films | It Doesn't Have To Be Right...

2016-05-26
by iansales 2 Comments

Moving pictures, #26

MOAR MOVIES…

The Saragossa Manuscript*, Wojciech Has (1965, Poland). Imagine the Arabian Nights set in eighteenth-century Spain but with a Polish cast speaking Polish throughout, and you might get some of the flavour of The Saragossa Manuscript. The film is based on an actual book, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, allegedly by Count Jan Potocki, originally published in 1805, although the book was added to in later years, bits were lost, and even the complete contents are not entirely certain. A plot summary would take up a lot of bandwidth, chiefly because it consists of stories nested within stories nested within stories, to such an extent it’s no longer clear which is the framing narrative. Mostly it’s based on the adventures of a Spanish nobleman in the eighteenth century, as written down in the aforementioned manuscript, which is discovered by a pair of officers from opposite sides in Zaragoza during the Napoleonic Wars. The first half of the film seems to consist of the hero of the story, an ancestor of one of the officers, being enchanted by ghosts and then waking up under a set of gallows; but in the second half, the stories become even more inter-nested, and the film begins to get much more interesting. So much so that by the end of it, I quite fancied having a copy of it. Wikipedia claims “multiple viewings of the film are recommended in order to comprehend the plot”, although I didn’t find it that hard to follow (once, that is, I’d realised it aped the Arabian Nights’ structure), but I’d still like to watch it again. Recommended.

First Man into Space, Robert Day (1959, UK). I have no idea why I put this on my rental list – I’m guessing it’s because of the title. I’m not sure I’d describe it as “Best of British” as the cover claims, given that it’s set in the US, was filmed partly in the US, and features a mostly US cast hardly makes it especially British. But it was produced by a UK company and filmed by a British director. An astronaut pilots a rocket-plane into space, encounters some weird cosmic storm, and crashes back on Earth transformed into a monster… and promptly goes on a rampage. It’s fairly typical B-movie nonsense of the period, of course, although interesting inasmuch as the rocket-plane was the very real X-1, and stock footage of X-1 flights was used (at least for the in-atmosphere bits). True, the cockpit as depicted in the film bore no resemblance to the real X-1’s, and the X-1 never reached Mach 2.5 or flew out of the atmosphere (it wasn’t until the X-15 that either of those happened – and it held speed and altitude records for decades). I think the actual last flight of the X-1 captured on film was an appearance in Josef von Sternberg’s Jet Pilot from 1957 as a Soviet “parasite fighter”, and actually flown by Chuck Yeager for the production. Filming for Jet Pilot took place between 1949 and 1953, but the film wasn’t released until four years later.

Dancer in the Dark, Lars von Trier (2000, Denmark). This was a “lucky” charity shop find, and I say “lucky” because I’m still not sure if von Trier is a genius or a complete charlatan. And I’m no nearer knowing after watching this… although I am starting to incline toward to the former. Dancer in the Dark is an unholy mix of made-for-TV true-crime drama and late twentieth-century music video. It’s a musical, but its star is Björk, which means every musical number (and she’s in them all) bears more resemblance to her music than it does musical film or theatre of the time. Now, I still consider Björks’s Post from 1995 a classic pop album – although I no longer own a copy (whereas Chapterhouse’s Blood Music, from 1993, I still own and think is the best shoegazer album ever made). Anyway, Dancer in the Dark… Björk plays a Czech emigré to the US who works in a factory. She is steadily losing her sight, but is saving up her wages to pay for an operation so her son will not suffer the same fate (plots like this DO NOT WORK in the UK, because we have the NHS – THIS IS A GOOD THING, DO NOT KILL THE NHS). Anyway, her boss finds out, she loses her job, she kills her landlord (at his request) and, wouldn’t you know it, she’s arrested and charged with his murder. Then there’s a court case, which owes more to The Thin Blue Line than it does Law & Order. The supporting cast is surprisingly high-powered – and in one notable scene, Björj plays against Catherine Deneuve in a prison visiting booth… and though Björk isn’t actually acting she somehow or other manages to hold her own against Deneuve. Unfortunately, that’s not true of every scene she’s in, and her gauche artlessness often works against the others’ much more polished performances. Still, von Trier is not a director who follows the rules, and you watch his film for that reason as much as for any other. [2]

Once Upon a Time in China*, Tsui Hark (1991, China). Well, there’s Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands and even Once Upon a Time in Mumbai… not to mention many other variations, or the fact that Once Upon a Time in China is actually a series of films, comprising Once Upon a Time in China, Once Upon a Time in China II, Once Upon a Time in China III, Once Upon a Time in China IV, Once Upon a Time in China V, Once Upon a Time in China VI and Once Upon a Time in China and America. I think I’ve seen that last one too. I was, perhaps unfairly, expecting something like Hero or even Hark’s later Seven Swords. But Once Upon a Time in China felt very small-scale, more like those Hong Kong films I used to watch on VCD back in the 1990s. Jet Li plays a martial arts instructor and apothecary who finds himself caught in the middle of a fight between the local milita and a criminal gang, while Americans are trying to move into the country, looking for ~~slave~~ cheap labour to use back home. Some of the fight scenes are cleverly done, particularly the final one in the godown, with the combatants on huge ladders. Of the twenty Chinese films on the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list, I’ve now I’ve seen around half. One or two I loved, but most, like this one, seemed little better than those VCDs I used to watch. Oh well.

The Descendants, Alexander Payne (2011, USA). This is not actually on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list I’ve been using, but it’s on the combined list given on listchallenge.com, so it must have appeared on an earlier, or later, edition of the list. I’m baffled as to why. Clooney plays a laid-back Hawaiian lawyer whose wife is in a coma aftet a boating accident. According to the terms of her living will, it’s time to turn off her life-support, so he gathers in their two daughters (and the older one’s dim-witted boyfriend). Also at stake is a large parcel of land on the island – Oahu, I think – which the family wants to sell for a huge amount to a developer. Clooney is not against the sale, but when he learns his wife was having an affair it sort of complicates matters. And… they put this on one of the iterations of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before Die list? Seriously? It’s a not very interesting family drama about a bunch of unlikeable characters – Clooney is not very good at playing unlikeable, obviously, but he’s so passive in this he’s not very sympathetic. Not worth seeing.

101 Dalmatians, Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske & Wolfgang Reitherman (1961, USA). I’m not sure why I’ve been watching so many Disney films recently. Some are on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and I found myself admiring a couple of them enough to buy copies for myself… but several have also appeared on Amazon Prime and so I thought I might as well give them a go. I suspect I saw 101 Dalmatians way back in the 1970s when I was a kid, but I have no memory of doing so (much as I didn’t for The Rescuers – see here), and it’s impossible to tell if what I do know of the film is from having seen it or just simply picked up from more than five decades of commentary on it. Anyway, I spent a Sunday afternoon watching 101 Dalmatians… and was surprised to find it a considerably more charming film than I’d expected. I hadn’t known it was set in the UK, although I should have guessed since I sort of knew that Dodie Smith was a British author. And, of course, a lot of successful Disney properties of the 1960s were based on UK books and set in the UK. Rod Taylor (an Australian) was an odd choice for Pongo, the male lead, but he was good in it. Cruella De Vil was somewhat OTT and, while the rest of the cast were standard Disney types, the dogs were good and surprisingly not annoying. And the art was good too. Better than I had expected.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 769

2016-05-23
by iansales 3 Comments

Moving pictures, #25

I catch up… then I get behind. But I’m staying reasonably on top of these posts for now… possibly because I’ve been rewatching Battlestar Galactica so I’ve not been watching movies all the time.

Le trou*, Jacques Becker (1960, France). As I was watching this, I kept on thinking I was watching a Robert Bresson film, because it could just as easily have made by him – in many ways, Le trou reminds me a lot of A Man Escaped, at least more than just “man escapes from French prison”. Which is pretty much the plot. A group of prisoners in a cell dig a hole in the floor, which leads them into the prison’s cellars. From there, they find their way into the sewers… except the sewer tunnel is blocked, so they must dig around the concrete plug blocking it. The story is based on a real prison escape and, in fact, one of the original escapees plays himself in the film (well, sort of, the names are all changed, although I’m not sure why). There’s a matter of factness to Becker’s direction, despite which the film remains too… personal, too readily creates a narrative from its cast’s back-stories… to come across as a documentary. It makes for an odd disconnect. True, Le trou can be watched as a work of fiction and, in fact, that’s probably the easiest way to watch it, and the way most people are likely to watch it. (I can’t remember if the film opens with text explaining it’s a dramatisation of real events.) It’s the opposite, I suppose, of the 1980s penchant for dramatising documentaries, making something with a fictional format of them.

City Girl, FW Murnau (1930, USA). It’s the age-old story: farmer’s son goes to the big city to sell the corn harvest, meets a young woman, falls in love, marries her, doesn’t get the expected price for the corn, goes back home with new bride, but farmer is not happy – at the reduced price for the corn or the new wife. Things get worse. But then they realise the errors of their ways, and everyone lives happily ever after. While the cinematography and direction are up to Murnau’s usual standard, where this film really scores is in depicting life on a US farm in the late 1920s. The harvesting scenes are especially fascinating, because the technology used is sort of halfway between how you imagine it was done in the nineteenth century or earlier and how it’s done now. I do like Murnau’s films – they’re straightforward, the characters are well-drawn, if somewhat broadly so, and for their time they’re cutting-edge, which makes them interesting as historical documents. Murnau is also a good example of those German directors who crossed over to Hollywood and, you would like to think, caused Hollywood to up its game and produce serious films instead of endless variations on the Keystone Cops. It’s not as if Murnau was on his own – Lang, Lubitsch, Wilder, von Stroheim, Sirk, even Hitchcock, who cut his teeth in the German film industry. Not all of them stayed, of course. Lang’s last films were made in Germany (well, India – but they were German films), and von Stroheim retired to France. City Girl is by no means Murnau’s best – that would have to be Nosferatu or Tabu – but it’s still worth seeing. [dual]

Through a Glass Darkly*, Ingmar Bergman (1961, Sweden). Two couples – father, son, daughter and son-in-law – are holidaying on Fårö, a Swedish island in the Baltic (which Bergman loved so much, he ended up moving there). Father is a novelist and has just returned from working abroad. Daughter has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but refuses treatment. Son-in-law is a doctor and is having trouble persuading father of the severity of his wife’s condition. And son is not happy about his father’s absences. If films were books, then Bergman’s movies would be literary fiction. And watching one of his films is like reading a polished literary short story, the sort that fifty years later is studied in schools. Even the stark black and white cinematography of Through a Glass Darkly feels like a deliberate choice to create a precise atmosphere, much as a writer crafts sentences. Bergman’s use of ensemble acting and a stable of actors only heightens the likeness: three of the actors in Through a Glass Darkly – von Sydow, Andersson and Björnstrand – were all part of Bergman’s stock company at some point in their careers. [0]

Laura*, Otto Preminger (1944, USA). I had high hopes for this famous noir film – not just because of the genre or director, but also because it starred Gene Tierney, who appeared in several classic noir films. But… the film opens after Laura’s murder, with a detective trying to find out who the killer is. He interviews Laura’s patron, an effete newspaper columnist, and Laura’s boyfriend, a louche playboy. The detective learns so much about Laura that he begins to obsess over her… so he’s somewhat flabbergasted when he falls asleep in her apartment and she walks through the door. Turns out it wasn’t Laura who was killed, but one of her models (the body’s face had been destroyed by a shotgun blast, but since it happened Laura’s apartment they assumed it was her). Preminger directed some killer noir films, and Tierney was the epitome of a 1940s Hollywood femme fatale – no matter the role, she seemed to take into herself all the baggage associated with the character. I suspect this was due to the fact she wasn’t actually a very good actress. She had screen presence, certainly; but she never seemed especially convincing – not that it was a requirement at the time, cf Ava Gardner’s career – and the same is true in Laura. Tierney is more of a centre around which the story revolves, in which position she does quite a good job. But Laura the character is about as convincing as a unicorn, and the story of the film is not much better. Had I been putting together the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list myself, I would have chosen a different Preminger noir film – Whirlpool, perhaps, or Fallen Angel. Not this lacklustre affair.

