The 1962 Mini-List
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
Thanks swo!
1. The Trial (Orson Welles)
2. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman)
3. Thérèse Desqueyroux (Georges Franju)
4. Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Adorable menteuse (Michel Deville)
6. Le Monte-charge (Marcel Bluwal)
7. L'eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
8. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
9. Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
10. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
11. Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah)
12. Days of Wine and Roses (Blake Edwards)
13. El ángel exterminador (Luis Buñuel)
14. L'Œil du malin (Claude Chabrol)
15. Sweet Bird of Youth (Richard Brooks)
16. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
17. Experiment in Terror (Blake Edwards)
18. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi)
19. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville)
20. Ivan's Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky)
21. Jules et Jim (François Truffaut)
22. Black Test Car (Yasuzō Masumura)
23. Le Caporal épinglé (Jean Renoir)
24. The Miracle Worker (Arthur Penn)
25. Should I Marry Outside My Faith? (Eddie Dew)
Apologies to whoever orphaned Zetterling's The War Game - I had it as my 25th slot originally but Dew's propaganda film is just so much better
And to my fellow social horror fanatic who placed the correct film in the #1 slot:
1. The Trial (Orson Welles)
2. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman)
3. Thérèse Desqueyroux (Georges Franju)
4. Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Adorable menteuse (Michel Deville)
6. Le Monte-charge (Marcel Bluwal)
7. L'eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
8. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
9. Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
10. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
11. Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah)
12. Days of Wine and Roses (Blake Edwards)
13. El ángel exterminador (Luis Buñuel)
14. L'Œil du malin (Claude Chabrol)
15. Sweet Bird of Youth (Richard Brooks)
16. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
17. Experiment in Terror (Blake Edwards)
18. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi)
19. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville)
20. Ivan's Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky)
21. Jules et Jim (François Truffaut)
22. Black Test Car (Yasuzō Masumura)
23. Le Caporal épinglé (Jean Renoir)
24. The Miracle Worker (Arthur Penn)
25. Should I Marry Outside My Faith? (Eddie Dew)
Apologies to whoever orphaned Zetterling's The War Game - I had it as my 25th slot originally but Dew's propaganda film is just so much better
And to my fellow social horror fanatic who placed the correct film in the #1 slot:
- dustybooks
- Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
- Location: Wilmington, NC
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
Yes, thank you again swo for running this thing, it's been a blast.
My ballot (I'm still hopefully going to write up the last several things I watched even though the '63 thread is now well under way...), with asterisks beside the films I watched for the first time just for this project.
1. The Manchurian Candidate
2. Lolita
3. The Trial
4. Antoine et Colette
5. Harakiri
6. The Exterminating Angel *
7. An Autumn Afternoon *
8. Days of Wine and Roses
9. Cleo from 5 to 7
10. Carnival of Souls
11. Vivre sa vie *
12. The Hole
13. Knife in the Water
14. The Temptation of Dr. Antonio *
15. Advise & Consent *
16. Ivan's Childhood *
17. Birdman of Alcatraz
18. Experiment in Terror
My ballot (I'm still hopefully going to write up the last several things I watched even though the '63 thread is now well under way...), with asterisks beside the films I watched for the first time just for this project.
1. The Manchurian Candidate
2. Lolita
3. The Trial
4. Antoine et Colette
5. Harakiri
6. The Exterminating Angel *
7. An Autumn Afternoon *
8. Days of Wine and Roses
9. Cleo from 5 to 7
10. Carnival of Souls
11. Vivre sa vie *
12. The Hole
13. Knife in the Water
14. The Temptation of Dr. Antonio *
15. Advise & Consent *
16. Ivan's Childhood *
17. Birdman of Alcatraz
18. Experiment in Terror
- Maltic
- Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:36 am
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I believe the list I submitted was in this order
1. An Afternoon Mackerel
2. Hatari
3. L'Eclisse
4. Il Sorpasso
5. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
6. Jules et Jim
7. Family Diary
8. Ride the High Country
9. Two Weeks in another town
10. Knife in the Water
All based on prior viewings, I'm afraid (some of them distant). I also didn't get around to Merrill's Marauders, so I'm glad someone else put it on the board.
1. An Afternoon Mackerel
2. Hatari
3. L'Eclisse
4. Il Sorpasso
5. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
6. Jules et Jim
7. Family Diary
8. Ride the High Country
9. Two Weeks in another town
10. Knife in the Water
All based on prior viewings, I'm afraid (some of them distant). I also didn't get around to Merrill's Marauders, so I'm glad someone else put it on the board.
- Matt
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I forgot to vote for Sweet Bird of Youth, but I don’t think I would have ranked it highly enough for it to make the top 50. That movie’s all about Geraldine Page for me.
There was a 1989 TV remake with Liz Taylor and Mark Harmon, Valerie Perrine, Seymour Cassel, and Rip Torn (again), directed by Nicolas Roeg, but it’s not nearly as interesting as it might sound.
