1. Vertigo – head and shoulders above everything else and a personal template for my own cinephilia!
2. Rear Window – his most satisfying and technically brilliant
3. Notorious – the snappy dialogue is the most exciting and sophisticated in all of the Hitchcock canon. Most especially the racetrack scene which is the very model of heart-breaking restraint (“dry your eyes baby, it’s out of character… except keep on your toes, it’s a tough job we’re on”)
4. Marnie – his most flawed masterpiece and so his most interesting. He was certainly aware of the flaws and there is the occasional jokey reference in the dialogue. As when Mark asks Marnie why she tried to kill herself by throwing herself in the ship’s pool when they’re surrounded by an ocean?? (“the idea was to kill myself, not feed the fishes”)
5. North by Northwest – obviously his most polished – even though time has dulled the sheen.
Runners up:
Strangers on a Train. Highsmith is the perfect partner for Hitch and both book and film compliment each other.
Rebecca. It scores points for fleshing out the villainy of Mrs Danvers. But loses points for watering down Maxim’s ‘guilt’ and so weakening the ending And also for the horrible model shots of Manderley (the house is as much a foreboding character as the first Mrs DeWinter but when we see it for the fist time we just snigger)
Most undervalued:
Stage Fright. Hugely entertaining. Also the ‘lying’ flashback is not a mistake but a brilliant trick/joke on the audience
Mr & Mrs Smith. A fine screwball comedy. And, technically, very Hitchcockian
And the British period:
1. The 39 Steps. The template for every spy caper/man on the run film made ever since – including North by Northwest and so, consequently, every Bond film
2. The Lady Vanishes. Even though much of it’s appeal (the host of characters) is as much down to Launder & Gilliat
3. Sabotage. His most criminally slated effort which is finally getting the respect it deserves
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much. A far superior film to it’s tedious remake. Edna best, shooting shotgun from the hip, is a far ballsier heroine than Doris Day’s screechy house-frau who warbles to save her son!
5. Young and Innocent
Honourable mention: Number 17. Much berated and undeservedly I feel. It all moves at such a break-neck speed and is such huge fun that you can forgive its flaws. Its also probably the first Hitchcock film to contain many of the elements we now recognise as Hitchcockian: staircases (lots of them), bathrooms, the good ‘bad’ girl, handcuffs and bondage, trains and chases on trains, people not being what they seem (who are the villains and the heroes?), a macguffin (the necklace)
1. Vertigo – head and shoulders above everything else and a personal template for my own cinephilia!
2. Rear Window – his most satisfying and technically brilliant
3. Notorious – the snappy dialogue is the most exciting and sophisticated in all of the Hitchcock canon. Most especially the racetrack scene which is the very model of heart-breaking restraint (“dry your eyes baby, it’s out of character… except keep on your toes, it’s a tough job we’re on”)
4. Marnie – his most flawed masterpiece and so his most interesting. He was certainly aware of the flaws and there is the occasional jokey reference in the dialogue. As when Mark asks Marnie why she tried to kill herself by throwing herself in the ship’s pool when they’re surrounded by and ocean?? (“the idea was to kill myself, not feed the fishes”)
5. North by Northwest – obviously his most polished – even though time has dulled the sheen.
Runners up:
Strangers on a Train. Highsmith is the perfect partner for Hitch and both book and film compliment each other.
Rebecca. It scores points for fleshing out the villainy of Mrs Danvers but loses points for the horrible model shot of Manderley (the house is as much a foreboding character as the first Mrs DeWinter but when we see it for the fist time we just snigger) and for watering down Maxim’s ‘guilt’ and so weakening the ending.
Most undervalued:
Stage Fright. Hugely entertaining and the ‘lying’ flashback is not a mistake but a brilliant trick/joke on the audience
Mr & Mrs Smith. A fine screwball comedy. And, technically, very Hitchcockian
And the British period:
1. The 39 Steps. The template for every spy caper/man on the run film made ever since – including North by Northwest and so, consequently, every Bond film
2. The Lady Vanishes. Even though much of it’s appeal (the host of characters) is as much down to Launder & Gilliat
3. Sabotage. His most criminally slated effort which is finally getting the respect it deserves
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much. A far superior film to it’s tedious remake. Edna best, shooting shotgun from the hip, is a far ballsier heroine than Doris Day’s screechy house-frau who warbles to save her son!
5. Young and Innocent
Honourable mention: Number 17. Much berated and undeservedly I feel. It all moves at such a break-neck speed and is such huge fun that you can forgive its flaws. Its also probably the first Hitchcock film to contain many of the elements we now recognise as Hitchcockian: staircases (lots of them), bathrooms, the good ‘bad’ girl, handcuffs and bondage, trains and chases on trains, people not being what they seem (who are the villains and the heroes?), a macguffin (the necklace)
Someone had to do this. Reasons why we shouldn’t rule out the 80s:
The Elephant Man
Come and See
Amadeus
Au revoir, les enfants
Blade Runner
Das Boot
Brazil
Kagemusha
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Dangerous Liaisons
The Dresser
Dance With A Stranger
Fanny and Alexander
The Long Good Friday
Raging Bull
Ran
The Killing Fields
The Shining
Silkwood
Sophie’s Choice
The Thing
Withnail and I
Blue Velvet
Caravaggio
Babette’s Feast
A Short Film About Love
A Short Film About Killing
Matador
The Law of Desire
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
The Draughtsman’s Contract
The Company of Wolves
A Private Function
My Beautiful Laundrette
The Shooting Party
Prick Up Your Ears
The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Drowning By Numbers
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Diva
The Last Metro
The Return Of Martin Guerre
Shoah
Monsieur Hire
Mephisto
Colonel Redl
The Last Emperor
Red Sorghum
The Dead
Do we need more??
