347. Apu Sansar (The World Of Apu) (1959)

Directed By Satyajit Ray

Synopsis

Apu leaves school and stays in Calcutta giving private tutoring and barely making ends meet. He goes with a friend to a village where he gets married, almost by accident. Fortunately it becomes a very loving relationship, unfortunately his wife dies in childbirth. Distraught Apu goes wandering.

Review

Finally we come to the end of Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. And frankly they should be seen as a film in three Acts rather than as separate works. Fortunately they are all pretty amazing works, the first and last film being the best.

So it is hard to judge this last film without making a general judgement on the series. Satyajit Ray is a wonderful director, the images are stunnign throughout, you could almost pause the film anywhere and get a great picture from it. The faces, the settings, the music, the acting. everything comes together to make a very attractive series of films indeed.

The scope of the work is great as well, you see the evolution of a character from early childhood to full maturity and with him you follow what is a pretty shitty life. In the end the Apu trilogy is essential viewing for anyone who likes cinema.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

This trilogy is considered by critics around the globe to rank among the greatest achievements of Indian film, and is established as one of the most historically important cinematic debuts. Pather Panchali won 12 international prizes, followed by a Golden Lion in Venice for Aparajito and numerous other awards for Apur Sansar. When Ray made Pather Panchali he worked with a cast and crew most of whom had never been previously involved in the film medium. Ray himself at the time of directing Pather Panchali had primarily worked in the advertising industry, although he had served as assistant director on Jean Renoir's 1951 film The River. From this foundation, Ray went on to create other highly acclaimed films, like Charulata, Mahanagar, and Aranyer Dinratri, and his international success energized other Bengal filmmakers like Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak.

After his wife dies Apu throws his great novel to the wind:

346. Shadows (1959)

Directed By John Cassavetes

Synopsis

Three siblings, two boys an a girl, live together. Two of them can pass for white, the other one can't. The film explores race relations and their life.

Review

If you notice that synopsis is pretty vague. That's because there isn't much of a story to the film. It works as a vignette, just snippet of life, without being really concerned with plot. This is definitely purposeful as the film is going out of its way to defy what was up until now standard film-making.

It is in this defiance that the film becomes essential. The improvisational quality of the acting, the jagged quality of the editing, the be-bop soundtrack, the interracial sex. Nothing of "good Hollywood practice" remains.

This is also the main problem with the film, it seems more concerned with exploding convention than film-making. However these kinds of films are needed to propel the genre forward, and you can see the influence of this trickling down to our days. In this sense it is indispensable.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Film critic Leonard Maltin calls Cassavetes' second version of Shadows "a watershed in the birth of American independent cinema". The movie was shot with a 16 mm handheld camera on the streets of New York. Much of the dialogue was improvised, and the crew were class members or volunteers. The jazz-infused score, some of which is composed by jazz legend Charles Mingus, underlines the movie's Beat Generation theme of alienation and raw emotion. The movie's plot features an interracial relationship, which was still a taboo subject in Eisenhower-era America.

First Scene:

345. Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus)

Directed by Marcel Camus

Synopsis

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice in the context of the Rio Carnival. You know, boy loves girl, girl contracts death, boy tries to get girl back, epic fail.

Review

A very pretty film and a film which also has great music, having been largely responsible for the introduction of Bossa Nova into the Anglo-Saxon market. And the music/images are the best thing about the film, particularly when the music is allied to some great scenery.

The acting is pretty bad, they are non-professional actors but very few of them are naturals. When you compound this with the use of voice-overs it gets really bad, as the dialogue is often obviously different from what you hear, particularly in the more secondary characters.

This is a problem that might be less important to you if you don't understand Portuguese, although I have no idea how good the subtitles are, as they were turned off. I imagine that some of the awkward delivery will be less glaring if you don't understand the language, however. This is strange as the film is based on a Vinicius de Moraes play, one of the greatest Brazilian writers of all time, so I imagine the problem lies mostly in the acting. So, watch it and listen to it, but the acting is just not that great. However, I must say that the idea of the adaptation is quite interesting, if you know the original pretty well it is fun to discover the parallels here.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Marpessa Dawn, the actress who played Eurydice, was not actually from Brazil, but rather Pittsburgh.

