What’s Good for the Goose (1969)

Whats Good for the Goose

1969 | UK | Norman Wisdom | ★★

Norman Wisdom's seldom amusing Menahem Golan-directed What’s Good for the Goose is a Southport-set swinging sixties sex farce, hamstrung by ostentatious direction, bold but ineffective editing, and strange sexual politics.

---

"Screen clown Norman Wisdom stars in this Swinging Sixties comedy. Middle-aged assistant bank manager Timothy Bartlett (Wisdom) is awakened to the pleasures of peace and love by two hitchhiking hippy chicks, Nikki (Sally Geeson) and Meg (Sarah Atkinson). Future millionaire movie mogul Menahem Golan directs." Showbox

Goto: Isle of Love (1969)

Goto, l'île d'amour / Goto, Island of Love

1969 | France | Walerian Borowczyk | ★★★★★

Comprised of a series of beautifully framed tableaux, audacious Polish director Walerian Borowczyk's gorgeously crafted Goto: Isle of Love is a dream-like allegorical masterpiece, packed to the brim with oodles and oodles of deliciously provocative political satire.

---

"Walerian Borowczyk's second feature was just as original as his first. Almost entirely live action this time, it is situated on the archipelago of Goto, which has been cut off from the rest of human civilisation by a massive earthquake and has consequently developed its own arcane rules. Melancholic dictator Goto III (Pierre Brasseur) is married to the beautiful Glossia (Ligia Branice), who in turn is lusted after by the petty thief Gozo (Guy Saint-Jean) as he works his way up the hierarchy. Its thinly veiled critique of totalitarianism saw it banned in both Communist Poland and Fascist Spain (to Borowczyk's delight), but the film is most notable for its uniquely original atmosphere, in which bizarre props and sets (designed by Borowczyk himself) are given as much weight as the human actors. Its grave beauty is underscored to perfection by one of Handel's organ concertos." Arrow Academy

See also:

Stotty's 1960s Favourites

Spot the Microdot (1969)

1969 | UK | Malcolm Le Grice | ★★★

British painter turned avant-garde film-maker Malcolm Le Grice's Spot the Microdot is a mildly stimulating experimental short film that was created by punching holes into opaque 16mm film stock and underlaying with discs of colour.

---

"This film is made basically by punching circular holes into fully opaque film stock (16mm magnetic sound recording film), and laying discs of colour film into some of the punched holes. The holes are punched in a series of mathematically controlled systems, and the choices of colour etc are largely used to identify these systems. The use of opaque film is essential to allow the maximum difference between image and the absence of it. It is a film which is concerned with primarily exploring the links between perceptual experience, and the conceptual structuring of that experience. This is the most 'scientific' or objective film I have yet made, exploring most directly the possibility of the link between a performance, and an 'experimental' attitude in the viewer of the film." Malcolm Le Grice