If the decade that cinema forgot gave us all this, then surely this is proof that ALL decades had a great deal to give us at the flics.
I was under the impression I was expected to be subjective here – I would hardly include films I’m not a fan of. So I didn’t forget the two you mentioned. Ferris Bueller, didn’t get a mention because I don’t rate it that highly and Hannah And Her Sisters didn’t because I had added what I thought was a far superior Woody Allen film. Hannah and Her Sisters has never left much of a lasting impression on me and I’m not a huge admirer of Woody Allen anyway. But if I am to include all the films that I think other people on here would rate highly then I’m sure I could compile a much bigger list!
The point I was making was that the 80s is not the cinematic waste-ground it’s being dismissed as. I’m not saying it’s the ‘best’ decade for film – I’m not really interested in putting the decades in order of merit – I can’t be that anal (compiling the above list was boring enough), just that there is plenty to see that was released in the 80s as far as I’m concerned.
As I said, my point was that the 80s gave us a lot more than it’s being given credit for – not to hold it up as some shining beacon of cinephilia. It certainly is not that. Just that there is far too many films of that period for it to be dismissed so offhand. Also, what is the point of pointing out the Spielberg films? Not only are they (to me) kind of representative of what I think went rotten in that period (big overblown studio flics) but who actually needs reminding of their existence?? But feel free to add them to the growing list.
Thanks to Elvis Is King for his input and bumping up the list too.
I would LOVE to have included Kieślowski’s Dekalog and Fassbinder’s Alexanderplatz. They are magnificent of course. But it’s TV. And I KNOW I would have had someone dismissing them as such if I had included them (I’m surprised that someone hasn’t claimed this with Fanny and Alexander and Das Boot – which are infinitely better in their truncated TV form). I did include the two stories that were adapted to the screen from Decalog and hoped at least then someone else would point out Kieslowski’s genius so thanks to Drew for not disappointing me.
Maybe it is a decade where things seemed to come to an end (though God forbid that the 90s could be called a rebirth!). After all, it was the decade when Hitchcock, Welles and Huston died. And cinema was now having to compete with the home video boom.
It was also a kind of peak for British film. It all ended here I feel and it’s never fully recovered. So there’s a lot more British film I could include but didn’t want to appear too insular.
I know some of these are not that well revered here but, what the hell, I still think they are pretty worthy of mentioning:
Gandhi
Chariots of Fire
Maurice & A Room With A View (bland M&I I know but I like these two)
Another Country
An American Werewolf In London
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Gregory’s Girl
Britannia Hospital
Brimstone and Treacle
The Missionary
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
Paris By Night
Greystoke
A Passage To India
Meantime
The Angelic Conversation
The Last of England
War Requiem
Letter to Brezhnev
The Mission
Hope and Glory
Wish You Were Here
A Month in the Country
Personal Services
White Mischief
My Left Foot
And, yes Dimitris, you do add obscure films but isn’t that the point? I want to here about films I may have missed or forgotten. Don’t feel scolded mister – bring them on!
As I have already stated – twice – I’m not defending the 80s as decade of note. The 80s was not getting a mention in this thread at all, so initially I only wanted to point out that there is actually quite a lot to admire/enjoy and didn’t deserve to be ignored. Granted much of it has dated severely but that’s all relative (during the 80s is twas fashionable to sneer at the 70s). But, as I also pointed out, I actually agree totally that the decade is indeed rather a low point (and only someone who loves American teen comedies/dramas would disagree).
I don’t have an opinion on what is necessarily the ‘best’ decade and I would struggle to put them in order of merit. American cinema has had two Golden ages of course – Hollywood of the late 30s to early 40s and the groundbreaking auteurs of the 70s. The 60s and (to some degree) the 80s were good for European cinema. British film was consistently great from the 40s and well into the ‘kitchen sink’ realism of the 60s.
If I had a gun pointed at my head though ;) ;) I may have to concur that the 50s was the most consistently great across the board – it’s certainly a more rewarding experience listing the masterpieces released in this decade than the one 30 years later!
Any one of the MGM musicals – but Singin’ in the Rain most especially. Any of the screwball comedies but especially The Palm Beach Story (the title sequence and the opening scenes with lovely Franklin Pangborn’s tight-lipped neurotic campery are therapy enough) and The Thin Man (William Powell is the best onscreen drunk).
But when I’m in a genuine funk, absolute silence and a blank wall is all I can bear.
One of the great joys of Hitchcock is his randomness. Most of his films – but more so the British films – are full of surreal and/or absurd sequences that don’t always have much to do with the actual plot, except they make us laugh or scratch our heads or are just simply entertaining divertisements (for example the farmer’s wife in The 39 Steps, the visit to the dentist in The Man Who Knew Too Much or the children’s party in Young and Innocent). But Hitch was, first and foremost, a showman and a prankster and his prime aim was to entertain and to make mischief. He was far less interested in the logic and implausibilities of the plot (even his masterpiece Vertigo has plot flaws you could waltz an elephant through) as he was how the film made us ‘feel’. Add to this the fact that he claimed that ALL his films were comedies, which (excepting the bleakness of The Wrong Man, Vertigo and maybe I Confess) they all are – providing you accept the jet black joke that is Psycho? So treat Hitchcock films as glorious jokes – or tricks on the the audience and you start to get what was really at the heart of Hitchcock.
By the way, you can’t get any more random than his cameos!
