I should add that one of my favourite film books is Flickers by Gilbert Adair, in which he chooses the film Rope to represent the 2 pages for 1948, and his sentences playfully reflect that.
I admire Russian Ark and it was certainly a prodigious achievement- critic/writer Mark Cousins, who knows his stuff, rates it among the greatest- but i haven’t had any real emotional connection with it, and its impact has faded for me
Ah that’s great, and glad to have someone else here interested in Mizo. Oharu is one that’s grown on me with each viewing. I know Tales of the Taira Clan isn’t usually ranked among his elite, though critic John Gillett did once call it the best of all films, and it hits the right spots withe me- for its jewel-like colours, costumes, historical colour, its credible and deft handling of the issue of identity confusion (it puts say Secrets and Lies to shame), its lovely little romance, its upbeat sense of destiny (though anyone familiar with Japanese history or who’s seen Kwaidan will see an irony in the final scene), and a few superb scenes such as the monks’ torchlit forest procression that struck me as somehow familiar, though whether from a dream i’m not sure. Chikamatsu was Kurosawa’s favourite by Mizo; i saw that in Cardiff when there was a very successful, (at the NFT in London record-breaking) Mizo season in 1998 for the centenary of his birth. of course it’s excellent, some of the outdoor scenes are especially beautiful and memorable but there were a few moments when a hysterical melodramatic edge grated a little and the performance of male lead Hasegawa didn’t really suit me- well, he really wasn’t quite good enough for my beloved Kyoko Kagawa, but then who is?
Well, Andrei Rublev, Mirror and Stalker are his greatest masterpieces, imo. Or you could see the (feature) films chronologically. As a starter, Ivan’s Childhood is accessible and rewarding, though perhaps less typical of the full blown mesmerising Tarkovsky of his other films. Tarkovsky isn’t for everyone; some find him too slow and pretentious. Balancing out risks and rewards, i’d say go for Andrei Rublev.
Andrei Rublev was the first i saw by Tarkovsky and it made an enormous impression on me, its length didn’t bother me, but yes for some it could be a a drawback, so i agree Stalker would be probably the best alternative
Bobby, you asked which director could top Hitch’s filmography (which i agree is marvellous). Well, here’s my Hitch v Mizoguchi face-off, with the goodies in preferential order. Of course that’s just my taste.
Sansho the Bailiff (M)
North by Northwest (H)
Vertigo (H)
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (M)
The Life of Oharu (M)
Tales of the Taira Clan (M)
Ugetsu (M)
Miss Oyu (M)
Marnie (H)
The 39 Steps (H)
Rear Window (H)
Notorious (H)
The Loyal 47 Ronin (M)
Osaka Elegy (M)
Rebecca (H)
A Geisha (M)
Lady of Musashino (M)
The Water Magician (M)
Chikamatsu Monogatari (M)
The Woman of Rumour (M)
Sisters of the Gion (M)
Street of Shame (M)
The Birds (H)
Psycho (H)
Blackmail (H)
Women of the Night (M)
Foreign Correspondent (H)
Shadow of a Doubt (H)
Yang Kwei Fei (M)
The Lady Vanishes (H)
Strangers on a Train (H)
Five Women around Utamaro (M)
Suspicion (H)
The Lodger (H)
(and i’ve seen more Hitch than Mizo, would expect a few more by the Japanese master would make the list- and then most of his films are lost!)
1.Mirror (Tarkovsky)
2.Alice in the Cities (Wenders)
3.Celine and Julie go Boating (Rivette)
4.Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
5.Tale of Tales (Norstein)
6.Stalker (Tarkovsky)
7.Claire’s Knee (Rohmer)
8.Kings of the Road (Wenders)
9.Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
10.=Manhattan (Allen)
Aguirre Wrath of God (Herzog)
Alice in the Cities is a lovely little German road movie, when director Wenders was setting out as king of the road, about a girl left alone and befriended at the airport by a photojournalist returning from the US. This has some plot similarities with Salles’ Central Station in Brazil, but Alice wins hands down (helped along by young Yella Rottlander).
Spirit of the Beehive, surely the finest from Spain, has an even more wonderful performance by a child, Anna Torrent, who becomes obsessed with Frankenstein’s monster after a screening of the classic film in her village. Intimate, mysterious, charming and magical
I don’t think there’s any doubting he’s among the very greatest, but David Thomson made an interesting point comparing him (and other careful controllers and pre-planners like Kubrick) with directors who allow for more looseness and improvisation (Rivette was an example): there’s something to be said for unexpected moments of poetry that can emerge naturally with a lighter touch. But all credit to Hitch for pleasing public and critics alike, with such command of the medium, and with his own (often imitated but never bettered) style.
