1964: Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

1964: Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
It's hard to think of many American equivalents, perhaps John Huston's The Dead and some of the final films from Howard Hawks and John Ford.  What I'm talking about is when a director, towards the end of their career, starts making these films that are so pure, so refined, that they take on a whole other form.  Ever chew on a Saltine for a really long time?  Okay perhaps that's not the best example, but it will at least lead you in the right direction of my point.  

Simply put, Gertrud is a UFO that doesn't quite feel like a normal film. There's something very abstract about it, something off and naked about it all.  It's distilled to the point of being transformative.  

It's enough that I find the unique form of Gertrud incredibly fascinating.  But I also respond to it as one of the most powerful love stories ever put on film.  And, if these two things weren't already enough, I'll say this:  I can't think of any final moment in any work, in any medium, that more precisely offers closure on a great artist's career.

Other contenders for 1964: A good number of things I still need to see.  These include:  Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily, Sergei Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba, Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert, Cy Endfield's Zulu, Frank Tashlin's The Disorderly Orderly, and Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet.  I need to revisit Satyajit Ray's Charulata, Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night, and Peter Glenville's Becket (high school English class) as it's been too long since I've seen any of them to know where they'd place on this list.  This year I really like Howard Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport and Don Siegel's The Killers.  I love Francois Truffaut's The Soft Skin, Bernardo Bertolucci's Before the Revolution, Chris Marker's La jetee, Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove..."  My closest runner-up is Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie.

12/27/10 I watched Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe.  Interesting that this and Dr. Strangelove... both came out this year.  Lumet's film is somewhat naturalistic, absent of music, and told almost without humor or obvious satire.  I thought it could have benefitted from color rather than black-and-white, as its earnestness feels stilted because of its aesthetic.   But as is often the case with Lumet, it is well-told and well-acted.  I just never fully connected to anyone onscreen.  

5/18/11 I watched Sergei Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Parajanov's style is kinetic and certainly unique.  But I found its poetic, slightly non-narrative ambitions quickly frustrating, and was very rarely absorbed in any way.  

7/24/11 I watched Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew.  Intimate and personal telling of the Jesus story by Pasolini. He gives it a very stylish and immediate feel with an abundant use of the zoom and handheld camera.  

10/15/11 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Une Femme Mariee. Provocative as usual chez Godard, but this one is so cerebral as to become distancing compared some of my favorite of his films from this period. 

1/8/12 I watched Robert Rossen's Lilith.  An unusually demented work about the mentally ill.  Form merges into content in a very admirable way, but this isn't completely my kind of thing.  The sickness finally becomes so claustrophobic as to shut off my empathy valve a bit.  

1/8/12 I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert.  I definitely have a take it or leave it attitude when it comes to Antonioni's work.  I always admire his framing and extraordinary eye, but his fascination with bourgeois loneliness in the early sixties just simply leaves me uncaring.  

10/31/13 I watched Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: An Odyssey: The Shock of the New - Modern Filmmaking in Western Europe.  A little less exciting than I hoped, covering perhaps my favorite period in all of film history.  But I did enjoy Cousins' treatment of Bergman and Bresson.  I just wish he went a little deeper into the Nouvelle Vague and touched on Melville. 

11/24/13 I watched Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.  The music and Leone's use of it are still so fresh and fascinating today.  And he certainly found the perfect anti-hero in Eastwood.  But this one is not totally my thing.  I prefer later Leone when he had more money and his artistry replaced a little of the crudeness at the fore.

12/5/15 I watched Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger.  An entertaining Bond for sure even if I felt it lost a little steam by the time they got to Fort Knox.  The gadgets are great and the first 30 minutes are extremely top shelf Bond.  

3/5/17 I rewatched Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  I was frustrated by the backlash against La La Land.  And I was confused by the critical preference for Moonlight.  Sure, Chazelle's film had the more robust budget.  But I felt like his film also had far more filmmaking rigor than Jenkins' and that Chazelle's formal approach in general was much clearer and achieved at a significantly higher level.  And when I hear someone compare Moonlight's color palate to the incredible work Doyle and Wong Kar-wai achieved together I really don't see it at all.  
With that out of the way,  I was looking forward to rewatching Demy's film, cited as a key influence on La La Land.   I remembered Demy's work with color as among the most impressive in film's history and it was as brash and beautiful as I remembered.  The pinks, purples, and splashes of bold colors of Demy's cinema certainly find their way into some of the clothes and onto some of the sets of La La Land (most noticeably in Emma Stone's apartment and her roommates' outfits).  What I did not remember though is just how bittersweet and powerful the final minutes of Cherbourg are.  Rewatching it now, if you felt it like I did, it seems that the secret behind the emotional power of some of La La Land's final exchanges is Chazelle tapping into the same cinema magic Demy concocted for Cherbourg's last moments.  Both films explore unrequited and both get deep rewards for staying on the other side of happily ever after.  