Transformers 2 without doubt is the worst film I saw in 2009. (I hated the first one and only saw the second as favour to a friend). Much of what is being made now disappoints me so, more and more, (very reluctantly) I am staying away from the big screen – it’s all so thoroughly depressing – so I probably haven’t seen enough cinema to judge really, but this metal encased turd is certainly the most excruciating experience I’ve had at the cinema this year. It kind of sums up what is rotten in the cinema now – big, loud, very VERY expensive, utterly devoid of any pretense at being cinematic and moronic beyond belief.
I find myself appreciating, more than ever, overly subtle flics as if in refuge from the hammers and chisels of Bay & Emmerich and their followers. A Serious Man, Moon and Bright Star being my personal favourites of 2009
Thank you Armands for saving me time! We really do need to look to TV for the most accurate Sherlock Holmes adaptations and no-one has ever come as close as Granada’s recreations with Jeremy Brett as Holmes. But credit is also due to David Burke and Edward Hardwick (after Burke’s death) as Watson – finally not playing him as a boorish prig or a bumbling idiot (credit to the writers as well of course!).
I love Basil Rathbone as Holmes but, apart from The Hound of the Baskervilles (which retains a rich and gothic atmosphere akin to the original story), the films are mostly (Hollywoodised) campy hokum. Fun but NOT Conan Doyle for me. Plus Nigel Bruce, excruciating in the extreme, has helped perpetuate the myth that Watson was a pillock!
But as far as Mr Madonna goes. I don’t think his intention is to give us a Holmes for the aficionados. I’ve no doubt (judging by the trailer and pre-publicity) that this is simply a cynical bastardisation to make lots of filthy money (which he probably will) and it would be naive to think he’s interested in anything else
Hitchcock’s 2nd film as director, ‘The Mountain Eagle’ (dismissed by Hitch as awful and he was glad it was lost but he was often his most severest critic), and his preferred version of ‘The Paradine Case’ (as opposed to the pitiful empty shell foisted on him by Selznick). Both films surely lost forever but one can dream…
Yes Harry, I did forget lovely Andre Morrell (a better Watson than Cushing’s Holmes I feel). A shame that Hammer’s rather over-ripe treatment is one of the lesser adaptations
If the trailer was actually a joke on a TV sketch show, we’d laugh (the ridiculous ‘thud-thud-thud’ effect with the letters of the title are very reminiscent of The Day Today for example).
At least out of curiosity I will still go to see it. But a film is a film is a film and I try not to let prejudice dictate my choices (Tom Hanks aside!).
Oh dear… thanks for the correction Love Bug. I didn’t get confused between Burke and Brett – I’m not sure why, but I had always been led to believe he’d died – how shamed am I? If I had to choose I would say I prefer him over Hardwicke but that’s no excuse for killing him off of course! ;)
Keaton for the dead-pan delivery.
I find Chaplin just too sentimental. I probably prefer Harold Lloyd but Laurel and Hardy even more so because – to me at least – they are consistently funny. I think their non-silents are the funnier though [Nothing makes me laugh more than Oliver Hardy’s screams of pain]
Well, seeing as it doesn’t specify THE 5 favourite directors or THE TOP 3, then can I have the luxury of being maybe a little random here – seeing as it’s simply far too painful to be definitive of who/what I love more:
Hitchcock:
Sabotage
Vertigo
Marnie
Terence Davies:
Distant Voices, Still Lives
The Long Day Closes
The House of Mirth
Bryan Forbes:
Seance on a Wet Afternoon
The Whisperers
Whistle Down the Wind
Krzyzstof Kieslowski
A Short Film About Love (if I can’t pick the whole of the Decalog!)
La Double Vie de Véronique
Trois couleurs: Bleu
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger:
The Red Shoes
A Matter of Life and Death
Black Narcissus
Bryan Forbes is one of the most undervalued of British directors and Seance is possibly his best film. A masterclass in direction and screen acting for sure.
You certainly have a point about Nanette Newman. It caused trouble on the set of The Stepford Wives and the drastic toning down of the look of the wives of Stepford, for example, was most likely down to Forbes’ reticence at seeing his wife looking slutty (the matronly frills replaced the original look of skimpy and provocative) and I think it was a mistake. But I think Forbes could be forgiven for his nepotism generally, seeing as he at least had the good sense to put Newman in cameos or secondary parts.
Yes, he fell out with screenwriter, William Goldman, over casting his wife and the frumpy house-wife look was the result. The Stepford Wives of course was very much a product of the 70s and a reflection of the progressive women’s movements of the time so the husbands were creating the literal man’s fantasy of subservient women – sluts in the bedroom and matrons in the kitchen.
I was lucky enough to see some of the greatest films ever made on the big screen when I helped out at a local indie cinema in the 80s. Many of them for the first time!
To name a few: Vertigo, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, La Règle du Jeu, Flesh and the Devil, Greed, The Virgin Spring, La Grande illusion, L’Atalante, Zero de conduite, Jules et Jim, The 400 Blows, Les Diaboliques, so many Kurosawa, 8 1/2, Black Narcissus, Sunrise, Metropolis, Intolerance, Once Upon a Time in the West, Brief Encounter, Lawrence of Arabia, The Third Man, Come and See. There are so many more I could mention including my first encounters with Chabrol, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Visconti, Bergman, Ozu, Ophuls, Almodovar, Kieslowski and Terence Davies. ALL on the big screen. Seeing them as they were originally intended to be seen is what has cemented my passionate cinephilia. I really don’t think I would have as deep an appreciation if I had only ever seen these flics on a small square in my home. Watching a film this way really does lose something more than just size – most importantly, our absolute full attention.
