If you like this blog, but want the list to be four times longer, the writer to know what he's talking about and articles that actually have some researched depth rather than short bursts of inane ill-informed rambling, then take a look at Shooting Down Pictures. The website's a bit of a mess but there is a heck of a lot of material on there so full props to Kevin Lee for an awesome job.
That said, I believe I do still have some things to offer my readers. I've not yet finished my list, so there are still plenty of articles to come (whether this is a good thing is up to you). My articles are short enough to be read on the toilet. And when you visit my blog it doesn't auto-play a Big Lebowski video every single bloody time.
Saturday 11 December 2010
220. A Matter of Life and Death
Definitely in the "should have seen it" camp, rather than "didn't know I should have seen it", this is one of those Sunday afternoon classics that's on quite a bit but I'd never managed to catch. David Niven (always brilliant) plays the RAF pilot who's due to die over the Channel but somehow the powers that be fail to drag him off to heaven and he survives. They realise their mistake a few hours later but in the mean time he's fallen in love with a radio operator and wants to appeal his death.
Or maybe not. I'll try again. David Niven (always brilliant) plays an RAF pilot who, after crashing his plane in the Channel, gets diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumour. This causes him to hallucinate various conversations with a French fop who claims to be his guide to the after life. Initially skeptical, as the tumour develops he starts to believe this absurd story and has to decide on who to represent him in the trial.
The film is fantastic, of course. Perfectly played, well scripted, intelligent, with some brilliant ideas. It has enough romance to give the film heart but not so much as to make it sickly. There are some great random moments, such as the naked boy on the beach (why?). The heavenly scenes (in black and white, a clever flipping of the Wizard of Oz conceit) are imaginative and funny (and you even catch a glimpse of Richard Attenborough up there) and the earthbound scenes are comfortingly British in a Dad's Army sort of way.
If there is a false note in the film, it's probably the final act. Niven's case gets heard by a celestial court which, rather bizarrely, briefly turns into an Americans vs British slanging match. It's clearly trying to make some comment on Anglo-American relations at the time but it feels a bit tacked on. As if Powell and Pressburger had a great little fantasy romance ready to shoot but the government wanted to inject some of their post-war foreign policy into the mix. I'm quibbling, though.
Despite the above, the question I'm asking myself is: did I love it? I think I have to say no. I admire it, but I didn't get that feeling of awe or excitement from it. It's undoubtedly a well-made film but in the end it just didn't capture my imagination as much as plenty of lesser films have. Perhaps it's a little dated, perhaps it's a little familiar, I'm not really sure. Maybe it needs a second viewing, but it might be a while before I get round to it.
Or maybe not. I'll try again. David Niven (always brilliant) plays an RAF pilot who, after crashing his plane in the Channel, gets diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumour. This causes him to hallucinate various conversations with a French fop who claims to be his guide to the after life. Initially skeptical, as the tumour develops he starts to believe this absurd story and has to decide on who to represent him in the trial.
The film is fantastic, of course. Perfectly played, well scripted, intelligent, with some brilliant ideas. It has enough romance to give the film heart but not so much as to make it sickly. There are some great random moments, such as the naked boy on the beach (why?). The heavenly scenes (in black and white, a clever flipping of the Wizard of Oz conceit) are imaginative and funny (and you even catch a glimpse of Richard Attenborough up there) and the earthbound scenes are comfortingly British in a Dad's Army sort of way.
If there is a false note in the film, it's probably the final act. Niven's case gets heard by a celestial court which, rather bizarrely, briefly turns into an Americans vs British slanging match. It's clearly trying to make some comment on Anglo-American relations at the time but it feels a bit tacked on. As if Powell and Pressburger had a great little fantasy romance ready to shoot but the government wanted to inject some of their post-war foreign policy into the mix. I'm quibbling, though.
Despite the above, the question I'm asking myself is: did I love it? I think I have to say no. I admire it, but I didn't get that feeling of awe or excitement from it. It's undoubtedly a well-made film but in the end it just didn't capture my imagination as much as plenty of lesser films have. Perhaps it's a little dated, perhaps it's a little familiar, I'm not really sure. Maybe it needs a second viewing, but it might be a while before I get round to it.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
112. Un Chien Andalou
I hadn't seen this before, though I of course knew about the infamous eyeball scene. Often lauded as a masterpiece, it's a French/Spanish surrealist short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali but I'm not going to describe the film any more than that — watch it and you'll understand!
I have to say I'm seriously wondering if there's an Emperor's New Clothes thing going on here. Buñuel is a revered director (who made several highly regarded films surprisingly not on this list) and Dali is one of the most famous artists of the last century, so obviously this has to be a great film. After all, that's what film students the world over are told. So how come it seems to be total shit? Oh well, it must be my shortcomings as a film watcher because all those people can't be wrong. I don't want to look like a dick so I'll just pretend that it's actually awesome.
Except I'm more than happy to look like a dick, so here's an honest review.
The most interesting thing about it is probably the fact that it's utterly meaningless. And that's not me being stupid; the writers purposefully made it void of all symbolism, metaphor or interpretation. This means that any critic who claims to possess some deep understanding of it is an idiot. There's also no plot and I'm pretty sure there aren't any characters either — there are actors in common through the piece but they're just showroom dummies on which the director dresses his bizarre scenes. Just because the girl in the opening scene looks the same as the girl running away from the bloke tied to the pianos (sigh...) doesn't mean it's the same person any more than Jake Gittes is the same person as Jack Torrance. The whole thing is just really empty and pointless.
Don't put this down to surrealism-bashing. I'm not against the movement and it led to some excellent pieces of artwork. David Lynch's backwards-talking dwarf, for example, is one of the coolest scenes in all television and is undoubtedly "surreal". True surrealism tries to express the chaos of the mind and the trip into Dale Cooper's dream psyche is perfectly weird. Un Chien Andalou, by comparison, is just very tiresome. A load of random stuff happens but you don't care about any of it, can't find any meaning in it and it's not even particularly interesting from a purely visual perspective.
Watch Porky in Wackyland instead — a much better example of surrealist film.
I have to say I'm seriously wondering if there's an Emperor's New Clothes thing going on here. Buñuel is a revered director (who made several highly regarded films surprisingly not on this list) and Dali is one of the most famous artists of the last century, so obviously this has to be a great film. After all, that's what film students the world over are told. So how come it seems to be total shit? Oh well, it must be my shortcomings as a film watcher because all those people can't be wrong. I don't want to look like a dick so I'll just pretend that it's actually awesome.
Except I'm more than happy to look like a dick, so here's an honest review.
The most interesting thing about it is probably the fact that it's utterly meaningless. And that's not me being stupid; the writers purposefully made it void of all symbolism, metaphor or interpretation. This means that any critic who claims to possess some deep understanding of it is an idiot. There's also no plot and I'm pretty sure there aren't any characters either — there are actors in common through the piece but they're just showroom dummies on which the director dresses his bizarre scenes. Just because the girl in the opening scene looks the same as the girl running away from the bloke tied to the pianos (sigh...) doesn't mean it's the same person any more than Jake Gittes is the same person as Jack Torrance. The whole thing is just really empty and pointless.
Don't put this down to surrealism-bashing. I'm not against the movement and it led to some excellent pieces of artwork. David Lynch's backwards-talking dwarf, for example, is one of the coolest scenes in all television and is undoubtedly "surreal". True surrealism tries to express the chaos of the mind and the trip into Dale Cooper's dream psyche is perfectly weird. Un Chien Andalou, by comparison, is just very tiresome. A load of random stuff happens but you don't care about any of it, can't find any meaning in it and it's not even particularly interesting from a purely visual perspective.
Watch Porky in Wackyland instead — a much better example of surrealist film.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
37. Metropolis
I first saw this about 15 years ago when Channel 4 showed the colour-tinted Giorgio Moroder rock opera version, running at 80 minutes. I loved it of course, and didn't even mind the music despite the multiple Razzie nominations. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to the cinema to see the newly rediscovered and lovingly restored almost complete version: pure black and white with an authentic score and a whopping 150 minute running time. Some of the difference in time is technical (the Moroder version was run at a slightly faster speed and used subtitles instead of intertitles) but also there are a lot of previously lost scenes added. In fact, there are now only a couple of scenes missing from the film shown at the 1927 Berlin premiere and they mark these in this version with title cards explaining what should be happening.
In a word, it's awesome and a completely different experience to the first time I saw it. In fact, apart from the iconic scenes everybody knows, it's as if they're two different films. If you've seen Metropolis before and you enjoyed it you owe it to yourself to catch this re-release.
The Metropolis of the title is a sprawling futuristic city with a stark division between the rich thinkers who live in luxury in their ivory towers and the practically enslaved working class who live underground and make the city's machines tick. Both halves are magnificently depicted. Above we have the incredible soaring tower blocks, opulent night-spots and fantastical transport systems - all modelled on the New York of the 20's, itself a futuristic landscape for European eyes. Down below are the machines: enormous, complex and industrial with little or no automation and requiring hordes of oppressed workers to run. The whole thing, of course, is an allegory of Communism but this wasn't the film's strong point for me. In fact, the central thesis of the film — that "between the head and the hands lies the heart" — is a bit heavy-handed (not to mention nauseating) and really didn't need to be repeated throughout the film; there is such a thing as subtext, y'know. That said, this was 1927 and audiences hadn't yet been subjected to thousands of films on this subject so maybe I'm just jaded.
While the politics might not be especially inspired, the film more than makes up for it in sexy robots. Mad scientist Rotwang — who has more than a shade of Strangelove about him — creates the man-machine to replace his dead love and it takes on the appearance of Maria, the leader of an underground movement for better working conditions. With Maria out of the way, the evil doppelgänger actually encourages the workers to rise up so that the city boss has an excuse to kill them off and replace them with an army of robots. It's not quite that simple, though, as Rotwang plans to double-cross him and his son has grown a conscience and rebels (mostly because he's trying to pull Maria).