Love One Another, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1922, Germany). What an odd film. I say that having seen – and even liking – any number of odd films. I am, I admit, a fan of Dreyer’s films, and the more of his films I watch, and the more times I watch each of them, the more my admiration grows – but, let’s face it, most probably know of him only from his three Danish films of the 1940s, Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud. But they’re products of the end of his career, and his earlier stuff is also very good (to be fair, The Passion of Joan of Arc is also pretty well known) but even so, the BFI aside, Dreyer’s entire oeuvre is not that readily available. He bounced around in his early years – working in Denmark, Norway and Germany… and it is the last country where this film was made. It’s based on a novel – Elsker hverandre by Aage Madelung from 1918 – and is set in Russia in the late nineteenth century. The central character is a Jewish girl who experiences anti-semitism on a daily basis but falls in love with a Gentile, Sasha. When news of the affair surfaces, she is expelled from school and flees to St Petersburg to stay with her brother, who converted to Christianity. She becomes involved with underground revolutionaries and, against the backdrop of the Tsar’s pogroms against the Jews, she manages to get back together with Sasha, and they join the Jew fleeing Russia. Although set in Russia, Love One Another was filmed entirely in Germany. It is, in its way, as important an historical record as Eisenstein’s October: Ten Days That Shook the World, even though it’s fictional. (Apparently, some of the extras in the films were actual survivors of the Jewish pogroms in Tsarist Russia.) Worth seeing. [0]

Man of the West*, Anthony Mann (1958, USA). I can’t help comparing this film with Shane, released five years earlier, and not to Man of the West‘s advantage. Gary Cooper plays a retired outlaw who, en route to Fort Worth by train to find a teacher for his small town’s new school, finds himself caught up with the outlaw gang to which he once belonged. He has a saloon singer and a con artist in tow, and tries to protect the two from the outlaws (led by his uncle), but only manages by reluctantly agreeing to help them rob a bank in Lassoo. But when he gets to Lassoo, it’s a ghost town and the bank has long since closed. Cue shoot-out. To be honest, Cooper makes a more convincing cowboy than Ladd did in Shane, and even though it’s been a dozen years since he hung up his black hat, at 57 he was probably a little too old for the part. But that’s a minor niggle. The photography is not as impressivas in Stevens’s film, but the story is at least not quite so… melodramatic. It feels like a Western from a later period. After watching Shane on rental DVD, I bought myself a copy of the Master of Cinema edition Blu-ray. I don’t think I’ll be doing the same for Man of the West, although a Masters of Cinema edition has been released.

The Phantom of Liberty, Luis Buñuel (1970, France). I rented this to test if my Theory of Godard could be applied to Buñuel, even though it had already failed several times. I have this theory, you see, that Godard’s films in colour are better than those in black and white – at least, the Godard fims I’ve seen which I like have all been in colour. But that’s not strictly true for Buñuel – I liked The Exterminating Angel a lot (black and white), but not Tristana or Belle du jour so much (both colour). I did like Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (colour)… but did that mean I’d like The Phantom of Liberty… especially since it’s considered amongst his most surreal films (or rather, most experimental plot-wise)? The easy answer is… yes, I liked it; and no, it seems the theory only really applies to Godard. The Phantom of Liberty does not have a plot, it’s just a series of vignettes linked by characters, none of which are actually resolved. Some feel like failed comedy sketches – the Carmelite monks who play poker using holy relics as chips, Michael Lonsdale throwing an impromptu room party and then his wife dresses up in her dominatrix outfit and whips him on the arse, the dinner party where the guests sit on toilets at the table and shit but go to a private room to eat; others are not remotely comedic, such as the sniper in the Tour Montparnasse, or the police chief who gets a phone call from his dead sister. They are all, however, mostly surreal – like the emu that wanders through a man’s bedroom as he tries to sleep. On balance, I think The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie the better film, but I did enjoy The Phantom of Liberty, and I plan to watch more of Buñuel’s films.

1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die count: 768

2016-05-19
by iansales 2 Comments

Moving pictures, #24

Onward with the movie posts…

Queen Christina*, Rouben Mamoulian (1933, USA). You know that thing about “Garbo laughs” and they used it as the tagline for Ninotchka, which was released six years after this one, but Garbo, who plays the title role in Queen Christina, does quite a good impression of laughter on a couple of occasions in this film. The title character is a real historical figure, queen of Sweden from 1632 to 1654, and she did indeed abdicate and convert to Roman Catholicism. But not, as the film would have it, for love. In the film, she’s out hunting one day when she comes across the Spanish envoy, whose carriage is stuck in a snow drift. She gives his servants advice on how to extricate the coach. Since she dresses as a man, the envoy mistakes her for one. And does the same later, when they meet at a nearby inn. Queen Christina, who is now actively pretending to be male, has taken the last room. The envoy demands “he” vacate it. They end up sharing and the queen reveals her gender – but not her identity. She saves that little surprise for when the envoy is officially introduced to her at the royal palace. The real Queen Christina was raised as a boy and was in a long-term lesbian relationship. She’d also been fascinated with the Roman Catholic Church from a young age. But when has Hollywood ever let history get in the way of a good story? Or their marketing, for that matter. I’m not entirely sure why this film is on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. I didn’t see anything that was technicially or cinematically ahead of its time, and though it was enormously successful and popular in 1933, it doesn’t seem like anything particularly special these days.

Fantastic Four, Josh Trank (2015, USA). Given the success of the MCU films, it can hardly be a surprise that Hollywood is rebooting every superhero franchise it can in a desperate effort to keep the rights and find a moneyspinner. Spider-Man is about to see its fourth incarnation, and here’s the Fantastic Four, another iconic Marvel property, on its third incarnation (although the first was never actually released). Like the Spider-Man reboot, they’ve rolled back the ages of the heroes to high school, because twentysomething heroes were apparently fine for twentieth-century kids but in the twenty-first century it’s got to be totally about the kids. And if that wasn’t enough of a change, this film has completely rewritten the Fantastic Four’s origin story. True, the original, er, origin story – four rich twentysomethings build a rocket, go into space, get bombarded by cosmic rays and develop superpowers – was pretty daft, but try naming an origin story that isn’t completely ridiculous. In this new version, Reed Richards spends years developing a teleportation machine, is then recruited by the Baxter Foundation, and with the help of studly Latverian genius Victor von Doom, builds a full-scale model… except it’s not a teleporter, it’s a portal to another dimension. And it’s on a drunken trip there that the four get their fantastic powers… and Doom is left behind and turns into a metal man with awesome mental powers. The military weaponizes the four – except for Richards, who goes on the run. But eventually he is brought into the fold. This is a completely charmless affair, with a charisma-free cast. And where previously the Fantastic Four spent most of their time saving the world, here they’re just “military assets”, tools of US imperialism – and while superheroes are often just as destructive as the supervillains they fight, that change in mission is just downright offensive. Marvel adopts manifest destiny. If superheroes had always seemed a little fascist before, with this film they’ve openly embraced it. Happily, Fantastic Four tanked at the box office. Avoid.

Antonio das Mortes, Glauber Rocha (1969, Brazil). This is the third of Rocha’s Anotonio das Mortes trilogy (its origin title is actually O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerriro, “The Dragon of Evil against the Saint Warrior”), following on from Black God, White Devil (see here) and Entranced Earth (see here). Unlike the preceding film, this one is set in Brazil and not an invented country. The north-east of the country was once controlled by bandits called cangaceiros, the greatest of whom was Lampião, who died in 1938. But a new cangaceiro has appeared, accompanied by a young woman believed to be a saint, and a host of peasants. The blind coronel, the landowner of the town of Jardim de Piranhas, sends for Antonio das Mortes to kill the cangaceiro. Antonio fatally wounds the cangaceiro in a duel, but then suffers a change of heart and demands the coronel hand out his food reserves to the poor. The coronel refuses and orders Antonio killed… Antonio das Mortes is the only film of the three in colour, and Mr Bongo have done another slipshod job on it – the print is far from perfect, and the many folk songs on the soundtrack have French translations of their lyrics burned in. It’s also a less declamatory film than Entranced Earth, although not by much – the cangaceiro, for example, introduces himself by speaking in rhyme to the camera. And even much of Antonio’s dialogue is self-reflective. A lot of the violence is staged almost like a dance, which works well with the local folk songs on the soundtrack. The landscape appears much stranger in colour than it does in black and white, with some effective landscape photography that demonstrates just how huge and featurless is the region. I’ll admit I bought these films while under the influence after watching Entranced Earth, but I don’t regret the purchase. Not only are they very political films – the coronel in Antonio das Mortes is portrayed as over-entitled and completely lacking in compassion, and the stories of all three films centre on the common people fighting the ruling classes – but the tactic of playing the political elements flat and affectless and the cultural elements full of sound and colour is especially effective. Not to mention the over-the-top and hammed up violence. These films are very much folk-tales, but they’re colourful and political folk-tales. And I really like movies like that. Recommended. It’s a shame more of Rocha’s films aren’t available on DVD. [0]

La femme publique, Andrzej Żuławski (1984, France). I am, I admit, slightly puzzled by Żuławski’s success. After fleeing Poland in the early 1980s, the only place he could go and still make films was France. It’s unlikely he’d have fitted in to the film traditions of any other country. Because his films really are quite strange. Even La femme publique, which is an adaption of an autobiography by Dominique Garnier, in which she describes her arrival in Paris and attempt to break into cinema acting, and her subsequent domination by the director who hires her. In most hands, this would be enough for a story, but Żuławski, with Garnier’s help, decided to add in a subplot about plot to assassinate a Lithuanian archbishop… The end result is an intense drama that might or might not be a somewhat bonkers thriller, which manages not to lose sight of its story. Valérie Kaprisky plays the young actress who, despite having no experience, is cast by enfant terrible Czech director Francis Huster in his adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Demons. Through Huster, Kaprisky meets fellow Czech emigré Lambert Wilson, whose wife has recently disappeared (and proves to have been murdered). Kaprisky is convinced Wilson is the murderer, so she pretends to be his wife (his grasp on reality is shaky to begin with, and visibly deteriorates). Huster meanwhile seems to be involved in some sort of plot to brainwash Wilson into assassinating the archbishop. It sort of makes sense when laid out so baldly, but this is a Żuławski movie so the reality is somewhat different. The performances are intense to a degree that’s rarely seen in Hollywood films, and the story’s focus on the psychology of the major characters is also something not often seen in plot-driven Hollywood movies (never mind Hollywood’s mindless adherence to various screenwriting techniques, such as the three-act structure, McKee’s Story or Snyder’s Save the Cat!). I don’t know that I’d call La femme publique Żuławski’s best film as I still like Na srebrnym globie a lot – but it’s certainly the best-presented film on DVD. This Mondo Vision Signature edition comes in a fancy box, with a soundtrack CD, publicity photos and a booklet. Recommended. [1]

