Defend Your Darlings, You Sad Pandas! (The Lists Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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Hrossa
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Defend Your Darlings, You Sad Pandas! (The Lists Project)

#1 Post by Hrossa » Fri Apr 15, 2005 12:58 pm

To the administrators: Move this thread somewhere else if this isn't the correct place for it.

I have darlings of my own to defend, but I'm not prepared right this second to do so. I will include the List of the Excluded from the 1950's poll below so that some of you might be inspired to defend them.

Ballad of a Soldier (Chukhraj, 1959), 81
World of Apu (Ray, 1959), 81
Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959), 78
I Vitelloni (Fellini, 1953), 76
Roman Holiday (Wyler, 1953), 76
Desistfilm (Brakhage, 1954), 75
Indian Tomb /Tiger of Eschnapur (Lang), 74
Othello (Welles, 1952), 74
Samurai I: Miyamoto Musashi (Inagaki, '54), 74
Burmese Harp (Ichikawa, 1956), 73
Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century (Jones, '53), 72
Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold, 1957), 72
Music Room (Ray, 1958), 72
Sleeping Beauty (Geronimi, 1959), 72
The Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957), 72
The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli, 1952), 70
Aparajito (Ray, 1957), 69
Funny Face (Donen, 1957), 69
Ace in the Hole (Wilder), 66
Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959), 66
Godzilla (Honda, 1954), 66
Ruby Gentry (Vidor), 65
Sound of the Mountains (Naruse), 65
Salt of the Earth (Biberman, 1954), 64
Some Came Running (Minnelli), 64
Blob (Yeaworth, 1958), 63
From Here To Eternity, 62
Mystery of Picasso (Clouzot, 1956), 60
Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956), 59
Summer With Monika (Bergman, 1952), 58
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Tashlin), 58
Ladykillers (Mackendrick, 1955), 57
Summertime (Lean, 1955), 57
Floating Clouds (Naruse), 56
Magnificent Obsession (Sirk), 56
Equinox Flower (Ozu, 1958), 55
Fires on the Plain (Ichikawa, 1959), 55
The Thing From Another World (Nyby/Hawks, 1951) , 55
Curse of Frankenstein (Fisher, 1957), 53
Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan, 1951), 53
Them! (Douglas, 1954), 52
Wedlock House: Intercourse (Brakhage, 1959), 52
Beat the Devil (Huston, 1953), 51
French Cancan (Renoir), 51
Harvey (Koster, 1950), 49
Monkey Business (Hawks, 1952), 49
Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (Donen, 1954), 49
Naked Spur (Mann, 1953), 48
The Magician (Bergman), 48
Eaux d'artifice (Anger), 47
Giant , 47
Man from Laramie (Mann), 47
Rebel Without a Cause, 47
Alice in Wonderland (Geronimi, 1951), 46
Confidential Report, 45
Black Orpheus (1959), 44
White Sheik (Fellini, 1952) , 44
La Ronde, 43
The Barefoot Contessa (Mankiewicz), 43
Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951), 42
Casque d'or , 41
Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1957), 41
Nazar�n (Bu�uel, 1959), 40
Richard III (Olivier, 1955), 39
Sabrina (Wilder, 1954), 38
Importance of Being Earnest (Asquith, 1952), 35
My Son John (McCarey), 35
Room At Top (Clayton, 1959), 34
Cinderella (Nelson, 1957), 33
Artists and Models (Tashlin), 30
Shane, 28
Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), 27
Princess Yang Kwei Fei, 26
Touchez pas au Grisbi (Becker), 24
The Seven Year Itch (Wilder, 1955), 23
Early Spring, 22
An Affair To Remember (McCarey, 1957), 20
Big Combo, 19
Quiet Man, 19
Il grido (Antonioni), 16
Wagonmaster (Ford), 16
Il Bidone (Fellini, 1955), 15
Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder, 1957), 15
Red Balloon (1956), 11
To Catch Thief (Hitchcock, 1955), 11
Winchester '73 (Mann), 8

I'm starting this thread based on the assumption that there are at least 10 of you out there with darlings to defend. Please do so, so that my authoring of this thread will be justified.