Black Orpheus plays an important role in 2008 Democratic President-elect Barack Obama's bestselling memoir Dreams from My Father and was his mother's favorite film.

A young boy who dances across the screen playing pandeiro grew up to win a national pandeiro-playing contest and play his instrument around the world. Currently, Carlinhos Pandeiro de Ouro teaches in Los Angeles and at California Brazil Camp.

First 10 minutes:

344. Ride Lonesome (1959)

Directed By Budd Boetticher

Synopsis

A bounty hunter is taking a guy to Santa Cruz to get his bounty. On the way he meets a woman and two guys who want to collect the bounty in order to get an amnesty and start their life afresh. Meanwhile the bounty's brother is coming to rescue him.

Review

Sorry for the above picture, Lee Van Cleef doesn't play that big a part in the film but it was the best picture I could find, this not being a particularly famous film. The fact that it isn't famous shouldn't deter you form it, though.

The thing is Ride Lonesome is a pretty good Western, short and sweet and giving James Coburn his screen debut. The cinemascope photography is put to great use here with some great landscapes and framing, this is clearly inspired by John Ford, with scenes of framing reminiscent of The Searchers.

The best things about the film are probably the writing and the great ending. It has very natural dialogue, which is unfortunately let down by some of the actors who seem slightly stunted. Randolph Scott among them, James Coburn is the best actor playing a very secondary role. A good film, but nothing to write home about.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film plays a prominent role in "The Cursed Tuba Contingency", an episode of The Middleman.

And now guest reviewer Martin Scorsese, he liked the film more than I did:

343. Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face) (1959)

Directed By Georges Franju

Synopsis

A girl loses her face in an accident and her father tries to make skin grafts by getting some face donors. Face donors aren't too chuffed about it.

Review

Some times genres take a step forward with a new film. Well with Yeux Sans Visage the horror genre is catapulted forward into a world of blood, gore and medical horror without precedent in cinema.

Jumping from the moderate blood of the hammer Dracula to cutting the face off a person all on screen is pretty drastic. But this is not all! It is a great, quality film. Beautiful and horrifying at the same time this is not done for cheap thrills.

The film feels quite retro in fact, if it weren't for the graphic moments, like a mix of 30s Universal, German Expressionism and Jean Cocteau Fabulism, it draws from all the best sources to be unnerving and pretty cool.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Although it passed through the European censors, the film caused controversy on its release in Europe. The French news magazine L'Express noted the audience "dropped like flies" during the heterografting scene. During the film's showing at the 1960 Edinburgh Film Festival, seven audience members fainted, to which director Franju responded, "Now I know why Scotsmen wear skirts." For the American début in 1962, the film was released in an edited form. It was given an English-language dub, and re-titled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. Edits in the Dr. Faustus version removed parts of the heterografting scene as well as scenes showing Doctor Génessier's more human side such his loving care for a small child at his clinic. The distributors recognized the artistic intent of the film and played up that element in promotion with an advertisement quoting the London Observer's positive statements about the film and noting its showing at the Edinburgh Film Festival. This is in contrast to presentation of the secondary feature, The Manster (1962), which mainly focused on the carnie-show aspect with its "two-headed monster" and "Invasion from outer space by two-headed creature killer". Eyes Without a Face had a very limited initial run and there was little reception from the American mainstream press.[19] Eyes Without a Face received its second large theatrical release in a September 1986 re-release of the film (in conjunction with retrospectives at the National Film Theatre in London and at film archive Cinémathèque Française for its 50th anniversary in France. As a founder of Cinémathèque Française, the archive celebrated Franju by presenting the director's back catalogue. The film was re-released in its original form to American theatres on October 31, 2003 under its original running time and title.