“a cultural omnivore who eats with his mouth open” Pauline Kael called him.
Painting (esp Vermeer), multi-media, intellect over emotion, nudity, decay, symmetry, games, numbers, lush colours, loaded screen; a very European, Anglo-Welsh, Dutch-based knowledge gatherer, ploughing his own furrow, pushing back the boundaries of different art forms with little concern for public taste or popularity, maybe arrogant (“his head has gone to his head” it’s been said of him).
I’ve had very mixed reactions to his films, did like The Draughtsman’s Contract, The Cook the Thief his Wife and her Lover, and Prospero’s Books. As a great fan of Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book i was very disappointed with the film. His love of lists and intellectualising overwhelms her poetic love of nature. Several others fell flat and it’s often difficult to assess how deep his intellectual games really go. He’s set himself above the common herd.
brain has gone to his head, i meant. Oh and he also likes oddballs, deformities, things that disgust or shock an audience. He’s a great admirer of Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, and i imagine he must also have been very attracted by Resnais’ Toute la Mémoire du Monde, with its elegant camera moves set in the French national library, with its labyrinth of floors, its careful numbering, organisation and incredible collection. The fluid horizontal camerawork in The Cook, Thief.. owes a lot to Resnais i think, and of course Greenaway used cinematographer Sacha Vierny. Prospero was always an ideal subject for him- and Shakespeare’s Prospero himself was most likely based on the eccentric John Dee, Anglo-Welsh Elizabethan court astronomer, mathematician, alchemist with the largest collection of books in Britain at the time
The Russian Tale of Tales is the most wonderful animation yet made, and fully deserved to win the animation all-time Olympics in 1984. Luminous, charming, wistful and beautiful, with an amiable wolf observing human life
Mulholland Dr
Singin in the Rain
Man with a Movie Camera
8 1/2
Sunset Boulevard
Close Up
Paper Flowers
Contempt
Irma Vep
Bubbling under; not forgetting Journey to the Beginning of the World (Oliveira) which starts at my favourite little spot in the world, and I enjoyed the Taviani bros’ Good Morning Babylon
Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet
Max Schreck in Nosferatu
Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter
Eitaro Shindo in Sansho the Bailiff
Henry Fonda in Once upon a Time in the West
Klaus Kinski in Aguirre Wrath of God
Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs
Louise Fletcher in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
likeable mass-murderer; Dennis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets
Basil Rathbone was a pretty good villain
but who would ever have expected Michael Palin in Brazil?
A title and a film to cherish. The fifth in Rohmer’s series of six Moral Tales, Claire’s Knee covers a month of full summer at Lake Annecy in the French Alps. Away from his rather severe-looking fiancée, a 35 year-old diplomat (Jean-Claude Brialy) encounters a female Romanian novelist friend (played by the writer herself, Aurora Cornu), who encourages him to flirt with an amiable teenage girl at whose lakeside home she is staying. When his attentions divert to the pretty but disinterested 17 year-old step-sister, he fixates on the eponymous feature.
As in his previous, equally assured masterpiece My Night with Maud- indeed, as throughout a prolific and consistent career spanning the six decades since he and fellow “Cahiers du Cinema” critics Godard, Truffaut and other New Wave stalwarts turned director – Claire’s Knee is a lucid analysis of temptation, moral choices and the fine details of relationships, all delivered with a gosssamer dexterity.
Where Maud’s crisp black and white was instilled with a cool wintry precision, Claire’s Knee captures the essence of summer with the agile grace of a swallow. Cinematographer on both films, Nestor Almendros delights in the warmth of the season, the lush vegetation and the gorgeous blues and greens of the setting, which once captivated the painter Cezanne.
A typically deft and wholly cinematic Rohmerian blend of insightful observation, generous humanism, delicate visual touches and sophisticated dialogue (though the director’s sophistication invariably exceeds that of his characters), the film gently punctures the protagonist’s tendency to condescension by exposing to the viewer realities of which he is blithely unaware. The concentrated eroticism of the moment when he caresses the specific object of his desire is astonishing for both its circumstances and also an understatement which shames Hollywood’s ludicrous grandstanding.
Filled with deeply satisfying sensual and intellectual pleasures, Claire’s Knee has retained all its charm and freshness; as seemingly ageless as its ever-youthful creator.