I'll chime in soon with my defense of Bucket of Blood.

All movies Silent-1959 are eligable.

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lord_clyde
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#2 Post by lord_clyde » Fri Apr 15, 2005 2:08 pm

Alright, I'll defend the Samurai movies! It is really a sin that they were so overlooked on those lists! When the comparison is made to 'Gone with the Wind', that's about right. This story of a man who goes from a low class ruffian to upright man of honor (and every woman's desire) is thrilling, compelling, and at times profound. Need I also mention that these are some of the first films to show the seeming innate knack Japanese directors have for using color? I'll be a very happy panda if somebody would back me up on this! Long live Musashi Miyamoto!

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Hrossa
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#3 Post by Hrossa » Fri Apr 15, 2005 3:28 pm

lord_clyde wrote: Need I also mention that these are some of the first films to show the seeming innate knack Japanese directors have for using color?
This actually has been proven scientifically.

I think Seijun Suzuki and Kon Ichikawa are both great practitioners of the ancient Chinese art of color cinema.

I want someone to defend Ray's Music Room, or better yet, defend a title that no one else voted for.

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#4 Post by Brian Oblivious » Fri Apr 15, 2005 5:37 pm

I provided one of the votes for the Music Room, which has been by far my favorite Bengali film since seeing it once several years ago. But I couldn't give it a proper defense without watching it again. I ranked the film #35 on my list.

I'd probably be better at defending a film I've seen more recently like Joseph Losey's M or Luis Bunuel's Nazarin, or something I've seen multiple times like Anthony Mann's the Far Country or Chuck Jones' Feed the Kitty. If I have time this weekend I'll write a little something.

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#5 Post by DDillaman » Fri Apr 15, 2005 9:34 pm

I didn't vote, but I have to believe ACE IN THE HOLE, possibly Wilder's best film and one of the most entertainingly acerbic films ever, would have placed substantially higher if it was particularly easy (or not next-to-impossible) to see. The interesting things about lists like this is seeing what films have found their "natural place" (which is to say, everybody's seen them and consensus, at least for the moment, is that they're where they belong) and which ones are there because of a passionate minority and are likely to rise the day that they get, say, a Criterion DVD release. (Another film that struck me that way on this list is WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER?, entertainingly daffy even in the P&S VHS version I've seen. And of course, there's the films I haven't seen, like Naruse's work, that seem well regarded by basically everyone who has.)

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Dylan
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#6 Post by Dylan » Fri Apr 15, 2005 10:13 pm

I missed the vote as well. My favorite 1950s film, Visconti's "White Nights," definitely could've benefited from the #1 spot it undoubtedly occupies on my 50s list. And like Ace in the Hole, it would've easily been higher if it were easier to see (and forunately Notti Bianche will be easier to see in the coming months, via CC).

Out of the shafted, I Vitelloni (how did this not make it?), Il Bidone, Rebel Without a Cause (ditto!), Streetcar Named Desire, Confidential Report, White Sheik, and Big Deal on Madonna Street all would've definitely made my list. I really should've voted. Ah well, I did submit my 60s list.

Dylan

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#7 Post by mmiesner » Sat Apr 16, 2005 11:03 am

sadly, i also missed the vote on this one, and found the list to be full of NON-SURPRISES. disappointing, but somewhat understandable. i almost fear that people are voting for films they like less simply to get one of their favorite directors on there somehow. i hope not, but i could see people doing it. i am disappointed with the lack of Brakhage on the list, but as someone said on another thread, this is probably due to him doing so many films that people's favorites overlap. but i also see the travesty that streetcar named desire and rebel without a cause failed to make the list?! shocking as all hell, especially because of the impact streetcar had on the art of acting... no good there. hopefully the '60's will have a few more surprises.

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zedz
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#8 Post by zedz » Sat Apr 16, 2005 9:01 pm

I'll claim Eaux d'Artifice. This is one of the most beautiful experimental films of its era: water sprays and burbles, a rococo dwarf scuttles through a moonlit garden while moist gargoyles look on. The images are lush, almost tactile, and Anger makes them sing with rhythmic montage. It's hard to articulate, but I particularly love the way in which the rhythms of the motion captured within the shots (the movement of the water and the human figure) interact with the rhythm of the editing and the rhythm of the music, creating an immersive, synaesthesic effect.

I'm glad I wasn't alone in nominating this for the 50s list: it gives me confidence that Scorpio Rising will score highly in the 60s.

I was also a supporter of The Man from Laramie, and was amazed by how poorly Mann fared over all. Sorry Hawks, sorry Ford and Boetticher, but Anthony Mann was the greatest Western director of the 50s. He'd earn that title on the strength of the Stewart films alone, and that overlooks Man of the West, Mann's greatest film, and possibly the greatest Western of all time. Mann took the genre to a whole new level of psychological complexity while shedding the accumulated cliches of decades. These films are free of sentimentality and nostalgia, and their toughness is still bracing 50 years later (who doesn't shudder when Stewart is shot in the hand at point-blank range in Laramie?). Even more than Vertigo the Mann westerns show just how great a screen actor Stewart was. His pitiless, brutal protagonists (heroes only by default) are light years away from his established screen persona, but they're completely, scarily convincing.

One of the reasons I'd like to see an eventual 'rematch' with these lists is that there are already several films I've seen since submiting my list that would make the grade. One of these is Mann's The Naked Spur - only a hair behind Laramie, a character-driven nail-biter marked by a truly great cast. Touchez pas au grisbi would also be up there. It's an extraordinary mood piece / character study masquerading as a caper / gangster film, with probably my favourite Gabin performance.

My big mea culpa for the 50s list was Salt of the Earth, which I simply overlooked. This fine film effortlessly transcends its worthy origins to become moving and inspiring as well as admirable. True American neorealism, with a radiant leading performance from Revueltas. Why did it take a 'subversive' film to create such great roles for women? I also forgot about Lionel Rogosin's lesser On the Bowery, which might well have made my list for its amazing actuality footage.

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Hrossa
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#9 Post by Hrossa » Sun Apr 17, 2005 3:45 pm

zedz wrote:I'll claim Eaux d'Artifice.
Where do you guys see your Anger films? Are these pirated VHS tapes or do you live in NY? I'm just slightly curious. Slightly.

Great post by the way zedz. That was exactly that kind of post I was hoping to see when I started this thread. I voted for the only Mann western I've seen - The Naked Spur. I was really impressed by it and a little surprised it didn't make the top 100. I guess people had it lower on their lists. Somehow Mann uses pretty spare and simple set-ups ( the actors only encounter something or someone outside of their group on time in the film.) but manages to make the film absolutely riveting. I was watching it at 2 AM on TCM at my grandparents' house on their couch and couldn't make myself turn it off, even though I had set their DVR to tape the rest of it.

I'm excited about the prospect of some more lively posts on overlooked films.

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zedz
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#10 Post by zedz » Sun Apr 17, 2005 5:15 pm

At least somebody else voted for Eaux d'Artifice. Number seven on my list was a genuine orphan: Len Lye's Free Radicals. This is a truly revolutionary film, but it's also a fantastic piece of cinema: one of the finest visual accompaniments to music (and what great music!). What always impresses me about this film is how Lye manages to create the illusion of three-dimensional space without any technical trickery - without even a camera. With a good print, played really loud, this films is simply stunning.

Further down my list, equally lonely, was Lindsay Anderson's Thursday's Children. Anderson's early documentaries are an impressive and important body of work, and I chose this film to represent them because it was the most moving and memorable. But there's much to recommend Every Day Except Christmas and the scabrous O Dreamland!. Is this another area where the vote was split, or did Anderson mot figure on anybody else's fifties radar?

As for seeing Anger films, I was lucky that our local film society had 16mm prints of Eaux d'Artifice, Scorpio Rising and Invocation of My Demon Brother. I caught Lucifer Rising in a London fleapit years ago, and Fireworks on bootleg video, then saw the complete works when Ken came to town touring his Magic Lantern Cycle (and flogging copies of Hollywood Babylon).

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#11 Post by Brian Oblivious » Mon Apr 18, 2005 7:11 pm

Another voter for Eaux d'artifice (nice depiction, btw zedz), I saw it when the San Francisco Intl' Film Festival gave an award to Kenneth Anger in 2001. They played his entire Magic Lantern Cycle at the Castro theatre that evening. Amazing to see these films projected onto such a huge screen, and I think it particularly aided Eaux d'artifice, which I imagine could be rather underwhelming on a bootleg video. The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts also periodically place an Anger film in their programs. I've seen Rabbit's Moon and Scorpio Rising under such circumstances.

I will be voting for a lot of Bruce Conner films in the 1960's list, I suspect. There will probably still be room for an Anger or two, though. I voted for Len Lye's a Colour Box in the 1930's list; I wish I could see more of the man's films.

I wonder if Anthony Mann didn't fall prey to a similar vote-split problem, actually. I picked three of his films, Man of the West, the Tall Target and the Far Country. The latter I ranked at #9, as I still think of it as my favorite Mann film. Its mountainous landscape is perfectly framed by Mann's camera to induce a sort of claustrophobia here at the very edge of the frontier, where Stewart's perhaps most spiritually isolated character finds himself superceded by a ruthless capitalist much like himself, Jack Gannon, who has the advantage of having come to town a bit earlier. I don't know why it tends to be the most overlooked of the Mann/Stewart Westerns. Its a taut masterpiece with themes that explode in all sorts of interesting directions. And its perhaps the greatest Walter Brennen role ever, which is saying something.[/i]

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zedz
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#12 Post by zedz » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:10 am

I had a lot of disappointed darlings on my 60s list, with more orphans than twins.

Here they are, by rank:

5. A Quiet Week in the House, Jan Svankmajer. I notice that The Flat got some votes, but I prefer this surrealist gem. The animated tableaux that the interloper glimpses through the doors of the house are some of the most bizarre, beautiful, uncanny and visionary sequences in all of Svankmajer's work, and thus in all cinema.

6. Scorpio Rising, Kenneth Anger. What the fuck? NOBODY else voted for this? One of the greatest and most influential experimental films of all time? (And damned funny to boot.) If you look further up this thread you'll even see me dropping broad hints. Nevertheless, I bet you'll all be voting for David Lynch films in later lists.

7. The Round-Up, Miklos Jancso. The only Jancso I've actually seen on the big screen, which probably accounts for its high placing. If you haven't seen one of his films, there's not much else I can compare it to (Tarkovsky with OCD?). All of his films that I've seen take your breath away with his technique, but this one also sucker-punches you with its pitilessness.

9. L'Enfance nue, Maurice Pialat. Maybe the greatest film about childhood ever made. The 400 Blows with a much more nuanced understanding of human nature and much more refined, even Bressonian, cinematic technique (and I like The 400 Blows).

11. Signs of Life, Werner Herzog. I caught up with this between my first and second iteration of the list (i.e. it made the tedcogs one, but not the Tristan one), and it struck me as one of Herzog's best features: nervy, with some incredible visuals (such as the daylight fireworks display) and a thoroughly original elliptical narrative style.

12. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, Nagisa Oshima. The availability effect: am I seriously supposed to believe that four of the hundred best films of the 60s were directed by Suzuki (and that they just happen to be the first four released by Criterion), and none were directed by Oshima? This is the best, bravest and craziest of the Oshimas I've seen (and there are lots I haven't). You guys who think Suzuki is off the wall ain't seen nothin' yet.

15. Pigsty, Pier Paolo Pasolini. I was sort of surprised when this ended up as my top Pasolini. I only saw it once, about fifteen years ago, in a ratty print, but entire sequences still unspool in my mind from time to time. I also love the structure: one story is almost entirely verbal, and is presented in (almost) rigidly symmetrical compositions; the other is almost entirely visual, and is presented in wildly asymmetrical compositions. I have killed my father, I have tasted human flesh, and I tremble with joy.

