1980s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[Gregory]

There are a lot of reasons to film in black and white, and Allen and his cinematographers weren't just mimicking Bergman and Fellini (who made plenty of color films). Black and white can achieve a whole range of "period" qualities, depending on how it's done. For example in Zelig, Gordon Willis not only shot in black and white but set up the lighting specifically to match the style of period newsreels.
By the way, I share all the appreciation for Radio Days above but hope Zelig won't be overlooked.

Woody went through a phase where he made black and white films. I understand the effect he was going for in Manhattan and Zelig, but it was during this phase that he tried to mimic Ingmar Bergman and paid homage to/parodied Fellini with Stardust Memories. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only black and white films he made were from this period where he was strongly influenced by 50s and 60s European cinema.

Agree to disagree, on the whole, though I'll grant your point about Stardust Memories. Shadows and Fog is another special case where, as a take on German Expressionism, it really had to be in black and white. But Allen and Willis shot Manhattan in black and white for much the same reasons as the Gershwin music was featured, both of which are made explicit in the film: to evoke a certain period of New York (and likely Classical Hollywood), not anything to do with European cinema. And if you look at his most directly Bergman-influenced films, such as Interiors, they're in color. Broadway Danny Rose is another black-and-white one that I would argue is not an homage to Bergman or other European filmmakers, so no I don't think there's generally a correlation, or a simple question of influence that Allen and his cinematographers to choose black and white most of the times that they did.

[Dylan]

Woody went through a phase where he made black and white films

He made several b&w movies from 1979 to 1998. Hardly "a phase." And as Gregory wrote, all of the Bergman-esque Woody Allen movies are in color. Sven Nykvist did shoot a b&w film for Allen, Celebrity, but it looks nothing like a Bergman film - it has a rich, bright, high contrast look akin to entertainment/fashion magazine photography, which is just excellent visual direction given the material.

[Gropius]

Rewatched probably my favourite experimental film of the decade, Morgan Fisher's Standard Gauge (1984).

This is one that one feels slightly guilty for viewing as a digital bootleg, since it is so thoroughly concerned with the materiality of film, but it's not the sort of thing that gets many public screenings. (When I did see it on film a few years back, it was projected in a gallery.)

Fisher is one of the more unsung figures of American experimental film, arguably at least as interesting as, say, Hollis Frampton, but with a much more modest output and self-effacing manner. Most of his films were made in a cluster in the late 60s/early 70s, but Standard Gauge, at just over half an hour in length (the longest possible single 16mm take), is his magnum opus. On paper it might sound underwhelming or dull: using a lightbox, Fisher presents a series of scraps of 35mm film (the commercial industry's 'standard gauge'), like a slide show, and accompanies them with his own voiceover commentary.

The commentary is a mixture of autobiographical reminiscence - he briefly worked as a Hollywood editor on Corman titles such as Student Nurses - and more general reflections on the history of the medium. The tone is wry and deadpan (almost comparable to the Greenaway of Vertical Features Remake), but also, while sticking plainly to the facts, implicitly elegiac. The pieces of film that Fisher examines are the invisible offcuts - bits of leader, discarded frames, the 'China Girl' image used for colour calibration - that haunted the edges of the reels containing the features audiences came to see. There are notes on the decline of Technicolor, the closure of labs, the destruction of footage. Viewed thirty years on, on the cusp of the de facto end of the celluloid age, it looks even more like a memorial broadcast from a lost world (not that I have any personal investment in celluloid nostalgia, which can be overdone by the avant-garde crowd).

Given its economy of means and structure, I think Fisher achieves something extraordinary, as rich in its way as his friend and dedicatee Thom Andersen's later essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself. It is an experimental film that engages with the history of commercial filmmaking, rather than, as Frampton and co did, trying to ignore the latter, and in the process produces something that exists, hauntingly, in a kind of metacinematic no man's land. This'll be in my top 5, maybe even no. 1 if no features reassert themselves.

[ohtani's jacket]

Broadway Danny Rose is another black-and-white one that I would argue is not an homage to Bergman or other European filmmakers, so no I don't think there's generally a correlation, or a simple question of influence that Allen and his cinematographers to choose black and white most of the times that they did.

Here's a quote about Broadway Danny Rose from Allen:

"For some reason I saw it in black-and-white because I wanted to make a 1950s Italian movie. And Gordon Willis understood instantly. He said, “It just feels better to me in black-and-white, too…Broadway Danny Rose is a spontaneous film the way I like them. I didn’t have to keep an eye on the sun—we wanted a visual style without artifice. And I worked in the European way, shooting in exteriors and real interiors…"

The Woody "phase" I was talking about was the period where he worked with Gordon Willis. I totally blanked on his later b&w films.