American trailer for the double bill with THE MANSTER!

342. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Directed by Otto Preminger

Synopsis

A man is accused of having murdered his wife's rapist. Jimmy Stewart must get him out, but will the defence of "temporary insanity" convince anyone?

Review

I really like court dramas. From Law & Order to Boston Legal to 12 Angry Man to A Few Good Men, anything really. And then they give me one with Jimmy Stewart and the great George C. Scott, and make it last for over 2 and a half hours, how could I not love it?

In fact it is a pretty great film, like Some Like it Hot which I reviewed just yesterday, this is another of those films which helped put the final nails in the coffin of the by now ripe-smelling production code. Words like sperm, rape and panties are used liberally throughout, and even if that sounds tame to us it sounds revolutionary in the historical context. So does the Duke Ellington soundtrack, he even has an excellent cameo doing a duet with Stewart.

And then the way the film leaves you completely without answers about the case, I personally wouldn't have bought the defence, is astonishing at a time where no criminal could get away scot-free. At the beginning I thought, hey the defendant and his wife are quite bad actors. As the film goes on, however, you consider is this bad acting because they are acting lying? It feels like that at times, and this is immensely smart. We'll never know what happened, but the film is great.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The movie, inspired by a 1952 Big Bay Lumberjack Tavern murder trial in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, was adapted by Wendell Mayes from the novel by Robert Traver (pen name of John D. Voelker, a Michigan Supreme Court judge from 1957-1959).

It was filmed in Big Bay, Marquette, Ishpeming, and Michigamme, Michigan. Some scenes were actually filmed in the Thunder Bay Inn in Big Bay, Michigan, one block from the Lumberjack Tavern, the site of a murder that had inspired much of the novel. The movie was directed by Otto Preminger, and was noted for featuring unusually frank dialogue for 1959. It was among the first Hollywood films to challenge the Production Code, along with Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959) and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

Silly trailer:

341. Some Like It Hot (1959)

Directed by Billy Wilder

Synopsis

After witnessing a mob massacre, two musicians decide to do some drag as female musicians in order to escape. They were not, however, planning on Sugar Kane or Osgood.

Review

Billy Wilder brings us what is not only a really funny comedy, because it is that, but also a spoof of films like Little Caesar or Scarface, those early thirties mob films and a pretty revolutionary comedy in the kind of humour used.

The humour is of course full of sexual and homosexual innuendo, something which you were not seeing frequently coming out of anywhere at the time. This humour is also tempered with an actually dangerous situation in which the characters are thrust.

This mix of danger and comedy makes the film quite revolutionary, Spats isn't a comedy villain (even if Napoleon is that), and the comedy comes from the situation characters are thrust in as well as some brilliantly ambiguous dialogue. A great comedy.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was originally planned to be filmed in full color, but after several screen tests, it had to be changed to black and white because of a very obvious 'green tint' around the heavy make-up required by Curtis and Lemmon when portraying Josephine and Daphne. The Florida segment was filmed at the Hotel Del Coronado in Coronado, California.

Some Like It Hot received a "C" (Condemned) rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency. The film, along with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and several other films, led to the end of the Production Code in the mid-1960s. It was released by United Artists without the MPAA logo in the credits or title sequence, since the film did not receive Production Code approval.

Tony Curtis is frequently quoted as saying that kissing Marilyn Monroe was like "kissing Hitler." In a 2001 interview with Leonard Maltin, Curtis stated that he never made this claim.

The film's title is a line in the nursery rhyme "Pease Porridge Hot." It also occurs as dialogue in the film when Joe, as "Junior", tells Sugar he prefers classical music over hot jazz. The film's working title was "Not Tonight, Josephine".

Trailer:

340. North By Northwest (1959)

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

Cary Grant gets mistaken for some government spy. HE also gets accused of murder, so he has to run away form Vandamm (not Jean-Claude) and the police, while trying to shag this spy girl.