Brigitte Helm is probably the best thing about the film. It's an incredible performance: virginal and strong as Maria; deranged and sexy as hell as the robot. I can't have been the only person in the audience who preferred the evil version, though, erotically writhing around with those maniacal eyes. It is actually surprisingly risqué, not that I was complaining. Evil Maria does like to touch herself and even in metal form she's built for sex appeal. And that dance, phew! I've read that Fritz Lang (the director) was a bit of a tyrant and that the shoot was hell for many of the cast, especially Helm, but it clearly got the best out of her.
The film is chock full of iconic scenes: the transformation scene, obviously; Freder at the clock (but lord knows what mechanism he's actually working there); the children fleeing the rising flood waters; Rotwang chasing Maria through the pitch-black tunnels; and of course those amazing Futurama cityscapes. It's exciting and intelligent and massively influential to not only science fiction film makers. Perhaps in another 15 years they'll have discovered the last missing pieces in some cave in Afghanistan and I'll go and see it again.
In a word, it's awesome and a completely different experience to the first time I saw it. In fact, apart from the iconic scenes everybody knows, it's as if they're two different films. If you've seen Metropolis before and you enjoyed it you owe it to yourself to catch this re-release.
The Metropolis of the title is a sprawling futuristic city with a stark division between the rich thinkers who live in luxury in their ivory towers and the practically enslaved working class who live underground and make the city's machines tick. Both halves are magnificently depicted. Above we have the incredible soaring tower blocks, opulent night-spots and fantastical transport systems - all modelled on the New York of the 20's, itself a futuristic landscape for European eyes. Down below are the machines: enormous, complex and industrial with little or no automation and requiring hordes of oppressed workers to run. The whole thing, of course, is an allegory of Communism but this wasn't the film's strong point for me. In fact, the central thesis of the film — that "between the head and the hands lies the heart" — is a bit heavy-handed (not to mention nauseating) and really didn't need to be repeated throughout the film; there is such a thing as subtext, y'know. That said, this was 1927 and audiences hadn't yet been subjected to thousands of films on this subject so maybe I'm just jaded.
While the politics might not be especially inspired, the film more than makes up for it in sexy robots. Mad scientist Rotwang — who has more than a shade of Strangelove about him — creates the man-machine to replace his dead love and it takes on the appearance of Maria, the leader of an underground movement for better working conditions. With Maria out of the way, the evil doppelgänger actually encourages the workers to rise up so that the city boss has an excuse to kill them off and replace them with an army of robots. It's not quite that simple, though, as Rotwang plans to double-cross him and his son has grown a conscience and rebels (mostly because he's trying to pull Maria).
Brigitte Helm is probably the best thing about the film. It's an incredible performance: virginal and strong as Maria; deranged and sexy as hell as the robot. I can't have been the only person in the audience who preferred the evil version, though, erotically writhing around with those maniacal eyes. It is actually surprisingly risqué, not that I was complaining. Evil Maria does like to touch herself and even in metal form she's built for sex appeal. And that dance, phew! I've read that Fritz Lang (the director) was a bit of a tyrant and that the shoot was hell for many of the cast, especially Helm, but it clearly got the best out of her.
The film is chock full of iconic scenes: the transformation scene, obviously; Freder at the clock (but lord knows what mechanism he's actually working there); the children fleeing the rising flood waters; Rotwang chasing Maria through the pitch-black tunnels; and of course those amazing Futurama cityscapes. It's exciting and intelligent and massively influential to not only science fiction film makers. Perhaps in another 15 years they'll have discovered the last missing pieces in some cave in Afghanistan and I'll go and see it again.
Saturday 30 October 2010
220. His Girl Friday
This was on TV a while back and I caught up with it last weekend. It's a 1940 screwball comedy about newspaper reporters and it's available in the public domain so I can link you to the whole film:
Cary Grant plays a scumbag editor who, as the opening title card says, will do anything short of murder to get the story. He's a real git who's quite happy to threaten women, cheat on politicians, rob and kidnap people all for the story. He's also a real charmer and very funny. Rosalind Russell — equally smart and funny — is the star journalist who's looking to get away from the business and settle down in Albany with sweet dull Ralph Bellamy. She's also his ex-wife ("I intended to be with you on our honeymoon, honest I did," says Grant). But when a story breaks she can't resist Grant pushing her back into the fray and finds that she misses her old life.
The side-story about a death row inmate is actually oddly serious. John Qualen is accused of killing a man and is sentenced to death but there's a question mark over his sanity and, since the victim was black and there are a lot of black voters in the town, there are also question marks over the motives of the politicians trying to see him executed. Then when the confused man's depressed girlfriend jumps out of a window you might think that we were watching a serious piece of drama. I guess there's some comment on the ethics of journalism too, but all that grown-up stuff is pushed swiftly aside by the tidal wave of wisecracks — many ad-libbed — from the two stars and their supporting cast.
The relationship between Grant and Russell is a little strange. He's really a terrible person and you can see why she left him. She's no happier with Bellamy, though, and over the course of the film Grant gradually worms his way back into her heart — mostly by framing Bellamy for various crimes so that he's occupied with the police. It's interesting, though, that she doesn't even consider the third option — as if to realise that both men are wrong for her would mean she dies alone. She does end up with one of them, but it's refreshingly unromantic to think that the relationship is almost certainly over a week or two at most beyond the end credits!
I can't find any hard statistics on the subject, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the wordiest film ever made. It runs to only 92-minutes, too, so that shows just what a pace they're going at. One source clocks them at 240 words per minute, which is about double normal talking speed. I recently saw The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin-scripted film about the founding of Facebook. It's also pretty wordy and apparently to get the script to fit a reasonable time rather than cut out sections they instead got the actors to talk faster. Whether that's true or not, it's still slow and contemplative in comparison to His Girl Friday. The dialogue is relentless, with constant jokes and humorous asides. The actors don't even wait until the other person's sentence is finished before starting their own lines. In one remarkable scene Russell, typing a story out on her typewriter, has an argument over her shoulder with Bellamy while Cary Grant barks orders over the phone about the layout of the morning edition, frequently breaking off to make jibes at the hapless fiancé. It's sheer chaos but brilliantly executed and I can only imagine how much rehearsal it needed. Some people might find it a bit too manic but I lapped it up and would recommend the film to anyone.
Cary Grant plays a scumbag editor who, as the opening title card says, will do anything short of murder to get the story. He's a real git who's quite happy to threaten women, cheat on politicians, rob and kidnap people all for the story. He's also a real charmer and very funny. Rosalind Russell — equally smart and funny — is the star journalist who's looking to get away from the business and settle down in Albany with sweet dull Ralph Bellamy. She's also his ex-wife ("I intended to be with you on our honeymoon, honest I did," says Grant). But when a story breaks she can't resist Grant pushing her back into the fray and finds that she misses her old life.
The side-story about a death row inmate is actually oddly serious. John Qualen is accused of killing a man and is sentenced to death but there's a question mark over his sanity and, since the victim was black and there are a lot of black voters in the town, there are also question marks over the motives of the politicians trying to see him executed. Then when the confused man's depressed girlfriend jumps out of a window you might think that we were watching a serious piece of drama. I guess there's some comment on the ethics of journalism too, but all that grown-up stuff is pushed swiftly aside by the tidal wave of wisecracks — many ad-libbed — from the two stars and their supporting cast.
The relationship between Grant and Russell is a little strange. He's really a terrible person and you can see why she left him. She's no happier with Bellamy, though, and over the course of the film Grant gradually worms his way back into her heart — mostly by framing Bellamy for various crimes so that he's occupied with the police. It's interesting, though, that she doesn't even consider the third option — as if to realise that both men are wrong for her would mean she dies alone. She does end up with one of them, but it's refreshingly unromantic to think that the relationship is almost certainly over a week or two at most beyond the end credits!
I can't find any hard statistics on the subject, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the wordiest film ever made. It runs to only 92-minutes, too, so that shows just what a pace they're going at. One source clocks them at 240 words per minute, which is about double normal talking speed. I recently saw The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin-scripted film about the founding of Facebook. It's also pretty wordy and apparently to get the script to fit a reasonable time rather than cut out sections they instead got the actors to talk faster. Whether that's true or not, it's still slow and contemplative in comparison to His Girl Friday. The dialogue is relentless, with constant jokes and humorous asides. The actors don't even wait until the other person's sentence is finished before starting their own lines. In one remarkable scene Russell, typing a story out on her typewriter, has an argument over her shoulder with Bellamy while Cary Grant barks orders over the phone about the layout of the morning edition, frequently breaking off to make jibes at the hapless fiancé. It's sheer chaos but brilliantly executed and I can only imagine how much rehearsal it needed. Some people might find it a bit too manic but I lapped it up and would recommend the film to anyone.
Saturday 9 October 2010
82. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Ok, question number one: why is this film called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but the sequels and remake are called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Who decided to drop the space, and why?
Anyway, there's probably little need to tell you what goes on in this film. It's famous and even if you haven't seen it (which I hadn't until the end of August) you still know it through the many films it's influenced and Simpsons jokes referencing it. If you've seen any of the modern slasher films, too, the plot will feel familiar — a group of kids on a trip to the country meet some bad folks and some grisly ends — but this was the landmark of the genre and if not the very first was certainly the most important. As such it should be treated as a historical piece as well as an individual work.
It's quite fun to look at the similarities with Star Wars. They're both pioneering films, financially successful, enormously influential and spawned several terrible sequels. Both directors gained great acclaim but never quite reached those heights again and had — creatively at least — quite disappointing careers. And they both had beards. But that's a little unfair on Tobe Hooper and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a much better film than Star Wars. But it's not a great film and to be honest I was a little underwhelmed seeing it for the first time after all the hype and expectation.
The first half hour works well, deftly building up tension in the usual way (see earlier comments on Suspiria). Then they get to the creepy old house, the tension ratchets up a few notches and the chain sawing starts. It's superb stuff — terrifying and visceral and very exciting. And considering it was made in 1974 when the audience's taste for such things wasn't quite as high as it is now makes it all the more impressive. I can quite believe all the stories about people fainting in cinemas and having to be stretchered out.
