I might try Hangover Square in such a circumstance. It’s only 77 minutes long and melodramatic enough to keep even a high schooler entertained. John Brahm, while not a particularly famous director, was highly adept at the very things you mentioned; lighting, mise-en-scene, music, and blocking. I would think it an excellent teaching film.
Wings — Larisa Shepitko
In the Cut, Sweetie, Portrait of a Lady — Jane Campion
Household Saints, Dogfight — Nancy Savoca
Daughters of the Dust — Julie Dash
Daisies — Vera Chytilova
Vagabond — Agnes Varda
Strange Days — Katherine Bigelow
Earth — Deepa Mehta
Secret Garden — Agnieska Holland
Kristin Lavransdatter — Liv Ullman
Mädchen in Uniform — Leontine Sagan
My First Mister — Christine Lahti
Orlando — Sally Potter
Crossing Delancey — Joan Micklin Silver
Scarlet Flower — Irina Povolotskaya
Fat Girl — Catherine Breillat
Toute Une Nuit — Chantal Akerman
Since I haven’t seen all the films by most of these directors, I won’t stake a claim to these being their “best” films, but they are the best of those I have seen. For each director I listed the best film first and, obviously enough, the second best second. I would have liked to add a third film to most of these, but, hey, rules is rules. I added a few Hollywood directors that I like, that weren’t listed previously. Also, for fun, I also ranked the directors as I would view them if they all had only made their two films and didn’t have any other history to judge them on. I was curious about how much difference a body of work makes in appreciating their talents. Needless to say, both the rankings and the films chosen could easily differ if I were to do this again.
Orson Welles The Magnificent Ambersons, Citizen Kane
Ernst Lubitsch The Shop Around the Corner, Heaven Can Wait
Alfred Hitchcock The Birds, Strangers on a Train
Buster Keaton The General, Steamboat Bill Jr.
Gregory LaCava Stage Door, My Man Godfrey
Frank Capra It’s a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe
Michael Curtiz The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca
Lewis Milestone Hallelujah I’m a Bum, All Quiet on the Western Front
Victor Sjostrom He Who Gets Slapped, The Wind
John Ford The Quiet Man, My Darling Clementine
Vincente Minnelli The Pirate, Meet Me in St. Louis
Raoul Walsh Gentleman Jim, The Strawberry Blonde
Josef von Sternberg Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress
Jacques Tourneur I Walked With a Zombie, The Leopard Man
Robert Aldrich Kiss Me Deadly, Flight of the Phoenix
Stanley Donen Singing in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Charlie Chaplin Limelight, The Great Dictator
Edmund Goulding Nightmare Alley, Dawn Patrol
Rouben Mamoulian Queen Christina, We Live Again
John Brahm Hangover Square, The Lodger
Norman Z. McLeod It’s a Gift, Monkey Business
John Stahl Leave Her to Heaven, Magnificent Obsession
William Wyler Jezebel, The Good Fairy
Mervyn LeRoy Johnny Eager, I Am a Fugitive From A Chain Gang
Preston Sturges The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story
Anthony Mann The Fall of the Roman Empire, Winchester ’73
F.W. Murnau Sunrise, Tabu
Victor Fleming The Wizard of Oz, Red Dust
Howard Hawks Scarface, Man’s Favorite Sport
Fritz Lang The Big Heat, Ministry of Fear
James Whale Waterloo Bridge, The Old Dark House
Douglas Sirk A Scandal in Paris, Written on the Wind
Clarence Brown The Flesh and the Devil, Wife vs. Secretary
Robert Flaherty Louisiana Story, Nanook of the North
Charles Vidor Gilda, Cover Girl
William Wellman Nothing Sacred, The Light That Failed
Edgar Ulmer The Black Cat, The Strange Woman
Cecil B. DeMille Four Frightened Friends, The Crusades
Arthur Penn Night Moves, The Left Handed Gun
John Huston Moby Dick, Wise Blood
Henry Hathaway Peter Ibbetson, Niagra
Billy Wilder The Major and the Minor, One, Two, Three
Leo McCarey Love Affair, The Awful Truth
Nicholas Ray They Live by Night, Johnny Guitar
Roger Corman X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The Tomb of Ligeia
Sam Fuller The Naked Kiss, The Baron of Arizona
Robert Stevenson Darby O’Gill and the Little People, Jane Eyre
George Stevens Swing Time, Vivacious Lady
Richard Wallace Young in Heart, Tycoon
William Castle I Saw What You Did, The Tingler
George Marshall Destry Rides Again, The Blue Dahlia
Edward Dmytryk Murder My Sweet, Walk on the Wild Side
Sam Peckinpah Ride the High Country, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Mitchell Leisen Hands Across the Table, Easy Living
John Farrow His Kind of Woman, The Big Clock
Frank Taschlin Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Artists and Models
Robert Rossen All the King’s Men, The Hustler
D.W. Griffith Orphans of the Storm, Sally of the Sawdust
Alexander Mackendrick A High Wind in Jamaica, Sweet Smell of Success
Elia Kazan Baby Doll, East of Eden
Henry King The Black Swan, In Old Chicago
Fred Zinnemann From Here to Eternity, Day of the Jackal
John Sturges Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape
Mark Sandrich Shall We Dance, Top Hat
George Cukor Gaslight, Les Girls
Jack Arnold The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon
Jean Negulesco The Mask of Dimitrios, Humoresque
Irving Cummings The Dolly Sisters, Girl’s Dormitory
Anatole Litvak All This and Heaven Too, This Above All
Otto Preminger In Harm’s Way, Angel Face
Joseph Mankiewicz The Quiet American, Suddenly, Last Summer
Henry Koster The Rage of Paris, The Inspector General
Alfred E Green Baby Face, Dangerous
William Seiter Sons of the Desert, You Were Never Lovelier
Delmer Daves Jubal, Rome Adventure
King Vidor Bird of Paradise, Duel in the Sun
Mark Robson Isle of the Dead, The Ghost Ship
Budd Boetticher Decision at Sundown, Ride Lonesome
J. Lee Thompson Tiger Bay, Cape Fear
Robert Wise Curse of the Cat People, The Haunting
Lloyd Bacon The Sullivans, Footlight Parade
W.S.Van Dyke The Thin Man, Tarzan the Ape Man
William Dieterle A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Don Siegel Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Beguiled
Jerry Lewis The Nutty Professor, The Bellboy
Busby Berkeley Babes in Arms, For Me and My Gal
Ida Lupino The Trouble with Angels, The Gilligan’s Island episode The Producer
Richard Brooks Lord Jim, In Cold Blood
Rene Clair I Married a Witch, The Ghost Goes West
Frank Borzage The Mortal Storm, Strange Cargo
Archie Mayo Charlie’s Aunt, The Petrified Forest
Sidney Lumet Serpico, Running on Empty
Richard Fleischer Barrabas, The Vikings
Charles Walters Barkleys of Broadway, Good News
Allan Dwan Suez, The Three Musketeers
Robert Siodmak Dark Mirror, The Crimson Pirate
William Keighley The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Bride Came C.O.D.
Andre de Toth House of Wax, Springfield Rifle
Jules Dassin The Canterville Ghost, Tokapi
Fred Niblo The Mark of Zorro, The Three Musketeers
Stanley Kramer The Defiant Ones, On the Beach
Blake Edwards High Time, Operation Petticoat
Max Ophuls – I’ve only seen Letter From an Unknown Woman from his Hollywood period, add Madame de… and he would rank around 5th on the list.
Morris Engel – I watched as much of Little Fugitive as I could bear. Great technique, far too cloying.
Erich von Stroheim – So far I’ve only seen parts of Greed and Foolish Wives, not enough to judge.
Oscar Micheaux — Zilch
Fellini – La Dolce Vita
Bergman – Smiles of a Summer Night
Kurosawa – Kagemusha
Truffaut – Shoot the Piano Player
Renoir – Rules of the Game
Fassbinder – The Marriage of Maria Braun
Herzog – Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Godard – Contempt
Antonioni – L’avventura
Bresson – Diary of a Country Priest
Hitchcock – The Birds
Bunuel – Belle de jour
Lang – M
Tarkovsky – The Sacrifice
Mizoguchi – Ugetsu monogatari
Rossellini – The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
Altman – Nashville
De Sica – Woman Times Seven
Polanski – Tess
Rivette – The Duchess of Langeais
Wenders – Alice in the Cities
Rohmer – Perceval le Gallois
Melville – Army of Shadows
Kubrick – Eyes Wide Shut
Ozu – A Story of Floating Weeds (‘34)
Pasolini – The Canterbury Tales
Cocteau – The Beauty and the Beast
Dreyer – Michael
Eisenstein – Ivan the Terrible part II
Lean – Great Expectations
Visconti – The Leopard
Satyajit Ray – The Home and The World
Vigo – *L’atalante*
Resnais – Last Year at Marienbad
Bertolucci – The Sheltering Sky
Kieslowski – Blue
Wajda – Ashes and Diamonds
Powell/Pressburger – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Spielberg – A.I.