23. The Red and the White, Jancso. Even more abstracted than The Round-Up. I can only imagine how overwhelming this would be in a good print on a huge screen.

27. The Night of Counting the Years, Shadi Abdelsalam. A simply magical film, with one of the bleakest and most haunting denouements in cinema. This really deserves to be better known: by far the best Arabian film I've seen (sorry, Chahine).

30. Film, Alan Schneider. I was sort of surprised that this failed to make it as well. Keaton and Beckett are a match made in heaven, and their film is very creepy, very funny, and conceptually witty. A sound film in which the only sound is "Shhh!" Another one for the Lynch mob.

32. The Cremator, Juraj Herz. Along with the Svankmajer, probably the most visually extravagant film on my list (and Teshigahara and Frankenheimer are just around the corner). This is just one eye-popping set-up / transition after another. Content-wise, this is both blacker-than-black satire (Nazi collaboration) and extremely silly wig-out (visions of the Dalai Lama). It has to be seen to be believed.

34 and 35. The Face of Another and Seconds, Hiroshi Teshigahara and John Frankenheimer. I couldn't resist putting these two together: two brave, visually inventive movies about practically the same subject.

36. Theorem, Pier Paolo Pasolini. This film astonished me on first view, and didn't hold up quite as well second time around. It's here by the sheer force of its strangeness, I suspect.

37. Mingus, Reichman. A rather ramshackle verite documentary that I find completely compelling. Mingus wanders around the studio from which he's about to be evicted, talking to the filmmaker, in the dark, waving a shotgun. Talk about the dark side of genius. . .

38. Paris nous appartient, Jacques Rivette. A thrilling debut. I was surprised Rivette was given the cold shoulder on this list.

39. Double Suicide, Masahiro Shinoda. Also mildly surprised that nobody else voted for this, as it's one of the few accessible Japanese New Wave classics.

40. The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, Straub / Huillet. Best concert film ever made. So some other cinemasochist voted for this as well, between sucking lemons!

41. Daisies, Vera Chytilova. When I saw this I was sort of half exasperated and half elated, but it's the elation that stayed with me. Another viewing may tip the balance back, but at the moment it makes the list.

42. Medea, Pier Paolo Pasolini. This could be on its way up the list, on the strength of the gorgeous Raro Video transfer. Another Pasolini film whose images haunted me for years after a single viewing, and I love the way he tells the end of the story twice: once as vision, once as reality.

43. Black God, White Devil, Glauber Rocha. Another film that leapt on between iterations of the list. I saw a fragment of this in a compilation film nearly twenty years ago and it had been near the top of my must-see list ever since, because it looked like no other film I'd ever seen (some of the Pasolinis came closest). The film was different to what I expected (aren't they all?), but did not disappoint. At least somebody else voted for it. It's depressing to think that something like El Topo is a shoo-in for the 70s list, but this great antecedent remains in obscurity.

45. I Am Curious (Yellow / Blue), Vilgot Sjoman. I actually think the way in which these two films interlock is far more audacious and innovative than anything in the Godard films that made the list.

46. The Shooting, Monte Hellman. Warren Oates. Jack Nicholson. The western Antonioni forgot to make. What's wrong with you people?

47. Brief Encounters, Kira Muratova. One of the great Russian films of the 60s, but, oh dear, it's directed by a woman, and thus unknown and unelectable. Meanwhile, more than one person thinks that The Roadroller and the Violin is among the fifty best films of the decade.

48. Mark of the Stones, Frank Beyer. The greatest film of the heart-breakingly brief East German film renaissance of the mid-sixties. Socialist realism with the messy human complications tearing the form apart from the inside.

49. Love Is Colder Than Death, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. A last minute impulse addition. In so many ways, this is a textbook of how not to make a movie, but I find it hypnotic: everything is so wrong it's right. A new form of cinema that can't survive long in the real world - its spindly legs can't support its own weight in Earth gravity; the lungs don't function properly because the air's too thick here - but you can't take your eyes off it as it dies in front of you.

