The All-Time List Discussion Thread (Decade Project Vol. 3)

[colinr0380]

Alien. By chance, I saw this again Friday night, at the same time I found out John Hurt had died (the first show of the crew is their sleeping pods being opened and John Hurt waking up front and center). What can I say about this one? It always stands out among the very top of the science fiction genre. The mood, the slow set-up and mystery of what’s going to happen, the production design, the crisp photography. I always end up being (almost) slightly disappointed when it eventually turns into an action film, but the ending is memorable.

I’m glad that you brought up the opening with Kane waking up, as I also think that’s one of the best sequences of Alien, with its dreamy half-asleep dissolves to different positions as Kane and the others wake, until the dissolve into the chatter of the (first!) dinner table scene.

I wonder if this focus on Kane here is meant to subliminally suggest to the first time viewer that he is going to be our identification character. He certainly seems the most proactive character (to a fault when it comes to interacting with the eggs!), and is planning out the journey to the derelict alien ship with Captain Dallas whilst Lambert is sitting apart, smoking pensively.

It is perhaps doing the same Psycho trick of switching the protagonist part-way with a spectacular death scene. Maybe that sense of Kane being the main protagonist who gets shockingly taken out of the picture early on would have more impact if the film wasn’t so generous about giving all the members of its ensemble cast their moments to shine! That element, if intended to be there, gets slightly muted when all of our hopes are not invested in Kane as the only person with the ability to handle the situation, who has now left the film in the hands of the antagonist, as happened with Marion Crane’s death in Psycho.

But instead of Ripley immediately emerging with the loss of Kane, the emphasis goes over to Captain Dallas instead, following the chain of command. And perhaps the way that the rest of the crew seem a little antagonistic to the, herself slightly abrasive, Ripley diverts our attention away from her for a little while, suggesting that she is the regularly overlooked or overshadowed member of the crew. She’ll never be the scientific one, or the ship captain, or the intrepid explorer, but she will end up having the greatest journey of anyone.

[Lowry_Sam]

His list has another film at 50, maybe they're tied.

Oops. Inserting numbers quickly to the rest of the list & no time to fix, so i guess it's the next 51, beginning w/ 51.

For those who have plenty of time to work on it more, kudos, but I've got way too much on my plate in the next couple of months & I didn't want to wait because I'd likely forget as I have for other lists.

[John Shade]

Do people tend to choose more subjectively for their lists? I realize that if you've seen most of these movies then you've probably developed a certain kind of taste which is going to make any list subjective (and informative/unique). I suppose my point is more like this: I have probably seen Jurassic Park far more times than any film on this list, simply because I was a kid when it came out and I watched the VHS probably every month of '94/'95. I still love the movie today--maybe I should watch it again and offer a kind of write up--but it is definitely like comfort food. I don't watch it the same way that I watch something like The Passion of Joan of Arc. Certain movies benefit from a little distance, even intimidation.

Maybe I'm not articulating this well, but should it be some kind of synthesis?

[jindianajonz]

Any list is, by it's nature, subjective. If you think Jurassic Park belongs at a higher position than Passion of Joan of Arc, then that's your call to make. This project is made up entirely of films that multiple people felt were among the best of a given decade, so there's no "wrong answer", so to speak.

As for how people tend to choose, it's all up to their own subjective criteria. Personally, I look for balance between films that surprised me with technique, films that are aesthetically pleasing, films that are enjoyable to watch, and films that stick with me over time. Other people may weigh these factors differently or introduce their own factors.

[domino harvey]

Any list is, by it's nature, subjective. If you think Jurassic Park belongs at a higher position than Passion of Joan of Arc, then that's your call to make.

These are both on my list, FYI, though not in that order!

[swo17]

The more personal your list the better, I say.

[domino harvey]

My list is an honest evaluation of my tastes and what I like in the order I like them. Any placement after thirteen or so on any giant list is pretty arbitrary, so like all ranking lists it gets a bit sillier the bigger it gets. But I haven't included any films on my list that I don't feel passionate about in some manner

[John Shade]

My list is an honest evaluation of my tastes and what I like in the order I like them. Any placement after thirteen or so on any giant list is pretty arbitrary, so like all ranking lists it gets a bit sillier the bigger it gets. But I haven't included any films on my list that I don't feel passionate about in some manner

Good stuff--I'll go with passionate too. I tend to agree, and after maybe my top eight or nine it will be arbitrary. Was it Ignatiy Vishnevetsky who picked his Sight and Sound films out of a hat? A fun option to consider.