Review

Hitchcock does good again. In North by Northwest he brings us a film that is not nearly as dark as Vertigo, but that is great fun to watch. If we ignore the mistaken identity bits it could almost be a very good Bond film, spectacular locations, romance with spies, wisecracking sexual jokes, villains from some undefined organisation, ending the film with a roll in the hay, getting the girl etc.

So it is a lighter fare, as you want a Cary Grant film to be. An Affair to Remember was a heavy Grant film... and we all know it's shit. Hitchcock always manages to amuse me to no end, however, there are little funny details spread throughout the film which really reward close viewing, from the Hitchcock cameo to Grant crossing a woman's room at the hospital, to the mischievous Freudian final scene.

Well, I still have not seen a Hitchcock film I disliked, all of them I have loved and always on more than one level, funny, cruel, suspenseful and frustrating all at the same time seem to be his hallmarks and he always manage to make them work perfectly together.


Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The plot of this film is one of the purer versions of Alfred Hitchcock's idea of the "MacGuffin", the physical object that everyone in the film is chasing after but which has no deep relationship to the plot. Late in North by Northwest, it emerges that the spies are attempting to smuggle microfilm containing government secrets out of the country. They have been trying to kill Thornhill, who they believe to be the agent on their trail, "George Kaplan". Indeed, the fictitious Kaplan himself could be the "MacGuffin" of the film as Thornhill, as well as the villains, spend most of the movie vainly trying to track him down.

There are similarities between this movie and Hitchcock's earlier film Saboteur (1942), whose final scene on top of the Statue of Liberty foreshadows the Mount Rushmore scene in the later film. In fact, North by Northwest can be seen as the last in a long line of "wrong man" films that Hitchcock made according to the pattern he established in The 39 Steps (1935).

Titles:

339. Les 400 Coups (The 400 Blows) (1959)

Directed By François Truffaut

Synopsis

Doniel is a kid who gets into all kinds of trouble. Eventually, his desperate parents send him to a reformatory.

Review

Truffaut's first film is an exploration of childhood and the injustices of childhood. You know when people told you when you were a kid, that those were the best years of your life, that you had no responsibilities etc? Well, those were all lies.

Many people are so wound up in nostalgia that they have actually convinced themselves of the happiness of childhood and adolescence. Well those are surely fake memories, I know that I like my life better now. And Truffaut seems to also be aware of this, which is the great thing about this film. A kid's life is tough, unfair and powerless.

The greatest kudos in the film go to Jean-Pierre Léaud, however, as possibly the best child actor that we have had the pleasure to see in a film on this list until now, and that will take some beating. His interview with the psychologist is particularly natural, with some pretty amazing reaction expressions and almost improvisational replies.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The English title is a straight translation of the French, but misses its meaning, as the French title refers to the expression "faire les quatre cents coups", which means "to raise hell". On the first American prints, subtitler and dubber Noelle Gilmore gave the film the title Wild Oats, but the distributor did not like that title, and reverted it to The 400 Blows, which led some to think the film covered the topic of corporal punishment.

Trailer:

338. Jalsaghar (The Music Room) (1958)

Directed By Satyajit Ray

Synopsis

The same old story, penniless nobility meets arriviste noveau-riche bourgeoisie. Bourgeoisie envies nobility's status, nobility envies bourgeoisie's money. In this case the old Zamindar spends his last pennies giving a huge bash in order to outshine his rich neighbour after his house has gone into terrible decay and his family dies making him the last of his line.

Review

Satyajit Ray was a great director, we've already had two parts of his Apu trilogy here, and will have the third. Meanwhile we get Jalsaghar which works not only as a film on the decay of the zamindar (feudal land-owner type) system in India, but also as a great music film.

The great highlights of the film are the musical moments with some impressive performances, but underpinning all that is the desperate struggle of a man to remain something that he no longer is.

