The 1983 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1983

VOTE THROUGH MAY 31

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

[therewillbeblus]

Swo, can you please add Holy Flame of the Martial World (Chun-Ku Lu)?

[swo17]

Added

[domino harvey]

Swo, can you please add L'Ami de Vincent?

[swo17]

Added

[yoshimori]

Double-feature (performance deathmatch?) for everyone:

Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Betty Buckley in Tender Mercies / Theresa Russell in Eureka

But my favorite '83 is undoubtedly Family Game.

[domino harvey]

Added

Merci! L'ami de Vincent is a film that's really stayed with me since I saw it. Philippe Noiret is called upon by his longtime friend Jean Rochefort to investigate which of Rochefort's exes is out to kill him. Along the way, a more universal theme emerges of how unknowable the people in our lives, even those closest to us, truly are, as Noiret discovers in his journey that contrary to his assumptions, he knows nearly nothing about his best friend. A great exploration of how so many friendships we have as adults are shallow and surface-level by design

[Solaris]

Missing Australian classic BMX Bandits - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085204/

[swo17]

Added

[Solaris]

thanks
also missing Ermanno Olmi's Camminacammina https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083713/

[swo17]

Added

[knives]

Got the cheat sheet in relatively early. Have my own recs of additions in waiting though.

[knives]

There’s a pair of completely unrelated Japanese films I’d love to see added to the list.

Gosha doesn’t change his style for Geisha, but the story is a far cry from the world of machismo he usually traffics in. It shows a straightforward looking brutalism that never feels punishing. In a way the film reminds me a bit of how Imamura changed the way that women are depicted in Japanese film during the ‘60s though replacing his anarchic spirit with ice.

The other film is deceptively minor in appearance, yet stunning all around. Unico in the Island of Magic takes Tezuka’s character so cute and full of pluck and essentially says what if every delightful thing about the Shoju genre’s success was born out of deep loneliness.

[swo17]

Added

[the preacher]

Missing darlings:
Balkan ekspres/Balkan Express/Branko Baletic
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085215/
Cross Creek/Martin Ritt
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085380/
Da qiao xia mian/Under the Bridge/Shen Bai
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356499/
El harrif/The Street Player/Mohamed Khan
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327835/
Karnal/Of the Flesh/Marilou Diaz-Abaya
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312863/
Olivia/Ulli Lommel
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082841/

[knives]

Before this week my limited exposure to Barbara Hammer had me assuming she was a limited artist navigating her own attractions. Bent Time sent me down a massive rabbit hole showcasing one of the most outstanding talents of mid-20th century experimentalism. Really, in the seven films I sampled her thesis seems to be defining objects in space which I suppose makes this title a tad humourous.

Bent Time turned out to not even be the best film of hers from 1983. So far that title seems to go to Stone Circles which I ask Swo to please put on the list. It’s just so interesting to have a film recognizing ancient structures which we are used to for their intended purpose, lots of light play, while also thinking of them as exotic and bizarre.

[swo17]

I've added that and most of preacher's requests. I should note that Olivia was eligible for the 1981 list but no one voted for it then. I don't know how much that might have been because people weren't aware it was eligible. (I believe domino's a fan of it too?) My understanding is that the film was made in 1981 but not released until 1983. I'm not aware if it was suppressed in some way to cause the delay. Failing that, it probably more properly belongs to 1983 anyway. Does anyone have more information about this?

[domino harvey]

I do like Olivia, but not enough to vote for it in any year it's eligible

[the preacher]

C'mon, Olivia is the perfect example of Hitchcock-De Palma-80s slasher natural evolution... directed by a Warhol and Fassbinder disciple.

[domino harvey]

It does feature a death-by-toothbrush, so I guess there's always that going for it

[alacal2]

Never come across Barbara Hammer before but mentions here mademe idly google DVD availability and discovered BFI stock her work here. So an opportunity (if slightly pricey) to broaden my far too limited imagination.

[knives]

This has been a pretty fun if odd year so far. Here’s just some of the best.

