1. M - 1931 - Lang, Fritz - Germany: this film has been on my top 10 list more or less from the day I saw it. More like top 2-3. As everything else changes around it, it stays there.
#3 - I don't have anything much to add to this. I was pleased that the top 3 films in the poll were my 2, 1, 4 films, and my number 5 made the top ten - after that, the final list diverges from mine. Position may not matter all that much - but it's still nice to know you're not alone. Also nice to sometimes be a bit weird - so when my choices don't match the poll, that works too! Everything works! yay!
2 Rules of the Game - 1939 - Renoir, Jean - France - when I first rented it, as soon as it ended, I rewound and watched it again. You could put it on a loop and never get tired of it, I think. It’s hard to say much more and ever stop talking about it.
#1 - That's not surprising. M might be (and pleasing) - this and Seven Samurai would have been my guesses for the top 2-3.... they should be.
3 Late Spring - 1949 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan - It was watching Late Spring, during the scene at the Noh performance where Chishu Ryu nods to the woman he claims he will marry and Hara starts squirming beside him, that I knew Ozu was the greatest filmmaker ever. The film has everything - far more comedy than it gets credit for; the cultural details and critiques, from all angles - celebrating Japanese culture, making fun of it, working in all those baseball and movie jokes, putting that big coke sign in the middle of a happy interlude; the brilliant performances, the way Hara and Ryu move, she being brought to bay, he holding everything in, acting the old man; everything. Almost endlessly rewarding, and ultimately heart-breaking. For my money, Early Summer is even better, but this will do. I tend to lump films from my favorite directors together anyway - choosing among them is an arbitrary science.
#48 - This breaks the pattern of me matching the poll - though I did some calculations and discovered that this had the third highest points per vote on the poll (after M and Rules) - which makes sense. I can't imagine you could watch this, like it, and not think it was one of the 10 or so best films ever made. It might be less seen - and people may not warm to it - but if they do, they will worship it. The process of voting has made me wonder if this isn't my favorite film of all time, period - better than Early Summer; better than M and Rules - better than It's a Wonderful Life, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, better than Duck Soup. Or maybe it's the film, at least on this list, that most makes me want to grab people by the lapel and scream at them - you have to see this film! You have to love this film! - Rules of the Game, M, Seven Samurai, It's A Wonderful Life, etc. people already know about - Late Spring is still something of a mystery. Whatever it is - it floors me.... I am also most happy to have been quoted about this film: part and parcel of what I'm saying I guess - whatever it means, this is the film on the list that ended up meaning the most to me.
4 Seven Samurai - 1955 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan - What epics should be - thrilling, moving, technically breath-taking, and historically serious. Like - one example - the historical point of the way guns are transforming the world - all four dead samurai fall to gunfire.
#2 - about right. One thing I wonder, though - my comment: is that remark about guns on the commentary track of the film? I keep thinking I got it from somewhere, but I don't remember where, if I did. It might also be something most comments on Kurosawa mention....
5 Aguirre Wrath of God - 1973 - Herzog, Werner - Germany - a film featuring one of the half-dozen great opening shots in films: and maybe one of the half dozen greatest closing shots as well, Kinski holding up a shitting monkey and monologuing about marrying his daughter to found a pure line - then throwing the monkey away like an empty beer can.
# 8 - nice to see it up there.
6 Pierrot Le Fou - 1965 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France - Back in the theaters! It used to be my favorite Godard, but I went a long time without seeing it, and saw Vivre sa Vie a bunch of times in the interim, and it took over the spot. I imagine, if anyone else had nominated Vivre sa Vie, it still would be the top Godard film on this ballot, but Pierrot will do. It’s great. The eye popping colors and compositions (though there’s barely a frame anywhere in Godard’s work that isn’t magnificent looking); the song and dance routines; the many many tricks - addressing the camera, quoting himself, and piecing a story out of what he finds - books, movies, ads, comics, real life, the newspapers. And how much fun it is, how physical it is (especially Belmondo, running and jumping around, being tortured on camera and so on), and how well Godard manages to always keep it funny, serious, even moving, all at once.
# 87 - 87? weird. Anyway - I think I might be underrating it.
7 Gospel According to Matthew - 1964 - Pasolini, Pier Paolo - Italy - stands to reason that a gay communist atheist would make the best religious movie ever. By sticking to the text, mostly - and the land and faces of southern Italy - though he does use the style, the handheld cameras, zooming, telephoto lenses, to great effect as well.
# 98 (tied with Day of Wrath) - just made the 100, but I can't say I'm too surprised or exercised. These are all good films, after all....
