The first film that changed my view of cinema was Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation”. Maybe it was because i was finally old enough to choose my own movies and i came of age, so to speak. Then i fell in love with Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” and Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” After that i discovered indie movies, David Lynch, Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Bergman, Fellini, etc… I’ve never looked back since.
Zoom by Michael Snow
Mishima when I was about 15
I took an intro to film studies class in university, simply as a way to get my fine art credits. I skipped practically the whole first semester ( I have to admit I really didn’t care so much for the silent films), and for some reason started attending just in time for the section on French Film … It could have been The Grande Illusion, The 400 Blows, Breathless, or Cleo from 5 to 7… but I’m pretty positive it was A Man Escaped … yup, I’m pretty sure that was the film that made me switch my major to film studies. By the time we got to Chantal Akerman’s Toute une Nuit at the end of the year, I was hooked. I always loved movies, but A Man Escaped and Toute une Nuit tought me to love a different kind of filmmaking, film as an art form. And then the next year, it was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Gods of the Plague (just when I thought I knew what filmmaking could be, I realized it could be so much more)… and then, a couple years later, Theo Angelopoulos’s The Travelling Players moved me in ways I didn’t think was possible… it never ceases to amaze me, just when I think I can’t be moved more by a film, something else comes along :-) Sometimes I think that every film I watch changes the way I look at cinema… in any case, the list is long.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover – for feeling like a violent, elegant dream
2001: A Space Odyssey – for utilizing the pace of space
F for Fake – for innovation at every turn
Lawrence of Arabia – for its definition of epic scope
Satyricon – like a fiendish fever dream…
Solaris – 2001’s antithesis, the pace of the human heart
Particularly F for Fake. I really felt it made excellent use of the way ideas can be expressed through the medium.
No film has had more effect on my life than A Woman Under the Influence. It’s impact on my own films, the way I look at and judge other films, and what I see as possible in terms of cinema is undefinable. It changed my life if for no other reason than I found the path for my voice as a director after watching that film.
ooo… Brian I agree… “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” is breathtaking!
But for me, it always comes back to one film which is Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Trois Couleurs: Bleu”
It taught me how to write compelling characters without having to give up their internal conflicts or irrational behaviors.
Julia – “A Man Escaped” might be mine as well. By the time I reached Bresson, I’d already seen loads of films, but when I finished that one, I just sat for a while, unable to understand or express what I’d just seen. I guess I could point to a number of others, so heres a small list.
A Man Escaped
Black Narcissus
Adaptation
The Man With the Movie Camera
Crank 2. Total disregard for any rules of filmmaking. If it looks good/is funny… do it. Crank 2 is like the Citizen Kane of the Over the Top Action Movie Genre. Should be viewed as revolutionary as T2 was for action movies back in 91. Crank 2 isnt a movie. It isnt a film. Its a ride. Get on. Enjoy. Its all on purpose and its all for your entertainment!
But the first movie that opened my eyes to film as film was Reservoir Dogs. After that movie I decided to dedicate my life to films and luckily QT told me all the good ones to watch. RD was like the gateway film to my addiction.
STAR WARS, first of all. I saw it as a kid on the big screen and it was all I expected it to be.
Later, when I was 8 or 9, ORDINARY PEOPLE made a strong impression on me.
Then, as a 16-year-old adolescent in love with ’serious" cinema, I saw LA STRADA and THE SEVENTH SEAL as a way of giving “foreign films” a shot… and nothing was ever the same.
Bergman outdid the previous experience when I saw PERSONA and was totally blown away both consciously and subconsciously.
Soon after, AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, the first Herzog I saw (without any real enthusiasm). I think that right there and then I “got” Herzog without knowing exactly what was it I was “getting”. What I read later about him confirmed that I was on the right track.
I’d have to go with Star Wars. That changed my life.
A double feature of Eraserhead and Night of the Living Dead. I realized that anything goes…seeing that bill made me change the way I thought about movies. They were the first movies I saw in a repertory theater and have not looked back since
A Clockwork Orange, absolutely. I was a freshman in high school and had no idea movies could ever be anything like that. My brain was so malleable that I really really wanted to BE Alex. To talk like him, to dress like him. I completely understand why the film caused so many riots.
During my freshman year of College I took a World Cinema class and got to watch the films 8 1/2 by Fellini and Pixote by Hector Babenco. I knew there was something very exciting about the images being projected on the screen.
It sounds kind of stereotypical but for me it was Fight Club. I snuck into that movie when I was 17 and it was the first time that I thought that a movie could be more than just entertainment. It opened the door for me to change my tastes and consume other kinds of movies.
It s very interesting, color of everyone, feelings of everyone.
I like high on the top of Mulholland Drive, Opening Night and this strange way to feel life into my heart -definetlymonstrous.
Pierrot le Fou, my second revelation .
