i tend to gravitate to tragedy. it seems more dramatic and interesting, and yes, more realistic. and who of us in life doesnt feel that we have problems, some unsolvable?
comedy is great, but it seems more akin to fantasy. wow. does that make me a pessimist? tragedy in life seems certain, comedy a rareity.
Liem, try these GREAT movies, which are definitely not depressing:
1) Schindler’s List
2) Kramer vs. Kramer
3) Life is Beautiful
4) Sophie’s Choice
5) Days of Heaven
oh, wait, wrong list, sorry, try this one:
1) Tootsie
2) As Good As It Gets
3) Rocky
4) Marty
5) Unfaithfully Yours
All you have to do is think of some movies that are generally brighter, happier, and equally great.
Toy Story — a great film no matter how you slice it.
Star Wars, Ep 3. Anyone who finds any melancholy in it oughta have something examined because that person is just looking to be depressed.
L.A. Confidential. Okay it’s a mix of the bad and the good in human nature, but…I can’t say anymore without spoiling.
Shakespeare in Love — irrepressibly high spirited with, yeah, some melancholy thrown in.
Airplane! I’ll take this over any Woody Allen hand-wringing any day.
The bleakest films are steeped in what Tennessee Williams’ Big Daddy decries as “mendacity.” And the presence or absence, say, of sex or violence needn’t even come into it: for me, each Pixar feature is just about the bleakest, most mendacious specimen out there. Alanedit cited Wall-E as an example of a movie that bore its serious critique lightly; whereas for me the spectacle of the fat, degenerate, post-literate and thoroughly corporatized human race returning like a plague to Earth only to foul it again made the film far bleaker than Mike Judge’s all-too-true Idiocracy.
There’s definately a bias in Western asthetics in favor or tragedy over comedy. Going back to the Ancient Greeks comedy was not treated in the same manner as the “goat-song.”
Great unbleak films:
Amelie (I think it’s brilliant, if you think it’s shallow, well, that’s just you…)
Time Bandits (ok it’s for kids but still)
Strangelove isn’t bleak
Zelig
Delicatessen
Lawrence of Arabia
33 short films about Glenn Gould
The Vigo films as mentioned above
Renoir’s Rules of the Game
Masculin/Feminin (ok, maybe kind of a downer)
8 1/2
Real life is depressing… not art.
I think Bergman’s largely lyrical and joyful Summer with Monika is let down by its bleakness- as if he felt angst was necessarily deeper, and i even wondered if there was even an element of self-loathing or cynicism. Great films can deal with all sorts of emotions; whether there’s a huge range within one film, or a film is placed at a point on the bleak-joyful continuum. My favourites are a bit of a mix (some sprightly, some romantic, some exciting, some dark, some poignant, some contemplative, some wondrous, some with a whole welter of moods- for instance Sunrise)
Preston Sturges’ THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK I find great and is not depressing. Neither is AMELIE, which I also think is great,
“le vieil homme et L’enfant” by Berri has sad moments in it but overall quite funny and touching.
Also I don’t consider “the bicycle thieves” to be a dark movie at all. The ending where the boy takes the dad by the hand is one of the most touching moments on screen
…Annie Hall isn’t very bleak. depressing, maybe, but not bleak.
…Dr. Strangelove isn’t very depressing. bleak, definately, but not depressing.
Spies Like Us is neither bleak OR depressing. but its a terrible movie…
Pulp Fiction isn’t bleak or depressing, AND in spite of many of your opinions, is a great movie.
2001 isn’t bleak, depressing, nor does it make sense, but is a great movie…i think.
I’m surprised this discussion is still going on. Is it really that hard to conceive of art that is both humorous and insightful? I’ll start proving my argument with literature:
Don Quixote
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the the rest of Shakespeare
Tartuffe, The Misanthrope
Tom Jones
Kafka
Portnoy’s Complaint
I could go on.
As for film (who here really needs this list?):
Duck Soup
Annie Hall
Sullivan’s Travels
M. Hulot’s Holiday
Dr. Strangelove
Again, the list could go on, and if you don’t consider anything on those lists to be great art, well, you’re beyond the point of being helped (the same applies if you don’t find life humorous as well (I’m looking in your direction Bobby Wise)). Humor is a complex and fairly recent invention (Rabelais and Cervantes are the true fathers of modern humor) but even before that we had Chaucer, Boccaccio, and a slew of satirists among the ancients.
If you want a good argument for the depth and value of humor, you’ll find an excellent one in Milan Kundera’s essay The Curtain as well as in another of his essays, Testaments Betrayed, which I won’t go to the trouble of summing up here (he puts it much better, obviously).
Like I said before, humorlessness is only a criterion for great art if you’re 16 years old.
I don’t think it’s a direct relation with depressing the audience or being a sad film. Not all great films are depressing either. But for those great ones that are a little bit tear jerking it tends to be because they break the mold and come out as something completely different and above their genre. For example, Casablanca. It’s a romantic drama, the usual ending is, boy wins over girl and they live happily ever after. Casablanca didn’t end on as much of an up beat note. Same sort of thing with Gone With the Wind, they’re the first to really be that big and that bold. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is another similar case.
Another approach to the situation is that its easier to depress an audience then it is to woo them in another fashion. “Great films” are great because of how they control our emotions. A film maker will have an easier time to move the viewer’s emotions around to sadness then to joy. Think Schindler’s List. It is an incredible picture and it is constantly pulling you down to a sadder and more shocking place.
If you’ve read this far you’re probably going to think that comedy is an easier way to pull the audience around. And it’s true that anything can make some one laugh. Anchorman, people laugh at that! Why isn’t it a cinema classic, it pulls you around? A simple answer is that it’s all slapstick style, its nothing new. Chaplin was the last one to bring anything of that sort to the table.
To be considered a great cinema classic, a picture needs to be well made obviously and needs to offer something new and refreshing to the mix. It needs to bring something into the genre and in turn the genre needs to take from it to prove its worthiness.
Often times a sad story is a compelling way to do that.
despair makes for some great films
No, great movies don’t have to be bleak or depressing. But it’s a perception thing. One person’s depressed ending can be another person’s uplifting ending.
In Annie Hall and Casablanca the male lead loses the girl at the end. Yet the male characters and the audience learn and grow from the experience. That’s uplifting.
Clockwork Orange is a great movie that is funny and thought provoking.
Airplane! and Kentucky Fried Movie are classic. I don’t care who you are, but them movies is funny.
Formerly Biberkopf here. Back under my real name.
There’s a difference between movies that are alienated/bleak/depressing because the auteur has fully digested a world view or philosophy which leads to alienation and movies that are casually or superficially “dark.” In the first category, much Bergman, much Fassbinder, much Bela Tarr, some Tarkovsky (but not Rublev which is life-affirming - Solaris which is pessimistic); in the second category, Gaspar Noe, much David Fincher, much Dumont, etc. Movies that truck in pessimism without a philosophical or historical underpinning are essentially bourgeois — and way more depressing, in actuality, than the movies that shoot from the hip about the evils of the world and see things in a clear-eyed light.
What intrigues me is how a filmmaker has his characters handle bleakness. In Bergman, people often collapse into paralyzed insanity. In Godard, they turn violent. I tend to believe more in the Godardian thesis, sensitivity leading to aggression (as Freud believed), and I think it ultimately makes for more gripping cinema. More cinematic cinema.
“As long as movies are depressing, life isn’t.” — Fassbinder
The Princess Bride is a fine example, in my opinion. Also, Airplane!
Is “The Princess Bride” that depressing and bleak?
That has to be a joke…
“Do great films have to be depressing and bleak to be great?”
Trick question.
“great films” are already “great”.
Ah, no…I meant films that aren’t depressing and bleak that are still great. Sorry.
No..films by the Monty Python are great…they keep you laughing all the time.
No..films by the Monty Python are great…they keep you laughing all the time.
this makes no sense. It would be really sad if people made their films depressing so that people would view their films as “great”
Justin Biberkopf
No one puts Baby in a corner, eh Johnny?