| Ice | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Robert Kramer |
| Written by | Robert Kramer |
| Produced by | Barbara Stone David Stone |
| Starring | Robert Kramer Leo Braudy |
| Cinematography | Robert Machover |
Release date |
|
Running time | 130 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Ice is a 1970 American thriller film written, directed by and starring Robert Kramer. [1]
An underground revolutionary group carries out urban guerrilla attacks against a fictionalized fascist regime in the United States, while struggling against internal strife. This is intermixed with sequences that explain the philosophy of radical action and play down the melodrama inherent in the thriller genre.
Author Andrew Nette wrote that, though Ice can be classified as belonging to the thriller genre, its "depiction of a simultaneously run-down and modern New York, governed by a largely unseen but powerful surveillance state, gives it a science-fiction tone and aesthetic." [2] Nette draws comparisons between Ice and the Jean-Luc Godard-directed films Alphaville (1965) and La Chinoise (1967), as well as the 1928 Soviet film October: Ten Days That Shook the World . [2]
According to English film critic George Melly, Ice presents such questions as, "[At what point] does the liberal decide that violent action is justified in fighting the State? How much oppression would be needed to turn us into Weathermen or enlist us in the Angry Brigade?" [3]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Ice "a very long (132 minutes), very intense, very self-satisfied movie that is also a curiously moving experience," concluding: "It is an awfully proud and humorless film, and although I can't say that I really like it, I do admire it, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in politics or movies." [4] Author Alan Rosenthal criticized Ice for what he characterized as "naive emotional reasoning", writing that the film "substitutes dogmatic assertion in place of hard political argument." [5] Melly, in his review of the film for The Observer , wrote that, "although a thoughtful and indeed thought-provoking film, I couldn't really believe in it. The young revolutionaries were, as they say in the underground, 'beautiful,' but they offered little but slogans and gestures as an alternative to the status quo. The film showed up that terrible poverty of language which, in my view, is the flaw in current revolutionary practice. Ideas need words, more words than 'wow,' 'heavy' and 'too much.' There is the necessity to communicate if you are to convince. Idealism and violence are not in themselves enough." [3]
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for work in the suspense, crime and psychological thriller genres. De Palma was a leading member of the New Hollywood generation of film directors.
The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.
Medium Cool is a 1969 American drama film written and directed by Haskell Wexler and starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968. It was notable for Wexler's use of cinéma vérité–style documentary filmmaking techniques, as well as for combining fictional and non-fictional content.
Three Days of the Condor is a 1975 American political thriller film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, and Max von Sydow. The screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel was based on the 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor by James Grady.
Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III is an American actor and Warhol superstar. He was a sex symbol of gay subculture in the 1960s and 1970s, and of several American underground films before going mainstream.
Wrong Is Right, released in the UK as The Man with the Deadly Lens, is a 1982 American political satire comedy thriller film directed, written, and co-produced by Richard Brooks and starring Sean Connery as TV news reporter Patrick Hale. The film, based on Charles McCarry's novel The Better Angels (1979), is about the theft of two suitcase nukes.
Richard Owen Fleischer was an American film director whose career spanned more than four decades, beginning at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood and lasting through the American New Wave.
Women in Revolt is a 1971 American satirical film produced by Andy Warhol and directed by Paul Morrissey. It was initially released as Andy Warhol's Women. The film stars Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, and Holly Woodlawn, three trans women and superstars of Warhol's Factory scene. It also features soundtrack music by John Cale.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a 1973 action crime–drama film based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee. It is both a satire of the civil rights struggle in the United States of the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of Black militancy. Dan Freeman, the titular protagonist, is enlisted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its elitist espionage program, becoming its token Black person. After mastering agency tactics, however, he becomes disillusioned and drops out to train young Black people in Chicago to become "Freedom Fighters". As a story of one man's reaction to white ruling-class hypocrisy, the film is loosely autobiographical and personal.
