The 1975 Mini-List

[Toland's Mitchell]

Why didn't Barry Lyndon get the gif? Haha, I thought the gif was the prize for finishing in first. Well maybe the gif goes to the title with the most #1 votes, which Nashville beat Barry 5-0. I was somewhat surprised by Barry's first place finish, but it makes sense. It was the consensus film most people liked a lot, though nobody loved it enough to put it #1. It was #4 on mine IIRC. There's clearly strong passion for Nashville, indicated not only by the most #1 votes but also most Top 5 votes. This leads me to believe that while Barry won the 1975 contest, Nashville will probably edge out Barry on the overall 70s list. I also found it ironic the film that topped the last Sight and Sound Critic's Poll couldn't even finish in the Top 10 of its own year here on CF. Was there backlash? Or was it never well-liked here?

[therewillbeblus]

Not too many warm gestures in the Kubrick to give off pleasant gif vibes

[Rayon Vert]

I also found it ironic the film that topped the last Sight and Sound Critic's Poll couldn't even finish in the Top 10 of its own year here on CF. Was there backlash? Or was it never well-liked here?

I noticed that too. I had it at no 7.

[yoshimori]

Thanks for your work, swo17.

Looks like there are two listings for Guzman's Battle for Chile.

[swo17]

Looks like there are two listings for Guzman's Battle for Chile.

There's one for the entire series, which received multiple votes, and also listings for each installment, one of which was an orphan

[therewillbeblus]

As I said previously, these are among my favorite films of all time.

3. Professione: Reporter [The Passenger]

I like this film too, and voted for it, but I've never been able to find a convincing defense for why it's one of Antonioni's best compared within his own filmography. Do you have a writeup or an essay or piece that satisfies this intra-oeuvre quest? It definitely speaks to the fantasy aspect of What If I Could Escape The Banality of My Existence (cheekily enhancing the 'wherever you go, there you are' fatalism beyond the ordinary and into the idealized "exciting" lifestyle, though still dry existence) but I've always found it more interesting to sit with Antonioni's characters who don't or can't escape and have to stew in their suffocatingly vapid milieus, than the ones who do. This seems to be a film about what would Lea Massari's life be like if we followed her "escape" from the island in L'Avventura, but I'm not sure I want to watch that movie as much as I want to return to L'Avventura every six months

[Rayon Vert]

I'll look at my writeup but I'm not sure it'll be too revealing regarding your question. The atmosphere and Antonioni's editing and shot choices make it for me more than any identification with what the characters are going through. And it's extremely beautiful. Just watched it again recently but with Adrian Martin's commentary on Indicator, so I wasn't following the "story" as much. I rank L'Eclisse just as high but those are my top two, with L'Avventura and Red Desert very close behind. Those four are all top notch for me. Blow-up isn't that too far down the list behind those. I think Antonioni's film or shooting style creates a feeling that is very much like meditation - a sense of observing detachment while at the same time the world becomes more exquisitely alive. That's probably the main reason his films appeal to me, rather than a psychological engagement with the film. The psychology is there but there's an other vastness around it. Quite unique.

[therewillbeblus]

Well put, and I agree regarding his positioning from his characters, and didn't mean to convey we were intimately following a psychology in others. That's also why I've come around on Zabriskie Point, which I used to hate, because of how Antonioni is engaging with his atmosphere that's at once unobtrusively observing and philosophizing about it. And that's also why I've described Thriller - A Cruel Picture as Antonioni-esque, since we aren't invited into the principal's psyche and yet the camera's observational style demand an urgent meditation on the implications of these behaviors and a tragic existentialism attached

[Toland's Mitchell]

Not too many warm gestures in the Kubrick to give off pleasant gif vibes

I guess not.
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/BareThoughtfu ... ricted.gif

I also found it ironic the film that topped the last Sight and Sound Critic's Poll couldn't even finish in the Top 10 of its own year here on CF. Was there backlash? Or was it never well-liked here?

I noticed that too. I had it at no 7.

I had it in the 7-10 range, unlikely to land in my Top 50. I watched it for the first time (and only time to date) in February, fresh off its SnS win and early into this 70s project. I cannot say I enjoyed it, but rather respected for its significance. I found it more interesting to talk about afterward that it was to actually sit through.

[swo17]

As you guessed, it just felt wrong to do the gif for a film that no one voted #1

[Rayon Vert]

Barry Lyndon is no 2 for me here, but no 3 in my all-time list at this moment so it’s definitely a winner in my book!