50. Big City Blues, Charles van der Linden. I'm glad this hung in there after all the shufflings. A very slick, very nasty Dutch short involving children, a bunny rabbit, an abandoned building site, and a deranged killer.

Geez, what a mammoth post. Sorry to anybody who fell asleep halfway through. My excuse is that I'm going away for a month.

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lord_clyde
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#13 Post by lord_clyde » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:24 am

My darlings to defend are as different as two films can be. One a campy, hilarious superhero movie based on a popular television series and the other a quiet, simple film about peer pressure and loss of innocence.

The first is of course 'Batman: The Movie', which is a preposterous movie about world conquest and impossible riddles. I have seen this film about a dozen times and I always laugh at the exploding shark, the way everything is 'clearly labeled', and the ease which Batman solves the Riddlers clues - which even a genius would have to admit are lines of nonsense rather than actual riddles. And of course there is the trademark fist fights, highlighted by colorful POWs and BOOFs. And lest we forget, the scene where Batman sprints through the harbor carrying a bomb that could explode at any second, and constantly having to change course due to nuns, a marching band, a young couple kissing, and a family of ducklings.

My second darling is Frank Perrys coming of age masterpiece 'Last Summer'. Barbara Hershey plays the manipulative Sandy, who meets two young boys on the beach and soon has them eating out of the palm of her hand. The trio are inseparable, and are soon come across by Rhoda (Catherine Burns in an Oscar nominated role), who is the exact opposite of Sandy (both physically and personality wise). One of the boys starts to see that there is more to Rhoda than meets the eye, and Sandy (who apparently is not satisfied to only have one of the boys drooling over her) seeks to humiliate and destroy Rhoda. I first saw it when I was about 12 and it has stayed with me ever since.

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#14 Post by Penny Dreadful » Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:36 pm

A few of my favorites that NO ONE ELSE voted for:

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS: This may be an unfashionably sentimental movie, but I ranked it number one. First of all, the angst of a teenage girl caught between her morally upright parents and her more "loose" boyfriend is depicted in a startlingly fresh way. I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone, but this is a far cry from the sort of morality play you'd expect from a 1961 film with this subject matter. Also, the story could be taken as a metaphor for what was to come in the 60's--the innocent 50's lost, the youth in revolt against their parents' ways, confusion and insanity. Mostly though, it's a beautiful film (filled with rural scenery) that means a lot to me personally.

SKIDOO: This film is almost impossible to see, but it is THE big-budget psychedelic romp of the 60s! Groucho Marx plays a dope-smoking boat captain named "God," Jackie Gleason has an acid trip involving Carol Channing's head spinning round on a screw then rides around on a hot air balloon, and Harry Nilsson sings every word of the credits. It is a ridiculous, mad movie, with plenty of song-and-dance numbers. But the fact that all these old-time stars were involved in such a production goes to show you how topsy-turvy things got during that decade. Unfortunately the movie wasn't hip with the kids at all, and today pretty much everyone involved with it has disowned it. We'll probably never see it on DVD for this reason.

THE PUMPKIN EATER: A frighteningly intense movie about a marriage falling apart. It portrays the plight of a lonely woman in a very frank, eccentric and grotesque way. "The Pumpkin Eater" wasn't a horror movie, but it scared me.

PUNCH AND JUDY (short): One of my favorite Svankmeyer shorts.

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#15 Post by kieslowski_67 » Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:47 pm

Dylan wrote:I missed the vote as well. My favorite 1950s film, Visconti's "White Nights," definitely could've benefited from the #1 spot it undoubtedly occupies on my 50s list. And like Ace in the Hole, it would've easily been higher if it were easier to see (and forunately Notti Bianche will be easier to see in the coming months, via CC).

Out of the shafted, I Vitelloni (how did this not make it?), Il Bidone, Rebel Without a Cause (ditto!), Streetcar Named Desire, Confidential Report, White Sheik, and Big Deal on Madonna Street all would've definitely made my list. I really should've voted. Ah well, I did submit my 60s list.