I have to agree with Harry on Lon Chaney Jr and the original film really is not one of the best of the Universal monster flics. I don’t really like to get involved in the whys and wherefores of remakes (I’m neutral on the subject and the debate has been done to death anyway) but isn’t this film being sold as a pastiche/homage of Universal’s monster flics anyway? That can’t be a bad thing (and is at least interesting from a cinephile perspective) – even Stephen Sommers retread of The Mummy and a turd like Van Helsing renewed interest in the originals.
Whether this ‘retread’ is any good or not (I have a sneaky suspicion it won’t be) it’ll fail or succeed on its own merits.
Great casting choice of Geraldine Chaplin as Maleva though!
“all films should be seen on the big screen except maybe if they were originally meant to be shown on TV”
I won’t argue with that.
“I think to state that one film you HAVE to see on the big screen, but another you don’t is offensive to the Director. If he made his film for the big screen, and regardless of how you watch it, that was his vision”
Absolutely right
As soon as you argue whether it’s preferable to see a film on the small or big screen (or… ahem! laptop!) then cinema as an artform is already becoming reduntant. If you actually need to be told the difference between TV and cinema then I don’t have an awful lot to say to you.
As a preference: Always big screen first, small screen secondary and laptop when your arms and legs have fallen off!
I watch films on all formats but I always aim to see it on the big fat white rectangle in the dark. However, I most certainly know how impossible it is nowadays to get to see anything much on the big screen that hasn’t come out of one of the big Hollywood studios. So you get it where you can for sure.
But the day I concede that it actually doesn’t MATTER where you watch your film or (God forbid) is actually preferable to watch it on a small screen at home is the day I hand in my cinephile credentials.
The point here is not about size (I actually prefer a smaller cinema screen) it’s about ATTENTION. No matter how much you think you are taking it all in because you have got a bigger than average TV, your attention span is simply not there as it would be in a cinema so that the small details that distinguish a piece of cinema from a TV drama are lost or become less important. Obviously some films fare better than others from the transfer but it’s usually the more cinematic that suffer.
In some ways it’s like saying listening to a CD is the same as going to a concert. Or that a a TV drama has the same emotional impact as live theatre.
His golden age from the British period that started with ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ and ended with ‘The Lady Vanishes’. Everything else – like cinema itself – is merely (more ‘polished’) imitation… mostly!
Hitchcock was hardly EVER really serious and maybe he was being glib when he said that “all my films are comedies”. But, when you look closely, the only films that could ever be called outright ‘serious’ are ‘The Wrong Man’, ‘I Confess’ and ‘Vertigo’ . All three are utterly bleak with untypically downbeat endings – ‘Vertigo’ does contain a handful of jokes but there is none at all in ‘I Confess or ’The Wrong Man’. Even ‘Psycho’ (which he referred to as his “little joke”) riddled as it is with gothic and gallows humour is nothing if not a black comedy.
Obviously I digress here! But ALL Hitchcock holds interest for me, so I don’t need much of an excuse to ramble ;)
Anyway (of the US films) Marnie, Lifeboat, Strangers on a Train, Rope, Shadow of a Doubt, Rebecca and even (dare I admit it?!) Stage Fright are infinitely more interesting and rewarding films (to me at least) than either North by Northwest or The Birds and consequently they stand up to repeated viewing. I haven’t rewatched North by Northwest or The Birds in years but have come back to the others many a time.
It’s hard to discuss without giving spoilers! I will say the ‘lying’ flashback which, far from being a cheat, I think is a brilliant trick on the audience. The casting – Jane Wyman (despite feeling eclipsed by Dietrich) is actually not bad and Alistair Sim was criticised but I think he’s great as are a number of other theatrical types being very theatrical (Kay Walsh, Joyce Grenfell, Sybil Thorndike and Patricia Hitchcock of course). But that is what this film is about – acting. Not in the sense of the players performing well but that ALL the characters are acting a part in some way (some more obviously than others).
Michael Wilding is a bit blah and it’s also been criticised for a particular ‘weak’ villain. But the weakness is an irrelevance and makes perfect sense to the outcome. And there is nothing weak about the eery way the killer is revealed and the peril the heroine finds herself in.
Marlene Dietrich is extremely camp and very much indulged by Hitch but I certainly can’t see a problem with that!
Most of all, it’s such huge camp fun and I think many people (during this period at least) expect Hitchcock to be unnerving and/or scary.
Well Wyman has herself to blame in some respects. She was peeved at Hitch’s indulgence of Dietrich and consequently balked at being too frumpy when pretending to be Doris Tinsdale. She would have been more fun if she had stuck to her original disguise (the gold-fish bowl glasses and fag hanging from her lip were a nice touch). In the story it’s dismissed by her character when she’s recognised by her mother
Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
Of the American period:
1. Vertigo – head and shoulders above everything else and a personal template for my own cinephilia!
2. Rear Window – his most satisfying and technically brilliant
3. Notorious – the snappy dialogue is the most exciting and sophisticated in all of the Hitchcock canon. Most especially the racetrack scene which is the very model of heart-breaking restraint (“dry your eyes baby, it’s out of character… except keep on your toes, it’s a tough job we’re on”)
4. Marnie – his most flawed masterpiece and so his most interesting. He was certainly aware of the flaws and there is the occasional jokey reference in the dialogue. As when Mark asks Marnie why she tried to kill herself by throwing herself in the ship’s pool when they’re surrounded by an ocean?? (“the idea was to kill myself, not feed the fishes”)
5. North by Northwest – obviously his most polished – even though time has dulled the sheen.
Runners up:
Strangers on a Train. Highsmith is the perfect partner for Hitch and both book and film compliment each other.
