Favorite (four), part seven

Just like in my other six posts thus far in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  I'm trying right now to take in almost a film a day.  Most have been first-time viewings.  And most I have been glad to finally see, but only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those (and hopefully one or two of these will be good to someone else, too).

Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring
Another extraordinarily tender and wise film about  life, relationships, and personal growth and evolution.  Ozu keeps things minimal and spare, as usual.  But whenever he goes outside he reminds us of his strong connection to nature and tremendous feeling and eye for the outdoors.  Soft but packs a punch.


Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D.
Perhaps the film if you want to understand the bond between a dog and its owner.  Moving, realistic, wise, and full of heart.  A movie with a huge reputation, and rightfully so.  

Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow
Brewer brings both a tremendous vitality and heart to the film.  And Howard's performance is delivered with such an amazing amount of conviction.  Perhaps slightly messy and overwrought at times.  But a film that deserved to put Brewer firmly on the map.  It's also a film that hits on things such as the incredible vulnerability and anxiety that come with trying to be discovered and the grit and hustle necessary to achieve success in a creative profession.  

 

John Ford's Mogambo
A flawed film, certainly.  But a fever dream of a flick, with the painfully beautiful Grace Kelly, and some of the most suspenseful scenes in the history of cinema involving animals and humans.  Nice to see Ford taking a break from the Irish thing and delivering this complex tale.  

Favorite (four), part 3

As I mentioned during my other two entries in this series, periodically I'll stop and single out the films I've seen recently that I've responded to most strongly.  The other two entries were five films, but this one is four.  Why?  It's been awhile since I've done one of these posts, and I felt it was time to bring out the filter.

John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (Cameraman Gregg Toland does some extraordinary things, and there's a depthfulness and heavy melancholy that gives it the kind of heft I've experienced with some Ozu, Mizoguchi, Bresson, and Dreyer)
Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (An incredible performance from Tatum O'Neal and some nice Fordian nostalgia and melancholy)
Woody Allen's Radio Days (A personal film by Woody, buoyant and graceful)
Disney's Pinocchio (A tremendous Disney film, full of imagination and warmth)

Looking forward to the great discoveries ahead.  Happy viewing to all.

1962: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)

1962: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
I have a thing for great directors' later works.  I love Dreyer's Gertrud, Bresson's L'argent, even John Huston's The Dead (and the list could go on).  There's an element of spring cleaning that occurs in these later works.  A director looks at their tools and gets rid of all but the most essential.  

I still have a good many Ford films to see, but I've always felt that Ford could take an unusually "spare" eye to landscape.  Meanwhile, to avoid being too minimal, too abstract, Ford would often counter with frames of hundreds of people conversing, battling, or whatever the film might demand.  Valance is the first of Ford films I have seen that keeps everything from the landscapes to the interiors a little more stripped down.  I like the austerity of it and the uncluttered nature of it all.  

I guess I'm also a formalist since certain stylistic elements of filmmaking can singlehandedly determine whether I care for a film. The way that Ford shoots the titular scene is among the most formally solid and brilliantly executed moments I have ever seen.

I love Ford's humanity in the film, but that's not what I love about Valance the most.  What I truly love here is kicking back with a master director as they share a little of the distilled stuff.  

Other contenders for 1962: I still have a number of things to see from this year.  These include:  Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker, Blake Edwards' Days of Wine and Roses, Tony Richardson's Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Forough Farrokhzad's The House Is Black, Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon, Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso, Robert Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc, J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear, and Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird.  At some point, I need to revisit Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country, Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos as none of them impacted me on first viewing like I would have expected.  I also need to re-watch Jean Renoir's The Elusive Corporal and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate as it's been too long since I saw either to know where they'd place on this list.  But I really like Stanley Kubrick's Lolita.  I love David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, Howard Hawks' Hatari!, and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. Meanwhile, my closest runner-up is Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie.


4/26/11 I watched Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light.  Although Bergman's religious obsessions are far from my own chief concerns, I did really connect to the previous film in his trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly.  This one though moved me far less.  It felt heavily talky, visually claustrophobic, and even a bit forced narratively.  Its major reputation was a bit lost on me.  