Mann – The Jericho Mile
Gilliam – Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Fincher – Alien 3
Scorsese – Life Lessons
Coppola – The Conversation
De Palma – Blow Out
Tarantino – Kill Bill vol 1
Coens – Blood Simple
P.T.Anderson – There Will Be Blood
Demme – Swing Shift
Cassavetes – The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Reiner – Rob When Harry Met Sally / Carl Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Penny Marshall – Big
Eastwood – The Bridges of Madison County
Cameron – The Abyss
Wes Anderson – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Jarmusch – Broken Flowers
Bay – The Rock
D.G. Green – Pineapple Express
Huston – Moby Dick
Ivan Reitman – Stripes
Lumet – Serpico
Burton – Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
Take those choices for what they’re worth since I’m not really a fan of most of these guys, although that isn’t an anti-Hollywood thing, it’s just these directors I don’t like.
John Woo – Last Hurrah for Chivalry
Mike Leigh – Life is Sweet
Stephen Frears – Dangerous Liaisons
Marc Forster – Stranger Than Fiction
Bela Tarr – Werckmeister Harmonies
Wong Kar Wai – In the Mood for Love
Ang Lee – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Atom Egoyan – Ararat
Costa-Gavras – Betrayed
Michel Gondry – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Guillermo Del Toro – Chronos
Alfonso Cuaron – The only one I’ve seen is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Alejandro Gonzelez Inurritu – 21 Grams
Arturo Ripstein – The only one I’ve seen is Foxtrot. If memory serves, I found it quite interesting.
Neil Jordan – Mona Lisa
Danny Boyle – 28 Days Later
Mike Newell – An Awfully Big Adventure
Nuri Bilge Ceylan –
Roger Donaldson – Smash Palace
Philip Noyce – The Quiet American
Peter Weir – The Mosquito Coast
Park Chan Wook – JSA
Lasse Hallstrom – My Life as a Dog
Ridley Scott – Alien
Walter Salles – Dark Water
To my mind Walsh’s strengths are in his love of humanity in its unwashed nakedness and in capturing the ways people move en masse. Like Shohei Imamura, he seems to not be concerned with value judgments but with trying to show the diversity of actions and motivations that people act upon. At times this can seem heartless or insensitive, but it also frees the viewer from the more manipulative methods of being told how to feel about the interactions of the characters they are watching. There is a better balance of faults and strengths in his characters than is found in almost any other Hollywood director, and, if one takes into account the conventions of Hollywood films from the time, more than most directors from other parts of the world as well.
In White Heat our sympathies can be with both Cody Jarrett and Vic Pardo depending on the specific actions that are occuring. In Gentleman Jim we can see Jim Corbett is a bit of a heel and a boor and can thus understand the wealthy club denizens wanting to take him down a peg, but we can also see his exuberance and charm and root for him to triumph. The fight with John L. Sullivan captures this well. We are both rooting for Corbett to prove his mettle by defeating Sullivan, but we have also seen enough of Sullivan to feel a sense of loss if he would be defeated. In They Died With Their Boots On he even pulls the strange trick of having us root for both George Custer and the indians! This tendency even holds true in films like College Swing and The Strawberry Blonde, our sympathies or interests shift depending on who is being focused on at the moment. It suggests a world view that is less determined by some innate sense of character, by which I mean some notion that there are good and bad or evil people, and more on a sense of individual actions causing better or worse outcomes.
As for the way he handles crowds or extras, just watch the amazing fight scene at the pier in Gentleman Jim to see how a mass of people behave. He really is without many peers in his understanding of crowd dynamics and the variety of ways people respond to situations. Even as far back as Regeneration he was much better at capturing the diversity of response than most directors I have encountered. And, echoing Farber, his ability to capture the lives of the poor without caricature is almost unmatched.
Granted, this is only based on having watched, perhaps, a dozen of his films, and some not recently, but Walsh’s films aren’t as readily available as they should be for someone as talented as he was. I hope to watch as many of his films as can get my hands on to see if my viewpoint will change over time.
Great subject!
All right, I’ll play. It is a little unclear as to where the best fit is for some of these directors; Ophuls Germany? Lubitsch US? Hitchcock Brit? I put them where I figured they were best suited, but, of course, your mileage may vary.
It’s an odd mix of filmmakers who I’ve seen few works by but deeply impressed me and filmmakers with a large body of work that is predominantly impressive if not quite as great if you just judged by their few best films. Anyway;
I wouldn’t say that Dances With Wolves is, in any significant way, about Native Americans, or at least not exactly. I would say it is more about coming to terms with the abuse they suffered at the hands of the U.S. government and its people. It is, to a large extent, like a time travel movie in which Lt. Dunbar represents Costner’s, and by extension our, modern sensibility; beginning from ignorance or disinterest in Native tribes and U.S. interactions with them, presuming some generalized sense of our government is behaving responsibly or is doing what is necessary, and then slowly growing to realize that this isn’t the case, that what he’s learned has been lies, that the native tribes are not savages as portrayed by those with a stake in wiping them out, but are people just as we are. Dunbar in this sense stands outside of realistic time and becomes a sort of projection of Costner’s changing feelings on the history of North America. The native tribes then are not the direct subject of the film but symbolic representations of the guilt Costner seems to feel regarding “our” role in their destruction.
This, of course, doesn’t mean the film is profound, in fact I would suggest it isn’t. It has the effect of absolving modern audiences from real and on-going culpability in the fate of the Native American’s still living in, often, squalid conditions and simultaneously pats us on the back for our being so much wiser than our predecessors. Lt. Dunbar’s acceptance into the tribe is troubling because it presumes, in some sense, that his new “modern” understanding is all that is needed for forgiveness from the Native Americans and works as a form of apology for past wrongs. By separating himself, as Dunbar,from the actions of the other white men he seems to be, in effect, saying that we wouldn’t do the same things again, we know better now, we aren’t like those people then. It is a fine first step to comes to terms with the real history of the U.S. but I think he presumes much too far here. It is one thing to take on the symbolic role of the white men in showing an understanding of their role in genocide, but it is entirely another to presume simply doing so is enough to win the affections of those whom such actions have been perpetrated against.
I have to side with those that find Costner a decently adept, but intellectually undistinguished director much in the vein of Ron Howard and others. I do find however he has an interesting persona that could still be used effectively is he hadn’t come to be seen as box office poison in recent years. His best work, perhaps unsurprisingly, seems to come when playing characters from more blue collar backgrounds, characters not that well educated but somewhat savvy, athletes and characters from westerns are an excellent fit for him, and he is better than most actors in those roles since he has a physical believability in his actions that non-sporting actors just don’t have, as well as his ability to show that peculiar mix of boyishness and underlying anger at being treated boyishly that seems to often come from those who make their living with their bodies like athletes and blue-collar workers do. He is one of a small amount of Hollywood actors who doesn’t seem to need to be treated as if he was brilliantly smart and that is a skill of no small use sometimes.
As for the cinematography debate, don’t confuse the Academy’s lousy voting record on the Best Picture with that of the Best Cinematography. Only other cinematographers vote on the award and the list of winners is much more distinguished than that of Best Picture winners.Here’s the list if you’re intereseted; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Cinematography
That said, it seems like there is a greater emphasis given to filming great landscapes outdoors than there is studio work, and, I imagine, there is a propensity to reward those one knows and likes personally as there would be in any fellowship like this so those form overseas are not as likely to be rewarded. I also must say that there is usually more great cinematography in any given year than there are great pictures, so making an outright terrible decision is much harder since there is such a high level of skill represented by all the nominees, as well as by many of those not nominated. It helps that cinematography has a much stricter technical component than say acting or directing where interpretation plays a much greater role. (Not that there isn’t an interpretive side to lighting or a technical side to directing, but it is just easier to measure the difference in a more qualitative way in the former I think.)
Wow, that’s far more words than I ever thought I would type about Kevin Costner, weird…
I think Brad Pitt has become a quite good physical actor, but has significant limitations with his voice and vocal range. Up through, roughly, Meet Joe Black, I found him to be a pretty buy who looked uncomfortable when asked to stretch beyond his innate charms associated his his natural good looks and carriage. I thought he was not very successful in Twelve Monkeys, but he did take some chances that I think helped him to become more comfortable in different roles later on.
