1001 Flicks

384. Dog Star Man (1962)

2010-05-23T18:07:00.003+01:00

Directed By Stan Brakhage

Synopsis

A man climbs a snowy hill with his dog... and shit.

Review

Well this is half an hour of my life I won't get back (I didn't watch the whole cycle of films from 61 to 64, only Part I from 1962). I know this will annoy plenty of uptight film students but it was not the most enjoyable experience. I suspect it would be better in the correct context, but in front of my PC it didn't do much for me.

This is not to say that I don't recognise its importance or its worthiness as a presence on this list. This is cinema at its most experimental something which was all too infrequent from the beginning of talkies until the 60s, and in that sense Brakhage was playing with film in an original and worthy way, just not in one which is particularly exciting for the viewer.

I would also figure that the film would be greatly enhanced by mind altering substances, which I didn't partake of. It is half an hour of silent film with images bombarding the viewer more often than not being completely abstract. What I probably found most interesting about it were the parallels between the film and the Philip K. Dick "Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep" Mercerism thing where they get absorbed into a film of a man climbing a hill and falling down becoming almost a religious experience. I seemed to be missing an "empathy box" for this film, however.

Final Grade

6/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is part of the by Brakhage: an Anthology Criterion collection DVD.

The same footage was also made into a much longer film, The Art of Vision. Both are generally considered the masterpieces of his first mature period.

First 9 minutes of the PRelude from 1961:

383. Cléo de 5 a 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7) (1962)

2010-04-29T23:48:00.003+01:00

Directed By Agnes Varda

Synopsis

The film follows two hours of a pop-star's life, while she waits for some biopsy results which will tell her whether she has cancer.

Review

Agnes Varda is one of the great, if not the greatest female director of the French New Wave. In a film style that is kind of defined by the misogyny of Godard, it makes it quite fresh.

Varda was married to Jacques Demy, and that shows through in this film, there are similarities throughout with Demy's Lola, not only due to the central character being a beautiful and troubled woman, but in a certain lightness of touch absent from the dourer films of Godard. The importance of music is another thing that connects Lola and Cleo.

That being said while Lola is a film seen very much through a man's eyes, Cleo is a much more female-centred film, which is very much not to be confused with it being a "chick-flick". The way the film develops almost in real time is a really interesting exercise, as is the shifts in perspective from one character to the next, all of the shifts being signalled through subtitles in the film. Cleo is a slightly annoying character, but one who slowly improves as her priorities in life shift throughout the film and by the end you can see her on a path going beyond superficiality. Good film.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film includes cameos by Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine and Jean-Claude Brialy as characters in the silent film Raoul shows Cleo and Dorothee, while composer Michel Legrand, who wrote the film's score, plays "Bob the pianist". It was entered into the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.

Scene:

382. Mondo Cane (A Dog's Life) (1962)

2010-04-05T20:30:00.004+01:00

Directed By Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti, and Franco Prosperi

Synopsis

The film shows several shocking or absurd scenes from around the world in a "documentary" style.

Review

Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction Mondo Cane is a really hard film to make up your mind about. Is it simply a commentary on the voyeurism of documentary cinema? Is it a slightly racist shock-fest? Is it an exercise on the idea of documental truth?

Well you can take it as you like, but it is definitely a powerful film which not only makes you feel depressed about human nature but also manipulates the viewer in their most basic feelings, and which is at the same time admirable and disgusting. In purely technical terms it is extremely well filmed and some close ups of faces are almost prefiguring later Italian film-makers such as Sergio Leone, seeing faces as ugly landscapes.

The film is extremely nihilistic in its outlook, while at times there might be a sense of some racism inherent in the exoticisation of the foreign as with the Papua New Guinea scenes, the film seems to be an equal-opportunity offender as European and American people are equally mocked and treated with paternalistic condescension. Of course most of the things in the film aren't really real, or are at least puffed-up versions of what is actually happening in order to serve the film's purpose. The lack of context in most scenes helps the film's end of portraying humanity as beyond the pale, but is ultimately unfair. If this is a commentary on the limits of documentary film-making it is indeed a poignant criticism, if not it shows dishonesty, but it is in any way a truly enlightening film.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

As well as encouraging sequels, Mondo Cane's shock-exploitation-documentary-exquisite corpse style is credited with starting a whole genre: the Mondo film. Examples of mondo film include Mondo Bizarro, Mondo Daytona, Mondo Mod, Mondo Infame and Mondo Hollywood; later examples include the Faces of Death series.

Happy Easter:

381. West Side Story (1961)

2010-03-01T22:49:00.003Z

Directed By Robert Wise and Jerome Roberts

Synopsis

Romeo and Juliet get transposed to US gang life.

Review

Much can be said about this as a film, but the real merit goes definitely to the original musical, Bernstein's music and Sondheim's lyrics just make this an amazing musical which would then lead to a great film without needing to add much to it.

However it also shows us that musical theatre was far ahead of the cinema in what came to social politics, and it is weird to find that one of the most politically and socially hard-hitting films of the early 60s is indeed an adaptation of a musical. Problems of racism, immigration, social inclusion, police brutality and institutionalised racism are explored at a deeper level here than you would expect.

The casting is sometimes pretty bad, the two main characters are unconvincing, but it is filled with some great minor characters with Rita Moreno pretty much stealing the show throughout. And it is really when it comes to the musical numbers that the film becomes the most affecting and fun. Great Stuff.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Elvis Presley was originally approached for Tony. However, his manager, Colonel Parker, strongly believed the role to be wrong for Elvis and made him decline in favor of other movie musicals. When the movie became a hit and earned 10 Oscars, Elvis later regretted having given up the part. He was only one of many young stars that were in consideration for the role of Tony. Several Hollywood men auditioned for the part, including Warren Beatty, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins, Russ Tamblyn, Burt Reynolds, Troy Donahue, Bobby Darin, Richard Chamberlain, and Gary Lockwood.

America:

380. The Hustler (1961)

2010-02-21T05:21:00.003Z

Directed by Rober Rossen

Synopsis

Paul Newman is a hustler. Not that kind of hustler, one who uses his rod and balls to make money. A pool hustler. And he really wants to beat Jackie Gleason... whatever it takes, and it takes quite a bit.

Review

How can you make a 2 hour 15 minute film about shooting pool exciting? Well Rossen managed to do it with The Hustler. Of course the film goes way beyond pool playing, in fact it is about life and growing up, how to succeed by getting your focus on what is actually important in life.

In this case that realisation might come quite late in the film, and too late to salvage the Hustler's loved one, but it does come. And through it all the performances are astounding. Paul Newman is his beautiful self and plays Fast Eddie like he was born to do it, George C. Scott plays a bastard as only he can play them, and Piper Laurie feels genuinely damaged throughout.

If this was all there was to it, a thoughtful plot and great acting, it would already be worth watching, but there is also beautiful direction and cinematography, the black and white being more and more used as an artistic option rather than a technical imperative, and the great wide cinemascope shots being beautiful to look at, all complemented by exacting detail in the locations and extras. Great film.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Rossen filmed The Hustler over six weeks, entirely in New York City. Much of the action was filmed at two now-defunct pool halls, McGirr's and Ames Billiard Academy. Other shooting locations included a townhouse on East 82nd Street, which served as the Louisville home of Murray Hamilton's character Findley, and the Manhattan Greyhound bus terminal. The film crew built a dining area that was so realistic that confused passengers sat there and waited to place their orders. Willie Mosconi served as technical advisor on the film and shot a number of the trick shots in place of the actors (except for Gleason whose shots were his own and filmed in wide-angle to show the actor and the shot in the same frames). Rossen, in pursuit of the style he termed "neo-neo-realistic",hired actual street thugs, enrolled them in the Screen Actors Guild and used them as extras.

Fast Eddie talks about how he feels when playing pool:

379. Chronique d'un Été (Chronicle of a Summer) (1961)

2010-02-19T18:50:00.002Z

Directed By Jean Rouch

Synopsis

A documentary follows common people around during a summer asking them if they are happy and how they live.

Review

The above synopsis gives us a simple premiss for what ends up being a quite complex film, complex not in its basic idea but in the brilliant execution of the whole thing and the methodology underpinning it.

Here, for the first time, we really see documentary cinema being painfully aware of itself. Rouch knows that the camera changes what is being filmed, and so instead of trying to efface it off the screen he admits its presence and his own as director and so do his subjects.

This ends up making the film not only a touching documentary following people's struggles in daily life and their own inner turmoil, but also a self-reflective film. By the end of it the film is shown to the documentary subjects and they try to judge where the "truth" in the film is. This ends up giving all kinds of reactions to the same scenes, showing us and showing itself aware of the subjectivity of truth on camera. Even if the film might get slightly dull at times it is full of very humane moments which are deeply touching as well as being honest about itself and the problems which are always present in documentary film making.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

"It must be said, all that we have done in France in the area of cinéma-vérité comes from Canada. It is Brault who brought a new technique of filming that we had not known and that we copied ever since. In fact, truly, there is a "brauchitis" spreading, it is certain. Even the people who consider that Brault is a nuisance, or were jealous, are forced to recognize it."

Original text

«Il faut le dire, tout ce que nous avons fait en France dans le domaine du cinéma-vérité vient de l'ONF (Canada). C'est Brault qui a apporté une technique nouvelle de tournage que nous ne connaissions pas et que nous copions tous depuis. D'ailleurs, vraiment, on a la "brauchite", ça, c'est sûr; même les gens qui considèrent que Brault est un emmerdeur ou qui étaient jaloux sont forcés de le reconnaître.»" Jean Rouch, June 1963 Cahiers du Cinéma No.144.

Scene:

378. Såsom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly) (1961)

2010-02-17T19:44:00.003Z

Directed By Ingmar Bergman

Synopsis

A family of four (Father, son, daughter and daughter's husband) reunite at a summer's house in Sweden and everything seems fine and happy... well the daughter is suffering from mental illness and in the space of 24 hours all goes to shit.

Review

If there is anything that makes all of Bergman's films a joy to watch it is just how great the acting is. Here you have a cast consisting solely of four people, but then you need no more than that to explore the gamut of human emotions.

So acting is flawless here, but the directing is also amazing, with an interplay of light and shadow which is truly beautiful, just look at the play scene or the scene inside the wrecked boat.

Then the plot is not exactly uplifting but it is also not completely a downer behind all the disaster pervading the family there is a lot of love going on there, of all kinds, and some of it misplaced or slightly self-interested but there is a sense of all the characters caring for each other deeply, but then it is the superb acting that makes it all the more believable they act like a family because these are are actors which have been working together for a while, isolated in the island of Faro, the intimacy of a cast of four really translates to the interpersonal relations on screen. Great stuff.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The spider god may be an allusion to Dostoevsky's character Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment who wonders of the afterlife, "But what if there are only spiders there, or something like that?" Karin’s reaction to the wallpaper in the attic may also be taken as an allusion to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’ short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Trailer:

377. The Ladies Man (1961)

2010-02-11T19:10:00.003Z

Directed By Jerry Lewis

Synopsis

Herbert H. Heebert graduates and in the same day has his heart broken. From then on he decided to forsake women. Then he gets a job at a all women boarding house! Oh the hilarity!