L Amour Fou of Rivette, this impossible capacity to love and to capture love through cinema.
Inland Empire, the most empirical masterpiece of Lynch.
And others, of course Almodovar, Tarantino, Kurosawa, I think my list will be exhaustive!
Sin City was the film that paved the way for my intense exploration into other areas. It was the first time I realized how much went into a movie, whether it’s the way it’s made, and everything. I studied the hell out of that movie. I started with more commercial people, of course, because I was unaware of all of the different directors from around the world. Then, though, I read Ebert’s The Great Movies, and I suddenly became immersed in film, moreso than I ever was. Somehow, I ended up where I am now (probably after checking out about Criterion, and learning about all the different films that I didn’t even know existed), and I am all the more grateful for it.
Savvy
I think Children of Men and Vertigo had the biggest impact on me. Children of Men made me realize there were movies that had more than just sheer entertainment value to them. Prior to that I was just watch things like Talladega Nights and Adam Sandler Movies. Children of Men just blew me away. After that I started watching more acclaimed type movies. Then a coworker took me two hours away to see Vertigo in an Angelika theatre. And that opened my eyes to older movies and now I watch any and all types of movies. And i owe it to those two.
A Clockwork Orange. I watched it by chance on television when I was fourteen and it is the only film I’ve watched so far that looks as if it has been made by some crazy genious from the year 2500. Very ahead of its time, indeed. One of the films that can change your life.
Star Wars was the movie that got me into the cinema world. I was full blown into cinema with my books and everything. I enjoyed Ebert’s Awake In the Dark and it wasn’t until I started reading up about movies from around the world. This is when I was introduced to Chungking Express which changed my perception on film, but in a good way. It made my appreciation in film grow deeper.
Blade Runner.
I was 14 years old or so .
Pretty immature, thinking Harrison Ford, i knew him from Star Wars and he’s a cop and there’s robots and flying cars and he’s running through the streets of a futuristic city with a gun.
By the time the anti-climatic end ( anti-climatic for a 14 year old craving a space battle or two) came along I was so disappointed. I was still enthralled by the images on the screen, but didn’t aprpreciate the subtexts. I mean the bad guy doesn’t kill him?
Luckily i re-watched it a couple of years later and i feel in love with it.
It showed me that there could be more to it than what meets the eye.
1 Johnny Guitar by N. Ray 2 Gone With The Wind by V. Fleming 3 Blow Up by Antonioni 4 La Dolce Vita by Fellini 5 The Godfather 3 parts by Coppola 6 Red Beard by Kurosawa 7 Horse Thief by Tian Zhuangzhuang 8 Andrei Roublev by Tarkovsky 9 Decalog by Kieslowski 10 Video: Rock With You by Quincy Jones 11 Satantango by Bela Tarr 12 Synecdoche New York by C. Kaufman 13 Of Time and The City by Terence Davies—for me and some others these are defining moments in Cinema—these are the Big 13 for me!
I grew up in a family of late adopters (technologically speaking), so for me the biggest single factor was the first VCR we ever had in the house (sometime in the early ‘80s), which suddenly allowed you to watch a movie as many times as you wanted, pause and rewind, etc. As far as a single film, alas, it was Soderbergh’s sex, lies & videotape, which I saw in high school because it was on the syllabus of a college film studies class a slightly older friend of mine.
Eraserhead
2001
The Seven Samuria
8 1/2
La Jette
Citizen Kane
Being John Malkovich
Fargo
The Forbbiden Planet
Pulp fiction
The birds
Rushmore
Equinox
2001: A Space Oddisey
Traffic
Schizopolis
Dr. Strangelove
The blob
oh and I know it’s very stupid but Ghost Busters (not including Ghost Busters 2)
For me it was, “Central Station” by Walter Salles….which was shown to me in a culture studies class…..it just struck me deep inside….and i really started looking at cinema more closely and with more respect after i completed that credit. and then Hitchcock too…..and Requiem for a dream…..and …‘the good, the bad and the ugly’
Persona (Bergman), Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais), 8 1/2 (Fellini), Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky), The Bicycle Thief (De Sica), Rashomon (Kurosawa)
Northfork. I learned that, as long as the movie accomplishes what it sets out to do, anything goes.
Breathless (Godard), The 400 Blows (Truffaut), Hiroshima, mon amour (Resnais) and Les cousins (Chabrol). All during summer vacation between 7th and 8th grade, and not entirely coincidental. The French New Wave had just made it big in my corner of the world, and sneaking in the neighborhood movie theater was kind of a rite of passage. But it was only a few years later, at the cine-club, that I better understood why these movies had made such an impact at the time.
Austin Glidden
I got really into film about six years ago. It all started with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amelie”. It was just the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen at that point in time. Then I watched Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and was hooked.
Since I’ve been really into film though, I’d have to say “The Passion of Joan of Arc” had a major affect on me.