4/30/11 I watched Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker.  Heavy and unsettling as it is moving and real.  Patty Duke's performance surely must go down as one of the greatest child performances in the history of the medium.  Penn demonstrates a willingness to take on an extremely difficult subject head-on and to go all the way with it.  Even though cinematically I might have wanted some things done differently, Penn really delivers with the emotional elements.  


5/2/11 I watched Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso.  I've long known this as one of Scorsese's favorites, and it certainly doesn't disappoint.  But it doesn't meet expectations either.  There's far less violence than one would imagine.  The tone more often resembles a vivacious and sunny foreign film than a somber and serious-minded noir.  And Lattuada shows an unexpected assertiveness with his editing, movement of the camera, and ability to juggle different genres.  Lattuada also knows how to make great use of music to heighten the action (the jazz leading up to the barbershop sequence) and has no problem leaving the viewer with a great, big lump in his throat.  


5/3/11 I watched Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon.  Another strong film from Ozu.  Ozu seems like he was such a peaceful person, and his films move in a way that's as soft and gentle as anything I've ever seen in the medium.  This one is not as quite as perfect to me.  A couple of the acting and music cues seem slightly unsubtle.  But it's still a deep, engaged work, this time dealing with the emptiness that follows the marriage of one's children.  

5/9/11 I watched Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.  Dated now and feeling badly disjointed, in the Richard Lester style.  It still holds some power in its Tom Courtenay performance and unexpected ending. 


5/10/11 I watched Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird.  There is much to recommend here.  The movie captures the phobias and rather unjustified fears that come with childhood.  It also has a nice, surprising warmth and humanity that explains much of its lasting reputation.  The filmmaking is a bit uninspired, for the most part.  But Bernstein delivers musically a score of real strength and atmosphere.  


5/11/11 I watched Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?  Aldrich keeps the drama and intensity wound incredibly tight. And the result is disturbing, but I liked it more than I expected.  There are moments that remind one of Aldrich's ability and that he was able to deliver one of the great noirs, Kiss Me Deadly.


5/24/11 I watched Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel.  I can't say that I necessarily understand all that Bunuel is saying with this one. But nonetheless, I feel comfortable saying it's too claustrophobic, morbid, and lifeless to grab me fully.  

9/21/13 I watched Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town.  So much of the film is mature, daringly dark, modern, and full of interesting feelings about Hollywood.  And maybe the tacked-on happy ending is part of that commentary, but it feels unsatisfying when compared to the rest of work.  Highlights include the incredible elevator shot and what feels like a very subtle use of slo-mo as Douglas, his ex, and her new man ride up together.  

11/10/13 I watched Agnes Varda's Cleo de 5 a 7.  More masterful than I remember from my first viewing more than twenty years ago, Varda's work separates itself from many of the early New Wave films by eschewing genre and delivering a film with a focus entirely on character.  Varda's camera glides and records capturing a realness of faces and of Paris.  And what we are left with is, as a capsule of its time, a film as valuable as Breathless, 400 Blows, and any of the other key Vague work from the early sixties.  

8/2/14 I watched Robert Bresson's Proces de Jeanne d'Arc.  One of the few films by the director that I had never seen and yet another reminder of his brilliance, uniqueness and above all clarity of approach.  Bresson is a master of restraint and finding small stylistic touches that add such interesting rhythm to his work, like the repetition of an eyehole and visitors peering through it to comment on  Joan.  Bresson is the Thelonious Monk of cinema or Monk the Bresson of music.  This work may lack some of the transcendence or full blown poetry of some of Bresson's other films - its subject matter and approach almost prevent it from the latter - but it is still a great film by one of the medium's five or ten greatest practitioners.  

9/21/14 I watched Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso.  It is amazing to step back and see the New Wave for what it was not only in France but as it touched Italy, England, Czech Republic and across the world.  What was it?  It was about championing the young over the old, the free over the responsible, the city over the country and beauty over decay.  This film is a great example of what it looked like in Italy in 1962 even if I still prefer how the French did it and particularly Godard, Truffaut, Demy, Rohmer, Rivette and Chabrol.  

2/9/17 I watched Terrence Young's Dr. No.  Connery looks great and immediately announces himself as one of cinema's most entertaining icons.  But the plot of this one is a little weak and very little of it rises to the level of the very best Bond.  