I would say the combination of The Mexican and, especially, Snatch is where he really found his comfort zone, where he stopped trying to act like his idea of what an actor is supposed to due and just accepted that people liked him on screen and that he belonged there without being Robert DeNiro or whoever his idea of a good actor is. I think the physicalness of Snatch loosened him up in some ways as well. He has a very expressive way of moving and carrying himself, it seems as if he pictures his roles through the way the characters would physically respond to the world, granted, with his looks there is a limited amount of roles he will be given to play anyway, but within that limited range of characters I think he has differentiated himself nicely. His Tyler Durden was aggressive and physically tense, a cocky sort of movement that itched for a fight, whereas his Rusty Ryan in the Ocean’s films is comfortable in his body but laid back, more reliant on the confidence that he can get things done through charm and perceptiveness. But it was Troy that really helped convince me that he was improving enormously. Watching his Achilles move and fight is the best thing about that film. He, and presumably a fight choreographer, developed a fighting style that looked both unique and effective within the bounds of the film. His Achilles moved and acted as someone almost animal like, neither brute strength or raw intelligence or skill, like is the normal case in these sorts of films, would describe him well, he managed to convey an instinctual fighter, a mythological figure without calling to mind either Hong Kong or Sylvester Stallone and his like. I was impressed.
I think his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Mr. and Mrs Smith and Burn After Reading as been as much as anyone could ask for from those roles and shows he knows how to choose his projects wisely which is as much a key as anything to being seen as a good actor.
Oh, I agree, I don’t think the Academy is great when it comes to cinematographers, just much much better than they are when it comes to picking best pictures. I do think there is a lot of behind the scenes buddy buddy voting going on, but at least the nominations are often respectable, not worthy of being laughed off the stage like the best film choices are. Out of the nominees that year I leaned towards Vittorio Storaro’s work on Dick Tracy as being the one I would have voted for, but I am a sucker for studio work so take that as you will. Over all, I’d have to look more deeply into the matter since I don’t have a good list of what came out that year. Offhandedly, Mo’ Better Blues stands out in memory, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, and Cyrano de Bergerac were impressive, Wild at Heart was interesting and I seem to recall liking the look fo State of Grace, The Sheltering Sky, and Henry and June in lesser degrees. I was also quite impressed with Hardware’s look for the budget it must have had, but I’m sure there were other films that I’ve watched more recently from that year that were as good since the list I have of that year is mostly Hollywood films.
Well, I could hardly disagree with the idea that non-Hollywood films deserve more notice. They certainly do, but without a handy guide to the films of 1990 nearby I had to rely on a list I made around that time which doesn’t have many films from other parts of the world on it since I don’t get much chance to watch them until many months or years after the fact if at all. Distribution determines as much of the way we view a the history of film as anything, hell, more than anything, even promotion comes second to those who really want to find good films from wherever they are made. So, to be clear, I am not boosting Hollywood over any other part of the world, but being from the U.S. it is almost inevitable that I will see more films from here than anywhere else, and my choices will be less constrained by someone elses idea of what should be viewed.
That said, two things are also important to keep in mind regarding the Hollywood vs the World debate. One is that Hollywood does excel at the technical aspects of production, which isn’t to say that there isn’t great technicians elsewhere, but that the average level of technique is quite high there so in less interpretive aspects of film-making Hollywood does quite well. Secondly, and somewhat contradictorily I suppose, it is hard to get a good grasp on the “typical” film from areas of the world other than those in which we live since we tend to see a hand-picked few, the alleged best, or at least the most likely to be appreciated.So while the heights of film-making may be greater outside of Hollywood, the depths can be pretty low indeed. Stories as ridiculous as the worst of Hollywood but with even less technical competence. That, of course, isn’t as likely to be true from areas with equally vibrant and long standing traditions of film-making like Japan and France, but even in those cases the money put into films can play a big part in how well-made they are and who makes them. Hollywood “steals” so much of the best talent from around the world because they can throw money around and entice the best to come here. Of course their idea of the best in the world is predominated by the notion of who will provide the biggest box office returns so many great artists are ignored, which is good and bad since seeing some directors get the budgets and help required to make the films they want would be wonderful, but having them remain in their own countries often means they are free of the restraints of having to provide big box office returns on their films. So they keep working with more limited financial means but with more freedom to experiment and develop new language for film. It’s a strange mixed bag since many great directors often must struggle with other sorts of censorship problems in their home countries. It’s sometimes hard to tell which is worse, lack of financial backing or government interference. In any case, I heartily agree that Hollywood is not the innovative engine of film-making; it is instead where film-making goes that has already been tested and is ready for further production in similar modes. While the occasional odd work escapes that is truly innovative or the occasional film-maker breaks free and finds an audience for ground breaking work, usually in genre pieces, it isn’t where I would look for bold new visions.
Regarding Dances cinematography, I do wonder if the added difficulty of working with natural lighting, as opposed to the more readily controlled studio lighting, should be considered more seriously, or more seriously by me at least. It seems like outdoor photography is more highly regarded than indoor or studio photography by those in the industry, which means while I’m considering it only from the final result on screen there are those that might be thinking more of the inherent difficulty of the work accomplished. Presuming that could be the case, and it is only a presumption since I don’t know that much about the specifics of the work involved, I can accept a film like Dances with Wolves might be more impressive from a technical point of view even if it is less impressive artistically than some others made that same year.
Patrice Leconte – The Widow of Saint-Pierre barely beats out Monsieur Hire and the Hairdressers Husband due to the compounded irony of the ending. As you can see below I love a good ending.
Pedro Almodovar – Talk to Her. No other director like him. I wonder how he will be viewed over time. I also wonder this about Kaurismaki. Somehow I suspect Kaurismaki will be the more highly regarded, although I personally don’t agree with that notion.
Bela Tarr – Werckmeister Harmonies One of my very favorite films.
Takeshi Kitano – Kikujiro and Hana-bi are great, but the ending of Zatoichi fills me with so much glee I’m choosing it instead.
Kim Ki-Duk – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring over the conceptually interesting 3-Iron
Park Chan-Wook – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance even though I find JSA to be under-appreciated and sometimes prefer it. I am not completely sold on any of his works that I’ve seen so far, but he’s definitely impressive.
Alejandro Amenábar – I’ve only seen The Others.
Guillermo Del Toro – Chronos is a little more interesting than The Devil’s Backbone to me, but I fear he will only become Tim Burton’s more talented cousin at the rate he’s going rather than develop into something more.
Alejandro González Iñárritu – 21 Grams, I appreciate his seriousness, but I haven’t been converted.
Alfonso Cuarón – I hope Y tu mamá también is good since I haven’t liked any of his other films I’ve seen, although he does have some obvious talents.
Akis Kaurismaki – Ariel. Good solid film-maker with a very interesting vision, but in the three films I’ve seen he hasn’t managed to convince me his quirks add up to something more than pleasantly interesting.
Abbas Kiarostami – The Wind Will Carry Us. Brilliant.
Giuseppe Tornatore – The Legend of 1900 narrowly wins for it’s fascinating central conceit.
Lukas Moodysson – Ack! This reminds me I’ve been meaning to see Lilya 4-Ever for years now. Together is the only one I’ve seen otherwise.
Wong Kar Wai – In the Mood for Love towers above the three other films of his I’ve seen, and I liked the others. I’m not sure where he’ll go from here.
Michael Haneke – I feel like I’m getting a lecture from him too much of the time, but Cache is otherwise pretty compelling.
Aleksandr Sokurov – Russian Ark out of the two I’ve seen.
Lars von Trier – Dancer in the Dark out of the two I’ve seen.
Takashi Miike – Ugh. I keep watching his films since their descriptions sound so interesting but I can’t stand any of them. I hold out hopes for Audition though since it has an awesome trailer, in fact, that. The Audition trailer is my favorite “film” of his.
Luc Besson – Subway. He’s entertaining enough, but I can’t take him too seriously beyond that.
Catherine Breillat – Anatomy of Hell. Romance or Fat Girl would work as well. I really like her work, but I haven’t fully come to terms with it yet so I don’t know how much I “agree” with it intellectually. I find her bracing and mentally invigorating though and that’s rare enough.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet – A Very Long Engagement. Not really a big fan of his work, but Audrey Tautou? That’s a different story.
Zhang Yimou – To Live. Not that he’s made anything I haven’t liked that I’ve seen…I’ve got to find Codename Cougar sometime…
Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Pulse. Although Charisma comes close. I can’t wait to see Tokyo Sonata, I want to see him tackle a family drama.
You do run the risk of some, um, questionable choices by going with birth countries since the reason people left those countries could often be quite compelling. It would be a bit jarring to have Germany represented by To Be or Not To be, or even Manhunt for Austria. But I suppose if you consider it more of a generally approximated land mass where people happened to be born rather than a political designation it would make some sense.