Yang got a really good start with That Day, On the Beach, huh? It’s got all of his hallmarks, but presented in such a clear and explicit fashion that I became more engaged then ever. It almost plays like a ghost story as this relationship haunts her.

Peter Rose’s The Pressures of the Text is a great entry in the experimental films making fun of academia genre as language begins to hilariously fall apart. Likewise Possibly in Michigan had me laughing in horror throughout its Kuchar inspired antics.

It’s fascinating to find out that the Schraders worked on P. P. Rider though the star artist is clearly Somai. Just two films and I’m already getting a firm feeling of who Somai is as this is another Yakuza starring child fantasy that bridges the gulf of innocence and depression with a mild expression reminiscent of the Taiwanese New Wave. That’s quite a good place to be in my book.

Life is a Bed of Roses has all the depth of a thimble and is fairly bad at its central conceit, yet I found it incredibly fun. Resnais is just goofing off and that’s a pleasurable mode to me. None of the segments really reflect who they’re imitating, I wouldn’t have guessed Rohmer as the inspiration to Chaplin’s segment, which is definitely the weakest, and the Melies segment strays into modern film technique fairly quickly before being forgotten completely. Only the Herbier segment with an absolutely enchanting Fanny Ardant is fully successful. The intercutting also just doesn’t work and I wonder is the film would be better cut into segments.

Yet how can I speak against this film which was such a delight especially watched after Kluge’s The Power of Emotion? Kluge’s film is clearly better made featuring a lot of depth, successful humour, and a pointed use of different filmmaking styles to create a completed tome. It’s everything Resnais strives and fails at, but et I have nothing really to say about Kluge’s film and was left only amused during the viewing. I think this really shows how being technically better doesn’t necessarily make a film better for an audience member. I’m willing to forgive Resnais’ sloppiness for the sake of fun and enjoyment.

[TechnicolorAcid]

I want to real quickly shout out Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s Abuse which is just such a downer of a watch in how it portrays abusive relationships between parental figures and their children, how those who attempt to save them accidentally form into another toxic presence in a child’s life and the glimpses of hope for the victim, presented through the lens of a warped after school special style tone with expertly executed filmmaking throughout (that recording booth session will never leave my mind). I’d like to say more but it’s best going into it as blind as you can because it’s probably the most harrowing look into child abuse that I’ve ever truly seen captured on film and a lot of it’s power comes from how shocking it gets at points. Easy top 20 material for me.

[martin]

@swo17: The last three films below are not on the list of eligible titles but you don’t have to add them (I hope it's the correct year though). They’re quite rare and would not be on anyone’s list obviously. But I’ve seen them recently and thought I’d just as well post my thoughts although it’s not very useful in this context.

L'été meurtrier (Jean Becker)
It begins like a Tinto Brass-style movie objectifying women and emphasizing the male gaze. But it turns out to be a more sinister and deeper film with a flash-back structure and voice-over narration from 6 different characters (I think)! At one point a character says something like “how can anyone know the real truth when each of us only knows a part of it”. It’s not Rashomon-tier but it’s quite good and maybe a borderline case for my list. Isabelle Adjani plays the leading part, and, as a trivia fact, the 6-year old flashback-version of her character is played by actress/filmmaker Maïwenn.

L'africain (Philippe de Broca)
Set in East/Central Africa, this is basically a romantic comedy starring Philippe Noiret and Catherine Deneuve. There’s an underlying story about ivory poachers which turns the movie into some sort of adventure. Some of it is mildly entertaining but as a whole I found the movie pretty boring and slight. Noiret is loud and annoying, and he’s actually the most likeable of the two main characters. I’d recommend Coup de torchon instead if you want a movie with Noiret in Africa (1981 though). There’s a nod towards The African Queen, set in the same part of Africa.

Équateur (Serge Gainsbourg)
Based on a Georges Simenon novel, this noirish tale is set and shot in Gabon. Francis Huster’s character has gone to Africa for some business opportunities; Barbara Sukowa’s character is managing the hotel where he’s staying. Now, Sukowa has had some success in these 80’s mini-list with Lola, Die bleierne Zeit (and Berlin Alexanderplatz although she was not a leading character to the same extent in that one) but this will be less successful.