10/29/17 I watched Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine.  I watched a version on YouTube without subtitles so was unable to catch every word.  But, the film feels like the male version of Jules et Jim, or in other words, one male and two females.  I don't know Rozier's cinema yet but if this film is any indication he has the New Wave's keen interest and eye in youth, female beauty and the sea.  

10/27/18 I watched Jean Rouch's La punition.  Rouch stays in the streets of Paris and poetically captures a day in the life of a young Parisian girl during her formative years.  Most interesting are the last five minutes as the film shifts tone and becomes an expressionistic rumination. 

9/7/19 I watched J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear.  The first half was pretty unaffecting but Thompson shows some talent as he builds to the drama of the last thirty or so minutes.  Not top shelf noir in my book but still several great passages that are worth a watch.

3/27/20 I watched Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror.  Until now, I thought Edwards was a filmmaker who was pretty adept at making light, entertaining trifles.  But this film proves he could also do dark and moody when he set out to.  I could feel the New Wave's influence as Edwards does an extraordinary job capturing authentic San Francisco streets and homes and venues.  An ignored film from this period that deserves a much larger reputation. 

10/24/21 I watched Jean Renoir's Le caporal epingle.  Renoir's second to last feature revisits some of the same subject matter as La Grande Illusion but perhaps due to the Nouvelle Vague's influence takes on a more playful tone.  There are several wonderful scenes and Renoir's ability with actors is very evident but it never comes together fully like some of my favorite work by the French master.  

8/8/22 I watched Eric Rohmer's The Sign of Leo.  What is most striking is how different it feels from most of the rest of his work.  Whereas most of his movies focus on intereaction and long conversations between characters, this film mostly follows one character's greater and greater descent into isolation and despair.  In this way, it feels the most like Italian Neorealism.  I would argue that it's a director still in search of his strengths and his style while others praise it as one of the director's great works.

1/18/23 I rewatched Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country.  Timing is a critical part of appreciating certain works of art.  Sometimes you discover them when you're too young, sometimes when you're too old, and sometimes the timing is just right.  I have probably watched this early Peckinpah western 2 or 3 other times, never quite clicking it with like some of my peers.  But this time it was different.  As can be expected with Peckinpah, it takes you into some dark, uncomfortable places (Elsa's wedding night!)  What's less expected are the final minutes, the depth of humanity of Peckinpah's characters and the weight Peckinpah is finally able to leave you with as he pays tribute to the slow disappearance of a certain kind of man in a certain kind of world.  

1939: La regle du jeu (Jean Renoir)

1939: La regle du jeu (Jean Renoir)

Here's a film that will probably forever be mentioned among the greats. It always seems to find its way to the top of those "best ever" lists, and I don't really ever see that changing.  

It's a film that I greatly admire, I'm even in awe of it, but it's also the kind of film that makes me want to put together a "favorites" list.  What I mean by this is that if all I ever saw were "the greats", films with as much universal support as this one, I'm not sure I'd have the same passion around film.  


Many of my favorites are more flawed, less perfect, but they affect me more personally.  When I first started being a cinephile, circa 1994, I wanted to like all the "best films", the ones the critics I respected loved the most.  But then something happened.  I found that I adamantly disagreed for the first time with Pauline Kael, one of the critics I most admired.  It was probably either with Michael Mann's Thief or Michael Cimino's Year of the Dragon.  Kael hated it, I loved it.  And then I began to start questioning some of her other picks.  Soon I decided that it was important to see "the greats", but it was even more important for me to determine my own set of classics, my own favorites, regardless of whether anyone else had championed them or not.  


Tony Dayoub over at the excellent blog Cinema Viewfinder posted a similar discussion late last week.  I thought Tony, as well as Sam Juliano (of another excellent blog Wonders in the Dark), made some fantastic points, and articulated this issue as well as anywhere I've ever seen.  


All this to say I can't help but include La regle du jeu on this list.  It doesn't affect me personally as much as some films from some of the other years or even some of the other Renoir films.  But the direction is as graceful as anywhere I've ever seen and the performances are all magnificent.  It's probably as perfect a film as any I can think of, but in my very humble opinion, perfect and favorite are not, and don't have to be, the same.