Rebecca. It scores points for fleshing out the villainy of Mrs Danvers. But loses points for watering down Maxim’s ‘guilt’ and so weakening the ending And also for the horrible model shots of Manderley (the house is as much a foreboding character as the first Mrs DeWinter but when we see it for the fist time we just snigger)
Most undervalued:
Stage Fright. Hugely entertaining. Also the ‘lying’ flashback is not a mistake but a brilliant trick/joke on the audience
Mr & Mrs Smith. A fine screwball comedy. And, technically, very Hitchcockian
And the British period:
1. The 39 Steps. The template for every spy caper/man on the run film made ever since – including North by Northwest and so, consequently, every Bond film
2. The Lady Vanishes. Even though much of it’s appeal (the host of characters) is as much down to Launder & Gilliat
3. Sabotage. His most criminally slated effort which is finally getting the respect it deserves
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much. A far superior film to it’s tedious remake. Edna best, shooting shotgun from the hip, is a far ballsier heroine than Doris Day’s screechy house-frau who warbles to save her son!
5. Young and Innocent
Honourable mention: Number 17. Much berated and undeservedly I feel. It all moves at such a break-neck speed and is such huge fun that you can forgive its flaws. Its also probably the first Hitchcock film to contain many of the elements we now recognise as Hitchcockian: staircases (lots of them), bathrooms, the good ‘bad’ girl, handcuffs and bondage, trains and chases on trains, people not being what they seem (who are the villains and the heroes?), a macguffin (the necklace)
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Top 5 Hitchcock over 2 years ago
Of the American period:
1. Vertigo – head and shoulders above everything else and a personal template for my own cinephilia!
2. Rear Window – his most satisfying and technically brilliant
3. Notorious – the snappy dialogue is the most exciting and sophisticated in all of the Hitchcock canon. Most especially the racetrack scene which is the very model of heart-breaking restraint (“dry your eyes baby, it’s out of character… except keep on your toes, it’s a tough job we’re on”)
4. Marnie – his most flawed masterpiece and so his most interesting. He was certainly aware of the flaws and there is the occasional jokey reference in the dialogue. As when Mark asks Marnie why she tried to kill herself by throwing herself in the ship’s pool when they’re surrounded by and ocean?? (“the idea was to kill myself, not feed the fishes”)
5. North by Northwest – obviously his most polished – even though time has dulled the sheen.
Runners up:
Strangers on a Train. Highsmith is the perfect partner for Hitch and both book and film compliment each other.
Rebecca. It scores points for fleshing out the villainy of Mrs Danvers but loses points for the horrible model shot of Manderley (the house is as much a foreboding character as the first Mrs DeWinter but when we see it for the fist time we just snigger) and for watering down Maxim’s ‘guilt’ and so weakening the ending.
Most undervalued:
Stage Fright. Hugely entertaining and the ‘lying’ flashback is not a mistake but a brilliant trick/joke on the audience
Mr & Mrs Smith. A fine screwball comedy. And, technically, very Hitchcockian
And the British period:
1. The 39 Steps. The template for every spy caper/man on the run film made ever since – including North by Northwest and so, consequently, every Bond film
2. The Lady Vanishes. Even though much of it’s appeal (the host of characters) is as much down to Launder & Gilliat
3. Sabotage. His most criminally slated effort which is finally getting the respect it deserves
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much. A far superior film to it’s tedious remake. Edna best, shooting shotgun from the hip, is a far ballsier heroine than Doris Day’s screechy house-frau who warbles to save her son!
5. Young and Innocent
Honourable mention: Number 17. Much berated and undeservedly I feel. It all moves at such a break-neck speed and is such huge fun that you can forgive its flaws. Its also probably the first Hitchcock film to contain many of the elements we now recognise as Hitchcockian: staircases (lots of them), bathrooms, the good ‘bad’ girl, handcuffs and bondage, trains and chases on trains, people not being what they seem (who are the villains and the heroes?), a macguffin (the necklace)
Go to Comment
What was the best decade for film? 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or our present decade? over 2 years ago
Someone had to do this. Reasons why we shouldn’t rule out the 80s:
The Elephant Man
Come and See
Amadeus
Au revoir, les enfants
Blade Runner
Das Boot
Brazil
Kagemusha
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Dangerous Liaisons
The Dresser
Dance With A Stranger
Fanny and Alexander
The Long Good Friday
Raging Bull
Ran
The Killing Fields
The Shining
Silkwood
Sophie’s Choice
The Thing
Withnail and I
Blue Velvet
Caravaggio
Babette’s Feast
A Short Film About Love
A Short Film About Killing
Matador
The Law of Desire
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
The Draughtsman’s Contract
The Company of Wolves
A Private Function
My Beautiful Laundrette
The Shooting Party
Prick Up Your Ears
The Lonely Passion Of Judith Hearne
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Drowning By Numbers
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Diva
The Last Metro
The Return Of Martin Guerre
Shoah
Monsieur Hire
Mephisto
Colonel Redl
The Last Emperor
Red Sorghum
The Dead
Do we need more??
If the decade that cinema forgot gave us all this, then surely this is proof that ALL decades had a great deal to give us at the flics.
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What was the best decade for film? 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or our present decade? over 2 years ago
I was under the impression I was expected to be subjective here – I would hardly include films I’m not a fan of. So I didn’t forget the two you mentioned. Ferris Bueller, didn’t get a mention because I don’t rate it that highly and Hannah And Her Sisters didn’t because I had added what I thought was a far superior Woody Allen film. Hannah and Her Sisters has never left much of a lasting impression on me and I’m not a huge admirer of Woody Allen anyway. But if I am to include all the films that I think other people on here would rate highly then I’m sure I could compile a much bigger list!