[swo17]

Yes, he had to pick 10 so he put 90 films in a hat and drew. Only 42 of those films were eligible for this list though, so he'd have to branch out a bit if he were to participate. (Note to IV if you are Googling this: please do!)

Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980)
Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932)
Charulata (Satyajit Ray, 1964)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1989)
Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Daisies (Vera Chytilova, 1967)
Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988)
Earrings of Madame de ... (Max Ophuls, 1953)
The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein, 1946)
Johnny Guitar (Nicolas Ray, 1954)
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
L'Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)
M. (Fritz Lang, 1931)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
Modern Romance (Albert Brooks, 1981)
The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)
Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz, 2010)
Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
Play Time (Jacques Tati, 1967)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1965)
Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Under the Bridges (Helmut Käutner, 1946)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

[zedz]

My list is an honest evaluation of my tastes and what I like in the order I like them. Any placement after thirteen or so on any giant list is pretty arbitrary, so like all ranking lists it gets a bit sillier the bigger it gets. But I haven't included any films on my list that I don't feel passionate about in some manner

I tend to group my favourite films in tiers rather than strict linear order, and find it hard / pointless to rank them within those tiers, so with most lists, after the top twenty or so, I'm just making a general selection from the fifty or so films that come next. This can vary wildly with my mood on the day, but I try to make that selection as representative as possible of my interests, with films that could use a critical leg up getting priority seating. (Nobody's going to discover Chinatown because I ranked it number 43 on some list, but somebody just might try to track down Joen or Empreintes out of curiosity if I rave enough about them.) I try to keep the number 50 slot for some weird personal favourite that's hard to defend but impossible to forget (and it seems like quite a few other list-makers do the same thing.)

Trying to get your list to reflect anything other than your personal preference (such as 'objective' - hah! - worthiness) is a pointless task that would drain all the joy out of the project. The conventional worthies generally rise to the top anyway if enough people participate, since they have the enormous advantage of being seen by just about everybody. They certainly don't need any additional handicapping. But I'd definitely advise anybody suspecting an old favourite might be coasting on nostalgia to rewatch it, if they can, to see if it still holds up for them.

[John Shade]

Trying to get your list to reflect anything other than your personal preference (such as 'objective' - hah! - worthiness) is a pointless task that would drain all the joy out of the project. The conventional worthies generally rise to the top anyway if enough people participate, since they have the enormous advantage of being seen by just about everybody. They certainly don't need any additional handicapping. But I'd definitely advise anybody suspecting an old favourite might be coasting on nostalgia to rewatch it, if they can, to see if it still holds up for them.

Speaking of old favorites, I'd say I had this experience recently with 8 1/2. It was probably my favorite art film when I was in high school and college and I hadn't seen it in probably four or five years. What immediately struck me was how little of this film I really understood when I was in high school. Frankly, I think I liked it more because it seemed cool, and because it is one of the coolest looking movies ever, filled with beautiful women, the occasional weirdo, and perhaps the coolest acting performance. This time around I found it even more entertaining, humane, rich, and sometimes funny. The surreal and stream-of-consciousness material works for me. The go for broke attempt of the whole thing is appealing too (in a Moby Dick or Ulysses kind of way if that makes sense and isn't obviously pretentious). Still top five for me.

In that same vein I also rewatched Stardust Memories recently. This board is filled with so many Woody Allen fans and good discussions that I may not have to add much here. I will say that I had been overly stressed about work recently, and then watched this film, which is basically a variety of scenes showcasing stress. The opening part is definitely a riff on 8 1/2, but the whole movie seems to be an extended take on Guido's suicidal stress critic freak out scene. For whatever reason, I needed this and it worked for me in a different way than it has in the past.

[Rayon Vert]

Quick and rough notes for this week’s watches.

Out of the Past. I only saw this for the first time over a year ago and its reputation did not disappoint. I suspect it’s near the top of a lot of people’s noir lists. Nearly perfect, it starts with an amazingly good and complex screenplay, and Tourneur films and directs it with mastery and great beauty. The scenes in Acapulco between Jeff and Kathie, in particular, are drop dead gorgeous.