I guess Équateur is quite rare as there are no user reviews on IMDb, and it’s also one of those films that will often be dismissed as pretentious. Gainsbourg has some deliberately artistic solutions to many scenes beginning with the title sequence: I don’t know if what we see is a part of a poster or photo, but imagine the camera having zoomed in to maybe 1% of the image. Then the camera pans around said image – Ken Burns effect-style – for two minutes without ever showing the full image. I actually like some of the ideas used in the film but the style and the amount of smack-in-your-face nudity will probably throw a lot of people off. DP was Willy Kurant – a name I especially associate with Welles’ The Immortal Story – but he’s worked with a lot of top-tier directors, and I’ve seen many films shot by Willy Kurant without really realising it.

Udenrigskorrespondenten (Jørgen Leth)
On the outset, this is a fictional narrative feature film (Leth’s first). A journalist is in Haiti to write about the civil war in El Salvador when he suffers from a writer’s block, starts drinking and slowly falls apart. His downfall is further enhanced by the disappearance of a woman he’s just met. But the voice-over sets this apart from traditional narrative films. It’s neither a 1st person narrator nor an all-knowing (omniscient) narrator. Instead the narrator engages the spectator with a narration like this: “Here’s our man… He’s looking for a story… I haven’t seen him write… Is he on good terms with his typewriter?… Can he write?… Can he think?”

This is the same type of narration used in Leth’s experimental short Det perfekte menneske aka The Perfect Human (1968), and this, at least in my opinion, makes Udenrigskorrespondenten a borderline experimental film. There are some strange scenes, for instance when a man in uniform (he’s with the Police or Customs, I guess) improvises a 2 or 3 minutes solo dance shot in one take. This scene made me think of the famous dance scene in Bande à part – also shot in one take – but it also points back to the dancing in The Perfect Human.

It’s shot entirely on location in El Salvador and Haiti and I like a lot of what I see, but it’s just too odd to make my list at this point. There are no reviews on IMDb for this one either. The Danish title literally means “The Foreign Correspondent” but it’s known in English as either “Interference” or “Haiti Express”.

[swo17]

Visages perdus (Alain Mazars)

This comes from a strong Re:voir set devoted to the director, and you know this is the best film on it when they pull the cover image from it. Here's a brief sample

Bérénice (Raúl Ruiz)

You probably already know that City of Pirates is a beguiling marvel and you may already know the same about Three Crowns of the Sailor, but the puzzle of 1983 is incomplete without Ruiz's third film from the year. Granted, it's probably also incomplete with it, as Bérénice merely offers more puzzle pieces, not necessarily the ones the other films left you missing

A Few Stories About a Man (Bogdan Dziworski)

Dziworksi already tends to make the familiar feel alien, so you can imagine what he does with something as foreign to most of us as the daily routines of armless athlete/artist Jerzy Orłowski. Dziworski slows the world down around him and accentuates only the most critical sounds, placing us either directly in Orłowski's headspace or on some other planet--I can't decide. This is available on a PWA/NiNA DVD set devoted to the director or streaming here

It's a Good Life (Joe Dante)

Handily the standout of the doomed Twilight Zone movie, and the segment that adds the most to its source material, even if it's less remembered than the iconic George Miller segment

My Breakfast with Blassie (Johnny Legend & Linda Lautrec)

Not quite great but still better than it has any right to be as a My Dinner with André parody, with an added weight from being Kaufman's final film role before his death the next year

The Sea in Their Blood (Peter Greenaway)

Interesting to see the Greenaway/Nyman pairing in the service of a more straightforward (and not invented) documentary. The playfulness is missing I suppose but the audiovisual element still has a certain transcendent quality. Available as an extra on BFI's Zed & Two Noughts BD

And finally, three cheesy music videos that I nonetheless adore:

The Cure: The Lovecats (Tim Pope)
Oingo Boingo: Nothing Bad Ever Happens (Francis Delia)
Haysi Fantayzee: Shiny Shiny (Cameron McVee)