But then the film takes a bizarre left turn for the final act. We get to share a meal with Leatherface and his family and I'm not ashamed to admit I just didn't get it. It's a very poor attempt at black comedy, almost as if Hooper wanted to do a version of The Munsters but without being funny, and fits very strangely into the film that had gone before. Here's a quote from Wikipedia on the film's sequel, made in 1986:
"The emphasis in this sequel is on black comedy, which director Tobe Hooper believed was present in the first film, but unacknowledged by viewers because of its realistic and shocking content."
I like the way they say that Hooper believed it was present, as if he couldn't be sure. Or maybe he tried to put it in but it turned out so badly he decided that it wasn't there after all. Whatever the story, I'm afraid this spoiled the film for me a little. I'm happy to ignore those scenes and concentrate on the good points, of which there are plenty, but I shouldn't have to do that in a top 250 film.
We actually saw this at Frightfest in London so they had a Q+A with the director himself afterwards. I say Q+A, but it was more like nauseatingly fanboyish leading questions and embarrassingly stilted answers. A good public speaker Tobe Hooper is not and I did feel a bit sorry for the man, forced to answer these inane questions from some guy who had once written a GCSE Film Studies essay about him. One comment that did interest me, though, was when Hooper was attempting to show how different he was trying to be with the film. "No Hollywood film would have the actor jump through two windows," he proudly says. And he's probably right, but not necessarily in a good way. You can watch the interview on Youtube and he also talks a little about the black comedy aspect of the film. Mercifully a lot of the most cringe-worthy questions seem to be cut out.
I don't want to sound too critical about it because we had a good time watching it and I would still recommend it highly to anyone. And it's certainly an "important" film in the history of cinema. It's not a masterpiece, though, but why should it have to be?
Anyway, there's probably little need to tell you what goes on in this film. It's famous and even if you haven't seen it (which I hadn't until the end of August) you still know it through the many films it's influenced and Simpsons jokes referencing it. If you've seen any of the modern slasher films, too, the plot will feel familiar — a group of kids on a trip to the country meet some bad folks and some grisly ends — but this was the landmark of the genre and if not the very first was certainly the most important. As such it should be treated as a historical piece as well as an individual work.
It's quite fun to look at the similarities with Star Wars. They're both pioneering films, financially successful, enormously influential and spawned several terrible sequels. Both directors gained great acclaim but never quite reached those heights again and had — creatively at least — quite disappointing careers. And they both had beards. But that's a little unfair on Tobe Hooper and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a much better film than Star Wars. But it's not a great film and to be honest I was a little underwhelmed seeing it for the first time after all the hype and expectation.
The first half hour works well, deftly building up tension in the usual way (see earlier comments on Suspiria). Then they get to the creepy old house, the tension ratchets up a few notches and the chain sawing starts. It's superb stuff — terrifying and visceral and very exciting. And considering it was made in 1974 when the audience's taste for such things wasn't quite as high as it is now makes it all the more impressive. I can quite believe all the stories about people fainting in cinemas and having to be stretchered out.
But then the film takes a bizarre left turn for the final act. We get to share a meal with Leatherface and his family and I'm not ashamed to admit I just didn't get it. It's a very poor attempt at black comedy, almost as if Hooper wanted to do a version of The Munsters but without being funny, and fits very strangely into the film that had gone before. Here's a quote from Wikipedia on the film's sequel, made in 1986:
"The emphasis in this sequel is on black comedy, which director Tobe Hooper believed was present in the first film, but unacknowledged by viewers because of its realistic and shocking content."
I like the way they say that Hooper believed it was present, as if he couldn't be sure. Or maybe he tried to put it in but it turned out so badly he decided that it wasn't there after all. Whatever the story, I'm afraid this spoiled the film for me a little. I'm happy to ignore those scenes and concentrate on the good points, of which there are plenty, but I shouldn't have to do that in a top 250 film.
We actually saw this at Frightfest in London so they had a Q+A with the director himself afterwards. I say Q+A, but it was more like nauseatingly fanboyish leading questions and embarrassingly stilted answers. A good public speaker Tobe Hooper is not and I did feel a bit sorry for the man, forced to answer these inane questions from some guy who had once written a GCSE Film Studies essay about him. One comment that did interest me, though, was when Hooper was attempting to show how different he was trying to be with the film. "No Hollywood film would have the actor jump through two windows," he proudly says. And he's probably right, but not necessarily in a good way. You can watch the interview on Youtube and he also talks a little about the black comedy aspect of the film. Mercifully a lot of the most cringe-worthy questions seem to be cut out.
I don't want to sound too critical about it because we had a good time watching it and I would still recommend it highly to anyone. And it's certainly an "important" film in the history of cinema. It's not a masterpiece, though, but why should it have to be?
Wednesday 6 October 2010
94. Suspiria
This was on Film4 about a month ago as part of the run-up to FrightFest. It's a 1977 horror film which I'm astonished isn't as well known as other works in the genre, because it's clearly one of the best. How come Hallowe'en is shown once a year at a minimum, but Suspiria gets no more attention than a brief mention in Juno?
The plot isn't particularly revolutionary — a plucky virginal heroine heads off to a spooky dance school in Europe where people start getting bumped off — but the plot isn't so important as the style of the film. It's beautiful to look at with these wonderfully lit primary-coloured rooms. Some of the sets are quite reminiscent of The Conformist — it must be an Italian thing.
The masterstroke of director Dario Argento, though, is in the opening scenes. Most horror films like this open slowly, building up the tension, hinting at things to come and then gradually escalate to a great terrifying crescendo. That's standard fare and a lot of very good films have been made in this model (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, reviewed next, being a prominent example). One problem with this, though, is that you get used to the film — its style and pacing — and you learn to predict, whether consciously or unconsciously, what is likely to happen. Argento, however, cunningly flips this on its head by putting all the best stuff right up front. As such, the first 20 minutes are unpredictable, disorienting, shocking and very frightening. You have no idea what's going on, no frame of reference for judging how bad it's going to get. Is it a supernatural villain or is it a human killer? Is the girl we're following the heroine of the film (and therefore safe from an early grave) or an expendable supporting character? You don't know.
As the film progresses things settle down to a more standard setup. The deaths happen at the usual intervals and in between the heroine researches the strange goings on, leading her on a path to the finale. That's not to say the deaths are uninteresting — far from it. They're just expected. Actually they're pretty cool and the girls die in lots of bizarre and sometimes extremely gruesome ways. This is not a film for the squeamish and you certainly get your money's worth in blood.
A word should be said about the soundtrack, by the Italian prog-rock group Goblin. It's just superb and plays a vital role in creating the eerie quality of the movie. Just a few notes of the main theme on the piano is enough to freak my little sister out — always a good talent to have up one's sleeve! What's interesting, too, is that it's not just the music on the soundtrack that works so well but the use of silence. A well-timed silence can send a shiver up your spine just as much as a haunting celeste.
I'm not totally convinced that this film will withstand repeat viewings because once it loses its shock and surprise it might not have a whole lot of substance to it. The Exorcist is such a great film because even after seeing it several times it's still totally enthralling. Scream, on the other hand, was enormous fun at the cinema but when I saw it again a few years later I could see the cracks. Where Suspiria comes in this hierarchy remains to be seen, but for any of you out there who haven't seen it yet, I couldn't recommend another horror film more highly.
The plot isn't particularly revolutionary — a plucky virginal heroine heads off to a spooky dance school in Europe where people start getting bumped off — but the plot isn't so important as the style of the film. It's beautiful to look at with these wonderfully lit primary-coloured rooms. Some of the sets are quite reminiscent of The Conformist — it must be an Italian thing.
The masterstroke of director Dario Argento, though, is in the opening scenes. Most horror films like this open slowly, building up the tension, hinting at things to come and then gradually escalate to a great terrifying crescendo. That's standard fare and a lot of very good films have been made in this model (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, reviewed next, being a prominent example). One problem with this, though, is that you get used to the film — its style and pacing — and you learn to predict, whether consciously or unconsciously, what is likely to happen. Argento, however, cunningly flips this on its head by putting all the best stuff right up front. As such, the first 20 minutes are unpredictable, disorienting, shocking and very frightening. You have no idea what's going on, no frame of reference for judging how bad it's going to get. Is it a supernatural villain or is it a human killer? Is the girl we're following the heroine of the film (and therefore safe from an early grave) or an expendable supporting character? You don't know.
As the film progresses things settle down to a more standard setup. The deaths happen at the usual intervals and in between the heroine researches the strange goings on, leading her on a path to the finale. That's not to say the deaths are uninteresting — far from it. They're just expected. Actually they're pretty cool and the girls die in lots of bizarre and sometimes extremely gruesome ways. This is not a film for the squeamish and you certainly get your money's worth in blood.
A word should be said about the soundtrack, by the Italian prog-rock group Goblin. It's just superb and plays a vital role in creating the eerie quality of the movie. Just a few notes of the main theme on the piano is enough to freak my little sister out — always a good talent to have up one's sleeve! What's interesting, too, is that it's not just the music on the soundtrack that works so well but the use of silence. A well-timed silence can send a shiver up your spine just as much as a haunting celeste.
I'm not totally convinced that this film will withstand repeat viewings because once it loses its shock and surprise it might not have a whole lot of substance to it. The Exorcist is such a great film because even after seeing it several times it's still totally enthralling. Scream, on the other hand, was enormous fun at the cinema but when I saw it again a few years later I could see the cracks. Where Suspiria comes in this hierarchy remains to be seen, but for any of you out there who haven't seen it yet, I couldn't recommend another horror film more highly.