Theo Angelopoulos may be the greatest living director, a master of the long take and choreography. His slow pacing and seriousness count against his being better known and appreciated; he’s an uncompromising prophet in the wilderness.
Acknowledged influences; Mizoguchi and Welles. His use of space and architecture has been compared to Antonioni.
There are references to Greek history in his work (e.g The Travelling Players), the odyssey or journey is common to his films, wandering, refugees, the sea, processions, family gatherings, (the choreography, slow movements even relate to musicals), memories, fluid time changes, (a group will sometimes move from one shot to another in the same place with a jump in time), leftist politics, poetry, bleak wintry Greece contrasting with the sunny tourist image.
Eternity and a Day deservedly won at Cannes, i found it very moving, which is not always the case with Angelopoulos, and Ulysses’ Caze is a great masterpiece too. He was (rightly) annoyed it lost out to Underground for the 1995 Palme d’Or
The music of Eleni Karaindrou and the cinematography of Arvanitis, Angelopoulos regulars, are magnificent
I would recommend David Bordwell’s book Figures Traced in Light, which devotes a detailed chapter to him, and also the book of collected essays The Last Modernist. .
ah i can understand your groupings Genaro- your top 3, along with Oharu, were all in the top 100 in the last Sight and Sound Critics’ poll. Miss Oyu is a small film but i think it’s lovely; like Taira Clan it appeals to me more than most. The ending reminded me of a scene in Sunrise (though of course Sunrise is much greater). I’ve probably underrated Sisters of the Gion; i’ve only seen it once, my video of it is kaputt. Good to have your input and appreciation
it’s strange, the 70s are widely considered a great American decade (with the famous moviebrats, the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls era), but i prefer the 50s for American cinema. No doubt just a personal thing. Of course the 70s was certainly a golden age compared with the complacent wilderness of the 80s.
Angelopoulos’ top 10 for Sight and Sound poll 2002:
Citizen Kane (Welles)
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein)
Ordet (Dreyer)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Nosferatu (Murnau)
L’Avventura (Antonioni)
The Gold Rush (Chaplin)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
Pickpocket (Bresson)
Persona (Bergman)
Yeah it’s true that although Bonnie and Clyde is still well-known he’s slipped from the general consciousness, but was pretty important at the time. And i like Little Big Man, a corrective to the usual representation of the West. I saw his 60s film The Chase with Brando when i was young and that impressed me, though my memories are very limited now. Night Moves is excellent.
well, imdb is the main site and so i suppose represents the general filmgoing public (though still, being the net, tending to younger age group), and Hollywood blockbusters appeal to lots of people more than one of Fellini’s best. Well, it’s frustrating of course that world cinema is so overlooked, many popular film sites and TV Channels hardly have any space for it at all.
Dan, i don’t know about Genaro, but Street of Shame struck me as much rougher round the edges than i’d expected compared with the refined beauty of Sansho i’d come to love. But second time round- and this was the same with The Woman of Rumour- i could appreciate it more on its own terms. What a brilliant scene where Machiko Kyo is lambasting her hypocritical dad, and what an extraordinary shot to end a great career on. The music in the film is very strange, almost like some cheap sci-fi flying saucers type film. Women of the Night has a similar toughness, with moments of hysteria (which may be off-putting to some, i’m in 2 minds), Tadao Sato rates it among Mizo’s very best.
The Western: Ford or Leone about 4 years ago
Useful comments too, Musycks. I saw Prisoner of Shark Island years ago and enjoyed it,, but i would really need to see it again, refresh my memory.
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Russian Ark, is it cinema or just a long, dull home movie? about 4 years ago
I should add that one of my favourite film books is Flickers by Gilbert Adair, in which he chooses the film Rope to represent the 2 pages for 1948, and his sentences playfully reflect that.
I admire Russian Ark and it was certainly a prodigious achievement- critic/writer Mark Cousins, who knows his stuff, rates it among the greatest- but i haven’t had any real emotional connection with it, and its impact has faded for me
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Top 5 (or rating) Mizoguchi about 4 years ago
Ah that’s great, and glad to have someone else here interested in Mizo. Oharu is one that’s grown on me with each viewing. I know Tales of the Taira Clan isn’t usually ranked among his elite, though critic John Gillett did once call it the best of all films, and it hits the right spots withe me- for its jewel-like colours, costumes, historical colour, its credible and deft handling of the issue of identity confusion (it puts say Secrets and Lies to shame), its lovely little romance, its upbeat sense of destiny (though anyone familiar with Japanese history or who’s seen Kwaidan will see an irony in the final scene), and a few superb scenes such as the monks’ torchlit forest procression that struck me as somehow familiar, though whether from a dream i’m not sure. Chikamatsu was Kurosawa’s favourite by Mizo; i saw that in Cardiff when there was a very successful, (at the NFT in London record-breaking) Mizo season in 1998 for the centenary of his birth. of course it’s excellent, some of the outdoor scenes are especially beautiful and memorable but there were a few moments when a hysterical melodramatic edge grated a little and the performance of male lead Hasegawa didn’t really suit me- well, he really wasn’t quite good enough for my beloved Kyoko Kagawa, but then who is?
