Sunday, February 25, 2007
Film Don't look now
Posted by Pat Graham on 02.25.07 at 10:07 PM
This one's for the masochists ...
The idea comes from a February 9 post on Andy Horbal's film blog in which Horbal decided to list the "50 best films" he'd never seen in his life, according to their rankings on 1,000 greatest movies of all time list at They Shoot Pictures, Don' They? (For a nuts-and-bolts appreciation of this strenuous compilation, see Jonathan Rosenbaum's More List-o-Mania post of January 22.) In confessing his desire to "excavate every aspect of my relationship with film and display it," Horbal adverted to the dubious advice grammar school teachers conventionally give their unbelieving charges: "There are no stupid questions. If you're not sure about something, then raise your hand and ask."
Guess this is the equivalent of raising my hand, since if a smart guy like Horbal can display his canonical ignorance in public, then why not somebody considerably less smart like yours truly? Plus a little embarrassment's never killed anyone—at least not yet—and how embarrassing can it be? Just a parlor game for film fans, to find out who hasn't seen what, who's the great pretender and who's really really up on his/her stuff . . .
But my own personal wrinkle's gonna be this: I haven't even scanned the They Shoot Pictures list yet! Not with full advertence anyway—like, Citizen Kane comes first, right?—so who knows what surprises are in store, for me or anyone curious (or cynical) enough to look and laugh and point the ridiculing finger? But confidence, Pat, confidence—since obviously I must think I've seen enough "great" movies to try this stunt in the first place. On the other hand, could be I'm simply delusional. But if Horbal can cheerfully admit to not having seen L'Eclisse or The Travelling Players (both in my own top ten, fercrissake!), then how much worse can it get for me?
So here goes—probably not to the full monty 50, since I'd simply run out of blog space . . . but at least till I'm exhausted enough to quit. (NB: numbers before titles indicate film's rank on TSPDT list as of late afternoon February 23.)
62. Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982; Sweden)
66. Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924; US)
82. The Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929; USSR)
94. Dekalog/Decalogue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988; Poland)—skipped the last four commandments
108. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944; US)
115. Vivre Sa Vie/My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963; France)—only the tail end of it . . .
121. Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958; Poland)
122. Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952; Italy)
127. Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948; US)—unendurable, lord knows I tried . . .
134. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940; US)
135. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974; France)
137. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945; UK)
141. Paisan/Paisa (Roberto Rossellini, 1946; Italy)
154. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966; France)—yeah, figures . . .
158. The Maltese Falcon (Huston, John; 1941; US)—the skeleton in the closet . . .
168. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940; US)
171. The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958; India)
180. The Conversation (Francis Coppola, 1974; US)
194. The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973; US)
198. Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1928; Germany)
208. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940; US)
220. Berlin Alexanderplatz (R.W. Fassbinder, 1980; Germany)
222. Masculin Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966; France-Sweden)
224. Germany, Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1947; Italy-West Germany)
235. Shoot the Piano Player/Tirez sur le Pianiste (Francois Truffaut, 1960; France)
237. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974; US)
240. Strike/Stachka (Sergie Eisenstein, 1924; USSR)
255. West Side Story (Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins; 1961; US)
257. The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978; US)
263. High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952; US)
270. Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976; US)
271. Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959; US)
275. Charulata/The Lonely Wife (Satyajit Ray, 1964; India)
291. The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921; US)
294. The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950; US)
297. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943; US)
Time to cry uncle—plus I'm getting bored with this—so aloha and good night.
Comments (13)
Showing 1-13 of 13
rss trouble again: should read: >So how many of the 1,000 best movies of all time can a serious film blogger afford not to see? Please don't ask ...<
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also NB: number 134 shows up ok on the save screen, don't know what you can do to fix it on the draft
I had to work down to number 500 to get a decent list of never-seen titles. I've been at this movie thing a while--some 35 years of active film mania. An asterisk indicates I've seen only parts of the film. 1/145 Jeanne Dielman...* (Chantal Akerman) 2/179 The Travelling Players* (Theo Angelopoulos) 3/295 Miracle in Milan (Vittorio de Sica) 4/305 Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha) 5/307 Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings) 6/311 Terra em Transe (Glauber Rocha) 7/340 Come and See (Elem Klimov) 8/354 Pyaasa (Guru Dutt) 9/367 The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (Kazuo Hara) 10/380 Fellini's Casanova* 11/396 My Neighbor Totoro* (Hayao Miyazaki) 12/399 The Hart of London (Jack Chambers) 13/407 Sayat Nova (Sergei Paradjanov) 14/409 A Touch of Zen (King Hu) 15/410 Nostalghia* (Andrei Tarkovsky) 16/430 La Region Centrale (Michael Snow) 17/431 Underground (Emir Kusturica) 18/462 Vidas secas (Nelson Pereira dos Santos) 19/467 Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett) (coming soon to a theater near me) 20/468 Xala (Ousmane Sembene) 21/470 Hour of the Furnaces (Getino/Solanas) 22/476 Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings) 23/493 The Tingler (William Castle) So I have some gaps in Brazilian Cinema Novo and British wartime documentary, plus the legendary "Jeanne Dielman," which I haven't had the chance to see all the way through although I've seen the first hour and the last half hour or so.
actually i've seen 16 of your 23, JIM--plus SAYAT NOVA's another in my own all-time top ten, so whatever ... but my main gaps seem far less forgivable than yours--30s and 40s hollywood, mostly--against which cinema novo counts hardly at all ... though oddly enough i'm pretty well set up on that one!
I'll make a point of seeing L'Eclisse and The Travelling Players in the very near future if you agree to see Ashes and Diamonds and Masculine-Feminine ASAP! There's a constantly evolving selection of Maya Deren available at YouTube that currently (11:43 EST 2/27) includes Meshes of the Afternoon in two parts... All in all, I found this exercise ("Best films I've never seen") rather cathartic and humbling: I haven't earned the title "expert on cinema," not by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm doing alright for a 25 year-old. I think this post situated me where I'm at: enthusiastic and committed novice. Nothing wrong with that! I'm delighted to see it repeated here at On Film because it sends a great message: film critics aren't people who have seen every film ever made, they're people who are able to devote themselves to the task of "discovering" films. Film critics are ideally models of "active" movie lovers, not passive arbiters of good taste...
SAYAT NOVA is high on my Netflix queue. Pat, no excuse for missing SHERLOCK JR.--it's only 45 minutes long.
sorry ANDY, no quid pro quo--plus: can't even bear thinking what TRAVELLING PLAYERS'd look like on the small screen; everything that makes it earth shattering--especially the control-freak director's THROWING HIS FILM AWAY at least four times in the second half (serendipitously, i'm guessing--something t.p. anderson tried also in PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, if only twice ... )--just won't register there but that's my biases showing again ... in any case, chance & necessity's the key
One thing that often discourages me from writing film reveiws is that I haven't seen enough key films to be able to qualify the one I want to review, so its nice to know that there is a professional critic out there who hasen't seen Network.
JEFF--sounds like you've a lot in common with james agee and heaps of other critics at "great metropolitan dailies," at least at the beginning of their "professional" careers ... no names, but i could tell you a couple as for NETWORK: ironically, i'd been working as a (part-time) projectionist when it came out and probably saw fewer films in those years than at any time before or since * plus i don't do the "films into video" number--consider me a format freak and: i'm not "professional" either--god save the critics from that!
This sounds like fun. Here's my top 15 of They Shoot Pictures Don't they that I haven't seen: 113. Los Olvidados/The Young and the Damned(Luis Bunuel, 1950) 115. My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) 135. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974) 145. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975) 154. Two or three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) 177. Performance (Nicholas Roeg, 1970) 179. The Travelling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975) 211. Zero for Conduct (Jean Vigo, 1933) 216. A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir, 1936) 220. Berlin Alexanderplatz (R.W. Fassbinder, 1980) 221. The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973) 224. Germany, Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1947) 227. Tabu (F.W. Murnau, 1931) 233. Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915) 237. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Film Director Kazuo Hara will appear at the University of Chicago on May 8th. A film screening of his film, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, will be followed by a "talk show" with Director Kazuo Hara. For more information, please visit http://docfilms.uchicago.edu/calendar/tuesday.shtml