Tuesday 31 August 2010
62. Les Vampires
There are a few films on the list that I'm not particularly looking forward to. Don't get me wrong — I'm sure Sátántangó is a fine film and will be worth watching, but the thought of sitting down to a 7 hour Hungarian epic about Communism doesn't immediately thrill me. The same was true of Les Vampires, a 10-part 1915 silent serial running to over 6 hours, but I gladly admit I was wrong to have my doubts — it's superbly entertaining and although it's almost a century old it still feels very fresh.
Les Vampires has nothing to do with blood-sucking creatures of the night. The title refers to a group of master criminals who terrorise Paris during World War One and the story revolves around young intrepid reporter Philippe Guérande and his faithful sidekick (and brilliantly named) Oscar-Cloud Mazamette fighting against their evil ways. All but the first couple of episodes run to about 45 minutes and they stand perfectly well on their own so you can watch them occasionally while eating your lunch. Here's a link to the first episode, one of the better and shorter ones so well worth a look to see if you'll like the rest.
There are a lot of things to enjoy. Some you might find in a Boy's Own adventure story or a Tintin comic: secret passages, treasure maps, disguises, daring escapes, car chases, cunning traps, hypnosis. Some are rather more macabre: murders, suicides, severed heads in boxes, poisoned rings that kill their wearers, gas chambers. The plots are imaginative and often quite labyrinthine — you have to keep focussed if you want to follow it all! The cast list is enormous, too, and the many disguises and impersonations don't always make it easy to tell who's doing what, but that's quite fun.
One thing I really love about these silent films, which applies equally to the Buster Keaton films I wrote about earlier, is how unconstrained by studio sets they are. Directors were perfectly happy to film outside or in a real house. In later years, this became too expensive to do well and the directors retreated to sound stages where everything could be measured and controlled. Les Vampires has a terrific freedom about it and hundreds of different locations. You get to see all sorts of aspects of 1915 Paris. To be sure, it was a desolate and miserable place — there was a war on and the Western Front wasn't too far away — but that only adds to the character and sense of time the film has.
The central characters themselves are interesting and you develop a fondness for them as the series progresses. Guérande the hero is a bit bland, but his colleague Mazamette is memorable — brave and loyal, but a bit of a clown and with a rough edge. The best thing about it, though, has to be Musidora, the actress who plays Irma Vep — probably the first screen femme fatale and one of the most beautiful. Strong and deadly with incredible intense eyes, she was also an acrobat so takes part in some of the film's best stunts. She steals the show and is much more interesting than the succession of evil bosses she works for.
The picture quality isn't always brilliant, but considering the film's age this isn't too big a deal. The music is really good and fits the on-screen action perfectly. The translation from the original French is done very well, too, and not just with the intertitles. If a character is reading a newspaper article or showing us his business card they will superimpose the English translation over the top so it was clearly produced with some loving care and attention.
Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where the BBC could show this weekly at 9pm on a Sunday evening and people would watch it? Unfortunately, today's audience could never get over the whole "they ain't saying anything" problem. A shame, because I think it stands up very well as a piece of entertainment and is easily a match for a lot of today's television fare.
Les Vampires has nothing to do with blood-sucking creatures of the night. The title refers to a group of master criminals who terrorise Paris during World War One and the story revolves around young intrepid reporter Philippe Guérande and his faithful sidekick (and brilliantly named) Oscar-Cloud Mazamette fighting against their evil ways. All but the first couple of episodes run to about 45 minutes and they stand perfectly well on their own so you can watch them occasionally while eating your lunch. Here's a link to the first episode, one of the better and shorter ones so well worth a look to see if you'll like the rest.
There are a lot of things to enjoy. Some you might find in a Boy's Own adventure story or a Tintin comic: secret passages, treasure maps, disguises, daring escapes, car chases, cunning traps, hypnosis. Some are rather more macabre: murders, suicides, severed heads in boxes, poisoned rings that kill their wearers, gas chambers. The plots are imaginative and often quite labyrinthine — you have to keep focussed if you want to follow it all! The cast list is enormous, too, and the many disguises and impersonations don't always make it easy to tell who's doing what, but that's quite fun.
One thing I really love about these silent films, which applies equally to the Buster Keaton films I wrote about earlier, is how unconstrained by studio sets they are. Directors were perfectly happy to film outside or in a real house. In later years, this became too expensive to do well and the directors retreated to sound stages where everything could be measured and controlled. Les Vampires has a terrific freedom about it and hundreds of different locations. You get to see all sorts of aspects of 1915 Paris. To be sure, it was a desolate and miserable place — there was a war on and the Western Front wasn't too far away — but that only adds to the character and sense of time the film has.
The central characters themselves are interesting and you develop a fondness for them as the series progresses. Guérande the hero is a bit bland, but his colleague Mazamette is memorable — brave and loyal, but a bit of a clown and with a rough edge. The best thing about it, though, has to be Musidora, the actress who plays Irma Vep — probably the first screen femme fatale and one of the most beautiful. Strong and deadly with incredible intense eyes, she was also an acrobat so takes part in some of the film's best stunts. She steals the show and is much more interesting than the succession of evil bosses she works for.
The picture quality isn't always brilliant, but considering the film's age this isn't too big a deal. The music is really good and fits the on-screen action perfectly. The translation from the original French is done very well, too, and not just with the intertitles. If a character is reading a newspaper article or showing us his business card they will superimpose the English translation over the top so it was clearly produced with some loving care and attention.
Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where the BBC could show this weekly at 9pm on a Sunday evening and people would watch it? Unfortunately, today's audience could never get over the whole "they ain't saying anything" problem. A shame, because I think it stands up very well as a piece of entertainment and is easily a match for a lot of today's television fare.
Saturday 14 August 2010
77. Notorious
Last weekend I was idly channel surfing, looking for something to watch when I noticed this was just starting. Unfortunately I'd missed Spellbound, the first part of the Hitchcock double, but I stayed and watched Notorious to the end. I saw this film back in my University days one afternoon when I probably should have been revising but as I watched I realised I could remember almost nothing about it — it obviously made an impression on me!
The plot is fairly simple for a Hitchcock thriller. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman fall in love in post-war Rio while waiting for Bergman to start an assignment to infiltrate a group of Nazis. One of them — the always superb, and always seemingly slightly drunk, Claude Rains — is in love with her, a situation she uses to her advantage.
There are some great tense moments — vintage Hitchcock — but the film is really just a love story. The espionage stuff is practically a side-bar which barely bothers concluding itself and there are some interesting psychological issues (Rains' relationship with his mother exemplifying a typical Hitchcock theme). But it's the love triangle at the centre that's most compelling.
This is one of many similarities with Casablanca that really struck me. Along with Rains and Bergman, of course, we have Nazis, McGuffins, foreign locations, stoic leading men hiding their feelings, questions of love vs duty and so on. I think that's why Notorious made little impression on me the first time I saw it. For sure it's a classy and very well polished romantic thriller. The characters are interesting, deep and well portrayed. But it ain't no Casablanca, which has a lot of the good things that Notorious has, but with a superior script, better music and Peter Lorre.
They remade it in 2009 but while I'm all in favour of changing things in remakes — otherwise why bother? — I think they probably took it a bit far.
The plot is fairly simple for a Hitchcock thriller. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman fall in love in post-war Rio while waiting for Bergman to start an assignment to infiltrate a group of Nazis. One of them — the always superb, and always seemingly slightly drunk, Claude Rains — is in love with her, a situation she uses to her advantage.
There are some great tense moments — vintage Hitchcock — but the film is really just a love story. The espionage stuff is practically a side-bar which barely bothers concluding itself and there are some interesting psychological issues (Rains' relationship with his mother exemplifying a typical Hitchcock theme). But it's the love triangle at the centre that's most compelling.
This is one of many similarities with Casablanca that really struck me. Along with Rains and Bergman, of course, we have Nazis, McGuffins, foreign locations, stoic leading men hiding their feelings, questions of love vs duty and so on. I think that's why Notorious made little impression on me the first time I saw it. For sure it's a classy and very well polished romantic thriller. The characters are interesting, deep and well portrayed. But it ain't no Casablanca, which has a lot of the good things that Notorious has, but with a superior script, better music and Peter Lorre.
They remade it in 2009 but while I'm all in favour of changing things in remakes — otherwise why bother? — I think they probably took it a bit far.
Wednesday 28 July 2010
60. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
I was quite ignorant about this film, I must admit. Obviously, since it was directed by John Ford and starred Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne and Lee Marvin I knew it couldn't be bad but the cheesy Burt Bacharach title song did its reputation no favours and I'm ashamed to say I dismissed it as just another western. I recorded it when it was on TV about a year ago but I never got round to watching it. So when I found it on this list (which doesn't feature Stagecoach, Unforgiven and High Noon among other notable westerns) it was a little surprising. I was also very pleased when I discovered that the Bacharach song didn't have anything to do with the film either!
Jimmy Stewart plays a senator who returns with his wife to their home town to attend the funeral of an old friend. The newspaper men are curious to know the details of why he would come back to pay his respects to a "nobody" so he tells them the tale. It's fairly standard western fare for the most part: an educated and non-violent man from the East comes to town, gets robbed, tries to fight his battles using law and his sense of civilised justice but finds that the sword can be mightier than the pen. There are gunfights and saloons and tough men eating big steaks but there are also some interesting insights into American politics of the period which in some ways hasn't changed at all.
Stewart is always good, of course, but the standout performances here are from the supporting cast — particularly Edmund O'Brien as the newspaper editor who likes a drink and the sound of his own voice and Woody Strode as John Wayne's loyal sidekick. Wayne himself was a limited actor but had great screen presence and was constantly watchable — surely the definition of a true film star.
It's hard to talk too much about themes without giving away the ending. We have the old standby of so many westerns: civilisation coming to the West and how it parallels the story of the USA. We have the central triangle of Jimmy Stewart's idealist, John Wayne's pragmatist and Lee Marvin's anarchist — facets of a single character or facets of America itself? All very Film Studies 101 but there are some more interesting questions being asked here too — about the flexibility of law and the role of myth in American history. Its answers are quite pessimistic really, but I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
A top Western, and well worth its place at no. 60.