Review

Well there isn't much of a plot to speak of here. The whole film consists of a sequence of situations slightly united by plot with a kind of romance side-plot which is never really developed. That said there are plenty of interesting things here.

Jerry Lewis is both the best and worse thing about this film, the bad is his acting which is just too much over the top to actually be funny, the faces he pulls, his histrionics etc. are just too forced. The great thing about Jerry here is his job as director, he is a pretty good director there are several sequences which are amazingly well made.

An example of these sequences is near the beginning of the film where the girls wake up in the house and all the movement is done to music, the way the house is cut away to show all the rooms makes it almost theatrical but also always keeps you aware of the artificiality of what you are watching, but in a good way. The entrance of a TV crew in the house actually seems to break the fourth wall as the cameras are placed beyond the house where the actual cameras to film the film would be. And then there is the great Miss Cartilage scene, which is funny in its surrealness. If only Jerry hadn't acted in the film...

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It was released on June 28, 1961 by Paramount.

Great Sequence which I can only find dubbed in Spanish! Why do you people keep dubbing crap, can't you read subtitles?:

376. Viridiana (1961)

2010-02-09T04:12:00.002Z

Directed By Luis Buñuel

Synopsis

A young woman is going to become a nun, but before that she goes to visit her old uncle who has financially supported her all her life. Because she resembles his dead wife, he wants to keep her with him forever. When she doesn't agree he commits suicide leaving all his possessions to her and a son he had out of wedlock. She decides to create an auberge for the poor in the uncle's land while his son starts living there. Eventually they leave all the beggars at the property while they have to go to the lawyer or something. The beggars break in to the main house and have a party, leaving a lot of damage behind. Heartbroken, Viridiana loses the will to be charitable and submits to the flesh.

Review

From that synopsis the film does not look particularly shocking, and the same was what the Spanish authorities during the Franco dictatorship thought... but this is Buñuel, a master at showing rather than saying and it is in the visuals that the truly avant-garde stuff happens.

We need to remember that Buñuel was already extremely active during the silent film era, with Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or, for example, so he is no stranger at making the images do the talking. And here is where the blasphemies, lecherousness, transvestism, necrophilia and incestuousness come in. When the uncle dresses his niece up as his dead bride and then drugs her, he puts her hands in place like a corpse and then proceeds to kiss her. While Viridiana takes off her socks the camera stops longingly in her legs, as the beggars blow their chances for a comfortable life in one night of excess they pose as the last supper, when Viridiana tries to milk a cow her hesitating fingers cannot grasp the teats in what is a very phallic moment.

With Buñuel the devil is always in the detail, it cannot be described, the eye of the director is infinitely more important than the written script, and surprisingly it never feels like a gimmick. And this is what has always made him such a great director, and this such a good film.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

After the film was completed and sent by the Spanish cinematographic authority to the Cannes Film Festival, and awarded, the government of Francisco Franco tried unsuccessfully to have the film withdrawn and banned its release in Spain. L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, described the film as "blasphemous." The film was released there in 1977, after Franco's death, when Buñuel was seventy-seven years old.

However the film was acclaimed at Cannes, winning the Palme D'Or. Buñuel himself said that "I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am".

Trailer:

375. Jules et Jim (Jules and Jim) (1961)

2010-02-02T01:33:00.003Z

Directed By François Truffaut

Synopsis

Fickle lady likes to fuck around. Jules, her husband, is what we in Portugal call a "corno-manso" (tame-horn). Jim, his best friend, eventually joins in the fun. She goes a bit obsessed, and turns to psycho bitch killing herself and Jim, leaving her husband to take care of her daughter.

Review

When looking at French new wave there are two giants who rear their heads, Godard and Truffaut. In my opinion, however, Truffaut is vastly superior, not only in the way he uses film-making techniques but simply because he has a heart.

Truffaut is a deeply human director, while Godard isn't, Truffaut can create images and situations which resound with the spectator in a way Godard simply cannot. Jules et Jim, even if it is at moments an annoying film (Jeanne Moreau's character is a bit detestable), is a film shot through with moments of great beauty.

In a way the film contrasts the purity of the almost homoerotic relationship of the two title characters with the destructive influence of the female coming in from the outside. In a sense it is as misogynist as Godard but he makes beauty while doing it. Also his visual techniques, use of panning, archive footage, dissolves etc. is pretty innovative interesting and keeps your attention throughout.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

One of the seminal products of the French New Wave, Jules and Jim is an inventive encyclopedia of the language of cinema that incorporates newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voiceover narration (by Michel Subor). Truffaut's cinematographer was Raoul Coutard, a frequent collaborator with Jean-Luc Godard, who employed the latest lightweight cameras to create an extremely fluid and distinctive film style. For example, some of the postwar scenes were shot using cameras mounted on bicycles.

Trailer:

374. La Notte (The Night) (1961)

2010-02-01T00:39:00.003Z

Directed By Michelangelo Antonioni

Synopsis

A couple is falling out of love, they go to a hospital, walk about, go home, go to a night club, and to a party.

Review

Marcello Mastroianni plays his usual caddy self in another Antonioni film. My wife was saying that Antonioni's films seem to be all middle... and it is a bit true. The travels the viewer makes in his films are really not about getting anywhere, they are about a frozen moment.

Only Antonioni drags that moment through hours. There is nothing wrong with that, and in the moments where he does it well it is really worth watching. Seeing as this is a kind of loose trilogy with L'Avventura which we've had here already and L'Eclisse which we will have, I will reserve judgement on his portrayal of bored superficial rich people until I do the Eclisse review.

I can safely say, however that this is a better film than L'Avventura, the acting is much better, with Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau doing great and a now brunette Monica Vitti brightening up the screen. It is also not as frustrating as the "mystery with no solution" of L'Avventura. This being said there is very little excitement to be had and little to empathise with as well. Oh well.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

A subtitle at the end of the credits of the Monty Python movie Life of Brian contains a recommendation to see La notte.

Night club scene with the impressive dancer:

373. Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

2009-11-29T21:52:00.003Z

Directed by Blake Edwards

Synopsis

A film about a poser with whom poser fans identify with while missing the whole point of the film.

Review

I really like Breakfast at Tiffany's. In fact it has a special significance for me as it was the first film me and my wife went to see at the cinema after we started going out together. Ahhh young romance.

Now some things are pretty objectionable about the film, first and foremost the character of Yunioshi, played by Mickey Rooney, "yellowing-up" for the part, is pretty disgustingly racist, from round glasses to buck-teeth to tea ceremony to exaggerated accent it still rings terribly of WWII propaganda. Blake Edwards seemed to have a penchant for racial stereotyping. Just at the pretty disgusting The Party from 1968 where Peter Sellars "browns-up" to play a comic Indian character again with all the comedy appealing the the most basic racial stereotypes... and this is not even mentioning the Pink Panther series where French(Inspector Closeau) and Asian (Kato) stereotypes are the basis for the whole series of films. At least Kato was actually Chinese.

However Yunioshi is very much a secondary character of the film and his presence should not let you stop from appreciating it. Audrey Hepburn is dazzling throughout the film even if she plays a character which is at the same time sweet and a complete air-head with her heart in very much the wrong place. It is George Peppard who is the real hero here, no matter what all the movie posters tell you. He is the one who is able to shift his life from superficiality due to his own initiative and eventually save Hepburn from herself. It is in the realisation of the emptiness of the "stylish-life" that the great moral teaching of the film appears, there is more to life than this, which is what most fans of the film seem to miss.

On the positive side the film is immensely pretty, the set and clothing are great throughout and with such good taste that they sometimes look downright timeless. Mancini's soundtrack is one of the great plus points of the film creating a completely adequate atmosphere throughout. The acting is passable... Hepburn not being such a great actress but looking pretty.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In the 45th anniversary edition DVD release, producer Richard Shepherd repeatedly apologizes, saying, "If we could just change Mickey Rooney, I'd be thrilled with the movie."Director Blake Edwards stated, "Looking back, I wish I had never done it...and I would give anything to be able to recast it, but it's there, and onward and upward."In a 2008 interview about the film, 87-year-old Rooney said he was heartbroken about the criticism and that he had never received any complaints about his portrayal of the character.

A free outdoor screening in Sacramento, California, scheduled for August 23, 2008, was replaced with the animated film Ratatouille after protests about the character Mr. Yunioshi. The protest was led by Christina Fa of the Asian American Media Watch. In light of the protest, Sacramento vice mayor Steven Cohn stated that "the intent was never to create controversy, to make political statements or to be on the avant garde of the movie world, let alone to offend significant members of our community."

Film's on youtube, part 1:

372. Lola (1961)

2009-11-09T00:52:00.003Z

Directed By Jacques Demy

Synopsis

Lola is a dancer, she awaits the return of her son's father, who left 7 years ago to seek his fortune. Meanwhile her childhood friend loses his job and is contracted to carry a briefcase to Johannesburg, but he finds Lola and decides to put it off because he loves her, she doesn't love him so he decides to leave. Her son's father returns.

Review

You can't tell much about the film from this synopsis, you can't particularly tell how delightful the whole thing is. Demy is attempting to create a musical with no musical numbers here, and despite a musical moment he manages to do it beautifully.

The dialogue has that lightness of touch so common to French cinema of the pre-Nouvelle Vague age. The characters, no matter how secondary, intertwine their plots and lives through the story in a way that is both spectacular and very funny.

The film ends up not being a comedy but being comedic all the same in the way the tropes of musical cinema are used in a serious context, the way characters parallel each other and in the simple events and references of the film. The acting is good but better still is the camera work and cinematography in a clear tribute to Max Ophuls. Another great film.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda.

The whole film is online here.

Trailer:

371. One Eyed Jacks (1961)

2009-11-07T03:10:00.003Z

Directed By Marlon Brando

Synopsis

A gang composed of Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and Ensign Smith rob a bank. While enjoying the fruits of their labour the federales come after them and Ensign Smith gets shot to hell. Malden and Brando take a stand, and Brando sends Malden to get fresh horses. Does he? Does he bollocks. After coming out of prison Brando wants to take revenge, he meets Malden and plans, he manages to impregnate his step-daughter who falls in love with him and eventually he gets arrested by Malden who is now a Sheriff. He escapes, there's a shoot out, Marlon Brando and impregnated lady are happy ever after... or are they?