Personally, I prefer Dick Powell as Marlowe in Murder My Sweet since he achieves much of the same effect as Gould while maintaining more of the concept of the private dick. I think Gould ranges too far into the nebish category to have been acceptably believable as someone who would have chosen to be a private eye. On the other hand, the handling of the interactions in the relationships Altman does show is quite well done. And since this version is as much about the distance between Chandler’s time and Altman’s I can live with some dissonance. Roscoe’s points are well taken, but over all I find the film a welcome addition to the genre, if for no other reason, too many times directors try to pointlessly duplicate the forties feel instead of expanding and finding a new mode within the genre.The noir thing is fine, but it is an awfully narrow viewpoint and there is no need to constrain oneself to older forms so rigorously. Altman is a bit of a smart-ass and a bit contradictory and limited in his viewpoints at times, but the variations on the themes are, I think, surprising enough and rewarding enough to offset the limitations. Hell, Sterling Hayden alone makes the whole thing worth having been made.
Oh, I wasn’ trying to derail the plan, just point out a possible area of contention to avoid an issue later.
Don’t forget to think of Pabst with the possibilities for the Austrian contingent and someone could always throw in Karl Freund as an alternate if they were big Mad Love fans.
Have you decided on how the points per game would be awarded? Is it just going to be a matter of putting up three films against each other and picking which group of three is better? I might hazard the suggestion that it could be more fun to do something like having the home team announce their group of three directors and then the visiting team would match a director and film one on one against the home teams directors at which point the home team would announce their opposing films. That way there could be a further level of strategy involved if, say Australia was going to face Denmark at Denmark, Denmark could announce a team of Dreyer, Von Trier and August, the Aussies could decide to run a sacrifice by throwing Luhrmann and Moulin Rouge against Dreyer and save their stronger players to face off against Von Trier and August. England could respond by saving The Passion of Joan of Arc or Vampyr, more certain crowd pleasers, for the next round and run out Ordet or Day of Wrath in their place feeling certain that Dreyer would still win the day. Each game would then have an element of offense and defense involved and it would make the three choices less top heavy by getting the focus off the single best film of the group and more on the body of films. It would not be surprising to see England keep winning because people feel so strongly about Hitchcock even if they didn’t care much for the other two films England put out there. I would also think about doing something like no film repeats until the finals or semi-finals and possibly have each of the starting three directors sit out one of the first three rounds in order to keep this from becoming another usual suspect love fest. To do that though would require either a sixth director for each team or some honest dealings on who the best three are for each squad and listing them as you starters.
Are you going to ask people not to vote, assuming scoring is based on votes, unless they have seen all the films listed, or, if you did do direct match-ups, at least both films listed by the matched pair?
Just some thoughts to mull over. Good luck! It’ll be interesting whichever way you do it, I’m just hoping to have it work in a way that doesn’t reward what people already think they know and continuing the stultifying dominance of a small group of directors that people keep listing as the best. Not that Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Hitchcock, etc. aren’t great, but their dominance is a little out of hand here and I would personally be rooting fora system that can get other directors noticed that are equally great although not as iconic.
I also think you might be able to have some fun if you had the managers and assistants to post a defense of their chosen film and an attack on the opponents film, but that could be time consuming and reward humor, eloquence, or invective over substance, it would, nonetheless, be more enjoyable…
All right, I’ll give it a go. Sign me up for the plucky Canucks. I live close enough to Canada for them to almost be my home team, and I’m familiar enough with the films there to not have to worry about finding to much extra time if I get busy with work.
The good lord knows I wouldn’t want the pressure of having to deal with the U.S. especially when they seem fated to lose in the later rounds if people who vote have seen the films they’ll be up against.
The sub versus starting player thing is a problem for the less prolific teams, like Canada and, I think, New Zealand. It would possibly be better to expand the rosters to six players to make a little space for directors like Geoff Murphy and Tamahori for New Zealand or Sarah Polley or Zacharias Kunuk.for Canada, amongst others, that have made one significant film but for economic or other reasons weren’t able to follow up on their success. I know I have a few Canadians that I will be unlikely to easily find more than one film for a variety of reasons, but the single films I can find are better than those of directors with more works available so I might have to take someone like Dmytryk just to have a guy with variety otherwise I’d have to run out the same couple of films all the time which wouldn’t be as much fun. I admit that I am partly just concerned with having to keep playing someone like Denys Arcand who is fine but unlikely to draw any support in most match-ups. I guess it’s partly a question of whether it’d be more interesting to have better films or more auteury directors. Personally, I’d like to showcase a little variety, but will be perfectly content to go the other route as well.
Like I said, I’m cool either way. I was mostly concerned with trying to maximize the potential appeal of a smaller nation’s film heritage and improve it’s chance of showing well against bigger more established powers. It’s only a matter of a single film difference in a third round so it isn’t a big deal, and maybe it makes sense to limit the amount of directors with one strong work. I just hate to have to leave out a better film for a worse one by a director with more work, but since Canada isn’t likely to go to far in the tournament it isn’t really worth worrying about.
As an aside, it would be really interesting to do this sometime with just works after,say1980 or so since it would even out the field considerably and remove a lot of received wisdom and reputation from play and would really give newer directors a chance to shine. I wouldn’t have a clue as to who would come out on top in such a tournament. But to focus on the matter at hand again, as far as I’m concerned I’m just here to do whatever y’all decide and see some good films. It’s already paid off since I took the opportunity to watch The Fast Runner this evening. So my investment is already paying dividends. Good luck with deciding on what films you’re going to choose on that Japanese team, or should I say which ones you’ll leave out…
I completely agree with having the possibility of substitutions after the group round in case some original choices show a propensity to underperform. That would take care of the problem I was worried about earlier about teams with some limited production players.
Heh. I thought about taking Austria instead of Canada, but I can’t abide Preminger, or Haneke if he qualified, and since they seems popular I didn’t want to hurt the teams chances with my idiosyncratic opinions.
I would, however, substitute teams if there were another Canada fan.
Yeah, I feel the same about Varda,and also Campion. I think The Piano is one of her weaker films, but I also understand there is a lot of hate for In the Cut, her best in my opinion.
Riefenstahl Dimitris?I can her her technical appeal, but I have a hard time taking out her politics. But that is an old argument of aesthetics vs content that won’t likely be settled easily. I do love the film The White Hell of Pitz Palu though and she is in that, and is excellent, so I guess I have some room to give here.
Also, Big?
Portrait of a Lady is also excellent, but I find the thematic construction of In the Cut to be her most daring work and a thrilling recontextualizing of both gender relationships and the history of their presentation in films. It reminds me a bit of Breillat’s work but aimed at the popular film audience more directly.
I can’t possibly disagree with with Riefenstahl’s importance and achievements, so I think we come pretty close to agreeing about her place in film history other than possibly the way her achievements should be represented on lists like this, which is obviously a relatively minor matter.
Well, I also happen to like Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct more than his other films too, so that might tell you something about where I’m coming from. (Jeez, I’m starting to get a little worried about the way I look at relationships now. I better watch some romantic comedies to regain some some balance here. ;))
The trick will be whether people vote on the films competing or on their feeling about the directors work as a whole. I mean if Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange comes up against Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century in the first round will Kubrick take it because he is well loved for his body of work and that people have a strong opinion about him or will Weerasethakul’s work be given the chance to shine as it should even though he is less widely known in a general sense?
Yeah, Big is fine for what it is, I just have a hard time seeing those other films behind it. Penny Marshall should have had at least the same career path as Ron Howard. But I guess people prefer Richie Cunningham to Laverne DeFazio so what can you do? I’m just happy there isn’t a strong Nora Ephron contingent here.
What film(s) do you think perfectly (or imperfectly) represents the American nuclear family? almost 4 years ago
Off the top of my head, my vote would be for Real Life by Albert Brooks.
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good examples to teach mise-en-scene and film language? almost 4 years ago
I might try Hangover Square in such a circumstance. It’s only 77 minutes long and melodramatic enough to keep even a high schooler entertained. John Brahm, while not a particularly famous director, was highly adept at the very things you mentioned; lighting, mise-en-scene, music, and blocking. I would think it an excellent teaching film.
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Poll of the Month, July: Favourite Films by Women almost 4 years ago
Wings — Larisa Shepitko
In the Cut, Sweetie, Portrait of a Lady — Jane Campion
Household Saints, Dogfight — Nancy Savoca
Daughters of the Dust — Julie Dash
Daisies — Vera Chytilova
Vagabond — Agnes Varda
Strange Days — Katherine Bigelow
Earth — Deepa Mehta
Secret Garden — Agnieska Holland
Kristin Lavransdatter — Liv Ullman
Mädchen in Uniform — Leontine Sagan
My First Mister — Christine Lahti
Orlando — Sally Potter
Crossing Delancey — Joan Micklin Silver
Scarlet Flower — Irina Povolotskaya
Fat Girl — Catherine Breillat
Toute Une Nuit — Chantal Akerman
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BEST FILMS BY CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD DIRECTORS almost 4 years ago
Since I haven’t seen all the films by most of these directors, I won’t stake a claim to these being their “best” films, but they are the best of those I have seen. For each director I listed the best film first and, obviously enough, the second best second. I would have liked to add a third film to most of these, but, hey, rules is rules. I added a few Hollywood directors that I like, that weren’t listed previously. Also, for fun, I also ranked the directors as I would view them if they all had only made their two films and didn’t have any other history to judge them on. I was curious about how much difference a body of work makes in appreciating their talents. Needless to say, both the rankings and the films chosen could easily differ if I were to do this again.