The film often feels too slow, that is, however, very deliberate, it not only emphasises the pure desperation of the situation but also contrasts with the at times ecstatic musical moments and last scenes of the film. It is all a grey and slow build-up, shot through with moments of brilliance, which really work for what the film is trying to do. Nice to see little Apu as the zamindar's son here as well.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film features much excellent footage of Hindustani classical vocal and instrumental music, as well as classical dance. The musical score is by Vilayat Khan (although the credits for the Sony Pictures Classics video release mistakenly list Ravi Shankar as composer) and several major performers, including Begum Akhtar (first singer; sometimes credited as Akhtari Bai), Roshan Kumari (kathak dancer), Ustad Bismillah Khan and Company, Waheed Khan (surbahar player), and Salamat Ali Khan (second, khyal singer; sometimes credited as Salamat Khan) also appear in the film.

Amazing dance sequence:

337. Mon Oncle (My Uncle) (1958)

Directed By Jacques Tati

Synopsis

M. Hulot takes care of his nephew who lives in an anti-septic modernist house in the suburbs of Paris. This contrasts with his more familiar area in the old part of the city.

Review

I really disliked Les Vacances de M. Hulot, in fact I think it is the lowest rated film on this blog up until now. Mon Oncle is, however, a different story. As you can imagine I was not looking forward to this and was, therefore, pleasantly surprised at it not being shit.

The film has a lot of faults, it is much too long, lasting almost two hours, the action is a bit too slow and it is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Still it also has its plus points. Tati makes great use of architecture updating Chaplin's Modern Times to the late 50s, some moments are very clever... which unfortunately is not saying the same as funny.

Mon Oncle is a vast improvement over Vacances, moments are beautifully filmed, and it can at times be quite delightful... it does drag on for too long however, and the humour is too reliant on prat fall type humour. In that way you can see the influence on stuff like Mr. Bean or the Pink Panther films, further accentuated by the lack of dialogue. Tati does use sounds in a very good way, serving mostly to annoy the viewer and show how horrible modernity is... which is a bit reactionary of him, but I get where he is coming from.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film centers on the dimwitted yet lovable character of Monsieur Hulot and his quixotic struggle with postwar France's infatuation with modern architecture, mechanical efficiency and American-style consumerism. As with most Tati films, Mon Oncle is largely a visual comedy; color and lighting are employed to help tell the story. The dialogue in Mon Oncle is barely audible, and largely subordinated to the role of a sound effect. Consequently, most of the conversations are not subtitled. Instead, the drifting noises of heated arguments and idle banter complement other sounds and the physical movements of the characters, intensifying comedic effect. The complex soundtrack also uses music to characterize environments, including a lively musical theme that represents Hulot's world of comical inefficiency and freedom.

Hulot in the kitchen:

336. Dracula (1958)

Directed By Terence Fisher


Synopsis

It's Dracula! Only Harker is a librarian, Mina is married to Lucy's Brother and it is all set in Germany.

Review

You never watch Hammer horror film for their lovely acting, nuanced scripts or high-budget special effects. You watch it because it is great fun. And this film is great fun! Unfortunately it is not very good. As an important note it was released in the US as the Horror of Dracula, as that is how you will find it in Region 1 DVDs.

An interesting thing about the film and the main reason why it is included in this list is just how much further it pushes the horror envelope than the MGM horror films of the 30s and 40s. There is blood and gore and the sexual content is very visible, there is more red in this film that anything else on the list until now.

This again shows the audiences growing and demanding more adult material. It seems funny now that this came out with a X qualification, now it is a 12A in the UK. But the contrast with all that came before it is so great that this must have been shocking for the time. As a document for the development of graphic violence in cinema it is essential, as a camp film it is essential, as a cult film ditto... but the script is risible, the acting even by the great Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is deliciously hammy and the sets are terrible... frankly you wouldn't want it any other way.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The filming of Dracula's destruction included a shot in which Dracula appears to peel away his decaying skin. This was accomplished by putting a layer of red makeup on Christopher Lee's face, and then covering his entire face with a thin coating of mortician's wax, which was then made up to conform to his normal skin tone. When he raked his fingers across the wax, it revealed the "raw" marks underneath. Still photos of this startling shot exist, but it was cut out of the disintegration sequence in the film.