Jimmy Stewart plays a senator who returns with his wife to their home town to attend the funeral of an old friend. The newspaper men are curious to know the details of why he would come back to pay his respects to a "nobody" so he tells them the tale. It's fairly standard western fare for the most part: an educated and non-violent man from the East comes to town, gets robbed, tries to fight his battles using law and his sense of civilised justice but finds that the sword can be mightier than the pen. There are gunfights and saloons and tough men eating big steaks but there are also some interesting insights into American politics of the period which in some ways hasn't changed at all.
Stewart is always good, of course, but the standout performances here are from the supporting cast — particularly Edmund O'Brien as the newspaper editor who likes a drink and the sound of his own voice and Woody Strode as John Wayne's loyal sidekick. Wayne himself was a limited actor but had great screen presence and was constantly watchable — surely the definition of a true film star.
It's hard to talk too much about themes without giving away the ending. We have the old standby of so many westerns: civilisation coming to the West and how it parallels the story of the USA. We have the central triangle of Jimmy Stewart's idealist, John Wayne's pragmatist and Lee Marvin's anarchist — facets of a single character or facets of America itself? All very Film Studies 101 but there are some more interesting questions being asked here too — about the flexibility of law and the role of myth in American history. Its answers are quite pessimistic really, but I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
A top Western, and well worth its place at no. 60.
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Statistics
So here are the facts and figures. I've based this all on 248 films — the 250 listed minus Family Feud and Song Cycle. Who the hell would be credited as directory of Family Feud anyhow? This also leaves in the entries which are double-counted, so you may want to mentally remove them from the figures: Vivre Sa Vie/My Life To Live, Dog Star Man/The Art of Vision and Pather Panchali/The Apu Trilogy. The last of those pairs should probably count as three, actually.
Not a big shock that USA and France lead the way, but perhaps a bit surprising that Italy and Germany are so high up. The poor old UK doesn't fare well at all and seems to be absent a lot of key works — where's David Lean? I suppose we should be consoled that there are a lot of British directors in the list.
So Godard wins it with 9 (which should probably be 8) ahead of crowd favourite Hitchcock. Interesting that there are only 3 American directors in the top ten, two of whom were from the silent era.
An indication that cinema has declined in the past thirty years, or just that it takes time to recognise a great film for what it is?
Colour or Black and White
150 out of the 248 are Black and White films (60%).Silent or Talkie
40 are silent films (16%).Countries Represented
This is slightly difficult as a lot of films have multiple nationalities. I tried where I could to pick the primary country of origin, which is usually the language spoken or the nationality of the director.| USA | 116 |
| France | 41 |
| Italy | 17 |
| Japan | 16 |
| Germany | 15 |
| USSR | 9 |
| UK | 9 |
| Denmark | 4 |
| Sweden | 4 |
| Poland | 3 |
| Belgium | 2 |
| India | 2 |
| Canada | 2 |
| Iran | 1 |
| Mexico | 1 |
| Hungary | 1 |
| Senegal | 1 |
| Hong Kong | 1 |
| Taiwan | 1 |
| Greece | 1 |
| Brazil | 1 |
Not a big shock that USA and France lead the way, but perhaps a bit surprising that Italy and Germany are so high up. The poor old UK doesn't fare well at all and seems to be absent a lot of key works — where's David Lean? I suppose we should be consoled that there are a lot of British directors in the list.
Directors
Here are the directors with two or more films to their name:| Jean-Luc Godard | 9 |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 7 |
| Robert Bresson | 6 |
| Buster Keaton | 6 |
| Akira Kurosawa | 6 |
| Yasujiro Ozu | 5 |
| Orson Welles | 5 |
| DW Griffith | 5 |
| Carl Theodor Dreyer | 5 |
| Stanley Kubrick | 4 |
| Stan Brakhage | 4 |
| Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 4 |
| John Ford | 4 |
| Howard Hawks | 4 |
| Charlie Chaplin | 4 |
| Sergei Eisenstein | 3 |
| Roberto Rossellini | 3 |
| Preston Sturges | 3 |
| Michelangelo Antonioni | 3 |
| Martin Scorsese | 3 |
| Jean Renoir | 3 |
| Ingmar Bergman | 3 |
| Federico Fellini | 3 |
| F W Murnau | 3 |
| William A Wellman | 2 |
| Werner Herzog | 2 |
| Vittorio de Sica | 2 |
| Satyajit Ray | 2 |
| Andrei Tarkovsky | 2 |
| Robert Altman | 2 |
| Douglas Sirk | 2 |
| Pier Paolo Pasolini | 2 |
| Oliver Stone | 2 |
| Nicholas Ray | 2 |
| Michael Powell | 2 |
| Max Ophüls | 2 |
| Chantal Akerman | 2 |
| Francis Ford Coppola | 2 |
| François Truffaut | 2 |
| Luis Buñuel | 2 |
| Louis Feuillade | 2 |
| Kenji Mizoguchi | 2 |
| John Cassavetes | 2 |
| Fritz Lang | 2 |
| James Cameron | 2 |
| Bernardo Bertolucci | 2 |
| Georges Méliès | 2 |
So Godard wins it with 9 (which should probably be 8) ahead of crowd favourite Hitchcock. Interesting that there are only 3 American directors in the top ten, two of whom were from the silent era.
Decades
Finally, a look at when these films were made:| 1900s | 2 |
| 1910s | 6 |
| 1920s | 28 |
| 1930s | 26 |
| 1940s | 28 |
| 1950s | 43 |
| 1960s | 48 |
| 1970s | 36 |
| 1980s | 19 |
| 1990s | 12 |
An indication that cinema has declined in the past thirty years, or just that it takes time to recognise a great film for what it is?
Unknown Films
I've now been through the whole list (and will post some statistics later) but there are a few question marks. Things would be much simpler if Thomas Edison laid down in law right from the start that every film could have only one title and every title could only belong to one film. Then you wouldn't have so many remakes — surely a good thing — and you'd also clear up a lot of confusion.
Imagine if a beautiful woman comes up to you in a bar and says "Hey baby, do you want to come back to my place to watch Crash on DVD?" Quite the dilemma, I'm confident you're all thinking. If she means the Paul Haggis film you'll surely regret saying yes as you sit there watching two hours of overwrought Oscar-grubbing. But if she means the Cronenberg film and you say no you'll miss out on a hell of a night. So you tiresomely ask her and she discards you and moves on to the next sap. Damn you Haggis! Why on earth would you title your film the same as a (better) film just 8 years older?
It's even worse when films have different titles in different countries. Which version the voters in this poll intended isn't always at all clear.
Take China Gate. There's a 1957 American war film of that title. It looks ok but hardly seems a must-see, so maybe they mean the 1998 Bollywood film instead? That gets a decent enough write-up too but I'd be surprised if anyone voted it best of the century. I can't believe either film is the one intended, but I can't find any other references out there. A puzzler.
Family Feud is equally puzzling. As Chris pointed out in the comments, this is the American version of rubbish gameshow Family Fortunes ("and our survey said..."). Surely they can't mean that, though, and this is really some sort of documentary or experimental work? Not that I can find anywhere.
Iliad has a number of possibilities. In the end I've gone for Manfred Noa's 1924 Helen of Troy which seems the most plausible but I could easily be wrong.
Imitation of Life could really be either version. Each seems equally likely to me. The same goes for The Ten Commandments but with that I'm guessing the 1956 version, mostly because that's the one I've seen.
L'Argent could be the fairly well-known 1983 Bresson film or the less well-known but apparently equally revered 1928 film.
Is Parade really just the 1974 Jacques Tati film about the circus? There seem a lot of films with this title, but that's the best of an unlikely bunch.
Song Cycle I have absolutely no clue about. There's the well-regarded Van Dyke Parks album with this title, but that won't be it. Nor will it be the 1928 film A Cycle of Songs which has received no votes on IMDB at all.
Any ideas?
Imagine if a beautiful woman comes up to you in a bar and says "Hey baby, do you want to come back to my place to watch Crash on DVD?" Quite the dilemma, I'm confident you're all thinking. If she means the Paul Haggis film you'll surely regret saying yes as you sit there watching two hours of overwrought Oscar-grubbing. But if she means the Cronenberg film and you say no you'll miss out on a hell of a night. So you tiresomely ask her and she discards you and moves on to the next sap. Damn you Haggis! Why on earth would you title your film the same as a (better) film just 8 years older?
It's even worse when films have different titles in different countries. Which version the voters in this poll intended isn't always at all clear.
Take China Gate. There's a 1957 American war film of that title. It looks ok but hardly seems a must-see, so maybe they mean the 1998 Bollywood film instead? That gets a decent enough write-up too but I'd be surprised if anyone voted it best of the century. I can't believe either film is the one intended, but I can't find any other references out there. A puzzler.
Family Feud is equally puzzling. As Chris pointed out in the comments, this is the American version of rubbish gameshow Family Fortunes ("and our survey said..."). Surely they can't mean that, though, and this is really some sort of documentary or experimental work? Not that I can find anywhere.
Iliad has a number of possibilities. In the end I've gone for Manfred Noa's 1924 Helen of Troy which seems the most plausible but I could easily be wrong.
Imitation of Life could really be either version. Each seems equally likely to me. The same goes for The Ten Commandments but with that I'm guessing the 1956 version, mostly because that's the one I've seen.
L'Argent could be the fairly well-known 1983 Bresson film or the less well-known but apparently equally revered 1928 film.
Is Parade really just the 1974 Jacques Tati film about the circus? There seem a lot of films with this title, but that's the best of an unlikely bunch.
Song Cycle I have absolutely no clue about. There's the well-regarded Van Dyke Parks album with this title, but that won't be it. Nor will it be the 1928 film A Cycle of Songs which has received no votes on IMDB at all.
Any ideas?
Friday 16 July 2010
Six Buster Keaton Films
There are six Buster Keaton films on the list and I'd only seen The General before, so I thought I'd tick the other five off and write about them in one go. For those of you who like old films, I highly recommend archive.org which has tons of silent films for free download. They're all out of copyright so it's perfectly legal. The quality's not always that good but it's still watchable.