Orson Welles The Magnificent Ambersons, Citizen Kane
Ernst Lubitsch The Shop Around the Corner, Heaven Can Wait
Alfred Hitchcock The Birds, Strangers on a Train
Buster Keaton The General, Steamboat Bill Jr.
Gregory LaCava Stage Door, My Man Godfrey
Frank Capra It’s a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe
Michael Curtiz The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca
Lewis Milestone Hallelujah I’m a Bum, All Quiet on the Western Front
Victor Sjostrom He Who Gets Slapped, The Wind
John Ford The Quiet Man, My Darling Clementine
Vincente Minnelli The Pirate, Meet Me in St. Louis
Raoul Walsh Gentleman Jim, The Strawberry Blonde
Josef von Sternberg Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress
Jacques Tourneur I Walked With a Zombie, The Leopard Man
Robert Aldrich Kiss Me Deadly, Flight of the Phoenix
Stanley Donen Singing in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Charlie Chaplin Limelight, The Great Dictator
Edmund Goulding Nightmare Alley, Dawn Patrol
Rouben Mamoulian Queen Christina, We Live Again
John Brahm Hangover Square, The Lodger
Norman Z. McLeod It’s a Gift, Monkey Business
John Stahl Leave Her to Heaven, Magnificent Obsession
William Wyler Jezebel, The Good Fairy
Mervyn LeRoy Johnny Eager, I Am a Fugitive From A Chain Gang
Preston Sturges The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story
Anthony Mann The Fall of the Roman Empire, Winchester ’73
F.W. Murnau Sunrise, Tabu
Victor Fleming The Wizard of Oz, Red Dust
Howard Hawks Scarface, Man’s Favorite Sport
Fritz Lang The Big Heat, Ministry of Fear
James Whale Waterloo Bridge, The Old Dark House
Douglas Sirk A Scandal in Paris, Written on the Wind
Clarence Brown The Flesh and the Devil, Wife vs. Secretary
Robert Flaherty Louisiana Story, Nanook of the North
Charles Vidor Gilda, Cover Girl
William Wellman Nothing Sacred, The Light That Failed
Edgar Ulmer The Black Cat, The Strange Woman
Cecil B. DeMille Four Frightened Friends, The Crusades
Arthur Penn Night Moves, The Left Handed Gun
John Huston Moby Dick, Wise Blood
Henry Hathaway Peter Ibbetson, Niagra
Billy Wilder The Major and the Minor, One, Two, Three
Leo McCarey Love Affair, The Awful Truth
Nicholas Ray They Live by Night, Johnny Guitar
Roger Corman X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The Tomb of Ligeia
Sam Fuller The Naked Kiss, The Baron of Arizona
Robert Stevenson Darby O’Gill and the Little People, Jane Eyre
George Stevens Swing Time, Vivacious Lady
Richard Wallace Young in Heart, Tycoon
William Castle I Saw What You Did, The Tingler
George Marshall Destry Rides Again, The Blue Dahlia
Edward Dmytryk Murder My Sweet, Walk on the Wild Side
Sam Peckinpah Ride the High Country, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Mitchell Leisen Hands Across the Table, Easy Living
John Farrow His Kind of Woman, The Big Clock
Frank Taschlin Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Artists and Models
Robert Rossen All the King’s Men, The Hustler
D.W. Griffith Orphans of the Storm, Sally of the Sawdust
Alexander Mackendrick A High Wind in Jamaica, Sweet Smell of Success
Elia Kazan Baby Doll, East of Eden
Henry King The Black Swan, In Old Chicago
Fred Zinnemann From Here to Eternity, Day of the Jackal
John Sturges Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape
Mark Sandrich Shall We Dance, Top Hat
George Cukor Gaslight, Les Girls
Jack Arnold The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon
Jean Negulesco The Mask of Dimitrios, Humoresque
Irving Cummings The Dolly Sisters, Girl’s Dormitory
Anatole Litvak All This and Heaven Too, This Above All
Otto Preminger In Harm’s Way, Angel Face
Joseph Mankiewicz The Quiet American, Suddenly, Last Summer
Henry Koster The Rage of Paris, The Inspector General
Alfred E Green Baby Face, Dangerous
William Seiter Sons of the Desert, You Were Never Lovelier
Delmer Daves Jubal, Rome Adventure
King Vidor Bird of Paradise, Duel in the Sun
Mark Robson Isle of the Dead, The Ghost Ship
Budd Boetticher Decision at Sundown, Ride Lonesome
J. Lee Thompson Tiger Bay, Cape Fear
Robert Wise Curse of the Cat People, The Haunting
Lloyd Bacon The Sullivans, Footlight Parade
W.S.Van Dyke The Thin Man, Tarzan the Ape Man
William Dieterle A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Don Siegel Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Beguiled
Jerry Lewis The Nutty Professor, The Bellboy
Busby Berkeley Babes in Arms, For Me and My Gal
Ida Lupino The Trouble with Angels, The Gilligan’s Island episode The Producer
Richard Brooks Lord Jim, In Cold Blood
Rene Clair I Married a Witch, The Ghost Goes West
Frank Borzage The Mortal Storm, Strange Cargo
Archie Mayo Charlie’s Aunt, The Petrified Forest
Sidney Lumet Serpico, Running on Empty
Richard Fleischer Barrabas, The Vikings
Charles Walters Barkleys of Broadway, Good News
Allan Dwan Suez, The Three Musketeers
Robert Siodmak Dark Mirror, The Crimson Pirate
William Keighley The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Bride Came C.O.D.
Andre de Toth House of Wax, Springfield Rifle
Jules Dassin The Canterville Ghost, Tokapi
Fred Niblo The Mark of Zorro, The Three Musketeers
Stanley Kramer The Defiant Ones, On the Beach
Blake Edwards High Time, Operation Petticoat
Max Ophuls – I’ve only seen Letter From an Unknown Woman from his Hollywood period, add Madame de… and he would rank around 5th on the list.
Morris Engel – I watched as much of Little Fugitive as I could bear. Great technique, far too cloying.
Erich von Stroheim – So far I’ve only seen parts of Greed and Foolish Wives, not enough to judge.
Oscar Micheaux — Zilch
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Best film by each of these directors almost 4 years ago
Fellini – La Dolce Vita
Bergman – Smiles of a Summer Night
Kurosawa – Kagemusha
Truffaut – Shoot the Piano Player
Renoir – Rules of the Game
Fassbinder – The Marriage of Maria Braun
Herzog – Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Godard – Contempt
Antonioni – L’avventura
Bresson – Diary of a Country Priest
Hitchcock – The Birds
Bunuel – Belle de jour
Lang – M
Tarkovsky – The Sacrifice
Mizoguchi – Ugetsu monogatari
Rossellini – The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
Altman – Nashville
De Sica – Woman Times Seven
Polanski – Tess
Rivette – The Duchess of Langeais
Wenders – Alice in the Cities
Rohmer – Perceval le Gallois
Melville – Army of Shadows
Kubrick – Eyes Wide Shut
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Best Film by Each of These Directors - Part 2 almost 4 years ago
Ozu – A Story of Floating Weeds (‘34)
Pasolini – The Canterbury Tales
Cocteau – The Beauty and the Beast
Dreyer – Michael
Eisenstein – Ivan the Terrible part II
Lean – Great Expectations
Visconti – The Leopard
Satyajit Ray – The Home and The World
Vigo – *L’atalante*
Resnais – Last Year at Marienbad
Bertolucci – The Sheltering Sky
Kieslowski – Blue
Wajda – Ashes and Diamonds
Powell/Pressburger – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
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Best Film by Each of These Directors: Hollywood Style almost 4 years ago
Spielberg – A.I.
Mann – The Jericho Mile
Gilliam – Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Fincher – Alien 3
Scorsese – Life Lessons
Coppola – The Conversation
De Palma – Blow Out
Tarantino – Kill Bill vol 1
Coens – Blood Simple
P.T.Anderson – There Will Be Blood
Demme – Swing Shift
Cassavetes – The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Reiner – Rob When Harry Met Sally / Carl Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Penny Marshall – Big
Eastwood – The Bridges of Madison County
Cameron – The Abyss
Wes Anderson – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Jarmusch – Broken Flowers
Bay – The Rock
D.G. Green – Pineapple Express
Huston – Moby Dick
Ivan Reitman – Stripes
Lumet – Serpico
Burton – Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
Take those choices for what they’re worth since I’m not really a fan of most of these guys, although that isn’t an anti-Hollywood thing, it’s just these directors I don’t like.
