More (France, 1969)

More (France, 1969)

Director: Barbet Schroeder. Stars: Mimsy Farmer, Klaus Grünberg, Heinz Engelmann...

A young German fresh out of college hitch-hikes to Paris and meets up with a lovely American girl, who he ends up following to Ibiza, where they live a hedonistic lifestyle in the sun and eventually become heroin addicts. Of course, the main reason I watched this was because Pink Floyd did the music for it.

Anyway, before meeting the girl, he befriends a guy in a café, who plays a few games of Ship-Mates (Gottlieb, 1964)...

Profondo Rosso (Italy, 1975)

Profondo Rosso (Italy, 1975) [A.K.A. Deep Red or The Hatchet Murders]
Director: Dario Argento.  Stars: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi...

This genre is really not my thing. The only reason I watched this film was because it was mentioned in The Complete Pinball Book: Collecting the Game & Its History by Marco Rossignoli (a great book on everything pinball). There are a few paragraphs where he mentions a few apparitions of pinball in movies, and that planted the pinballspotting seed in my head.

Anyway, there’s a scene wherein the main character is making a telephone call in a café, but is having a hard time hearing due to the noisy Jungle Life (Gottlieb, 1973) pinball machine and players on one side and and the espresso maker on the other...

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (France, 1967)

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (France, 1967) A.K.A. Two or Three Things I Know About Her
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Stars: Marina Vlady, Anny Duperey, Juliet Berto...

Apparently Godard shot this simultaneously with Made in U.S.A., which I’ve covered in this post. Hardly a narrative film, it’s more like an essay where the actors spout Godard’s observations and comments about contemporary life, social and political stuff. Stylistically experimental as well, characters would also break the 4th wall, the actors sometimes seemingly talking about themselves, not in character.

His marriage with Anna Karina on the rocks, this time we have the lovely Marina Vlady... she walks into a café to meet a friend, passing by a man playing a Masquerade (Gottlieb, 1966)...

In a later, rather long scene, the camera focuses on several different conversations going on in a restaurant/café, accompanied by the sounds of a woman playing pinball the whole time. In the conversation involving Juliet Berto, we can see the woman behind her playing a Big Chief (Williams, 1965). Behind the man is an A-Go-Go (Williams, 1966)...

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (France, UK, USA, 1998)

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (France, UK, USA, 1998). Director: James Ivory. Stars: Leelee Sobieski, Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Jane Birkin...

Stumbled upon this movie at the library, watched it because of the actors. I’m not usually into the Merchant/Ivory productions, but you know it likely has good performances. It was ok.

The story starts in the early-mid 60s when the main-character girl is 7 years old, living in Paris. Her father takes her into a café to play a 4-player bowling-themed “300” (Gottlieb, 1975).  The story later skips to when the girl is 14, and her family is about to move back to the States, circa 1970-72. Her father again takes her to the same café to play the same game.  This is another case of pinball anachronism, since the machine was only produced a couple of years after, not to mention it being pretty unlikely that the same game would in the same place for that length of time. But hey, it added a certain symmetry to the story...

 The girl at age 7...

Seven years later...

Jean-Luc Godard (80s, 90s)

I was never a fan of later-era Godard (80s, 90s), but there are a few pinballspottings...

Passion  (France, 1982). 
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Hanna Schygulla, Michel Piccoli...

A hugely popular machine, one I definitely remember playing back in the day... Kiss  (Bally, 1979)...

Prénom: Carmen (France, 1983)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Starring: Maruschka Detmers, Jacques Bonnaffé, Myriem Roussel...

Not enough visible to identify this one... but we hear the guy playing it behind Maruschka...

Hélas Pour Moi (France, 1993)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Laurence Masliah, Bernard Verley...

There’s an Eight Ball Deluxe (Limited Edition)  (Bally, 1982). We hear some of the machine’s voice sounds: “Quit talking and start chalking!”...

L'attentat (France, 1966)

L'attentat  (France, 1966). Director: Jean-François Davy. Starring: Roger Sweig, Marie-Hélène Broca, Dominique Erlanger...

Thanks for Mark Loeser for mentioning this film to me whilst I was trying to amateurishly fix a bug with his pinball machine....

It’s a French “New Wave” film about a disillusioned pinball repair man who can barely make ends meet and is frustrated with society.

Wanting to get things happening with the Leftist movement, he eventually plants a bomb in a train station and rigs up a pinball machine to trigger it from a distance when it scores 500 points.

First up on his rounds, a Ship-Mates (Gottlieb, 1964)...