There was a 1989 TV remake with Liz Taylor and Mark Harmon, Valerie Perrine, Seymour Cassel, and Rip Torn (again), directed by Nicolas Roeg, but it’s not nearly as interesting as it might sound.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
Similarly, I forgot to vote for L-Shaped Room but wouldn't have brought it into the top 50 either
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
My List:
01 Adieu Philippine
02 Thérèse Desqueyroux
03 Vivre sa vie
04 Adorable Menteuse
05 the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
06 El ángel exterminador
07 Le monte-charge
08 Il Lavoro
09 L’Eclisse
10 Lisa / the Inspector
11 Jules et Jim
12 Hara-kiri
13 L'Œil du Malin
14 Should I Marry Outside My Faith?
15 Days of Wine and Roses
16 Der Schatz im Silbersee
17 the Miracle Worker
18 It’s Trad, Dad!
19 Et Satan conduit le bal
20 Sweet Bird of Youth
21 the L-Shaped Room
22 Le signe du lion
23 Ride the High Country
24 Antonine et Colette
25 War Hunt
I believe the Lester was my only orphan. Whoever also put War Hunt at 25, well done
EDIT: Nope, Der Schatz im Silbersee was orphaned too. Only because people here haven't seen it, because they'd love it
01 Adieu Philippine
02 Thérèse Desqueyroux
03 Vivre sa vie
04 Adorable Menteuse
05 the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
06 El ángel exterminador
07 Le monte-charge
08 Il Lavoro
09 L’Eclisse
10 Lisa / the Inspector
11 Jules et Jim
12 Hara-kiri
13 L'Œil du Malin
14 Should I Marry Outside My Faith?
15 Days of Wine and Roses
16 Der Schatz im Silbersee
17 the Miracle Worker
18 It’s Trad, Dad!
19 Et Satan conduit le bal
20 Sweet Bird of Youth
21 the L-Shaped Room
22 Le signe du lion
23 Ride the High Country
24 Antonine et Colette
25 War Hunt
I believe the Lester was my only orphan. Whoever also put War Hunt at 25, well done
EDIT: Nope, Der Schatz im Silbersee was orphaned too. Only because people here haven't seen it, because they'd love it
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I was thrown off by the dual title of Lisa/The Inspector and didn't recognize it (probably further obfuscated since I watched it under its latter title), otherwise I would've voted for it
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I'll take the blame for that, and if you tell me how that would have changed your list I can quickly revise the results.
It's tricky though, because I can only list the film once, and it seems like it would be just as easy to miss under "The Inspector/Lisa" alphabetized under 'I'
It's tricky though, because I can only list the film once, and it seems like it would be just as easy to miss under "The Inspector/Lisa" alphabetized under 'I'
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
It's not on you- I could've easily taken the extra time to look up the few films on domino's posted shortlist that I didn't recognize, which would've triggered an 'a-ha' moment based on the poster on google/Letterboxd. Today's ballot would've looked different in the back half, especially after revisiting Lawrence of Arabia's UHD today, so I'll leave it as is and not game the results
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
OK. And yeah, LoA on UHD is VNL (very nice looking)
-
- not waving but frowning
- Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 1:18 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
Most pleasing discovery for me this year was Therese Desqueyroux (my No 6) which I discovered in a pile of bootlegs. A reviewing of Adieu (my No 10) didn't undim my enthusiasm and L'Eclisse (my No5) began to soften me up to Antonioni. Roll on 1963.
- Rayon Vert
- Green is the Rayest Color
- Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:52 pm
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
- Toland's Mitchell
- Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2019 2:42 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
My top 10:
1. L'Elisse
2. The Manchurian Candidate
3. Jules and Jim
4. Harakiri
5. Il Sorpasso
6. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
7. Cleo from 5 to 7
8. Lawrence of Arabia
9. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
10. Birdman of Alcatraz
I don't' recall exactly but the rest of my list went something like (give or take a few ranks):
11. Ivan's Childhood
12. Le Doulos
13. The Exterminating Angel
14. Ride the High Country
15. Experiment in Terror
16. The Third Lover
17. An Autumn Afternoon
18. Knife in the Water
19. Mamma Roma
20. To Kill a Mockingbird
21. Lolita
22. Cape Fear
23. Dr. No
Also wanted to vote for Siberian Lady Macbeth (Wajda) and Pressure Point (Kramer) but I didn't notice they weren't on the list. Oh well. They would have been on the bottom third of my list anyway. '62 was an excellent year. I've seen most of our list, hope to find more treasures from the titles I haven't seen.