Casablanca. As Time Goes By. “Here’s looking at you, kid”. Putting aside the iconic elements that may potentially be offputting, once I delve into the film itself I’m always surprised at how much I enjoy it. A great story with a terrifically well-realized setting and executed perfectly on all fronts. It possibly borrowed a lot from the also enjoyable Pépé le Moko, but I rate this film more highly. The dramatic war context provides a lot.

Blow Out. Smart, clever, fun, a little silly at times, but that’s par for the course with De Palma and for my taste that doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of his films – it’s just part of his style. In terms of emotional depth there’s something a bit cartoonish and a little lacking in my view – if I compare it with something like The Conversation -, but then that’s like several Hitchcock films and I still enjoy them. Lots of terrifically crafted scenes, and some great meta-cinematic/self-reflexive elements. But it likely won’t make the cutoff for my list.

My Night at Maud’s. Part of the enduring strength of this film, one suspects, is the ambiguity of its meaning. Philosophical discussions regarding Pascal, Christianity, probabilities and making decisions, are explicitly foregrounded, even as the film never threatens to be reduced to them. As befits the “Moral Tales” series, we have a main male character who strives to abide and define himself by a certain philosophy, but which is partially contradicted by his actions, though Trintignant’s character remains on the whole sympathetic, in contrast to those in La Collectionneuse. The winter setting and the beauty of the framings and black-and-white cinematography is what wins me over every time – especially the scenes travelling around the city and the courtship of Françoise. Another attractive element in Rohmer’s films – most of them, especially the ones composing his three series – involves a strong grounding in the specific French town/city/region each film is set in. There’s something a bit ethnographic about it (it would make a nice project to set these locations on a map and use Rohmer’s films to travel cinematically throughout the country). In this case, we get a real feeling for Clermont in Auvergne - which happens to be Pascal’s birthplace, as one character points out.

Bringing Up Baby. I don’t think any of the screwballs will make my list, even though this one is among my favorites. It’s not perfect – in each scene there are bits that are strongly amusing and others that are a little flat, but the manic antics of Hepburn (and her multitudinous crazy costume-changes) here I find charming, whereas Twentieth Century leaves me mostly exhausted. Probably one of the best films featuring animals! The film starts to drag a bit though when we get to the jail sequence, until the leopards make their reappearance…

Dr. Strangelove. A magnificent film, near perfect: screenplay, production design, editing, photography (including those terrifically realistic documentary-like combat scenes). Most terrific of all is the quality of the acting, which brings something beyond what the already tremendous screenplay could produce. Sellers and Hayden are terrific, but George C. Scott in just incredible. Still shocking in its premise and execution, terrifying and hilarious.

Army of Shadows. Resistance fighters taking on the same sort of look and ethos as Melville’s gangster characters, in a film with a deep aesthetic sense, but full of gravity and somberness and nothing shallow about it. Best ever recreation of Nazi-occupied France? Extremely memorable.

The Conversation. Superswede11 covered this film very well and I don’t have anything to add to that wonderful analysis. The scenes towards the end are very powerful. Also high in my esteem, but will probably just be under the cutoff. I also hope other people select it.

[swo17]

So that's two votes for "I love The Conversation but you should vote for it instead of me!"

[Rayon Vert]

Hey, this list project is tough. It's like choosing between your children.

[DarkImbecile]

Count me as a vote for "I'm putting The Conversation on my list and so should you."

[Rayon Vert]

You guys have shamed me into reconsidering and placing it a bit higher - high enough so that it now has a potential chance of making the list depending on how I rate what I've left to watch.

[swo17]

Didn't mean to shame anyone, just thought it was interesting that the last two comments about the film shared that same sentiment.

[Rayon Vert]

No worries, swo, I didn't take it that way! Kidding about being shamed - I enjoy the friendly challenges.

I've counted and I've got about 49 or 50 films I want to watch and rate before the deadline. Which should be just about what I should be able to pull off if I keep a rate going of 7 to 8 a week. Hopefully my all-region blu-ray player will not conk out. And any social life will have to wait...