Start the Revolution Without Me is a 1970 British-French-American period comedy film directed by Bud Yorkin, and starring Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, Hugh Griffith, Jack MacGowran, Billie Whitelaw, Orson Welles and Victor Spinetti. The film is set in revolutionary France where two peasants are mistaken for the famous Corsican Brothers. The film is considered a parody of a number of works of historical fiction about the French Revolution and French history in general, including A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens and two works by Alexandre Dumas, The Corsican Brothers (1844) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1847).
Poliziotteschi constitute a subgenre of crime and action films that emerged in Italy in the late 1960s and reached the height of their popularity in the 1970s. They are also known as polizieschi all'italiana, Italo-crime, spaghetti crime films, or simply Italian crime films. Influenced primarily by both 1970s French crime films and gritty 1960s and 1970s American cop films and vigilante films, poliziotteschi films were made amidst an atmosphere of socio-political turmoil in Italy known as Years of Lead and amidst increasing Italian crime rates. The films generally featured graphic and brutal violence, organized crime, car chases, vigilantism, heists, gunfights, and corruption up to the highest levels. The protagonists were generally tough working class loners, willing to act outside a corrupt or overly bureaucratic system.
Otley is a 1968 British comedy thriller film directed by Dick Clement and starring Tom Courtenay and Romy Schneider. It was adapted by Clement and Ian La Frenais from the 1966 novel of the same name by Martin Waddell, and released by Columbia Pictures.
John Gregory Jacobs was an American student and anti-war activist in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was a leader in both Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman group, and an advocate of the use of violent force to overthrow the government of the United States. A fugitive after 1970, he died in 1997 in Canada.
King Lear is a 1971 British film adaptation of the Shakespeare play directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield. Filmed in stark black-and-white, the film was inspired by the absurdist theatre of playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and upon release was noted for its bleak tone and wintry atmosphere.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969), by Sam Greenlee, is the fictional story of Dan Freeman, the first black CIA officer, and of the CIA's history of training persons and political groups who later used their specialised training in gathering intelligence, political subversion, and guerrilla warfare against the CIA. The novel has been characterised as "part thriller, part satire and part social commentary". As described by The New Yorker, the title "alludes to the conspicuous deployment of the agency's one black officer to display its phony integration".
Half a Life is a 1982 film directed by Romain Goupil. The film won the Caméra d'Or and Award of the Youth at the Cannes Film Festival, along with the César Award for Best Debut.
Robert Kramer was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor who directed 19 films between 1965 and 1999, most of them political cinema made from a left-wing point of view. Born in New York and educated at Swarthmore College and Stanford University, Kramer was a founding member of the filmmaking collective The Newsreel, established in New York City in 1968. Kramer wrote, directed and starred in the 1970 thriller film Ice, and co-directed the 1975 film Milestones with John Douglas. After relocating to Europe in 1979, Kramer directed the 1982 French film À toute allure, which was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
Roger Greenspun was an American journalist and film critic, best known for his work with The New York Times in which he reviewed near 400 films, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for Penthouse for which he was the film critic throughout much of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Mel Gibson is an American actor, director, and producer, who made his acting debut on the Australian television drama series The Sullivans (1976–1983). While a student at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, he was given an uncredited role in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and subsequently appeared as a leading actor in the micro budget surf drama Summer City. Gibson rose to prominence during the Australian New Wave cinema movement in the early 1980s, having appeared in his breakthrough role in George Miller's dystopian action film Mad Max (1979), portraying the eponymous hero. He reprised the role in its sequels, Mad Max 2 (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). He appeared in Peter Weir's war drama Gallipoli (1981) and the romantic drama The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). Five years later he played Martin Riggs in the buddy cop action comedy Lethal Weapon alongside Danny Glover—a role he later reprised in its sequels Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), and Lethal Weapon 4 (1998).
Comedy thrillers are a hybrid genre that draw subject matter generally from comedy and thrillers.