1/29/18 I watched Vincente Minnelli's Goodbye Charlie.  A bit too zany for my taste but interesting as yet another loose installment on Minnelli's obsession with Hollywood and his deep ambivalence about the system in which he made a great name for himself.  

3/3/18 I watched Eric Rohmer's Nadja in Paris.  A little known short by Rohmer is yet another great installment in the tremendous Nouvelle Vague body of work from 1958-1965.  It is ten minutes or so of pure voiceover but Rohmer announces early his extraordinary skill for capturing women and the streets and people of Paris.  

6/25/20 I watched Martin Scorsese's It's Not Just You, Murray!  A pretty clinical and unemotional early short from Scorsese that's of greatest interest for already displaying some of the visceral camera moves that would become prevalent in Scorsese's later work.

12/7/20 I watched Maurice Pialat's Bosphore.  It is striking how much weight Pialat's early work already carries.  Much of it comes from his extraordinarily strong framing but it also his depthful voiceover and his editing that confidently moves from static shot to static shot interspersed with a few beautifully orchestrated moves of the camera.

1/15/22 I watched Cy Endfield's Zulu.  I've only seen three of his films but I feel completely confident in saying that Cy Endfield is a name that should be far more common and known in cinephile circles than it is.  Each of his films has a strong directorial presence and a position to the material that encourages contemplation without being distancing.  Although not my area of expertise, I can't think of a war film set up in remotely the same way as Zulu.  We remain in one location for the first two hours with very little in terms of plot advances as we get to know characters as they prepare for what is probably their final battle.  

1955: Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

1955: Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
I've only seen this once, but it finds its way on the list for the same reason as my final three picks (L'enfant, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and Tulpan), Ordet is an absolute technical marvel.  Here it comes in the form of perfectly choreographed, incredibly long takes. And like Tulpan, I'm not referring to fixed frame long takes like we find in the cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien.  Dreyer's camera and characters are almost always moving with the director hardly ever cutting to break up the action.  It's one of these films I watch and almost every five minutes can hear myself say, "I can't believe he just did that!"  The lack of cuts definitely gives this a pace that will make it not for everyone.  But, for me, it's cinema of the highest order, and one of the five or so most perfectly made movies I've ever seen.  The acting and cinematography are also in another stratosphere.  But, it's the direction that makes this one most humbling, and most impressive.  The other thing that struck me is that although a good amount of the action takes place inside one location, Dreyer never makes us feel like we're at the theater.  There's no mistaking, his approach is cinematic and his talent mastery.  Lastly, as an incredibly tiny tribute to Dreyer and his extraordinary accomplishment here, I've decided to refrain from any paragraph breaks in my short post. 

Other contenders for 1955: A year where I have quite a few gaps. These include: Raoul Walsh's The Tall Men, Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, Jean Rouch's Les Maitres Fous, Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, Vincente Minnelli's The Cobweb, Alain Resnais' Night and Fog, John Ford's The Long Gray Line, Michelangelo Antonioni's The Lady Without Camelias, Frank Tashlin's Artists and Models, Max Ophuls' Lola Montes, Ingmar Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel, Kenji Mizoguchi's New Tales of the Taira Clan, Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry, and Jacques Tourneur's Wichita. I need to revisit the following three films as it's simply been too long since I've seen them to know where they would place on this list: Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without A Cause, and Elia Kazan's East of Eden.  Even with all these gaps though, there are still a number of favorites from this year.  I really like Anthony Mann's The Far Country and The Man from Laramie, Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, Fritz Lang's Moonfleet, and Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm.  I love Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin and Jules Dassin's Rififi.  My closest runner-up though is Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly.


2/7/11 I watched John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock.  A wonderful cast in what feels like a very artificial, overly talky, and static film. Some interesting framing, but other than that, just all fell flat for me.  


2/9/11 I watched Raoul Walsh's The Tall Men.  Messy, pedestrian, and far from top-tier Walsh.  Some nice work on the theme of brotherhood but otherwise pretty uninspired stuff.  


2/10/111 I watched Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows.  As one would expect, the colors are extraordinary, the control and restraint masterful, with a few incredible moments of melodrama.  Doesn't reach near the heights for me of Written on the Wind, but still a very good work.  


2/19/11 I watched Alain Resnais' Night and Fog.  Absolutely chilling and masterful doc.  Resnais keeps a slight distance and never goes for the sentimental or the easy effect.  He just documents the horrors of the concentration camps, never really forcing anything on us.  However, he somehow makes us receive it all in a gut-wrenching and incredibly visceral way.  