Lucy Gets Staked!

335. Popiół i Diament (Ashes and Diamonds) (1958)

Directed By Andrzej Wajda

Synopsis

A man is on a mission to kill a communist leader. When he falls in love he is on a reluctant mission to kill a communist leader.

Review

Well this film could have been better. It is much loved for its cinematography but The Cranes Are Flying was much better for example, and even if the film has a load of potential it seems to be a bit dispersed.

Two things would have made the film better, trimming or getting rid of some of the side plots (who cares about the mayor's secretary?) or making the film longer in order to further explore the main romantic relationship.

The fact that the main character falls in love seems a bit rushed, his motivation for his reluctance becomes less than obvious. There are moments of real beauty in the film, as the moment depicted in the above picture when the couple have a conversation with an upended crucifix in the foreground or how the blood comes through the sheets at the end, but not enough to make the film great.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The main character, Maciek, has to wear a sunglass all the time, since he was in the Warsaw Uprising, which took place between August 1 and October 2 (63 days in total), and where insurgents used the Warsaw sewers to move between the Old Town and the Downtown of Warsaw. Maciek being part of the uprising explains his hatred of the Soviets, who were on the other side of the Vistula but did not help the insurgents at all. He also mentions Warsaw as a beautiful memory to the porter, obviously referring to the almost total (85%) destruction of Warsaw by the Germans following the uprising.

Good Scene:

334. Vertigo (1958)

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

Jimmy Stewart is so afraid of heights that he quits the police force. A man then hires him to follow his wife which is seemingly possessed by the spirit of an ancestor...

Review

If the synopsis is incomplete it is because anything else would really ruin the film, well maybe not ruin because it is such a great film, but at least diminish the impact for those who don't know the story.

This is one of the best films by Hitchcock we've had on the list and also one of the strangest ones. Jimmy Stewart is particularly good in this and he is very well used by Hitchcock, no one expects to see Jimmy become a ruthless self-obsessed asshole, but for a while in the film he does become that.

The ending of the film is also one of those great endings in cinema which make you titter with a nervous giggle at the unexpectedness and awesomeness of it. This is a film that does not end well... lets say. Then there is some great innovative camera work, form the depictions of vertigo to the representation of San Francisco. A truly great film.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In the 1960s, the French Cahiers du cinéma critics began re-evaluating Hitchcock as a serious artist rather than just a populist showman. However, even François Truffaut's important book of Hitchcock interviews mentions Vertigo very little. Dan Aulier has suggested that the real beginning of Vertigo's rise in adulation was the British-Canadian scholar Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films (1968), which calls the film "Hitchcock's masterpiece to date and one of the four or five most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us". Adding to its mystique was the fact that Vertigo was one of five films owned by the Hitchcock estate that was removed from circulation in 1973. When Vertigo was re-released in theaters in October 1983, and then on home video in October 1984, it achieved an impressive commercial success and laudatory reviews. Similarly adulatory reviews were written for the October 1996 of a restored print in 70mm and DTS sound at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.

In 1989, Vertigo was recognized as a "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" film by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, going in the first year of the registry's voting.

The film ranked 4th and 2nd respectively in Sight and Sound's poll of the best films ever made, in 1992 and 2002 respectively. In 2005, Vertigo came in second (to Goodfellas) in British magazine Total Film's book, 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.

In his book Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer, however, British film critic Tom Shone argued that Vertigo's critical re-evaluation has led to excessive praise, and argued for a more measured response. Faulting Sight and Sound for "perennially" putting the film on the list of best-ever films, he wrote that "Hitchcock is a director who delights in getting his plot mechanisms buffed up to a nice humming shine, and so the Sight and Sound team praise the one film of his in which this is not the case – it's all loose ends and lopsided angles, its plumbing out on display for the critic to pick over at his leisure."

Film is online! Part 1: