Harry Long: well, come to think of it, The Idiot and Diary of a Country Priest should replace A Place in the Sun and The African Queen, they’re classier, though i do have fond memories of Liz Taylor at her most radiant, and i agree An American in Paris doesn’t live up to the extended ballet (not a patch on Minnelli’s The Band Wagon).
There’s just something more than a little creepy about Gene Kelly by this time. I can see him showing up at the studio, getting into costume & then pushing his face into a vacuform machine to plant that slightly psychotic grin on his face for the rest of the day. But I have to admire any film brave enough to lead up to a 20 minute ballet & then resolve its plot with only a few more well-chosen images & no break the spell with a single word. Knocks me for a loop every time.
AFRICAN QUEEN: Stop already with the tales of the hardships & bravery of Bogart & Hepburn. I know stunt-doubles and rear-projection when I see it. I am not stupid.
A PLACE IN THE SUN: I prefer Sternberg’s take on the material. Instead we take all the politics & social comment out of the story & try to turn it into ROMEO & JULIET. Doesn’t wash. And I confess I never quite “got” Monty Clift … sure he was gorgeous until the accident … but he will open his mouth and talk and that nasal drone drives me up a wall.
I think on my initial list I indicated that IDIOT and PRIEST were two films from my birth year I have yet to see & I really need to.
It wasn’t easy coming up with this list but consulting the Cannes Festival entry list and also searching The Auteurs website turned out to be a good strategy. Difficult to know which eight to eliminate as I haven’t seen most of these films. Am open to suggestions for a better Indian film if there is one. :-)
1. Jacques Tati: M. Hulot’s Holiday, Les Vacances de M. Hulot
2. Ingmar Bergman: Sawdust and Tinsel, Abend der Gaukler (Harriet Andersson)
3. Ozu: Tokyo Story (Hara Setsuko)
4. Mizoguchi: Ugetsu (Kyô Machiko)
5. Naruse Mikio: Older Brother, Younger Sister (Kyô Machiko)
6. Vincente Minelli: The Band Wagon (Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse)
7. Albert Lamorisse: White Mane
8. Jean Dréville: Endless Horizons, Horizons sans fin (Maurice Ronet)
9. Luis Garcia Berlanga: Welcome Mr. Marshall
10. Frederico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, etc.: Love in the City (L’Amore in Città, an anthology film composed of six segments by different directors or writers, e.g. Risi, Lizzani, Zavattini, Masselli, Lattuada)
11. Fritz Lang: “The Big Heat” or “The Blue Gardenia” (Anne Baxter, Nat King Cole)
12. John Huston: Beat the Devil (Humphrey Bogart)
13. Joseph L. Mankiewicz: Julius Caesar (Marlon Brando)
14. Billy Wilder: Stalag 17 (William Holden)
15. Jean Renoir: Le Carosse d’Or, The Golden Coach (another side of Renoir with Anna Magnani)
16. William Wyler: Roman Holiday (Audrey Hepburn)
17. Henri Decoin: Inside a Girl’s Dormitory, Dortoir des grandes (Jeanne Moreau, Louis de Funès and Jean Marais)
18. Nandlal Jaswantlal: Anarkali (musical score by C. Ramachandra)
1981 was not my favourite year for film, but anyways…
1) La femme de l’aviateur (Eric Rohmer) aka The Aviator’s Wife
2) Times Square (Allan Moyle) – OK, technically 1980 in the US, but released in 1981 overseas, I swear!
3) My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle)
4) Unico (Osamu Tezuka) – so good; this was my favourite movie as a kid..
5) An American Werewolf in London (John Landis)
6) Blow Out (Brian DePalma)
7) Polyester (John Waters)
8) Scanners (Cronenberg)
9) Teheran 43 (Alov, Naumov)
10) Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson)
hmm… I’m sure there’s more…
THANKS EVERYONE! i didn’t realise The Changeling and Max Max were from 1980, so lemme add those to the list of “Best” from my birth year—loved both movies.
i’m definately gonna throw some of them on my Netflix and give my birth years some love!
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Back To The Future Part 2
Christmas Vacation
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Drugstore Cowboy
Licence to Kill
Mystery Train
New York Stories
Dead Poets Society
>>hmm… I’m sure there’s more…<<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1981_films
Good to see love for La Femme de l’Aviateur in 1981 and also White Mane in 1953. From that year A Geisha by Mizoguchi is worth seeing, not just Ugetsu. Anarkali: i don’t know that film, Kim, but presume it’s based on the same story as the great 1960 musical Mughal-e-Azam. I could do with seeing Welcome Mr Marshall.
Kim, my picks for 1953:
The Band Wagon (Minnelli)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
Madame de (Ophuls)
Voyage to Italy (Rossellini)
White Mane (Lamorisse)
Roman Holiday (Wyler)
El (Bunuel)
A Geisha (Mizoguchi)
Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Resnais, Marker, Cloquet)
just missing out:
The Big Heat, The Wages of Fear, Duck Amuck
Thanks for mentioning Gion bayashi (Gion festival music) by Mizoguchi. (I like the original title better than “A Geisha” somehow.) I’ve been to Kyoto and have had the pleasure of visiting a maiko girl (geisha apprentice dancing girl) in Gion so it will bring back memories. She was a niece of someone I got to know while spending a summer there to learn about Japanese culture. As for Mughal-e-Azam, you are right, it is based on the same story which had been adapted for film twice before in the history of Indian cinema. I do like the singing in Anarkali but the 1960 version may be better in other respects so will look into it.
Thanks for the list… I had a glimpse (via youtube) of Madame de by Ophuls and El by Buñuel but wasn’t too sure about them… but hadn’t come across Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy or Resnais’s Les Statues… will take a peek. :-)
Les Statues Meurent Aussi is in full on youtube, it’s a short film. That must have been wonderful at Kyoto. Mughal-e-Azam is overlong, it seemed to me to wring out every drop from the final section, but the whole central section of the film is ravishing, sensual and romantic with some superb songs and magnificent sets, and it has the beautiful Madhubala, who died young (like several major Indian stars of that time, Guru Dutt and Meena Kumari were others). I saw it first in b+w with a few colour sections, i’m not sure what the original was, but it’s also been fully colourised and there’s a current remake i gather. Voyage to Italy is pretty essential, as a precursor to both Contempt and L’Avventura. The French new wave/Cahiers critics raved about it. I first heard of Madame de in John Kobal’s book The Top 100 Movies, which opened up a whole new world for me in the late 80s
p.s oh i see Les Statues Meurent Aussi is in French on youtube. The African statue photos by the Welsh photographer Gwilliam Iwan Jones on the photography thread brought it to mind.
Great information, I appreciate it. I will get started, then. Les Statues seems promising and I do like African art.
Top Grossing Movies In The USA 1981:
1. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
2. On Golden Pond
3. Superman II
4. Arthur
5. Stripes
6. The Cannonball Run
7. Chariots Of Fire
8. For Your Eyes Only
9. The Four Seasons
10. Time Bandits
Thanks Harry! “Clash of the Titans” was 1981??? For some reason I thought it was a 70s film. That’s so knocking Das Boot off at number 10, perhaps should even go in at number 8 or 9. Wasn’t that Harryhausen’s last flick? I was completely in love with that movie; I kind of still am. I even had the metal lunchbox and everything.
I thought about Dragonslayer earlier, because I also loved it as a kid, but I haven’t seen it since the mid 80s so I’m not sure what I’d think of it now. I really need to see the The French Lieutenant’s Woman – it’s been on my list for a while and I love Karel Reisz’s 50s and 60s stuff. I’ll go reserve it on LoveFilm sharpish.
Kenji: There’s something about The Aviator’s Wife that always makes me happy watching it. It’s kind of like Paul Auster crossed with the first hour of Celine & Julie Go Boating…
This is my first post on The Auteurs and I couldn’t think of a better thread to begin on.
Here are my picks for my birth year, 1987:
1. Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick)
2. Au revoir, les enfants (Louis Malle)
3. Raising Arizona (Joel & Ethan Coen)
4. Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson)
5. Barfly (Barbet Schroeder)
6. House of Games (David Mamet)
7. The Dead (John Huston)
8. The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci)
9. The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner)
10. Predator (John McTiernan)
Honorable Mentions: Ironweed (Hector Babenco), My Life as a Dog (Lasse Hallström), Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow), The Untouchables (Brian de Palma), Radio Days (Woody Allen)
BUMP
Welcome Ben, hope you have a good time here.
Wildfire; The Aviator’s Wife is less well known than many by Rohmer but it has a typically lovely light feeling and Parisian park setting as in Celine and Julie; The Green Ray, with the wonderful Marie Riviere again, also has something of Celine and Julie about it (a frisson of magic in the cards). I obviously must read Auster, for some reason i’ve not got round to him.
The French Lieutenant is worth seeing, and i enjoyed walking with my dog Bryn along the Cob(b?) sea wall at Lyme Regis in Dorset where she stands in the famous image. That sea wall slopes and in high winds and waves i can imagine it could feel quite scary.
@Kenji.
Ah, yes! I forgot Ulysses’ Gaze.
It is indeed fantastic.
Ah you never cease to amaze me. Angelopoulos wasn’t too chuffed when it lost out to your top choice Underground for the Palme d’Or.
1976, a pretty cool year by all accounts!
Taxi Driver
Rocky
Carrie
All the President’s Men
Network
The Omen
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Marathon Man
Logan’s Run
Assault on Precinct 13
This is a fun thread; you don’t realize how much came out each year until you find a list. I’m surprsied people are into it enough to argue other’s 10 bests for their birth years. Being a child of 1982, I thought it would be pretty rough. There’s BladeRunner, but haven’t seen it since I was a kid (a “Channel 11, New York’s Movie Station” regular.) Never seen it without the voiceover.
I’ve got Gandhi, but I always found it a bit dull, kind of a standard biopic with a good performance. Like most biopics, unworthy of it’s subject.
From what I’ve seen, Dark Crystal, Fitzcarraldo, ET, Carpenter’s Thing, & Star Trek 2 are the only ones I’m confident would stand up had I seen more of them.
Fanny & Alexander? Querelle? Need to see them. And damn do I need to see Inchon.
- 1989
Cinema Paradiso
Dead Poets Society
Crimes and Misdemeanors
My Left Foot
When Harry Met Sally…,
>>Top Grossing Movies In The USA 1981:
1. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
2. On Golden Pond
3. Superman II
4. Arthur
5. Stripes
6. The Cannonball Run
7. Chariots Of Fire
8. For Your Eyes Only
9. The Four Seasons
10. Time Bandits<<
Geez, what a dreadful list. Only TIME BANDTS is worth a damn.
>>Thanks Harry! “Clash of the Titans” was 1981??? For some reason I thought it was a 70s film. That’s so knocking Das Boot off at number 10, perhaps should even go in at number 8 or 9. Wasn’t that Harryhausen’s last flick? I was completely in love with that movie; I kind of still am. I even had the metal lunchbox and everything.<<
No, no. Keep DAS BOOT. A much better film than CLASH OF THE TITANS, even if it does have one of RH’s coolest monsters (The Medusa) and a glorious score. As a film it isn’t fit to lick DAS BOOT’s … er … boots. (I’m a Harryhausen fan, too, btw … but let’s face it, most of his films — as films — are not very good.)
>>I thought about Dragonslayer earlier, because I also loved it as a kid, but I haven’t seen it since the mid 80s so I’m not sure what I’d think of it now.<<
It holds up better than CLASH. In fact it’s always been a better film than CLASH.
>>Querelle? Need to see them.<<
It’s …. different.
1. Faces of Death II
2. Faces of Death III
3. The Decline of Western Civilization
4. Body Heat (mainly just the part where Kathleen is grabbing on the sheets and raspily insists to Will Hurt, “DON’T… STOP!”)
5. The Evil Dead (not because it’s good, but because Joel Coen worked on it.)
I saw Escape From New York once but don’t remember thinking it was that great. That probably does it for me and 1981.
I discovered on-line a beautiful Indian film Avvaiyar (1953) by Kothamangalam Subbu. Unfortunately, online viewing is not ideal with the image being a little blurry with no subtitles for the script in Tamil… but the scenes from India and the music still make the viewing very interesting. A little baby girl floating downstream in a basket reminds me of the biblical story of Moses. The little girl grows up to be a renowned poet and a singer saint in the 7th century. I haven’t seen it entirely but it seems like a promising classic Indian film.
http://www.megavideo.com/?d=PAXJXV10
1972 (I share my birthday with Nicholas Roeg and Ben Affleck- down to the day and the year).
Here goes:
1) The Godfather
2) Deliverance
3) Solaris
4) Super Fly
5) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
6) Last Tango in Paris
7)The King of Marvin Gardens
8) Jeremiah Johnson
9) The Ruling Class
10) Cabaret
Se7en
Dead Man Walking
The Usual Suspects
Twelve Monkeys
Toy Story
Leaving Las Vegas
Casino
Apollo 13
Ghost in the Shell
A Trip to the Moon
1959:
The 400 Blows
Breathless
Pickpocket
Imitation of Life
North by Northwest
Room at the Top
Suddenly Last Summer
I couldn’t come up with 10 films even though the 1950’s and 60’s are two of my favorite decades for movies. I think 1960 and 1963 were pretty good years. L’Avventura and La Dolce Vita came out in 1960, and Le Feu Follet and Le Mepris in 1963; four films on my top 10 list. There is a movie on my “To Watch” list that came out in 1959, Ashes and Diamonds, which sounds tremendous and I’ve wanted to see it for some time now. I hate to admit that I haven’t seen it yet. So many movies, so little time…
Anna, 1959 was a great year for films. I used to think Breathless was 1959, but imdb has it as 1960.
anyway, my choices:
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
Some Like it Hot (Wilder)
Hiroshima mon Amour (Resnais)
The World of Apu (S.Ray)
Paper Flowers (Dutt)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
Night Train (Kawalerowicz)
Ballad of a Soldier (Chukhrai)
Astronauts (Borowczyk, Marker)
Imitation of Life (Sirk)
+
Le Testament d’Orphée (Cocteau)
The Lin Family Shop (Zhang Shuihua)
Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger)
The Nun’s Story (Zinnemann)
Andrew Kay; there was a thread here a few weeks back on our birthday directors, in case you’re interested (pardon me if you’ve been on it already, my memory is giving up)
john brown
Thank you Kenji! I esp. have to find/see ‘Day For Night’ – I’ve heard so much good about it! Ditto to ‘Ali: Fear…’