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andrei tarkovsky about 4 years ago
Well, Andrei Rublev, Mirror and Stalker are his greatest masterpieces, imo. Or you could see the (feature) films chronologically. As a starter, Ivan’s Childhood is accessible and rewarding, though perhaps less typical of the full blown mesmerising Tarkovsky of his other films. Tarkovsky isn’t for everyone; some find him too slow and pretentious. Balancing out risks and rewards, i’d say go for Andrei Rublev.
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andrei tarkovsky about 4 years ago
Andrei Rublev was the first i saw by Tarkovsky and it made an enormous impression on me, its length didn’t bother me, but yes for some it could be a a drawback, so i agree Stalker would be probably the best alternative
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HITCHCOCK about 4 years ago
Bobby, you asked which director could top Hitch’s filmography (which i agree is marvellous). Well, here’s my Hitch v Mizoguchi face-off, with the goodies in preferential order. Of course that’s just my taste.
Sansho the Bailiff (M)
North by Northwest (H)
Vertigo (H)
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (M)
The Life of Oharu (M)
Tales of the Taira Clan (M)
Ugetsu (M)
Miss Oyu (M)
Marnie (H)
The 39 Steps (H)
Rear Window (H)
Notorious (H)
The Loyal 47 Ronin (M)
Osaka Elegy (M)
Rebecca (H)
A Geisha (M)
Lady of Musashino (M)
The Water Magician (M)
Chikamatsu Monogatari (M)
The Woman of Rumour (M)
Sisters of the Gion (M)
Street of Shame (M)
The Birds (H)
Psycho (H)
Blackmail (H)
Women of the Night (M)
Foreign Correspondent (H)
Shadow of a Doubt (H)
Yang Kwei Fei (M)
The Lady Vanishes (H)
Strangers on a Train (H)
Five Women around Utamaro (M)
Suspicion (H)
The Lodger (H)
(and i’ve seen more Hitch than Mizo, would expect a few more by the Japanese master would make the list- and then most of his films are lost!)
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
1.Mirror (Tarkovsky)
2.Alice in the Cities (Wenders)
3.Celine and Julie go Boating (Rivette)
4.Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
5.Tale of Tales (Norstein)
6.Stalker (Tarkovsky)
7.Claire’s Knee (Rohmer)
8.Kings of the Road (Wenders)
9.Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
10.=Manhattan (Allen)
Aguirre Wrath of God (Herzog)
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
Alice in the Cities is a lovely little German road movie, when director Wenders was setting out as king of the road, about a girl left alone and befriended at the airport by a photojournalist returning from the US. This has some plot similarities with Salles’ Central Station in Brazil, but Alice wins hands down (helped along by young Yella Rottlander).
Spirit of the Beehive, surely the finest from Spain, has an even more wonderful performance by a child, Anna Torrent, who becomes obsessed with Frankenstein’s monster after a screening of the classic film in her village. Intimate, mysterious, charming and magical
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HITCHCOCK about 4 years ago
I don’t think there’s any doubting he’s among the very greatest, but David Thomson made an interesting point comparing him (and other careful controllers and pre-planners like Kubrick) with directors who allow for more looseness and improvisation (Rivette was an example): there’s something to be said for unexpected moments of poetry that can emerge naturally with a lighter touch. But all credit to Hitch for pleasing public and critics alike, with such command of the medium, and with his own (often imitated but never bettered) style.
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
scratching the surface, ha; we only have one film in common and that barely scraped in at my #10!
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Peter Greenaway about 4 years ago
“a cultural omnivore who eats with his mouth open” Pauline Kael called him.
Painting (esp Vermeer), multi-media, intellect over emotion, nudity, decay, symmetry, games, numbers, lush colours, loaded screen; a very European, Anglo-Welsh, Dutch-based knowledge gatherer, ploughing his own furrow, pushing back the boundaries of different art forms with little concern for public taste or popularity, maybe arrogant (“his head has gone to his head” it’s been said of him).