1. L'Elisse
2. The Manchurian Candidate
3. Jules and Jim
4. Harakiri
5. Il Sorpasso
6. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
7. Cleo from 5 to 7
8. Lawrence of Arabia
9. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
10. Birdman of Alcatraz
I don't' recall exactly but the rest of my list went something like (give or take a few ranks):
11. Ivan's Childhood
12. Le Doulos
13. The Exterminating Angel
14. Ride the High Country
15. Experiment in Terror
16. The Third Lover
17. An Autumn Afternoon
18. Knife in the Water
19. Mamma Roma
20. To Kill a Mockingbird
21. Lolita
22. Cape Fear
23. Dr. No
Also wanted to vote for Siberian Lady Macbeth (Wajda) and Pressure Point (Kramer) but I didn't notice they weren't on the list. Oh well. They would have been on the bottom third of my list anyway. '62 was an excellent year. I've seen most of our list, hope to find more treasures from the titles I haven't seen.
Last edited by Toland's Mitchell on Fri Jun 17, 2022 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
- Mr Sheldrake
- Joined: Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:09 pm
- Location: Jersey burbs exit 4
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
1. L’Eclisse
2. The Trial
3. The Exterminating Angel
4. Harakiri
5. Lolita
6. The Inheritance
7. Mafioso
8. The Third Lover
9. Advise and Consent
10. Salvatore Giuliano
2. The Trial
3. The Exterminating Angel
4. Harakiri
5. Lolita
6. The Inheritance
7. Mafioso
8. The Third Lover
9. Advise and Consent
10. Salvatore Giuliano
- TMDaines
- Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
- Location: Stretford, Manchester
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
Oh, this is embarrassing. Missed this deadline on holiday! Noooo!
- ryannichols7
- Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:26 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I know the pain, I missed the 61 list for the same reason. you should still post your list, I'd love to read it.
glad I got a ballot in this time, new to me films are bolded. I tacked on the shorts at the end because I struggle to vote for shorts versus full lengths - dustybooks and I watched The Temptation of Dr Antonio together and had a riot of a time, glad to see we single handedly got it into also rans!
13 the fabulous baron munchausen
12 sanjuro
11 black test car
10 the manchurian candidate
09 mamma roma
08 knife in the water
07 the exterminating angel
06 l’eclisse
05 carnival of souls
04 an autumn afternoon
03 the man who shot liberty valance
02 the trial
01 ivan’s childhood
shorts were all new to me:
antoine and collette
the hole
the temptation of dr antonio
will also try and get around to writing these up, hopefully sometime this weekend
- TMDaines
- Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
- Location: Stretford, Manchester
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I would have voted:
#1) Il sorpasso (Dino Risi - Italy)
#2) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford - United States)
#3) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Robert Aldrich - United States)
#4) O Pagador de Promessas (Anselmo Duarte - Brazil)
#5) Vu du pont (Sidney Lumet - France)
#6) Jules et Jim (François Truffaut - France)
#7) Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier - France)
#8) L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni - Italy)
#9) Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini - Italy)
#10) Das Brot der frühen Jahre (Herbert Vesely - Germany)
#11) Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard - France)
#12) The Trial (Orson Welles - France)
#13) Das Zweite Gleis (Hans-Joachim Kunert - East Germany)
#14) Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville - France)
#15) Ivanovo detstvo (Andrei Tarkovsky - Soviet Union)
#16) I giorni contati (Elio Petri - Italy)
#1) Il sorpasso (Dino Risi - Italy)
#2) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford - United States)
#3) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Robert Aldrich - United States)
#4) O Pagador de Promessas (Anselmo Duarte - Brazil)
#5) Vu du pont (Sidney Lumet - France)
#6) Jules et Jim (François Truffaut - France)
#7) Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier - France)
#8) L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni - Italy)
#9) Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini - Italy)
#10) Das Brot der frühen Jahre (Herbert Vesely - Germany)
#11) Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard - France)
#12) The Trial (Orson Welles - France)
#13) Das Zweite Gleis (Hans-Joachim Kunert - East Germany)
#14) Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville - France)
#15) Ivanovo detstvo (Andrei Tarkovsky - Soviet Union)
#16) I giorni contati (Elio Petri - Italy)
Last edited by TMDaines on Mon Jul 25, 2022 7:07 am, edited 2 times in total.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
We're counting your #1 as a 1963 film
- dustybooks
- Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
- Location: Wilmington, NC
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
First off, I'm sorry for not getting around to logging these until after this list project was over! These were first-time watches for me this past month...
An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu): The note of finality this strikes is evidently coincidental to the fact of it being Ozu's last film; it synthesizes his pet themes so well and feels both emotionally universal and highly specific to its place and time, in particular the way that memories of the war overshadow everything and hang in the air with a certain profound sadness. These anxieties over appearances and a fixation toward self-denial are explicit in a way they aren't in modern or American life but I feel they're still in place and evident all the time. Every one of these movies has so much to offer, it will be a long time before I satisfactorily unpack them if I ever do. I didn't even mention the colors...
