film like The Road to Revenge would be a very person topic to him. In other words, he would be creating a movie that was largely just what was important to him.

Our focus on this film was editing. Consequently, we chose Don Cambern as our editor because of his previous work with Easy Rider in 1969. In this film, he used a lot of jump cuts that demonstrated more of the experimental style in film that we wanted to continue to highlight in this film.

5. The rating of this film is M for mature. We made this decision based on the fact that we wanted to bring in a larger viewing audience. Even though there are definitely more gritty scenes, we wanted to make sure that it was accessible to a lot of different ages.

This film has many characteristics of 70’s film. First, there is an antihero, the film is very artistic and experimental, the topic is personal to the director, there is social commentary that questions authority, it is gritty (not escapist), and finally, there are blurred lines of good and evil.

6.  In hindsight, the one thing that I would change if I could would be the rating. I think that an R rating might be more appropriate given the content of the film. I also think that even though it might slightly impact he size of the viewing audience, it largely wouldn’t matter seeing as so many people were becoming interested in R rated movies.