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Best Film By Each of These Directors: Contemporary Non-Americans almost 4 years ago
John Woo – Last Hurrah for Chivalry
Mike Leigh – Life is Sweet
Stephen Frears – Dangerous Liaisons
Marc Forster – Stranger Than Fiction
Bela Tarr – Werckmeister Harmonies
Wong Kar Wai – In the Mood for Love
Ang Lee – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Atom Egoyan – Ararat
Costa-Gavras – Betrayed
Michel Gondry – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Guillermo Del Toro – Chronos
Alfonso Cuaron – The only one I’ve seen is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Alejandro Gonzelez Inurritu – 21 Grams
Arturo Ripstein – The only one I’ve seen is Foxtrot. If memory serves, I found it quite interesting.
Neil Jordan – Mona Lisa
Danny Boyle – 28 Days Later
Mike Newell – An Awfully Big Adventure
Nuri Bilge Ceylan –
Roger Donaldson – Smash Palace
Philip Noyce – The Quiet American
Peter Weir – The Mosquito Coast
Park Chan Wook – JSA
Lasse Hallstrom – My Life as a Dog
Ridley Scott – Alien
Walter Salles – Dark Water
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Raoul Walsh almost 4 years ago
To my mind Walsh’s strengths are in his love of humanity in its unwashed nakedness and in capturing the ways people move en masse. Like Shohei Imamura, he seems to not be concerned with value judgments but with trying to show the diversity of actions and motivations that people act upon. At times this can seem heartless or insensitive, but it also frees the viewer from the more manipulative methods of being told how to feel about the interactions of the characters they are watching. There is a better balance of faults and strengths in his characters than is found in almost any other Hollywood director, and, if one takes into account the conventions of Hollywood films from the time, more than most directors from other parts of the world as well.
In White Heat our sympathies can be with both Cody Jarrett and Vic Pardo depending on the specific actions that are occuring. In Gentleman Jim we can see Jim Corbett is a bit of a heel and a boor and can thus understand the wealthy club denizens wanting to take him down a peg, but we can also see his exuberance and charm and root for him to triumph. The fight with John L. Sullivan captures this well. We are both rooting for Corbett to prove his mettle by defeating Sullivan, but we have also seen enough of Sullivan to feel a sense of loss if he would be defeated. In They Died With Their Boots On he even pulls the strange trick of having us root for both George Custer and the indians! This tendency even holds true in films like College Swing and The Strawberry Blonde, our sympathies or interests shift depending on who is being focused on at the moment. It suggests a world view that is less determined by some innate sense of character, by which I mean some notion that there are good and bad or evil people, and more on a sense of individual actions causing better or worse outcomes.
As for the way he handles crowds or extras, just watch the amazing fight scene at the pier in Gentleman Jim to see how a mass of people behave. He really is without many peers in his understanding of crowd dynamics and the variety of ways people respond to situations. Even as far back as Regeneration he was much better at capturing the diversity of response than most directors I have encountered. And, echoing Farber, his ability to capture the lives of the poor without caricature is almost unmatched.
Granted, this is only based on having watched, perhaps, a dozen of his films, and some not recently, but Walsh’s films aren’t as readily available as they should be for someone as talented as he was. I hope to watch as many of his films as can get my hands on to see if my viewpoint will change over time.
Great subject!
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CINEMATIC LANDSCAPE almost 4 years ago
All right, I’ll play. It is a little unclear as to where the best fit is for some of these directors; Ophuls Germany? Lubitsch US? Hitchcock Brit? I put them where I figured they were best suited, but, of course, your mileage may vary.
It’s an odd mix of filmmakers who I’ve seen few works by but deeply impressed me and filmmakers with a large body of work that is predominantly impressive if not quite as great if you just judged by their few best films. Anyway;
JAPAN
Shohei Imamura
Kenji Mizoguchi
Seijun Suzuki
Hiroshi Shimizu
Yasujiro Ozu
FRANCE
Jean Renoir
Eric Rohmer
Olivier Assayas
Jacques Demy
Jacques Tati
UNITED STATES
(Ernst Lubitsch?)
Orson Welles
Jacques Tourneur
Vincente Minnelli
Anthony Mann
John Ford
ITALY
Vittorio De Sica
Federico Fellini
Luchino Visconti
Pietro Germi
Sergio Leone
RUSSIA/SOVIET UNION
Andrei Tarkovsky
Sergei Eisenstein
Larisa Shepitko
Aleksandr Rou
Aleksandr Sokurov
CHINA/TAIWAN
Ming-liang Tsai
Johnnie To
Hsiao-hsien Hou
Zhang Ke Jia
King Hu
GREAT BRITAIN
(Alfred Hitchcock?)
Carol Reed
Bill Forsyth
Alexander Korda
Michael Powell
Anthony Asquith
GERMANY
F.W. Murnau
G.W. Pabst
Fritz Lang
(Max Ophuls?)
Werner Herzog
Volker Schlöndorff
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kevin costner, director almost 4 years ago
I wouldn’t say that Dances With Wolves is, in any significant way, about Native Americans, or at least not exactly. I would say it is more about coming to terms with the abuse they suffered at the hands of the U.S. government and its people. It is, to a large extent, like a time travel movie in which Lt. Dunbar represents Costner’s, and by extension our, modern sensibility; beginning from ignorance or disinterest in Native tribes and U.S. interactions with them, presuming some generalized sense of our government is behaving responsibly or is doing what is necessary, and then slowly growing to realize that this isn’t the case, that what he’s learned has been lies, that the native tribes are not savages as portrayed by those with a stake in wiping them out, but are people just as we are. Dunbar in this sense stands outside of realistic time and becomes a sort of projection of Costner’s changing feelings on the history of North America. The native tribes then are not the direct subject of the film but symbolic representations of the guilt Costner seems to feel regarding “our” role in their destruction.
This, of course, doesn’t mean the film is profound, in fact I would suggest it isn’t. It has the effect of absolving modern audiences from real and on-going culpability in the fate of the Native American’s still living in, often, squalid conditions and simultaneously pats us on the back for our being so much wiser than our predecessors. Lt. Dunbar’s acceptance into the tribe is troubling because it presumes, in some sense, that his new “modern” understanding is all that is needed for forgiveness from the Native Americans and works as a form of apology for past wrongs. By separating himself, as Dunbar,from the actions of the other white men he seems to be, in effect, saying that we wouldn’t do the same things again, we know better now, we aren’t like those people then. It is a fine first step to comes to terms with the real history of the U.S. but I think he presumes much too far here. It is one thing to take on the symbolic role of the white men in showing an understanding of their role in genocide, but it is entirely another to presume simply doing so is enough to win the affections of those whom such actions have been perpetrated against.
I have to side with those that find Costner a decently adept, but intellectually undistinguished director much in the vein of Ron Howard and others. I do find however he has an interesting persona that could still be used effectively is he hadn’t come to be seen as box office poison in recent years. His best work, perhaps unsurprisingly, seems to come when playing characters from more blue collar backgrounds, characters not that well educated but somewhat savvy, athletes and characters from westerns are an excellent fit for him, and he is better than most actors in those roles since he has a physical believability in his actions that non-sporting actors just don’t have, as well as his ability to show that peculiar mix of boyishness and underlying anger at being treated boyishly that seems to often come from those who make their living with their bodies like athletes and blue-collar workers do. He is one of a small amount of Hollywood actors who doesn’t seem to need to be treated as if he was brilliantly smart and that is a skill of no small use sometimes.
As for the cinematography debate, don’t confuse the Academy’s lousy voting record on the Best Picture with that of the Best Cinematography. Only other cinematographers vote on the award and the list of winners is much more distinguished than that of Best Picture winners.Here’s the list if you’re intereseted; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Cinematography
That said, it seems like there is a greater emphasis given to filming great landscapes outdoors than there is studio work, and, I imagine, there is a propensity to reward those one knows and likes personally as there would be in any fellowship like this so those form overseas are not as likely to be rewarded. I also must say that there is usually more great cinematography in any given year than there are great pictures, so making an outright terrible decision is much harder since there is such a high level of skill represented by all the nominees, as well as by many of those not nominated. It helps that cinematography has a much stricter technical component than say acting or directing where interpretation plays a much greater role. (Not that there isn’t an interpretive side to lighting or a technical side to directing, but it is just easier to measure the difference in a more qualitative way in the former I think.)
