I’ve always loved “The Dead,” by John Huston. I can only assume his knowledge of his impending death contributed to the masterfully sensitive tone of the film.
I’ve always loved “The Dead,” by John Huston. I can only assume his knowledge of his impending death contributed to the masterfully sensitive tone of the film.
Damn it.
That’s a beautiful example, Chris. Some of Huston’s later work could be mistaken for that of a far younger filmmaker – Prizzi’s Honor and Wise Blood, especially – but The Dead (not unlike Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, maybe?) clearly is a nuanced masterpiece crafted under a director’s certain twilight. Altman’s Prairie Home Companion, while lighter in tone, is another of those late-career films dripping in an old man’s sweet melancholy.
I kind of feel bad about it, but after seeing Saraband I walked out of the theater praying that it would be his final film. I can’t think of a more perfect way for Bergman to leave both life and cinema.
“The Sacrifice” by Tarkovsky
“Eyes Wide Shut” by Kubrick
It’s strange, but even though I love Kubrick and Tarkovsky, I haven’t seen either of those movies yet.
“l’argent” was bresson’s final film, and its a great masterpiece.
however, “family plot” by hitchcock was something i didn’t care for. if he ended his career on “frenzy”, it would have been his final great masterpiece. that’s still an underrated film, by the way, though its starting to get its due.
Maybe we need a separate thread for directors who went “A Film Too Far.” I’m sure Hitchcock and Fred Zinnemann would rather have gone out with Frenzy and Julia than with the swan songs that rang down their respective curtains.
Yasujiro Ozu didn’t yet know that An Autumn Afternoon would be his final film, but it was a great, great finale to his career.
Fassbinder’s last film Veronika Voss is one of his best and arguably the best of the BRD trilogy. It creates an image of post-WWII Germany as one marred by equal parts failure and nostalgia.
Veronika Voss was not Fassbinder’s last film. That was Querelle.
Chris, make a point of seeing them both this year; forget that Cruise and Kidman are in EWS, and you’ll find a very rewarding film that you will want to watch again and again. It has quite a few elements from “The Shining” in tone and feel….it’s quite remarkable. Too easily dismissed because of Cruise being in it; too bad.
Thanks for the tip, Mark. I’ve actually got “The Sacrifice” in my collection; for some reason I’ve just never sat down with it. I think it might be because “Andrei Rublev” and “Solaris” (of all his films) affected me so deeply, I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed. Silly, I know.
As for “EWS,” I’ll admit Cruise turned me off at first. (Kidman, well, what can I say – I love her. I don’t care what the people say.) But I also heard a lot of “Meh” when it came out. That does seem to be changing and, well, it’s Kubrick (and Nicole in her underwear – sorry! I’m sorry!): how bad can it be?
Personally, I think “Eyes Wide Shut” is a bad film because of Kubrick. But, let’s not get into that can of worms again.
I echo the comments of Tom Wilson and David; I saw “An Autumn Afternoon” recently and totally agree it is a great film. Just this very evening, I saw Ozu’s “Early Spring,” which is also great; an elegiac epic of middle-class boredom, adultery, despair and, maybe, hope. Ozu reminds me of the Ramones: everything he did was just like the last thing he did, but it’s still great in its own way.
Another one no one has mentioned: Bunuel, who not only had a great final film with “That Obscure Object of Desire,” but two great decades, as the last 20 or so years of his life were his most artistically fertile.
Sirk’s last feature IMITATION OF LIFE.
That’s a good point that Tom Wilson brought up. There are many directors that made just one more film than they were supposed to.
Or we could even take it a bit further, like directors that should have stopped after their worst film and continued to make not as good films, or films that were supposed to be made by other directors like Martin Scorsese doing Schindlers List. Or even films that directors would have made if it weren’t for their death or some other reason like Kubrick making Aryan Papers, Napoleon, A.I., or Foucault’s Pendulum.
I think “Eyes Wide Shut” is Kubrick’s second best film to date. It’s an absolute masterpiece. And yes, “Querelle” is Fassbinder’s last film.
Or Eisenstein finishing what he could of Ivan the Terrible II, even though he ended up with so many truncated projects, tragically.
And certainly Kieslowski’s Three Colours can be termed as career masterpieces, although he died fairly young.
But wholeheartedly agree with The Sacrifice, and especially with The Dead.
There is a sense of poetry and restraint that only the certainty of death can enhance.
Orson Welles’ F For Fake was a pretty good swansong as final completed films go, though I doubt he intended it as such.
Same with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America.
Andrzej Munk’s Passenger might have been even more extraordinary if he hadn’t died during production – though of course it equally might have been worse than the present fascinating, frustratingly elliptical torso.
Tommy: or films that were supposed to be made by other directors like Martin Scorsese doing Schindlers List.
Like Scorsese’s Little Shop of Horrors in 3D? (I’m not making this up!)
