You can argue forever about the content of a film, its aesthetic, its style, even its moral posture; but the crucial imperative is to avoid boredom at all costs.
Luis Buñuel
Another installment in my exploration of the world's Greatest Films of All Time. The initial post included an Introduction and Films 1-20. [The other posts in this series include Films 21-50, Films 101-200, and The Directors.]
You can skip the following brief intro if you've already read the other posts.
Briefly, I researched and compiled 30 lists of Greatest Films from various sources around the globe, including critics such as Roger Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum; popular magazines like Time and Time Out (UK); films journals such as Sight & Sound, Cahiers du cinema, Kinovedcheskie Zapiski (Russia); and a range of Film Archives from countries like China, India, Ecuador, Israel, Greece, and Finland.
The 30 polls produced a total of 580 films. When films weren't ranked in the polls, I assigned a numeric value depending on the total number of films included (eg. 100 films = 20 points). So, the list I'm presenting is not a ranking of films I personally think are the greatest of all time. It's simply a reflection of results from across 30 polls voted on by hundreds of other people.
My quest was twofold: To see which works were considered the masterpieces of cinema from a variety of international sources, and to see if and how the perception of great films and great directors varied from one region of the world to another.
Films 51-100
51. The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed 396.5 points - 7 mentions
52. Sunset Blvd. (1950) Billy Wilder 379 - 7
53. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) Robert Bresson 373.5 - 7
54. Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola 371 - 7
55. Ivan Groznyy I and/or II [Ivan the Terrible] (1944) Sergei M. Eisenstein 370 - 7
56. Raging Bull (1980) Martin Scorsese 367.5 - 7
57. Fanny och Alexander (1982) Ingmar Bergman 359.5 - 6
58. North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock 357 - 6
59. Modern Times (1936) Charlie Chaplin 355 - 7
60. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) Orson Welles 350.5 - 6
61. Il Gattopardo [The Leopard] (1963) Luchino Visconti 347.5 - 7
62. Rio Bravo (1959) Howard Hawks 340.5 - 6
63. L'Age d'or (1930) Luis Buñuel 340 - 7
64. The Birth of a Nation (1915) D.W. Griffith 329 - 7
65. Barry Lyndon (1975) Stanley Kubrick 317.5 - 8
66. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Stanley Kubrick 317 - 6
67. Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman 316 - 8
68. Pierrot le fou (1965) Jean Luc Godard 315.5 - 7
69. Viridiana (1961) Luis Buñuel 309.5 - 6
70. Pickpocket (1959) Robert Bresson 303.5 - 7
71. The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming 292 - 7
72. Il Conformista (1970) Bernardo Bertolucci 288.5 - 5
73. Jules et Jim (1962) François Truffaut 279 - 6
74. All About Eve (1950) Joseph Mankiewicz 275 - 6
75. Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock 272.5 - 4
76. Sanshô dayû [Sansho the Bailiff] (1954) Kenji Mizoguchi 267 - 6
77. La Strada (1954) Federico Fellini 264.5 - 4
78. Notorious (1946) Alfred Hitchcock 263.5 - 7
79. The Apartment (1960) Billy Wilder 248.5 - 5
80. Amarcord (1973) Federico Fellini 247.5 - 6
81. L'Année dernière à Marienbad [Last Year at Marienbad] (1961) Alain Resnais 243.5 - 7
82. Gertrud (1964) Carl Dreyer 243 - 6
83. The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah 241 - 5
84. Roma, città aperta [Rome, Open City] (1945) Roberto Rossellini 236 - 6
85. Hiroshima mon amour (1959) Alain Resnais 234 - 4
86. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) Max Ophüls 233.5 - 6
87. (tie) Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau 232 - 7
87. (tie) Madame de… (1953) Max Ophüls 232 - 4
89. (tie) Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder 231 - 6
89. (tie) Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre: The Wrath of God] (1972) Werner Herzog 231 - 5
91. To Be or Not to Be (1942) Ernst Lubitsch 227.5 - 4
92. Ikiru (1952) Akira Kurosawa 227 - 6
93. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone 225.5 - 5
94. Broken Blossoms (1919) D.W. Griffith 219.5 - 6
95. Napoleon (1927) Abel Gance 210 - 5
96. Dekalog (1989) Krzysztof Kieslowski 209 - 6
97. (tie) Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott 197 - 5
97. (tie) Un chien andalou (1929) Luis Buñuel 197 - 5
99. Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg 195.5 - 5
100. (tie) Freaks (1932) Tod Browning 195 - 4
100. (tie) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) John Ford 195 - 4
Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder seem to have done particularly well in this section of the list, with three films each. In the end, Hitchcock wound up with the most films in the Top 100, a total of five. Wilder, along with Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, had four films in the Top 100. Directors with three films included: Buñuel, Chaplin, Coppola, Dreyer, Godard, Griffith, Kubrick, Kurosawa and Welles.
Whereas the most recent work in Films 1-50 was from 1976 (Taxi Driver) and the average year of production was 1949, Films 51-100 tended to be a little newer. The most recent work was from 1993 (Schindler's List) and there were four films from the 1980s: Raging Bull, Fanny and Alexander, Dekalog and Blade Runner. The average year of production was 1956.