[knives]

Sorry Swo, but it looks like I'll have to be resubmitting my list after all because Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is quite good. I'm additionally sorry if I am completely off pace or ridiculous here, but as great as this film is many elements of it are played at such a distance to suggest a non psychological interpretation which without further context can easily lead me to make an ass of myself. For example near the opening there is a title card reading 1964 and 1864. That could very easily just be saying the year it was made plus indicating this is a period piece which is a safe, boring assumption. How it is formatted though plus everything that follows suggests additionally to me, which I am likely reading too much into, that this is a history told generations off of not just a forgotten ancestor, but a forgotten history turned to rubble in the mouth of the modern storyteller because of time and perhaps, giving this a political impression, forced assimilation by the Russians. Certainly that fits well with Paradjanov's total disinterest in the historical and even his own Armenian heritage.

This also gives a narrative sense to the Ulysses like differences in narrative styles of each chapter as if a different descendant is speaking each chapter in their own voice and distance from the culture. This all makes even sadder what is already a story ready for Verdi. It also prevents it from being punishing which in other hands it could as well have been. Instead the tone is more a sorrowful acceptance like saying this will be done the one way this story always ends, but that is alright. This is only one thing though and spoken totally in ignorance where the film has many potential doors to it.

[swo17]

No need to apologize, the way I tabulate the lists it's very simple for me to make any revisions anyone wants to up until the deadline.

[Red Screamer]

Writeups of recent viewings, in which I mention Godard a total of one zillion times:

Pepe Le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937)
A major influence on Pierrot le Fou, no? Beyond sharing a character name, the similarity of their titles, and its namedrop in the Godard, it circles themes of betrayal and adultery, breaks into a musical twice (including a song about wishing to be inside American movies, sung with the hope of “changing eras”), is full of proto-noir stylings and erudite gangster slang, and even has a Godardian love scene where lovers swap points of Parisian geography, not to mention that both films have practically the same ending: a tragic bon voyage as a boat whisks away the woman our eponymous not-so-hero can’t live without. Regardless, it’s an incredible movie—sharp, poetic, and psychologically intense.


The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
A film I was previously pretty ambivalent about has revealed itself as a stone-cold masterpiece. Since my last viewing, I read that before filming The Birds Hitchcock made a point of seeing arthouse films fashionable at the time, including The Virgin Spring, L’Avventura, and Breathless. It shows. Moreso than Psycho uses TV aesthetics, The Birds brilliantly absorbs the ethos of these European art films into Hitchcock’s signature style of genre craftsmanship and reinvents it in the process (though it’s interesting that Psycho and L’Avventura, released the same year, both arrive at the disappearance of their female leads in completely different ways). In particular, the scene on the beach, reportedly written into the script by Hitchcock himself, resembles the Antonioni film and the set of Annie Hayworth’s house recalls early Godard’s art-prints-on-white-walls set design. In another Godardian touch, Hitchcock even uses a bad take in the opening scene ("Let m-, let me give you my address”, which I hadn't noticed until Jett Loe pointed it out).

More generally in step with arthouse trends, the film depicts angsty characters openly psychoanalyzing themselves and each other, and, in one scene, attempting interpretation of the movie’s central symbol, which in the new tradition of cinematic crypticism is meant to be discussed as some great metaphor, but in the film itself doesn’t really signify anything at all. Much of The Birds is constructed around absences, and its unusual insistence on leaving its own premise unexplained is a primary example of this approach. The film as a whole is structured by long, quiet stretches of contemplation followed by long, cacophonous stretches of hysteria, giving it a weight of existential dread more than suspense (the most suspenseful scene in the movie might be of Melanie sneaking around the empty Brenner house). If Hitchcock were trying to build suspense, the movie’s attack scenes would be absurdly long in comparison to his other work. The montage-attack in the attic is four or five times longer than its famous counterpart in Psycho (another notable difference is their soundtracks; Herrmann's score versus natural bird flutters). This could just be Hitchcock’s attempt to double down on the tension and horror of his previous film, but I think it's something more. And I'd be remiss not to mention just how fucking strange the effects sequences look. Surely they're among the most abstract and avant-garde pieces of Hollywood filmmaking.