A pinball player says to him whilst he’s repairing a machine, “That must be a cool job”, but he replies “Yeah, it seems so in the beginning.” Then he goes on to say that “Pinball is like politics. You need reflexes and to be alert.”...

When he makes his rounds, a bartender calls him “Mr. Gottlieb”, yet at this other place, there are a couple of Williams machines... Big Chief (Williams, 1965) and a Merry Widow (Williams, 1963)...

Merry Widow (Williams, 1963)...

At yet another job, there’s a Band Wagon (Bally, 1965), with a sign saying "EN PANNE" (Out of order)...

Sitting with a friend, behind him is a pinball cabinet... I think it’s a Thoro-Bred (Gottlieb, 1965)...

Here he is installing the bomb trigger transmitter in a Liberty Belle (Gottlieb, 1962)...

An unsuspecting person playing the rigged Liberty Belle  (Gottlieb, 1962)... will he score the fateful 500 points?!

Instead of “The End”, the last frame is TILT, with the sounds of pinball...

TILT.

Masculin-féminin (France, 1966)

Masculin-féminin (France, 1966). Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert...

Ooops, I forgot about this one for the Godard special of the last post, but then again, unlike the other 60s Godard pinballspottings, Anna Karina is not in it.

Sure, Chantal Goya is cute, but she can’t hold a candle to Anna K. She was also a singer of yé-yé pop songs. There are plenty of snippets of Goya’s songs and references to pop culture. An intertitle in the film states “This film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola”.

In a café, there’s a Ship-Mates (Gottlieb, 1964)...

Later we see a game room with a bowling machine, a driving game and an Aloha (Gottlieb, 1961)...

Chantal Goya had a song called “Si tu gagnes au flipper” [if you win at pinball]. The song is typical of that pop style, with pretty vapid lyrics, but it starts out with some pinball sounds.

Si tu gagnes au flipper, tu as perdu mon cœur
Car je sais que tu es sorti, avec ma meilleure amie

Translation:
If you win at pinball, you’ve lost my heart
Because I know that you’ve gone out with my best friend

We hear a bit of the song whilst Léaud plays a game, but we don’t see enough of the table to be able to identify it, except that it is most likely a Gottlieb, because they were definitely king of pinball in France...

Jean-Luc Godard (France) Part 1: The 60s

Jean-Luc Godard is an influential French filmmaker notably associated with the Nouvelle Vague film movement (“New Wave” in English). Hi films were variously experimental, genre-deconstructing, intellectual, political and funny. He was married to actress Anna Karina, who graced many of his 1960s films with her beauty and charm.

Vivre sa vie (France, 1962) [A.K.A. My Life To Live]
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Starring: Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, André S. Labarthe...

A couple of scenes where the main characters play pinball. In the first scene, Anna plays a Sea Belles (Gottlieb, 1956)...

In the second scene, Anna’s friends play a Sweet Sioux (Gottlieb, 1959). This was a 4-player game, which normally had wood side rails, but metal ones also existed, as pictured here...

Bande à part (France, 1964) [A.K.A. Band of Outsiders].
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Stars: Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey...

Just a brief glimpse of a Sunset (Gottlieb, 1962) as the gang walks into a café…

Pierrot le fou (France, 1965)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina...

A very brief glimpse of two machines in a bowling alley.
The one on the left is a Sky·Line (Gottlieb, 1965), which was pretty much brand new when the film was shot.

The other we don’t see enough of to identify...

Made In U.S.A. (France, 1966)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Starring: Anna Karina, László Szabó, Jean-Pierre Léaud...

Godard’s last feature film with Karina… they had divorced in 1965. I don’t remember much of the plot, but it was a sort of mish-mash film noir with gangsters and politics and deconstructed.

Some of the gang Anna’s with hang out in a garage where there’s a Sea-Shore (Gottlieb, 1964)...

Bonus:
Godard’s 1965 film Alphaville (which also starred Anna Karina) inspired Jerry Kelley for the artwork for Capersville (Bally, 1966)...

Marathon Man (USA, 1976)

Marathon Man (USA, 1976). Director: John Schlesinger, Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, Marthe Keller...

This is a pretty tense movie, and might put you off dentists for a bit. In a brief scene in Paris, there’s a shot of a creepy bad guy playing pinball... at first they show the ball bouncing around the playfield of a Bow And Arrow (Bally, 1974)...

...but then they show the backbox of a Polo (Gottlieb, 1970)...

...which is what he’s actually playing in the long shot...

Game over.