Technically, Kieslowski's Dekalog is not a motion picture but a series of ten one-hour programs shown on Polish television. But it often gets included in polls of great "films." And, according to IMDB, Stanley Kubrick said Dekalog was the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime. So, there. Whatever it is, it's one of the most powerful works I've ever seen.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was Kubrick's 1975 period piece, Barry Lyndon, ranked #65, just ahead of the more well-known Dr. Strangelove. Again, these two Kubrick's films didn't do well outside of the US/UK polls, though Cahiers du cinema did include Barry Lyndon. I've never seen this one by Kubrick and would be curious to hear from others who have.
Another surprise was Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West cracking the Top 100 at #93, even ahead of his own Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo [The Good, the Bad and the Ugly] (1966), which I always thought was more popular - it's currently ranked #5 at IMDB. Three other westerns showed up in Films 51-100: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, ranked #62, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, at #83, and John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, tied at #100. (Ford's The Searchers was the top western at #16.) Of the five westerns in the Top 100, I prefer The Wild Bunch.Peckinpah's western also made it two films for William Holden in the Top 100, along with Sunset Blvd. (#52)
Other actors who showed up in multiple films: John Wayne (The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) Jimmy Stewart (Vertigo, Rear Window and It's a Wonderful Life), Cary Grant (North by Northwest, Notorious), Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca, Notorious), Robert De Niro (Godfather II, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita, 8½) , Jean-Paul Belmondo (À bout de souffle, Pierrot le fou), Jack Lemmon (The Aprtment, Some Like it Hot), and, of course, Peter Lorre (M, Casablanca). Charlie Chaplin also starred in all 3 of his films: The Gold Rush, City Lights and Modern Times.
The actor who showed up the most in the Top 100: Orson Welles. He starred in all three of his own productions (Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and The Magnificent Ambersons), and also gave an unforgettable performance as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (#51). And, of course, there's his little-known but amazing tour de force as Munchkin #27 in The Wizard of Oz.I didn't officially track actors in the list; I'm just eye-balling the film titles - so there may be others who appeared in multiple films. (Ah!, Claude Rains, for example: Notorious, Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia. And Anthony Quinn: Lawrence of Arabia and La Strada.)
Freaks, directed by Tod Browning (Dracula 1931), was an interesting case. It didn't show up on any US/UK lists, and I always considered it a minor cult film, but it was very highly regarded in other areas. The Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique chose it as one of the 20 Greatest Films of All Time, the Fundación Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela as one of the 24 Greatest of All Time, and the Cinémathèque Française as one of the 33 Greatest. It also ranked highly in the other French poll - #21 (tied) - the Cahiers du cinema Top 100.
It's interesting to note how much of a drop off there is in votes received between the #1 film, Citizen Kane, and #100, Freaks and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Kane showed up in all 30 polls and had a total of 1,735 points. The films at #100 each only appeared in four polls and had a total of 195 points. Only 16 films showed up in at least half of the 30 polls. After that, the number of movies considered "greatest" begins to grow exponentially. From that information, I would say that any kind of film canon must exist in a fluid state. Maybe that's why the IMDB Classic Film Board Top 200, which changes every two months, strikes me as a useful poll.
In the end, there were 46 English-language films from the US/UK in the Top 100. Non-English European films accounted for 47 titles (if you include Russia). Among individual European countries, France accounted for the most productions, with 19. Asia only had 7 titles in the Top 100, six of them from Japan.
Films ranked 51-100 that show up in my own list of Favorite 100 Films: Sunset Blvd., Apocalypse Now, North by Northwest, Pierrot le fou, The Wild Bunch, Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre: The Wrath of God], Double Indemnity, and Dekalog.
I would like to hear about your own experiences with the films listed 51-100. Faves, ones you can't stand, etc.
Until the next reel. . . .
Films 101-200
Showing posts with label Alfred Hitchcock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfred Hitchcock. Show all posts
Saturday, August 02, 2008
The Greatest Films of All Time: 51-100
Saturday, July 26, 2008
The Greatest Films of All Time: The Directors
All of the men in this photograph either directed, wrote (Carriere) or produced (Silberman) films listed in the Greatest Films of All Time. From a 1972 lunch given by George Cukor for Luis Buñuel.
Back Row from left: Robert Mulligan, William Wyler, George Cukor, Robert Wise, Jean-Claude Carriere and Serge Silberman
Front Row from left: Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Rouben Mamoulian
Front Row from left: Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Rouben Mamoulian
Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals.
Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art.
The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.
John Ford
Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art.
The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.
John Ford
This is the final part of my exploration of the world's Greatest Films of All Time. The other posts were Introduction and Films 1-20, Films 21-50, Films 51-100, and Films 101-200.
Briefly, I researched and compiled 30 lists of Greatest Films from various sources around the globe, including critics such as Roger Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum; popular magazines like Time and Time Out (UK); films journals such as Sight & Sound, Cahiers du cinema, Kinovedcheskie Zapiski (Russia); and a range of Film Archives from countries like China, India, Ecuador, Israel, Greece, and Finland.
The 30 polls produced a total of 580 films. When films weren't ranked in the polls, I assigned a numeric value depending on the total number of films included (eg. 100 films = 20 points). So, the list I'm presenting is not a ranking of films I personally think are the greatest of all time. It's simply a reflection of results from across 30 polls voted on by hundreds of other people.