Mutiny on the Bounty (Milestone): I'm aware this version of the story has its champions here but I found it a lot more ponderous than Frank Lloyd's 1935 interpretation, which has many problems and is by no means a great film but does boast a lot more charisma within its two leads in my opinion. The dropoff from Charles Laughton's Captain Bligh to Trevor Howard's is severe, and I like Howard.
L'Eclisse (Antonioni): I could basically copy and paste my La Notte review; Antonioni may turn out to be the biggest auteur whose work I simply and uniformly don't care for. Of course there are breathtaking aspects to this; I don't have to tell you which one made the biggest immediate impression.
Billy Budd (Ustinov): This isn't all that memorable visually but it's a striking and well-acted version of the Melville story, and Terence Stamp is really wonderful in the title role, rendering fully credible the Christ parables that might have seemed hackneyed with a lesser performance, and Robert Ryan makes for a truly menacing villain. Seeing the tense court martial scenes enacted also caused me to idly wonder if Melville's story was an influence on Paths of Glory, which engenders a similar sense of gross injustice in the viewer but without the rousing cosmic revenge that closes this film.
Sanjuro (Kurosawa): Been a while since I saw Yojimbo but I really don't remember it being this straightforwardly hilarious. Slight by Kurosawa's standards but a lot of fun.
The Temptation of Dr. Antonio (Fellini): Fellini's struggles with sexuality find some of their most succinct and self-aware expression here. Even more than Fellini's other work of the period it feels like a nearly prophetic road map for the course the '60s would follow aesthetically, culturally, sexually. (The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour of five years later looks like a wan imitation of this in every manner.)
The Four Days of Naples (Nanni Loy): Straightforward, impressively mounted reenactment of the September 1943 uprising in Naples against the Nazis rendered in a Neorealist style, though its obligations toward factual presentation are such that it doesn't really probe into any but the broadest realities on living under fascism, at least not the way something like Rome, Open City does. Has a certain Battle of Algiers-like urgent quality despite covering a more distant period: cinema as pure communication more than shaded storytelling.
Sundays and Cybele (Bourguignon): Was prepared neither for the narrative bleakness of this nor for the eccentricity of its central relationship, which I admit I found a little hard to take even though there's a kind of childlike naivete to it all that's sort of beautiful. It reminded me of Forbidden Games a bit. Interesting to compare the interpretation of "innocence" and mental illness here to what's in David and Lisa.
That Touch of Mink (Delbert Mann): A bad sitcom at feature length, just one that happens to feature Cary Grant and Doris Day; the latter spends the film wringing her hands over whether to fuck Grant, an indecision that even with their age difference is a little unbelievable.
Advise & Consent (Preminger): Having never been fully seduced by forum favorite Preminger apart from Anatomy of a Murder (which I saw before any of his other films), I loved this. The intrigue of it all wrapped me up but even more than that I appreciated how unpredictable its story was, and how it rendered life-or-death scenarios from the parlor games of politics: Preminger plays expertly with how trivial things are made to seem vital in this context, and vice versa. I thought Charles Laughton's southern accent was going to become insufferable but after a while I started to appreciate how his performance threw everyone else in stark relief, which serves the story well. And the
Black Test Car (Masumura): It's actually surprising this came after Giants and Toys, which tackled corporate culture in a somewhat sharper way; whereas that film felt a little tame than its promise, this one goes way over the top in its narrative but funnels all that into endless talking, with its message imparted all too directly in dialogue toward the end of the film. I keep thinking I'm going to see the Masumura film that causes all the others to fall into place but it hasn't happened yet.
Revisits...
Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey): Holds up splendidly for me. It's eerie, it's funny, and there's a certain joy in it. The acting is uneven but that's part of the charm, and I think it's really beautiful-looking and brilliantly edited at its best, though it's pretty evident that the filmmakers cared about some scenes more than others!
Days of Wine and Roses (Edwards): This occasionally goes over the top, but it doesn't live there like The Lost Weekend, and its basic structure is brilliantly unusual and haunting, tracking the way the couple feeds on one another's addiction even more than on the addiction itself. Seeing Jack Lemmon at full intensity reminds me of what a force of nature he was, surely one of the finest actors in Hollywood history, and Lee Remick is terrific here as well,which had me wondering
Harakiri (Kobayashi): Monumental storytelling and an unusually probing social message about the entire patriarchal notion of "honor," plus a virtually boundless series of beautiful images that make the most of confinement and enormity alike and some genuinely witty if purposely unkempt editing -- to me this is in many ways the Samurai movie, at least in the sense that it feels like the sobering conclusion of Seven Samuri drawn out to full length. It's a slow burn, and sometimes sadistic (with noble intention!), but it all comes out to justifying every bit of it. Tatsuya Nakadai's guiding presence, and supremely eclectic performance, is an asset every step of the way.