The point I was making was that the 80s is not the cinematic waste-ground it’s being dismissed as. I’m not saying it’s the ‘best’ decade for film – I’m not really interested in putting the decades in order of merit – I can’t be that anal (compiling the above list was boring enough), just that there is plenty to see that was released in the 80s as far as I’m concerned.
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What was the best decade for film? 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or our present decade? over 2 years ago
As I said, my point was that the 80s gave us a lot more than it’s being given credit for – not to hold it up as some shining beacon of cinephilia. It certainly is not that. Just that there is far too many films of that period for it to be dismissed so offhand. Also, what is the point of pointing out the Spielberg films? Not only are they (to me) kind of representative of what I think went rotten in that period (big overblown studio flics) but who actually needs reminding of their existence?? But feel free to add them to the growing list.
Thanks to Elvis Is King for his input and bumping up the list too.
I would LOVE to have included Kieślowski’s Dekalog and Fassbinder’s Alexanderplatz. They are magnificent of course. But it’s TV. And I KNOW I would have had someone dismissing them as such if I had included them (I’m surprised that someone hasn’t claimed this with Fanny and Alexander and Das Boot – which are infinitely better in their truncated TV form). I did include the two stories that were adapted to the screen from Decalog and hoped at least then someone else would point out Kieslowski’s genius so thanks to Drew for not disappointing me.
Maybe it is a decade where things seemed to come to an end (though God forbid that the 90s could be called a rebirth!). After all, it was the decade when Hitchcock, Welles and Huston died. And cinema was now having to compete with the home video boom.
It was also a kind of peak for British film. It all ended here I feel and it’s never fully recovered. So there’s a lot more British film I could include but didn’t want to appear too insular.
I know some of these are not that well revered here but, what the hell, I still think they are pretty worthy of mentioning:
Gandhi
Chariots of Fire
Maurice & A Room With A View (bland M&I I know but I like these two)
Another Country
An American Werewolf In London
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Gregory’s Girl
Britannia Hospital
Brimstone and Treacle
The Missionary
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
Paris By Night
Greystoke
A Passage To India
Meantime
The Angelic Conversation
The Last of England
War Requiem
Letter to Brezhnev
The Mission
Hope and Glory
Wish You Were Here
A Month in the Country
Personal Services
White Mischief
My Left Foot
And, yes Dimitris, you do add obscure films but isn’t that the point? I want to here about films I may have missed or forgotten. Don’t feel scolded mister – bring them on!
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What was the best decade for film? 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or our present decade? over 2 years ago
As I have already stated – twice – I’m not defending the 80s as decade of note. The 80s was not getting a mention in this thread at all, so initially I only wanted to point out that there is actually quite a lot to admire/enjoy and didn’t deserve to be ignored. Granted much of it has dated severely but that’s all relative (during the 80s is twas fashionable to sneer at the 70s). But, as I also pointed out, I actually agree totally that the decade is indeed rather a low point (and only someone who loves American teen comedies/dramas would disagree).
I don’t have an opinion on what is necessarily the ‘best’ decade and I would struggle to put them in order of merit. American cinema has had two Golden ages of course – Hollywood of the late 30s to early 40s and the groundbreaking auteurs of the 70s. The 60s and (to some degree) the 80s were good for European cinema. British film was consistently great from the 40s and well into the ‘kitchen sink’ realism of the 60s.
If I had a gun pointed at my head though ;) ;) I may have to concur that the 50s was the most consistently great across the board – it’s certainly a more rewarding experience listing the masterpieces released in this decade than the one 30 years later!
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What was the best decade for film? 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or our present decade? over 2 years ago
Me thinks that someone has a rather select taste? ;) And does that mean that the 80s has got its first vote??
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What was the best decade for film? 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or our present decade? over 2 years ago
Of course you were joking. The 80s could never be anyone’s favourite decade – even by default!
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What was the best decade for film? 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, or our present decade? over 2 years ago
Thanks Dimitris for reminding me of Bill Douglas. And that I missed Fitzcarraldo!!
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which movie picks you up when you're down? over 2 years ago
Any one of the MGM musicals – but Singin’ in the Rain most especially. Any of the screwball comedies but especially The Palm Beach Story (the title sequence and the opening scenes with lovely Franklin Pangborn’s tight-lipped neurotic campery are therapy enough) and The Thin Man (William Powell is the best onscreen drunk).
But when I’m in a genuine funk, absolute silence and a blank wall is all I can bear.
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What am I not Getting About Hitchcock? over 2 years ago
One of the great joys of Hitchcock is his randomness. Most of his films – but more so the British films – are full of surreal and/or absurd sequences that don’t always have much to do with the actual plot, except they make us laugh or scratch our heads or are just simply entertaining divertisements (for example the farmer’s wife in The 39 Steps, the visit to the dentist in The Man Who Knew Too Much or the children’s party in Young and Innocent). But Hitch was, first and foremost, a showman and a prankster and his prime aim was to entertain and to make mischief. He was far less interested in the logic and implausibilities of the plot (even his masterpiece Vertigo has plot flaws you could waltz an elephant through) as he was how the film made us ‘feel’. Add to this the fact that he claimed that ALL his films were comedies, which (excepting the bleakness of The Wrong Man, Vertigo and maybe I Confess) they all are – providing you accept the jet black joke that is Psycho? So treat Hitchcock films as glorious jokes – or tricks on the the audience and you start to get what was really at the heart of Hitchcock.
By the way, you can’t get any more random than his cameos!