Review

There is definitely something happening in the world of Westerns, in this case we have Marlon Brando very much taking method acting to the Western scenery. If you add to this the convention braking idea of having a Western shot next to the sea, there is something really new here. The dialogue is natural, the acting is great and the idea of Western as b-movie is completely out the window.

This is, unfortunately, the only film directed by Brando, but it is indeed a great one. The cinematography is amazing, and even if the plot is completely secondary and quite predictable the acting keeps it together through the 2 hours something of it.

In fact the film is completely made by the characters and dialogue, each main character is so multi-faceted that they become real riddles, your opinion on Brandon and Malden change throughout the film, also because they are both so adept at transmitting good and evil on the screen that they manage to do both equally convincingly in the space of 5 minutes. Great film.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The movie had very little resemblance to the Neider novel, and what remains has much more resonance with history than fiction. At various times, the two credited screenwriters and the uncredited Peckinpah have claimed (or had claimed for them) a majority of the responsibility for the film, and Karl Malden has answered the query about who really wrote the story: "There is one answer to your question — Marlon Brando, a genius in our time."

The whole film is here!

Trailer:

370. La Jetée (The Pier) (1961)

2009-10-17T00:54:00.003+01:00

Directed By Chris Marker

Synopsis

After World War III the victors do experiments on prisoners to send them to the past and future so that humanity may survive.

Review

This is a very short film done completely by making a sequence of stills connected by narration. And this is all you need to make a film, sequential images and a plot on screen.

In fact the film is so well paced that after some 5 minutes you start forgetting its particular style and just follow the story of it. This is experimentalism how it should be done, not as a chore for the viewer but as something that the viewer can enjoy at least as much as its creator. So the visual style is challenging? Put some interesting plot in it. The plot is strange, mundane or cryptic? Do it in a visually interesting way. Sometimes both might work as in Yasujiro Ozu's films where the camera is still and the subject mundane but touching, but that is rare indeed.

So the film works great both as a piece of entertainment (which then would give origin to 12 Monkeys) and as an example of what sequential images on a screen can do even without the "moving" image. Somewhere between the Comic and the Film, this is a unique piece of Cinema.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

La jetée has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German. The story is told by a voice-over narrator. It is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying pace. It contains only one brief shot originating on a motion-picture camera. The stills were taken with a Pentax 24x36 and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35mm Arriflex. The film score was composed by Trevor Duncan. Due to its brevity, La jetée is often screened in theatres alongside other films; Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965) was the film with which it was first released.

It is online, part 1:

369. L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) (1961)

2009-10-13T23:32:00.003+01:00

Directed by Alain Resnais

Synopsis

Two people (A and X) might or might not have had an affair and then might or might not have made a date for the following year. The woman (who may or may not be married to M) may be alive or dead seems to believe or not what the man recollects from their combination. They may or may not end up leaving Marienbad (or is it some place else?) together.

Review

Sometimes films are more interesting than actually entertaining. This is, most definitely, the case here. You might find yourself nodding off throughout the film but it does stay with you afterwards and there are interesting questions posed by it that you will reflect on.

This kind of film serves a strong purpose in the way that it opens doors to use experimental techniques in more "entertainment-centred" films. Marienbad has plenty of things to detest, it is French to the point of ridicule, full of affected artificiality, clichés and unnatural speech. And then it has the good things from it being French, like a certain depth of both acting and concept, and Coco Chanel designing the women's clothes.

In the end it is food for thought, is X the writer of the film endlessly changing the story? Is A dead? Are both X and A dead and is M imagining the whole thing? In the end it is all fruitless because it means nothing. But an interesting and very pretty nothing.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is famous for its enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to distinguish, and the temporal and spatial relationship of the events is open to question. The dream-like nature of the film has fascinated and baffled audiences and critics, some hailing it as a masterpiece, others finding it to be incomprehensible. Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the chateau and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows, the trees in the garden do not.

Online, first part:

368. Spelndor in the Grass (1961)

2009-10-13T02:33:00.003+01:00

Directed By Elia Kazan

Synopsis

Sexual repression is not good for you. Nice girls get no cock and go insane because nice boys go to bad girls to get their jollies. Bad girls get no respect and get cock for the wrong reasons. A no win situation here. But true love can be found in the psychiatric hospital.

Review

How can Elia Kazan, who was essentially a shitty person, direct great films? Well the same can be asked of Woody Allen or D. W. Griffith, or in musical terms Wagner for that matter. We have to be able to separate the work from the man. And Elia Kazan is again masterful in his direction.

Clearly influenced by the new stuff coming out of Europe he applies it to a traditionally American melodrama to great effect. At least he gets the best performance out of Natalie Wood I had seen.

The themes explored here show the shift in the early 1960s to tell the production code to take a hike. Exploring education, sexuality, morals and gender in a way that is more honest than much we have seen until now it manages to transcend the melodrama genre to be a quite powerful film. This is due to his reliance on method acting and some pretty great control of filming techniques which were only now becoming common, making the film feel modern even when some of the opinions expressed in it aren't.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film's title is taken from a line of William Wordsworth's poem "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood":

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind...

Film is Online, Part 1:

367. Spartacus (1960)

2009-10-13T02:10:00.004+01:00

Directed By Stanley Kubrick (and a little bit by Anthony Mann)

Synopsis

Spartacus is a slave trained as a gladiator, gets other slaves to get uppity in some kind of commie red revolt. It all goes to shit.

Review

This is probably the last of the truly great classical sword and sandal epics. They would be resurrected later by stuff like Gladiator but this is the last great one. And to my opinion it is definitely the best of them all.

The heavy handed religious rhetoric so present in Ben-Hur or Ten Commandments is really absent here, replaced by much smarter and therefore more effective symbolism. It isn't pure coincidence that Spartacus dies on the cross, he brings a message of hope through armed revolution, he is a true hero of the people.

If the American right had any interpretative power they'd be up in arms due to the messianic parallelisms made with an essentially good but violent man, which made me cry with his death on the cross... something no film on Christ ever did. A moving, deep and beautiful film. The best classical epic, but so close to not being one, with short battle scenes, focus on character's emotions, that it really signals the death of the whole genre for a time to come. Oh and Peter Ustinov is amazing throughout.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was re-released in 1967 (in a version 23 minutes shorter than the original release), and again in 1991 with the same 23 minutes restored by Robert A. Harris, plus an additional 14 minutes that had been cut from the film before its original release. This addition includes several violent battle sequences as well as a bath scene in which the Roman patrician and general Crassus (Olivier) attempts to seduce his slave Antoninus (Curtis) using the analogy of "eating oysters" and "eating snails" to express his opinion that sexual preference is a matter of taste rather than morality.

I'm Spartacus:

366. The Apartment (1960)

2009-08-24T05:20:00.003+01:00

Directed By Billy Wilder

Synopsis

A man lends out his apartment to his superiors at work for extra-marital escapades. This isn't nice for him but he does get some quick promotions... until the woman he loves is one of those taken to the apartment by his boss.

Review

I am sorry for taking such a long time-out here, I will really try to get more regular with the film viewing. So now we get back to this. The Apartment is another great Billy Wilder film. A strong social critique under the guise of a rom-com.

Well it is really more than a rom-com, it starts out as a com-com, moves to a dram-com, to a dram-dram and ends as a rom-com. Billy Wilder gives us plenty of turns in the film that not only switch the plot but more importantly the whole tenor of the film.

The extra-marital escapades move from amusing to quite seedy, not because they change as the acts that they are but because the main character's perspective change and so does ours. Jack Lemmon's lending out of his Apartment moves from funny inconvenience, to serious inconvenience, to emotionally painful to unbearable. All this in a film that is just plain easy to watch and can be enjoyed by almost anyone. This is the versatility of Wilder's films that make them the great, unpertentious works of art that they are.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The initial concept for the film came from the one-act play Brief Encounter by Noel Coward, in which the main character would use a friend's apartment to have an affair on his wife. Wilder and Diamond also based the film partially on a local scandal in which a high-powered agent having an affair was shot for sleeping with the woman's husband. During the affair, the agent would use a low-level employee's apartment for his trysts.

Scene:

365. Peeping Tom (1960)

2009-07-18T05:24:00.004+01:00

Directed By Michael Powell

Synopsis

A little boy has a weird upbringing. He then goes on to be obsessed with the idea of fear, to the point that he tries to capture it perfectly on camera... while killing his victims.

Review

We have slowly seen Michael Powell's descent into madness. From the great but quite inoffensive Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and I Know Where I Am Going to the progressivelly stranger Matter of Life And Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.

All of these films were made with Pressburger who might have been a restraining influence. Now Powell brings us Peeping Tom, possibly the weirdest, most psychologically damaged and most brilliant of all his films.

Peeping Tom is something else. The cinematography and colour, as well as the attention to detail are something Powell and Pressburger had made us used to, but the level of sheer emotional complexity of the film leaves Psycho crying in the corner. What this film has to say about the voyeurism of the viewer and the director is unsettling, as is the way that it makes us sympathise for a monster, you come out of it feeling dirty, but better off for the experience. Highly Recommended.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Peeping Tom was an immensely controversial film on initial release and the critical backlash heaped on the film all but finished Powell's career. However, the film earned a cult following, and since the 1970s has received a critical reappraisal that not only salvaged Powell's reputation but also earned the film a re-evaluation. He noted ruefully in his autobiography, "I make a film that nobody wants to see and then, thirty years later, everybody has either seen it or wants to see it."

Beginning of the film:

364. La Maschera Del Demonio (Revenge of the Vampire / Black Sunday) (1960)

2009-06-28T04:52:00.004+01:00

Directed By Mario Bava

Synopsis

A vampire/witch and her vampire lover get killed by the Inquisition in medieval times. Centuries later a doctor and his student do enough stupid things to allow the vampires to take their revenge.

Review

The plot of the film is pretty beside the point, it is traditional horror fare. What is not traditional for 1960 is just how gruesome the whole thing is. Watching this right after Psycho puts Hitchcock's violence in perspective. At this time European cinema had the edge.

It starts off with a great scene where the convicted lady gets a mask with nails stuck to her face with a mallet, to the point you see blood actually spurting from her head. This is something completely new, the level of gore here is just so far ahead that it makes the film compelling.

If gore and the visual horror of the bodies regenerating in their tombs was all there was to the film it would still be revolutionary and only comparable to Eyes Without a Face before it, but the film is also beautifully shot, with the director Mario Bava doubling as cinematographer. The acting is pretty terrible all around, and the best version is the English one with the Italian soundtrack, as the main actors were English-speakers the usual doubling from Italian films is less noticeable and they are using their own voices... even that doesn't save the acting... but bad acting is part of the film's charm. Definitely one for Halloween.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, of American International Pictures, were screened the Italian language version of the film when they were visiting Rome in search of viable, inexpensive European made films to act as second features for their double-bills. They immediately recognized the film as a potential hit, and bought the U.S. rights for $100,000, reportedly more than the movie’s budget.

