1950s Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[Scharphedin2]

Those writeups on the Mann/Stewart westerns are excellent, zedz. Thanks. It reminded me, how much I would enjoy to see all of these films again. As it is, I have Naked Spur coming up (as the only one I have not seen before), but elected to exclude the other ones from my packed schema in order to view other films that I have not seen before.

Winchester '73 would definitely make a top list of the best westerns ever. I think it is always easy to forget the fantastic energy of that film, and all those great characters that enter and exit the story at such a rapid pace throughout. It is another title that it is time for me to upgrade to DVD -- I own the old Universal laserdisc. The LD had an excellent commentary track with Stewart reminiscing about working on this and the other Mann westerns. I especially remember him talking about the hat he wears, and which he insisted in wearing in several westerns -- sweat stains and all. Also, there were several anecdotes about his horse Pie, which followed Stewart loyally on many a western, and like a true film diva was loath to take direction from anyone other than Stewart himself.

Jon -- some fascinating titles that you are throwing out there. You sure got my attention with that description of Aventurera. Is it Facets that has this out on DVD? There are a couple of other Alberto Gout films out from VCI, have you seen any of those?

[souvenir]

The LD had an excellent commentary track with Stewart reminiscing about working on this and the other Mann westerns. I especially remember him talking about the hat he wears, and which he insisted in wearing in several westerns -- sweat stains and all. Also, there were several anecdotes about his horse Pie, which followed Stewart loyally on many a western, and like a true film diva was loath to take direction from anyone other than Stewart himself.

The Stewart commentary is actually on the DVD too, but it's advertised on the back as an interview.

Winchester '73 is my favorite of the Mann/Stewart westerns, which is saying something since I'd personally rank their overall output even above the Ford/Wayne pairings.

[jonp72]

Jon -- some fascinating titles that you are throwing out there. You sure got my attention with that description of Aventurera. Is it Facets that has this out on DVD? There are a couple of other Alberto Gout films out from VCI, have you seen any of those?

The Aventurera DVD is indeed on Facets. Given the U.S. border with Mexico and marketing gurus chasing the Latino consumer dollar, releasing Aventurera is more of a no-brainer in Region 1 than it might be outside Region 1. As Aventurera demonstrates, we must realize that the U.S. is not the only country with a flair for making musicals. I can't vouch for other Alberto Gout films, but I'm trying to branch out with some foreign "popular" cinema from the 1950s that hasn't been recognized by the standard arthouse foreign film canon. Some off-beat foreign choices I have in the queue include the Bollywood film Awaara, Mother India (nicknamed India's Gone with the Wind), some Japanese horror films by Nobuo Nakagawa, and some Czech stop-motion animation by Karel Zeman. There's also a surprising number of old Indian films on DVD made for the domestic Indian market that come with English subtitles, although you often have to track down the original Indian title to make sure you're getting the right film. (When you have 800 languages and dialects as India does, sometimes it's just easier to use English as the lingua franca.) To be specific, I was able to order several 1950s films by Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, and Satyajit Ray from calcuttaweb.com, which has very good prices and low shipping costs (at least to the United States). Although Satyajit Ray's 1950s output is probably eclipsed by the Apu trilogy, he did two other films that decade, The Music Room and The Philosopher's Stone, that look promising. I got The Music Room from a French DVD, and the Philosopher's Stone was available as a video CD with English subs under its Indian title, Parash Pathar.

When I finally get the time to see a few more DVD's in the queue, I will be happy to report back to the list.

[GringoTex]

I want to push Bunuel's "Robinson Crusoe" which is available in an acceptable dvd from VCI and proves Bunuel could have been a great Hollywood filmmaker. It's amazing to watch him follow all the Hollywood tropes with that critical camera of his.

[bufordsharkley]

I can't recommend The Big Combo enough. From Alton's cinematography to Richard Conte and Brian Donlevy's performances, it's a collection of career-bests all in one package.

...Infinitely stylized, clever, and beautiful, it's possibly my favorite noir.

[Michael Kerpan]

Bunuels greatest 50s movie is Subida al Cielo. Forget the rest (good as they are.)

I respectfully disagree. There's at least 7 1950s Bunuel films I like more than this. ;~}

[GringoTex]

Bunuels greatest 50s movie is Subida al Cielo. Forget the rest (good as they are.)

I haven't seen this but found an upcoming French boxset that contains it. Can anyone tell me if this has English subs?

[drpauligari]

Subida al Cielo is available in a passable dvd from Mexico via Alter Films. These dvds are probably most easily obtained outside of Mexico through eBay.

[Michael Kerpan]

There is an online dealer in Mexico who will theoretically ship the films to the US -- but who still doesn't take credit cards or Pay Pal -- only wire transfers. ;~{

[drpauligari]

There is an online dealer in Mexico who will theoretically ship the films to the US -- but who still doesn't take credit cards or Pay Pal -- only wire transfers. ;~{

Yes, that is Alter Films.

[Scharphedin2]

I am usually never one to wait, however, in this one case due to the fact that several labels (Arrow, Yume, Optimum) have been literally pumping out Bunuel in the UK lately, and a French release often being a good indicator of an impending release in the UK, it may be prudent to give it a month or two.

[Lemmy Caution]

I want to push Bunuel's "Robinson Crusoe" which is available in an acceptable dvd from VCI and proves Bunuel could have been a great Hollywood filmmaker. It's amazing to watch him follow all the Hollywood tropes with that critical camera of his.

I had the same thoughts after watching El Gran Calavera (The Great Madcap).

If anyone is having trouble getting 50's Bunuel, The Yume editions of Subida al Cielo (Ascent to Heaven, aka Mexican Bus Ride) and Nazarin are readily available here. PM me if interested. Also El Gran Calavera. Although that's from 1949, it shouldn't be missed. Bunuel handling a screwball comedy with aplomb. El (1953) (aka This Strange Passion) was around from a different label, but I haven't spotted it recently.

The Yume Subida al Cielo and Gran Calavera looked fine to me.
I haven't watched Nazarin yet, but will soon.

I've been very fortunate to watch alot of Bunuel in the past year. Including Los Olvidados on a big screen as part of last year's Shanghai Int'l Film Festival. A nice combination of observation, humor and intelligence throughout his films. Bunuel has quickly become one of my favorite directors. [Manufacturing a quick list, probably: Lang, Renoir, DeSica, then Bunuel. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any Lang films from the 50's. In fact, nothing post-war (ie. since 1944's Ministry of Fear)

Would be very interested to get my hands on Robinson Crusoe (1954). Well, with all this Bunuel talk, I think I've just convinced myself to toss on Nazarin tonight.

[Scharphedin2]

If anyone is having trouble getting 50's Bunuel, The Yume editions of Subida al Cielo (Ascent to Heaven, aka Mexican Bus Ride) and Nazarin are readily available here. PM me if interested. Also El Gran Calavera. Although that's from 1949, it shouldn't be missed.

You're right Lemmy. These both came out fairly recently from Yume Pictures. The title threw me, when Davidhare started talking about Subida al Cielo, but it is of course Ascent to Heaven, which was released at the same time as El Gran Calavera/The Great Madcap. Both are readily available from (r)e-tailers in the UK.

Bunuels greatest 50s movie is Subida al Cielo. Forget the rest (good as they are.)

The greatest movie from 1950 is un Chant d'Amour closely followed by Cromwell's Caged and the Melville-Cocteau

Best 1951 movie is Europa 51

Best 1952 movie is Angel Face...

and so on.

I will add no more to this discussion. Am shutting firmly up.

I dearly hope the above is an empthy threat...

Based on your post, I have already decided to pick up Bunuel's Ascent to Heaven, which I had overlooked, thinking it a very minor work.

Chant D'Amour has likewise jumped to the front of my list based on your recommendation here and in the designated thread. I have never seen the film, but have reading knowledge of Genet's work, which I admire.

Being obviously a huge defender of this thread (and the lists project as such), I am actually not very interested in the actual lists, but completely interested in learning about films from people who have seen things that I have not, and who are passionate about what they have seen. As far as I can tell, few posters in the forum have a greater viewing knowledge of classic films than you David, and I always read your comments with great interest. So, here is hoping that you will make frequent contributions here.

[Don Lope de Aguirre]

As far as I can tell, few posters in the forum have a greater viewing knowledge of classic films than you David, and I always read your comments with great interest. So, here is hoping that you will make frequent contributions here.

[Michael Kerpan]

FYI

Subido al cielo = Ascent to Heaven = Mexican Bus Ride.

;~}

[Scharphedin2]

For anyone interested in puchasing the various earlier Bunuel titles like Ascent to Heaven and Los Olvidados, Xploited Cinema offers an excellent selection.

Thanks for all the great suggestions, David. One thing that I find really fascinating about the '50s -- and it is probably especially apparent in French film as your post implicitly points out, but also in the cinema of other countries -- is the generational break that was beginning to happen, and obviously also the technological innovations that were causing upheavals in the industry -- TV coming in, and the film industry's attempts to set itself apart through color, scope, spectacle, etc.

[zedz]

More generally, I hesitated to post anything on this thread because, as Zedz well knows, I hate lists. I've only ever posted my own here with absolutely no intention of creating any sort of numerical hierarchy. All I ever want to do with lists is give an impression of my own view of what Ive been watching with pleasure over a period of time, or within a movement, or whatever. I absolutely resist "ranking" movies as the best this or the best that (and I should have phrased the earlier post much more carefully.)

I'm trying to be even more ruthlessly subjective this time around than before, so instead of starting from the point of "who deserves to be here?" and ordering the results (which only works, in my experience, if you've got no more than 70 films on your initial 'deserving' list), I'm trying to restrict my master list to "films I can't live without". So the films I merely admire are not even going to figure - theoretically. Of course, the difference between respect and adoration can be a single viewing (and vice versa).

Which brings me to:

It would also be refreshing to see some fresh arguments made about French cinema for instance. Is fifties Renoir really standing up for everyone? Or is it worth reexamining some of the Trad de Qualite people (Autant Lara, Duvivier's Voici le Temps des Assassins, Clouzot, etc.) And the precursors lof the Nouvelle Vague? (Rivette, Becker, etc.)

The only Renoir in contention for me is The River. Even French Cancan (the best of the 'Stage & Spectacle' films by far, in my opinion) is but a pale technicolor shadow of his pre-war work. Ophuls (with the possible exception of Madame de) is also in my 'admire rather than love' bag, but at this stage the pre-NV crowd (Becker, Melville, Bresson, Clouzot, maybe Cocteau) are looking pretty impressive - certainly much stronger than the first of the NV titles. I don't think any of the films I'm considering qualify as "Tradition of Quality" (though Forbidden Games is wavering on the verge of consideration), but I agree it would be good to start up a conversation about those films, to sort out the gold from the dross.

In that vein the only "advice" I'd consider giving anyone is to not forget some of the "minor" joys, or the once-called "Lightly Likeables". In American cinema for instance, Siegel, Don Weis, Tashlin, Donen, Delmer Daves (whose 50s work in the Western is at an extremely high level, ditto Boetticher obviously), not to mention the already notables.

An excellent example of such a minor joy is Summer Stock, which I recently viewed again. Great score, immensely likeable, but what really makes it special for me is the wonderfully tender on-screen relationship between Garland and Kelly, particularly moving given the circumstances of production (not that this should be a factor in one's appreciation of a film).

I'm also in love with The Singing Street. Historically, it's probably one of the least significant of the Free Cinema films, but (maybe because of the very ratty condition of the transfer on the wonderful BFI set) it strikes me as an invaluable window onto a lost world.

And it's Siegel, but I wouldn't consider it minor: don't forget Invasion of the Body Snatchers, folks.

[GringoTex]

It would also be refreshing to see some fresh arguments made about French cinema for instance. Is fifties Renoir really standing up for everyone?

The Golden Coach is #1 on my 50s list at the moment. For me, Rules of the Game and The Golden Coach serve as the bookends of the first half-century of cinema: the former being the ultimate expression of Bazinian realism in exploring sociopolitics; the latter using the shallowest of surfaces to explore the idea of art and artifice.

Or to put it another way: everything that happened in Rules of the Game really did happen in France. Nothing that happened in The Golden Coach could have ever really happened in South America. Yet the end truth is the same: the euphoric melancholia of a woman abandoned by her lovers via the bumbling disentegration of a party.

That's why I think the Golden Coach is the most important precursor to the modern cinema of the 60s.

[Scharphedin2]

With some time off from work this past week, I indulged (probably too much) in the pleasure of viewing films. In the following are a few notes on each of the films I viewed. They were all produced in 1952 save for The Idiot and Tales of Hoffmann, which are both from 1951. Any comments or discussion would be fun.

The Idiot – When I read the book some years ago, I remember having a harder time living into this novel, than other works of Dostoevsky's that I have read. The characters, situations and various reversals throughout the book seemed more eccentric, than those found in “Crime and Punishmentâ€

[jonp72]

My chronological progress through the 1950s is slower than Scharphedin2, but I've at least done a preliminary ranking of films from 1950. Most of the films I saw came from Jonathan Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema. In all, I saw all 14 films Rosenbaum had listed for 1950, plus 2 films that Rosenbaum dates as 1949 (Rossellini's Stromboli & Joseph Lewis's Gun Crazy) but that IMDB classifies as 1950. I also Jean-Isidore Isou's Venom and Eternity, which Rosenbaum lists as 1952, but is listed in IMDB as 1950.

So far, here is my ranking for 1950

1. Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel)
2. Orphee (Jean Cocteau)
3. Aventurera (Alberto Gout)
4. The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini)
5. Un Chant d'Amour (Jean Genet)
Alternates: Story of a Love Affair (Michelangelo Antonioni), Try and Get Me (Cyril Endfield), Gun Crazy (Joseph Lewis), In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
Contenders I Haven't Seen Yet: La Ronde (Max Ophuls), Caged (John Cromwell), The Furies (Anthony Mann)

Here's Rosenbaum's list from 1950:

All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Annie Get Your Gun (George Sidney)
Cinderella (Wilfred Jackson / Luske / Clyde Geronimi)
Father of the Bride (Minnelli)
The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur)
The Gunfighter (Henry King)
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
Los Olvidados (Bunuel)
Orpheus (Cocteau)
Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan)
Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
Try and Get Me (Endfield)
Wagon Master (Ford)

And here's my recap:

I've seen All About Eve before, but I felt it was overrated. Some of the lines are justifiable classics ("Fasten your seat belts..."), but I felt the film was a little talky. In addition, I kept wishing that Eve was played by Marilyn Monroe (who had a minor role in the film) instead of Anne Baxter. Annie Get Your Gun was an interesting musical with a spirited performance from Betty Hutton, but my favorite musical of 1950 (in addition to being my favorite noir and favorite melodrama) was Aventurera. I saw Cinderella as a kid, but if I vote for a Disney production, I think I might save that vote for the more surrealistic Alice in Wonderland. Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride was a pleasant surprise. It was not only leaps and bounds better than Steve Martin remake that I was familiar with, but it has some moments of real poignancy about how an upper middle class father slowly comes to realize that his relationship with his daughter has irrevocably changed. There's even an expressionist dream sequence that takes place the night before his daughter's wedding. Of the two Jacques Tourneur films I saw, The Flame and the Arrow (from my VHS collection) and Stars in My Crown (from an unofficial DVD-R), I preferred The Flame and the Arrow more. It is a rousing swashbuckler that features some fine acrobatics from Burt Lancaster (from Lancaster's pre-Hollywood days as a circus perfomer) in addition to some of Tourneur's unique stylistic touches (atmospheric use of sound, creating suspense in claustrophobic spaces). Stars in My Crown is an unconventional western featuring a Bible-toting sheriff played by Joel McCrea. In fact, the only shots fired in the film are warning shots; the film does not contain a single gunfight. Topics covered in the plot range from a typhoid epidemic to the harassment of property-owning blacks in the Reconstruction-era South, but I still found it a little mild for my tastes.

My favorite three westerns of 1950 were Winchester '73, The Gunfighter, and Wagon Master, but none of the three stuck out as better than the others. The Anthony Mann enthusiasts on this forum have already spoken of Winchester 73's many virtues. Personally, I think it might be interesting to view it as a male version of The Earring of Madame De..., in that both films use totemic objects to illustrate a web of interconnected relationships. Henry King's The Gunfighter is about a gunslinger with a violent reputation, played by Gregory Peck, who can never find any peace, because other gunslingers are always to make themselves famous by gunning him down. Its mournful tone and its acceptance of the unsustainability of the Wild West as a way of life (symbolized by schools and churches as civilizing institutions) make it extremely similar to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and some of the revisionist westerns of the 70s. (I saw the Gunfight on a VHS tape that I purchased from a video store liquidating its VHS rentals, but I think a UK release exists.) Finally, Wagon Master shows how masterful John Ford can be in making a "classical" western, even when using the unlikely subject matter of the Mormon migration to Utah. (For example, the Cleggs in Wagon Master are almost as interesting as the Clantons in My Darling Clementine in depicting how an all-male "family" of villains can get warped when kept apart from feminine "civilizing" influences.)

In a Lonely Place made my list of alternates, because I think the film does a better job of depicting the self-destructive relationships between minor celebrities and their fans than any other film that came before. If you want to understand the psychological dynamics between abusive male has-beens (O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector, Robert Blake) and the women who gravitate to them, In a Lonely Place is a good place to start. I liked Panic in the Streets for its noirish atmosphere, its semi-documentary realism, and the basic idea behind a plot that merged chasing a criminal with chasing a deadly disease, but I still can't help that I like Richard Widmark better as an antihero (Pickup on South Street!!) than as a uniformed member of the Establishment. Sunset Boulevard was and is a sentimental favorite of mine, but upon rewatching it, I ranked it lower, because I found the romantic subplot with Nancy Olson as Betty Schaefer to be a weak point of the film. The film gets a good atmosphere going by mixing romantic melodrama with some of the trappings of the "old dark house" genre of Gothic horror, but after seeing it again, I also noticed how Franz Waxman's score was used semi-manipulatively to accomplish the films shifts of tone from cynicism to romanticism to horror and back again.

Jean-Isidore Isou's Venom and Eternity is an experimental film associated with the French avant-garde Lettrist movement that sought to create a "discrepant" cinema that liberated sound from the "tyranny" of the image. (You can view the film online here.) The images are prosaic depictions, such as of a man walking down the street, almost defiantly prosaic. But the soundtrack is filled with "sound poetry" created by tape manipulation and layering of isolated nonsense syllables, followed by what sounds like a ranting manifesto delivered at a 1950s-era French cine-club. It transfixed me more than some experimental films only 1/10 of its length, but some of it was also maddening, perhaps as its makers intended. I've only seen the film online, but perhaps I can revisit it after re:voir comes out with its promised DVD of the film. Until then, I'll take a page from Andrew Sarris and label it as a "subject for further research."

[jonp72]

Indispensable from any year 1950 list are Summer Stock and Les Enfants terribles.

I will definitely put Summer Stock on my to-view list based on your recommendation, but I prefer 1949's La Silence de La Mer to Les Enfants Terribles. When I saw La Silence de la Mer, it was like unearthing a hidden Rosetta Stone that linked the great idiosyncratic French directors who existed outside the "tradition of quality" (Renoir, Cocteau, Bresson) and the Nouvelle Vague of the future. I felt that the Cocteau/Melville collaboration in Les Enfants Terribles just didn't achieve the synergy of two great idiosyncratic talents that it did in La Silence de la Mer.

[tryavna]

I also noticed how Franz Waxman's score was used semi-manipulatively to accomplish the films shifts of tone from cynicism to romanticism to horror and back again.

I find this an odd criticism to level at any music score, since most music scores can be viewed as emotionally manipulative at some level or another. Waxman's score for Sunset Blvd. isn't my favorite by any means (not even among Waxman's ouevre), but I think it fits the film quite well, especially the way Waxman employs the tango at various points to evoke the ghosts of Hollywood past as well as Norma's own unravelling.

[jonp72]

I also noticed how Franz Waxman's score was used semi-manipulatively to accomplish the films shifts of tone from cynicism to romanticism to horror and back again.

I find this an odd criticism to level at any music score, since most music scores can be viewed as emotionally manipulative at some level or another. Waxman's score for Sunset Blvd. isn't my favorite by any means (not even among Waxman's ouevre), but I think it fits the film quite well, especially the way Waxman employs the tango at various points to evoke the ghosts of Hollywood past as well as Norma's own unravelling.

My criticism is less aimed at Waxman's score per se than with Wilder's use of that score. I remember that a film critic once labeled Billy Wilder as "too cynical to believe his own cynicism." I don't necessarily think that's applicable to Billy Wilder's work as a whole (Some Like It Hot will almost definitely make my top 50 for the 50s), but in Sunset Boulevard, I thought Billy Wilder would shy away from the more cynical and gothic aspects of the film with Norma Desmond, then shift to the romantic subplot with Betty the aspiring screenwriter, while Waxman's layers on the strings.

[sevenarts]

My approach to the 50s has been a bit more haphazard than some others here so far. I haven't seen much pre-60s cinema prior to this, and I've decided to use this list as a good excuse to give myself an overview of the 50s, for starters. I've got a nice big stack of 50s films to go through now, and here are some thoughts on some of the ones I've watched so far.

Pickup on South Street is the first Samuel Fuller film I've seen, and also the first of a prospective slate of Hollywood noirs that I'll be watching. It was pretty fun, with the over-the-top hard-boiled dialogue -- "Everybody loves everybody when they're kissing." And the tie saleswoman stoolie was just a great (and very nuanced) character. All in all, pretty solid.

On the other hand, though Fuller's film was pretty enjoyable, Otto Preminger's Bonjour, Tristesse impressed me on a much deeper level. In some ways, it's also a very typical over-the-top hammy Hollywood production, but there's something incredibly subversive about Preminger's use of these performances. He actually turns his characters' relentless cheeriness and silliness against them, so that by the end of the film he's sabotaged the initial sympathy we feel for these people, stealthily revealing their darker, more selfish sides. As a depiction of the idle rich, it's surprisingly nuanced but also unflinching in giving these very likeable characters some incredibly unpleasant traits. And ultimately, its very light mood is undercut with some deep emotions. It's a film that was really enjoyable while I was actually watching it, and the more I turn it over in my mind afterwards, the more seems to be hidden there.

Flowing was the last film from MOC's Mikio Naruse box that I still needed to see, and it was another excellent one. All three films in there are definite contenders, and I'd say that both this one and Sound of the Mountain will without question be on my final list. Naruse's interest in the lives of women in the other two films reaches its logical peak here in a film with a practically all-female cast. It's a masterpiece of small gestures and dialogue that leaves much unsaid and everything important implied. Naruse's subject matter is similar to Ozu's in some ways. Both masters deal with the constriction of choices, the routines of daily life, and the ways in which social and economic realities can change and strain familial relationships. But Naruse's style is much more invisible, relying on editing and juxtaposition rather than Ozu's striking static shots. The final scene of this film seems like a perfect distillation of the subtle power of Naruse's aesthetics. He sets up a beautifully framed shot of the two geisha women playing shamisens, with the maid framed, standing in the background, between them -- the audience's knowledge about what the maid must be thinking then, the sadness of the music, the sense that this is a final peaceful moment for this house, is all encapsulated in this striking master shot. And then, with these emotions lingering, Naruse cuts in sequence to a few shots of people around the house, listening to the music and going about their daily chores, before returning to the two musicians. With this seemingly simple editing, he's able to carry the emotional impact of that first shot through the rest of the scene to a graceful, uncertain, and sad ending.

Speaking of Ozu, the most recent I've seen by him was the wonderful Tokyo Story. I'm not sure much needs to be said there, other than that I'm continually surprised by just how light, graceful, and even humorous a touch Ozu has, even in more serious films like this. In other hands, this would be the stuff of melodrama, and indeed Ozu's reputation always seem to suggest tearjerker family dramas, but what he does is so much more. This is very deservedly a classic.

I never really expected to get much out of Une histoire d'eau, the film Godard constructed from footage shot and abandoned by Truffaut in the late 50s, but it's a surprisingly fun and suggestive little film. Fun because Godard has constructed a non-stop associative monologue for his main character to deliver in breathless stops and starts, encompassing everything from philosophy to relationships to cinema. Sound familiar? Sure, but I guess I didn't expect all the elements of early Godard to be quite so intact here, even down to the fragmented editing, probably born of necessity here, working with borrowed and therefore limited material. As a big Godard fan, this was a no-brainer, and definitely worth seeing.

I also watched Ugetsu, and loved it. Absolutely brilliant, not much else to say for now. Gorgeously shot, and beautifully told.

[Don Lope de Aguirre]

I am very surprised that more people haven't mentioned Antonioni's criminally underrated 1950s work! All of which is of the very highest, highest quality (bar, perhaps, the final section of I Vinti). Although a lot of people seem only to be interested in his 'later' works I would like to humbly point out that there are many big name film makers whose work can not compare to Antonioni's 'early' output! In particular, Le Amiche is a pearl and one of my favorite films of all time...

I'm not sure if this has been posted elsewhere but those who like lists may also be interested in this. Some of the 1950s entries may give you some viewing ideas...