The film also experiments with editing that emphasizes the movement or stasis between shots and the use of electronic noise instead of a score. The most well-known examples of the former include the sequence of birds flocking to the playground, the reveal of the first murder, and the shots of Hedren watching a fire spread (creating a nearly Cubist effect that must have made ’63 Godard fall right out of his chair), but it’s used effectively throughout. In addition to Oskar Sala and Remi Gassmann’s shrieking electronica, the soundtrack uses silence, offscreen sound, and unconventional mixing to shape its bizarre headspace. In Film, A Sound Art, Michel Chion writes about the use of “phantom sounds” in the film (when the image suggests a sound not heard on the actual soundtrack, like the birds on the playground, or Melanie’s recurring unvoiced screams), and Hitchcock’s repeated use of this technique strengthens both the impact of the movie’s psychodrama and its recurring motifs: the act of pretending, repression, and the deceit of appearances.

I completely reject the idea that Melanie “deserves” her fate. The blurring between bird and human strikes me as more genuinely disturbing than misanthropic, and at the end of the film, her mental and physical collapse as she bats away hallucinatory birds (illustrated vividly by the soundtrack and camera) and her final coupling with Lydia as surrogate mother and daughter read as sensitive tragedy, and are a piece with Hitchcock’s continued empathy for, and kinship with, the psychotically wounded.

[Rayon Vert]

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. One of the ‘30s WB films celebrated for its progressive agenda, relating the horrors of the chain gang system. But I’m glad to see it on the list because it’s an exceptionally good film, with little in the way of flaws for such a relatively minor piece. Muni is solid, the script first-rate and LeRoy’s direction very fine through much of it, and that ending is haunting. Thrilling prison escape sequences.

Paths of Glory. Don’t have much to say about a film that’s so well-known except I always admire and enjoy it. The trenches, the courtroom, the dénouement – technically and dramatically memorable from start to finish.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Took the opportunity to watch for the first time the Criterion release. Beautiful as always. An atmospheric, lyrical film where, like a lot of Altman films, the plot can feel a little secondary (Bob liked to compare his films to paintings). The Cohen songs on the soundtrack are really evocative and I can’t imagine the film having its power and charm without them. And I didn’t remember how much the whorehouse is central in the film. “Passion” is a good word for the criteria I’m using to rate the films and make my list, and I didn’t feel quite as strongly about this one as I have in the past (relative to other films I’m rewatching), so it won’t make the cut. I also downgraded Short Cuts more severely before this, but that just means I’ve gone from five to still likely three Altmans in my top 50.

La Grande Illusion. The frequent classifying of this film, along with usual suspects like Tokyo Story, Citizen Kane, Wild Strawberries, Bicycle Thieves, etc., as One Of The Greatest Films Ever, has never translated into my feeling as ardently towards it as some of Renoir’s others (The River, The Rules of the Game, La Marseillaise). So that I’m never thrilled at the prospect of seeing it again. But every time I do, I seem to like/love it more and more. The plot and its treatment aren’t engrossing as such, but there’s a loving attention and a richness of detail in the way Renoir presents all of these characters, their relationships and the social contexts in which they live, and this is no doubt a cliché but Renoir summons here a strong feeling for the brotherhood of man and the value of human life. The three major settings in the film are also extremely expressive and evocative. I don’t remember what renowned critic said of War and Peace that it “contains life”, or something to that effect, but by the end of it I felt the same could be applied to this film.

Hail Mary. In common with Godard’s other films of this period, there’s a lot of physical roughness and violence between the characters, that’s matched by the viewer-assaulting effect of the layered audio tracks, the way loud music or other sounds are abruptly put-on and cut-off, the sometimes difficult to comprehend dialogue (which subtitles allows you to cheat, because some of those lines are really aurally incomprehensible without them). At the same time, that violent quality co-mixes with another dimension that is contemplative and spiritual. This re-imagining of the story of Mary and Joseph in modern times is at once a fairy tale and a deeply profound and meditative poem on the origins and sacredness of life. Whether it’s snatches of nature sounds (crickets, the wind) or classical music, this time they give fuel to the character of the professor’s propounding of an intelligent design behind life itself. From an uncertain start, the film progresses into a more and more beautiful, convincing and enthralling aesthetic-mystic experience, with incredibly stunning images of nature (the sun, moon, rain-drenched and windy fields, turbulent or near-still waters), of animals (that donkey bringing to mind the Bressonian world most overtly) intertwined with Mary’s struggles and spiritual war for the spirit that animates the body. A memorable Godard, but then he’s got so many.