In order to make the film more accessible to American audiences, AIP trimmed over three minutes’ worth of violence and objectionable content. Sequences excised or shortened included the burning "S" branded into Asa's flesh and the blood spewing from the mask after it was hammered into her face, the moist eyeball impalement of Kruvajan, and the flesh peeling off Vajda's face as he burned to death in the fireplace. In the original version of the film, Asa and Javuto were brother and sister; in the AIP version, Javuto became Asa's servant. In addition, some dialogue was "softened", including Asa's line, "You too can find the joy and happiness of Hades!"; AIP modified it to "You too can find the joy and happiness of hating!"

First part of the film:

363. Psycho (1960)

2009-06-28T02:43:00.003+01:00

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

A series of people get disappeared at a roadside motel where a young man lives with his "mother".

Review

Well you really don't need much more than that for a synopsis... of course it's more complicated than that, but if you've seen the film you know what happens and if you haven't more than that would ruin it for you.

This is the Hitchcock film that has been on the list that plays most with his macabre sense of humour. In fact the film, for all its fame as a thriller works mostly as a humorous piece... of course it is a very particular kind of humour, but it is humour nonetheless.

So it is the funniest Hitchcock film we've had up until now. Is it his best? No, not really I'd still put Rear Window and Rope up there above this. It is, however, thoroughly entertaining and a joy to watch, full of misdirection and mischievousness it is a great pleasure to see a master at work.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Psycho is a prime example of the type of film that appeared in the 1960s after the erosion of the Production Code. It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right from the opening scene where Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing the same bed. In the Production Code standards of that time, unmarried couples shown in the same bed would be taboo. In addition, the censors were upset by the shot of a flushing toilet; at that time, the idea of seeing a toilet onscreen - let alone being flushed - was taboo in American movies and TV shows. According to Entertainment Weekly, "The Production Code censors... had no objection to the bloodletting, the Oedipal murder theme, or even the shower scene—but did ask that Hitchcock remove the word transvestite from the film. He didn't." At one point, Hitchcock actually considered releasing the film without censorial approval. Its box office success helped propel Hollywood toward more graphic displays of previously-censored themes.

Psycho is widely considered to be the first film in the slasher film genre.

Trailer with Hitchcock giving a tour of the set:

362. Hayno (The Housemaid) (1960)

2009-06-16T18:53:00.004+01:00

Directed By Kim Ki-young

Synopsis

A family decides to hire a housemaid as they have a new bigger house and the wife has to work. The husband is kind of forced to shag her after she catches him in a compromising situation with a student and threatens to tell his wife. She gets preggers, wife tells her to jump down the stairs to get an abortion, she does it! To get even though she kills the family's son, by giving him rat poison and then telling him which makes him run off and fall down the same stairs! Then threatening to go to the police and tell them the wife made her have an abortion, she convinces the husband to take some rat poison with her. They both die. It all seems to happen within some stupid framing story where the husband is telling his wife this delightful tale with the warning: "It could happen to anyone, don't shag your housemaid". No it couldn't!

Review

So! I've finally managed to watch the film, thanks to Scorcese and his restoration efforts and it was worth waiting for. Thanks for the comments suggesting where I could get it! This is a strange film indeed.

In a way it feels of its time, particularly in its use of a framing story which is actually a bit of a throwback, possibly to allay censorship fears. Mostly the film feels about 30 years ahead of its time, in the late 80s/early 90s we had a spate of "crazy bitch from hell" films like Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Single White Female just to give three examples, and this film is very much in that style.

Both a freaky thriller with a murderous housemaid making a family's life absolute hell it is also an extremely strong indictment of South Korean culture. The attachment to material goods and money-making is so important to all characters here that it leads to the death of four people and an abortion. Basically the whole plot could have ended as soon as the housemaid started acting up by going to the police, but the scandal would have lost them money! Fascinating weird shit, why are all the best Korean films such murder fests?

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 2003, Jean-Michel Frodon, editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma, wrote that the discovery of The Housemaid by the West, over forty years after the film's debut, was a "marvelous feeling– marvelous not just because one finds in writer-director Kim Ki-young a truly extraordinary image maker, but in his film such an utterly unpredictable work."

Comparing the director to Luis Buñuel, Frodon wrote Kim is "capable of probing deep into the human mind, its desires and impulses, while paying sarcastic attention to the details..." He called The Housemaid "shocking", noting that "...the shocking nature of the film is both disturbing and pleasurable..." Frodon pointed out that The Housemaid was only one early major film in the director's career, and that Kim Ki-young would continue "running wild through obsessions and rebellion" with his films for decades to come.

The housemaid sees the husband in the compromising situation:

361. Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star)v (1960)

2009-05-28T03:26:00.003+01:00

Directed By Ritwik Ghatak

Synopsis

A girl lives for her family, gives them all her money. They don't really appreciate her. She gets T.B. and presumably dies. Feel good movie of the year!

Review

I am sorry I have taken so long between posts but my life has been quite full lately and I really have not had the time to watch anything. I suppose it's a good thing, but I missed doing these reviews.

This film is an unflinching look at family life and how horrible it can be. This is an Indian melodrama and as such there is plenty of singing, however it is anything but a musical, the music is always an integral part of the story and when it is incidental it is extremely interesting in its expressionist experimentalism. In fact if anything truly stands out in this film as completely original it is its amazing soundtrack. That being said the film is quite excellent in other ways to, from the camera work to the acting.

The acting is excellent throughout, although the father does seem like a caricature at times as does the mother. In spite of being a melodrama the story never seems to fall into excessive sentimentalism, the reactions to situations seeming quite normal and ringing true to life throughout. A very good film which shows you what you get in life for being nice and selfless.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Meghe Dhaka Tara is strongly melodramatic in tone, especially as concerns the sufferings heaped on the protagonist. As in many of his other films, Ghatak also uses surrealistic sound effects, such as sounds of a lashing as the heroine suffers yet another tragic twist of fate.

The film is online, here is the link for the first part.

360. La Joven (The Young One) (1960)

2009-05-07T02:43:00.003+01:00

Directed by Luis Buñuel

Synopsis

A girl, a gamekeeper and her grandfather live on an island. Her grandfather dies and the gamekeeper starts having illicit thoughts about the young girl. Meanwhile a black man escaping a lynching mob appears on the island and develops a friendship with the girl. He comes then into obvious conflict with the gamekeeper.

Review

Buñuel has an immensely varied career from silent surrealism in Chien Andalou to Belle de Jour through films in English such as this one. Note that the official title is in Spanish but the film is actually filmed in English by American actors and fully spoken in that language.

Interesting as well when following Buñuel's career is to spot the constant themes pervading such a variety of films. Here you get trademark bugs, animals killing each other or being killed by man, the idea of Eros and Thanatos and as in Olvidados the inappropriate sexual feelings towards young children.

Buñuel manages to make the viewer participate in some kind of awkward voyeuristic experience by having some very "wrong" shots of the girl, this works extremely well in the context of the film. A film that ends up being about equality and the stupidity of prejudice, where the person accused of rape is the one who hasn't committed it and does not tolerate it, whereas all other characters to the exclusion of the girl seem to be more or less accepting of rape... except that acceptable rape is committed by a white man.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

La Joven is one of Buñuel's more serious films, dealing with racism and rape. Based on a story by Peter Matthiessen called Travelin' Man.

Beginning with a version of Sinnerman:

359. L'Avventura (The Adventure) (1960)

2009-04-28T02:19:00.004+01:00

Directed By Michelangelo Antonioni

Synopsis

A woman and her lover plus her close friend, plus some other friends go on a yacht tour of the islands. The woman gets lost. Her lover and her friend start getting it on after her disappearance. What happened to her? You'll have to watch the film not to find out!

Review

Of the three films that helped redefine Italian cinema for the 60s, the others being Rocco e Suoi Fratelli and La Dolce Vita, L'Avventura is the less interesting of the three. Still, it does a couple of interesting things.

First you are misdirected into thinking someone is a protagonist while in reality she disappears off the screen quite early on. Antonioni manages to make her still present throughout in the mind of those who were around her and her presence is felt all the way through the film. Second, the ending is supremely unsatisfying for a film that again misdirects you into thinking it is a mystery film.

The film is shot in some beautiful locations around Mediterranean islands and the acting is quite good. Monica Vitti is particularly stunning. That being said, for a film which presumes to explore human emotion and relationships, the characters show little emotional evolution, they just shift gears suddenly, which for a film which lasts 2 and a half hours and has little action other than the inner life of the characters is really unnecessary. For example Vitti's character goes from distraught to amorous to angry to forgiving without having any stages in between, it just does not ring true, well she does rebuke the guy's advances for the whole of 2 minutes.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Released in 1960 the film was booed by some members of the audience during its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (Antonioni and Vitti fled the theatre) but after a second screening it won the Special Jury Prize and went on to both international box office success and what has since been described as "hysteria." This controversy carried on for decades. L'Avventura influenced the visual language of cinema, forever changing how subsequent movies looked and has been named by some critics as one of the best ever made, but has been criticized by others for its seemingly uneventful plot and slow pacing along with the existentialist themes, which even stirred the "waggishly dismissive epithet of Antoniennui."

It's online, but you need to get Italian:

358. Tirez Sur Le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) (1960)

2009-04-26T02:09:00.003+01:00

Directed By Francois Truffaut

Synopsis

An ex-concert pianist, who now lives by playing in a café, gets drawn into some shit one of his brothers did.

Review

My feelings about the French Nouvelle Vague are mixed at best, on the other hand my feelings about M. Truffaut are not, at least not up to now. This is another example of brilliant, innovative and free film-making.

Truffaut manages to make a film where most characters are purposefully cartoony a strangely moving piece, aided by brilliant soundtrack, editing, camerawork and performances with Aznavour playing the proto-Woody Allen as the geek who always has beautiful women interested in him for some reason.

The whole film mixes comedy, drama, tragedy and film noir in a completely organic way. It is actually pretty much a delight to watch, as an art film, as a technical achievement and just as entertainment.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is loosely based on the novel Down There by David Goodis. It shares the novel's bleak plot about a man hiding from his shattered life by doing the only thing he knows how to do, while remaining unable to escape the past. However, Truffaut's work resolves itself into both a tribute to the American genre of literary and cinematic noir and a meditation on the relationship between art and commercialism.

Film is online:

357. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

2009-04-23T01:56:00.003+01:00

Directed By Karl Reisz

Synopsis

Arthur lives a grim life in grim Nottingham, dances, drinks and screws 'cause there's nothing else to do.