Antoine et Collette (Truffaut): This half-hour sequel to The 400 Blows -- infinitely more lighthearted but, in a sense, nearly as upsetting -- is as self-aware as Truffaut ever got in its delightfully sad-boy chronicle of Antoine Doinel, now out of juvenile hall and independent from his parents, working for a record company and turning into a classical/experimental music snob whose attempts to court a woman he frequently sees out and about at concerts are both strikingly amusing in their small-time obviousness and cringe-setting in their sheer ineptitude. This is such a cogent portrait of young adulthood; it's been a while since I saw them, but I don't think any of the later Doinel sequels were nearly this perceptive and funny, and Leaud captures the brooding self-importance, familiar to everyone who was ever a dorky early-twenties guy, so fabulously. A great work, near the top of Truffaut's output for me.
The Hole (John & Faith Hubley): One of my favorite Hubley films, this Oscar winner is a generally abstract (with occasional hints of the duo's work for Fail-Safe) portrait of a construction site with rudimentary caricaturing of improvised dialogue between Dizzy Gillespie and George Mathews, whose chat about matters both philosophical and practical -- the latter clearly growing exasperated with the former -- eventually takes an apocalyptic bent thanks to current events, as then does the state of the world as depicted in the film. It's a peacemongering and timely portrait of everything being on the brink, but it works because it's just so effortlessly funny.
An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu): The note of finality this strikes is evidently coincidental to the fact of it being Ozu's last film; it synthesizes his pet themes so well and feels both emotionally universal and highly specific to its place and time, in particular the way that memories of the war overshadow everything and hang in the air with a certain profound sadness. These anxieties over appearances and a fixation toward self-denial are explicit in a way they aren't in modern or American life but I feel they're still in place and evident all the time. Every one of these movies has so much to offer, it will be a long time before I satisfactorily unpack them if I ever do. I didn't even mention the colors...
Mutiny on the Bounty (Milestone): I'm aware this version of the story has its champions here but I found it a lot more ponderous than Frank Lloyd's 1935 interpretation, which has many problems and is by no means a great film but does boast a lot more charisma within its two leads in my opinion. The dropoff from Charles Laughton's Captain Bligh to Trevor Howard's is severe, and I like Howard.
L'Eclisse (Antonioni): I could basically copy and paste my La Notte review; Antonioni may turn out to be the biggest auteur whose work I simply and uniformly don't care for. Of course there are breathtaking aspects to this; I don't have to tell you which one made the biggest immediate impression.
Billy Budd (Ustinov): This isn't all that memorable visually but it's a striking and well-acted version of the Melville story, and Terence Stamp is really wonderful in the title role, rendering fully credible the Christ parables that might have seemed hackneyed with a lesser performance, and Robert Ryan makes for a truly menacing villain. Seeing the tense court martial scenes enacted also caused me to idly wonder if Melville's story was an influence on Paths of Glory, which engenders a similar sense of gross injustice in the viewer but without the rousing cosmic revenge that closes this film.
Sanjuro (Kurosawa): Been a while since I saw Yojimbo but I really don't remember it being this straightforwardly hilarious. Slight by Kurosawa's standards but a lot of fun.
The Temptation of Dr. Antonio (Fellini): Fellini's struggles with sexuality find some of their most succinct and self-aware expression here. Even more than Fellini's other work of the period it feels like a nearly prophetic road map for the course the '60s would follow aesthetically, culturally, sexually. (The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour of five years later looks like a wan imitation of this in every manner.)
The Four Days of Naples (Nanni Loy): Straightforward, impressively mounted reenactment of the September 1943 uprising in Naples against the Nazis rendered in a Neorealist style, though its obligations toward factual presentation are such that it doesn't really probe into any but the broadest realities on living under fascism, at least not the way something like Rome, Open City does. Has a certain Battle of Algiers-like urgent quality despite covering a more distant period: cinema as pure communication more than shaded storytelling.
Sundays and Cybele (Bourguignon): Was prepared neither for the narrative bleakness of this nor for the eccentricity of its central relationship, which I admit I found a little hard to take even though there's a kind of childlike naivete to it all that's sort of beautiful. It reminded me of Forbidden Games a bit. Interesting to compare the interpretation of "innocence" and mental illness here to what's in David and Lisa.
That Touch of Mink (Delbert Mann): A bad sitcom at feature length, just one that happens to feature Cary Grant and Doris Day; the latter spends the film wringing her hands over whether to fuck Grant, an indecision that even with their age difference is a little unbelievable.
Advise & Consent (Preminger): Having never been fully seduced by forum favorite Preminger apart from Anatomy of a Murder (which I saw before any of his other films), I loved this. The intrigue of it all wrapped me up but even more than that I appreciated how unpredictable its story was, and how it rendered life-or-death scenarios from the parlor games of politics: Preminger plays expertly with how trivial things are made to seem vital in this context, and vice versa. I thought Charles Laughton's southern accent was going to become insufferable but after a while I started to appreciate how his performance threw everyone else in stark relief, which serves the story well. And the
SpoilerShow
audience "fuck-you" at the finale was delightful to me, for whatever reason.