Recently saw Kurosawa’s Madadayo (Not Yet) for the first time. Surely, this is a fitting tribute for a final film from a great master film craftsman. I am sure Kurosawa was reflecting on his own life and coming death in his treatment of the old man who we see constantly drinking a large glass of beer on his birthday celebrations as he ages throughout the film and saying, “Not yet (as translated)” when he is asked if he is ready to depart this life. All other suggestions are very appropriate, too. I loved how Tarkovky summed up everything in Sacrifice, and Houston did in The Dead. I have yet to see Saraband, but for me Fanny & Alexander was his “final” film. Bergman seemed to reflect so beautifully on his own life and career through the story of F & A’s father – and ironically on his own father through their awful step-father..
good call on bunuel. “that obscure object of desire” is beautiful. my favorite bunuel right behind “belle de jour”. he certainly ended his career with an outright masterpiece.
Yes, yes, yes to Bob Stutsman. Madadayo by Kurosawa is criminally underrated.
Grand finales:
L’Argent (Bresson, 1983), released when Bresson was 84
That Obscure Object of Desire (Buñuel, 1977), released when Buñuel was 77
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999), released when Kubrick was 71
L’Innocente (Visconti, 1976), released when Visconti was 70
I’d also include The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky) and Ivan the Terrible, Pt. 2 (Eisenstein), even though both Russian filmmakers were relatively young when they made their last films. So too Pasolini with Salo. Perhaps these belong on another list though: final works by filmmakers cut down in their prime. Here one might also mention Melville’s Un Flic (1972), released a year before the director’s death at the age of 56.
Finally, I concur with Bobby that Frenzy, not Family Plot, would have been a worthy Hitchcock finale. Perhaps another list? To it, I’d add La Truite (Losey, 1982), which should have been his last film – not Steaming
I agree with Leone’s Once Upon a Time in American
I’ve not seen Saraband yet, but I agree that Fanny & Alexander was intended to be Bergman’s last film in the way he reflected on all the periods of his work and his belief in the supernatural, life, death, etc. Though I believe that as much as Bergman was reflecting on his father through the step father he was also reflecting on himself, he was a notoriously difficult artist to work with.
Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion in many ways reflected on his brilliant carrer and sent a true master filmmaker out on the top of his game.
He might not have been in his prime, but he gave us a fine body of work and I would’ve liked to see more from Alan Pakula. I don’t know that the director of Klute, All the President’s Men and Sophie’s Choice would want to go out on The Devil’s Own. I guess that would go for actors, too, not just Heath and James Dean and Marilyn, but so many others gone too soon. (Not to mention authors; I’m reading Roberto Bolano’s posthumously published 2666 and it’s a massive masterwork.) Jeez. Freakin’ mortality is creepin’ up on me in this new year. I hope I can accomplish something before it’s my turn!
One thing this thread is establishing is that there are two types of “last film” – those explicitly planned as such from the outset, and those which just happened to be the last project the director got off the ground.
In the former category, Krysztof Kieslowski claimed that Three Colours Red would be his last film, and it was. (He went on to write more screenplays, but there’s no hard evidence that he ever planned to direct them himself). Jan Svankmajer says that his next film, Surviving Life, will also be his last. (This may well be true: he’ll be in his late seventies when it’s released). If Tarkovsky wasn’t aware that he had terminal cancer when actually shooting The Sacrifice, he certainly knew before its completion, and I doubt John Huston seriously thought he had another film in him after The Dead.
Mind you, when someone announces in advance that his next film will be his last, it’s not necessarily true: if I remember rightly, Luis Bunuel did it for every film from Belle de Jour onwards, before finally bowing out a decade later.
Conversely, Salo LOOKS like a last film (and it’s hard to see where Pasolini could have gone from there), but he was only in his early fifties when he was murdered. Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn also looks like a last film (it was certainly a dream project of his for decades, and he was 82 when it opened), but he recently finished shooting another feature.
Chaplin’s Limelight would have been a perfect swansong if he hadn’t gone on to make two more. I’ve never seen The Countess from Hong Kong but by literally every account I’ve read of it I’m not missing much.
I’m a big fan of Huston’s THE DEAD, too.
And count me in the column of people who consider EYES WIDE SHUT to be a genuine masterpiece.
Count me out on people who feel that Eyes Wide Shut is a masterpiece. I feel it’s Kubricks weakest film. Countess From Hong Kong is also a terrible last film as well as Family Plot. Enjoyed Huston’s The Dead. Have yet to see Bergman’s Sarabande. I don’t know if Sidney Lumet is filming anything more but last years Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is among his best films and looks like the work of a much younger man.
Tommy
I guess I haven’t seen any other post such as this one so I figured I might as well make one. I just finished watching Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband and really liked it. I started watching his films when I was 13 or 14 and really came to know him through his classic masterpieces as most people do. I just thought it was pretty amazing to watch a Bergman film that had been made within the years of my adult life. On the dvd there’s a making of the film and I always like to see the making of any of his films. It’s just amazing to see him at the age of 84 and directing a film with just as much enthusiam and precision as he had in the 50’s and 60’s. I always kind of wondered what kind of film most directors would make if they were just to make one more film before they had died or whatever may be the case.
I gues the purpose of the post is to see what other opinions on either final films of a certain filmmakers career or a certain point in a filmmakers life that marked somewhat of a turning point in their style of film. ex.when kurosawa started to make films in color it completely changed his perspective on film and stood out seperately from his previous films