Review

Taking into account the fact that this film is 49 years old it is amazing how little things have changed in a certain area of the UK, among the majority of people. The pub as the central point in a life where it is the main means of escape from a crap job or, after Thatcher, no job.

The influence of the French new wave is more than evident throughout the film, the camera work is quite great, very fluid. The acting style is pretty realistic, with Albert Finney doing a bang up job in his starring début.

The use of regional accents gives it all an extra sense of realism, and here we see the beginning of the great British tradition of social-realist cinema. There is not much of a plot to it, just an accurate portrayal of crappy life. It's grim up north.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is the origin for the title of the debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not of Sheffield rock band Arctic Monkeys. It is also the origin for the title of the live album Saturday Night, Sunday Morning by The Stranglers.

Trailer:

356. La Dolce Vita (1960)

2009-04-21T04:18:00.003+01:00

Directed By Frederico Fellini

Synopsis

The film follows the character of Marcello through a sequence of events where the the squalid, depressing nature of wealthy boredom is explored.

Review

It is strange that this film has come to be equated with sophisticate lifestyles and it's title meaning "The Sweet Life" stripped of all irony. The truth of the film is that it is unrelentingly depressing, the superficiality of it is oppressive, the characters are vacuous and annoying.

The only thing that gels the film together is the character of Marcello, through which you see the situations in the film, even he, in the end, becomes a part of the decadence. This is a film about how boredom and money can strip people of their common humanity, in this sense it is highly political.

Even if Felinni eschews narrative linearity in the film the moral linearity is constant throughout, Felinni makes us feel his disgust for the over-privileged scenes he shows us. All the beautiful superficiality hides something very rotten indeed, like the manta-ray at the end, it has been dead for at least three days. The outlook is so bleak for mankind that Steiner's actions almost make sense in the film's context, all characters have given up being human at one time or another, in the end even Marcello gives up.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In a device used earlier in his films, Fellini orders the disparate succession of sequences as movements from evening to dawn. Also employed as an ordering device is the image of a downward spiral that Marcello sets in motion when descending the first of several staircases (including ladders) that open and close each major episode. The upshot is that the film's aesthetic form, rather than its content, embodies the overall theme of Rome as a moral wasteland.

Sad Clown:

355. Rocco E I Suoi Fratelli (Rocco And His Brothers) (1960)

2009-04-19T23:03:00.003+01:00

Directed By Luchino Visconti

Synopsis

A large family composed of a mother and 4 children moves to Milan from the rural south to join the remaining son. The adaptation to city living does not happen smoothly and the family structure starts shattering.

Review

This is one of the first films in the redefinition of Italian cinema right at the start of the 60s. Italian cinema starts moving away from the neorealism that so dominated it during the 50s, and while there are still elements of this in Rocco, there are great changes that are in my opinion all for the better.

Firstly in Rocco all the acting is professional, which is a change I welcome, while the use of non-pros may at times increase the authenticity of the film it often just produced bad acting. Here you get to cherish the performances of some very good actors, with the exception of a couple of characters, such as the hysterical mother. Secondly the film is made on a grand scale, with its almost three hour running time with much more studied editing, camera work and lighting than most neorealist films.

In this way Rocco makes for a decisive improvement in Italian cinema in my opinion, not being the greatest fan of the excesses of neorealism, and it is a truly great piece of cinema. I still have problems with it: the bad dubbing which is a constant of Italian cinema for at least the next 20 years and the histrionics of so many of the characters (although they are Italian after all). But there are so many positives about he beautifully shot and directed film that it is hard to put too much importance on those.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The staff at Variety magazine lauded the drama, and wrote, "With all its faults, this is one of the top achievements of the year in Italy...Scripting shows numerous hands at work, yet all is pulled together by Visconti's dynamic and generally tasteful direction. Occasionally, as in the near-final revelation to the family of Simone's crime, the action gets out of hand and comes close to melodrama. Yet the impact of the main story line, aided by the sensitive, expertly guided playing of Alain Delon as Rocco, Annie Girardot as the prostie, and Renato Salvatori as Simone, is great. Katina Paxinou at times is perfect, at others she is allowed to act too theatrically and off-key."

Trailer:

354. Ukigusa (Floating Weeds) (1959)

2009-04-18T13:55:00.003+01:00

Directed By Yasujiro Ozu

Synopsis

A Kabuki troupe returns to a village to put on a play. The leader of the troupe has some ancient history in that village, visits his old flame and his son who has been under the impression that his father had died when he was a baby so he is not demeaned by having an actor for a father. It all goes wrong.

Review

After the perfect Tokyo Monogatari by Ozu that we had on this list a while ago any film by him would have a hard time living up to the expectation. That was partly what happened but then this just is not as great as Tokyo Monogatari.

That being said it is still a pretty good film, as in most good Japanese cinema of this time it is unflinching in its portrayal of daily life as an unrelentingly depressing affair. Ozu's very still camera continues to help to reinforce that sense of boredom.

The story was not so compelling however, it would have helped to have fleshed out the characters more deeply so we as an audience could care more about their fate. This being said there are moments of truly beautiful imagery, and it is still a film worth seeing, even if you want an Ozu film I would still go with Tokyo Monogatari every day.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Early on, there is a travelling shot filmed from a ferry as it docks at the harbour. This is the only instance of camera movement in Ozu's six colour films.

First 10 minutes:

353. Le Trou (The Hole) (book says 1959 wiki says 1960)

2009-04-14T01:00:00.005+01:00

Directed By Jacques Becker

Synopsis

Four prisoners have a plan to escape, they get a fifth element and have to decide whether to trust him or not. You follow their best laid plans, which end up as best laid plans so often do.

Review

You might have noticed in my previous reviews that I often have problems with non-professional actors in films. Jacques Becker has managed, however, to have pretty much perfect casting, even if using non-professionals.

It probably helps that one of the actors was actually one of the prisoners who attempted the escape in the first place, lending the film and the acting, an air of verisimilitude which probably rubs off on the non-pro actors.

The film is extremely well directed, Becker knows perfectly for how long to keep a shot going, how to create tension and drop subtle hints about the characters. Like most great films the plot is secondary to the relationship between the people portrayed in the film. Really great stuff, another amazing prison escape film, we have had so many and from La Grande Illusion onwards they have been uniformly fantastic.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It was called The Night Watch when first released in the United States, but is released under its French title today.

Whole film online, get it here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FDE78703216BC9C9 (sorry no embedding)

352. Rio Bravo (1959)

2009-03-30T01:54:00.003+01:00

Directed By Howard Hawks

Synopsis

A Sheriff has two deputies and a dangerous man in jail. His family and accomplices want to spring him, hence Sheriff is in a tough situation.

Review

This Western by the great Howard Hawks represents one of the last of a dying breed. The old style, white hats vs. black hats Western. The moral ambiguity that would come along soon in the 60's is almost totally absent here. Fortunately it is a really good film nonetheless.

Hawks is not Ford or Mann, hence it isn't all about the little man in the big scenery, actually scenery is almost absent here. If there is one constant in Hawks' film it is it's focus on human relationships. The same happens here, and that is really the strong point of the film.

John Wayne plays the same character he always does, so that is no surprise. If you want some enjoyable acting you have to look to Dean Martin and Walter Brennan, the don of curmudgeonly frontier hicks. Still, it keeps your attention for the 2 hours and 15 minutes of it. It is, as all Howard Hawks films, pretty well written and entertaining.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was made as a response to High Noon, which is sometimes thought to be an allegory for blacklisting in Hollywood, as well as a critique of McCarthyism, according to Graham. Wayne teamed up with director Howard Hawks to tell the story his way. Hawks and Wayne were offended by High Noon; Johnson quotes Hawks as saying he didn't believe the marshal, played by Gary Cooper, would "go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help." Wayne was a conservative and a firm supporter of blacklisting. They were offended too that Kane was abandoned by almost everyone (except at the last minute his Quaker bride, played by Grace Kelly). In "Rio Bravo", Chance is surrounded by allies—a deputy recovering from alcoholism, a young gunfighter, an old man, a Mexican innkeeper, and an attractive young woman—and repeatedly turns down aid from anyone he doesn't think is capable of helping him, though in the final shootout they come to help him anyway.

Final shoot-out, with a theme which is an obvious influence on Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western themes:

351. Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

2009-03-26T01:45:00.003Z

Directed By Alain Resnais

Synopsis

A French woman is an actress shooting a film in Hiroshima, she starts an affair with a Japanese man through which her pass is explored and exorcised.

Review

Alain Resnais, when faced with making a documentary about Hiroshima was afraid of repeating himself. He had famously directed Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) about the holocaust, and again to make a film about Man's cruelty to Man peppered with images of corpses and disfigurements, death and rebirth would make him repeat himself almost inevitably.

He made, then, a film about memory, about the dangers of forgetting and the necessity of living with your horrors in order for life to continue. He puts this in the context of a relation initially based on lust, the most life affirming of Mankind's impulses, between East and West. In this context it is the Western element, the woman, who has some remembering to do and to share with the Japanese man. In the end the whole thing is about not forgetting but leaning to sublimate the memory.

The film works due to Alain's masterful direction and the superb editing in parts of the film. The acting is good but Marguerite Duras might have been too literary in the scriptwriting for its own good, many of those sentences would work great on a book where you can pause, read, re-read, go back, think etc. In a filmic context, however, the sentence exists now and ceases the next second, and when it is too complex the actor cannot but look silly. This unfortunately happens in several moments of the film, people just don't say those things in any occasion, unless they are pedants, which I am sure was not the intention. Oh well, the French.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

According to James Monaco, Resnais was originally commissioned to make a short documentary about the atomic bomb, but spent several months confused about how to proceed because he did not want to recreate his 1955 Holocaust documentary Night and Fog. He later went to his producer and joked that the film could not be done unless Marguerite Duras was involved in writing the screenplay.

The film is online, part 1:

350. Pickpocket (1959)

2009-03-23T01:36:00.003Z

Directed By Robert Bresson

Synopsis

A guy gets his jollies from pickpocketing. He ends up going to jail, at least he gets the girl.

Review

When the average non-French person thinks of French cinema it is probably something similar to a Bresson film that comes to his mind. Deep philosophical thought, slightly boring, unnatural acting and revered by boffs for some inexplicable reason.

Well there are plenty of reasons to like or love Bresson, Un condamné à mort s'est échappé is a perfect example of why to love him. Journal d'un Curé de Campagne is a better example of why not to like him. This film sits somewhere in the middle. The acting is not stellar, and although some will argue that he used non-professional actors and that the turmoil happens within, some scenes are so stuntedly acted that they are distracting.