In this first one — the most unconventional of the six — Buster plays a projectionist who wants to be a detective and tries to solve the case of a missing watch. But he's not very good at it and after a few comic misadventures his girlfriend finds the culprit without much trouble at all. The plot is more or less wrapped up in twenty minutes, but what follows is a dream sequence that takes up most of the rest of the film and features an awesome array of set-pieces as Buster jumps into a movie screen where he takes on the role of the super detective. Two scenes stand out, but it's all golden. First Buster jumps head-first through a window where he had carefully positioned a box, emerges from the other side wearing a dress that was in the box, and immediately imitates an old woman to evade his pursuers. You can't help but rewind it and watch it again and wonder how on earth it was filmed. The other notable scene is where Buster rides on the handlebars of a motorcycle (the other rider having fallen off) and negotiates various obstacles, collapsing bridges and oncoming trains. It's seriously dangerous stuff which you could never get away with filming nowadays but you have to just sit there and marvel at it.
The weakest of the six, The Navigator is more a series of sketches than a fully coherent narrative. There's some tenuous story about a young couple who get stranded on a passenger ship which is cast adrift on the ocean but it doesn't make much sense. The set-pieces range from the very good to the corny. In one Buster has trouble putting together a deck-chair — hilarious stuff! The underwater sequences are well done and the finale is quite impressive as the duo fight off a bunch of savage cannibals. It's not very politically correct, but it's very inventive and exciting. A good enjoyable film, but I have no idea why the person who voted it onto the list ranked it above the other five here.
The most modern of the six — the plot wouldn't look out of place in a 90's rom-com — this one has Buster needing to get married in a day in order to inherit a huge sum. He messes it up with his sweetheart but, undeterred, he goes on a quest to propose to anyone he can find. First he asks the seven single women at his club, with predictable results, then he walks down the street chatting up everybody he meets. He even approaches, unknowingly, a black woman, a Jew and a drag queen. Brilliant stuff — as if a white man could ever marry one of those people. Comedy gold.
Such dubious moments aside, though, this film is laden with gags, no more so than in the final segment where he's pursued by an army of brides-to-be as he races to marry his sweetheart (who's forgiven him) by the deadline. The stunts and acrobatics are astounding and genuinely more impressive than anything you find in today's cinema. Jackie Chan is said to have been inspired by Keaton but he never reached these heights.
If you watch this on Youtube (linked above), watch out for the colour scenes right at the start — not bad for 1925.
This is Keaton's Pet Sounds. The work which had gone before was undoubtedly very good, but he really stepped up with The General which is a more grown-up and polished film. Set in the American Civil War, Buster plays a man who is shunned by his friends for not being allowed to enlist in the Confederate army but gets caught up in events when some Unionists steal his beloved steam train (the eponymous General) and he heads off in pursuit. There's so much to love here, but the highlights have to be the two train chases which are so inventive and exciting. You wouldn't think that you could get much creative mileage from a chase sequence where the vehicles are confined to a linear track, but under Keaton's direction you get everything.
The General is quite critical of war and patriotism, a fairly brave statement at the time and probably why the film tanked at the box office. Most of the soldiers in the film are arrogant and pompous and generally a bit incompetent. Buster isn't much better. He runs rings around his enemies, but not usually from any great wit or superior soldiery — most of the time he succeeds by pure blind luck. The motives for war are noticeably absent, too. Buster doesn't seem interested in any of the reasons for fighting for the South — he just wants to look good wearing the uniform for his girl. Nor does he chase after the bad guys because he wants to stop the enemy from carrying out their dastardly plan, or even because he wants to save his lady from their evil clutches — he just wants to get his train back. He's still the hero, of course, and saves the day like every hero should. But he's a fairly pitiable hero, perhaps a point Keaton was trying to make about soldiers in general.
Incidentally, the version embedded above has a really weird soundtrack — it kicks off with Elgar for no particularly good reason and the first few minutes are quite hard to watch. I think it gets better later on, though. I have it on DVD where the soundtrack is a much more appropriate Scott Joplin. It's quite interesting how important sound is for a silent film! Also, ignore the title cards right at the start — they aren't on the DVD version and are both irrelevant and spoil the plot a little.
This one is a strange affair. Maybe it's because I saw this film last of the six, but it didn't impress me. It's 70 minutes long and the first 55 of them are pretty dire, to be frank. We're talking sub-Chuckle Brothers physical comedy as Buster falls off things, walks into things and tries on silly hats. I was struggling to keep watching, but I did know what was to come as this is the film with his most famous scene.
There really isn't much of a story. Buster is the public-school educated son of a salty old riverboat captain. His sweetheart is the daughter of a rival riverboat owner, but Romeo and Juliet this isn't. The dad gets arrested and Buster makes a bizarre attempt to free him from prison, though I'm not sure what would have happened if he'd succeeded. But then a cyclone hits and the film changes completely. The last 15 minutes are truly magnificent as the town is destroyed by the winds. We see houses lift up off their foundations, trees being uprooted and blown across town, buildings topple over and in amongst the wreckage flies Buster. Some of the scenes are quite remarkable and have rightly gone down in cinema history. The rumour was that he was suicidal and so took ridiculous risks for the sake of making these sensational stunts but whatever the truth, the end product is amazing.
It's still worth sitting through the movie to get to the end, but you're probably better off just fast-forwarding it to its conclusion.
This was Keaton's first movie for MGM and the last of his great films. MGM would afterwards remove creative control and therefore all that was good about his films. Morons. Buster plays a cameraman who wants to shoot footage for the news and win the heart of a girl who works at the news office. There's nothing particularly new or revolutionary about this film compared to the other five — it's just a very well executed comedy. Again, it's the finale that impresses with two brilliant scenes. First, a shootout between rival Chinese gangs and then a boating accident and daring rescue. The rest of the film is pretty good, too, although the visit to the swimming pool feels a bit out of place in the middle.
Buster also gets himself a monkey sidekick, which can never be a bad thing. I think most films could be improved if the hero had a monkey sidekick.
I was already a Buster Keaton fan on the basis of one film, but now I've seen all these six my love for the little stony-faced acrobat is confirmed. Nevertheless, I am a little surprised at how well some of these films rank. The General, of course, is rightly near the top of the pile. An almost perfect film, Orson Welles said it was the greatest comedy ever, the greatest war film ever and probably the greatest film ever too. Sherlock, Jr. is imaginative and fantastical and tremendous fun. The rest also have moments of brilliance — some more than others — but are still fairly patchy. I'll concede that Steamboat Bill, Jr. should be included on the basis of its final act alone, but I'm not convinced about the rest. But who cares — they're all terrific entertainment even after all these years and it would take a very cold-hearted person to sit through them without a big grin on their face.
P.S. It seems the embedded videos are too wide to fit in this column, and I don't really want to widen the column. If you do want to watch them, you'll have to full-screen it (the button that's cut off furthest on the right) or go to archive.org and see them there.
37. Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
In this first one — the most unconventional of the six — Buster plays a projectionist who wants to be a detective and tries to solve the case of a missing watch. But he's not very good at it and after a few comic misadventures his girlfriend finds the culprit without much trouble at all. The plot is more or less wrapped up in twenty minutes, but what follows is a dream sequence that takes up most of the rest of the film and features an awesome array of set-pieces as Buster jumps into a movie screen where he takes on the role of the super detective. Two scenes stand out, but it's all golden. First Buster jumps head-first through a window where he had carefully positioned a box, emerges from the other side wearing a dress that was in the box, and immediately imitates an old woman to evade his pursuers. You can't help but rewind it and watch it again and wonder how on earth it was filmed. The other notable scene is where Buster rides on the handlebars of a motorcycle (the other rider having fallen off) and negotiates various obstacles, collapsing bridges and oncoming trains. It's seriously dangerous stuff which you could never get away with filming nowadays but you have to just sit there and marvel at it.
220. The Navigator (1924)
The weakest of the six, The Navigator is more a series of sketches than a fully coherent narrative. There's some tenuous story about a young couple who get stranded on a passenger ship which is cast adrift on the ocean but it doesn't make much sense. The set-pieces range from the very good to the corny. In one Buster has trouble putting together a deck-chair — hilarious stuff! The underwater sequences are well done and the finale is quite impressive as the duo fight off a bunch of savage cannibals. It's not very politically correct, but it's very inventive and exciting. A good enjoyable film, but I have no idea why the person who voted it onto the list ranked it above the other five here.
112. Seven Chances (1925)
(watch this one on Youtube)The most modern of the six — the plot wouldn't look out of place in a 90's rom-com — this one has Buster needing to get married in a day in order to inherit a huge sum. He messes it up with his sweetheart but, undeterred, he goes on a quest to propose to anyone he can find. First he asks the seven single women at his club, with predictable results, then he walks down the street chatting up everybody he meets. He even approaches, unknowingly, a black woman, a Jew and a drag queen. Brilliant stuff — as if a white man could ever marry one of those people. Comedy gold.
Such dubious moments aside, though, this film is laden with gags, no more so than in the final segment where he's pursued by an army of brides-to-be as he races to marry his sweetheart (who's forgiven him) by the deadline. The stunts and acrobatics are astounding and genuinely more impressive than anything you find in today's cinema. Jackie Chan is said to have been inspired by Keaton but he never reached these heights.
If you watch this on Youtube (linked above), watch out for the colour scenes right at the start — not bad for 1925.
32. The General (1927)
This is Keaton's Pet Sounds. The work which had gone before was undoubtedly very good, but he really stepped up with The General which is a more grown-up and polished film. Set in the American Civil War, Buster plays a man who is shunned by his friends for not being allowed to enlist in the Confederate army but gets caught up in events when some Unionists steal his beloved steam train (the eponymous General) and he heads off in pursuit. There's so much to love here, but the highlights have to be the two train chases which are so inventive and exciting. You wouldn't think that you could get much creative mileage from a chase sequence where the vehicles are confined to a linear track, but under Keaton's direction you get everything.