Revisits...
Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey): Holds up splendidly for me. It's eerie, it's funny, and there's a certain joy in it. The acting is uneven but that's part of the charm, and I think it's really beautiful-looking and brilliantly edited at its best, though it's pretty evident that the filmmakers cared about some scenes more than others!
Days of Wine and Roses (Edwards): This occasionally goes over the top, but it doesn't live there like The Lost Weekend, and its basic structure is brilliantly unusual and haunting, tracking the way the couple feeds on one another's addiction even more than on the addiction itself. Seeing Jack Lemmon at full intensity reminds me of what a force of nature he was, surely one of the finest actors in Hollywood history, and Lee Remick is terrific here as well,
SpoilerShow
selling the impossibly heartbreaking, surprisingly ambigious ending,
spoiler for sixth season of Better Call SaulShow
how much the illusions to this film throughout the current season of Better Call Saul may be setting us up for a similar kind of irreparable mutual self-destruction.
Antoine et Collette (Truffaut): This half-hour sequel to The 400 Blows -- infinitely more lighthearted but, in a sense, nearly as upsetting -- is as self-aware as Truffaut ever got in its delightfully sad-boy chronicle of Antoine Doinel, now out of juvenile hall and independent from his parents, working for a record company and turning into a classical/experimental music snob whose attempts to court a woman he frequently sees out and about at concerts are both strikingly amusing in their small-time obviousness and cringe-setting in their sheer ineptitude. This is such a cogent portrait of young adulthood; it's been a while since I saw them, but I don't think any of the later Doinel sequels were nearly this perceptive and funny, and Leaud captures the brooding self-importance, familiar to everyone who was ever a dorky early-twenties guy, so fabulously. A great work, near the top of Truffaut's output for me.
The Hole (John & Faith Hubley): One of my favorite Hubley films, this Oscar winner is a generally abstract (with occasional hints of the duo's work for Fail-Safe) portrait of a construction site with rudimentary caricaturing of improvised dialogue between Dizzy Gillespie and George Mathews, whose chat about matters both philosophical and practical -- the latter clearly growing exasperated with the former -- eventually takes an apocalyptic bent thanks to current events, as then does the state of the world as depicted in the film. It's a peacemongering and timely portrait of everything being on the brink, but it works because it's just so effortlessly funny.
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I think it's odd when people charge films like The Lost Weekend, Days of Wine and Roses, and some Euphoria episodes with going "over the top" when, in my experience, people who struggle with addiction uniformly endorse these specific depictions in recovery halls- be they belonging to young or elderly demographics. I don't know whether it's non-addicts comparing their own responses to compulsions or alcohol with people constitutionally different than them in their responses, but it's become a pretty consistent critique here and elsewhere and I'm genuinely curious what people find exaggerated, and how much of this is rooted in obstacles like admitting a foreign stance to the experience. What did you think was "over the top" about this film in particular?
- dustybooks
- Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
- Location: Wilmington, NC
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I don't really mean over the top in the sense of its treatment of addiction so much as in the drama itself. In this film, while I think Lemmon's performance is impressive throughout, I find his behavior in the famous greenhouse scene to be a bit cartoonish -- raw and startling, but a bit "awards reel," so to speak. I also think, in the script,In The Lost Weekend, I just think the visual of Ray Milland -- whose performance I think is much less believable than Lemmon's, for what that's worth -- being taunted by a fake bat in his room is sillier than it is harrowing. It's been a while since I've seen the film, and at the time I had a bit less experience with alcoholism in my circle, so I'm not entirely sure how I'd feel about that element now.
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the notion that a single relapse would land him in an institution is a little hard to take, strictly in the context of this character/film. In the narrative, as you may recall, he decided to quit cold-turkey after catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror; but one night of drinking some time afterward takes him completely overboard, not just wrecking his life but taking him to the brink of insanity. Frankly I'm reminded a bit of the goofy Reefer Madness-like cautionary stuff at the center of Requiem for a Dream. While I have no doubt that a momentary loss of control can have dire consequences for an addict -- and have seen it firsthand more than once -- I think that the narrative shorthand in the film makes it somewhat less than credible.
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
Huh. Hallucinations of bats, rats, spiders, other large insects etc. are very common when people who have a physiological dependency on alcohol are in a certain stage of withdrawal. TMI perhaps, but I can attest to that personally, and you can also read about it online - this is a known symptom discussed everywhere from wikipedia to advanced addiction studies classes for those pursuing Master's degrees in addiction (something I can also attest to personally). Maybe the 1950s special effects look silly in 2022, but they aren't silly in the moment nor for the character in the film, whose role/performance I know others have taken issues with but he's quite literally in a heightened state of active crisis hitting rock bottom. Of course it's going to be dramatic and animated, but that's because it's that way in real life too! I've made emergency home-visits to peers (helped them flush drugs/admit them to detox) in states very similar to Milland's. It's a believable performance.