Wow, that’s far more words than I ever thought I would type about Kevin Costner, weird…
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Is Brad Pitt a good actor? almost 4 years ago
I think Brad Pitt has become a quite good physical actor, but has significant limitations with his voice and vocal range. Up through, roughly, Meet Joe Black, I found him to be a pretty buy who looked uncomfortable when asked to stretch beyond his innate charms associated his his natural good looks and carriage. I thought he was not very successful in Twelve Monkeys, but he did take some chances that I think helped him to become more comfortable in different roles later on.
I would say the combination of The Mexican and, especially, Snatch is where he really found his comfort zone, where he stopped trying to act like his idea of what an actor is supposed to due and just accepted that people liked him on screen and that he belonged there without being Robert DeNiro or whoever his idea of a good actor is. I think the physicalness of Snatch loosened him up in some ways as well. He has a very expressive way of moving and carrying himself, it seems as if he pictures his roles through the way the characters would physically respond to the world, granted, with his looks there is a limited amount of roles he will be given to play anyway, but within that limited range of characters I think he has differentiated himself nicely. His Tyler Durden was aggressive and physically tense, a cocky sort of movement that itched for a fight, whereas his Rusty Ryan in the Ocean’s films is comfortable in his body but laid back, more reliant on the confidence that he can get things done through charm and perceptiveness. But it was Troy that really helped convince me that he was improving enormously. Watching his Achilles move and fight is the best thing about that film. He, and presumably a fight choreographer, developed a fighting style that looked both unique and effective within the bounds of the film. His Achilles moved and acted as someone almost animal like, neither brute strength or raw intelligence or skill, like is the normal case in these sorts of films, would describe him well, he managed to convey an instinctual fighter, a mythological figure without calling to mind either Hong Kong or Sylvester Stallone and his like. I was impressed.
I think his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Mr. and Mrs Smith and Burn After Reading as been as much as anyone could ask for from those roles and shows he knows how to choose his projects wisely which is as much a key as anything to being seen as a good actor.
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kevin costner, director almost 4 years ago
Oh, I agree, I don’t think the Academy is great when it comes to cinematographers, just much much better than they are when it comes to picking best pictures. I do think there is a lot of behind the scenes buddy buddy voting going on, but at least the nominations are often respectable, not worthy of being laughed off the stage like the best film choices are. Out of the nominees that year I leaned towards Vittorio Storaro’s work on Dick Tracy as being the one I would have voted for, but I am a sucker for studio work so take that as you will. Over all, I’d have to look more deeply into the matter since I don’t have a good list of what came out that year. Offhandedly, Mo’ Better Blues stands out in memory, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, and Cyrano de Bergerac were impressive, Wild at Heart was interesting and I seem to recall liking the look fo State of Grace, The Sheltering Sky, and Henry and June in lesser degrees. I was also quite impressed with Hardware’s look for the budget it must have had, but I’m sure there were other films that I’ve watched more recently from that year that were as good since the list I have of that year is mostly Hollywood films.
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kevin costner, director almost 4 years ago
Oh, definitely Ju Dou would be on the short list as well, I missed that one the first time.
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kevin costner, director almost 4 years ago
Well, I could hardly disagree with the idea that non-Hollywood films deserve more notice. They certainly do, but without a handy guide to the films of 1990 nearby I had to rely on a list I made around that time which doesn’t have many films from other parts of the world on it since I don’t get much chance to watch them until many months or years after the fact if at all. Distribution determines as much of the way we view a the history of film as anything, hell, more than anything, even promotion comes second to those who really want to find good films from wherever they are made. So, to be clear, I am not boosting Hollywood over any other part of the world, but being from the U.S. it is almost inevitable that I will see more films from here than anywhere else, and my choices will be less constrained by someone elses idea of what should be viewed.
That said, two things are also important to keep in mind regarding the Hollywood vs the World debate. One is that Hollywood does excel at the technical aspects of production, which isn’t to say that there isn’t great technicians elsewhere, but that the average level of technique is quite high there so in less interpretive aspects of film-making Hollywood does quite well. Secondly, and somewhat contradictorily I suppose, it is hard to get a good grasp on the “typical” film from areas of the world other than those in which we live since we tend to see a hand-picked few, the alleged best, or at least the most likely to be appreciated.So while the heights of film-making may be greater outside of Hollywood, the depths can be pretty low indeed. Stories as ridiculous as the worst of Hollywood but with even less technical competence. That, of course, isn’t as likely to be true from areas with equally vibrant and long standing traditions of film-making like Japan and France, but even in those cases the money put into films can play a big part in how well-made they are and who makes them. Hollywood “steals” so much of the best talent from around the world because they can throw money around and entice the best to come here. Of course their idea of the best in the world is predominated by the notion of who will provide the biggest box office returns so many great artists are ignored, which is good and bad since seeing some directors get the budgets and help required to make the films they want would be wonderful, but having them remain in their own countries often means they are free of the restraints of having to provide big box office returns on their films. So they keep working with more limited financial means but with more freedom to experiment and develop new language for film. It’s a strange mixed bag since many great directors often must struggle with other sorts of censorship problems in their home countries. It’s sometimes hard to tell which is worse, lack of financial backing or government interference. In any case, I heartily agree that Hollywood is not the innovative engine of film-making; it is instead where film-making goes that has already been tested and is ready for further production in similar modes. While the occasional odd work escapes that is truly innovative or the occasional film-maker breaks free and finds an audience for ground breaking work, usually in genre pieces, it isn’t where I would look for bold new visions.
Regarding Dances cinematography, I do wonder if the added difficulty of working with natural lighting, as opposed to the more readily controlled studio lighting, should be considered more seriously, or more seriously by me at least. It seems like outdoor photography is more highly regarded than indoor or studio photography by those in the industry, which means while I’m considering it only from the final result on screen there are those that might be thinking more of the inherent difficulty of the work accomplished. Presuming that could be the case, and it is only a presumption since I don’t know that much about the specifics of the work involved, I can accept a film like Dances with Wolves might be more impressive from a technical point of view even if it is less impressive artistically than some others made that same year.
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Best films by these directors - part 3 (final) almost 4 years ago
Patrice Leconte – The Widow of Saint-Pierre barely beats out Monsieur Hire and the Hairdressers Husband due to the compounded irony of the ending. As you can see below I love a good ending.
Pedro Almodovar – Talk to Her. No other director like him. I wonder how he will be viewed over time. I also wonder this about Kaurismaki. Somehow I suspect Kaurismaki will be the more highly regarded, although I personally don’t agree with that notion.
Bela Tarr – Werckmeister Harmonies One of my very favorite films.
Takeshi Kitano – Kikujiro and Hana-bi are great, but the ending of Zatoichi fills me with so much glee I’m choosing it instead.
Kim Ki-Duk – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring over the conceptually interesting 3-Iron
Park Chan-Wook – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance even though I find JSA to be under-appreciated and sometimes prefer it. I am not completely sold on any of his works that I’ve seen so far, but he’s definitely impressive.
Alejandro Amenábar – I’ve only seen The Others.
Guillermo Del Toro – Chronos is a little more interesting than The Devil’s Backbone to me, but I fear he will only become Tim Burton’s more talented cousin at the rate he’s going rather than develop into something more.
Alejandro González Iñárritu – 21 Grams, I appreciate his seriousness, but I haven’t been converted.
Alfonso Cuarón – I hope Y tu mamá también is good since I haven’t liked any of his other films I’ve seen, although he does have some obvious talents.
Akis Kaurismaki – Ariel. Good solid film-maker with a very interesting vision, but in the three films I’ve seen he hasn’t managed to convince me his quirks add up to something more than pleasantly interesting.
Abbas Kiarostami – The Wind Will Carry Us. Brilliant.
Giuseppe Tornatore – The Legend of 1900 narrowly wins for it’s fascinating central conceit.
Lukas Moodysson – Ack! This reminds me I’ve been meaning to see Lilya 4-Ever for years now. Together is the only one I’ve seen otherwise.
Wong Kar Wai – In the Mood for Love towers above the three other films of his I’ve seen, and I liked the others. I’m not sure where he’ll go from here.
Michael Haneke – I feel like I’m getting a lecture from him too much of the time, but Cache is otherwise pretty compelling.
Aleksandr Sokurov – Russian Ark out of the two I’ve seen.
Lars von Trier – Dancer in the Dark out of the two I’ve seen.
Takashi Miike – Ugh. I keep watching his films since their descriptions sound so interesting but I can’t stand any of them. I hold out hopes for Audition though since it has an awesome trailer, in fact, that. The Audition trailer is my favorite “film” of his.
Luc Besson – Subway. He’s entertaining enough, but I can’t take him too seriously beyond that.