[Gregory]

I hadn't read that interview. That's a little surprising because I don't think it ended up much like a 1950s Italian film. Inspiration can be a very tough thing for a viewer to gauge. Rewatching Radio Days, I was struck by how it had even more similarities to Amarcord than I had remembered (no pun intended). But when Stig Björkman asked him if Fellini was an inspiration for the film "in any way," Allen said "No, not really." It's clearly an extremely personal film, which is what I thought allowed Allen to so fully assimilate his influences and make them his own. But in Allen's mind, it all really came from his own life and the memories triggered by the old songs.
The original song-based memory concept explains the episodic quality of the film, which is one of the things that had struck me as a Fellini influence. In any case, those shifts from one incident or memory to the next allowed him to make a truly tragicomic film. At the moment I can't remember another film I've seen in a long time that has balanced such humor and sadness. It's one of my favorite Mia Farrow performances ever. She's so funny in this film, and I also love the scene where she's singing at a USO ball, and all the ambient noise in the place is muted to spotlight just her voice and the piano.

Allen really shows how versatile his humor can be in Radio Days as well. It's a more subdued comedic tone of a memoirist who knew a lot of funny people and funny stories but tries to recall them pretty realistically and sincerely rather than telling about them the way a standup comedian or conventional comedy writer would, yet it's often laugh-out-loud funny.
EDIT: typo

[domino harvey]

Spurned on by the recent discussions here and TT's Blu-ray, I revisited Radio Days and found it more wonderful than I remembered, and can also pledge to place it on my list with no hesitation. What struck me about the film, apart from how wonderfully warm all the goings on are, is how effective it is as an insightful representation of media consumption, with the primary concerns being the omnipresence of this particular media outlet and how it inundated all of American life until TV replaced it with more demanding/less social outlet for receiving home media. And I forgot all the wonderful cameos from Allen's 80s crew too, and while much of the humor is lived in, some of the funniest moments are pure sketch comedy-- easily the biggest laughs I had not just in the film but in a while were courtesy of the report on the "inspirational" baseball star, and it was much funnier than I remembered it being (A sharp contrast to Crimes and Misdemeanors, which was far less funny than I remembered it being on a recent revisit). I say any piece of nostalgia that effectively makes you wish you lived it has done its job, and thankfully it has more going for it than vicarious enjoyment of something none of us will ever be able to experience first hand going forward.

[Red Screamer]

Viewing Log

The Verdict (Lumet, 1982)
This blew away my expectations, even though I'm far more partial to Lumet than most. He and Newman took what's basically a paperback courtroom thriller and turned it into a moving character study. Mamet's script, though the weakest aspect of the film, does have an impressive understanding of legal argot that you don't usually see. Lumet is known for being great with actors and The Verdict is no exception. Newman's central performance is really great and the subtleties in his blocking and body language (one of my favorite characteristics of Lumet's films) go a long way. The ending is quite wonderful and shows that it was always more about Frank Galvin's quasi-redemption than a courtcase.

Heaven's Gate (Cimino, 1980)
A western pastiche practically in the filmic style of Bruegel. Beyond words. I'm still reeling from my viewing a few days ago.

Au Revoir Les Enfants (Malle, 1987)
A troubling film for me. Not only for its devastating story, but for its distracting shifts in quality. One moment I'll be completely engrossed in the story and the next I'll be rolling my eyes at the obvious plotting and characterization. The last twenty minutes or so is particularly frustrating, with the plot elements awkwardly executed inbetween some very emotional moments that hit home. Recommended but mileage will vary.

Akira (Ohtomo, 1988)
Extraordinary technical excellence put to use for a nonsensical storyline that seems to be an excuse for (admittedly pretty cool) lengthy action scenes. Pretty entertaining and well-done, but nothing to write home about.

An American Werewolf In London (1981, Landis)
An intriguing mix of horror and comedy that is undermined by the worse-than-flat direction, which makes the whole thing feel like a made for TV movie. The script has its funny and memorable moments, in spite of the visuals, and the special effects are great. Werewolf is more notable for the fact that it paved the way for a masterpiece like Shaun of the Dead, than for any of its own accomplishments.

Moonstruck (Jewison, 1987)
As is the problem with most films ever made, there's not enough Nicolas Cage here. I'd recommend skipping the movie and just checking out one or two of his big scenes on YouTube instead.

Hail Mary (Godard, 1985)
My first late Godard and it's really a stunner. One of the more interesting modern religious adaptations (if you call it that) and would make a perfect double bill with the similarly great Last Temptation of Christ, which will also be making my list. This is perhaps the most sincere Godard film I've yet seen, and the most surprising element for me was how he allowed an emotional connection with the characters, even attempting to empathize and understand them. And on a basic visual level, what a beautiful film! I'm looking forward to further viewings and more 80s Godard. Does anyone know if that Lionsgate 3-Disc Godard collection is worth getting?

[domino harvey]

Does anyone know if that Lionsgate 3-Disc Godard collection is worth getting?

Yes, all of the films on it range from good to grrreat and it contains my favorite 80s Godard, Detective. Especially if you enjoyed Hail Mary, I think you'd def get your money's worth out of it

[Michael Kerpan]

Does anyone know if that Lionsgate 3-Disc Godard collection is worth getting?

Yes, all of the films on it range from good to grrreat and it contains my favorite 80s Godard, Detective. Especially if you enjoyed Hail Mary, I think you'd def get your money's worth out of it

Even if one is befuddled by the "stories" in these, the films all look absolutely gorgeous. A very worthwhile purchase for anyone interested in Godard's work.

Detective is also my favorite from this box.

[roujin]

Viewing Log:
Princess from the Moon (Kon Ichikawa, 1987): Ichikawa's film plays like a fun update of a classic Japanese fairy tale.

That's because it is. Isao Takahata's latest (final?) film is an animated version of the same story.

[bamwc2]

Viewing Log:
Princess from the Moon (Kon Ichikawa, 1987): Ichikawa's film plays like a fun update of a classic Japanese fairy tale.

That's because it is. Isao Takahata's latest (final?) film is an animated version of the same story.

roujin, thanks. I knew the it was a traditional Japanese fairytale. I'm sorry that my poor phrasing strongly implied otherwise. However, I didn't know about the animated film. Thanks!

[colinr0380]

Akira (Ohtomo, 1988)
Extraordinary technical excellence put to use for a nonsensical storyline that seems to be an excuse for (admittedly pretty cool) lengthy action scenes. Pretty entertaining and well-done, but nothing to write home about.

I love the film version of Akira (especially for those little moments like the well observed reactions of the characters, both foreground and background ones), but in defence of the 'nonsensical' storyline, while I'm not sure that this would change opinion, it is important to note that the film is a highly condensed version of an extremely detailed manga that runs to six volumes in its currently published form. A lot of the more minor characters from the cult leaders, to the resistance movement, to the biker gang, to the scientists get a lot more time spent with them (and there is also much more time spent in the ruins post-apocalypse), while the film does focus the storyline much more squarely onto the major thread of the duelling 'friends turned into enemies' plotline. Although a lot of those other elements and subplots remain as (an astonishingly rich) backdrop.

[M_Penalosa]

New user here. My top 80's film as of now will be Yanagimachi's Farewell to the Land, about an agriculture trucker's drug/alcohol addiction and its effects on his family. Yanagimachi is the only post-1950s Japanese filmmaker I place alongside the old masters. He's like Pialat in the way he traces the dynamics of emotional abuse.

[Michael Kerpan]

> Yanagimachi is the only post-1950s Japanese filmmaker I place alongside the old masters.

Imamura? Somai? Kitano? Jun Ichikawa? Kore-eda?

(for starters)

[swo17]

Or what about Ito? I can't recommend highly enough the Takashi Ito: Film Anthology DVD (available from Re:voir or the BFI Filmstore, among other places). The best films from the set are on Disc 1, and all but one of them are from the '80s. So this write-up will serve as a sort of director's guide.

Some of you are hopefully already familiar with Spacy, which is meticulously animated with photographs to present the illusion of the space-time continuum endlessly tying itself in knots. The Mummy's Dream plays a somewhat similar trick, zooming in and out of tunnels and other assorted cityscapes as though running into their borders fast enough reveals secret passageways between them. (Don't try this at home!) Box is even more dizzying, projecting a hasty jaunt through the city on a cube that's spinning in the opposite direction. And Drill bumps around inside an empty office long enough for the floors and ceilings to start to shift off their axes, as the surrounding building presumably folds in on itself.

Devil's Circuit takes us outside again, setting its sights on a tall building in the middle of a city from maybe a mile away, and then circling it from that same distance. This makes the building appear to spin in place, while the smaller buildings/streetlife in the foreground dash by like lightning. (This kind of thing is why I'll take movies over traveling any day of the week.) And Wall attempts the same circling from a much shorter distance, rather jarringly zooming into, away from, and around the front of a large building.

Finally, there are Ito's "horror films" (Thunder, Ghost, and Grim) which combine time lapse and bulb shutter techniques to create these lively and utterly unique cinematic spaces. Of these, I'm going to go ahead and spotlight Thunder, which is probably the least creepy but most kinetic of the three.

[M_Penalosa]

> Yanagimachi is the only post-1950s Japanese filmmaker I place alongside the old masters.

Imamura? Somai? Kitano? Jun Ichikawa? Kore-eda?

(for starters)

I haven't seen any Somai. What would you recommend?

[Michael Kerpan]

I haven't seen any Somai. What would you recommend?

My favorite is Moving (from the 90s). From the 80s, The Catch and Typhoon club -- and, for fun, Sailor suit and Machine Guns.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I second all of Michael's recs and would add Love Hotel. And, as another adoring Yanagimachi fan, I'd say that him and Somai have a definite affinity.

In terms of Japanese post 50s giants, if you haven't seen any Yoshida, Teshigahara, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Oshima, Matsumoto, Hani, Wakamatsu, Shinoda, Adachi, or Kumashiro, then fix that hole before the rain gets in. Maybe you have and just don't care for them, but I think that all of these directors, when they're at their best, can go toe to toe with the "old masters". (Well, maybe not with Ozu, but then I wouldn't put anyone in the same ring as that particular ball of fire.)

[M_Penalosa]

I second all of Michael's recs and would add Love Hotel. And, as another adoring Yanagimachi fan, I'd say that him and Somai have a definite affinity.

Thanks for the recs, guys!

[zedz]

If we're creating a loose canon for recent Japanese filmmakers, I'll add in Ishii Sogo, particularly for his 90s work. If you've ever watched 2001 and wondered why Kubrick didn't make that film as a high school romcom, August in the Water is the film for you!

[Satori]

I've been watching Ulrike Ottinger's films over the past week and have just been absolutely blown away- it's not often you discover a filmmaker whose sensibilities completely overlap with your own in every way. I'm fairly certain I came across her name in this thread, so I owe someone a tremendous debt of gratitude.

Of her three full-length features from the 80s, I am less enamored with Freak Orlando than the other two, although I love the concept of reimagining Browning's Freaks alongside the Virginia Woolf. The other two are utterly brilliant, though. Ottinger is like Rivette in that she teaches us to let go of our desires for epistemological or temporal mastery over the films we are watching: we have to surrender ourselves to her tempo and allow her to take us where she wants us to go. This refusal to systematize her film structures seems deeply related to her representation of fluidity between identity, gender, and sexuality as well. I have no idea what is happening for much of Dorian Grey, but the images she creates are simply unbelievable. I can't imagine what this would be like on a proper release rather than the crummy rip I was able to get a hold of.

On first impression, my favorite of the 80s films is Johanna D'arc of Mongolia, though. The juxtaposition between the train sequences and the time spent with tribeswomen is so powerful: the tight, constructed mise-en-scene and stable identities of the four "archetypes" of women versus the gorgeous expanses of Monglia and the transformations that occur for all the women (especially Johanna). The "Mongolia" portions reminded me of another 80s masterpiece, The Horse Thief. I found an interview with Ottinger where she discusses the differing temporalities of these two sections as well: the regimented clock time of the train where meals and entertainment are planned exhaustively versus what she calls the "epic time" of Mongolia (or Walter Benjamin's 'homogenous empty time' versus 'messianic time').

The ending strikes me as tremendously important, too:

Spoiler

We think Johanna is going to stay behind with the tribe, but at the last minute she jumps back onto the train with the other women.

At first I thought this might have been a betrayal of the encounter Johanna has with the tribeswomen, but I think it is actually the purest form of fidelity to it. Ottinger is reminding us that a "return" to this so-called "earlier" form of culture is not possible; rather, we need to return to our own world having been transformed by our encounter. Ottinger's cinema is radically anti-nostalgic: her ultimate message seems to be that we need to always be changing and undergoing transformations of ourselves. Static identities of whatever kind are what must be avoided. I take this to be the lesson of her 70s film Madame X as well:

Spoiler

the characters must symbolically die so that they can rejoin the ship at the end in their new identities.

Johanna's journey is then allegorically our own encounter with Ottinger's cinema: we unfortunately can't stay within her worlds, but we must leave ourselves open to transformation from the encounter with them as we remake our own identities in our own world.

[matrixschmatrix]

Have you read the piece David Kalat wrote about Ottinger? I read it not having any direct familiarity with her work- does it strike you as fair?

[domino harvey]

A timely bump, as there are exactly two months left for this project! I still have five overflowing boxes of 80s movies to get through yet I think I got burned out from watching over a hundred 80s movies at the other end of this thread and it's been hard to motivate myself. I've learned my lesson from the last two decades, though, and will only be drawing from existing unwatched titles for the 90s-- which doesn't mean anything, as I probably have the same amount of those already as I do unwatched 80s films I picked up in the last six months!

[Satori]

Have you read the piece David Kalat wrote about Ottinger? I read it not having any direct familiarity with her work- does it strike you as fair?

Thanks for the link. I don't know much about Ottinger yet, so I don't know how to evaluate his claims about things unrelated to the films themselves. (I did just start Laurence Rickels' book on Ottinger called The Autobiography of Art Cinema, though, and he does discuss the difficulty she had making projects in the 90s and beyond). It does seem to me that Kalat uses a lot of unattributed references about what she thinks about various things. He also seems to conflate her refusal to compromise on aesthetic issues (e.g. he says she won't cut down her films or "rein in her indulgence") with her apparent refusal to seek mainstream distribution of her films. I think these are two different issues: if she won't allow anyone to distribute her films (which I'm not even sure is the case), then that is really frustrating but I guess ultimately her call. Lots of avant garde filmmakers don't allow their films to be shown except on film, so I guess this would be a similar thing. Asking her to compromise on her aesthetic vision is ridiculous, though. It it precisely her "indulgence" that makes me love her films.
He also seems to trot out some really silly clichés about art cinema vis-à-vis popular cinema, such as:

Her contempt for the commercial film industry and refusal to compromise so much as a single frame to appeal to wider audiences has kept her works from being seen by anything beyond a tight circle of intellectuals and art theorists. Her provocative ideas and “cinematic ethnography” can have little effect on mainstream society when she merely preaches to the converted

I think he also overstates the difficulty of her work; she's not any tougher than more well known art film staples like Akerman or Rivette. She just seems like a convenient example for him to contrast with Cassavetes because he knows his audience is not likely to have heard of her (he says as much when introducing her). Cassavetes and her are both brilliant, but they are doing wildly different things in completely different contexts.

[Gropius]

I've been watching Ulrike Ottinger's films over the past week and have just been absolutely blown away- it's not often you discover a filmmaker whose sensibilities completely overlap with your own in every way.

I'm one of the Ottinger fans (voted for Madame X in the 70s list), but it's been a while since I saw two of the 80s features (Dorian Gray and Johanna d'Arc - haven't seen Freak Orlando yet). Like you, I remember enjoying Johanna the most, and will definitely be including it on my list; my memories of Dorian aren't clear enough to really root for it (though it was certainly good), and I'd prefer not to watch it again in a smudgy VHS bootleg.

Another interesting Ottinger curio of the 80s is her short film Superbia, a contribution to the themed anthology Seven Women, Seven Sins. I haven't seen the whole thing yet, only the bits by Ottinger and Akerman (the latter of whom turns in a low-key autobiographical sketch on laziness).

While on the subject of Akerman, here's a mini round-up of three of her 80s features:

It's arguably no exaggeration to say that her precocious achievement with Jeanne Dielman hangs like a shadow over the rest of her career, but she continued to produce interesting work, even it if none of it seems quite so 'major'. Toute une nuit (1982) is a return to her earlier experimental formalism, a curious hybrid of structural and narrative film. Think of the scenes of couples meeting or parting by night to be found in most love stories, and then imagine a compendium consisting of nothing but those scenes, and you get this film. The cataloguing impulse of Frampton or Greenaway, but injected with romance, albeit of a slightly gloomy kind. I'd need to watch it again to decide whether it's list-worthy, but certainly unique and compelling.

The next two need to be placed together. Golden Eighties (1986) was Akerman's attempt at a Demy-style musical, following the amorous entanglements of employees in a French shopping mall. She spent quite a few years working on this project, and the end result, while charming in its way, can't quite attain the stylistic heights of its 60s predecessors. Some of the cast (including Seyrig again) are good, and some of the songs, which combine the older chanson style with 80s pop, are catchy, but the limited budget clearly shows, and the singing itself isn't exactly polished.

Golden Eighties was preceded three years earlier by Les années 80 (1983), and it is actually this film that'd be my Akerman pick for the decade (also Jonathan Rosenbaum's, apparently - it's in his canon). It's basically a kind of making-of/work-in-progress doc about the musical, including much audition footage, but it's loaded with a sense of promise and experimentation that the finished work never quite delivers on. It's a fascinating document in itself.