Other contenders for 1939: I probably have more gaps in this year than in any year so far.  And some are downright embarrassing.  The most notable films I still have to see are:  Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind (I'm embarrassed to say, but it's true!), Kenji Mizoguchi's The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums, and Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings.   Other films from this year I still need to see are: William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, George Stevens' Gunga Din, Zoltan Korda's The Four Feathers, Leo McCarey's Love Affair, Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, John Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk, George Cukor's The Women, and Mitchell Leisen's Midnight.  Of the films I have seen, there are three main runners-up.  I find John Ford's Stagecoach to be one of the most entertaining westerns ever made.  Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties echoes many of the themes of another favorite of mine, Once Upon a Time in America, and is an absolutely fantastic crime film. Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz still affects me as one of the most beautiful and magical films the cinema has ever produced.  Finally though I went with the Renoir as I admire it (maybe even love it) for it feels in some sense the most like real life -- complex, chaotic, and vital yet still harmonious and in some kind of balance. 

7/18/10 I watched Mitchell Leisen's Midnight.  Charming enough, but I could never really connect with Don Ameche, and the story never involved me fully.  I like Claudette Colbert a great deal, but this is not one of my favorite films with her.  

7/25/10 I watched Leo McCarey's Love Affair.  An extremely sad movie, full of some incredible moments but often a little unfocused.  McCarey proves once again that he is fantastic with actors and can create fresh and real feeling about as well as anyone.  

7/30/10 I watched Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  It has a good deal of the hokeyness that Capra has become known for. But it also boasts some terrific moments with James Stewart and the most rich and unhinged performance I've ever seen from Claude Rains. A forced happy ending but an interesting watch with some food for thought.   

8/4/10 I watched John Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk.  Although it's a little long-winded at times for my taste, it reminds me of how important Ford was at retelling our country's history.  Like Capra, he tries to remind us of our past, our values, and the events that led to the liberty that most of us are able to enjoy.  Fonda was a strong heroic character and some of Ford's unusual visual abilities shine through.  

8/9/10 I watched George Stevens' Gunga Din.  Rollicking but a little long-winded at times for my taste.  Seems to have been a major influence on Raiders of the Lost Ark and certainly has its share of memorable moments.  

8/10/10 I watched John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln.  Ford could be overly sentimental in moments.  But Fonda's transition into Lincoln is eerily close.  And the way that Ford stages and shoots the one murder in the film is among the most poetic and memorable things I've seen in his work.  It rates up there with the titular murder in Valance.  Also, some of Ford's static shots of Fonda thinking, particularly near the end, are powerful, deep, and affecting.

8/15/10 I watched Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind.  I'm very ashamed to admit it, but this is the first time that I've seen it.  The characters are much more ambiguous than I imagined they would be, and Fleming doesn't really linger on anything.  A little too long and its almost contempt for contemplation wore me out after awhile.  But I'm very glad to have seen it.  

8/16/10 I watched Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings. Although it's more complex, thematically, emotionally, and formally, than His Girl Friday, I still prefer HGF.  But this Hawks is definitely top-tier, featuring one of his very best scripts, and one of Grant's most sophisticated characters.  All that is Hawksian is on display here, and it's a great ride, albeit slightly cold at times.  

8/17/10 I watched George Cukor's The Women.  The verbal mania really wore on me after awhile, and the gimmick of having no men ever on screen stopped working for me pretty soon into the film.  Pretty good performances, and I'm sure it has value for certain people, but I never could really connect.  

10/20/11 I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn.  An uncharacteristic film from the master.  It felt messy and under-budgeted.  Pretty much a slog even with a strong Laughton performance.  

10/5/13 I watched Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: An Odyssey:  The 1930s The Great American Movie Genres and the Brilliance of European Film.  Perhaps the least interesting installment to me so far, but I did really like those sections on Cocteau, Vigo, and Renoir.  

9/13/15 I watched George Marshall and Edward F Cline's You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.  While not as memorable as It's a Gift it is still an ample and powerful display of the unique comic approach of Fields.  He was very different than anyone I have ever seen on screen but every bit as effective as Keaton or Chaplin or Tati.

2/10/18 I watched Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka.  Far from Lubitsch's great works, although there are some wonderful moments like Ninotchka's reunion with her comrades back in Moscow.

1/15/21 I watched William Wyler's Wuthering Heights.  Olivier is great and there are a few scenes where Toland's masterful talent is on display.  But there is nearly wall-to-wall music and everything came off as more forced than felt.