I’ve had very mixed reactions to his films, did like The Draughtsman’s Contract, The Cook the Thief his Wife and her Lover, and Prospero’s Books. As a great fan of Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book i was very disappointed with the film. His love of lists and intellectualising overwhelms her poetic love of nature. Several others fell flat and it’s often difficult to assess how deep his intellectual games really go. He’s set himself above the common herd.
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Peter Greenaway about 4 years ago
brain has gone to his head, i meant. Oh and he also likes oddballs, deformities, things that disgust or shock an audience. He’s a great admirer of Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, and i imagine he must also have been very attracted by Resnais’ Toute la Mémoire du Monde, with its elegant camera moves set in the French national library, with its labyrinth of floors, its careful numbering, organisation and incredible collection. The fluid horizontal camerawork in The Cook, Thief.. owes a lot to Resnais i think, and of course Greenaway used cinematographer Sacha Vierny. Prospero was always an ideal subject for him- and Shakespeare’s Prospero himself was most likely based on the eccentric John Dee, Anglo-Welsh Elizabethan court astronomer, mathematician, alchemist with the largest collection of books in Britain at the time
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
The Russian Tale of Tales is the most wonderful animation yet made, and fully deserved to win the animation all-time Olympics in 1984. Luminous, charming, wistful and beautiful, with an amiable wolf observing human life
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Best Film About Film? about 4 years ago
Mulholland Dr
Singin in the Rain
Man with a Movie Camera
8 1/2
Sunset Boulevard
Close Up
Paper Flowers
Contempt
Irma Vep
Bubbling under; not forgetting Journey to the Beginning of the World (Oliveira) which starts at my favourite little spot in the world, and I enjoyed the Taviani bros’ Good Morning Babylon
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Best Movie Villain about 4 years ago
well, hats off to
Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet
Max Schreck in Nosferatu
Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter
Eitaro Shindo in Sansho the Bailiff
Henry Fonda in Once upon a Time in the West
Klaus Kinski in Aguirre Wrath of God
Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs
Louise Fletcher in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
likeable mass-murderer; Dennis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets
Basil Rathbone was a pretty good villain
but who would ever have expected Michael Palin in Brazil?
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
CLAIRE’S KNEE
A title and a film to cherish. The fifth in Rohmer’s series of six Moral Tales, Claire’s Knee covers a month of full summer at Lake Annecy in the French Alps. Away from his rather severe-looking fiancée, a 35 year-old diplomat (Jean-Claude Brialy) encounters a female Romanian novelist friend (played by the writer herself, Aurora Cornu), who encourages him to flirt with an amiable teenage girl at whose lakeside home she is staying. When his attentions divert to the pretty but disinterested 17 year-old step-sister, he fixates on the eponymous feature.
As in his previous, equally assured masterpiece My Night with Maud- indeed, as throughout a prolific and consistent career spanning the six decades since he and fellow “Cahiers du Cinema” critics Godard, Truffaut and other New Wave stalwarts turned director – Claire’s Knee is a lucid analysis of temptation, moral choices and the fine details of relationships, all delivered with a gosssamer dexterity.
Where Maud’s crisp black and white was instilled with a cool wintry precision, Claire’s Knee captures the essence of summer with the agile grace of a swallow. Cinematographer on both films, Nestor Almendros delights in the warmth of the season, the lush vegetation and the gorgeous blues and greens of the setting, which once captivated the painter Cezanne.
A typically deft and wholly cinematic Rohmerian blend of insightful observation, generous humanism, delicate visual touches and sophisticated dialogue (though the director’s sophistication invariably exceeds that of his characters), the film gently punctures the protagonist’s tendency to condescension by exposing to the viewer realities of which he is blithely unaware. The concentrated eroticism of the moment when he caresses the specific object of his desire is astonishing for both its circumstances and also an understatement which shames Hollywood’s ludicrous grandstanding.
Filled with deeply satisfying sensual and intellectual pleasures, Claire’s Knee has retained all its charm and freshness; as seemingly ageless as its ever-youthful creator.
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Help make The Auteurs totally awesome about 4 years ago
The friend invite mechanism isn’t available at present
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3 Favourite Movies From 5 Favourite Directors about 4 years ago
MIZOGUCHI
Sansho the Bailiff
Tales of the Taira Clan
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums/The Life of Oharu
TARKOVSKY
Mirror
Andrei Rublev
Stalker
RENOIR
Rules of the Game
A Day in the Country
Grand Illusion/The River
OZU
Late Spring
Tokyo Story
The End of Summer
HITCHCOCK
North by Northwest
Vertigo
Marnie
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Help make The Auteurs totally awesome about 4 years ago
er, so now i simply click on Follow as a friend invite?