The one-night relapse and its consequences in Days of Wine and Roses are actually a better-than-average case scenario for a relapse. I've known plenty of people from friends to family members who had decades of sobriety and relapsed and landed in worse places, including unstoppable binges that led to homelessness and death. I worked with a kid from 15-18 y/o who only used marijuana and alcohol in what appeared from the outside-in to be age-appropriate quantities, but he knew he had a problem based on the behind-the-scenes effects and internal sensations of cravings and moral flexibility that occurred when he used. He relapsed once, in the midst of the relapse consumed another illicit substance and committed armed robbery, after never having a violent episode before in his life. The next relapse killed him. He didn't seem like a wild user either- so to draw a parallel to the formulation you're drawing from our observations of Lemmon's character, it's actually a testament to the play and film's comprehension of addiction that this shift transcends our expectations. That's just what the addiction does for its user, who never enters into a relapse or use in general saying to themselves that they'll wind up in jails, institutions, or dead. Just look at Prochaska's Stages of Change model to see how elastic the process of active commitment to sobriety and relapse is, in how it can bring one to a different stage of consciousness regarding their problematic use. The disease of addiction is immensely powerful, and I know it's hard for some people to wrap their heads around stories where a person relapses after 35 years and wakes up one day to find out they blacked out through a decade of their child's life, or something that appears cartoonishly pronounced, but it happens, sadly more than you'd think.
I don't mean to pick on you, dustybooks. I think very highly of you as a poster and am just sensitive when I perceive issues taken with portrayals of addiction to be associating them with overdramatizations. In my experience, often times the person critiquing the work will separate the portrayal of addiction and the drama itself, but the critiques assume these are separate when the filmmakers very much appropriately make them the same- and said effort to separate the two actually does a disservice to the validity of the material's conscientiousness pertaining to addiction's painful dramas. I completely agree that something like Requiem for a Dream is awful and unearned drama, not because things like this don't happen, but the way they happen is inorganic and pitched for shock value, far more interested in manipulating its audience with messaging than portraying the experience itself, thus other'ing the presented addicts intentionally or otherwise (and give me a break on the Summer->Fall->Winter seasonal transitions- why? Because there's no possible Spring Back in drug addiction!). However, the events selected in these aforementioned films ring true (I was just talking with a 75y/o speaker at a recovery meeting last week about the authenticity of the greenhouse scene in the '62 adaptation of Days of Wine and Roses after he talked about it in his share) - at least for me they do. I don't pretend to be the spokesperson for all experiences with addiction, but I'm perhaps closer to seeing the validity in these works than some, due to the ubiquitous presence of addiction in my personal and professional life. This is something I subjectively engage in treatment for myself, and also objectively have studied in higher ed and intervene on that clinical level for work- and consequently feel a responsibility to push back on occasion.
If the film doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you, but don't let that be because you perceive something to be inaccurate when it's accurate, assume your perspective equals truth, and stick to that idea. It's definitely absurd, insane, irrational, and at-times unbelievable behavior, but that doesn't mean it isn't realistic.
The one-night relapse and its consequences in Days of Wine and Roses are actually a better-than-average case scenario for a relapse. I've known plenty of people from friends to family members who had decades of sobriety and relapsed and landed in worse places, including unstoppable binges that led to homelessness and death. I worked with a kid from 15-18 y/o who only used marijuana and alcohol in what appeared from the outside-in to be age-appropriate quantities, but he knew he had a problem based on the behind-the-scenes effects and internal sensations of cravings and moral flexibility that occurred when he used. He relapsed once, in the midst of the relapse consumed another illicit substance and committed armed robbery, after never having a violent episode before in his life. The next relapse killed him. He didn't seem like a wild user either- so to draw a parallel to the formulation you're drawing from our observations of Lemmon's character, it's actually a testament to the play and film's comprehension of addiction that this shift transcends our expectations. That's just what the addiction does for its user, who never enters into a relapse or use in general saying to themselves that they'll wind up in jails, institutions, or dead. Just look at Prochaska's Stages of Change model to see how elastic the process of active commitment to sobriety and relapse is, in how it can bring one to a different stage of consciousness regarding their problematic use. The disease of addiction is immensely powerful, and I know it's hard for some people to wrap their heads around stories where a person relapses after 35 years and wakes up one day to find out they blacked out through a decade of their child's life, or something that appears cartoonishly pronounced, but it happens, sadly more than you'd think.