2/23/11 I watched John Ford's The Long Gray Line.  There is a depth and humanity to Ford and this film that I really like.  But it also has a mawkish way about it that I find grating after awhile.  Ultimately, I'm left a little lukewarm.  

3/3/11 I watched Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry.  Might go down as my least favorite Hitch film I've seen thus far.  All felt very tedious and repetitive to me.  Aside from an early Shirley MacLaine appearance, little grabbed my attention.

3/30/11 I watched Jacques Tourneur's Wichita.  Tourneur proves that he definitely was an A-level director, ofter working on B-level budgets.  Nothing flashy here, but just the great taste of Tourneur that guides everything from the cast (Vera Miles is exceptionally easy on the eyes) and the locations to the script and the camerawork.  A very solid western from the great director. 


10/9/11 I watched Max Ophuls' Lola Montes.  Though I'm unsure I understood all of Ophuls' implications, this unconventional work is obviously full of great passion and conviction.  The most formally daring of all the great filmmaker's films, it's not the warmest, most inviting work but one that would be interesting to study from time to time.  

5/22/13 I watched Frank Tashlin's Artists and Models.  I have long known the Nouvelle Vague's appreciation for Tashlin but have not fully connected to anything I have seen yet from him.  This one bears great influences on Une femme est une femme and even Pierrot and Tashlin's playfulness and visual gags impress at times, but he also overplays certain moments like Lewis going up and down the stairs to answer the phone.  I will continue to dig around to see more Tashlin work, but I remain lukewarm on this one and his work as a whole.  

11/23/13 I watched Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali.  A world of truth and heft that rivals any I know on film but quite unlike anyone else's world as well.  Warmer than Ozu, closer to a documentary-like realism than Renoir, and probably a little more alive than either, Ray does not shy away from death or difficulty and captures the buoyant feelings of innocence and happiness masterfully.  A humanist film containing so much life and truth, Ray offers a spirituality so often lacking in cinema and a poetic approach to the world and the medium both rewarding and renewing.  

2/5/17 I watched William Wyler's The Desperate Hours.  I had already seen Cimino's remake.  Wyler films at times in a theatrical way, using the interior of the home more as a stage than a typical film frame.  But he proves adept at the action scenes (the milkman's demise, Hal's final moments, etc.) creating memorable, brisk moments filmed with a bit of gusto.

2/12/17 I watched Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds.  I have very little experience with Naruse's work, this being either only the first or second film I have ever seen from him.  I'm not a fan of his almost wall-to-wall music and I wish he were more similar to Mizoguchi and Ozu in his sense of restraint.  But I admire his ability to go the distance with the material, never becoming sentimental even when it would have more palatable and more commercial to do so.  He is gifted with time, effortlessly gliding back and forth between the past and the present, and emotionally he is more engaged with reality than the cerebral Mizouchi and the distant Ozu.  

3/19/19 I watched Edgar G. Ulmer's The Naked Dawn.  It never quite grabbed me, even as powerful as Kennedy's performance was.

9/26/21 I watched Luis Bunuel's The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz.  Cold and I never really cared about any of the characters but was fascinating to see Bunuel's stylistic boldness.  Particularly the surrealistic touches and the false narratives.  

2/3/23 I watched Vincente Minnelli's The Cobweb.  A melodrama that finds its way on Rosenbaum's list of 1000 essential films that I could never quite grasp intellectually or emotionally.  

8/27/23 I watched King Vidor's Man Without a Star.  An interesting use of "wire" to discuss the closing of the frontier and some great scenes but often times a bit broad in its performances and overall approach.  

1928: The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

1928: The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

Seeing The Passion of Joan of Arc the first time, the way that I did, remains one of the most memorable cinephile experiences I've ever had (and probably will ever have).  It was 1995, the Summer, and I was out in Los Angeles visiting my brother.  Modern classical composer, Richard Einhorn, had recently composed a piece entitled Voices of Light and was performing it for the first time in Los Angeles at the incredible John Anson Ford Amphitheatre.   So I decided to go, alone (maybe my favorite way to take in a movie).  They projected the film on a massive screen and then as it played these hundreds of people behind the screen (musicians and vocals) provided the accompaniment.  It was roaringly powerful and as transcendent as any artistic experience I've ever had.   

Dreyer's film for me is all about Renee Jeanne Falconetti's face.  Simply put, it's the MOST emotive thing I've ever seen on a screen.  

Everyone always talks about what the talkies could do that silent films couldn't (and of course there are obvious things).  However, in my favorite silent films, it's not just directors making a film without sound; it's a different artform in many ways, with different strengths and weaknesses.  If you ask me to show an example of what a silent film can do that the talkies can never really imitate, this is the film I would use.    

