#188
Post
by zedz » Mon Oct 02, 2006 12:52 am
[brain dump]
Only two in my top twenty failed to make the final list, though several were way down, so here's a pocket defence of them all:
1. The Roaring Twenties (Walsh, 1939) – Poor Raoul Walsh is severely underappreciated around these parts. Only two of his films were even nominated (for the other one, see below). For my money, this is one of the greatest Hollywood films ever made, and certainly the greatest gangster movie (yes, even better than Le Samourai). It was very tough to decide between this and Rules - two films which give me so much pleasure every time I see them. Cagney's performance is sublime. He's one of the greatest of physical actors and expresses so much of his character through gesture or gait: just look at the way he springs up the stairs when he goes to visit Jean backstage. Walsh's direction of actors in this film is impeccable (just look at the character detail Gladys George and Frank McHugh bring to their roles), as is his staging and pacing. This is a sprawling epic without a wasted second, and just look at the amazing economy of those bravura, Vorkapichesque montages. If you haven't seen this in a while, take another look.
2. Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939) – It's impossible to begrudge this flawless, astonishingly rich film its preeminence. It's clearly a consensus choice. Like L'Atalante, only one voter didn't include it. When I first saw it many years ago I was well primed, having read endlessly about its brilliance, but it still managed to surprise me (is Renoir really juggling that many different levels of meaning?), and, more importantly, it still surprises me every time I see it.
3. Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938) – Probably my favourite sound comedy. I know the next film on my list is a comedy as well (and a damn funny one), but this gets me laughing out loud like The General does. Grant and Hepburn's performances are also among their most technically demanding as well, and this film is a perfect showcase for their brilliance. Imagine how awful this film would be if the leads were belaboured. Despite its strong finish, this does not seem to be a consensus favourite. It was only about halfway through the voting that it started seriously climbing the heap.
4. I Was Born, But. . . (Ozu, 1932) – This incredible film is as fresh and lively today as it must have been when first released. Its observations of family and childhood dynamics are still spot on three quarters of a century later. Here's hoping it gets a decent subtitled release before we next get to vote for this decade.
5. Study No 7 (Hungarian Dance) (Fischinger, 1931) – It was touch and go, but this drop-dead masterpiece of visualised music (barely) made the cut. Six of Fischinger's little gobs of genius attracted votes, but this is the only one anyone could agree on.
6. Mor'Vran (Epstein, 1931) – This didn't even make the also-rans list. A mean, moody and magnificent maritime documentary that includes, like a seam of gold, a vestigial narrative. Epstein's a tragically overlooked filmmaker. Here's hoping his wonderful La Tempestaire – a somewhat less intense descendant of this film – is remembered come the 40s. At least that film is available!
7. Peter Ibbetson (Hathaway, 1935) – I was surprised that this ended up nowhere, since I discovered it as a consequence of several boosters on this forum. It's completely sui generis – though Cocteau would start making films like this the following decade – and one of the weirdest Hollywood films I know of. Weirdness isn't always enough, and this film also offers simply exquisite filmmaking – breathtaking integrated effects; stunning, emotionally charged mise en scene; sublime camera movements; and a highly developed thematic use of visual motifs.
8. The Only Son (Ozu, 1936) – As noted in the parent thread, after the first batch of votes came in this emotionally devastating film was the strong leader. And then the votes just dried up. I hope that's just because nobody else had seen it, because if you can sit through this film and not appreciate its greatness, you've got a cinematic tin ear.
9. Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932) – Now here's a film that's evidently not as difficult to see as I expected, only missing from a few lists.
10. L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934) – What's not to love about this film?
11. Las Hurdes (Bunuel, 1933) – Documentaries generally fared pretty miserably, so I wonder if this film and L'Age d'or (representing the similarly ignored genre of experimental film) did well primarily because Bunuel is an Approved Auteur who had no other films available to vote for in this decade.
12. Top Hat (Sandrich, 1935) – A big surprise to me that this classic ended up halfway down the list (and it only did that well because of an eleventh-hour reshuffle from an early submitter who had overlooked it entirely and made it a belated number 1). For me, this is Astaire-Rogers' finest hour. The numbers are great – but they're always great – but this time its in the context of that crazy vision of a Deco Venice and accompanied by a genuinely funny script.
13. Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939) – I rewatched this film in the process of working on this list and it's the film that leapt most in my estimation on revisiting it. In my memory, I retained only the generic plot elements and a general air of cool, but the joy of this film lies in everything else – the subtlety of the character interactions and performances, the sexual subtexts, and Hawks' terrific eye.
14. La Petite Lise (Gremillon, 1930) - Poor Gremillon! A week ago this was in the top 10, then no more votes came in. Again, the capriciousness of availability determines the canon. It's hard to believe that an audience that so highly prizes the cinematic alchemy of L'Atalante and Zero de Conduite would be immune to the charms of this film – were they able to partake of them.
15. Zero de Conduite (Vigo, 1933) – Another near-constant presence on people's lists. The two other Vigos were practically ignored, however.
16. The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938) – Up until the ending, which I think really sucks (Redgrave arbitrarily forgetting the tune just when it doesn't matter anyway), this is by far my favourite British Hitchcock. It's like a classic album you can enjoy in the same way over and over again.
17. Blonde Venus (von Sternberg, 1932) – I expect I'm alone in having this as my favourite Dietrich / Sternberg. For some reason the piquant combination of that lush style and the supposedly ‘gritty' content is what does it for me – or maybe it's Marlene in a gorilla suit.
18. Toni (Renoir, 1935) – Unseen, but hotly anticipated for about 20 years, until MoC's recent release, this film surpassed my mile-high expectations. One of the great works of neorealism.
19. Trade Tattoo (Lye, 1937) – Len Lye was furiously recreating cinema from the inside out during the 30s. A Colour Box may be more visionary and innovative, but I've always loved the way he incorporates the photographic material into this psychedelic industrial tone poem.
20. A Story of Floating Weeds (Ozu, 1934) – Ozu's 30s work is an embarrassment of riches, and there's plenty I've never seen (I haven't seen any 30s Mizoguchi or Naruse, mind you, so I'm partly responsible for their poor showing on the final list). I placed this one highly because it showed yet another side of his mastery.
And the following films from my top fifty failed to chart:
21. An Optical Poem (Fischinger, 1937)
25. La Cartomancienne (Hill, 1932) – I'm surprised nobody else was impressed by this supremely lyrical short from the Unseen Cinema set. Sure the heavy symbolism of the slender narrative is intrusive, but this film is all about the seductive textures (those gorgeous dissolves on shimmering water), the power of the landscape and those momentary direct cinema intrusions.
26. Study No 8 (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) (Fischinger, 1931) – Yes, even more Fischinger. Believe me, it was all I could do to keep it to only three of these marvels. This is a rather pointed choice, because, in a few minutes, it completely shows up the sterile infantilism of Fantasia, the garish rock on which Fischinger's Hollywood career would ultimately be wrecked.
26. Thru the Mirror (Hand, 1936) – There probably should have been more Disney on my list, but I was amazed to see only Snow White nominated to represent this great body of animation. Walt was a bit of a shit and a shyster, but in the 1930s his minions were churning out some of the greatest animation ever conceived. I decided on this short to represent that work because of its phenomenal visual invention and beautiful execution. For a cartoon icon, Mickey Mouse is an odd, boring character, and the Disney studio seemed to realise this pretty quickly, as the majority of classic-era Mickey Mouse shorts are actually Mickey-Donald-Goofy ensembles (with the narrative and comic weight carried by the sidekicks) or Pluto solo vehicles. This Alice riff is a rare Mickey solo outing, and the animators have thrown everything they have into making the bizarre dream world he enters steal the mouse's feeble thunder.
27. Children's Party (Cornell, 1938) – Nice to see Rose Hobart make the cut, if only just. I was pretty sure few would share my affection for this wacky assemblage, but I just can't resist the primal power of that extraordinary clip of the child perfectly split between the urge to doze and the urge to devour, and that creepy coda with a pedophile's Godiva perpetuates the film's distinctive atmosphere of being on the verge of a dream.