My quest was twofold: To see which works were considered the masterpieces of cinema from a variety of international sources, and to see if and how the perception of great films and great directors varied from one region of the world to another.
The Directors
The most eye-opening part of my exploration of the Greatest Films of All Time was digging through the results by Director. While the Top 200 Films on my list provided some surprises, the overall landscape wasn't that different from what I expected. Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Seven Samurai, Tokyo Story, À bout de souffle, Rules of the Game, 8 ½ . . . they were all there. Some of the exact rankings may have surprised me, and many of the cultural differences were new to me, but the list of titles didn't challenge my concept of world cinema.
Akira KurosawaAs I started looking at directors, however, I was genuinely surprised by some of the results, and, as the process went on, my own thinking about cinema was actually transformed. It became clear, for example, that some directors whose names we have attached to one or two "important" films actually created numerous works of exceptional quality over the span of their careers. We may not discuss these other titles very much, if at all, but they were good enough to be selected by someone somewhere as being among the greatest motion pictures ever.
My own quest to compile a list of the greatest films of all time is, I think, part of the problem. I am guilty, along with other list-makers, of burying alive many fantastic films. So, yes, we know Fritz Lang's M or Metropolis from numerous polls and books on cinema. But what about his other work?
Luckily, some polls can also un-bury films. As it turns out, Fritz Lang had six other titles that were mentioned at least once. Did you have any idea that after 30 polls and 580 total movies that Fritz Lang would rank fifth (tied) in Total Films Mentioned, ahead of Bergman, Kurosawa and Fellini? How often do we drop his name in a conversation about cinema? Because Metropolis was made in 1927 and M in 1931, don't we exile Lang to that shadowy land of "silent movies" or "really old movies"? Yet his last film was made in 1960, and two of his later works - The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959) and Moonfleet (1955) - were listed among 100 Greatest Films by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Cahiers du cinema respectively.
I don't mean to imply that the number of films included on the list equals greatness. For one thing, some directors are simply more prolific than others. Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Roublev) has 11 films listed on IMDB; Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) has 172. Some directors may have many films of high quality but few that we consider truly great. For that reason, I'm listing both the total number of titles from all 580 films mentioned, and then the titles from the Top 200. There were several differences between the lists.
I also tracked the overall number of times that a director was mentioned. This may be an even better gauge of their current reputation. John Cassavetes and Francis Ford Coppola both had five films listed, for example. But Cassavetes was only mentioned six times in total, whereas Coppola was mentioned 30 times. I find it interesting that Cassavetes is respected enough to have five films mentioned, but that no one can really decide which film of his to call "the greatest." Only A Woman Under the Influence (1974) was chosen twice. Perhaps this signals that the director made an important contribution to cinema through his life and overall body of work, but not necessarily with a single film.
Howard Hawks had 11 films in the Greatest Films of All Time. Here he's with Angie Dickinson on the set of Rio Bravo (#62)Ultimately, of course, one can't measure greatness with a lot of numbers on a spreadsheet. That's not the purpose of my exploration. What I hope is that by seeing some of these numbers, we can be challenged to re-think our ideas about cinema, to question perceptions we may have formed a long time ago, to see certain movies and directors in a fresh way. Most of all, I hope we can make little discoveries and be intrigued enough to explore some cinematic paths we hadn't previously considered.
Total Films Mentioned (out of 30 polls - 580 titles)
There were 31 directors who had at least five films mentioned. I've listed them in numerical order. When there was a tie, I listed them in alphabetical order.
1. Jean Luc Godard – 12
2. Howard Hawks – 11
3. Luis Buñuel – 10
4. Alfred Hitchcock - 9
5. (TIE)
Charlie Chaplin – 8
John Ford – 8
Stanley Kubrick – 8
Fritz Lang – 8
9. (TIE)
Yasujiro Ozu – 7
Jean Renoir – 7
Alain Resnais – 7
Luchino Visconti – 7
Orson Welles – 7
14. (TIE)
Ingmar Bergman – 6
Robert Bresson – 6
Federico Fellini – 6
Ernst Lubtisch – 6
Satyajit Ray - 6
Jacques Rivette – 6
Roberto Rossellini – 6
21. (TIE)
John Cassavetes – 5
Francis Ford Coppola – 5
George Cukor – 5
Rainer Werner Fassbinder – 5
Akira Kurosawa – 5
Kenji Mizoguchi – 5
F.W. Murnau – 5
Max Ophüls – 5
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger – 5
Josef von Sternberg – 5
Billy Wilder - 5
Quite frankly, I was astonished by the top three results. My guess probably would've been Hitchcock and Bergman at #1 and #2, and then, I don't know - maybe John Ford.