Khartoum, Basil Dearden (1966, UK). Remember when they used to open films with ten minutes of music, so you had time to buy your ice cream from the usher down at the front, and then they’d have an intermission so you could buy another ice cream or a box of ~~Treets~~ Poppets… or was that just in the UK? As the title of this film no doubt makes clear, it’s about the siege of Khartoum in 1884, when the forces of the Mahdi tried to capture the city from General Gordon, who’d been sent there by the British to evacuate the British and Egyptian population before the Mahdi attacked. The film is a typical historical epic of the period – not just that ten-minute entr’acte and a ten-minute intermission, but also a cast of thousands and big names playing the major roles no matter how inappropriately cast. I mean, Charlton Heston as Gordon is one thing (although apparently it was meant to be Burt Lancaster), and he at least attempts a British accent (albeit not very well); but Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi is just blackface. Khartoum was apparently filmed in Egypt and makes much of its locations – this is big-screen entertainment, and it makes sure you get what you paid for. And yet… it’s all a bit bland and unexciting – despite the battle scenes. Gordon was, by all accounts, an odd bloke – a drunkard, possibly queer, but also a gifted leader and tactician. He actually sounds quite interesting. He was lionised following his death in Khartoum, and it wasn’t until several decades later that his actions, or indeed his character, were questioned. Khartoum is pretty much the dictionary definition of a Sunday afternoon film – at least it was a decade or two ago – and that’s about its level. As history, it’s perhaps a little more reliable than the typical Hollywood movie; and as entertainment it’s very much of its time.

Fires Were Started*, Humphrey Jennings (1943, UK). This is the only Jennings film on the 1001 Movies You Must see Before You Die list, despite him being called one of Britain’s greatest film-makers. And he made thirty-two films, although most were documentary shorts. The BFI DVD case shown here contains five films, all from 1941 or 1943. Fires Were Started is about a London fire brigade, beginning with a new arrival to the watch, and following the watch members as they go about their duties. Although some of the film is reconstruction, and filmed at Pinewood Studios, it all looks very real (the fires, I think, are real fires – certainly the cast were actual firemen and not actors). I do remember that the firemen had their own bar and drank beer… until called out by an alarm. The technology also seemed surprisingly crude, especially when compared to the military technology of the time. But Jennings had a really good eye, and was especially effective at making his subjects seem likeable and sympathetic. The new member of the watch, for example, is university-educated, whereas the the current members are all working-class… but Jennings shows how accomodating both are toward each other and how well they work together. Fires Were Started is one of three collections of Jennings film released by the BFI. I quite fancy getting all three – um, maybe I should just wait until I’ve had some wine and do as I did for Glauber Rocha…

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 764

2016-05-12
by iansales 2 Comments

Moving pictures, #23

Another mixed bag, country-wise, this time. Four were rentals, two I bought. Two are also sequels. And one is silent, while another has only a music soundtrack.

Storm over Asia*, Vsevelod Pudovkin (1928, Russia). Although cinema was in its infancy back before “talkies”, what a lot of people seem to forget – or don’t know – is that a lot of the cinematography of that time is often astonishingly good. Anyone who has seen Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc can’t fail to be impressed by the beauty of the Dreyer’s imagery. Storm over Asia, an early Russian film, is not one that was known to me – Eisenstein, yes; even Aelita, yes; but not this one… Which is a shame as it’s quite an amazing piece of work. It’s set in Mongolia in 1918. A Mongolian trapper is ripped off by a European trader, and runs to the hills after fighting the trader. He becomes a Soviet partisan, fighting against the British occupiers. They catch him and shoot him, but then discover he is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. Fortunately, he’s still alive, so they patch him up and plan to use him as a ruler under their control. Of course, he turns on them. Hang on, I hear you saying, the British never invaded Mongolia; yes, they invaded lots of places over the centuries, but Mongolia wasn’t one of them. But this is a Russian film, and they were hardly likely to paint themselves as the villains (plus, the British had the advantage of being “capitalists”, which the villains of any Soviet film had to be, of course). Definitely worth seeing.

45 Years, Andrew Haigh (2015, UK). It’ll be interesting to see how this film does on sell-through. Hollywood, indeed most Anglophone cinema, seems locked into chasing that young male demographic, as if they’re the only people who go to the cinema. But when you make films aimed at one group, you can’t be surprised when other groups stay away. But then I suspect older viewers are more likely to watch a new movie on sell-through than they are in the cinema. But are they going to bother doing that for shitty tentpole blockbusters like the MCU films? And are they going to spend money on all the merchandising crap, which isn’t there to sell the fillm as much as it is to convince fans that’s okay really to like such rubbish since the property is so ubiquitous they can’t be considered weird for liking it… Which at least can’t be said of 45 Years, which is about a married couple, and the title refers to the time they’ve been married. But a few days before a planned celebration of the event, the husband receives news that the body of an ex-girlfriend, who fell into a crevasse in a glacier back in the 1960s, has just been discovered… While this all happened before he married, he hasn’t been completely honest about what happened with his wife. This is a nice, understated piece, well-played by a high-powered cast. It’s already garnered a fistful of award nominations and wins, and deservedly so.

Naqoyqatsi, Godfrey Reggio (2002, USA). This is the third of the Qatsi trilogy, made some twenty years after the previous two films, Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi. Ironically, it’s the one that’s dated the most. That’s chiefly because at the time it was made CGI was not as high-quality as it is now, and it shows. Not just in the resolution or range of colours of the computer-generated graphics, but also in the imagination on display. Those earlier two films were pure cinematography – of places and people, with no special effects. And they remain as effective today as they did when they were shot. Also to Naqoyqatsi‘s disadvantage is its subject: technology and war. There’s a big emphasis on computer code, modelling and simulations, and virtual reality, which would have felt cyberpunk… if only the film had been released a decade earlier. While the concerns, and subjects, of the first two remain true to this day, much of the technology celebrated, and reviled, in Naqoyqatsi no longer exists. In parts, Naqoyqatsi reminded me of David Blair’s Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees from 1991 (I have a signed copy of the film on VHS somewhere), and in other parts of its two predecessors. I’m glad I picked up the set and so now have all three films… but going for the Blu-rays was probably a bit much. [A]

The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer (2014, Denmark). This is the follow-up to Oppenheimer’s earlier The Act of Killing, and covers pretty much the same topic: the Indonesian slaughter of “communists” during the mid-1960s after the military seized control. The conceit here is that the brother of a man who disappeared during those murders visits some of the killers as an optician examining their eyesight, and quizzing them about it while he does so. There’s a telling remark made to camera by one of the men who committed those murders, “Thanks to the Americans for teaching us to hate communists”. The fact that most of those killed weren’t actually communists is apparently irrelevant. The US made it plain that communists were legitimate targets, and it’s not like anyone was going to look too closely when the so-called authorities labelled someone a communist. After all, the US had done exactly the same itself back in the days of HUAC, albeit without the machetes and assault rifles and death toll. Later in The Look of Silence, there’s a clip from US network news show from the 1960s, and it pretty much approves of the death and mutilation of the so-called communists. It goes without saying that the events discussed in this film are horrible; and that it’s enraging the perpetrators not only survived, but prospered and continue to do so. It’s heartbreaking that one survivor’s only way to live with it is to consider it all past and gone, life has moved on. Because clearly justice has not prevailed. And it’s unlikely to ever do so. It would be all too easy to blame it entirely on the Indonesians, except that would not be strictly true. The West creates these situations and should take responsibility for them – except that would mean admitting they’d done wrong, that the corporations are no longer under control, or that capitalism doesn’t actually work.

Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance, Hideaki Anno (2009, Japan). It would not be untrue to describe the plot of the Evangelion series as: giant alien creatures called Angels invade Earth (individually) and are fought off by giant cyborg creatures piloted by high school kids. Because, of course, there’s so much more than just that going on in there – that would be the Hollywood version. The Angels are these bizarre creatures, looking partly like something drawn by Moebius and partly like some nightmare doll. In Evangelion 2.22, there is now a squad of Evangelions, and the pilot of one is possibly the most irritating American character ever to appear in a film (which is quite an achievement). In fact, the existence of the squad means Evangelion 2.22 is a more action-packed film than Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, although like the first it’s parsimonious with the details of its setting, leaving much of the world-building a mystery. For example, it’s only on a visit to an aquatic research centre that the film explains that the seas really are red, and why. It’s a movie that requires several watchings – although that may simply because I have yet to learn the Way Of Watching Anime. One thing worth noting, however, is Evangelion 2.22‘s frankly bizarre score, which at times sounds like 1970s jazz/rock fusion – and seems weirdly anachronistic but is actually pretty good. Evangelion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo is currently available on DVD and Blu-ray, and I’ll be picking up a copy. The final film was due for theatrical release in late 2015 but has been delayed. I can wait. [ABC]

Thunder on the Hill, Douglas Sirk (1951, USA). My favourite film was directed by Sirk, and the handful of melodramas he made between 1953 and 1959, such as Magnificient Obsession, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life, I rate very highly. But he also made a lot of quite frankly ordinary thrillers and dramas for Hollywood throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Thunder on the Hill is one of these. Shot in black and white and set in, of all places, Norfolk, it sees a group of people descend on a convent during a fierce storm. One of these is a convicted murderer, with rescort, on her way to prison, except, of course, she’s really innocent. However, the victim’s doctor – the murderer’s brother – is now doctor at the convent. Guess what happens. Claudette Colbert plays the lead and doesn’t make much of an effort toward a British accent; neither, for that matter, does Ann Blyth. Most of the supporting staff are actually British – so you get that odd disconnect where some of the cast clearly can’t be the characters they play because they have the wrong accents. This is pretty ordinary and forgettable stuff, and you’d be much better off watching one of Sirk’s melodramas.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 762

2016-05-05
by iansales 1 Comment

Moving pictures, #22

Only one American film this time, and yes, that’s two Bollywood films. Which I can blame on the vagaries of the DVD rental services. Not that I didn’t enjoy them – in fact, the Guru Dutt was really good.

Robot Overlords, Jon Wright (2014, UK). Robots have conquered Earth, although they insist it’s only tempoerary while they learn everything there is learnt about humanity. Meanwhile, everyone has an implant fitted in their neck and is nofined to their home – except for a volunteer force, who collaborate with the robots. Robot Overlords centres on a young boy whose RAF father went missing shortly after the invasion. Meanwhile, local volunteer force leader Ben Kingsley has designs on his mother, Gillian Anderson. But then the kids accidentally discover how to disable their implants… and that gets them involved with the local black market (although what they’re trading is a mystery, as no one appears to work anymore), as well as bringing them to the attention of the robots. Who, it turns out, in a completely non-surprise turn, have no intention of going and leaving Earth to carry on as before. The boy’s brother discovers he has a mysterious ability to control the robots, which sort of comes from nowhere. They find the father, hiding out with others in a tine mine, and there’s a Spitfire – WTF – which they use to dogfight the robots. Despite being a polished production, Robot Overlords is a story that probably seemed much better on paper than it actually is. The film only took £4,000 on its opening weekend and, distribution aside, it’s not hard to see why: it’s not very good.

