A Big World

Having gone a couple weeks without a poll to argue about... we have a new poll to argue about! There was a good deal of sentiment, in the wake of the Online Community poll that was compiled a month, that Kids Today don't see enough foreign films. And so - another poll has been organized, devoted to non-English language sound fiction feature films. Hooray! or, getting in the spirit of the thing, Totemo Omoshiroii! Miscellaneous figures ranging from the exalted (Jonathon Rosenbaum? Annette Insdorf? Amy Taubin?) to the lowly (that would be me) submitted nominations, which have been compiled into a list, which can be found at Edward Copeland's blog. Part 2 of the process is at hand: readers are invited to vote on 25 films from the nominations... the deadline is September 16. Further details can be found chez M. Copeland.

UPDATE: This is, of course, being discussed far and wide. Linking to all of them may be impossible, certainly at 7am... I do want to point to Scanners, where Jim Emerson is hosting a collection and discussion of individual lists. A good place to see the contributing lists (and a lot of reactions) in one place...

In any event - we've got a month to think about it, and with any luck, I'll milk a few more posts out of it... Right now, though, I am going to posts lists of my own. First - a list I did NOT submit: I considered doing what Jim Emerson did, limiting myself to one film per director: that stretches the list without really diluting it, since the reason for all the Godard and Ozu is usually something like, I can't really choose between them.... I didn't, though, partly because, after that Online Film Community thing, there was so much talk of vote splitting - I panicked, lest, you know, Early Summer and Late Spring both end up with only 2 votes - if only I'd voted for both! (As it happened, Early Summer didn't make the cut - or My Life to Live, my top Godard pick. The rest of my multiples made it, more or less...) But if I had stripped out the doubled auteurs - these films would have made the list (starred films made the finals):

Mouchette - 1967 - Bresson, Robert - France
Camera Buff - 1979 - Kieslowski, Krystof - Poland - [lots of Kieslowski made the nominations, but nothing before the Decalogue - which seems exactly backwards. Camera Buff and Blind Chance are the best features I've seen by him. His later films are good, but seem far less inventive than the early ones. Except White, which barely made the list and is set in Poland... ]
*Yi Yi - 2000 - Yang, Edward - 960
Germany Year Zero - 1948 - Rossellini, Roberto - Italy - [Open City made the list. This is what I mean by vote splitting, though I doubt this would have gotten 3 votes anyway. Paisa might: maybe I should have voted for all of them.]
*400 Blows - 1959 - Truffaut, Francois - France
*Blue Angel - 1930 - Sternberg, Joseph von - Germany
*Satantango - 1994 - Tarr, Bela - Hungary
Touch of Zen - 1969 - King Hu - China Hong Kong - [This is an area that annoys me. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon made the list. Why? What the hell is that? Of all the Chinese action films that could make the list, why that one? oh - it's released in the US! blah. How can you pick that over any of the other possibilities? all the King Hu, Chang Cheh, John Woo, Jacky Chan, Brigitte Lin films to choose from... annoyance. And guilt - I never end up voting for those films in these polls, but hate myself for it. It's just too damned hard to parse out what criteria you're supposed to use, so I usually stick with the films I love that get talked about like Serious Art. Still - this film (along with Peking Opera Blues, Swordsman II and the best Jacky Chan films, like Project A II) makes it on all the merits, and it's just the fact that 25 is a very small number of films that keeps it off. And in this case, paranoia about vote splitting...]
*Cleo from 5 to 7 - 1961 - Varda, Agnes - France

In the fact: I submitted this list (starred again...):

* M - 1931 - Lang, Fritz - Germany
*Rules of the Game - 1939 - Renoir, Jean - France
Early Summer - 1951 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan
My Life to Live - 1963 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France
*Seven Samurai - 1955 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan
Pornographers - 1966 - Imamura, Shohei - Japan - [another irritation. I have 2 Imamuras on here, and 3-4 more that are just as good - but none made it - nothing made it! crap! were these votes being split? I guess this means that Imamura is one of the all time underrated dierctors - because he was as good as anyone, and not even film geeks with real cred rate him.]
City of Sadness - 1989 - Hou Hsiao Hsien - China Taiwan - [another annoying, though understandable, omission. Hou did not make it at all - weird!]
*Late Spring - 1949 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan
*Aguirre Wrath of God - 1973 - Herzog, Werner - Germany
*Gospel According to Matthew - 1964 - Pasolini, Pier Paolo - Italy - [It makes me very happy to see this on the list of nominees.]
*High and Low - 1963 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan
*Playtime - 1967 - Tati, Jacques - France
*Tokyo Story - 1953 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan
*Ugetsu Monogatari - 1953 - Mizoguchi Kenji - Japan
*Breathless - 1959 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France
*Mystery of Kaspar Hauser - 1975 - Herzog, Warner - Germany
Sun's Burial - 1960 - Oshima Nagasi - Japan - [Not that I expect it - but Oshima deserves some love.]
*Pierrot Le Fou - 1965 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France
Pather Panchali - 1955 - Ray, Satyajit - India [The great victim, I guess - a bunch of people voted for Ray films, but none of us picked the same ones. Oh well, I tried.]
Insect Woman - 1963 - Imamura Shohei - Japan
Alphaville - 1965 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France
Late Chrysanthemums - 1954 - Naruse Mikio - Japan - [not on DVD, might as well not exist, huh?]
*Celine and Julie Go Boating - 1973 - Rivette, Jacques - France [though sometimes: this is very gratifying. I only got to see it this year, but was utterly charmed...]
Ivan the Terrible I - 1941 - Eisenstein, Sergei - USSR [this didn't make it: strange]
Osaka Elegy - 1936 - Mizoguchi Kenji - Japan [This didn't make it - less strange. Story of the Last Chrysanthemum did - which is equally deserving and gratifying. Though I was disappointed when I realized that was the film on the list and not the Naruse film above...]