Catherine Breillat – Anatomy of Hell. Romance or Fat Girl would work as well. I really like her work, but I haven’t fully come to terms with it yet so I don’t know how much I “agree” with it intellectually. I find her bracing and mentally invigorating though and that’s rare enough.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet – A Very Long Engagement. Not really a big fan of his work, but Audrey Tautou? That’s a different story.
Zhang Yimou – To Live. Not that he’s made anything I haven’t liked that I’ve seen…I’ve got to find Codename Cougar sometime…
Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Pulse. Although Charisma comes close. I can’t wait to see Tokyo Sonata, I want to see him tackle a family drama.
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
You do run the risk of some, um, questionable choices by going with birth countries since the reason people left those countries could often be quite compelling. It would be a bit jarring to have Germany represented by To Be or Not To be, or even Manhunt for Austria. But I suppose if you consider it more of a generally approximated land mass where people happened to be born rather than a political designation it would make some sense.
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The Long Goodbye almost 4 years ago
Personally, I prefer Dick Powell as Marlowe in Murder My Sweet since he achieves much of the same effect as Gould while maintaining more of the concept of the private dick. I think Gould ranges too far into the nebish category to have been acceptably believable as someone who would have chosen to be a private eye. On the other hand, the handling of the interactions in the relationships Altman does show is quite well done. And since this version is as much about the distance between Chandler’s time and Altman’s I can live with some dissonance. Roscoe’s points are well taken, but over all I find the film a welcome addition to the genre, if for no other reason, too many times directors try to pointlessly duplicate the forties feel instead of expanding and finding a new mode within the genre.The noir thing is fine, but it is an awfully narrow viewpoint and there is no need to constrain oneself to older forms so rigorously. Altman is a bit of a smart-ass and a bit contradictory and limited in his viewpoints at times, but the variations on the themes are, I think, surprising enough and rewarding enough to offset the limitations. Hell, Sterling Hayden alone makes the whole thing worth having been made.
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
Oh, I wasn’ trying to derail the plan, just point out a possible area of contention to avoid an issue later.
Don’t forget to think of Pabst with the possibilities for the Austrian contingent and someone could always throw in Karl Freund as an alternate if they were big Mad Love fans.
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
Have you decided on how the points per game would be awarded? Is it just going to be a matter of putting up three films against each other and picking which group of three is better? I might hazard the suggestion that it could be more fun to do something like having the home team announce their group of three directors and then the visiting team would match a director and film one on one against the home teams directors at which point the home team would announce their opposing films. That way there could be a further level of strategy involved if, say Australia was going to face Denmark at Denmark, Denmark could announce a team of Dreyer, Von Trier and August, the Aussies could decide to run a sacrifice by throwing Luhrmann and Moulin Rouge against Dreyer and save their stronger players to face off against Von Trier and August. England could respond by saving The Passion of Joan of Arc or Vampyr, more certain crowd pleasers, for the next round and run out Ordet or Day of Wrath in their place feeling certain that Dreyer would still win the day. Each game would then have an element of offense and defense involved and it would make the three choices less top heavy by getting the focus off the single best film of the group and more on the body of films. It would not be surprising to see England keep winning because people feel so strongly about Hitchcock even if they didn’t care much for the other two films England put out there. I would also think about doing something like no film repeats until the finals or semi-finals and possibly have each of the starting three directors sit out one of the first three rounds in order to keep this from becoming another usual suspect love fest. To do that though would require either a sixth director for each team or some honest dealings on who the best three are for each squad and listing them as you starters.
Are you going to ask people not to vote, assuming scoring is based on votes, unless they have seen all the films listed, or, if you did do direct match-ups, at least both films listed by the matched pair?
Just some thoughts to mull over. Good luck! It’ll be interesting whichever way you do it, I’m just hoping to have it work in a way that doesn’t reward what people already think they know and continuing the stultifying dominance of a small group of directors that people keep listing as the best. Not that Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Hitchcock, etc. aren’t great, but their dominance is a little out of hand here and I would personally be rooting fora system that can get other directors noticed that are equally great although not as iconic.
I also think you might be able to have some fun if you had the managers and assistants to post a defense of their chosen film and an attack on the opponents film, but that could be time consuming and reward humor, eloquence, or invective over substance, it would, nonetheless, be more enjoyable…
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
All right, I’ll give it a go. Sign me up for the plucky Canucks. I live close enough to Canada for them to almost be my home team, and I’m familiar enough with the films there to not have to worry about finding to much extra time if I get busy with work.
The good lord knows I wouldn’t want the pressure of having to deal with the U.S. especially when they seem fated to lose in the later rounds if people who vote have seen the films they’ll be up against.
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
The sub versus starting player thing is a problem for the less prolific teams, like Canada and, I think, New Zealand. It would possibly be better to expand the rosters to six players to make a little space for directors like Geoff Murphy and Tamahori for New Zealand or Sarah Polley or Zacharias Kunuk.for Canada, amongst others, that have made one significant film but for economic or other reasons weren’t able to follow up on their success. I know I have a few Canadians that I will be unlikely to easily find more than one film for a variety of reasons, but the single films I can find are better than those of directors with more works available so I might have to take someone like Dmytryk just to have a guy with variety otherwise I’d have to run out the same couple of films all the time which wouldn’t be as much fun. I admit that I am partly just concerned with having to keep playing someone like Denys Arcand who is fine but unlikely to draw any support in most match-ups. I guess it’s partly a question of whether it’d be more interesting to have better films or more auteury directors. Personally, I’d like to showcase a little variety, but will be perfectly content to go the other route as well.
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
Like I said, I’m cool either way. I was mostly concerned with trying to maximize the potential appeal of a smaller nation’s film heritage and improve it’s chance of showing well against bigger more established powers. It’s only a matter of a single film difference in a third round so it isn’t a big deal, and maybe it makes sense to limit the amount of directors with one strong work. I just hate to have to leave out a better film for a worse one by a director with more work, but since Canada isn’t likely to go to far in the tournament it isn’t really worth worrying about.
As an aside, it would be really interesting to do this sometime with just works after,say1980 or so since it would even out the field considerably and remove a lot of received wisdom and reputation from play and would really give newer directors a chance to shine. I wouldn’t have a clue as to who would come out on top in such a tournament. But to focus on the matter at hand again, as far as I’m concerned I’m just here to do whatever y’all decide and see some good films. It’s already paid off since I took the opportunity to watch The Fast Runner this evening. So my investment is already paying dividends. Good luck with deciding on what films you’re going to choose on that Japanese team, or should I say which ones you’ll leave out…
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
I completely agree with having the possibility of substitutions after the group round in case some original choices show a propensity to underperform. That would take care of the problem I was worried about earlier about teams with some limited production players.
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
Heh. I thought about taking Austria instead of Canada, but I can’t abide Preminger, or Haneke if he qualified, and since they seems popular I didn’t want to hurt the teams chances with my idiosyncratic opinions.
I would, however, substitute teams if there were another Canada fan.
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Films by Women: Poll Results almost 4 years ago
Yeah, I feel the same about Varda,and also Campion. I think The Piano is one of her weaker films, but I also understand there is a lot of hate for In the Cut, her best in my opinion.
Riefenstahl Dimitris?I can her her technical appeal, but I have a hard time taking out her politics. But that is an old argument of aesthetics vs content that won’t likely be settled easily. I do love the film The White Hell of Pitz Palu though and she is in that, and is excellent, so I guess I have some room to give here.
Also, Big?
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Films by Women: Poll Results almost 4 years ago
Portrait of a Lady is also excellent, but I find the thematic construction of In the Cut to be her most daring work and a thrilling recontextualizing of both gender relationships and the history of their presentation in films. It reminds me a bit of Breillat’s work but aimed at the popular film audience more directly.
I can’t possibly disagree with with Riefenstahl’s importance and achievements, so I think we come pretty close to agreeing about her place in film history other than possibly the way her achievements should be represented on lists like this, which is obviously a relatively minor matter.
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Films by Women: Poll Results almost 4 years ago
Well, I also happen to like Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct more than his other films too, so that might tell you something about where I’m coming from. (Jeez, I’m starting to get a little worried about the way I look at relationships now. I better watch some romantic comedies to regain some some balance here. ;))
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The Auteurs Film World Cup almost 4 years ago
The trick will be whether people vote on the films competing or on their feeling about the directors work as a whole. I mean if Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange comes up against Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century in the first round will Kubrick take it because he is well loved for his body of work and that people have a strong opinion about him or will Weerasethakul’s work be given the chance to shine as it should even though he is less widely known in a general sense?
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Films by Women: Poll Results almost 4 years ago
Yeah, Big is fine for what it is, I just have a hard time seeing those other films behind it. Penny Marshall should have had at least the same career path as Ron Howard. But I guess people prefer Richie Cunningham to Laverne DeFazio so what can you do? I’m just happy there isn’t a strong Nora Ephron contingent here.
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