When Quentin Tarantino got a plane earlier this month, traveling to the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France it wasn’t just for a meet and greet. In addition to preparing for a masterclass talk, the director selected fourteen films from 1970 to screen at the festival — Arthur Hiller’s “Love Story,” Jerzy Skolimowski‘s “Deep End,” Dario Argento’s “The Bird With The Crystal Plumage,” Anatole Litvak‘s “The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun,” Eric Rohmer‘s “Claire’s Knee,” Claude Chabrol’s “The Butcher,” John Huston‘s “The Kremlin Letter,” Billy Wilder’s “The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes,” Bob Rafelson’s “Five Easy Pieces,” William Wyler‘s “The Liberation of L.B. Jones,” Jack Nicholson’s “Drive, He Said,” Russ Meyer’s “Beyond “The Valley Of The Dolls,” Robert Altman’s “M.A.S.H.,” and Michelangelo Antonioni‘s “Zabriskie Point” — presenting them as part of his ongoing study of the pivotal year in cinema.
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While it’s not yet known what Tarantino will craft out of his deep dive into 1970, it likely won’t be a film, with the director stating he’s looking at a documentary series, podcast, or book as possibilities. But it’s not just the movies themselves that interest the filmmaker, but how they reflected the changing times, even if audiences didn’t always go along with the New Hollywood way of storytelling.
Tarantino dives into all of this and much more in the full masterclass talk from Lumière, moderated by Cannes Film Festival head Thierry Fremaux. Across two hours, the director shared what he has learned from his research, his exploration of world cinema, the genre films of 1970, and he kicks things off with explaining why he bought the New Beverly cinema in California. It’s fascinating stuff, so make some time to sit back and take in this discussion, spread across five parts, below. [Culturebox]