GREAT CINEMA: THE SWEAT FACTOR
Death by dehydration – lars von trier
Antonioni sweats, just in a different way. Kind of like how dogs pant instead of sweat. Can we say Antonioni pants?
Orson Welles comes in below “drenched in sweat”? I think not, good sir.
Justin, I agree with most of your classifications, except for maybe Bresson. He seems at least semi-sweaty, if not sweaty to me. And I don’t know if I’d put Hitchcock and Murnau in the same grouping with Warhol, Cocteau, etc.. it just doesn’t seem right.
I’m not sure what kind of criteria you’re basing your choices on, but for the most part, your sweat meter makes sense. I’m curious as to where you’d place these: Wong Kar-Wai, Louis Malle, Bela Tarr, or Alain Resnais… ??
If I understnad your implications, Justin (& I confess I may not), I wouldn’t put Cocteau in the “dry” category. Read his production diary on LA BELLE ET LA BETE – that film was agony for him.
susan: I’d put Resnais and Louis Malle in semi-sweaty, WKW in needs to sweat more, and Bela Tarr in sweaty
sorry, double post
I wouldn’t classify Fassbinder as at all sweaty. He walked in and expected eberyone to do their job in one take. Then maybe he’d do a second if he really had to. Quick, not sweaty.
I have no idea what you guys are talking about
This was Justin Vicari’s last post. I miss that guy.
“Antonioni sweats, just in a different way.”
Antonioni covers his sweat with hair, so that all you see is a film with hair, but it’s “about” sweat.
—PolarisDiB
“Just sweatin’.”
I don’t understand this thread at all.
You mean sweating like this?
Justin Vicari
It seems to me that great films/auteurs can be classified on a kind of sweatiness meter.
Dry: Max Ophuls, Luis Bunuel, Hitchcock, Dreyer, Visconti, Murnau, Renoir, Cocteau, Nicholas Ray, Warhol
Needs to sweat a little more perhaps: Robert Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni
Drenched in sweat: Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Claude Chabrol, Paul Thomas Anderson, Seijun Suzuki, Sam Fuller
Sweaty: Ingmar Bergman, Fassbinder, Dusan Makavejev, G.W. Pabst, Eisenstein, Orson Welles
Semi-sweaty: Howard Hawks, Truffaut, Godard, Douglas Sirk, Tarkovsky, Haneke
“Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.” — Thomas Edison