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worst movie of 2009 over 2 years ago
Transformers 2 without doubt is the worst film I saw in 2009. (I hated the first one and only saw the second as favour to a friend). Much of what is being made now disappoints me so, more and more, (very reluctantly) I am staying away from the big screen – it’s all so thoroughly depressing – so I probably haven’t seen enough cinema to judge really, but this metal encased turd is certainly the most excruciating experience I’ve had at the cinema this year. It kind of sums up what is rotten in the cinema now – big, loud, very VERY expensive, utterly devoid of any pretense at being cinematic and moronic beyond belief.
I find myself appreciating, more than ever, overly subtle flics as if in refuge from the hammers and chisels of Bay & Emmerich and their followers. A Serious Man, Moon and Bright Star being my personal favourites of 2009
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Sherlock Holmes over 2 years ago
Thank you Armands for saving me time! We really do need to look to TV for the most accurate Sherlock Holmes adaptations and no-one has ever come as close as Granada’s recreations with Jeremy Brett as Holmes. But credit is also due to David Burke and Edward Hardwick (after Burke’s death) as Watson – finally not playing him as a boorish prig or a bumbling idiot (credit to the writers as well of course!).
I love Basil Rathbone as Holmes but, apart from The Hound of the Baskervilles (which retains a rich and gothic atmosphere akin to the original story), the films are mostly (Hollywoodised) campy hokum. Fun but NOT Conan Doyle for me. Plus Nigel Bruce, excruciating in the extreme, has helped perpetuate the myth that Watson was a pillock!
But as far as Mr Madonna goes. I don’t think his intention is to give us a Holmes for the aficionados. I’ve no doubt (judging by the trailer and pre-publicity) that this is simply a cynical bastardisation to make lots of filthy money (which he probably will) and it would be naive to think he’s interested in anything else
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Lost Movies over 2 years ago
Hitchcock’s 2nd film as director, ‘The Mountain Eagle’ (dismissed by Hitch as awful and he was glad it was lost but he was often his most severest critic), and his preferred version of ‘The Paradine Case’ (as opposed to the pitiful empty shell foisted on him by Selznick). Both films surely lost forever but one can dream…
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Sherlock Holmes over 2 years ago
Yes Harry, I did forget lovely Andre Morrell (a better Watson than Cushing’s Holmes I feel). A shame that Hammer’s rather over-ripe treatment is one of the lesser adaptations
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Sherlock Holmes over 2 years ago
If the trailer was actually a joke on a TV sketch show, we’d laugh (the ridiculous ‘thud-thud-thud’ effect with the letters of the title are very reminiscent of The Day Today for example).
At least out of curiosity I will still go to see it. But a film is a film is a film and I try not to let prejudice dictate my choices (Tom Hanks aside!).
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Sherlock Holmes over 2 years ago
Oh dear… thanks for the correction Love Bug. I didn’t get confused between Burke and Brett – I’m not sure why, but I had always been led to believe he’d died – how shamed am I? If I had to choose I would say I prefer him over Hardwicke but that’s no excuse for killing him off of course! ;)
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Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? over 2 years ago
Keaton for the dead-pan delivery.
I find Chaplin just too sentimental. I probably prefer Harold Lloyd but Laurel and Hardy even more so because – to me at least – they are consistently funny. I think their non-silents are the funnier though [Nothing makes me laugh more than Oliver Hardy’s screams of pain]
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3 Favourite Movies From 5 Favourite Directors over 2 years ago
Well, seeing as it doesn’t specify THE 5 favourite directors or THE TOP 3, then can I have the luxury of being maybe a little random here – seeing as it’s simply far too painful to be definitive of who/what I love more:
Hitchcock:
Sabotage
Vertigo
Marnie
Terence Davies:
Distant Voices, Still Lives
The Long Day Closes
The House of Mirth
Bryan Forbes:
Seance on a Wet Afternoon
The Whisperers
Whistle Down the Wind
Krzyzstof Kieslowski
A Short Film About Love (if I can’t pick the whole of the Decalog!)
La Double Vie de Véronique
Trois couleurs: Bleu
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger:
The Red Shoes
A Matter of Life and Death
Black Narcissus
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SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON over 2 years ago
Bryan Forbes is one of the most undervalued of British directors and Seance is possibly his best film. A masterclass in direction and screen acting for sure.
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SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON over 2 years ago
You certainly have a point about Nanette Newman. It caused trouble on the set of The Stepford Wives and the drastic toning down of the look of the wives of Stepford, for example, was most likely down to Forbes’ reticence at seeing his wife looking slutty (the matronly frills replaced the original look of skimpy and provocative) and I think it was a mistake. But I think Forbes could be forgiven for his nepotism generally, seeing as he at least had the good sense to put Newman in cameos or secondary parts.
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SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON over 2 years ago
Yes, he fell out with screenwriter, William Goldman, over casting his wife and the frumpy house-wife look was the result. The Stepford Wives of course was very much a product of the 70s and a reflection of the progressive women’s movements of the time so the husbands were creating the literal man’s fantasy of subservient women – sluts in the bedroom and matrons in the kitchen.
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great films that should be seen on a big screen vs. great films where it does not make a difference whether you watch on a laptop or in a movie theater over 2 years ago
I was lucky enough to see some of the greatest films ever made on the big screen when I helped out at a local indie cinema in the 80s. Many of them for the first time!
To name a few: Vertigo, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, La Règle du Jeu, Flesh and the Devil, Greed, The Virgin Spring, La Grande illusion, L’Atalante, Zero de conduite, Jules et Jim, The 400 Blows, Les Diaboliques, so many Kurosawa, 8 1/2, Black Narcissus, Sunrise, Metropolis, Intolerance, Once Upon a Time in the West, Brief Encounter, Lawrence of Arabia, The Third Man, Come and See. There are so many more I could mention including my first encounters with Chabrol, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Visconti, Bergman, Ozu, Ophuls, Almodovar, Kieslowski and Terence Davies. ALL on the big screen. Seeing them as they were originally intended to be seen is what has cemented my passionate cinephilia. I really don’t think I would have as deep an appreciation if I had only ever seen these flics on a small square in my home. Watching a film this way really does lose something more than just size – most importantly, our absolute full attention.