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
Well, it seems American films are dominating these lists
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Landscape In The Mist about 4 years ago
Theo Angelopoulos may be the greatest living director, a master of the long take and choreography. His slow pacing and seriousness count against his being better known and appreciated; he’s an uncompromising prophet in the wilderness.
Acknowledged influences; Mizoguchi and Welles. His use of space and architecture has been compared to Antonioni.
There are references to Greek history in his work (e.g The Travelling Players), the odyssey or journey is common to his films, wandering, refugees, the sea, processions, family gatherings, (the choreography, slow movements even relate to musicals), memories, fluid time changes, (a group will sometimes move from one shot to another in the same place with a jump in time), leftist politics, poetry, bleak wintry Greece contrasting with the sunny tourist image.
Eternity and a Day deservedly won at Cannes, i found it very moving, which is not always the case with Angelopoulos, and Ulysses’ Caze is a great masterpiece too. He was (rightly) annoyed it lost out to Underground for the 1995 Palme d’Or
The music of Eleni Karaindrou and the cinematography of Arvanitis, Angelopoulos regulars, are magnificent
I would recommend David Bordwell’s book Figures Traced in Light, which devotes a detailed chapter to him, and also the book of collected essays The Last Modernist. .
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Top 5 (or rating) Mizoguchi about 4 years ago
ah i can understand your groupings Genaro- your top 3, along with Oharu, were all in the top 100 in the last Sight and Sound Critics’ poll. Miss Oyu is a small film but i think it’s lovely; like Taira Clan it appeals to me more than most. The ending reminded me of a scene in Sunrise (though of course Sunrise is much greater). I’ve probably underrated Sisters of the Gion; i’ve only seen it once, my video of it is kaputt. Good to have your input and appreciation
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
it’s strange, the 70s are widely considered a great American decade (with the famous moviebrats, the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls era), but i prefer the 50s for American cinema. No doubt just a personal thing. Of course the 70s was certainly a golden age compared with the complacent wilderness of the 80s.
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Landscape In The Mist about 4 years ago
Angelopoulos’ top 10 for Sight and Sound poll 2002:
Citizen Kane (Welles)
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein)
Ordet (Dreyer)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Nosferatu (Murnau)
L’Avventura (Antonioni)
The Gold Rush (Chaplin)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
Pickpocket (Bresson)
Persona (Bergman)
nothing since 1966
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TOP 10 FILMS OF THE 70'S about 4 years ago
Yeah it’s true that although Bonnie and Clyde is still well-known he’s slipped from the general consciousness, but was pretty important at the time. And i like Little Big Man, a corrective to the usual representation of the West. I saw his 60s film The Chase with Brando when i was young and that impressed me, though my memories are very limited now. Night Moves is excellent.
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imdb: full of pricks and assholes about 4 years ago
well, imdb is the main site and so i suppose represents the general filmgoing public (though still, being the net, tending to younger age group), and Hollywood blockbusters appeal to lots of people more than one of Fellini’s best. Well, it’s frustrating of course that world cinema is so overlooked, many popular film sites and TV Channels hardly have any space for it at all.
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Top 5 (or rating) Mizoguchi about 4 years ago
Dan, i don’t know about Genaro, but Street of Shame struck me as much rougher round the edges than i’d expected compared with the refined beauty of Sansho i’d come to love. But second time round- and this was the same with The Woman of Rumour- i could appreciate it more on its own terms. What a brilliant scene where Machiko Kyo is lambasting her hypocritical dad, and what an extraordinary shot to end a great career on. The music in the film is very strange, almost like some cheap sci-fi flying saucers type film. Women of the Night has a similar toughness, with moments of hysteria (which may be off-putting to some, i’m in 2 minds), Tadao Sato rates it among Mizo’s very best.
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Best Movie Villain about 4 years ago
Oh yes that priest is awful. I blame Haneke for the boys in Funny Games
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imdb: full of pricks and assholes about 4 years ago
The Classic Films board there has a group of knowledgeable people though
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imdb: full of pricks and assholes about 4 years ago
Yeah, all those hundreds of thousands of people giving Dark Knight an average score of round about 9! (or was when i last looked)
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