The General is quite critical of war and patriotism, a fairly brave statement at the time and probably why the film tanked at the box office. Most of the soldiers in the film are arrogant and pompous and generally a bit incompetent. Buster isn't much better. He runs rings around his enemies, but not usually from any great wit or superior soldiery — most of the time he succeeds by pure blind luck. The motives for war are noticeably absent, too. Buster doesn't seem interested in any of the reasons for fighting for the South — he just wants to look good wearing the uniform for his girl. Nor does he chase after the bad guys because he wants to stop the enemy from carrying out their dastardly plan, or even because he wants to save his lady from their evil clutches — he just wants to get his train back. He's still the hero, of course, and saves the day like every hero should. But he's a fairly pitiable hero, perhaps a point Keaton was trying to make about soldiers in general.
Incidentally, the version embedded above has a really weird soundtrack — it kicks off with Elgar for no particularly good reason and the first few minutes are quite hard to watch. I think it gets better later on, though. I have it on DVD where the soundtrack is a much more appropriate Scott Joplin. It's quite interesting how important sound is for a silent film! Also, ignore the title cards right at the start — they aren't on the DVD version and are both irrelevant and spoil the plot a little.
46. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
This one is a strange affair. Maybe it's because I saw this film last of the six, but it didn't impress me. It's 70 minutes long and the first 55 of them are pretty dire, to be frank. We're talking sub-Chuckle Brothers physical comedy as Buster falls off things, walks into things and tries on silly hats. I was struggling to keep watching, but I did know what was to come as this is the film with his most famous scene.
There really isn't much of a story. Buster is the public-school educated son of a salty old riverboat captain. His sweetheart is the daughter of a rival riverboat owner, but Romeo and Juliet this isn't. The dad gets arrested and Buster makes a bizarre attempt to free him from prison, though I'm not sure what would have happened if he'd succeeded. But then a cyclone hits and the film changes completely. The last 15 minutes are truly magnificent as the town is destroyed by the winds. We see houses lift up off their foundations, trees being uprooted and blown across town, buildings topple over and in amongst the wreckage flies Buster. Some of the scenes are quite remarkable and have rightly gone down in cinema history. The rumour was that he was suicidal and so took ridiculous risks for the sake of making these sensational stunts but whatever the truth, the end product is amazing.
It's still worth sitting through the movie to get to the end, but you're probably better off just fast-forwarding it to its conclusion.
112. The Cameraman (1928)
This was Keaton's first movie for MGM and the last of his great films. MGM would afterwards remove creative control and therefore all that was good about his films. Morons. Buster plays a cameraman who wants to shoot footage for the news and win the heart of a girl who works at the news office. There's nothing particularly new or revolutionary about this film compared to the other five — it's just a very well executed comedy. Again, it's the finale that impresses with two brilliant scenes. First, a shootout between rival Chinese gangs and then a boating accident and daring rescue. The rest of the film is pretty good, too, although the visit to the swimming pool feels a bit out of place in the middle.
Buster also gets himself a monkey sidekick, which can never be a bad thing. I think most films could be improved if the hero had a monkey sidekick.
I was already a Buster Keaton fan on the basis of one film, but now I've seen all these six my love for the little stony-faced acrobat is confirmed. Nevertheless, I am a little surprised at how well some of these films rank. The General, of course, is rightly near the top of the pile. An almost perfect film, Orson Welles said it was the greatest comedy ever, the greatest war film ever and probably the greatest film ever too. Sherlock, Jr. is imaginative and fantastical and tremendous fun. The rest also have moments of brilliance — some more than others — but are still fairly patchy. I'll concede that Steamboat Bill, Jr. should be included on the basis of its final act alone, but I'm not convinced about the rest. But who cares — they're all terrific entertainment even after all these years and it would take a very cold-hearted person to sit through them without a big grin on their face.
P.S. It seems the embedded videos are too wide to fit in this column, and I don't really want to widen the column. If you do want to watch them, you'll have to full-screen it (the button that's cut off furthest on the right) or go to archive.org and see them there.
Wednesday 23 June 2010
82. A Trip to the Moon
Easily the oldest film on the list, Le Voyage Dans La Lune is now 108 years old. There are various versions out there — short versions (at 25 fps and therefore speeded up from the original), long versions (the original 16 fps), versions with rock music, versions with narration, colourised versions, etc. etc. The first version I saw had just a soundtrack but it's impossible to follow. This version made sense of the story by reading the original script like they would have done at the theatre it was first shown, but the sound is fairly amateurish:
The film is pretty poor, frankly. Yes, it's groundbreaking, it has great special effects for its time and fantastical sets. It's also admirably ambitious. Where other film makers were content with replicating a stage play on the big screen, Georges Méliès made a science fiction movie with aliens and rocket ships. I recommend you all watch it as it's an intriguing bit of film history but, as a film, it's pretty terrible. The plot is nonsense and just involves a bunch of magicians flying to the moon, killing off some natives and falling back to earth. It's cartoonish but not in a good way.
There isn't really any acting to speak of, either. Part of this might be down to the narrative style of the film being so alien — directors hadn't yet learned the language of cinema and how to tell a story in the new medium. There are no close-ups — just a static camera sitting away from the action as if we're in the front row of the theatre. There's no voice acting either (duh) so there's no way for the actors to express themselves other than jumping around and pointing at things — you don't see their faces. It just feels very clunky.
It does have one glorious moment, though, and that's the iconic image we've all seen before of the rocket flying into the moon's eye. It's worth it for that at least.
It's not the oldest film I've seen, though. That would be this. Cool to say you've seen it, but that's as far as it goes. Why is the old woman in the background walking backwards, though?
The film is pretty poor, frankly. Yes, it's groundbreaking, it has great special effects for its time and fantastical sets. It's also admirably ambitious. Where other film makers were content with replicating a stage play on the big screen, Georges Méliès made a science fiction movie with aliens and rocket ships. I recommend you all watch it as it's an intriguing bit of film history but, as a film, it's pretty terrible. The plot is nonsense and just involves a bunch of magicians flying to the moon, killing off some natives and falling back to earth. It's cartoonish but not in a good way.
There isn't really any acting to speak of, either. Part of this might be down to the narrative style of the film being so alien — directors hadn't yet learned the language of cinema and how to tell a story in the new medium. There are no close-ups — just a static camera sitting away from the action as if we're in the front row of the theatre. There's no voice acting either (duh) so there's no way for the actors to express themselves other than jumping around and pointing at things — you don't see their faces. It just feels very clunky.
It does have one glorious moment, though, and that's the iconic image we've all seen before of the rocket flying into the moon's eye. It's worth it for that at least.
It's not the oldest film I've seen, though. That would be this. Cool to say you've seen it, but that's as far as it goes. Why is the old woman in the background walking backwards, though?
Thursday 17 June 2010
62. La Jetée
Not a new film off the list, but something I've seen again recently. You may be familiar with La Jetée as the basis for Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. It's a fascinating piece of cinema as it involves almost no action at all — just a series of still photographs with a voice-over and soundtrack. The story involves a prisoner in a post-apocalyptic society being sent backwards and forwards in time in an effort to save the human race. It's a fairly simple tale, actually, but the way in which it's told is quite mesmerising and it really draws you in. You have to get over the fact that the time machine is just a woman's bra, though.
It's only 26 minutes long so watch it.
[It seems they took this video down so you'll just have to Google it. Or buy the DVD, you cheapskate!]
It's only 26 minutes long so watch it.
[It seems they took this video down so you'll just have to Google it. Or buy the DVD, you cheapskate!]
Wednesday 16 June 2010
58. The Conformist
This was on TV earlier this year, but I only got round to watching it at the weekend. It's Bernardo Bertolucci's 1970 film* about fascist Italy and one man struggling with his place in it.
The most obvious and immediate quality about it is how incredible it looks. In the early scenes we see enormous sets depicting various government buildings. Many are quite surreal, for example this is apparently a mental asylum:
Towards the end we get this stunningly lit scene in the snowy woods:
Everything about the film is designed immaculately for both visual and emotional appeal but it's not just a pretty face — there's depth to it too.
The surreal start isn't limited to just the sets. It takes a while to understand exactly what is going on and the mixing about of time periods and use of disorienting camera angles doesn't help things. Of course, this is all very deliberate as these are the sequences set in Italy. Once they cross the border into France things become more conventional and the story begins to become a bit clearer.
The conformist of the title, a man called Clerici, isn't exactly one of cinema's great heroes. He's a sexually confused product of a drug addict and a lunatic and, like most sexually confused products of drug addicts and lunatics, he just wants to lead a normal life. Unfortunately in 1930's Italy this means becoming a slave to the fascist state, a role he nevertheless embraces. How Clerici deals with the sacrifice of his ideals is what the piece is about, but you won't see him unshackle himself, overcome his oppressors, kill Mussolini, and flee to freedom on a tropical island — it's much more realistic than that and consequently much more cynical.
It also has blind people having a fight.
* I should probably use the word "masterpiece" here, but I suspect that such clichés will get a bit repetitive after a while.
The most obvious and immediate quality about it is how incredible it looks. In the early scenes we see enormous sets depicting various government buildings. Many are quite surreal, for example this is apparently a mental asylum:
Towards the end we get this stunningly lit scene in the snowy woods:
Everything about the film is designed immaculately for both visual and emotional appeal but it's not just a pretty face — there's depth to it too.
The surreal start isn't limited to just the sets. It takes a while to understand exactly what is going on and the mixing about of time periods and use of disorienting camera angles doesn't help things. Of course, this is all very deliberate as these are the sequences set in Italy. Once they cross the border into France things become more conventional and the story begins to become a bit clearer.