Milano Calibro 9, Fernando Di Leo (1972, Italy). This is a pretty ordinary Italian thriller, except it has a great soundtrack – partly provided by Italian prog rock group Osanna. And it’s obvious right from the opening credits. A gangster is released from prison after serving three years. Everyone thinks he stole $300,000 from his old mob boss, the American (bizarrely renamed the Mikado in a dubbed version). He tries to convince them he doesn’t have themoney and he plans to go straight – but the police don’t belive him, the American doesn’t believe him, his over-acting nutjob ex-partner Rocco doesn’t believe him, and his girlfriend doesn’t believe him. Meanwhile, Rocco and the American are cleaning house by having couriers they suspect of theft actually pick up parcel bombs. And there’s a friend of the gangster who’s a hitman, and the American’s suspicion descend on him… which totally backfires. A pretty solid Italian thriller, very seventies, and with a great soundtrack. Worth seeing.

Brideshead Revisited (1981, UK). Even now thirty-five years later, Brideshead Revisited is still remembeed as a notable British televisual event. It was a first in many respects, and proved far more successful than its makers had ever expected. Looking back on it from the twenty-first century. it’s not especially easy to understand why it proved such a landmark. Television has changed so much in the decades in between. Of course, a lot of the appeal rests on the source material, and Brideshead Revisited is generally reckoned to be Evelyn Waugh’s best work – and Waugh was a highly-regarded novelist for much of the twentieth century. The adaptation makes a good fist of presenting the time during which it’s set – it opens during WWII, then leaps back to the late 1920s, and the Oxbridge days of Charles Rider (Jeremy Irons) and Lord Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews), before continuing on through the 1930s. Waugh was a horrible snob, and desperate to be accepted by the upper classes – and that’s pretty much what drives Brideshead Revisited. Which makes it even more surprising a hit. There’s that baffling British love of tales of upper class life from the early decades of the twentieth century, of course. But Brideshead Revisited did have a top-notch cast; and Waugh’s novel handled some weighty themes, which made it more or less intact into the adaptation. Having said all that, the Marchmains, indeed much of the cast, are pretty hard to care about. Waugh’s longing to be seen as an equal by people like the Marchmains is plain throughout, and that only makes the whole even less easy to like. And yet… I did equite enjoy it. I just thought it was about a horrible bunch of people, and I was pretty indifferent to their fate.

Hum dil de chuke sanam, Sanjay Leela Bansali (1999, India). A singer travels from Italy to India because he wants to learn at the feet of a master of Indian classical music. The master’s daughter is Aishwarya Rai. The singer and Rai initially take a dislike to each other – she chiefly because he has taken her room in the, well, it’s more of a palace than a house. Over several musical numbers, they fall in love. But her parents have arranged her marriage to the unmusical lawyer Vanraj. When the two lovers are discovered canoodling, the master sends away his student. Rai is married to Vanjay, but she is not happy. Eventually, Vanraj decides to reunite Rai with her Italian lover (actually, he’s Indian, although lives in Italy and has an Italian surname). So he takes her to Italy – well, to Budapest, which plays the part of Rome, Hungarian hoardings and street signs notwithstanding. But finding the boyfriend is not so easy, and during the course of their search Rai comes to realise she actually loves Vanraj. So when they do find the elusive singer, she tells him that she came looking for him but now she wants to stay with her husband. This is a Bollywood film, so there’s lots of musical numbers – and some of them are big. Huge, like stage shows. Even for a Bollywood film, Hum dil de chuke sanam felt somewhat OTT (although, to be fair, I’m hardly an expert as I’ve only see about half a dozen). It starts slow, but it definitely builds up steam; and by the time it was all over I could understand why it had proven so successful.

It Should Happen to You!, George Cukor (1954, USA). I’m not sure why added this to my rental list, probably because I’ve enjoyed some Cukor movies and I do like me some 1950s rom com… Unfortunately, this one was a bit of damp squib. Although not originally written for Judy Holliday, it felt like a vehicle for her. She plays Gladys Glover, who moved to New York to make it but has so far failed to do so. So she spends her savings on a billboard on Columbus Circle – with her name in ten-foot high letters. However, that billboard is normally taken by the Adams Soap Company for their spring promotion. They contact Holliday, but she won’t give it up. They do her a deal – six billboards scattered around New York. She becomes a household name, Adams use her as a model, and so she makes it big. Meanwhile, Jack Lemmon (in his first role), who met her in Central Park right at the beginning and then was a bit stalkery, realises he can’t compete with playboy head of Adams Soap (Peter Lawford), so bows out. But Holliday realises she really loves him. There was some good footage of 1950s New York, but Holliday seemed a bit too laconic for the part she played, and the rags-to-riches tale felt a bit too well-worn.

Pyaasa, Guru Dutt (1957, India). Producer, director and star Dutt plays a poet who can’t get published. He bumps into an ex-girlfriend from his school days who is now married to a big-shot publisher. The publisher hires Dutt as a servant and mostreats him, but then a beggar who dies under a train is mistaken for Dutt… and Dutt’s poetry becomes a posthumous success. His two brothers argue over the money his work now earns, and when Dutt reappears they refuse to recognise him. Eventually they see the error of their ways, but by then Dutt has had enough and walks away. I tweeted that this film “has been restored from vintage source for nostalgic appeal”, as per an on-screen notice in the opening credits. And certainly the transfer quality of the black and white print was not great (by comparison, Mother India – see here – released in the same year – was filmed in colour and a much better quality transfer). Despite all that, Pyaasa was probably the most interesting Bollywood film I’ve seen so far – in fact, I want to see more of Dutt’s movies. It wasn’t just that Dutt played a good part, but that the film seemed to address more interesting themes than your average Bollywood film, and appeared to be more of a drama than a melodrama. It still had songs and dance numbers in it, though.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 761

2016-04-30
by iansales 4 Comments

Moving pictures, #21

And back to more films from the US than elsewhere. Given that only half the films described below are rentals, I can’t claim the vagaries of their service as an excuse. Oh well.

Cinderella, Kenneth Branagh (2015, USA). I bought a Blu-ray of the animated Disney Cinderella and the cheapest version available was a double Blu-ray box set with the 2015 live-action version of the film, because, probably, the live-action needs a bit of extra help to sell. I mean, whoever heard of a live-action Cinderella? Okay, it was directed by Branagh, and it’s got stars like Helena Bonham Carter and Cate Blanchett and Stellan Skarsgård and Derek Jacobi in it… but given the number of princess films Disney churns out, my expectations were understandably quite low. And yes, the film takes a few liberties with Perrault’s story, chiefly in order to give the characters more of a background. The two leads – Lily James and Richard Madden – are also a bit bland. But… there were some quite clever references to the Disney animated version, Bonham Carter’s absent-minded Fairy Godmother was fun, and Blanchett was on good form. However, the choreography during the ball scene just looked silly, and spoiled for me what had been up until then good family entertainment. A better film than I’d expected, but nowhere near as good as the animated version (although in its favour, its mice are considerably less annoying). [ABC]

The Rescuers, John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman & Art Stevens (1977, USA). I have a vague memory of this film’s original theatrical release. I can’t remember if I went to see it at the cinema, or if on a trip to the cinema my sisters saw it and I watched some other film. Watching it this time, 38 years later, very little seemed all that familiar. The seagull I sort of remembered, and Madame Medusa I think I remembered… But nothing else. Apparently, The Rescuers was instrumental in turning around Disney’s fortunes – they had not a successful film since The Jungle Book in 1967. I’m not sure I understand why – I can’t think of a weirder pairing for the main characters as Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor. And the animation looked a little crude and not very crisp when compared to Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. I wasn’t that impressed. Amusingly, in 1999 Disney had to recall 3.4 million videocassettes of the second home video release because someone had spotted a photo of a topless women in the background of one of the shots.

Hard to be a God, Aleksey German (2013, Russia). I’d heard a great deal about this film, and everything I’d heard led me to think I’d be much impressed by it. Not just that it was made by a Russian director, and made in that sort of very Russian style; or that it’s an adaptation of a novel by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky… Anyway, I bought the Blu-ray when it was released… and it sort of sat on the pile of films to be watched for six months or so before I finally decided to stick it in the player… An agent from Earth has infiltrated the society of another planet. The humans of the planet are anti-intellectual, and so are mired in the Middle Ages. The agent has taken the place of a local baron, and the local populace treat their nobles as god. On Blu-ray, the filth and squalour of the world German has created is visceral and obvious. The film sort of meanders about, revelling in the awful conditions in which everyone lives, and the dumb laws under which they must survive (an old man is drowned upside down in shit, for example, for writing poetry – and being what the subtitles call a “smartypants”). It’s all very grim and very cheerless, but in a sort of weirdly unbelievable and implausible way. The cinematography is fantastic, the film’s commitment to its world is astonishing… but, even though I like slow cinema, this is not a film in which things happen at a particularly fast pace. I thought I’d like it more than I did, so in that respect it’s disappointing. But it’s definitely a film that stands numerous viewings, so I’m glad I bought a copy. [ABC]

Black God, White Devil*, Glauber Rocha (1964, Brazil). So I’d watched Rocha’s Entranced Earth – because it was on the 1001 Movies Must See Before You Die list, it was a rental, see here – and I really enjoyed it and I was a bit drunk, so I went and bought DVDs of Rocha’s three films, of which Entranced Earth forms the middle part of the trilogy. Black God, White Devil is the first of the three. Obviously, I was interested to see what I made of it. And… well, it’s not a very good transfer. I like that Mr Bongo are releasing hard-to-find non-Anglophone movies, but they don’t seem to put much effort into it. Happily, Black God, White Devil is a good film. A really good film. It has a bit of the Jodorowsky about it, and it works really well. A poor farmer has to flee when he kills his boss (after his boss insists the farmer carry the cost of the loss of the two cattle which died of snake bites en route to market). The farmer and his wife join St Sebastian, an apocalyptic preacher who suggests violence is necessary for redemption. Meanwhile, the government is getting worried about St Sebastian and his growing influence. So they hire bandit Antonio das Mortes to kill the preacher and his followers. Two are left alive to spread the word – yes, the farmer and his wife. And they in turn become bandits. I now want more of Rocha’s films, but the three I have appear to be the only ones that are available. Bah. [0]

Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Koreeda (2004, Japan). This was recommended to me by David Tallerman, who has previously recommended anime films, but this is live action… although “action” may not be the right word. It’s a dramatisation of a true story. A woman with a twelve-year-old son moves into a new apartment. However, she actually has four kids – two are very young and are smuggled into the building inside suitcases, the other is eleven and turns up later. The woman continues to pretend she only has the one kid to her landlord. One day, she heads off to work… and never returns. She has abandoned her children. The oldest boy tries to keep the other children safe and fed, although what little money the mother left soon runs out. Then the utilities are cut off since the bills haven’t been paid. When the youngest girl falls from a stool, hits her head and dies, the three children bury her in a field near the airport. The film is played very flat, like a documentary, which has the odd side-effect of making the mother appear merely flighty instead of criminally negligent. Apparently, the real-life case was somewhat more gruesome – there were five children, not four; the youngest died after being assaulted by friends of the eldest; and all were badly malnourished when discovered by the authorities (after a tip-off from the landlord). Another of the children also died – Wikipedia does not give the cause – and the body was found with the three survivors. The mother gave herself up when the case hit the news. Astonishingly, after she’d served her three year jail sentence, the mother was given custody of the two surviving girls.