Kind Hearts and Coronets. Far and away the best Ealing comedy. Delightfully black, it feels way ahead of its time. I was just as bowled over by this film as the first time I saw it The script, the characterizations and acting (Dennis Price is incredibly charismatic), everything’s perfect. It looks tremendous as well, making good use of exterior shooting. At this point it’s probably my favorite British film.

Seconds. Only learned about and saw this film for the first time fairly recently, a blind buy as I was looking at relatively more obscure Criterion American releases of the 60s and 70s. My second viewing repeated the pleasure of the first. There might be a few moments here and there that are a bit awkward, but the conceit is irresistible and it’s filmed with great cinematographic ambition and creativity. Excellent dystopian science fiction combined with a forceful and finally moving existential-psychological drama (the depiction of the marriage, the scene where Arthur/Antiochus realizes he’s repeated the same meaningless life). That ending

Spoiler

into nothingness

outdoes Bergman!

Le Trou. The film recalls Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man in terms of its avowed non-fiction content, complete with an introduction spelling this out, and its documentary feel. Hitchcock’s film was still highly stylized, though, whereas this prison escape film is extremely realistic and documentary-like in its photography and use of at least one non-actor. In terms of sheer suspense, the feeling of anxiety this evokes at times becomes almost painful. Its conclusion and the sense it gives one of the loss of freedom entailed by jail life makes this an incredibly despairing and depressing film as well – so much so that the first time I put the DVD on the non-keeper pile. (Fortunately I’m always putting off selling my unwanted films.) This is an incredibly potent film, indeed probably the best prison break film. Like The Wages of Fear, it’s almost all watching men at work – except here the view of human relationships is a lot more balanced towards optimism, with the wonderful solidarity represented among (most of) the prisoners. I love the way the camera is framed to stay absolutely still and to linger for a long time at shots of work, banging away at rock and cement and so on - it adds a lot to the tension and the documentary feel.

The Battle of Algiers. Like Seconds, a relatively new film for me, whose reputation I found completely deserved. This is incredible filmmaking and I’m riveted and moved by the protagonist that is basically a people rather than specific individual characters. Of course with the world events of the last decade and a half or so, the film only feels that much more relevant – and it presents an extraordinarily sophisticated understanding of war, terrorism and insurrection. Superlative political and war film that will rank high on my list.

[domino harvey]

That's an interesting question but hard to answer fully since many of the best films I saw were all movies I was familiar with, already interested in, and would have gotten to eventually-- for instance, Paris is Burning would have made my Docs list, but seeing it here only moved it up in the queue. Yellow Earth, the Blue Bird, and Mr Thank You would likely never have been seen by me otherwise and I did like them a lot, so those are clear successes from the process. Though not good enough to make any list, including Decades, I was glad to be forced to see some films by directors who I otherwise disliked, as these too were films I never would have sought out in my own: Syndromes and a Century, Millennium Mambo, Lost Highway were all good films I enjoyed much more than I anticipated based on other experiences with their directors. It works in opposite though: I care for Ozu less than ever after filling in some gaps-- though Tokyo Twilight and Tokyo Story are fine films, I disliked all of his other qualifying pictures. Same for Kurosawa, though I started out far less enamored than I was with Ozu-- only Seven Samurai holds up on this list for me. And I am utterly over Oshima after seeking out the abhorrent unseen titles propped up here. And in the extreme is Love Streams, a film by a director I was already cool on that stunned me in its awfulness-- legitimately my new go-to answer for worst film I've ever seen. I am not exaggerating when I say you could not pay me to sit through it again, as I have never had a more agonizing viewing of anything in my life!

In the interest of full disclosure, I just realized while looking through my checklist of crossed-off films that I left off my second-favorite discovery of the project behind Farewell My Concubine, A Moment of Innocence, a film like Yellow Earth that I 100% would never have seen in my entire life without this list and which I enjoyed immensely for its playful use of docudrama conceits and self-reflexivity. So there's another discovery I made a while ago that goes into the plus column. Not enough to make my Top 50 but it'd make my next fifty.

[swo17]

It's definitely making my list. I'm glad you liked it!