Good things about the film are also easy to find, stylistically it is beautiful. The pickpocketing scenes are choreographed like a ballet, exciting and beautiful to look at. But then it all falls apart due to a plot you don-t care about because the actors play parts you don't care about. The main character is annoying and amoral, although he does invent a really bad theory about geniuses being above the law. So watch it for it's visual qualities not really for plot or acting. Marika Green who plays the love interest is however a really beautiful lady, and the aunt of Eva Green, she gets her kit off and has lesbian sex in Emannuelle, just for reference.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is considered an example of "parametric narration" (in which the style "dominates the syuzhet [plot] or is seemingly equal in importance to it".

Roger Ebert sees echoes of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment in this film.
"Bresson's Michel, like Dostoyevsky's hero Raskolnikov, needs money in order to realize his dreams, and sees no reason why some lackluster ordinary person should not be forced to supply it. The reasoning is immoral, but the characters claim special privileges above and beyond common morality. Michel, like the hero of Crime and Punishment, has a 'good woman' in his life, who trusts he will be able to redeem himself. ... She comes to Michel with the news that his mother is dying. Michel does not want to see his mother, but gives Jeanne money for her. Why does he avoid her? Bresson never supplies motives. We can only guess."

Well I know Roger! Because he had robbed her! It's pretty much said in the film, it is why Jeanne is summoned to the police and why the cops get on to him. Roger Ebert... have you even seen the film?

Learning New Tricks:

349. Ben-Hur (1959)

2009-03-22T00:58:00.003Z

Directed By William Wyler

Synopsis

Ben is in Judea minding his own business when Messala, his childhood friend, comes back from Rome. It all goes to shit. Ben is sent to the galleys, but comes back and defeats Messala. Oh Jesus Christ fits in there somehow as well.

Review

I know I promised that I would continue reviewing films while I was out getting a new house. Well this didn't happen because the only TV I had was hipster-tiny, meaning that Ben-Hur being the epic that it is and being cut at the top an bottom would look like coloured toilet paper unrolling on the wall. So I opted to wait and watch it in my considerably larger TV here to make it justice.

Ben-Hur is an epic's epic. It is a great film that keeps you riveted for two thirds of its very long running time. Frankly after Messala dies you lose interest in the story. The religious element is clearly tacked on, and I couldn't care less for his leprous mother and sister. So it goes on for too long, Hur needs to redeem himself, but all that makes you watch is the revenge story and the great, and very violent, galley and chariot race sequences.

Unlike the Ten Commandments, Hur is a successful epic. Its set pieces are superbly directed and set up. It is not, for the most part, boring, and you are really impressed by the work put into it. Heston is not a great actor, but the part is so larger than life that he doesn't need to be. So yeah a great epic which could be a 10 if not for the religious stuff tacked on with spit.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In interviews for the 1986 book Celluloid Closet, and later the 1995 documentary of the same name, screenwriter Gore Vidal asserts that he persuaded director Wyler to allow a carefully veiled homoerotic subtext between Messala and Ben-Hur. Vidal says his aim was to explain Messala's extreme reaction to Ben-Hur's refusal to name his fellow Jews to a Roman officer. Vidal suggested that Messala and Ben-Hur had been homosexual lovers while growing up, but Ben-Hur was no longer interested, so it is the anger of a scorned lover which motivates Messala's vindictiveness. Since the Hollywood production code would not permit this to appear on screen explicitly, it would have to be implied by the actors. Vidal suggested to Wyler that he would direct Stephen Boyd to play the role that way, but not tell Heston. Vidal claims that Wyler took his advice, and that the results can be seen in the film. However, Vidal is the only person ever to make this claim, and Heston insisted that Vidal had little to do with the final film.

You can watch it all online, here's part 1:

348. A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) (1959)

2009-02-03T02:09:00.003Z

Directed By Jean Luc-Godard

Synopsis

A soufflé, if sweet or savoury is never determined, kills a cop. He also has shagged, and spends de rest of de film trying to regain pant-admission, an annoying American rich girl. This film is about de soufflé. In de end it deflates, never poke holes in de Soufflé, the moral of it is eventually all soufflés deflate, no matter how good a cook you are. Think about it.

Review

This is a film I am very ambivalent about. On the one hand I really admire the technical innovation of the use of sound and hand-held as well as some great jarring cuts. I also admire the fact that it is quite irreverent when it comes to the dialogue, it shows people in bed, breasts, urinals, toilets, all of that. The characters are believable and the acting is great. Technically it is therefore an accomplishment. Bravo.

Now! On the other hand, both the characters are fucking annoying. He is an asshole, in fact he says so in the first line of the film, a murderer and thinks of little more than sex and money. She is a spoiled, selfish,tourist girl who is a pretentious nitwit who likes bad boys but also wants them to be able to appreciate William Faulkner.

The film also seems to be filled with a stench of misogynism throughout.Something which would be quite adequate for Godard as he was a prime misogynist himself. Actually from interviews of Godard I've seen it is the writer she interviews that most reminds me of him. So a mix between admiration and disgust, I suppose it succeeds in eliciting a reaction.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Breathless makes numerous references to films. Michel's constant lip-rubbing is a direct homage to Humphrey Bogart, a poster of whom Michel gazes at in one scene and says, "Bogie". Moreover, Patricia comments on Michel's similarity to Bogart when she tells him that he is only an image and should say more about himself.

The film includes additional references to many other films. In one scene, "Bob Montagne" is mentioned, an apparent reference to the proto-New Wave film Bob le Flambeur (1955), the title character of which shares the same name. A few American film posters are seen in the streets, including Humphrey Bogart's The Harder They Fall and Ten Seconds to Hell with Jack Palance (who would later work with Godard on Contempt). Michel and Patricia also attend a screening of Budd Boetticher's Westbound and she sneaks into a theatre showing Preminger's film noir, Whirlpool (1949) with Gene Tierney.

The film also makes reference to Godard's work as a critic for Cahiers du Cinéma: a woman (uncredited) attempts to sell a copy of Cahiers to Michel on the street, saying "Monsieur, do you support youth?" He angrily refuses, saying "No, I prefer the old."
According to Barbet Schroeder, Godard's original title for the film was Moi, un blanc ("Me, a white man"). This was in response to a 1958 film by Jean Rouch, entitled Moi, un noir ("Me, a black man").

Souris-moi:

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

2009-01-31T03:02:00.002Z

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)

2009-01-28T02:54:00.003Z

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)

2009-01-26T03:10:00.004Z

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)

2009-01-23T01:48:00.004Z

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)

2009-01-21T01:52:00.002Z

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)

2009-01-20T02:54:00.003Z

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)

2009-01-19T01:42:00.003Z

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)

2009-01-17T02:50:00.002Z

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)

2009-01-15T01:50:00.004Z

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)

2009-01-10T02:59:00.003Z

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)

2009-01-07T01:56:00.003Z

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)

2009-01-05T01:32:00.002Z

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)

2009-01-03T02:13:00.003Z

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)

2009-01-01T21:15:00.003Z

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:

333. The Defiant Ones (1958)

2008-12-31T01:25:00.002Z

Directed By Stanley Kramer

Synopsis

A black and a white prisoner are chained together and escape from an overturned transport truck. Hilarity ensues.

Review

One of the first films on the list to very seriously address questions of racial prejudice and integration, The Defiant Ones is also the first great part by Sidney Poitier, who plays a fiercely conscious black man.

The film works as an obvious allegory of American race relations. Blacks and Whites are chained together and there is no answer except cooperation, which comes hard and demands much from both parties but can be rewarding.

Of course it isn't very rewarding here as they both get caught, but the reward comes in the more moral and personal salvation of both characters as human beings. Tony Curtis has left his good looking boy parts behind him and starts the film of as horribly bigoted. They are both redeemed in the end, however. The fact that such an obvious allegory works so well as a film is part of is to be loved about this work. Sidney Poitier's character and performance alone would guarantee this film's place in history, but there is plenty more to love here.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen, and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Tony Curtis), Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sidney Poitier), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Theodore Bikel), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Cara Williams), Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Picture.

Getting out of the clay pit:

332. Gigi (1958)

2008-12-29T21:24:00.002Z

Directed By Vincent Minnelli

Synopsis

A little girl turns into a woman of questionable legal standing.

Review

This is one of the funnest late musicals in our list, in fact it is the last great MGM musical and it is a really great one. This has everything you require from a musical, amazing sets, a great sense of fun and great songs.

The whole story around Gigi is one which would probably not see the light of day today, starting off with an old man singing what amounts to an ode to borderline paedophilia, it goes on looking at the education of a young girl into a love machine.

If you put that aside, after all 1958 was a different planet, the film is great fun to watch. Leslie Caron is beautiful and the acting is generally excellent. Maurice Chevalier is probably the great highlight of the whole thing. We had last seen him in one of my favourite musicals, Love Me Tonight where he played a young tailor, all the way back in 1932, now he is old and bring a Gallic charm and amusement to the whole thing.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 1991, Gigi was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The American Film Institute ranked it #35 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions. The film is considered the last great MGM musical and the last great achievement of the Freed Unit, headed by producer Arthur Freed, although he would go on to produce several more films, including the musical Bells Are Ringing in 1960. The film was the basis for an unsuccessful stage musical produced on Broadway in 1973.

Trailer:

331. Bab El Hadid (Cairo Station) (1958)

2008-12-29T21:10:00.003Z

Directed By Youssef Chahine

So here's another film I cannot find by legal or illegal means. If you know where to get it for a reasonable price (i.e. under $25) let me know.

330. Touch of Evil (1958)

2008-12-22T03:37:00.003Z

Directed By Orson Welles

Synopsis

A Mexican cop and an American cop clash while investigating a murder. Corruption, hatred and grotesquery pepper the rest of the film.

Review

Orson Welles can be one of the most rewarding film-makers and actors to simply watch. Here he plays a completely monstrous character with such a sheer screen magnetism that you are glued to what is a very strange and brutal film to the very amazing end.

Again as I discussed in the last review the sense of cinema becoming more adult is patent here, not that Orson ever made uncomplicated films, but the themes dealt with, and the way they were dealt with was always quite tame.

This film is the death toll of the film noir, and what an amazing one it is. The whole thing is great to watch from one of the most stressful opening scenes ever, to blacked up Charlton Heston and Marlene Dietrich to bulging eyed Mexican drug baron strangled over the face of Janet Leigh to the edge-of-seat ending, it all works perfectly and disconcertingly. I am sure David Lynch liked this one, I did.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The movie was literally a B-movie, released as the lower half of a double feature. The A-movie was The Female Animal, starring Hedy Lamarr, produced by Albert Zugsmith and directed by Harry Keller whom the studio had hired to direct the re-shot material in Touch of Evil. The two films even had the same cameraman: Russell Metty. Welles's film was given little publicity despite the many stars in the cast. Nonetheless, even as originally released it was a film of power and impact: though it had little commercial success in the US, it was nonetheless quite well-received in Europe, particularly by critics like future film-maker François Truffaut.