Los Olvidados*, Luis Buñuel (1950, Mexico). The title refers to the forgotten kids and teenagers who live on the streets of Mexico City – although this is not a documentary. The teenage leader of a street gang escapes from juvenile jail, tracks down the kid who supposedly grassed him up, then beats him to death with a rock. A younger kid is witness but promises to say nothing. His mother persuades the kid to go straight and he gets a job as a blacksmith’s apprentice. But then the gang leader turns up and steals a knife. The kid is accused of the theft and sent to a progressive rehabilitation centre where, after a dodgy start, he seems to settle down. But then up pops the gang leader again, and he steals some money from the kid. They fight. During the fight, the kid tells everyone the gang leader is a murderer. The gang leader runs away. Later, he tracks down the kid and kills him. But the police are now after him – and they find him and gun him down. Shot in black and white, and in a social realist style, this is anything but a cheerful film. In fact, it’s really grim. To be honest, it didn’t much feel like a Buñuel movie, despite a bizarre dream sequence. To date, I’ve seen eight of Buñuel’s thirty-two films and only really liked two of them – The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, neither of which have that much in common. Much is made of Buñuel’s surrealism, or the surrealist elements of his films, and certainly the surrealism of the two I like is their major draw. But then I don’t see where Tristana, Belle du jour or Viridiana are especially surreal – and Un chien andalou and L’age d’or felt more like experimental films than anything else. An important director, undoubtedly, and one whose movies I will continue to watch – but I can’t say he’d make my top ten, or even top twenty…

The Kid, Charlie Chaplin (1921, USA). I thought this was on the 1001 Movies Must See Before You Die list, I can’t think why I put it on my rental list otherwise, but it’s not. Strange. Anyway, I watched it. The Kid is one of Chaplin’s most famous movies, and probably because of the title character. A woman has her baby stolen, it’s then left in an alleyway, where Chaplin finds it. He tries to get rid of the child, but fails… and so takes it home with him. The film then jumps forward five years, and the baby has grown into a little gamin, whom Chaplin’s tramp uses in his various cons. The kid throws rocks through windows, then Chaplin turns up with a pane of glass and is paid to replace the broken pane. There’s a scene where Chaplin is beaten up by a tough who’s wearing a bizarrely-padded jumper, and lots of Chaplin-like visual jokes… and a frankly bizarre dream sequence in which Chaplin imagines himself as an angel, the kid too, and everyone else who has appeared in the film, and the two of them fly along the ~~street~~ set… and then Chaplin wakes up. He decides to track down the kid’s mother, and return him to his rightful home. Which he does suspiciously easily – mother and son are re-united as if it had been five weeks and not five years, and everyone lives happily ever after. I actually prefer the other Chaplin films I’ve seen to this one, yes, even Monsieur Verdoux.

The African Queen*, John Huston (1951, USA). Katherine Hepburn is the sister of a British missionary (Robert Morley) in German East Africa in 1914. Humph is the captain of the eponymous steam-powered river boat which regularly delivers supplies. WWI breaks out, the Germans burn down the missionaries’ village, Morley is killed, so Hepburn and Humph escape on the African Queen. They plan to follow the river to the lake at its end, and there destroy the German gunboat which is preventing the British from attacking. Along the way, they fall in love, sneak past a German fort which commands an excellent view of the river, fix a broken propellor, survive a trip through some fierce rapids… It’s all very adventuresome – but then it is adapted from a CS Forester novel. Hepburn and Bogart forever hover on the edge of parody; and half the time they feel like impressionists playing the actors playing their roles. It’s all very silly, and amazingly lightweight for a film that’s on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You die list. In fact, I’m surprised it actually made the list. Huston is on there eight times, and some of the choices are baffling – Prizzi’s Honour? WTF? After early classics like The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierre Madre (both also starring Humph), you have to wonder what happened…

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 761

2016-04-28
by iansales 7 Comments

Moving pictures, #20

A nice geographical spread this time, although only two films are from the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list.

Entranced Earth*, Glauber Rocha (1967, Brazil). I watched this while drinking wine, as you do, and liked it so much I drunkenly went and bought it on Amazon, along with the other two films with which it forms a trilogy – Black God, White Devil and Antonio das Mortes. Oh well, these things happen. I’ve since watched it again – sober, of course – and… I still loved it. It’s a very political film, set in the invented country of Eldorado during an election, in which a journalist tries to decide between a conservative candidate and a populist candidate, both of which are corrupt. The narrative skips back and forth in time and place – it opens at the governor’s palace, but there are also scenes with one of candidates out meeting the public, as well as scenes of the other candidate ranting about the natural superiority of the upper classes. The journalist is also a poet, so we get to see some of his poetry as well. And there’s an astonishing series of shots from high up on a radio mast beside a villa built on the top of a mountain. Plus a hot jazz score. And I hate jazz. It’s clearly influenced by France’s New Wave, but not to its detriment. I loved it. A damn good film. A plot that’s all politics, a non-linear narrative… Great stuff. As I said earlier. Obvs. [0]

Late Autumn, Yasujirō Ozu (1960, Japan). And speaking of buying films from Amazon, I’m pretty sure I was sober when I purchased this but I’d actually meant to buy An Autumn Afternoon, which is on the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list, and not Late Autumn, which isn’t. Still, it’s Ozu and you can’t really go wrong with his films. Admittedly, I wasn’t all that taken with Tokyo Story, his most famous film, but I did like Floating Weeds, a later film, a great deal. And, having now watched Late Autumn, which I also liked a great deal, I think I ought to watch more of his films. Such as, er, An Autumn Afternoon. In tihs one, four middle-aged men turn up to the memorial service of a friend of theirs from college days, and decide to find a husband for the attractive daughter of their dead friend. It does not go well. Partly because the young woman does not want to leave her widowed mother alone, but also because the four blokes bungle their attempt at match-making. Late Autumn is a beautifully understated study of professional Japanese life. There are no theatrics, no histrionics, no need for special effects, just people going about their lives… and filmed with no pretensions by Ozu. [dual]

Peau d’âne, Jacques Demy (1970, France). Imagine a muscial version of Cinderella with Catherine Deneuve in the title role, only it’s not Cinderella it’s a story that’s a lot like it but a bit weird in places and, well, very Demy. But pretty much the same. Sort of. Deneuve plays a beautiful princess, whose father shows an un-paternal level of interest in her after her mother’s death. So she runs way to the woods, and with the help of magic appears as a poor and dirty servant girl when wearing the eponymous donkey skin. But the prince of a neighbouring country meets her (all his courtiers are red, whereas hers are blue), and wants to marry her. He has her ring – Cinderella’s slipper, in other words – and calls for every woman in the country to try on the ring so he can identify his one true love. Although the plot is pretty generic, the film is very Demy – the courtiers are completely coloured according to their court, so Deneuve’s retainers even wear blue face make-up; and, of course, there are songs, written by Michel Legrand, so if you’ve seen other Demy films you shold know what to expect. Mildly diverting. [2]

Dancing Hawk, Grzegorz Królikiewicz (1978, Poland). I really do like Polish cinema, butr I’m not entirely sure what to make of this one. Ostensibly, it’s the sotry of a self-made apparatchik, who rises high, only to lose it all in the end. But the opening shots depict his childhood during WWII, through much use of Dutch angles, weird shots and strange colour filters. And there’s an abrupt change to Polish realistic cinema, in that sort of TV drama style they do so well – I’m reminded of Wajda’s Man of Iron and Piestrak’s Test Pilota Pirxa – although that may just be the 1970s vibe. I should really wait until I’d rewatched this film before rewatching, but I’m getting a bit behind on my moving pictures posts… but perhaps I’ll write about it again after a rewatch. I will, however, note that I fancy getting that Królikiewicz box set… [0]

The Paleface*, Norman Z MacLeod (1948, USA). There have been a number of films whose presence on the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list I have found baffling, and none more so than this Bob Hope vehicle which manages to be mildly amusing and… well, that’s about all. My own list would include films others might find surprising, but I’d at least defend them; but there’s no documentation on the 1001 web site, so short of buying the actual book I’ve no way of knowing why this film makes the list. It certainly doesn’t deserve to – in fact, every other film in this post not on the list has a better claim to a place than The Paleface. Which may be slightly unfair, as there are plenty of films on the list which don’t belong on it. Bob Hope plays a dentist, and not a very sucessful one, whom Jane Russell decides to use as cover in her mission to travel eadt and discover who is running guns to the nasty Native Americans (who are, after all, trying to prevent their lands from being occupied by an invader; oh wait, the film doesn’t mention that).

The Stranger, Orson Welles (1946, USA). A war criminal is released so he can lead a war crimes investigator to a bigger fish. He’s followed to a small US town, where the investigator becomes suspicious of one of the local pillars of the community (played by Welles himself). Apparently, te film is notable for a number of reasons – that Welles wasn’t the first choice of director, and that the film incorporates newsreel footage of the Nazi death camps (because the Americans of the time didn’t really think they ever existed; some still don’t). My admiration for Welles’s work has grown over the past couple of years, and although it’s all too easy to forget quite how ground-breaking Citizen Kane was when it was made, so it’s easy to forget that many of his later films weren’t as straightforward as they initially appeared. The Stranger is by no means a highlight of his oeuvre, it is in most respects a relatively straightforward thriller of its time, but there’s lots to like in the less obvious details – such as the characterisation of some of the cast. Welles was never as clever cinematically as Hitchcock, but he was cleverer in other ways. Worth seeing.

1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die count: 758

2016-04-20
by iansales 1 Comment

Moving pictures, #19

Odd how these films fall out. Most of the ones I watch are rentals, so it depends on what gets sent to me – and sometimes they just happen to send me US films. Although, to be fair, Fellini’s Casanova was a rental. But Beware of the Holy Whore was from the Rainer Werner Fassbinder box set I bought last September.

High Plains Drifter*, Clint Eastwood (1973, USA). As I’ve said before, some films you like the idea of more than you like the actual implementation. But perhaps that’s unfair to High Plains Drifter – I sort of like the central conceit, and how it’s realised – mostly – but it’s a Western, a genre I’m not overly fond of, and it suffers somewhat because it’s a Western. A sheriff is whipped to death by bandits while the people of the town look on and do nothing. Some time later, a stranger arrives in town, violently takes it over, and then promises to defend it against the aforementioned bandits. But he’s really the spirit of the dead sheriff and he’s having his revenge on all parties. So he makes the townsfolk do odd things, like paint all the buildings bloody red, set up a feast in the town’s one street… and then it all turns, well, violent. The film was shot in a purpose-built town on the shores of a lake, which perversely made it seem more like a film set, further adding it to the movie’s general air of strangeness. I can’t decide if its failure to convince works for or against it, but I think on balance I prefer other Westerns directed by Eastwood.