I don't mean to pick on you, dustybooks. I think very highly of you as a poster and am just sensitive when I perceive issues taken with portrayals of addiction to be associating them with overdramatizations. In my experience, often times the person critiquing the work will separate the portrayal of addiction and the drama itself, but the critiques assume these are separate when the filmmakers very much appropriately make them the same- and said effort to separate the two actually does a disservice to the validity of the material's conscientiousness pertaining to addiction's painful dramas. I completely agree that something like Requiem for a Dream is awful and unearned drama, not because things like this don't happen, but the way they happen is inorganic and pitched for shock value, far more interested in manipulating its audience with messaging than portraying the experience itself, thus other'ing the presented addicts intentionally or otherwise (and give me a break on the Summer->Fall->Winter seasonal transitions- why? Because there's no possible Spring Back in drug addiction!). However, the events selected in these aforementioned films ring true (I was just talking with a 75y/o speaker at a recovery meeting last week about the authenticity of the greenhouse scene in the '62 adaptation of Days of Wine and Roses after he talked about it in his share) - at least for me they do. I don't pretend to be the spokesperson for all experiences with addiction, but I'm perhaps closer to seeing the validity in these works than some, due to the ubiquitous presence of addiction in my personal and professional life. This is something I subjectively engage in treatment for myself, and also objectively have studied in higher ed and intervene on that clinical level for work- and consequently feel a responsibility to push back on occasion.
If the film doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you, but don't let that be because you perceive something to be inaccurate when it's accurate, assume your perspective equals truth, and stick to that idea. It's definitely absurd, insane, irrational, and at-times unbelievable behavior, but that doesn't mean it isn't realistic.
- dustybooks
- Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
- Location: Wilmington, NC
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
I’m not sure what to say in response except that I will have to defer to your expertise. My experience with addiction is not in any professional capacity (beyond that which comes with serving the public in a government institution in general) but I have certainly seen treatments of alcoholism in media that rang true for me (The Spectacular Now and The Best Years of Our Lives and even certain moments on The Simpsons spring to mind, just going off the cuff) and I suspect there are a large variety of “realities” that can be conveyed. In my defense I’d add that, as you said earlier, the critiques I expressed before are relatively common and not unique to me, and in my case they definitely don’t come from ignorance about these matters. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that hallucinations don’t occur when someone is coming down from an addiction, which is why I distinctively separated the execution of the scene from the emotional reality it’s meant to convey. As an analogy, I might characterize a scene in a film dealing with the response to someone’s death as being over the top, but that would not be an implication that I don’t believe grief is a real thing. Anyway, I’ll do my best to be more mindful of all this going forward.
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: The 1962 Mini-List
Of course there are more realities (just as grief is expressed in all kinds of different ways!) but I think the difference from where I'm coming from is the pervasive stigma that perpetuates alcoholism/addiction, vs. something like grief and loss for the dead or dying. Acknowledging that alcoholism is a thing is a far cry from recognizing that it's a disease and might operate in a strange, illogical and nonlinear way that seems cartoonish but is nonetheless real and believable, with the key element being the humility to come at these works as curious and not-knowing rather than feeling equipped to diagnose realism related to the specifics of the behavior and psychology. Most people struggle to accept the disease model of addiction, which is fine (even if the AMA and APA endorsed and adopted it over half a century ago, but sometimes people like to argue with experts) though I think where that often leads us is that the masses tend to relate to it as an otherworldly thing that's foreign to them, even if most of us have peripherally observed others' addictions in action, while everyone has a relationship with grief and loss. So you can say a grieving response is over the top based on your experience, but when someone who does not know what it's like to be in the throes of active addiction makes a judgment on its realism, that process is happening from an aloof relationship to the mentality of the condition rather than an intimate one. It can also unintentionally perpetuate the other'ing mindset many take to the condition, that most of us are familiar to receiving regularly without any malicious intent on the party propagating assumptions. I don't want to push back on your use of the word "ignorant" because I don't doubt that you like many have had your share of experiences in this realm and I don't find that word helpful or fair considering our comprehensions rest on a spectrum, but I do think there are blind spots, and it says a lot when addicts in recovery almost uniformly (in my experience being around these communities for a while now) condemn or celebrate depictions of the disease in art, based on those universal experiences of the obsessions, compulsions and behaviors- even if we all have different stories, it led us to the same places. For the record, I cosign your examples above, particularly The Spectacular Now, which is one of the best movies about teenage alcoholism ever made. I hope that clarifies where I was coming from, and I really appreciate your response and engagement with me on this personal issue.dustybooks wrote: ↑Tue Jun 21, 2022 6:49 pmI have certainly seen treatments of alcoholism in media that rang true for me (The Spectacular Now and The Best Years of Our Lives and even certain moments on The Simpsons spring to mind, just going off the cuff) and I suspect there are a large variety of “realities” that can be conveyed. In my defense I’d add that, as you said earlier, the critiques I expressed before are relatively common and not unique to me, and in my case they definitely don’t come from ignorance about these matters... As an analogy, I might characterize a scene in a film dealing with the response to someone’s death as being over the top, but that would not be an implication that I don’t believe grief is a real thing.
- TMDaines
- Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
- Location: Stretford, Manchester