The conformist of the title, a man called Clerici, isn't exactly one of cinema's great heroes. He's a sexually confused product of a drug addict and a lunatic and, like most sexually confused products of drug addicts and lunatics, he just wants to lead a normal life. Unfortunately in 1930's Italy this means becoming a slave to the fascist state, a role he nevertheless embraces. How Clerici deals with the sacrifice of his ideals is what the piece is about, but you won't see him unshackle himself, overcome his oppressors, kill Mussolini, and flee to freedom on a tropical island — it's much more realistic than that and consequently much more cynical.
It also has blind people having a fight.
* I should probably use the word "masterpiece" here, but I suspect that such clichés will get a bit repetitive after a while.
Sunday 6 June 2010
Looking through the list
There are a lot of rather random films on this list. It seems that it was put together by asking film critics to supply their top ten and a number of the films towards the bottom have just one low-ranked vote. For example, Justine Elias made some eccentric choices for her films 8-10 and this was enough to rank them on the overall list. This will have skewed things somewhat at the bottom. Still, it also makes things interesting and will reveal a few films that might not have made other lists. One person thinks the Joan Crawford film Trog (no. 240) is one of the best of the century, so that must mean it's worth a look even if it looks dreadful and gets "9 beans" in this review.
The Zapruder Film at no. 112 is slightly odd, but you can't argue against its historical significance. Porky in Wackyland (also no. 112) I thought must be a joke, but I suppose you could say it was a landmark. But then there is no. 229 El Paso Wrecking Company which presumably is the same as gay porn film El Paso Wrecking Corp.? Why Dennis Dermody thinks this is the 8th best film of the last century, I have no idea.
The Zapruder Film at no. 112 is slightly odd, but you can't argue against its historical significance. Porky in Wackyland (also no. 112) I thought must be a joke, but I suppose you could say it was a landmark. But then there is no. 229 El Paso Wrecking Company which presumably is the same as gay porn film El Paso Wrecking Corp.? Why Dennis Dermody thinks this is the 8th best film of the last century, I have no idea.
121. Porky in Wackyland
I watched this on a Romanian video site. I've embedded it here, but I'm not sure how long it's likely to stay there. Watch it if you can, though, as it's pretty strange and only 7 minutes long.
Vezi mai multe din Desene animate pe 220.ro
I'm not convinced that this is really a masterpiece of 20th century film-making but it's certainly interesting, packed full of sight-gags and surrealist flights of fancy. Great silly fun.
Vezi mai multe din Desene animate pe 220.ro
I'm not convinced that this is really a masterpiece of 20th century film-making but it's certainly interesting, packed full of sight-gags and surrealist flights of fancy. Great silly fun.
6. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
So this was the film that inspired me to start this blog. If such a good film could pass me by all these years what other gems have escaped me? Laziness is the reason that I haven't yet got round to watching All About Eve (it's been sitting on my freeview box for about a year now unwatched) but ignorance is the reason I hadn't seen Sunrise.
I watched it on Youtube, where you can find it in nine 10-minute parts. The quality is fine for Youtube, but if you want to watch it on your 40" plasma telly you might want to get the DVD instead.
I'm not going to play the film critic — there are far more learned writers out there than me (for example they would use than I) — and neither am I going to pointlessly spew out the plot which will just be dull for those who have seen it and spoil things for those who haven't. Instead I intend to simply jot down some impressions of the films I watch. There will inevitably be some spoilers but I'll try to only reveal as much as any newspaper review would reveal and I promise not to give away any endings.
One thing that really struck me is how unusual Sunrise is, at least to my modern eyes. This might sound rather trite but it genuinely reminded me of Bollywood films with their pot pourri of action, drama, romance, comedy and everything else under the sun. Sunrise has romance in spades, of course, but also very funny scenes, psychedelic fantasy scenes, melodrama, scenes of dramatic tension. There are special effects (at least, what passed for special effects in 1927), elaborate sets, dancing and even a drunken animal doing a slapstick routine — something which sadly we don't see in many mainstream films nowadays.
But most striking of all is how dark it is in places. The first segment is like something out of a gothic horror film (it has the same director as Nosferatu after all) with mist sweeping over the swamp, grotesque villagers gossiping and a man bewitched by an evil harpy. We see this man's tormented eyes and heavy walk as he contemplates and almost carries out an unforgivable crime. Later on he confronts a stranger who has been rude to his wife. It doesn't last long but his reaction is terrifying with a real — almost psychotic — malice. This kind of character just isn't seen as a romantic lead in today's cinema and the experience is a little strange.
The film presents itself as some kind of fable (the characters are called "The Man", "The Wife" etc.) but I'm not entirely sure what the moral of the story is supposed to be apart from perhaps giving some hope to the Ike Turners of the world. Maybe more subtle metaphors will reveal themselves with further viewings but that's not really what interests me here. I've read reviews which describe this as the last great film of the silent era and mourn the backwards step that cinema took with the introduction of sound and I can completely see the point — it's visually enthralling from the first scene to the last, shot by a director at the height of his powers. But its narrative is equally strong — powerful and frightening and sad — and it's for this reason that the film is so astonishing in my opinion. Everybody should see at least one silent film and I can't think of a better example.
The title's rubbish, though.
I watched it on Youtube, where you can find it in nine 10-minute parts. The quality is fine for Youtube, but if you want to watch it on your 40" plasma telly you might want to get the DVD instead.
I'm not going to play the film critic — there are far more learned writers out there than me (for example they would use than I) — and neither am I going to pointlessly spew out the plot which will just be dull for those who have seen it and spoil things for those who haven't. Instead I intend to simply jot down some impressions of the films I watch. There will inevitably be some spoilers but I'll try to only reveal as much as any newspaper review would reveal and I promise not to give away any endings.
One thing that really struck me is how unusual Sunrise is, at least to my modern eyes. This might sound rather trite but it genuinely reminded me of Bollywood films with their pot pourri of action, drama, romance, comedy and everything else under the sun. Sunrise has romance in spades, of course, but also very funny scenes, psychedelic fantasy scenes, melodrama, scenes of dramatic tension. There are special effects (at least, what passed for special effects in 1927), elaborate sets, dancing and even a drunken animal doing a slapstick routine — something which sadly we don't see in many mainstream films nowadays.
But most striking of all is how dark it is in places. The first segment is like something out of a gothic horror film (it has the same director as Nosferatu after all) with mist sweeping over the swamp, grotesque villagers gossiping and a man bewitched by an evil harpy. We see this man's tormented eyes and heavy walk as he contemplates and almost carries out an unforgivable crime. Later on he confronts a stranger who has been rude to his wife. It doesn't last long but his reaction is terrifying with a real — almost psychotic — malice. This kind of character just isn't seen as a romantic lead in today's cinema and the experience is a little strange.
The film presents itself as some kind of fable (the characters are called "The Man", "The Wife" etc.) but I'm not entirely sure what the moral of the story is supposed to be apart from perhaps giving some hope to the Ike Turners of the world. Maybe more subtle metaphors will reveal themselves with further viewings but that's not really what interests me here. I've read reviews which describe this as the last great film of the silent era and mourn the backwards step that cinema took with the introduction of sound and I can completely see the point — it's visually enthralling from the first scene to the last, shot by a director at the height of his powers. But its narrative is equally strong — powerful and frightening and sad — and it's for this reason that the film is so astonishing in my opinion. Everybody should see at least one silent film and I can't think of a better example.
The title's rubbish, though.
Sunday 23 May 2010
Introduction
I love watching films, but there are still some fairly big holes in my cinema catalogue. This was sparked recently when I discovered the Sight and Sound Top 10 which is apparently the most highly regarded of the film lists. The 2002 edition was as follows:
I've seen quite a lot of films, and I try to catch the good ones when they come on. I'd seen pretty much all of the Channel Four Top 50, for example, so when I realised I'd only seen five of these I felt a bit disconcerted. Then when I realised that I'd never even heard of Sunrise before I was beginning to think that my proud persona as the annoying but lovable bloke who has seen all the films and is good in the pub quiz wasn't really holding up.
I googled Sunrise, found it was available on Youtube and watched it straight through. It was mesmerising and I loved it completely but I'll write about that later. I decided to try and hunt down the other four films on the list and watch them too.
I should have stopped there, but curiosity and Wikipedia got the better of me and soon I'd discovered the Village Voice Top 250 Films of the 20th Century. It was littered with films I'd never heard of and when I counted them up I found I'd barely seen a fifth of them. This wouldn't do.
I don't think this will turn out to be the account of a quest to watch all the films on the list. I doubt if I can hunt them all out, let alone find the time or inclination to watch them. But it would be nice to see more of these films and I think I'll enjoy logging them on this blog and writing about them. You can see the list on the right, with the films I've seen marked in green and the films I've written about underlined. I'd seen 57 films before starting out.
- Citizen Kane
- Vertigo
- La Règle du jeu
- The Godfather/The Godfather Part II
- Tokyo Story
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- The Battleship Potemkin
- Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
- 8½
- Singin' in the Rain
I've seen quite a lot of films, and I try to catch the good ones when they come on. I'd seen pretty much all of the Channel Four Top 50, for example, so when I realised I'd only seen five of these I felt a bit disconcerted. Then when I realised that I'd never even heard of Sunrise before I was beginning to think that my proud persona as the annoying but lovable bloke who has seen all the films and is good in the pub quiz wasn't really holding up.
I googled Sunrise, found it was available on Youtube and watched it straight through. It was mesmerising and I loved it completely but I'll write about that later. I decided to try and hunt down the other four films on the list and watch them too.
I should have stopped there, but curiosity and Wikipedia got the better of me and soon I'd discovered the Village Voice Top 250 Films of the 20th Century. It was littered with films I'd never heard of and when I counted them up I found I'd barely seen a fifth of them. This wouldn't do.
I don't think this will turn out to be the account of a quest to watch all the films on the list. I doubt if I can hunt them all out, let alone find the time or inclination to watch them. But it would be nice to see more of these films and I think I'll enjoy logging them on this blog and writing about them. You can see the list on the right, with the films I've seen marked in green and the films I've written about underlined. I'd seen 57 films before starting out.
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