The amazing opening scene:

329. Man of the West (1958)

2008-12-20T02:12:00.003Z

Directed by Anthony Mann

Synopsis

A man (Gary Cooper) is caught in the middle of a train robbery. He, a woman and another guy get dumped and walk until they found a house. Well Gary Cooper has a past with the gang in the house. It all goes pear-shaped.

Review

Sometimes in the history of cinema you clearly see the art-form having a pronounced growth spurt. This happened right at the beginning of the 50s and is now happening again at the end of the decade. Several reasons might exist for this, the development of the technical instruments or more importantly changes in the wider society.

At the moment we are seeing the slow and inexorable relaxation of the production code, recently on this list we've had Paths of Glory and the Sweet Smell of Success. Two films which are quite different and now we have Man of the West.

This is the most violent Westerns we've had on the list until now, not solely in terms of physical violence but also psychological, it reaches the level of grotesqueness at times. The two undressing scenes and the death of the mute bandit make this violence particularly interesting.

I was not a big fan of the Mann-Stewart collaborations but here we clearly see a transition to a more violent and adult western, one which explores the worse of humanity instead of a "pioneering spirit". A very good Western.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

When first released, the film was largely ignored by American critics, though renowned French critic Jean-Luc Godard regarded it as the best one released that year. In the decades since the film's release, it has garnered a cult following as well as considerably greater acclaim. Some, such as The Guardian's Derek Malcolm consider the film Mann's best and a landmark in the western genre's canon. Malcolm included the film in his 2000 list The Century of Film.

Cool fight scene:

328. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

2008-12-17T01:47:00.003Z

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

Synopsis

A columnist tries to stop his sister's love affair with a jazz player, using the dirtiest possible means.

Review

Alexander Mackendrick had previously been in this list with two Ealing Comedies, Whisky Galore! and The Ladykillers, now Ealing Studios was sold to the BBC and he moved to the States where he was given the job of directing this film and what a great job he did!

The film is amazing not only because of the very good directing by Mackendrick, in fact the greatest highlights are the acting by Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster and the taut, amazing dialogue that they engage in.

All the characters in the film are positively repulsive, with the exception of the very secondary loving couple. The film's view of the media and the corrupted relationships it engages in is positively bleak. The machinations of the main characters make them some of the most vile "heroes" of any film on this list yet, and it works incredibly well.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

A preview screening of the film did not go well as Tony Curtis fans were expecting him to play one of his typical nice guy roles and instead were presented with Sidney Falco. Mackendrick remembers seeing audience members "curling up, crossing their arms and legs, recoiling from the screen in disgust". Burt Lancaster's fans were not thrilled with their idol either, "finding the film too static and talky". The film was a box office failure and Hecht blamed his producing partner Hill. "The night of the preview, Harold said to me, 'You know you've wrecked our company? We're going to lose over a million dollars on this picture,'" Hill recalled.[1] However, Lancaster blamed Lehman who remembers a confrontation they had: "Burt threatened me at a party after the preview. He said, 'You didn't have to leave – you could have made this a much better picture. I ought to beat you up.' I said, 'Go ahead – I could use the money.'"

Film is online, part 1:

327. Paths of Glory (1957)

2008-12-15T01:27:00.003Z

Directed By Stanley Kubrick

Synopsis

War is stupid, grotesque and senseless. So are military courts.

Review

The first of many Kubrick films on this list does not disappoint in the least. You can almost see this as a prequel to Dr. Strangelove, it isn't as outwardly funny or as farcical but the same grotesquery of war is displayed here.

The film is quite short at under 1 hour 30 minutes but it is also a sharp, short punch to the gut. The whole film seems like a bad dream, there are lines of dialogue here that just make you laugh with incredulity, not because they are bad or unbelievable but because they are just on the right side of believable for you to imagine those characters saying them.

Of course this effect is only possible because the acting is so amazingly good throughout. The soldiers are played by people who have an almost documentary feel about them, the "actors" are the officers and that kind of creates a division between the real people and those who are detached of humanity, the soldiers do not look like actors at all. Kirk Douglas is the only exception among the officers, being the humane officer whose struggle we follow. Amazing and very infuriating film, Kubrick was an angry man and this was an amazing outlet.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The release of the film and its showing in parts of Europe were controversial. Active and retired military personnel, offended by the way the French military was portrayed in the film, vehemently criticized it after its showing in Brussels (although the film was otherwise well received). Contrary to a persistent urban legend, the film was not banned in France; however, the French government placed enormous pressure on United Artists, the European distributor for the film, through diplomatic channels, to refrain from releasing the film. As a result, the film was not submitted to French censors, and was not shown in France until 1975, when moral codes had changed and attitudes calmed. In Germany the film was not allowed to be shown for two years after its release to avoid any strain in relations with France. The film was also officially censored in Spain by the government of Francisco Franco for its anti-military content, and was not released in that country until 1986, eleven years after Franco's death.

Trailer:

326. Letyat zhuravli (The Cranes Are Flying) (1957)

2008-12-13T02:44:00.003Z

Directed By Mikhail Kalatozov

Synopsis

A girl (Veronica) and a boy (Boris) are separated when the USSR joins the second world war, he joins the army, she stays behind without being able to say goodbye. She is eventually kind of forced to marry Boris' cousin (did he rape her? did she actually betray Boris?) but never forgets Boris. She eventually finds out he died.

Review

If you've been following this list it seems like Russian cinema stopped after Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein. So it is all the more surprising that suddenly you get a film that is so technically and emotionally ravishing as this one, it seems like it came out of nowhere.

If you are a fan of the French Nouvelle Vague this is a film to watch, as an amazing precursor. I am not sure what cameras they are using here but they are amazingly fluid, the film consists of scene after scene after scene of amazing beauty and technical achievement.

Still, if that was all this would not be the film it is. The acting is superb, Tatyana Samojlova is a beautiful and extremely natural actress and that just makes her emotional turmoil all the more poignant. A truly unmissable film.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It was the second of two Soviet films to win the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film is online, watch it! Part 1:

325. Bharat Mata (Mother India) (1957)

2008-12-10T02:14:00.004Z

Directed By Mehboob Khan

Synopsis

It's not easy being a mother, owe money to a money lender, having your cows die, your husband lose his arms and then leave you, your mother-in-law die, your village destroyed in a flood, your baby die, and in the end having to shoot your son dead. Not easy at all.

Review

Phew... just spent three hours watching this, and it was a good film. It feels much more of an indigenous Indian style of cinema than the more Westernised films of Satyajit Ray, there's the singing and the dancing and the extreme melodrama.

Another interesting thing about the film is it's Sovietic look, I actually had to look up if it was a co-production because there are so many shots in the film that look like Stalinist or Maoist propaganda, and I found out it is a co-production with the USSR, and that makes a lot of sense.

The shots with that Left-Bloc influence look immediately iconic and that is a truly impressive thing to do, there are a dozen of moments in the film that are as iconic as any propaganda poster, this is also a result of the artificiality of the film. There is little attempt to be realistic, the dancing and the melodrama add to this sense. But then this is cinema and not real life, it is perfectly OK to eschew realism for stylisation if done right, and here it is done right. Just a bit too long, and my DVD had no subtitles during the songs, which was very annoying as my Hindi is a bit rusty.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is a remake of Mehboob Khan's earlier film Aurat (1940). The film would later be remade in Telugu as Bangaru Talli (1971). The film was fifth Indo-Russian co-production, and was preceed by Pardesi (1957), also starring Nargis Dutt. In 2005, Indiatimes Movies ranked the movie amongst the Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films. The film ranked #3 in the list of all-time box office hits.

Mother India pulls a plow:

324. Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

2008-12-08T03:19:00.002Z

Directed by David Lean

Synopsis

Club Med Thailand leaves much to be desired.

Review

What a great film. David Lean is a pretty amazing director and then he had the fortune of getting some great actors for this. Alec Guinnness is great as always and so is all the rest of the cast. The gorgeous colour cinematography is pretty amazing, making the film look considerably modern.

Another thing that makes the film look quite modern is the amount of detail put into the characterisation of the characters, from dirt to ragged clothing, the set design is equally amazing, not only in the creation of the bridge itself but also in Saito's room for example with all the Japanese elements and the pinup calendar giving it a touch of humour in a thoroughly unhumorous character.

It lasts for longer than 2 and 1/2 hours and it never gets even slightly boring, the film is expertly paced, it is at times very funny due to the completely insane unflappability and flippancy of many of the characters and it ends up giving us a moral lesson on the futility of war and its endeavours. One of the most interesting things is the parallels between Guinness' and Saito's characters, giving you a sense of people who have anything but common sense. An amazing and unmissable film.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

David Lean clashed with his cast members on multiple occasions, particularly Alec Guinness and James Donald, who thought the novel was anti-British. Lean had a lengthy row with Guinness over how to play the role of Nicholson; Guinness wanted to play the part with a sense of humor and sympathy, while Lean thought Nicholson should be "a bore". On another occasion, Lean and Guinness argued over the scene where Nicholson reflects on his career in the army. Lean filmed the scene from behind Guinness, and exploded in anger when Guinness asked him why he was doing this. After Guinness was done with the scene, Lean said "Now you can all fuck off and go home, you English actors. Thank God that I'm starting work tomorrow with an American actor (William Holden)"

Trailer:

323. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

2008-12-06T02:07:00.004Z

Directed By John Sturges

Synopsis

The Earps and the Clantons... not BFFs.

Review

Another film version of what is probably of the most often portrayed historical events in cinema history. I don't think even Pearl Harbour or D-Day had as many re-enactments as the gunfight at OK Corral. I must have seen about 10 films of it.

That being said this is a good film about this kind of tired subject. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas are excellent as ever, and the final shoot out is a great fight scene, the kind of stuff John Sturges did so well.

So yeah, it was probably too long at two hours, you don't really need that long to tell a story that most people who bother to watch the film already know. Still, it is reasonably historically accurate, and is good fun, building up to a very good ending... other than that meh.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

DeForest Kelley played the part of Morgan Earp in this film. Ten years later, as Doctor McCoy, he and others from the USS Enterprise landing crew faced the Earps in an episode of Star Trek "Spectre of the Gun".

Theme Song:

322. Aparajito (The Unvanquished) (1957)

2008-12-03T02:24:00.003Z

Directed By Satyajit Ray

Synopsis

Aparajito starts with Apu in Varanasi with his parents, his father is mildly successful as a priest. His father dies and his mother goes back to the countryside where Apu goes to school, eventually, due to his great success he is sent to Kolkata on a scholarship. He returns home after hearing his mother is ill, only to find he has arrived one day too late. He goes back to Kolkata.