[Rayon Vert]

Sweet Smell of Success. This film is as slick as its characters, though in the good sense – every aspect of the film feels impeccable. That doesn’t mean it will necessarily make my list, maybe in part because, like a critic or somebody said about A Clockwork Orange, as good as the film is I don’t care to spend that much time with these noxious characters – in other words, revisits aren’t appealing in thought as for other splendid films. Also, this doesn’t really need to be said but there are several noirs that photograph NYC magnificently, but this one is really up there.

Rome, Open City. Always rewarding, even with the stereotyped Nazis, but the other films in the trilogy are ahead of it for me.

The Lady Eve. I never remember the second half of the film as much as the first, i.e. everything that happens on the ship, and when I watch it again I conclude it’s because as solid as the film is throughout, there’s a special magic to those (sometimes quite steamy!) earlier Stanwyck-Fonda sequences. At another time I would have ranked this film head and shoulders over the other Sturges, but now I’d say there are about five that call out to me for fairly equal ranking.

Manhattan. I don’t know if I’m the only one that has a problem with this film. Even putting down the 42- & 17-year-old pairing to the anything-goes tail end of the 60s-70s sexual revolution cultural mores, it strikes me how morally unappealing the Isaac character is. There’s a memorable, and funny, scene where, standing besides a skeleton in a classroom, he’s berating his friend Yale for his ethical failure in betraying their friendship and reengaging with Mary again behind his back, along with cheating on his wife and other lapses. And that scene can be used to ground an argument that behind the outward appearance of a film delighting in its witty upper-middle-class Manhattan intellectual characters and their complicated amorous entanglements, there’s a parallel critique of the moral emptiness of these characters’ lives and behaviors. But if that’s so, then the film doesn’t indicate an awareness of how reprehensible Isaac is in his treatment of Tracy –

Spoiler

first the complete lack of empathy of the blow he lands her when he dumps her for Mary, where he shows no recognition and validation of her painful feelings, and finally in the last scenes where he is again completely centered on his own needs in running to her and trying to make her stay in New York rather than go study abroad in London, and, worse, using blatant manipulation to do so. I say the film indicates no awareness because that scene ends with Tracy seeming to open up to Isaac’s overtures, some “cute” facial expressions/ smiles from Allen and lush romantic music again.

There’s something screwed up here that isn’t in any way cute or romantic. Yes Manhattan has many witty moments and it benefits strongly, like most or all of the films of the Gordon Willis years, from the motivation to make films that are as visually innovative as they are intelligent in the writing, a quality the Allen films of the later years sorely lack by contrast, but for me the failings described aren’t details and color negatively my whole appreciation of the film.

The Best Years of Our Lives. As I was watching this again, I was thinking about Born on the Fourth of July that I watched again not that long ago and the many parallels these films share (I’m sure there are several other films I haven’t seen of soldiers “coming home”): veterans returning home from the war, disability, disillusionment/confrontation with the pre-war past, lots of drunkenness, even the confrontation with views critical of the war. As strong as the film is, and I’m sure I’m not alone in considering it Wyler’s best, it isn’t flawless. The pace feels a bit labored and slow in several scenes, and there are bits that are annoying, several of them involving Frederic March’s slightly overdone characterization (and, my, these women don’t seem to have any qualms dealing with their men’s drunkenness). But the film’s strengths are so many – how it conveys what it means to come home from the war, the rich panorama of small-town life, the glowing presence that Teresa Wright is in every scene she’s in, the memorable ending (starting with the visit to the war plane junkyard) - that I was again won over by it.

Rio Bravo. It may or may not make my list because it will be near the cut-off point but I was again surprised at how much I like this film. This is where Hawks changed speeds and resorted to a markedly laidback rhythm. This is a film about characters and relationships as much as about the sheriff-vs.-villainous-rancher plot, and the action when it happens is great fun but the rest is equally enjoyable even when it’s not very dramatic (which is a bit Ford-like). If there’s one flaw for me, it’s that the indoor scenes look a little flat, almost like television, albeit in Technicolor.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. I’m at a loss as to what to say about this one. I’m just recently discovering Cassavetes and I found this film, like most of the others, to be rich and complex and a world I can really get lost in. Cosmo Vitelli is really a unique character, a mystery or maybe a “character” that’s actually more true to life – simple yet in the end intelligent, both banal and deep, conformist and authentic. The assassination sequence is incredible.