[swo17]

It was in 1975 that these films were made, they're all equal now

[therewillbeblus]

Barry Lyndon is no 2 for me here, but no 3 in my all-time list at this moment so it’s definitely a winner in my book!

It would've been my number one if we did this list five years ago (and At Long Last Love would've been two years ago), and I imagine I'm not unique in this 'temporal target-missing' phenomenon - I'm just surprised it was nobody's number one at this moment in time!

[Rayon Vert]

Well put, and I agree regarding his positioning from his characters, and didn't mean to convey we were intimately following a psychology in others. That's also why I've come around on Zabriskie Point, which I used to hate, because of how Antonioni is engaging with his atmosphere that's at once unobtrusively observing and philosophizing about it. And that's also why I've described Thriller - A Cruel Picture as Antonioni-esque, since we aren't invited into the principal's psyche and yet the camera's observational style demand an urgent meditation on the implications of these behaviors and a tragic existentialism attached

Just a bit more about this. Listening to Adrian Martin's commentary for The Passenger, he brings your attention a lot to these typical Antonioni shots, where the camera leaves the character (with no obvious motivation) and just looks elsewhere, e.g. leaves Jack Nicholson in the early sequences and looks at the dunes, or that famous scene later on the film where Nicholson and his lady friend are in a restaurant or café or something, and we see the road and cars behind, and when a car goes left the camera goes left, and then a car comes from the right and the camera swishes back right following it. Maybe it's the kind of thing you find in Godard also to a certain extent (although nothing specific comes to my mind at the moment), but in Antonioni it's constant and it kind of feels throughout his films as if the camera represents this somewhat detached intelligent sentience where, yes, OK, humans and their stuff is interesting, but it's part of a mysterious, larger reality. It's extremely liberating, a kind of stillness behind the noise, and it is very much like meditation or (mostly Asian) spiritual attitudes guided towards disidentification from the limited self. That speaks to me a lot as someone who tries to live life like that, art least to a certain degree or part-time, and not just get lost in our human "stories".

There's a shot in Scorsese's Taxi Driver that's similar, where DeNiro is talking on the phone and the camera suddenly leaves him and just looks down a corridor. He surely must have been inspired by those filmmakers I find those moments incredibly beautiful.

I haven't seen Zabriskie Point in a while, but am looking forward to revisiting it.

[therewillbeblus]

OK, humans and their stuff is interesting, but it's part of a mysterious, larger reality. It's extremely liberating, a kind of stillness behind the noise, and it is very much like meditation or (mostly Asian) spiritual attitudes guided towards disidentification from the limited self. That speaks to me a lot as someone who tries to live life like that, art least to a certain degree or part-time, and not just get lost in our human "stories".

Absolutely, though they inform one another which is what's so wonderful about many of my favorite films (even something like La flor, which often gets lost in narrative, or Pierrot le fou, which reflexively oscillates between distractions in cognitive or emotional personifications, genre and tonal beats, etc.) - that relationship between the human enveloped in a limited perspective and the larger world. This can create simultaneous overwhelming spiritual vacancies sparked by awareness to our limitations, and also allow them/us to tap into the infinite meaning in now. L'Avventura is my favorite because it does this so well - the mystery disrupts complacency and forces engagement with emotional, existential, and spiritual questions that cannot be 'finalized' cathartically. I think a lot of his films do that to some extent, but L'Avventura's structure - which dwindles enthusiasm and is magnetized into adrift banalities almost by design - is extremely effective at achieving something ineffable.

There's a shot in Scorsese's Taxi Driver that's similar, where DeNiro is talking on the phone and the camera suddenly leaves him and just looks down a corridor. He surely must have been inspired by those filmmakers I find those moments incredibly beautiful.

Yeah, Scorsese is such a big fan of L'Eclisse, and this shot feels borrowed from that film's finale, though seemingly for a different purpose. The camera breaks from its protagonist's experience out of a discomfort - but is it a discomfort towards him, or is it a discomfort he feels in the situation? I've always found that shot interesting because it can play both ways: It can remove us from Travis and validate that disengagement with antisocial behavior, but it can also resemble his own defense mechanisms of derealization, mirroring where he wants to go; a fantasy to escape that conversation and drift into a safe delusion to cushion the blow to his ego that's occurring in real time.

[Rayon Vert]

Yes that psychological reading is a good one, given that it's one shot in the whole film, as opposed to Antonioni have them consistently throughout his films starting with L'Avventura. I like how your point out the interplay between the human (psychological) world and the larger one in those films.