35. Footlight Parade (Bacon, 1933) – Busby Berkeley had to be in here, but it seems like a lot of people had a similar dilemma as me, and the Busby vote was hopelessly split among several films. The problem, as I see it, is that Busby's spectacles are almost always poorly integrated into their parent film – they're flown in by helicopter and then we return to the iffy plot. The problem is so significant that it actually skews the structure of several of the films, not least this one. But that's what I like about it. Dames may have the most inimitable and abstract production numbers, but the surrounding film is one of the weakest in the series; Gold Diggers of 1935 may have the ultimate Berkeley number in Lullaby of Broadway, but the non-musical parts of the film are really clunky. Footlight Parade has perhaps the most off-kilter structure of any great musical: only four numbers, and three of them are piled up at the tail-end of the film (or even, in a sense, after the film proper has ended), but in that way it minimises the annoying Berkeley / Bacon bumps that would otherwise plague it. The film itself is one of the strongest of the sequence: tough, smart, with great turns from Cagney and Blondell. And at least one of the numbers, By a Waterfall, is among Berkeley's very best, and what a thrill it is, at the last moment, when Cagney starts to dance!
36. The Big Trail (Walsh, 1930) – This really didn't deserve to finish outside the top 100. In rewatching films for the purposes of compiling this list, I was surprised to see my highly rated Stagecoach appear too schematic for too much of its running time. It tumbled out of my top 50, leaving this much-maligned epic as the great western of the decade. Much of the mythology that's arisen around Stagecoach really needs to be reevaluated in the light of this film. John Wayne, if not quite fully formed in his first lead, is not that far from his Stagecoach persona. The plot is boilerplate and many of the performances indifferent, but Walsh shows his mastery of visual space throughout. Apart from the many superb landscapes, he's consistently deploying jaw-dropping compositions in depth. In an ordinary dialogue scene, which would normally be played out against the backdrop of a covered wagon, Walsh puts the wagon in there, but also shows us hundreds of extras, a mile in the distance, going on with their daily lives (loading up their wagons, chopping down trees, building cabins). In an industry when ‘casts of thousands' are generally used strictly for spectacle, it's almost revelatory to see a director organising his resources in such an undemonstrative, naturalistic way.
39. A Colour Box (Lye, 1935) – Another tough choice from a rich body of work. Whoever said a filmmaker needs a camera, anyway?
42. Shall We Dance (Sandrich, 1937) – Fred and Ginger are definitely not flavour of the month around these parts. Swingtime traditionally slots into second place behind Top Hat, but I have problems with the narrative in that film, so I went with Gershwin instead.
43. The Edge of the World (Powell, 1937) – No love for pre-Pressburger Michael Powell, either?
44. A Bronx Morning (Leyda, 1931) – In this film I love the lyrical effects and location photography. It gives a great sense of place.
45. From Saturday to Sunday (Machaty, 1931) – I thought people might go for the more notorious Ekstase in preference to this tough realist drama, but this ended up the sole Czech nomination.
46. We from Kronstadt (Dzigan, 1936) – An interesting study in changing critical fashions. For a long time, socialist realism was a central part of world cinema history, and everyone would be familiar with its iconic works (The Gorky Trilogy, The Maxim Trilogy, Chapayev). Other than single votes for the Vasilievs' film and a Romm, none of those films got a look-in. I saw most of the socialist realist ‘classics' years ago, and this is the one that has had the longest half-life in my memory, thanks to the stark staging of its brutal climactic scenes.
47. Night Mail (Watt / Wright, 1936) – Another representative of a ‘lost' movement – Grierson's documentaries. Time was, this kind of list would have been unthinkable without Night Mail or Song of Ceylon. This film is definitely dated, but still pretty seductive, and I couldn't let La Bete Humaine be the only train film on my list.
48. Lot in Sodom (Watson / Webber, 1937) – Drags a bit, but it's nevertheless a visionary early demonstration of the expressive potential of the optical printer, with many dazzlingly beautiful visual effects.
49. What Did the Lady Forget? (Ozu, 1937) – I think every 30s Ozu film I've seen would deserve a place on my list. I couldn't resist sneaking in one more.
50. Le Roman de Renard (Starewicz, 1930) – A masterpiece of pixillation. My Starewicz capital could have been better invested with Fetiche, it turns out, but je ne regrette rien.
[/brain dump]