As it turns out, I had just started reading Richard Brody's new book on Jean Luc Godard when I analyzed the directors included in the 30 polls. Not only was I stunned by Godard having the most films, but I was also surprised by some of the titles mentioned. Many of his 1960s films showed up, but four of his later films appeared, including: Sauve qui peut (la vie) [Every Man for Himself] (1980), which Godard considered his "second" first film after years of experimenting in video; Passion (1982) ; King Lear (1987); and Nouvelle Vague (1990).Godard is barely a blip on the radar in the U.S. right now. Yet, a combination of the results of these polls, and the elucidation of his later work in Brody's book, made me re-evaluate his career. I still believe his work in the 1960s remains vitally important in the history of cinema, serving as a kind of dividing line between an old and a new cinema. But I'm beginning to wonder if 50 years from now, his later career may also prove revolutionary, even though we can't see its implications at this point in time. Brody raises several fascinating and challenging questions about the very nature of cinema and its relationship to society that he claims Godard has been tackling in his post-1960s work, largely in isolation, and often with few people seeing the actual films. In some ways, I'm reminded of Coltrane's last years, producing music that people are still - 40 years later - barely catching up with. Could that be the case with Godard? I don't know. But instead of ignoring his later work, as I've done for the most part, I've decided to start watching some of the films.
I was also impressed that Godard did well across the world. He was one of only two directors, along with Buñuel, who had four or more films mentioned in all three major regional groupings: US/UK, Europe and Asia. The National Film Archive of India especially liked Godard, choosing five of his films in its Top 100, more even than native son Satyajit Ray, who only had four. He also showed up in Russia and Venezuela, and, in total, appeared in 24 out of the 30 polls.
Other directors didn't have the same global results. Howard Hawks, for example, had 11 films mentioned overall, but only one showed up in the Asian polls: Red River (1948). And, in total, he only appeared in 12 out of the 30 polls.
Several other directors were mentioned numerous times overall but didn't do very well in the Asian polls. Bergman, Kubrick, Powell & Pressburger, Visconti, and Wilder only had one film each that was mentioned. The directors mentioned most often in the Asian polls (out of 135 films):
1. Godard – 6
2. Satyajit Ray – 5
3. (TIE)
Buñuel – 4
Kurosawa – 4
Ozu – 4
4. (TIE)
Antonioni – 3
Chaplin – 3
Fellini – 3
Hitchcock – 3
Lang – 3
Mizoguchi – 3
Belgian director Chantal Ackerman, one of only three women with films in the Top 200. Her 1975 effort, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, was the highest ranked film by a woman director, at #143, and maybe the movie with the longest title.Total Films Mentioned in the Top 200
But what about the Top 200? Having a movie mentioned once by a film archive in a small country is one thing, but what about the titles mentioned most often? The results were different than the overall list of 580 films, but there were still some surprises. Here are the directors with four or more films listed in the Top 200 Films:
1. Buñuel – 7
2. (TIE)
Bergman – 5
Chaplin – 5
Fellini – 5
Godard – 5
Hitchcock – 5
Kubrick – 5
3. (TIE)
Bresson – 4
Dreyer – 4
Ford – 4
Kurosawa – 4
Powell & Pressburger – 4
Ray – 4
Visconti – 4
Wilder – 4
If you had told me when I started this exploration that Luis Buñuel would wind up with the most films in the Top 200, and with two more than the next closest director, I would've figured you were either Spanish or slightly insane, or both (Hugo, where are you?!) Again, I would have guessed Hitchcock. Maybe that's a cultural prejudice. Though, obviously, Hitch did just fine for himself in these polls. But the results for Buñuel have definitely challenged my own notions of cinema. I feel like re-watching some of his films now, and investigating ones I've never seen. And maybe I'll finally read his autobiography, My Last Sigh, which was given to me as a gift by a good friend (thank you!) and which La Reina recently read and loved.
Even the list of Buñuel's films that showed up in the Top 200 surprised me:
#63 - Âge d'or, L' (1930)
#69 - Viridiana (1961)
#97 - Un chien andalou (1929)
#107 - Olvidados, Los (1950)
#173 - Hurdes, Las [Land Without Bread] (1933)
#174 - Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Le (1972)
#178 - Ángel exterminador, El (1962)
Portrait of Luis Buñuel. Salvador Dalí. 1924. Oil on canvas.His two collaborations with Salvador Dalí, L'age d'or and Un chien Andalou, make a certain amount of sense because of their incredible innovation and historical significance, though I personally wouldn't place both of them that high. But Las Hurdes and Los Olvidados? I was expecting the likes of Belle du jour (1967), which eventually showed up at #284, and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), which didn't show up at all. And I was disappointed to see that my personal favorite, The Exterminating Angel, way down at #178. It's among my own 100 Favorite Films.
There weren't many other surprises for me in the Top 200 Films. Perhaps seeing Visconti with four titles listed. Especially considering the fact that none of his films showed up in a single US/UK poll. Why the seemingly Anglo-American disregard for his work? I have to confess, I've never seen any of his films. (The Angel of Cinema suddenly appears in my darkened bedroom, whipping me with knotted strips of film for my cultural sins. "And I strike thee again for not seeing any Rossellini, Ozu or Murnau!" s/he cries. "How dare you write about the Greatest Films of All Time when you haven't even learned your basic Cinematic Catechism!" "Have mercy!" I cry, pleading that I've seen all 30 of Fred Astaire's musicals. "I love - just poorly and with bad aim!")