Review

Aparajito is the second of the trilogy about the life of a Bengali boy. As such it feels very much like the middle film in the trilogy, in the first film, Pather Panchali, you got to know the characters and their environment and culture. Here that is taken as known and you jump right into the story.

This has positive and negative sides. On the positive side exposition is not necessary, you know the relationships and the condition of each character, on the other hand it doesn't feel as new as Pather Panchali and it has the typical problems of any bridge film, no real beginning or end.

Still it makes me watch the last film in the trilogy even more, the world is super-detailed, the acting is excellent and you care about the characters... now pared down to one... so you care about Apu's future. This trilogy is essential viewing for its beautiful cinematography, music, shots, acting, sets, script ... and that's all, I think. It's hard to judge parts individually, as it just feels like a whole film bigger than the sum of its parts, so when I watch the third one I will say something about the whole trilogy.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Aparajito won the Golden Lion at the 1957 Venice Film Festival. Ray got Golden Gate Awards for the Best Director in San Francisco International Film Festival in 1958 for this film. The film won "Bodil Award: Best Non-European Film of the Year" from Denmark in 1967. In 2005, The Apu Trilogy was included in Time magazine's All-time 100 greatest movies list. Roger Ebert has included The Apu Trilogy in his book Great Movies.

The film is online, here's part 1, skip to minute 3 for the film itself:

321. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

2008-12-01T01:27:00.003Z

Directed By Jack Arnold

Synopsis

After being hit by a cloud of glitter (radiation?) a guy starts shrinking. After a fight with his cat he falls in the basement and has to fight a spider. Then he goes out and has a religious epiphany.

Review

B-movies are always something else. Usually, however they are quite good and this is no exception, the incredible shrinking man is able to maintain a suspenseful and very stressful mood throughout culminating in a fight with a spider that if you are as squeamish as I am will make your skin crawl.

This is based on a story by and adapted to the screen by Richard Matheson of I Am Legend fame (the book not the Will Smith film), and one thing he is good at is the feeling of loneliness, threat and claustrophobia which is very well achieved here.

It really gets a lot of its points for a great script and quite amazing special effects for the time, the sets are great with so many things blown up to make the character tiny. The action sequences are pretty good as well. The ending is slightly disappointing with the religious epiphany taking the whole of 15 seconds and leaving the viewer thinking "What?".

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

"And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears locked away and in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God there is no zero. I still exist." (Scott, to himself - last line in movie.)

The film in 10 minutes:

320. Kumonosu Jo (Throne Of Blood) (1957)

2008-11-28T03:57:00.003Z

Directed By Akira Kurosawa

Synopsis

Bitches are bitches, men are pussy-whipped.

Review

The above synopsis is obviously the original subtitle to Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Throne of Blood is an astonishing adaptation of the play. One of the great things about Shakespeare's plays is their universality, they deal with themes that are translatable into almost any culture and time, Macbeth could be set today among big business companies, in the stone-age between conflicting tribes or in space between aliens or whatever.

Kurosawa picks up on this and transports Macbeth into medieval Japan, making an amazingly great adaptation. Toshiro Mifune plays the pussy-whipped lord who is convinced by his wife to rise to and consolidate power through a series of murders. The guilt and paranoia destroy them both.

Kurosawa is particularly effective at creating environments and ambiances which work at an almost subliminal level. Then his characterisations are perfect, the ghosts more than scare, they freak you out, they are insidious. Kurosawa seems to have learned how to portray the supernatural with Mizoguchi and it tells. The movements are stylised, reminiscent of Noh theatre, the whole thing looks alien and familiar at the same time. The action sequences are breathtaking, the death of Mifune is one of the best deaths ever committed to screen. Say what you want about Kenneth Branagh, this is probably the best Shakespeare adaptation ever committed to screen. Japanese cinema fails to disappoint again.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Washizu's famous death scene, in which his own archers turn upon him and fill his body with arrows, was in fact performed with real arrows, a choice made to help Mifune produce realistic facial expressions of fear. The arrows seen to impact the wooden walls were not superimposed or faked by special effects (this is disputed, however, as cables are visible several times during the sequence and reverse motion photography was probably used), but instead shot by choreographed archers. During filming, Mifune waved his arms, ostensibly because his character was trying to brush away the arrows embedded in the planks; this indicated to the archers the direction in which Mifune wanted to move.

Trailer:

319. Le Notti Di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) (1957)

2008-11-26T01:43:00.004Z

Directed By Federico Fellini

Synopsis

The film follows the life of a prostitute in Rome and her exploits looking for love. She doesn't really find it.

Review

Finally Italian cinema is moving slightly away from the emotional exploitativeness of Neo-Realism. There are of course elements of that trend still here, but it's about time to move on. There were two great Neo-Realist films: Bicycle Thieves and Rome, Open City, after that it all felt old hat. Fellini is the man to move us out of this, however.

The social realism of the film is present not only in the theme of it but in the portrayal of the downtrodden members of society not only in prostitution but people living in caves and the family that buys Cabiria's house. This is, however, tempered by more interesting and slightly surreal themes, from the night club she goes to with the film star to the film star's house and the magical/hypnotic show she attends and performs in, there is enough to keep you fascinated as you follow this woman's life.

Giulietta Masina as Cabiria is a great actress, as she had already shown in La Strada, here she allows to to at the same time find her annoying but also to empathise greatly with her situation. She is the ultimate "whore with a heart of gold" whose heart is constantly shattered. A very good film.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, plays Cabiria Ceccarelli, a feisty but naive prostitute in Ostia, then a seedy section of Rome. The name Cabiria is borrowed from the 1914 Italian film Cabiria, while the character of Cabiria herself is taken from a brief scene in Fellini's earlier film The White Sheik.

Trailer:

318. Smultronstallet (Wild Strawberries) (1957)

2008-11-25T01:03:00.002Z

Directed By Ingmar Bergman

Synopsis

An old professor decides to drive from Stockholm to Lund in order to receive his jubilee degree. On the way he shares his car with a number of characters which make him put his life in perspective and finally come to terms with his past.

Review

As my wife said: "This is how you make a film with old people". This is true, she was particularly comparing this with Umberto D, the Italian neo-realist film which is also more than a little exploitative. Bergman has a much softer touch, so he can make emotional films without pulling on easy sentiment.

Bergman was famously a fan of Kurosawa and we can see the influence of life-affirming films like Ikiru in this film. The emotional trip of the old professor here is comparable to that of the main character in Ikiru, old people learn to turn their life around, to be better, to come to terms with their life before the end.

Bergman has the talent of including pretty complex dialogue in a film without making it sound completely out of place. He does it here, smartly underpinning the inner trip of his characters with sound philosophical thought. To this is a road-trip film, both a literal road-trip and an interior travel, the film is full of parallels between the present in the past, impressive dream-sequences and surreal recollections and they all contribute to the building blocks of the professor's life and personality. A beautiful, sad and life-affirming film.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay.

The film is included on the Vatican Best Films List, recommended for its portrayal of a man's "interior journey from pangs of regret and anxiety to a refreshing sense of peace and reconciliation".

The film was the inspiration for Deconstructing Harry, written and directed by Woody Allen, in which a man (Allen) goes on a road trip to his former university to receive an honorary degree and on the way meets an assortment of characters and re-evaluates his life.

The film is online, here's part 1:

317. An Affair To Remmember (1957)

2008-11-21T02:05:00.002Z

Directed By Leo McCarey

Synopsis

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are both going to get married in the near future to other people. While on a boat they fall in love with each other. They decide to meet in six months at the top of the Empire State Building if they still feel the same way and want to get married to each other. Well Deborah Kerr on her way to him has a close encounter of the being run over and paralysed kind, while he is up there thinking he is getting the dump of a lifetime. She goes one to teach annoying children how to sing, and he eventually finds out she is paralysed and they get together again.

Review

I know a lot of people love this film... I think it's a bit crap. On paper it shouldn't be... Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr and Leo McCarey are all good at their jobs, heck even great. Then you read the script... and you think this is a bit silly... then you get to the second half and you go: "Two fucking singing numbers with children? What the fuck is going on here?"

It is all too silly and heavy handed to appeal to people who like their cinema to be even slightly subtle. I am known to cry in loads of films, I can't even count how many films in this list have made me cry... at the end of this I just laughed my head off.

What is it with the two children singing numbers? They just sound out of place, they do nothing to advance the story or to flesh out any characters, as the children as completely inconsequential and have not existence outside those numbers... we would have been just as well served by just having established that Kerr finds her work with children rewarding and the children like her... the singing was perfectly excusable. Oh well... didn't like it. Oh and Cary Grant is a shit painter.

Final Grade

6/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is considered one of the most romantic of all time, according to the American Film Institute. The movie was a remake of McCarey's 1939 film Love Affair, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. An Affair to Remember was almost identical to Love Affair on a scene to scene basis. McCarey used the same screenplay as the original film, which was penned by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart.

Contributing to the success of the 1957 film is its theme song "An Affair to Remember (Our Love Affair)' composed by Harry Warren with lyrics by Leo McCarey and Harold Adamson. The song is sung by Vic Damone during the opening credits and then sung later by Deborah Kerr's character, a nightclub singer. Kerr's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed for Kerr in the film The King and I.

Deborah Kerr sings!... well, she's being dubbed:

316. The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) (1957)

2008-11-19T02:45:00.002Z

Directed By Ingmar Bergman

Synopsis

Death comes for a Knight just returned from the Crusades. Before he dies the Knight wants to know what is beyond life. In order to gain some time he challenges Death to a game of chess. Well, he never finds out what is beyond, and he loses on purpose to save people whose life he cherishes.

Review

For a film which has gained the reputation of the ultimate art-house, obscure, dour film, The Seventh Seal is a surprisingly funny, interesting, tender, beautiful and deep film. We had seen Ingmar Bergman's light humoristic touch in the previous film of his here on the list, and even if this is ultimately not a feel good film, that touch is still here.

All the characters in the film are brilliant, even if they are not much more than allegorical characters as would befit a medieval passion play they are deep of thought and character... well most of them are.

The influence of the film has been wide-ranging, albeit more to the level of parody of superficial aspects of the film rather than an imitation of the existential explorations of the thing. This is quite sad really, while the existential dialogue can at times be heavy handed, it is often quite brilliant, succinct and insightful. Highly recommended, of course.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The Seventh Seal was Bergman's breakthrough film. When the film won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1957, the attention generated by it (along with the previous year's Smiles of a Summer Night) made Bergman and his stars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson well-known to the European film community, and the critics and readers of Cahiers du Cinéma, among others, discovered him with this movie. Within five years of this, he had established himself as the first real auteur of Swedish cinema. With its reflections upon death and the meaning of life, The Seventh Seal became something of a figurehead for "serious" European films and, as such, has often been parodied in film and television.

Gotta love Scott Walker: