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After finishing Pakula's paranoia trilogy, I'm surprised to find that (for me) Klute is the best and Parallax is the least best (because it's obviously still a pretty great movie.) It may be a matter of expectations- I went in expecting Klute to be relatively weak and found a wonderfully nuanced character piece with neo noir and paranoid 70s undertones, one which has a pretty great role for a sex worker and a take on gender that feels mostly still pretty agreeable, and one that slips effortlessly into the few understated suspense pieces it has. All The President's Men is also fantastic, and is oddly somewhat more of a detective movie than Klute is- it's a movie that's mostly about following a thread, tracking things down in a way that makes sense of all the connections, so understated that it's easy to forget what an enormous deal all this is. Parallax... well, I expected to like it the best, and I think it just doesn't have the same strengths that either of the other movies do- Beatty is good and all, but the movie's not really about him (or anyone else) as a character, he's just a Hitchcockian lead designed to guide us into the heart of darkness. And it's really far more of an action movie than I had expected- maybe a majority of the movie is scenes of car chases, guys sneaking up on each other, fistfights, suspense set pieces, and so forth- they're well executed, but they didn't strike me as being especially remarkable, and I wanted throughout to skip past them to get deeper into the conspiracy. Which we do, in a fairly intriguing way, but, I don't know- for me, the movie doesn't express paranoia as well as something like The Conversation does, because Beatty's neither a particularly paranoid character nor really someone for whom paranoia would have been all that helpful, and it's not really a world of watching and surveillance and the primacy of knowing as The Conversation is.

I can't deny the power of the test sequence, though- it feels almost as though the rest of the movie is a delivery system for an avant garde piece.

I suspect reputation got the better of you and that if you were to watch it free of thinking what it should be and just knowing what it is all of the elements might work better. Probably not enough to shake up your rankings (overall I agree with you that it is the least great), but still it's a surprisingly densely packed film for all of the surface action and really rewards on memorizing the beats which constantly remind of how strange the whole affair is. Not to mention that each time the ending gets more powerful. If it is a paranoid film it's more for the audience than the characters.

I think one of the strengths of The Parallax View is that Beatty's character is nowhere near paranoid enough. His failure to correctly gauge the enormity of what he's poking into is a big part of his character's tragedy.

I love all three films, and it's always surprising just how different they are from one another in fundamental ways. At one level, Klute is a character piece, All the President's Men is a detective film and The Parallax View is an action film (and it's the continual chain of action that keeps Beatty and us off guard), but any one of the three could have been framed in any one of those ways, and probably still have been extremely effective.

It seems like a movie that work well with rewatching in general- and possibly one that would work well with being watched in the middle of the night by oneself, rather than when feeling good on a fine afternoon.

I will say this- the framing on all three of Pakula's movies is really remarkable, and that's not something that normally calls itself to my attention. I think I don't have enough of an eye for architecture to really respond to some of the Antonioni-esque touches, but the way characters are buried in a tiny corner of the screen is unmissable, and something that gives the movies a feeling of darkness and a world that's implacably amoral. It's not particularly surprising when they fail, and feels wonderfully earned (though usually subdued) when they actually succeed.

matrixschmatrix wrote:After finishing Pakula's paranoia trilogy, I'm surprised to find that (for me) Klute is the best and Parallax is the least best (because it's obviously still a pretty great movie.) It may be a matter of expectations- I went in expecting Klute to be relatively weak and found a wonderfully nuanced character piece with neo noir and paranoid 70s undertones, one which has a pretty great role for a sex worker and a take on gender that feels mostly still pretty agreeable, and one that slips effortlessly into the few understated suspense pieces it has. All The President's Men is also fantastic, and is oddly somewhat more of a detective movie than Klute is- it's a movie that's mostly about following a thread, tracking things down in a way that makes sense of all the connections, so understated that it's easy to forget what an enormous deal all this is. Parallax... well, I expected to like it the best, and I think it just doesn't have the same strengths that either of the other movies do- Beatty is good and all, but the movie's not really about him (or anyone else) as a character, he's just a Hitchcockian lead designed to guide us into the heart of darkness. And it's really far more of an action movie than I had expected- maybe a majority of the movie is scenes of car chases, guys sneaking up on each other, fistfights, suspense set pieces, and so forth- they're well executed, but they didn't strike me as being especially remarkable, and I wanted throughout to skip past them to get deeper into the conspiracy. Which we do, in a fairly intriguing way, but, I don't know- for me, the movie doesn't express paranoia as well as something like The Conversation does, because Beatty's neither a particularly paranoid character nor really someone for whom paranoia would have been all that helpful, and it's not really a world of watching and surveillance and the primacy of knowing as The Conversation is.

I can't deny the power of the test sequence, though- it feels almost as though the rest of the movie is a delivery system for an avant garde piece.

What's interesting is that you remember all the action set-pieces, but don't remember that they only take place in the first third of the movie. Something I've always loved about it was its misdirection: the way it starts out as a generic action movie (car-chase, fist-fight, quick and perilous escape), with Beatty as the improbable action hero, and then slowly starts to change, replacing kineticism with stasis, and big, open natural spaces with oppressive architecture--and of course ending with our hero running place. It's wonderful the way the conspiracy in the movie becomes so large it even engulfs and destroys the action thriller.

You're right that the characters aren't developed like they are in the other two, but this is because Parallax pushes even further into abstraction. So while the movie doesn't have that particular strength--rounded characters--it replaces it with another. It's a wonderfully symbolic movie.

I wrote somewhere else on the board that The Conversation is about paranoia, about the condition of seeing sinister patterns within all the harmless-looking things around you. The Parallax View is not about paranoia because of course Beatty isn't paranoid, people are actually out to get him. The Parallax View is paranoid as a movie. Its very vision of the world is paranoid, so it transcends the concept as a psychological condition as experienced by characters. As you watch it, you experience the filmmakers' paranoia, and it's a frightening and bleak thing to experience, far more than the other two. It's the ultimate filmic vision of a paranoid universe.

Mr Sausage wrote: I wrote somewhere else on the board that The Conversation is about paranoia, about the condition of seeing sinister patterns within all the harmless looking-things around you. The Parallax View is not about paranoia because of course Beatty isn't paranoid, people are actually out to get him. The Parallax View is paranoid as a movie. Its very vision of the world is paranoid, so it transcends the concept as a psychological condition as experienced by characters. As you watch it, you experience the filmmakers' paranoia, and it's a frightening and bleak thing to experience, far more than the other two. It's the ultimate filmic vision of a paranoid universe.

That's exactly what I meant. After watching the film it's hard not to feel like a house is going to eat you for a few minutes.

The self-conscious framing in these films doesn't just look stupendous, but I think it adds to the atmosphere of paranoia, since it doesn't just show us the characters and their actions, but often feels like it's showing them as if they were being observed (by person or persons unknown) - and sometimes, of course, they are.

Pakula often uses shots - and particularly establishing shots - that are 'Hollywood Bad' (the camera is too far away from the subject; the subject isn't centrally positioned; the scene is underlit; what or who we're looking at hasn't been previously 'properly' established - all characteristics that suggest surveillance more than conventional shooting) and which make the viewer work harder to extract the narrative information from them. Appearances frequently deceive and the world of the film itself starts to dissolve in ambiguity and deceit.

Mr Sausage wrote:I wrote somewhere else on the board that The Conversation is about paranoia, about the condition of seeing sinister patterns within all the harmless looking-things around you. The Parallax View is not about paranoia because of course Beatty isn't paranoid, people are actually out to get him. The Parallax View is paranoid as a movie. Its very vision of the world is paranoid, so it transcends the concept as a psychological condition as experienced by characters. As you watch it, you experience the filmmakers' paranoia, and it's a frightening and bleak thing to experience, far more than the other two. It's the ultimate filmic vision of a paranoid universe.

And I think the ultimate example of this (as it should be, given its function within the film), is the test sequence, the moment in the film when we are absolutely placed in Beatty's position and when, if you're anything like me, you start to worry what the Parallax Corporation test film is doing to you. That's a moment when I'm jolted out of the narrative level of the film in a good way. I stop thinking about what the film tells us about Parallax, or what impact it might be having on the protagonist, and start having to deal with the avalanche of images myself. It's also probably the ultimate example of Pakula forcing the audience to process imagery that's opaque and discomfiting.

zedz wrote:The self-conscious framing in these films doesn't just look stupendous, but I think it adds to the atmosphere of paranoia, since it doesn't just show us the characters and their actions, but often feels like it's showing them as if they were being observed (by person or persons unknown) - and sometimes, of course, they are.

Pakula often uses shots - and particularly establishing shots - that are 'Hollywood Bad' (the camera is too far away from the subject; the subject isn't centrally positioned; the scene is underlit; what or who we're looking at hasn't been previously 'properly' established - all characteristics that suggest surveillance more than conventional shooting) and which make the viewer work harder to extract the narrative information from them. Appearances frequently deceive and the world of the film itself starts to dissolve in ambiguity and deceit.

There's a particular repeated shot in Klute that works remarkably well in that respect- a shot looking down from an overhead grate, where it's difficult to tell if it's plot-motivated or just aesthetic, and lends that feeling to a lot of other shots that wouldn't necessarily give one that feeling otherwise. It reminds me a bit of the trick that Haneke pulls in Caché with the voyeuristic footage, though I think it's less overstated and more successful in Klute.

Sausage, I see what you mean about the action pieces- though I think I might describe it as shading from straight action into suspense action, since so much of the movie is still about movement and hiding and being chased and trying to convey information, in a way that's inescapably Hitchcockian. I can see the point that the movie itself is paranoid, but it didn't draw me in as well as the others; the abstraction of the Parallax people makes them feel more difficult to believe than the venal and slightly incompetent (though still devastatingly successful, for the most part) conspiracies in Night Moves or even All The President's Men. I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been in an era where actual political assassinations were happening constantly, though. (Now, of course, we merely have to hear endless stories of children or theater patrons or Sikhs being murdered- what a delightful change!)

A late recommendation for a film that many might not have seen is the Argentine drama 'The Truce' by Sergio Renan. I think it was the first Oscar-nominated Argentine film. It's very much a middle class family drama - the father has been a widower for twenty years, has three grown up kids, falls in love. Nothing too radical. But it feels incredibly real and genuine. Like an Ozu film really.

One final viewing log before I submit my list tomorrow:

Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970): A group of four bachelors leave their big city jobs behind for a weekend of camaraderie in the countryside. Unbeknownst to them, some of them will find love, but all will be profoundly changed by what they experience during these two days. Days and Nights in the Forest is a far more playful film than I'm used to seeing from Ray, but no worse off for the change of tone. If anything, it's indicative of how deftly he could maneuver from one genre to another. A truly great film.

Le Dossier 51 (Michel Deville, 1978): A la Dark Passage, the film is told from a first person perspective shot. This was a bit jarring at first, but I got used to it and settled in to this rather interesting tale of an unnamed French agency that spends the duration of the film researching a politician (known only as 51) in an effort to gain control over his vote. It may not sound like much, but the tension here is fairly high and the film works quite well.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Shûji Terayama, 1971): How to explain this one? Terayama's first feature length work of fiction is a dizzying sepia toned (though there is apparently a European cut in B&W that's missing about 45 minutes) story about a society run by kids that would have seemed at home in China's Cultural Revolution. Like Terayama's other works, everyone is nude for much of the duration film and there are a few scenes of adult/child sexual relations that made me more than a bit uneasy. It's far from Terayama's best work of the decade, but still miles above most other movies.

Four Nights of a Dreamer (Robert Bresson, 1971): Based on the same Dostoyevsky novella that gave us Visconti's Le Notti Bianche, the film tells the story of a young man who attempts to break a suicidal woman of her longing for her lost love over the course of four nights. While moving, it probably ranks as my least favorite Bresson thus far (I've only Angels of Sin and Une femme douce left to see). It's by no means a bad film, but falls short of the heights that the rest of his films reach.

Grass Labyrinth (Shûji Terayama, 1979): Having already seen the condensed version in Private Collections (and thinking that it was the only reason for watching the flick), I was eager to see this expanded treatment of this tale of eroticism and madness. The film details the life of Akira, starting as a boy and ending as a young man as he undergoes a poetic and mysterious journey into adulthood and his mad quest to undercover the lyrics to a song that his mother once sung to him. Terayama was arguably the most visually impressive filmmaker of his day, and those talents are put on full display here as he creates a surreal masterpiece that evokes the best of dreamlike filmmaking. This is absolutely essential viewing.

Ice (Robert Kramer, 1970): Kramer's paean to 60s violent radicalism makes for an interesting companion piece to Peter Watkin's Punishment Park. Both are set in a society where a dictatorial right wing government control their citizens with violence. Whereas the leftists in Watkins film are portrayed as victims (all resistance is quickly squashed in the film), here they are um, a bit more proactive even if they often stumble over their own two feet in trying to get their message out. Of the two Kramer films on the list, this is definitely the weaker of the two, but still has enough going for it for a recommendation.

L'innocente (Luchino Visconti, 1976): Aristocratic Tullio has fallen out of love with his wife Giuliana, but finds the flame rekindled after discovering her infidelities. Giancarlo Giannini and Laura Antonelli both do well in their roles, but like most late Visconti the anti-humanism of the presentation was too much to bear. It's hard to believe that this is the same director that gave us so many wonderful films in the 40s and 50s. Somewhere down the line Visconti turned his interest from the working class to the upper class, and then from people to things. Every set is meticulously composed here, but I didn't feel a single emotion to go along with it.

The Left-Handed Woman (Peter Handke, 1978): Peter Handke, best known for his collaborative work with Wim Wenders, made his theatrical debut with this film which examines the life of a woman who without explanation decides to divorce her husband. The film leaves her reasons a mystery, and this only adds to the permeating sense of absurdity and meaninglessness that seems to characterize the titular character's life. Edith Clever, who plays Marianne in the film's lead role does a superb job, giving a performance that seems better suited to a female lead in a Fassbinder film than it would in a Wender's production from the era.

Lost, Lost, Lost (Jonas Mekas, 1976): This was my second film by Mekas that I watched for the project, and like Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, it is a highly personal tale culled from footage that he shot of his own friends and family. While a reductive analysis of the film might try to dismiss what we see her as a glorified home-movies, the poetry of Mekas's narration prevents such a misinterpretation. Like the previously mentioned work, Mekas introduces to us questions of biography, nature, meaning, etc. and asks us to meditate on them while providing us with no answers himself.

Milestones (John Douglas and Robert Kramer, 1975): I'll throw this one in here instead of the documentary thread since I guess that it's an open question as to how much of it is scripted and how much of it is real. Featuring an enormous and eclectic cast, the films doesn't tell a story so much as evokes a mood of the alienation and lost possibilities that occurred with the collapse of the previous decade. There's a lot going on here and it would be foolish to attempt to describe it all, but it should suffice to say that it is a wonderful document on a dying counter culture.

Numéro deux (Jean-Luc Godard, 1975): Presenting himself as some omniscient observer in an editing room, Godard weaves a narrative about a French family that mixes all of his hallmarks in under 90 minutes. Using split screens, real sex, radical political commentary, and frank character confessions, Numéro deux is the Platonic form of 70s Godard. Like many of his film's from this era, it's difficult to qualify it as "good" or "bad", but it is never uninteresting.

Salomè (Carmelo Bene, 1972): Now this one was a real treat. Bene's retelling of the Biblical story of Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils and the execution of John the Baptist is given a surreal interpretation that looks like it could have been ripped from the subconscious of Salvador Dalí. All of the film's actions are confined to one or two sets as a menagerie of colors and sounds flash on the screen, creating an stupefyingly erotic (though not at all unpleasant) surreal experience of religious iconography. Donyale Luna gives an unforgettable performance as a bald and ethereal Salome, while John the Baptist is a venom spewing madman. The editing was a bit unpleasant at first, as few shots lasted more than a second or two, but the the rapid fire cuts grew less pronounced in the third act. It stands a decent shot at making my list.

Symphony for a Sinner (George Kuchar, 1979): After seeing this and Thundercrack! (I know that he only wrote the screenplay there) count me as 0 for 2 with Kuchar films. The film tells the story of a man who...well, to be honest with you, I'm not really sure what it was about since the audio on the rip that I watched was so bad and there were no subtitles. Given its production history and lack of restoration, I doubt it currently exists in a better form. There was occasionally something interesting up on screen, but the laughable dialogue and atrocious acting counteracted any interest that I began to hold. I realize that some of these same qualities are found in other productions that I enjoy (e.g. the films of Doris Wishman or John Waters), but they didn't move me here. Pass.

Taking Off (Milos Forman, 1971): The title of Milos Forman's American debut could refer to either Jeannie Tyne's (Linnea Heacock) runaway or the experiences of her parents Lynn and Larry (respectively Lynn Carlin and Buck Henry) as they take off from their old staid lives and learn to let their hair down in this darkly comic masterpiece. The characters are all obviously exaggerations of the archetypes that they represent, but they're sufficiently grounded to make an emotional connection possible. If for no other reason, the film is worth watching for the hilariously earnest Ode to a Screw.

That Most Important Thing: Love (Andrzej Zulawski, 1975): Since The Third Part of the Night has been one of my favorite discoveries of the project so far, I had lofty expectations for Zulawski's most famous work from the decade. Although it's far from a bad film, it comes nowhere close to the masterpiece that he began the 70s with. The film begins with Servais, a young, but unscrupulous photographer who discovers Romy Schneider's Nadine drudging through life in the softcore industry. He decides to rescue her by staging a production of Richard III with her as the female lead. But is he doing this for noble reasons or out of a selfish desire to win her from her husband (a character who seems to fit the mold of many of the posters in this forum!)? Schneider is great in her role, but Klaus Kinski's performance steals every scene he's in. I'm not sure that I can explain why, but it never completely gelled for me.

...tick... tick... tick... (Ralph Nelson, 1970): Though it never comes anywhere close to In the Heat of the Night, this story of black and white law enforcement officers (played by Jim Brown and George Kennedy) learning to work together to clean up corruption in a small Southern town works just well enough for a recommendation. Kennedy plays the outgoing sheriff in an area where African Americans outweigh the Caucasian population and give Brown's character a narrow victory in the race. The story begins on the day where powers are to be transferred and tensions run high. The whites are mad at the outgoing sheriff for conceding defeat, while some members of the black community what to use the opportunity to take revenge for past wrongs. The story never amounts to much as the town's factions have to learn to live with one another to prevent trouble makers from another town that want to break out a well to do youth who's been charged with manslaughter. Everything is solved a bit too easily, but the performances by the two leads are good enough to push it in to a positive review.

Tristana (Luis Buñuel, 1970): By my count Buñuel made three out and out masterpieces this decade. Tristana is the black sheep of the bunch, falling into the "good, but not great" category of his work. The film stars his two muses from this era, the incomparable Catherine Deneuve and Fernando Rey, playing a pair of archetypal Buñuelian characters: a lustful old man and the young ingenue that captures his attention. The interaction between the two is of the caliber that you might expect from the combination, but I never found the story as interesting as Buñuel's best work. I have to admit that I'm surprised to see this charting on the last 70s list over some clearly superior films.

Walter Defends Sarajevo (Hajrudin Krvavac, 1972): Velimir 'Bata' Zivojinovic stars as the unstopable Nazi killing partisan Valter in this WWII action film that's based on a real individual. The film sometimes plays like a second rate Army of Shadows and there's nothing too cerebral going on here, but those who enjoy a good war film will find a lot to like in it. According to the ever reliable Wikipedia, this is the all time most popular film in mainland China, with Zivojinovic having achieved a level of fame there unparalleled in his home country. There's even a Chinese beer named after Valter with his face on it! Despite the film's clear anti-fascist message, I'm shocked that a movie about freedom fighters would ever play in China.

Without Anesthesia (Andrzej Wajda, 1978): Zbigniew Zapasiewicz plays a Job-like figure whose life begins to unravel after a talk show appearance that upsets the communist apparatus in his home country. This journalist's "crime" happen to coincide with his wife's decision to leave him for her lover, taking their daughters with them. Your enjoyment of it may be best measured by how much punishment you can see one man take in his fall from grace. Like all of Wajda's films that I've seen, it's quite good, though, like many of my opinions in this dump, not in his upper tier of work. Without giving anything away, I will say that the ending struck me as particularly apt.

I think the Mekas is almost a classical tragedy as he must assume a new identity for this new land he is exiled to. The camera thus becomes not only a tool for recording, but one almost mystically of transformation. I half want to call it Cronenberg's The Tempest given what transpires in that regard. He can no longer be the revolutionary he once was and so kills the Mekas of Lithuania leaving the one who can only journey there. Through this unbearable sadness comes the optimism I love Mekas for as the camera while creating a new man also creates a strong man who through the simplicity of life is able to see the world maturely.

I suppose in its own way that makes the film an interesting contrast to Ice which I agree that while excellent is not up to the snuff of Milestones. That film almost seems '68 and the early production date suggests that it rides high off of that steam. Mekas though is older and has seen this sort of thing before really getting to the heart of the joys and failings that seem to always happen in such situations. He's probably the most honest romantic there ever was.

I submitted my list yesterday and thought that I'd share some numbers from it:

In the last round of voting I had only two directors with more than one film on my list. This time I have seven (Robert Altman, Larry Cohen, Kazuo Hara, Werner Herzog, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nicolas Roeg, Shûji Terayama).

My break down of countries is as follows:

US: 19
Japan: 7
France: 6
UK: 4
Italy: 3
Australia 2
Poland: 2
USSR: 2
West Germany: 2
Cuba: 1
Sweden: 1
Syria: 1

Going in, I thought that there'd be far fewer US titles and far more German ones, but here we are.

Films watched for the project that made my final list: 11

Films that Criterion released over their history that made my list: 14

My next top ten (51-60):

51. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
52. Perceval(Eric Rohmer)
53. Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni)
54. The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (Larry Cohen)
55. Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
56. Martha (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
57. The Medusa Touch (Jack Gold)
58. Whity (Rainer Werner Fassbiner)
59. Filming Othello (Orson Welles)
60. Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle)

Ten films that I wanted to see for the project, but couldn't locate English friendly editions:

Arcana (Giulio Questi)
Benilde or the Virgin Mother (Manoel de Oliveira)
The Disenchantment (Jaime Chávarri)
Doomed Love (Manoel de Oliveira)
Femmes, Femmes (Paul Vecchiali)
How Yukong Moved the Mountains (Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan Ivens)
Made in the USA and Germany (Rudolf Thome)
Passing Through (Larry Clark)
Shirley Thompson vs The Aliens (Jim Sharman)
The Water Carrier Has Died (Salah Abu Seif)

Generally (for future reference) it's considered kosher to do that only after voting closes.

He technically didn't mention anything that made his list. And he's probably contributed more discussion to this thread than anyone else. So I'll allow it. But yes, discussion during this last 10 days should preferably focus on last minute recommendations for any who might be eager to put the strength of their provisional top 50s to the test. That, and my annoyingly vague clues, which I will start doing as soon as I have more lists.

Ha, yeah I've been a slacker in terms of actual writing.

Hint #1: With 3 lists in, there's currently one film in the top 10 that didn't make the prior list's top 100. And two directors have 3 films each in the top 20, one American, one not.

swo17 wrote:Hint #1: With 3 lists in, there's currently one film in the top 10 that didn't make the prior list's top 100.

God bless Jacques Rivette!

Another last minute recommendation: Ludwig - Requiem for a Virgin King (Syberberg 1972): an extremely artificial re-telling of the much-filmed story of Ludwig II, King of Bavaria. Syberberg's combination of stunning tableaux-like pictures, with practically no camera movement, and some very campy scenes, which nevertheless don't distract but actually further his analysis of the public image and afterlife of the 'kitsch king', feels very much like Greenaway doing a Fassbinder film. There's even a female Richard Wagner here, alongside 'guest appearances' by Karl May and Adolf Hitler... My very first Syberberg film, so I don't feel sure on how to pin it down, but it's a very worthy companion to Visconti's version from the same year, and both films will make my list.

I also second the recommendation for Rohmer's Perceval, another very theatrical and beautiful film, probably much easier to handle than the Syberberg, though. The greatest surprise is that it comes from Rohmer, though, if you only know some of his other pictures with their endless flow of dialogue...

My apologies. I hadn't realized that I was violating any of the site's norms with my post since there were plenty of posts like mine in the last week or so before the end of the 60s list.

bamwc2 wrote:Ten films that I wanted to see for the project, but couldn't locate English friendly editions:
How Yukong Moved the Mountains (Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan Ivens)

Did you get a chance to view the portions included in Arte's English-friendly Joris Ivens set (DVD 4, 1968-1976)?

The post in contention seems very much in line with how we've always talked about our lists once we've submitted them, I don't get it unless knives scrolled down, saw listings and data and thought bamwc2 was posting his submitted Top 10 before the list ended (which IS a faux pas)

Tommaso wrote:

swo17 wrote:Hint #1: With 3 lists in, there's currently one film in the top 10 that didn't make the prior list's top 100.

God bless Jacques Rivette!

Another last minute recommendation: Ludwig - Requiem for a Virgin King (Syberberg 1972): an extremely artificial re-telling of the much-filmed story of Ludwig II, King of Bavaria. Syberberg's combination of stunning tableaux-like pictures, with practically no camera movement, and some very campy scenes, which nevertheless don't distract but actually further his analysis of the public image and afterlife of the 'kitsch king', feels very much like Greenaway doing a Fassbinder film. There's even a female Richard Wagner here, alongside 'guest appearances' by Karl May and Adolf Hitler... My very first Syberberg film, so I don't feel sure on how to pin it down, but it's a very worthy companion to Visconti's version from the same year, and both films will make my list.

I also second the recommendation for Rohmer's Perceval, another very theatrical and beautiful film, probably much easier to handle than the Syberberg, though. The greatest surprise is that it comes from Rohmer, though, if you only know some of his other pictures with their endless flow of dialogue...

I'm sure I've intermittently been looking for Ludwig for years, Tommo; even though I still haven't watched any Syberberg
(I must have a DVD of his 'Hitler' for at least 5 years now!)

I don't really care for the Visconti Ludwig, though.

matrixschmatrix wrote:After finishing Pakula's paranoia trilogy, I'm surprised to find that (for me) Klute is the best and Parallax is the least best (because it's obviously still a pretty great movie.) It may be a matter of expectations- I went in expecting Klute to be relatively weak and found a wonderfully nuanced character piece with neo noir and paranoid 70s undertones, one which has a pretty great role for a sex worker and a take on gender that feels mostly still pretty agreeable, and one that slips effortlessly into the few understated suspense pieces it has. All The President's Men is also fantastic, and is oddly somewhat more of a detective movie than Klute is- it's a movie that's mostly about following a thread, tracking things down in a way that makes sense of all the connections, so understated that it's easy to forget what an enormous deal all this is. Parallax... well, I expected to like it the best, and I think it just doesn't have the same strengths that either of the other movies do- Beatty is good and all, but the movie's not really about him (or anyone else) as a character, he's just a Hitchcockian lead designed to guide us into the heart of darkness. And it's really far more of an action movie than I had expected- maybe a majority of the movie is scenes of car chases, guys sneaking up on each other, fistfights, suspense set pieces, and so forth- they're well executed, but they didn't strike me as being especially remarkable, and I wanted throughout to skip past them to get deeper into the conspiracy. Which we do, in a fairly intriguing way, but, I don't know- for me, the movie doesn't express paranoia as well as something like The Conversation does, because Beatty's neither a particularly paranoid character nor really someone for whom paranoia would have been all that helpful, and it's not really a world of watching and surveillance and the primacy of knowing as The Conversation is.

I can't deny the power of the test sequence, though- it feels almost as though the rest of the movie is a delivery system for an avant garde piece.

It's been years since I've watched Parallax - ATPM, even longer - but I've always loved it since my first viewing on its original cinema release: I think the ending really seals the deal for me, not least

Spoiler

Beatty's moment of revelation

Beautifully structured script.

As for 'Klute': the leads are excellent, but

Spoiler

Charles Cioffi steals it for me; particularly in that 'reveal' scene

I can't remember whether I was 'allowed' go to its original cinema release; or maybe it was a 'cleaned-up' version for early 70s Irish cinema release.

'Comes A Horseman' was a massive disappointment

Not that it really matters all that much or anyone cares. But back in the 1960s list when everyone was posting their country count, while ambiguous enough for major countries, it revealed quite a bit of information about which countries weren't getting voted for, and I was able to figure out before submitting my list that my #1 slot was orphaned.

Not that it matter too much, since this is more just a fun list that no one takes too seriously, but I think we should caution a bit from posting too many types of statistics before the deadline has been reached.

I hope I'll be able to find room for these relatively recent 'discoveries'

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance
Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice
New York, New York
Fox and His Friends
Beware of a Holy Whore
The Italian Connection (di Leo)
Rabid Dogs
Nuits rouges (Franju)


as well as these old faves

Les Valseuses
Phantom of the Paradise
Remember My Name
Wanda
A New Leaf
The Harder They Come
Supervixens
Blanche (Borowczyk)
Even Dwarfs Started Small
The Late Show

might be a tight squeeze for

Bay of Blood
Hickey & Boggs

,though