As for you Truffaut fans, I don't know what to tell you. Don't shoot me, I'm only the
And Truffaut certainly did better than Louis Malle, who, shockingly, didn't have a single film listed. Man, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud [Elevator to the Gallows] (1958) should've been mentioned by someone for the Miles Davis soundtrack alone. A wonderful film noir utilizing jazz extremely well. Not to mention My Dinner with Andre (1981) and Au revoir les enfants (1987). I'm surprised that none of these films were included in lists by Roger Ebert (100 films), Time magazine (100), Time Out (100) or the IMDB Classic Film Board (200). Not one Malle film out of 500 titles! I guess Time had to make space somewhere for Finding Nemo (2003).
François Truffaut[NOTE: For the Greatest Films of All Time project, I used Ebert's book Great Movies (2002), which includes 100 unranked films. I also read but did not include Great Movies II (2005), because 200 unranked films would have had little numeric value and, I thought, dilute Ebert's voice, which I think is an important one. I recommend both books. His website also includes 200 Great Movies, but the list has at least one change from the print version - Babel (2006). Ebert does list Malle's My Dinner with Andre and Au revoir les enfants on his web site - they must have been in the 101-200 list from Great Movies II.]
Total Votes Received (30 polls - 580 films)
Here are the Top 20 directors by total votes received (how many times overall their films were mentioned):
1. (TIE)
Alfred Hitchcock - 48
Orson Welles – 48
3. Federico Fellini – 46
4. (TIE)
Jean Luc Godard – 44
Jean Renoir – 44
6. Charlie Chaplin – 40
7. Akira Kurosawa – 38
8. Carl Dreyer – 37
9. Ingmar Bergman – 36
10. Stanley Kubrick –35
11. Sergei M. Eisenstein – 34
12. Fritz Lang – 33
13. Luis Buñuel – 31
14. Francis Ford Coppola – 30
15. (TIE)
John Ford -29
D.W. Griffith – 29
F.W. Murnau – 29
18. Billy Wilder – 28
19. Kenji Mizoguchi – 26
20. Satyajit Ray – 24
Finally, Hitchcock winds up on top, though he has to share the honor with Welles.
Orson Welles filming The Lady from Shanghai (1947) on Errol Flynn's yachtHas any major American artist been as rejected and neglected by his own country as Orson Welles? When people talk about great 20th Century American artists - T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, Plath, Toni Morrison, Pollock, Gershwin, Astaire, Dylan, Billie Holiday, Coltrane, Ellington, etc. - does Welles ever get mentioned? Cinema has been called the 20th-century art form. Orson Welles not only created the Greatest Film of All Time (and on his first try), but his work receives more votes in polls from around the world than any other director with the exception of Alfred Hitchcock. Yet we was exiled by Hollywood and still exists on the periphery of American film for most people. His treatment in and by the United States remains a great mystery.
Interesting that Godard and Renoir, the two titans of French cinema, wind up with an equal number of votes.
One director I haven't mentioned yet is Charlie Chaplin. I often think of him as a performer, but he ranked 5th (tied) in Total Films Mentioned, 2nd (tied) in Films in the Top 200, and 6th in Total Votes Received. In the end, only Godard and Hitchcock really did better in their numbers. Chaplin also did well across all regions, and appeared in 24 out of 30 polls. I notice he had a big goose egg, however, in the 1995 Filmoteca Vaticana list of Ten Greatest Films. One wonders if his political sympathies didn't go down well in the John Paul II era.
Buñuel drops down in this list, but still winds up ahead of figures like Ford and Wilder. I'm still amazed a bit by his excellent results in these polls.
Sadly, however, he's the only Spanish filmmaker who did well. Victor Erice had two films mentioned, El sol del membrillo (1992) and El espíritu de la colmena [Spirit of the Beehive] (1973), but neither one broke the Top 200, which, in the case of Spirit of the Beehive, is a travesty. And one of the biggest surprises for me was how poorly Pedro Almodóvar did in the polls. Only Hable con ella (2002) appeared anywhere - Time magazine and Cahiers du cinema - but it also couldn't break into the Top 200. One theory on Almodóvar's results: Many of these polls were done in 1995, when his reputation may have been at a low point. I was in Spain at that time, and he didn't seem nearly as respected as he had been back in the 1980s. It wasn't until Todo sobre mi madre won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in March 2000 that his reputation seemed to turn around. The Time magazine and Cahiers du cinema polls came out after that, for example.
Julio Medem (Los amantes del Círculo Polar), my favorite recent Spanish director, didn't have a single film chosen, nor did longtime director Carlos Saura (Cría cuervos), which was really a surprise. While Spanish cinema has never been on a par with that of France or Italy, I do think it was seriously under-represented in these polls. I don't know if that's a problem of film distribution, bad press, a weak industry, or what.
I hope you've enjoyed my mad exploration. Tell me some of your favorite directors and films!
Let the final credits roll. . .
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Oscars Quiz - The Great Directors
This coming Sunday, February 24, marks the 80th Annual Academy Awards. Time, then, to celebrate some of Oscar's glorious history.
1. Between them, Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert Altman were nominated 24 times for Best Direction. Which one of them won the most statues in this category?
2. Between them, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and Stanley Kubrick were nominated 17 times for Best Screenplay (Original or Adapted). Which one of them won the most statues in this category?
3. Not including honorary awards, Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick were nominated 49 times for various Oscars. How many statues did they take home?
4. How many Academy Award nominations has Jean-Luc Godard received?
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 5
Jean-Luc Godard
5. How many has Godard won?
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 5
6. How many Academy Award nominations has Jim Jarmusch received?
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 5
7. How many has Jarmusch won?
(A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 5
8. Between Michelangelo Antonioni, John Cassavetes, Charles Chaplin, Mel Gibson, Howard Hawks, Akira Kurosawa, and Orson Welles, who has won the most Academy Awards for Best Direction?
9. Who has been nominated the most times for an Academy Award for Best Direction?
(A) Billy Wilder (B) John Ford (C) William Wyler (D) Robert Altman (E) Martin Scorsese
10. Who has won the most Academy Awards for Best Direction?
(A) Billy Wilder (B) John Ford (C) William Wyler (D) Robert Altman (E) Martin Scorsese
Federico Fellini
Ingmar Bergman on the cover of Time.
Ernst Lubitsch
William Wyler
ANSWERS:
1. None of them ever won an Oscar for Best Direction. Hitchcock and Altman were nominated five times each for the award; Fellini four times; Bergman, Lubitsch and Kubrick three times; and Kurosawa once.
2. None of them ever won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Fellini was nominated seven times; Bergman and Kubrick five times each.
3. One. Stanley Kubrick won for "Best Effects, Special Visual Effects" for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). His other 12 nominations didn't lead to any awards.
Fellini received 12 personal nominations without winning anything. Bergman received nine, Altman seven, Hitchcock five, Lubitsch three, and Kurosawa one.
Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) won Best Picture, but the Oscar is given to the producer. Four Fellini films won Best Foreign Language Film (La Strada 1956; The Nights of Cabiria 1957; 8½ 1963; Amarcord 1974), as did three by Bergman (The Virgin Spring 1960; Through a Glass Darkly 1961; Fanny & Alexander 1983) and two by Kurosawa (Rashomon 1951; Dersu Uzala 1975), but, again, the statues are given to the producers.
4. Zero
5. Bigger zero.
6. Yeah, right.
7. He'll probably win an Oscar about the same time the Jets win the Super Bowl.
8. Mel Gibson. He won for Braveheart. The other directors in the list were each nominated once but did not win.
9. William Wyler. He was nominated 12 times for: Dodsworth (1936); Wuthering Heights (1939); The Letter (1940); The Little Foxes (1941); Mrs. Miniver (1942); The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); The Heiress (1949); Detective Story (1951); Roman Holiday (1953); Friendly Persuasion (1956); Ben-Hur (1959); and The Collector (1965).
He won for Mrs. Miniver (1942); The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); and Ben-Hur (1959).
Billy Wilder was nominated eight times, winning twice for and The Lost Weekend (1945) and The Apartment (1960).
David Lean and Fred Zinneman were each nominated seven times, both winning twice.
10. John Ford. He won four times for: The Informer (1935); The Grapes of Wrath (1940); How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952). He was also nominated but did not win for Stagecoach (1939).
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Recent Screenings
Michael Clayton (2007) - Written and directed by Tony Gilroy. Starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack.
George Clooney's new film has received a lot of positive reviews, and I have to say, it lives up to the hype. I'm a sucker for intelligent political-legal thrillers, and Michael Clayton is one of the best I've seen in a while. Mostly because of a fine script and some excellent work by its main actors.
George Clooney plays Michael Clayton, a lawyer at a big New York law firm whose job it is to go into bad situations and fix them. The work is thankless, and it's starting to get to him. In one of the best lines of the movie, Clayton is trying to help an arrogant executive who has just hit a pedestrian with his fancy car and driven away. He's furious that Clayton's advice, for which he's paying the firm a huge amount of money, is simply to call the police and report the accident. The client was led to believe that Clayton would perform wonders. "I'm not a miracle worker," Clooney says. "I'm a janitor." The client finally realizes just how far up the creek he really is, while the audience realizes how bad Clayton feels about his job right now. In addition to his professional work, which constantly keeps him in the murkier areas of morality and ethics, Clayton has tried to start a bar with his irresponsible brother, but it failed, and now he owes some tough people a lot of money that he doesn't have. There's also been a gambling problem. And he's divorced. In the midst of this mid-life crisis, the firm's biggest crisis ever suddenly unfolds. It's premier litigator, a legend in legal circles named Arthur Edens, has stopped taking his meds and strips down naked during an inquest, proclaiming his love to a young farm girl involved in the case he's working on who he sees as being pure and innocent. Clayton is sent off to fix the situation, because the firm is trying to merge with a giant English entity.
Clayton and Edens, played by Tom Wilkinson in a terrific performance, know each other pretty well, and after a while, Clayton starts to believe that his friend's proclamations about an ugly conspiracy on the part of a giant agri-chemical corporation involved in the case may not just be the fantasies of an unmedicated bipolar mind. Strange things start to happen, people die mysteriously, and Clayton gets wrapped up in the case.
Clooney does well in a great role, one that gives him the ability to stretch out and show his various strengths as an actor and star - toughness, shrewdness, emotion, elegance. I'm not sure there's another actor right now who reminds me so much of the stars of classic Hollywood, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him nominated for Best Actor when Oscar time rolls around. At one point in the story, after a particularly rough night, Clayton shows up at the office and Sydney Pollock, playing his boss, says, "You look like shit." Yeah, right. George Clooney looking like shit in the morning, which means he's slightly rumpled and looks even sexier. Sydney's obviously never seen someone like me in the morning.
Tilda Swinton also gives a strong performance, capturing the progressive slide into becoming an unethical person, with all of its tortured emotion, and in her case, sweaty arm pits in a company bathroom freak-out. Even Pollock delivers what may be his best performance ever.
The writing holds everything together. I wasn't expecting much, knowing that director-screenwriter Tony Gilroy was responsible for . . . writing, is that really the correct word? . . . the Bourne trilogy. But I was pleasantly surprised by the high level of his screenplay, as well as by Gilroy's direction. The ending may be a little too easy, but I went with it, bacuase it stayed true to the rest of the film in a certain way. If his debut is any indication, I look forward to seeing more work from Tony Gilroy in the futrure. This is a very good film. RECOMMENDED.
Control (2007) - Directed by Anton Corbijn. Starring Sam Riley, Samantha Morton and Alexandra Maria Lara.The first half of Anton Corbijn's debut film, Control, may belong with the best movies ever made about rock and roll. He does such a wonderful job of capturing what it's like to be an ordinary teenager in love with rock music, so much so that you want to start a band. In the beginning of the movie, Ian Curtis, a working-class kid from a dreary town outside of Manchester, walks home from school clutching some treasure wrapped in plain brown paper. It turns out to be the new David Bowie album, which at the time was Aladdin Sane. Who doesn't remember the excitement of bringing home a new LP by your favorite musician? Curtis lays in bed, smoking a cigarette and just listening. But eventually he rises from his lazy reverie and starts posturing in front of the mirror while his hero rocks out. On Curtis' desk, you see notebooks labeled Poetry and Novels, and we watch him scribbling his songs as well. Ah man, it just brought back so much of my youth.
I have to admit, I was afraid to see Control. The film is based on the true-life story of Curtis, who wound up being the singer and songwriter of the influential post-punk band Joy Division. After struggling with epilepsy, and torn up over events in his personal life, Curtis hung himself on the eve of the band's first tour of the United States, just as they were making it big. This tragic backstory, and the band's dark, emotionally powerful music made Curtis a cult hero - my generation's version of Jim Morrison - and proved an early inspiration for the Goth movement. (Sadly, and unfairly, as the band was always better than that.) But the myth surrounding Curtis is pretty powerful. Lord knows, I thought, what a movie about him will be like.
It didn't help that Corbijn was directing. Better known as one of rock's premier photographers (you've seen a lot of his photos, including U2's Joshua Tree cover), he had directed a posthumous music video of Joy Division's "Atmoshpere," which I found silly and pretentious. But positive reviews of Control by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker, A.O. Scott in The New York Times, and Roger Ebert gave me enough courage to seek it out one Friday afternoon while I was in New York. And to my very, very pleasant surprise, Corbijn has crafted a wonderfully simple and straightforward film that blows all the superfluous Joy Division myth right on its ass.
What's completely missing from the Goth aesthetic is what made Joy Division such a great band - the muscular, working-class punk background that gave them their start. And that's mostly what the movie is about. Curtis and a few mates from a gritty little town, starting up a band after seeing the Sex Pistols in concert. Meanwhile, Ian, who's just a teenager, marries his girlfriend Deborah. She's a normal girl who likes living in her little British town and wants to raise a family. The film is actually based on her autobiography, Touching from a Distance. Cobrijn shows what's it's like for young kids in this situation, practicing their music, going off to work at their jobs, and being married young. There's no glorification of the process. And, in fact, you don't need to know anything about Curtis or the band to appreciate this movie. It's much more universal than that.
Unlike most star biopics that strut their Hollywood big-budget glamour across the screen, Corbijn has gone after something completely different. Shooting on black and white film, Control feels at times like a small nouvelle vague film from the 1960s. And it works very well. Also, Corbijn infuses the film with a lot of sly humor. Mopey Joy Division fans hoping for some dark, depressing film, are not going to be happy with the results (if they can ever be happy). Actually, I've read some comments by fans who don't think the film captures the band or Curits very well. But that's not true. Corbijn knew the band. He actually left his home in Holland and moved to England because he loved their music so much - that's how he got his start, by photographing them just before Curits died. What these fans are upset about is that Corbijn has shattered a lot of the myth surrounding the band. In one of the best lines of the movie, Ian and Deborah are at a small party at the home of some neighbors, and one of the women says to Deb, "Wow, Ian's kind of famous now, isn't he?" "Not to me," Deb says, looking at him across the room. "I still have to wash his underwear."
The film also features some great scenes of the band playing their music. Curtis had an unusual, jerky dancing motion when performing live, which some say may have been related to his epilepsy, and he was a very powerful presence on stage. Sam Riley, who plays Curtis, not only looks a lot like the singer, but he does an amazing job of conveying Curtis' intensity while performing. The rest of the actors also do a fine job playing the music.
One interesting note, the film never makes mention of the fact that the three remaining members of Joy Division changed their name to New Order after Ian died and went on to tremendous success of their own. That's always amazed me, for he was such a powerful songwriter and performer. How many bands survive the loss of such a pivotal front-man? Look at those albums by The Doors after Morrison died. Not exactly the stuff of rock legend. (What, you didn't know The Doors made two albums post-Morrison? Well, there you go.) The surviving band members were involved in the production of the film, however.
Alas, the second half of the film starts to drag, as Curtis encounters the second love of his life, a woman journalist from Belgium. He's genuinely torn between Deborah and his new love. He knows that Deborah has been a good wife and loves him, but he feels restrained with her. He desperately wants out of the environment he grew up in, whereas she's content with it. Meeting an intelligent and sensitive women from the Continent only heightens his confusion. The triangle is handled well, thanks in part to the great job Samantha Morton does as Deborah. But the second half, trying to build up to the inevitable sad ending, seems to lose its energy as it turns away from the music. All in all, however, it's an impressive film, even for those who know nothing about the band. If you like rock and roll, this is definitely one to watch. RECOMMENDED.
QUICK TAKES
La Belle et la bête [Beauty and the Beast] (1946) - This magnificent film deserves an entire post, but I'm running out of energy. La Reina and I turned on Turner Movie Classics one night just as this started. We'd both seen it multiple times, so we said, "Well, let's just watch a few minutes while we eat dinner." An hour and a half later, we floated away from the TV, having been caught up once again in this most fantastic of films. There is simply nothing in cinema like the works of Jean Cocteau. He created a delirious, beautiful and poetic world that has never been equaled on film. And what was interesting this time, was to see how simply it all was constructed. The surreal images are very transparently produced - those are obviously actors behind the curtain holding candelabras - but that doesn't lessen their incredible impact. In fact, it's fascinating to try and figure out how Cocteau achieved his magic. And it is magic. Just goes to show that you don't need CGI to create a highly imaginative universe. If you've never seen this, watch it. If you haven't seen it in a while, watch it again. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.Shooter (2007) - What a Rambo movie would like if directed by a liberal. A Special Forces sniper, played by Mark Wahlberg, is betrayed by his government, then set-up to take the fall for an assassination attempt on the president. (Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.) What saves the movie is some decent writing, and some pretty angry but accurate political analysis. A lot of people get shot in the head by sniper fire. (No, I mean, a lot.) Michael Peña does well in a supporting role. Not bad for a video night. You'll enjoy the Bronson-like vigilantism, then spend the next day concerned that you enjoyed it so much.
The Lady Vanishes (1938) - The first of two Hitchcock films I watched recently that I had never seen before. (Well, evidently I had seen this one, because I remembered some of the scenes.) This won't go down as one of my favorite Hitchcock films, but it's very good. It seems somewhat predictable now, but that's because Hitchcock was developing so much of the vocabulary of cinema during this time. All of the plot devices he uses here you've seen dozens of times. Just keep reminding yourself that films like this one were the beginning of it all. It helps to have Michael Redgrave (yes, the father of Lynne and Vanessa) in it, as well as Dame May Whitty who plays Miss Froy, the old lady who disappears on the train.
Frenzy (1972) - After a series of commercial and critical duds in the last part of the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock returned to England to make Frenzy, which was hailed at the time as a return to form. I don't know about that. What I see is a great filmmaker sadly trying to keep up with the times, and not really succeeding. The only R-rated effort of his career, and the only one to feature nudity (a very disturbing scene, be forewarned), Frenzy made me realize how important subtlety was when Hitchcock was slyly dealing with sexual tension/perversion, which was most of the time. There are some great moments - the man was a master of cinema - but my friends and I figured out the storyline about five minutes into the film, and, worst of all, there's just no suspense. There are some dark comic moments, including a police investigator forced to eat his wife's experimental cooking, and one brilliant cinematographic piece, a long, silent shot coming out of the apartment building where a murder is taking place. Other than that, it's a pretty sad and dreary affair.
Deja Vu (2006) - I was skeptical about this one after reading the back of the DVD - I mean, time-travel, terrorists, police investigation, romance - it sounded like a recipe for a pretty bad flick. But after considering the DVD several times and always putting it back on the shelf, my respect for Denzel Washington won out, and so I gave it a chance. Actually, I enjoyed the first 4/5 of the film. Is it just me, or is there an epidemic of bad endings going on right now? This one wasn't as bad as some others, but it went from relatively reasonable (I mean, as reasonable as time travel and terrorists can get - it made sense in its own world) to dropping the ball at the end. If you don't expect much and can deal with Tony Scott (Crystal, take note), it's not totally bad. Hey, it's got Denzel Washington.
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003) - I love the title, although it had to be changed from its original: I'll Sleep When I'm Watching This Film. Director Mike Hodges and actor Clive Owen team up again after their wonderful Croupier to bring us this dark, lifeless effort. Some interesting parts here and there, but even Clive can't save this from being pretty damn dull.Premonition (2007) - This is what happens when you're married and have to give in sometimes to your partner's wishes. If only La Reina had had a premonition about how boring this film was going to be. (Or just listened to me.) I mean, come on, has Sandra Bullock made a good film in the last ten years? It's like watching a girl you're infatuated with go out with one jerk after another. "Why's she going out with him?" "Why's she making that film?" Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it's just not that good either.
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