No offense meant, but you’re making a bunch of assumptions almost no one will agree with. Birth of a Nation is not the film of the silent era, Citizen Kane is not the film of the sound era, and Goodfellas isn’t the film of the color era, which, by the way, is an era that has many black and white films and some silents.
I suppose you’re asking for people’s opinion of the best film of the last 60 or so years? I wish I could give you a good answer but whatever I say will change for me within the next 30 seconds. There’s too many.
probably the film which utilizes colour in the best way
What I mean basically is which encompasses everything we know about film in one movie.
For the next 30 minutes or so that film will be State Legislature by Frederick Wiseman, for me.
That film never has and never will exist, in any era, or in any format. To be an actual art form film has to be constantly evolving, which means a film that encompasses everything we know about film is the opposite of art and the opposite of a film.
Picnic (1955) or Reds (1981)
Medium Cool (1969) or 2001 (1968)
I considered 2001: A Space Odyssey because I feel that as a film it is greater, but more techniques are employed in Goodfellas. Also the characters are examined much more closely and develop a lot more in Goodfellas.
Oops, I read the question as which film has the best use of color. Lol, my bad.
i don’t even like 2001
Aren’t we still technically in the sound era?
Maybe you mean to say that Citizen Kane is the definitive film of the black and white era? Its innovation was far more remarkable in the field of cinematography than it was in sound. [But, of course, by 1941 color movies had been made too. Namely Gone With the Wind].
Also The Birth of a Nation is in no way ‘thee film of the silent era’. Far from it. It’s techniques and its length were somewhat novel by the standards of 1915 but the silent era still had a good 15 years of more innovative films that used all the tricks of the trade. I mean Buster Keaton’s The General is a far better film and it has no pretensions to being more than a comedy with enjoyable effects.
Anyway, what I think you are saying is that GoodFellas is the greatest film in the past 70 [or so] years. And I have to disagree with that.
I remember this conversation. I think what we meant was that when Birth of a Nation came out it was by no means the greatest film to be made at that time, just the one that, in terms of technique, laid out a blueprint for future films to go off of. When Citizen Kane came out it laid the blueprint for working with sound and evolving camera movement and cinematography. I’m not sure if ‘the color era’ is the best term for where we are now, but since film has evolved so much more since Kane the question is what film provides the best blueprint for making a modern movie? I am currently convinced it’s Goodfellas. That could change though.
I think that it would have to be Pulp Fiction which will most positively be the Citizen Kane of the future. Sort of like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is the “Houndog” of the 90’s.
Or..wait a minute! If you are a child of the 70’s like I am then Star Wars would be pretty definite
Pulp Fiction has had a major impact, but ten years from now will people really be looking upon as inspiration for filmmaking technique? Yes, it is one of the key films of the 90’s, but I feel that it’s greatness lies primarily in it’s screenplay (though the directing is great too). Goodfellas simply uses the camera so well I don’t think it will be outdone any time soon in terms of pure technique.
Tyler put it better than I did. Goodfellas is a Blueprint. That’s what I was eluding to.
Goodfellas doesn’t use more ‘techniques’ than 2001 … perhaps what would actually “further” this conversation is to state specifically what these techniques are and why one film is more representative than another.
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I don’t think the idea of a “Best Color Era Film” is as ludicrous as Mike Spence makes it out to be, as if this is some amateur topic film experts are “above” because there’s a constant mixture of styles utilized nowadays, black and white or otherwise. In fact I once saw Martin Scorsese had offered a list of his top ten “Color Films”, certainly he finds it a topic worth conversing over. And I have to agree with one of Marty’s choices, my pick is “Barry Lyndon”.
No, it’s an absurd topic, not to offend anyone. There isn’t a single film that uses every “technique”, there isn’t a film that is a “blueprint” for all others. Would anyone actually argue that Martin Scorsese or Goodfellas is a predominant influence on Tsai Ming-liang? Or Wang Bing? Or Pedro Costa? No of course not. There are probably many more films not influenced by Scorsese, or Welles, or Griffith than there are filmmakers working today that count them as a major influence.
I could make a list of a few hundred films in colour that have shaped colour cinematography. To try and make the list any fewer would be to ignore huge sections of film history for the sake of brevity or popularity, which is the antithesis of critical study or dialogue.
Yeah, its’ weird how Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) was a blueprint for Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires (1915). :)
Or how Griffith’s camera was such a huge inspiration on Yevgeni Bauer’s Twiligh of a Woman’s Soul (1913), or After Death (1915). Hell, Bauer was already experimenting with tracking shots and deep focus almost thirty years before Toland.
Any color film by Hitchcock, i.e. Vertigo, Rear Window, The Byrds has Good Fellas beat by the size of an Olympic-size swimming pool. In fact, there’s about a dozen or so techniques from these very films Scorcese rips off and uses in Goodfellas, including the opening credits, which was from Psycho, even though that was in black and white.
And, when going by what Mike Spence says above, I think the greatest film of the color era is a black and white film, which also happens to be Scorcese’s: Raging Bull.
I agree with the OP, if only to disagree with the rest.
^ That’s logic for you… or lack thereof.
Certainly there are directors working on their own frequencies. And Hitchcock deserves prominent mention in the shaping of modern filmmaking. I don’t think Goodfellas is the best color film ever made. I state that as the film of our era because it takes all those allusions to Hitchcock, as well as Renoir, Hawks, and others, and puts them all in one movie. It represents a collection of nearly every technique known to visual storytelling up to that point, before the age of digital effects.
So how did Goodfellas put into use the techniques of Chantal Akerman’s cinema? Or Cassavetes? Or Leigh? Or Svankmajer? Or Imamura? Or Oshima? Or Ozu (in his colour films)? Or Hu? Or Yang? Or Hou?
If Scorsese put into use every technique before him in Goodfellas then there must have only been about a dozen or so films made before Goodfellas, right?
It’s ridiculous to assert that one film can put all the techniques of every film before it. From 1955 (let’s say the mid 50’s is the beginning of the “colour era”… since it doesn’t really exist) until 1989 there were probably at least 50,000+ films made worldwide every year (and that’s an incredibly conservative estimate). So that means Goodfellas combined the efforts of the 1,700,000 films before it? Absurd.
Yeah, I don’t think Brett B. or his brother really thought this through. I LOVE GOODFELLAS, but NOONE (especially at this site) would pick it as the best color film of all time. Maybe PREDATOR, but not GOODFELLAS.
Okay so not EVERY film. But for classical filmmaking technique, that’s the definitive modern movie.
Bret Bynum
I had an interesting conversation with my brother Tyler and he asked an interesting question: What is thee film of the color era? If Birth of a Nation is thee film of the silent era and Citizen Kane is thee film of the sound era, then what is thee film of the color era. After about hour of discussing it, we concluded Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas because it basically puts every technique in one film. It kind of summarizes everything known about up to it’s point, like Birth of a Nation did when it come out. What are your thoughts and opinions about thee film of the color era?