Fellini’s Casanova, Federico Fellini (1976, Italy). After the way Fellini’s Satyricon (an earlier film) had slowly won me over as I watched it, I was sort of hoping Fellini’s Casanova would do the same. And early scenes certainly intrigued… if not so much because of what was going on but because the production design looked like an obvious inspiration for David Lynch’s Dune. It wasn’t just the set or costumes, or the fact Casanova’s forehead was shaved much like those of Lynch’s Bene Gesserit; but even the mechanical owl seemed like a piece of set dressing that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Paul Atreides’s bedroom. The plot, thankfully, is entirely different… although “plot” might be too strong a word. The film opens in Venice during Carnival. After one of the weirdest PG-rated sex scenes ever filmed, Casanova is arrested and imprisoned. He later escapes, and then travels about Europe having various debauched adventures. The title role is played by Donald Sutherland, who is dubbed into Italian (Fellini did this quite a bit, using Hollywood stars and dubbing them into Italian; seems an odd practice). Fellini’s Satyricon was wildly self-indulgent but, in a very bonkers way, sort of appealed; Fellini’s Casanova may actually be EVEN MOAR self-indulgent, but while I was watching I didn’t find myself taking to it to the extent I had the earlier film… But thinking about it now, as I write about it, I do wonder if another watch is needed in order to fully experience its self-indulgent weirdness.

Beware of a Holy Whore, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1971, Germany). That’s the last of the Fassbinders now watched, from both of the commemorative box sets; and with this first set it’s been a more variable experience than the second. But of the films included in volume 1, Beware of a Holy Whore, despite the unwieldy, and I’m-not-entirely-sure-what-it’s-referencing, title, this is one of the better ones. It’s set almost entirely in the foyer and bar of a hotel in Spain, where the cast and crew of a movie are waiting for a production to restart because the financing has run dry. Fassbinder plays the producer, and spends a lot of the film shouting at people. Various members engage in sexual pairings, others wander around pontificating. Then the director arrives in a helicopter, is less than impressed with the hotel as a location, but the shooting goes ahead anyway… And then the same old arguments as before take place. It feels very much like a play, and reminds me a little of Chinese Roulette, in which the guests at a country house party play truth or dare. Apparently, the film is semi-autobiographical as it was inspired by Fassbinder’s filming of Whity in Spain earlier that year.

Holiday Inn, Mark Sandrich (1942, USA). This is such a famous film – well, it’s the origin of the song ‘White Christmas’ – that I felt sure it must be on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die list. But it isn’t. And I don’t remember why I put it on my rental list. It’s not like I’m a big fan of Bing Crosby, or Fred Astaire, or Irving Berlin (there are no big star female leads in the film, which is a shame – it probably needed Ginger Rogers, or someone like her; have I said how great Ginger Rogers is?). Anyway, Crosby and Astaire are a singing and dancing act with Virginia Dale, Crosby thinks he’s going to marry her and retire to a farm he’s bought, but Astaire marries her instead. Crosby retires to his farm, it does not go well. He decides to re-invent his farm as a hotel open only on public holidays, with full-on musical entertainment. Marjorie Reynolds gets sort of accidentally hired as a star turn. Astaire turns up, decides Reynolds should be his next partner as she’s a complete star (Dale ran off with someone else), but by this point Crosby has decided he wants to marry her. In most respects, this is a fairly typical 1940s musical with a pair of big-name draws. But… one musical number is done entirely in blackface, and that had never been not offensive. Perhaps that’s why it’s not on the list.

Philadelphia*, Jonathan Demme (1993, USA). A few days after watching this, I was browsing through my spreadsheet of films watched (yes, I track them on a spreadsheet; stop sniggering at the back) and learnt I’d seen this film back in July 2003. My memory is usually quite good for remembering the plots of stories – either literary or cinematic – but I had zero memory of my previous watch of Philadelphia. It obviously made that much of an impression. And having now rewatched it, I can understand why. Writing this a week or so after watching it, and I’m having trouble recalling much of what happened in the movie. High-flying lawyer Tom Hanks has AIDS but doesn’t tell his employer. One of the partners spots a lesion on his face and correctly guesses Hanks’s condition. So they manufacture an incident and fire him for incompetence. Hanks decides to take them to court, and eventually ends up hiring ambulance-chaser Denzel Washington. Despite most of the cast of Philadelphia being homophobic, the word itself is never mentioned. And it’s a level of overt and constant homophobia that actually works against the point the film is trying to make, as if it’s Hanks’s lifestyle which led to his situation, not his disease. Watching the film is also like having a conversation with your grandad where you abruptly realise that his views and opinions haven’t changed with the times. Of course, a movie can’t evolve (well, it could be “rebooted”), so Philadelphia is a snapshot of attitudes in early-nineties USA. And whatever qualities that existed then which led to Hanks winning the Oscar, and the screenplay being nominated for an Oscar, it no longer feels like a film that belongs on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die list.

The Ice Storm*, Ang Lee (1997, USA). There is a type of domestic drama which appears on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die list a number of times and whose appeal I cannot fathom. Perhaps it speaks to the experience of being white, affluent and American. I am not American. I am not affluent. So it usually means zilch to me. The Ice Storm is based on a novel by Rick Moody; I have never read anything by Rick Moody. It takes place over the Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, in a well-off Connecticut suburb. There’s a wife-swapping party, which some husbands seem to enjoy, and some wives are very much set against. There are some weird and kooky college-age kids, who do weird and kooky things. Kevin Kline looks like he’s wearing parodies of 1970s clothes throughout, and Sigourney Weaver appears far too intense to be a bored housewife. And I really didn’t care about any of the characters, or any of their antics. Apparently, the film won best screenplay at Cannes, and Weaver won a BAFTA for best supporting actress. Meh.

1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die count: 756

2016-04-15
by iansales 1 Comment

Moving pictures, #18

More of a geographic spread this time around, with only two of the six from Hollywood – and both of those I only watched because they’re on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. Some of you may have noticed that I had a go at putting together my own version of the list, but so far only managed about 300 films. It’s a work in progress, of course; and will undoubtedly change as I watch more films, or change my minds about films I’ve already listed. It has so far proven difficult not to put too many films on my list by directors I rate highly – such as Dreyer below – but even then I seem to have included half a dozen by one favourite director but only two by another. So it’s not like I’ve been all that consistent. Ah well. We’ll see how it goes. Meanwhile, more films from the actual 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and a few others, what I have viewed recently…

Once Upon a Time, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1922, Denmark). As is no doubt obvious from the title, this is a fairy tale. It’s adapted from a play of the same title by Holger Drachmann, first performed in 1885. The film isn’t complete, however, as about half has been lost – but the Danske Filminstitut have managed to salvage a narrative using still photos and new intertitles based on original sources. It’s a less engaging film than Dreyer’s The Bride of Glomdal, although the staging is often impressive – as can be seen from the still on the DVD cover. I seem to recall the story dragging somewhat – and that there were a lot of intertitles, although whether that was a result of the fact half the footage has been lost, I’m not sure. I seem to recall other films by Dreyer from the same period featuring more intertitles than I’d expected. On the other hand, you’d expect a silent movie adaptation of a stage play to be quite talky… I do like Dreyer’s films – I’d certainly put him in my top ten directors list… (For the record, they would be, at this particular time, in no particular order, Sokurov, Tarkovsky, Suleiman, Antonioni, Haneke, Hitchcock, Dreyer, Benning, Kieślowski and Kaurismäki.)

Goodbye to Language, Jean-Luc Godard (2014, France). Some things I like the idea of more than I like the actual thing. One of those things is experimental cinema. I like that some film-makers explore how the medium can be used to tell stories, film-makers like James Benning, for example. But not every experiment film works for me. I remember watching and not liking Lukas Moodysson’s Container, although I do like Moodysson’s other movies. Godard was a director who certainly experimented, and one or two of his experiments I do indeed like – such as Two or Three Things I Know About Her or Weekend. Goodbye to Language experiments with both 3D filming techniques – entirely lost on me as I watched a 2D version – and cinematic narrative… and it’s not an easy film to watch. There are scenes which look and feel more like documentary footage, there are scenes in which characters lecture at each other (not unusual in a Godard film), there are strange camera tricks and photographic effects. The story has to be puzzled out from what’s shown on the screen, and it’s not at all obvious. Watching Goodbye to Language was a bit of a chore, but, as mentioned earlier, I like the idea of the movie – and might well give it another go sometime. Sometimes it happens you don’t take to something immediately, but leave it a while, return to it, give it another go… and it becomes a favourite. I suspect that won’t happen here, but perhaps I might decide I do actually like it…

A Simple Death, Aleksandr Kaidanovsky (1985, Russia). Kaidanovsky is perhaps better known as an actor – he played the lead in Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and one of Pirx’s crew in Test Pilota Pirxa – but he also directed three feature films: Гость (an adaptation of a Jorge Luis Borges story), Жена Керосинщика, and Простая смерть. The last, A Simple Death, is an adaptation of Tolstoy’s novella, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’, and pretty faithfully follows its plot: a magistrate who has led a mostly good and successful life falls while hanging curtains one day and hurts his side, the pain grows each day until he is bedridden and his codition is terminal, where he reflects on his mortality, his life and the injustice of his current predicament. Although made in 1985, A Simple Death is black and white, and parts of the film reminded me strongly of Sokurov’s Stone, in which Chekhov returns to the present day and surprises the young man who is caretaker of his house. There’s a similar aesthetic at work, although Kaidanovsky’s film and camera work is not as experimental as Sokurov’s. Good stuff.

Winchester ’73*, Anthony Mann (1950, USA). The title refers to a model of rifle, the Winchester 1873, which was a superior repeating rifle and much prized. Even more prized, however, was the “one in a thousand”, which was is a particular instance of the Winchester ’73 which was so well-made – more by accident than by design – that it shot so much truer than the other 999 rifles made in that batch. Winchester ’73 opens with a crowd gathering in Dodge City to either witness or take part in a shooting competition, the prize for which is a “one in a thousand”. The contestants are whittled down to two: Jimmy Stewart and Stephen McNally. And there’s plainly bad blood between the two. Stewart wins, but McNally later ambushes him, steals the prize rifle, and gets the hell out of Dodge. Stewart and buddy chase after him. Meanwhile McNally has lost the rifle in card game with a gunrunner, who then sells it to a Native American chief (Rock Hudson) on the warpath. Who then attacks a cavalry detachment, but Stewart and buddy turn up and help them cavalry win the day. Hudson is killed and a young Tony Curtis finds the prize rifle. The sergeant gives it Charkes Drake, as Stewart has already left. Drake, and fiancée Shelley Winters (who had met Stewart back in Dodge), continue with their journey, but come a cropper with a member of McNally’s gang, and so the rifle ends up back in McNally’s hands. At which point Stewart turns up and the two shoot at each other for the gun. Throughout the film, they’ve been depicted as superlative shots, but this last scene has them repeatedly missing each other. Guess they weren’t so good, after all. As mid-centiury Westerns go, Winchester ’73 isn’t a bad one – and it’s certainly refreshing to see Stewart acting tougher than he usually does. But I’m not really sure why it needs to be on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list.

Strictly Ballroom*, Baz Luhrmann (1992, Australia). I should think most of the populations of Australia and the UK, amd a goodly-sized proportion of the US, have already seen this film, but somehow or other I’d never managed to do so. Of course, I only watched it because it was on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. And now I have. It was… okay. It’s a spoof set around a regional ballroom dancing championship in Australia. The son of a dancing school instructor is the local star, and tipped to do well in the competition. But his partner leaves him for another dancer since he has a tendency to stray from “proper dance steps” – and, against his parents wishes, and with some persuasion, he decides to take as his partner a young woman who hangs around the dancing school but is not a dancer. They practice secretly, she develops into an excellent dancer, and he even learns some useful life lessons – and how to dance the pasodoble correctly – from her immigrant parents. Apparently, the film was adapted from an earlier play written by Luhrmann when he was a student. It’s also one of the most successful Australian films of all time. It has now been made into a stage musical, which I guess means it’s now as mainstream as you could possibly get.

American Graffiti*, George Lucas (1973, USA). After THX-1138, Lucas decided to make something more commercial, and so chose a story based on his own memories of growing up in Modesto, California. Although audience response to the film was good, and he had a number of big names batting for him, the studio first wanted their own re-edit of it and then to release it as a TV movie. However, saner heads prevailed, and the film was given a theatrical release, and went on to make a pretty good profit. All of which may be interesting, but is of no consequence when considering American Graffiti as a film. And it’s a Californian coming-of-age movie, a duller subject I can’t imagine. Obnoxious teenagers with over-inflated senses of self-worth driving around small town USA and getting up to drunken antics. Richard Dreyfus spends much of the movie chasing after a young woman he saw fleetingly in a car. Paul Le Mat cruises around with a teenybopper, before ending up in a road race against Harrison Ford. Charles Martin Smith chats up a young woman, mostly by telling lies, and then cruises around with her. And so on… Yawn. I have no idea why this film is on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list.

1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die count: 753

2016-04-11
by iansales 7 Comments

1001 movies…

Having worked my way through a substantial portion of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, it’s only natural I might want to create a similar list myself. After all, not every film I’ve seen from the list to my mind belongs on it; and there are a number of movies I think should have been on it but weren’t. So…

Unfortunately, picking 1001 films for such a list is easier said than done. I’ve watched a lot of films over the years, and a number of them were, I thought, excellent. But a thousand of them? And, of course, I’d want my list to have a good spread – across the decades, and across countries (and not have over half from the US, like the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list).

I’ve so far managed to put together around a third of my list:

1 Nosferatu, FW Murnau (1922, Germany)
2 La roue, Abel Gance (1923, France)
3 Our Hospitality, Buster Keaton (1923, USA)
4 Aelita, Yakov Protazanov (1924, Russia)
5 Strike, Sergei Eisenstein (1924, Russia)
6 The Great White Silence, Herbert G Ponting (1924, UK)
7 Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein (1925, Russia)
8 Metropolis, Fritz Lang (1927, Germany)
9 The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1928, Denmark)
10 A Throw of the Dice, Franz Osten (1929, India)
11 Frau im Mond, Fritz Lang (1929, Germany)
12 Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov (1929, Russia)
13 Pandora’s Box, GW Pabst (1929, Germany)
14 Zemyla, Aleksandr Dovzhenko (1930, Russia)
15 City Lights, Charlie Chaplin (1931, USA)
16 Tabu, FW Murnau (1931, USA)
17 42nd Street, Lloyd Bacon (1933, USA)
18 Footlight Parade, Lloyd Bacon (1933, USA)
19 Gold Diggers of 1933, Mervyn LeRoy (1933, USA)
20 L’atalante, Jean Vigo (1934, France)
21 Tag der Freiheit, Leni Riefenstahl (1935, Germany)
22 Swing Time, George Stevens (1936, USA)
23 Things to Come, William Cameron Menzies (1936, UK)
24 La grande illusion, Jean Renoir (1937, France)
25 The Adventures of Robin Hood, Michael Curtiz (1938, USA)
26 La règle de jeu, Jean Renoir (1939, France)
27 Citizen Kane, Orson Welles (1941, USA)
28 Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges (1941, USA)
29 The Maltese Falcon, John Huston (1941, USA)
30 Went the Day Well?, Cavalcanti (1942, UK)
31 Day of Wrath, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1943, Denmark)
32 Henry V, Laurence Olivier (1944, UK)
33 Ivan the Terrible Part 1, Sergei Eisenstein (1944, Russia)
34 Leave Her to Heaven, John M Stahl (1945, USA)
35 Mildred Pierce, Michael Curtiz (1945, USA)
36 Black Narcissus, Powell & Pressburger (1946, UK)
37 It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra (1946, USA)
38 The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler (1946, USA)
39 Gentleman’s Agreement, Elia Kazan (1947, USA)
40 Spring in a Small Town, Mu Fei (1948, China)
41 The Third Man, Carol Reed (1949, UK)
42 Whirlpool, Otto Preminger (1949, USA)
43 Cinderella, Clyde Geronimi (1950, USA)
44 Orphée, Jean Cocteau (1950, France)
45 The Day the Earth Stood Still, Robert Wise (1951, USA)
46 Monkey Business, Howard Hawks (1952, USA)
47 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks (1953, USA)
48 Gion Bayashi, Kenji Mizoguchi (1953, Japan)
49 Madame de…, Max Ophüls (1953, France)
50 Shane, George Stevens (1953, USA)
51 The Cruel Sea, Charles Frend (1953, UK)
52 Les Diaboliques, Henri-George Clouzot (1954, France)
53 Magnificent Obsession, Douglas Sirk (1954, USA)
54 Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock (1954, USA)
55 All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk (1955, USA)
56 Violent Saturday, Richard Flesicher (1955, USA)
57 Forbidden Planet, Fred M Wilcox (1956, USA)
58 High Society, Charles Walters (1956, USA)
59 The Burmese Harp, Kon Ichikawa (1956, Japan)
60 The Searchers, John Ford (1956, USA)
61 Les Girls, George Cukor (1957, USA)
62 Ivan the Terrible Part 2, Sergei Eisenstein (1958, Russia)
63 Mon oncle, Jacques Tati (1958, France)
64 Some Came Running, Vincent Minelli (1958, USA)
65 Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock (1958, USA)
66 Der Tiger von Eschnapur, Fritz Lang (1959, Germany)
67 Floating Weeds, Yasujiro Ozo (1959, Japan)
68 Imitation of Life, Douglas Sirk (1959, USA)
69 Nebo Zovyot, Valery Fokin (1959, Russia)
70 Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks (1959, USA)
71 Sleeping Beauty, Clyde Geronimi (1959, USA)
72 Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder (1959, USA)
73 The Best of Everything, Jean Negulesco (1959, USA)
74 The World of Apu, Satyajit Ray (1959, India)
75 A Cloud-Capped Star, Ritwik Ghatak (1960, India)
76 Knights of the Teutonic Order, Aleksandr Ford (1960, Poland)
77 L’avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni (1960, Italy)
78 Le testament d’Orphée, Jean Cocteau (1960, France)
79 Peeping Tom, Michael Powell (1960, UK)
80 Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock (1960, USA)
81 Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais (1961, France)
82 Lola, Jacques Demy (1961, France)
83 The Exiles, Kent Mackenzie (1961, USA)
84 8½, Frederico Fellini (1962, Italy)
85 Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda (1962, France)
86 Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean (1962, UK)
87 The Exterminating Angel, Luis Buñuel (1962, Mexico)
88 Ikarie XB-1, Jindřich Polák (1963, Czech Republic)
89 Le mépris, Jean-Luc Godard (1963, France)
90 Passenger, Andrzej Munk (1963, Poland)
91 Shock Corridor, Samuel Fuller (1963, USA)
92 The Haunting, Robert Wise (1963, USA)
93 The Leopard, Luchino Visconti (1963, Italy)
94 Culloden, Peter Watkins (1964, GB)
95 Gertrud, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1964, Denmark)
96 Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni (1964, Italy)
97 Woman of the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara (1964, Japan)
98 Doctor Zhivago, David Lean (1965, UK)
99 Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sergei Parajanov (1965, Russia)
100 The Ipcress File, Sidney J Furie (1965, UK)
101 The War Game, Peter Watkins (1965, UK)
102 Blow-up, Michelangelo Antonioni (1966, UK)
103 Fahrenheit 451, François Truffaut (1966, USA)
104 Falstaff – Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles (1966, Spain)
105 Queen of Blood, Curtis Harrington (1966, USA)
106 The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo (1966, Italy)
107 Wings, Larisa Shepitko (1966, Russia)
108 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Jean-Luc Godard (1967, France)
109 Les demoiselles de Rochefort, Jacques Demy (1967, France)
110 Playtime, Jacques Tati (1967, France)
111 The Firemen’s Ball, Miloš Forman (1967, Czech Republic)
112 Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard (1967, France)
113 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick (1968, USA)
114 Shame, Ingmar Bergman (1968, Sweden)
115 The Colour of Pomegranates, Sergei Parajanov (1968, Russia)
116 The Valley of the Bees, Frantisek Vlácil (1968, Czech Republic)
117 Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper (1969, USA)
118 Fellini Satyricon, Frederico Fellini (1969, Italy)
119 The Confrontation, Miklós Jancso (1969, Hungary)
120 The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah (1969, USA)
121 El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky (1970, Mexico)
122 Moonwalk One, Theo Kamecke (1970, USA)
123 Secrets of Sex, Antony Balch (1970, UK)
124 The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci (1970, Italy)
125 Zabriskie Point, Michelangelo Antonioni (1970, USA)
126 Get Carter, Mike Hodges (1971, UK)
127 Out 1, Jacques Rivette (1971, France)
128 Punishment Park, Peter Watkins (1971, USA)
129 Szindbád, Zoltán Huszárik (1971, Hungary)
130 The Third Part of the Night, Andrzej Żuławski (1971, Poland)
131 Wake in Fright, Ted Kotcheff (1971, Australia)
132 Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Werner Herzog (1972, Germany)
133 Cries and Whispers, Ingmar Bergman (1972, Sweden)
134 Eolomea, Hermann Zschoche (1972, Germany)
135 Love in the Afternoon, Éric Rohmer (1972, France)
136 Red Psalm, Miklós Jancso (1972, Hungary)
137 F for Fake, Orson Welles (1973, USA)
138 La Planète Sauvage, René Laloux (1973, France)
139 The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky (1973, Chile)
140 The Scarlet Letter, Wim Wenders (1973, Germany)
141 Effi Briest, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1974, Germany)
142 Dersu Uzala, Akira Kurosawa (1975, Russia)
143 Jeanne Dielmann, 23 Quaie de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Chantal Akerman (1975, France)
144 Mirror, Andrei Tarkovsky (1975, Russia)
145 Man of Marble, Andrzej Wajda (1976, Poland)
146 The Man Who Fell to Earth, Nicolas Roeg (1976, UK)
147 Star Wars: A New Hope, George Lucas (1977, USA)
148 Autumn Sonata, Ingmar Bergman (1978, Sweden)
149 Alien, Ridley Scott (1979, UK)
150 All That Jazz, Bob Fosse (1979, USA)
151 Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola (1979, USA)
152 Christ Stopped at Eboli, Francesco Rosi (1979, Italy)
153 Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky (1979, Russia)
154 Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Robert Wise (1979, USA)
155 The Black Hole, Gary Nelson (1979, USA)
156 The Marriage of Maria Braun, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1979, Germany)
157 La naissance du jour, Jacques Demy (1980, France)
158 Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, Vladimir Menshov (1980, Russia)
159 The Big Red One, Samuel Fuller (1980, USA)
160 Man of Iron, Andrzej Wajda (1981, Poland)
161 The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Karel Resiz (1981, UK)
162 Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam (1981, UK)
163 Blade Runner, Ridley Scott (1982, USA)
164 Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog (1982, Germany)
165 Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio (1982, USA)
166 Crime and Punishment, Aki Kaurismäki (1983, Finland)
167 Krull, Peter Yates (1983, UK)
168 The Fourth Man, Paul Verhoeven (1983, Netherlands)
169 American Dreams (lost + found), James Benning (1984, USA)
170 Nineteen Eighty-four, Michael Radford (1984, UK)
171 No End, Krzysztof Kieślowski (1984, Poland)
172 A Simple Death, Aleksandr Kajdanovsky (1985, Russia)
173 Brazil, Terry Gilliam (1985, UK)
174 Calamari Union, Aki Kaurismäki (1985, Finland)
175 Come and See, Elem Klimov (1985, Russia)
176 Das Boot, Wolfgang Petersen (1985, Germany)
177 O-Bi, O-Ba. Koniec Cywilizacji, Piotr Szulkin (1985, Poland)
178 Ran, Akira Kurosawa (1985, Japan)
179 Blue Velvet, David Lynch (1986, USA)
180 The Fly, David Cronenberg (1986, USA)
181 Babette’s Feast, Gabriel Axel (1987, Denmark)
182 Royal Space Force: Wings of Honnemâise, Hiroyuki Yamaga (1987, Japan)
183 Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders (1987, Germany)
184 Yeelen, Souleymane Cissé (1987, Mali)
185 Distant Voices, Still Lives, Terence Davies (1988, UK)
186 On the Silver Globe, Andrzej Żuławski (1988, Poland)
187 Story of Women, Claude Chabrol (1988, France)
188 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Pedro Almodóvar (1988, Spain)
189 For All Mankind, Al Reinert (1989, USA)
190 Leningrad Cowboys Go America, Aki Kaurismäki (1989, Finland)
191 The Abyss, James Cameron (1989, USA)
192 The Seventh Continent, Michael Haneke (1989, Austria)
193 Close-up, Abbas Kiarostami (1990, Iran)
194 The Second Circle, Aleksandr Sokurov (1990, Russia)
195 The Sheltering Sky, Bernardo Bertolucci (1990, UK)
196 Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro (1991, France)
197 Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Fax Bahr & George Hickenlooper (1991, USA)
198 La belle noiseuse, Jacques Rivette (1991, France)
199 Only Yesterday, Isao Takahata (1991, Japan)
200 The Double Life of Veronique, Krzysztof Kieślowski (1991, France)
201 Man Bites Dog, Belvoir, Bonzel & Poelvoorde (1992, Belgium)
202 Mięso (Ironica), Piotr Szulkin (1993, Poland)
203 Ocean Waves, Tomomi Mochizuki (1993, Japan)
204 Caro diario, Nanni Moretti (1994, Italy)
205 London, Patrick Keiller (1994, UK)
206 The KIngdom, Lars von Trier (1994, Denmark)
207 Apollo 13, Ron Howard (1995, USA)
208 Dead Man, Jim Jarmusch (1995, USA)
209 Deseret, James Benning (1995, USA)
210 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Adtiya Chopra (1995, India)
211 Safe, Todd Haynes (1995, USA)
212 Underground, Emir Kusturica (1995, Serbia)
213 Lone Star, John Sayles (1996, USA)
214 Insomnia, Erik Skjoldbærg (1997, Norway)
215 Mother and Son, Aleksandr Sokurov (1997, Russia)
216 Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven (1997, USA)
217 The Fifth Element, Luc Besson (1997, France)
218 Festen, Tomas Vinterberg (1998, Denmark)
219 Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Karan Johar (1998, India)
220 Run Lola Run, Tom Tykwer (1998, Germany)
221 Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg (1998, USA)
222 Sliding Doors, Peter Howitt (1998, UK)
223 The Thin Red Line, Terence Malick (1998, USA)
224 X-Files: Fight the Future, Rob Bowman (1998, USA)
225 Beau travail, Claire Denis (1999, France)
226 In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-Wai (1999, China)
227 The Matrix, Wachowskis (1999, USA)
228 The Wind Will Carry Us, Abbas Kiarostami (1999, Iran)
229 Amores Perros, Alejandro González Iñárritu (2000, Mexico)
230 Kippur, Amos Gitai (2000, Israel)
231 Le goût des autre, Agnès Jaoui (2000, France)
232 Memento, Christopher Nolan (2000, USA)
233 Nine Queens, Fábian Bielinsky (2000, Argentina)
234 The Circle, Jafar Panahi (2000, Iran)
235 Water Drops on Burning Rocks, François Ozon (2000, France)
236 Werckmeister Harmonies, Béla Tarr (2000, Hungary)
237 X-Men, Bryan Singer (2000, USA)
238 A Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, Chris Marker (2001, France)
239 Atanarjuat the Fast Runner, Zacharias Kunuk (2001, Canada)
240 Avalon, Mamoru Oshii (2001, Japan)
241 Mulholland Drive, David Lynch (2001, USA)
242 No Man’s Land, Danis Tanović (2001, Bosnia)
243 Secret Ballot, Babak Payami (2001, Iran)
244 Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki (2001, Japan)
245 The Discovery of Heaven, Jeroen Krabbé (2001, Netherlands)
246 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson (2001, USA)
247 8 femmes, François Ozon (2002, France)
248 City of God, Fernando Meireilles & Kátia Lund (2002, Brazil)
249 Divine Intervention, Elia Suleiman (2002, Palestine)
250 Hero, Zhang Yimou (2002, China)
251 Lilya 4-ever, Lukas Moodysson (2002, Sweden)
252 Russian Ark, Aleksandr Sokurov (2002, Russia)
253 Osama, Siddiq Barmak (2003, Afghanistan)
254 Zatoichi, Beat Takeshi (2003, Japan)
255 Atash, Tawfik Abu Wael (2004, Palestine)
256 Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel (2004, Germany)
257 Head-on, Fatih Akin (2004, Germany)
258 Moolaadé, Ousmane Sembène (2004, Senegal)
259 Primer, Shane Carruther (2004, USA)
260 Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow, Kerry Conran (2004, USA)
261 The Consequences of Love, Paolo Sorrentino (2004, Italy)
262 The Incredibles, Brad Bird (2004, USA)
263 Free Zone, Amos Gitai (2005, Israel)
264 Frozen Land, Aku Louhimies (2005, Finland)
265 Tsotsi, Gavin Hood (2005, South Africa)
266 Atomised, Oskar Roehler (2006, Germany)
267 Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón (2006, UK)
268 Daratt, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (2006, Chad)
269 Jar City, Baltasar Kormákur (2006, Iceland)
270 Lady Chatterley, Pascale Ferran (2006, France)
271 Ostrov, Pavel Lungin (2006, Russia)
272 Red Road, Andrea Arnold (2006, UK)
273 The Bothersome Man, Jens Lien (2006, Norway)
274 The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006, Germany)
275 The Yacoubian Building, Hamed Marwan (2006, Egypt)
276 In the Shadow of the Moon, David Sington (2007, UK)
277 La Antena, Esteban Sapir (2007, Argentina)
278 Paranormal Activity, Oran Peli (2007, USA)
279 The Band’s Visit, Eran Kolirin (2007, Israel)
280 Timecrimes, Nacho Vigalondo (2007, Spain)
281 XXY, Lucia Penzo (2007, Argentina)
282 Gomorra, Matteo Garrone (2008, Italy)
283 Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson (2008, Sweden)
284 She Should Have Gone to the Moon, Ulrike Kubatta (2008, UK)
285 Tears for Sale, Uros Stajonavic (2008, Serbia)
286 The Wedding Song, Karin Albou (2008, Tunisia)
287 About Elly, Asghar Farhadi (2009, Iran)
288 Ajami, Scandar Copti & Yaron Shani (2009, Israel)
289 Antichrist, Lars von Trier (2009, Denmark)
290 Cargo, Ivan Engler & Ralph Etter (2009, Switzerland)
291 Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold (2009, UK)
292 Hierro, Gabe Ibáñez (2009, Spain)
293 No One Knows About Persian Cats, Bahman Ghobadi (2009, Iran)
294 The Secret in their Eyes, Juan José Campanella (2009, Argentina)
295 The Time that Remains, Elia Suleiman (2009, Palestine)
296 The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke (2009, Germany)
297 Villa Amalia, Benoît Jacquot (2009, France)
298 Watchmen, Zack Snyder (2009, USA)
299 Women without Men, Shirin Neshat & Shoja Azari (2009, Iran)
300 Four Lions, Chris Morris (2010, UK)
301 Norwegian Ninja, Thomas Capellan Malling (2010, Norway)
302 Of Gods and Men, Xavier Beauvois (2010, France)
303 Troll Hunter, André Øvredal (2010, Norway)
304 Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik (2010, USA)
305 Apollo 18, Gonzalo Lopéz-Gallego (2011, USA)
306 Hanna, Joe Wright (2011, USA)
307 Sound of My Voice, Zal Batmanglij (2011, USA)
308 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher (2011, USA)
309 The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodóvar (2011, Spain)
310 Call Girl, Mikael Marcimain (2012, Sweden)
311 Dredd, Pete Travis (2012, UK)
312 John Carter, Andrew Stanton (2012, USA)
313 The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer (2012, UK)
314 Wadjda, Haifaa al-Mansour (2012, Saudi Arabia)
315 Europa Report, Sebastián Cordero (2013, USA)
316 Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón (2013, USA)
317 Nympho()maniac, Lars von Trier (2013, Denmark)
318 The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino (2013, Italy)
319 Upstream Colour, Shane Carruther (2013, USA)
320 Predestination, Michael & Peter Spierig (2014, Australia)
321 Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer (2014, UK)

At present, it breaks down as follows by country and decade.

There are still too many US films (29%) and too many from the first decade of this century (22%). There are some directors I’d like to include at least one work by, such as Otto Preminger, but I have yet to pick one. One or two of my choices may not make the final list, especially some of the science fiction films. But most choices I’m prepared to defend (although one or two – Queen Of Blood, for example – is just me being a bit perverse for the sake of it, although I do love the film…). One or two films I chose because of their influence on cinema, rather than because they are good films per se; but there are still a number of cinematic movements without representatives. Many of the films listed are personal favourites – that undoubtedly swayed my vote, but hey I have good taste in movies anyway…

There are also one or two directors who certainly belong on the list but I may not have chosen their best, or most obvious, films. Sometimes it’s because I much prefer the film I picked, sometimes it’s because I wasn’t sure which one to choose. I also need to watch more Bollywood films to see if more of those should make my list…. And more cinema from assorted African and South American countries… Not to mention exploring more of the oeuvres of world-class directors like Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray…

Of course, if there other movies which belong on this list that I’ve not listed, then feel free to name them in a comment. But please, don’t go suggesting loads of shitty Hollywood films. Yes, I’m going to need help to reach 1001 films, but I’m looking for good films…

Oh, and the first person to suggest The Force Awakens will be roundly chastised…

It Doesn't Have To Be Right…

… it just has to sound plausible

Category Archives: films