Other contenders for 1928:  Admittedly, there are some major gaps I still have to fill for this year.  The most notable are probably:  Howard Hawks' A Girl in Every Port, Josef von Sternberg's The Docks of New York, King Vidor's The Crowd, Fritz Lang's Spies, and Victor Seastrom's The Wind.  I also have never seen Alfred Hitchcock's The Farmer's Wife, Jean Renoir's Le tournoi dans la cite, and Jean Renoir's short film La petite marchande d'allumettes.  I've seen Queen Kelly once, but it didn't really stay with me.  I really like Un chien andalou, but it doesn't affect me in the same complete way as my top pick.  The only two runner-ups that could really challenge for this spot are my two favorite Buster Keaton films: Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman.  To me, they're the two Keaton films with the most energy and the most mind-blowing action sequences.  But, finally, I give the edge to the Dreyer as it affected me more deeply than any other film I've seen from this year.

2/15/10 I watched Charlie Chaplin's The Circus.  It wouldn't contend for my top spot.  I can't say it emotionally wrapped me up as much as some of his other films.  But it does have a lot to say both about the nature of humor and the role of the artist.  It also reminds me that Chaplin, at times, could get at deep melancholy about as well as anyone.  


2/16/10 I watched Frank Borzage's Street Angel.  It wouldn't contend for my top spot, but I did like that it was less melodramatic than Borzage's Seventh Heaven.  However, some of the plotting, particularly the central "catch", did keep me from fully embracing it.


2/23/10 I watched Fritz Lang's Spies.  Although it wouldn't contend for my top spot, it definitely sets up many of the archetypes and rules for what we've come to know as an action film.  Lang's exceptional eye is on display several times here; I think the first five minutes are particularly strong.  Some of the rest of the movie's narrative, however, feels a little on the long-winded side.  


4/23/10 I watched Alexander Dovzhenko's Arsenal.  Strong imagery and composition again from Dovzhenko, especially when he decides to move the camera.  However, I found the storyline in Earth a little easier to follow, and ultimately the later film (Earth) affected me a little more. But very interesting final shot in this one.  


3/16/11 I watched Josef von Sternberg's The Docks of New York. Probably an influence on L'atalante, but it lacks the heavy atmosphere and transcendent poetry of Vigo's film.  There are some heartfelt moments here and von Sternberg shows glimpses of his own expressive abilities, but the story drags to the entire venture's detriment.  


10/30/11 I watched Jean Renoir's La petite marchande d'allumettes. Another avant-garde, quirky, surreal short from Renoir, much like Charleston Parade.  Decent showcase for Hessling but mostly not really memorable.  


1/29/12 I watched Fred Niblo's The Mysterious Lady.  Garbo is sexy personified in this very efficient, inventive, and entertaining early work. Oh, and did I mention Garbo?

9/15/13 I watched the second installment of Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: An Odyssey: 1918-1928 The Triumph of American Film.  Another compelling entry focused primarily on Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd.  My favorite parts, however, are when Cousins moves into von Stroheim and Dreyer and illuminates aspects of both in ways I had never heard.  

10/13/13 I watched King Vidor's The Crowd.  Masterful in how real to life it seems.  Vidor takes us on an emotionally uncomfortable ride and manages so much of the exposition through inventive and efficient cinematic devices.  Visually striking and emotionally loyal, it is a masterpiece although because of the subject matter you may end up like me more in admiration than in deep love.  

11/8/17 I watched Paul Fejos' Lonesome.  I wish Paul Schrader were here.  I've heard him list off on a number of occasions the things that cinema does particularly well and I always thought his list quite astute.  But one thing he may or may not have mentioned that I think the medium does unusually well is restraint.  When the cinema holds back from giving the audience what it craves for an extended amount of time and then finally delivers, the result can be incredibly powerful and moving.  I'm thinking of Fellini's restraint from using a close-up until the very end of Nights of Cabiria or Marker's sudden burst of movement in La Jetee or the emotional restraint Bresson exhibits throughout the entirety of Pickpocket until the very final moments.  Here, the restraint has to do with sound and as with the very best examples of restraint, when it finally breaks or gives in, it comes as a complete shock.  The first time the two characters spoke in Lonesome I did not know what to think.  I have seen a good number of films but I have never gone into a silent film expecting to hear two characters speaking to one another 30 minutes in.  But Fejos does not stop there.  He dazzles with color, he dazzles with montage and then when it is time for him to bring it all to a close, he does that gloriously as well.

8/30/20 I watched Victor Sjostrom's The Wind.  There are some tremendous sequences.  I particularly admired the way that Sjostrom builds suspense from the moment we know Wirt Roddy is headed back to Letty's house to the time he actually arrives.  Sjostrom displays extraordinary restraint and as a result is able to create much more discomfort and even horror when he allows the moment finally to materialize.