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anyone else somewhat excited for Wolfman? over 2 years ago
I have to agree with Harry on Lon Chaney Jr and the original film really is not one of the best of the Universal monster flics. I don’t really like to get involved in the whys and wherefores of remakes (I’m neutral on the subject and the debate has been done to death anyway) but isn’t this film being sold as a pastiche/homage of Universal’s monster flics anyway? That can’t be a bad thing (and is at least interesting from a cinephile perspective) – even Stephen Sommers retread of The Mummy and a turd like Van Helsing renewed interest in the originals.
Whether this ‘retread’ is any good or not (I have a sneaky suspicion it won’t be) it’ll fail or succeed on its own merits.
Great casting choice of Geraldine Chaplin as Maleva though!
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great films that should be seen on a big screen vs. great films where it does not make a difference whether you watch on a laptop or in a movie theater over 2 years ago
“all films should be seen on the big screen except maybe if they were originally meant to be shown on TV”
I won’t argue with that.
“I think to state that one film you HAVE to see on the big screen, but another you don’t is offensive to the Director. If he made his film for the big screen, and regardless of how you watch it, that was his vision”
Absolutely right
As soon as you argue whether it’s preferable to see a film on the small or big screen (or… ahem! laptop!) then cinema as an artform is already becoming reduntant. If you actually need to be told the difference between TV and cinema then I don’t have an awful lot to say to you.
As a preference: Always big screen first, small screen secondary and laptop when your arms and legs have fallen off!
I watch films on all formats but I always aim to see it on the big fat white rectangle in the dark. However, I most certainly know how impossible it is nowadays to get to see anything much on the big screen that hasn’t come out of one of the big Hollywood studios. So you get it where you can for sure.
But the day I concede that it actually doesn’t MATTER where you watch your film or (God forbid) is actually preferable to watch it on a small screen at home is the day I hand in my cinephile credentials.
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great films that should be seen on a big screen vs. great films where it does not make a difference whether you watch on a laptop or in a movie theater over 2 years ago
The point here is not about size (I actually prefer a smaller cinema screen) it’s about ATTENTION. No matter how much you think you are taking it all in because you have got a bigger than average TV, your attention span is simply not there as it would be in a cinema so that the small details that distinguish a piece of cinema from a TV drama are lost or become less important. Obviously some films fare better than others from the transfer but it’s usually the more cinematic that suffer.
In some ways it’s like saying listening to a CD is the same as going to a concert. Or that a a TV drama has the same emotional impact as live theatre.
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what would hitchcock's best film be if you were to discount... over 2 years ago
His golden age from the British period that started with ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ and ended with ‘The Lady Vanishes’. Everything else – like cinema itself – is merely (more ‘polished’) imitation… mostly!
Hitchcock was hardly EVER really serious and maybe he was being glib when he said that “all my films are comedies”. But, when you look closely, the only films that could ever be called outright ‘serious’ are ‘The Wrong Man’, ‘I Confess’ and ‘Vertigo’ . All three are utterly bleak with untypically downbeat endings – ‘Vertigo’ does contain a handful of jokes but there is none at all in ‘I Confess or ’The Wrong Man’. Even ‘Psycho’ (which he referred to as his “little joke”) riddled as it is with gothic and gallows humour is nothing if not a black comedy.
Obviously I digress here! But ALL Hitchcock holds interest for me, so I don’t need much of an excuse to ramble ;)
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what would hitchcock's best film be if you were to discount... over 2 years ago
Anyway (of the US films) Marnie, Lifeboat, Strangers on a Train, Rope, Shadow of a Doubt, Rebecca and even (dare I admit it?!) Stage Fright are infinitely more interesting and rewarding films (to me at least) than either North by Northwest or The Birds and consequently they stand up to repeated viewing. I haven’t rewatched North by Northwest or The Birds in years but have come back to the others many a time.
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what would hitchcock's best film be if you were to discount... over 2 years ago
It’s hard to discuss without giving spoilers! I will say the ‘lying’ flashback which, far from being a cheat, I think is a brilliant trick on the audience. The casting – Jane Wyman (despite feeling eclipsed by Dietrich) is actually not bad and Alistair Sim was criticised but I think he’s great as are a number of other theatrical types being very theatrical (Kay Walsh, Joyce Grenfell, Sybil Thorndike and Patricia Hitchcock of course). But that is what this film is about – acting. Not in the sense of the players performing well but that ALL the characters are acting a part in some way (some more obviously than others).
Michael Wilding is a bit blah and it’s also been criticised for a particular ‘weak’ villain. But the weakness is an irrelevance and makes perfect sense to the outcome. And there is nothing weak about the eery way the killer is revealed and the peril the heroine finds herself in.
Marlene Dietrich is extremely camp and very much indulged by Hitch but I certainly can’t see a problem with that!
Most of all, it’s such huge camp fun and I think many people (during this period at least) expect Hitchcock to be unnerving and/or scary.
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what would hitchcock's best film be if you were to discount... over 2 years ago
Well Wyman has herself to blame in some respects. She was peeved at Hitch’s indulgence of Dietrich and consequently balked at being too frumpy when pretending to be Doris Tinsdale. She would have been more fun if she had stuck to her original disguise (the gold-fish bowl glasses and fag hanging from her lip were a nice touch). In the story it’s dismissed by her character when she’s recognised by her mother
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