Dylan
I also did not vote for the 50s. What a pity! "White nights" is one of my absolutely favorite movies of the 50s (top 10).

milkcan
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#16 Post by milkcan » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:56 pm

This is kind of silly since I didn't submit a list (although, if I could have I certainly would have), but:

Blast of Silence (1961, Allen Baron): Sure, I've mentioned this a number of times on this board already. But Baron's film is so absorbing and perfectly pitched, I simply can't get enough of this one. Baring some similarities to both of 1958's Touch of Evil and Murder By Contract (and maybe even a small scene swiped from Out of the Past), Blast of Silence is a film noir that stands out in the story department: the entire film concerns the procedures of a hitman. Baron aimed to beef it up with some allusions and character depth here and there, but ultimately the plot is so light-weight one really doesn't pay much attention to it (or, really, doesn't need too). But, what an outstanding jazz score! What sheer brutality and ugliness! Its a film with few patches of light and goodness of heart, and ultimately offers no hope of goodness at all! What a terribly effective and disturbing voice-over narration by Lionel Stander (who at that time was blacklisted and went uncredited). Excellent montage and editing for so small a production!

The World's Greatest Sinner (1962, Timothy Carey): For Carey fans, it is, ofcourse, a godsend. Written, Starring, Produced, and Directed by Timothy Carey- an example of pure vision. One of the most important aspects in dealing with this film is is that Carey's film began as a self-financed, true independent production in 1955, not getting released until 1962- and even then Carey would continue to cut and re-edit the film. Its an odd and interesting take on Nietzche's philosophy, and surprisingly works on many different levels. It features a cheesy Frank Zappa theme song and score, and great source lighting. But Timothy Carey steals the show with his acting: Carey is frightening in his complexion and towering menace and propagandist shouting. Not to be missed.

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#17 Post by Hrossa » Thu Aug 18, 2005 4:48 pm

Wow, in the few days since I've been frantically packing my belongings you guys have made this thread what I had hoped it would be - a receptacle of recommendations for movies I've never heard of.

I'm not even anywhere near being able to defend my 60's darlings. It suffices to say that I would probably set about defending some of the B-movies that I picked like The Beast of Yucca Flats and Modesty Blaise. I don't have many choices that are nearly as heady as many of zedz' picks.

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#18 Post by backstreetsbackalright » Thu Aug 18, 2005 5:59 pm

Switchboard Operator
A film that's gone by several names in translation, this is one of the most seamless pairings of documentary and fictional filmmaking in a single film. Makavejev's WR ups the ante, but this one I enjoy much more. Largely a film about reconciling personal needs with the good of the masses, this could probably rest nicely beside something like Brief Encounters, despite a somewhat schizophrenic jumping back and forth between fiction (a love affair between an exterminator and the title's switchboard operator), a verite-style procedural (the autopsy of a drowned woman's body), and actual documentary (dealing with violent sex crime, urban rat problems, etc.).

Sayat Nova, aka Color of Pomegrantes
I actually don't care for Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, as interesting a film as it is. Sayat Nova, however, is nothing short of revolutionary. Ostensibly a biopic, the film is basically a series of tableaux with varying degrees of discernable narrative content (I'm sure every scene contributes to the biography, but I very often can't decipher how). This is poetic filmmaking in the extreme, with all of the pros and cons that come with such a notion, and it's had incalculable influence over things like music video and installation film.

The Round-Up
Here's something I wrote about the film a year or so ago:
In the wake of an 1848 revolt against Austrian rule, suspected loyalists to Kossuth's rebellion were, well, rounded up. Focusing on the psychological torture that went on during this time, the film is set almost entirely inside a wooden fort where prisoners are brazenly encouraged to betray one another to their Austrian captors in order to stay alive, if only for a few miserable days longer. In what amounts to a trickle-down economics of cruelty, the prisoners give one another up all too readily. In one of the most nauseating examples, a father informs on his own son, which would seem more despicable had it not been so certain that his son would've betrayed him otherwise. The film's hopeless microcosm sets up a desperate model of “freedomâ€

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#19 Post by yoshimori » Thu Aug 18, 2005 7:24 pm

I'll second - because I also voted for them - Color of Pomegranates, Trial of Joan of Arc, and Chelsea Girls. Each is available on dvd.

milkcan
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#20 Post by milkcan » Sat Aug 20, 2005 11:29 am

It occured to me last night that Mondo Cane is absent from the 60s list.

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zedz
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#21 Post by zedz » Sun Aug 21, 2005 2:43 pm

backstreetsbackalright wrote:Sayat Nova, aka Color of Pomegrantes
I actually don't care for Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, as interesting a film as it is. Sayat Nova, however, is nothing short of revolutionary. Ostensibly a biopic, the film is basically a series of tableaux with varying degrees of discernable narrative content (I'm sure every scene contributes to the biography, but I very often can't decipher how). This is poetic filmmaking in the extreme, with all of the pros and cons that come with such a notion, and it's had incalculable influence over things like music video and installation film.
According to the rules of the game (imdb) this is a 70s film, which is why I didn't vote for it. If the two people who voted for it this time vote for it again next time, it WILL make the list (unless I'm hit by a truck).

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Michael
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:09 pm

#22 Post by Michael » Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:08 pm

According to the rules of the game (imdb) this is a 70s film, which is why I didn't vote for it. If the two people who voted for it this time vote for it again next time, it WILL make the list (unless I'm hit by a truck).
A reminder: please do not vote for Errol Morris' Gates of Heaven for the '70s list. Even though it was made in 1978, it is a 1980 film according to imdb so please remember this film for the 80s list. I would hate to see this fabulous film getting lost somewhere between the 70s and 80s lists.

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backstreetsbackalright
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#23 Post by backstreetsbackalright » Mon Aug 22, 2005 12:32 pm

zedz wrote:According to the rules of the game (imdb) this is a 70s film, which is why I didn't vote for it. If the two people who voted for it this time vote for it again next time, it WILL make the list (unless I'm hit by a truck).
That's good news - but how is it a 70s film? IMDb has it listed as '68.

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Penny Dreadful
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#24 Post by Penny Dreadful » Tue Aug 23, 2005 2:10 am

It occured to me last night that Mondo Cane is absent from the 60s list.
I voted for Mondo Cane too! What a weird and wonderful documentary that is!

A few others I don't think anyone else voted for:

VIY: Gothic horror from behind the Iron Curtain! This is one of the only Soviet Russian horror films ever made. It's based on a short story by Gogol, which was probably influenced by folk stories. Includes amazing footage of a coffin spinning around in the air inside a rural Eastern Orthodox church. The medieval countryside backdrop was obviously a set, yet the artificiality of it makes it even more beautiful somehow (like in Guy Maddin's movies).

TITICUT FOLLIES: Documentary on an insane asylum which includes footage of forced feedings, frustrated inmates trying to reason with their doctors, inmate baths and recess... basically a behind-the-scenes look at at a conflicted, dehumanizing institution. (Not publicly available on DVD or VHS--college/university libraries generally have it on VHS though.)

INCUBUS: This movie is Persona if it were City of the Dead filmed in Esperanto.

THE QUEEN: Documentary on a 1960's drag queen competition. The camera stays with the contestants in their hotel rooms, on the street, and behind the curtains as the drama and personality conflicts unfold. A fascinating look at gay/transvestite culture in NYC pre-Stonewall.

THE MINDBENDERS: The British B movie precursor to Altered States. It's all about isolation tank experiments, hallucinations, and over-eager scientists going nuts. I like it.

THE JOKERS: A smooth, stylish comedy about a pair of Swingin' London brothers and their attempts to break out of the monotonous social scene by blowing things up. Their "practical jokes" become more and more ridiculous. Imagine two drollishly jaded Evelyn Waugh characters set loose to cause anarchy in the visual world of Blow Up and you have the idea.

milkcan
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#25 Post by milkcan » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:18 am

INCUBUS: This movie is Persona if it were City of the Dead filmed in Esperanto.
Ah, yes, Incubus- a film I've only seen once but have never forgotten. A real gem, and completely memorable thanks to its eerie atmosphere, locales, and characters.

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