8 Ugetsu Monogatari - 1953 - Mizoguchi Kenji - Japan - once you start talking about most of these films, you realize there’s just too much to say. Nothing is enough. Since people usually focus on Mizoguchi’s style, I’ll note the thematic richness: Mizoguchi's usual subject, how women suffer to make men worth their suffering, here augmented by anti-militarism (the samurai are all scum, cowards, fools - the foot soldiers are bullies, rapists, murderers, thieves), a tract on the evils of greed, and the redeeming qualities of work and art. And the layers - the multiple ghost stories (there are ghosts inside the ghost stories!), the parallels between Lady Wasaka and Miyagi (the ghost is as sympathetic as the wife), the references to other arts - beautiful.
#22 - surprisingly low, I suppose, but still...
9 Playtime - 1967 - Tati, Jacques - France - It’s been a couple years since I saw it last: I would probably like it more now than I did then. I wish Alphaville had made the list - they are like a day and night view of the new (60s) Paris.
#23
10 High and Low - 1963 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan - Plenty to like here too. One of my all time favorite moments in a film - when Mifune throws a bunch of greedy executives out of his house and behind him you can see Tatsuya Nakadai and his partner judging them. The way Nakadai looks at the executives as they leave might be the best put down ever put on film.
#51 - I wish I had the DVD - I wish I had a screen shot of Nakadai for this....
11 Breathless - 1959 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France - it’s odd: films made today that transparently copy Breathless end up looking conservative next to it. Like Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris - a fine film, obviously structured like Breathless, but everything about it is more conventional, softened. I usually don’t go for judging art as “progress” but Godard still looks newer, more radical, than most of what is made now (even in art films), and was way beyond even most of the great films of the 60s
# 21
12 Tokyo Story - 1953 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan - though even Godard has trouble coming up to Ozu, as a master of formally adventurous, challenging work. In a completely commercial context!
# 12 - good lord! I got it dead on!
13 Mystery of Kaspar Hauser - 1975 - Herzog, Warner - Germany - “are you a tree frog?”
- I didn't notice this before - this is the one film I voted for that missed the cut.
14 Celine and Julie Go Boating - 1973 - Rivette, Jacques - France - one of only two films on my ballot I have only seen once: and, like the other one, I saw it this year. Along with the merits of the film, its immediate ascent is probably attributable to auteurism - I saw it as part of a long Rivette series, 12-13 of his films over a month or so. Celine and Julie is his best film, but it also seems more familiar because I saw all those other films at the same time. In a way, then, it stands in for his films in the mass. I suspect if I could see some of them again - Out 1 (either version), Amour Fou, Paris Belongs to Us, Jeanne la Poucelle - they might get on this list as well.
# 66 - kind of surprised this rated so high - this seems very hard to see. I don't remember any showings of it before the Rivette series I saw this year - I'm sure it plays somewhere now and then, but it's rare indeed. But a huge delight....
15 Yi Yi: A One and a Two directed by Edward Yang - the most recent film on the list. I have only seen two Edward Yang films - which is incredibly frustrating.
# 56
16 The Blue Angel directed by Josef von Sternberg - this is the oldest film on the nominations, isn’t it. Sternberg sometimes resists analysis - anything I can think to say feels too obvious. Just look at Dietrich. Which I do every day, since I have a poster from Blue Angel on the wall.
# 93
17 Sansho the Bailiff directed by Kenji Mizoguchi - I’ve seen this recently in the theater, a profound experience. I do think it’s odd that 3 Mizoguchi films got nominated and only 2 Ozus: in the last 10 years Ozu seems to have definitively passed Mizoguchi in the critical estimation. As imperfectly represented by DVD releases - there have been half a dozen Ozu films available for a couple years now (plus 5 more just released this summer) - Mizoguchi just has the two. Both are underrepresented - as is Naruse. Though I noticed that my vote for Late Chrysanthemums has disappeared - did it get rolled up into the votes for Mizoguchi’s Story of the Last Chrysanthemum? If so - it probably did more good there than in its proper place. Still - I’d be perfectly satisfied with a list of 25 films by just those three, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse.
# 46 - I should have written an actual comment about the film. I did originally, but it was starting to turn into a mini-essay so I cut it and went for the metacomments.... the original comment was:
Takes a while, I think, to get past the sheer beauty of Mizoguchi’s films, to get to the themes - like, oh - the ways men can move and women can’t (whatever else may happen to them) - the way women sacrifice themselves in these films because that is the best they can hope for, the most they have available for them to do - men can be stars or heroes or artists; women are lucky not to be intentionally crippled.
18 The Decalogue directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski - I wish some of his earlier films were nominated - Camera Buff or Blind Chance. Though the Decalogue as a whole is better. It's hard to think of it as a single film, though. There are a couple episodes (1, 5, 10 anyway) I'd consider voting for on their own.
# 43 - still seems odd to consider this as one film; though it's only 3 hours longer than Satantango...
19 Pickpocket directed by Robert Bresson - like a lot of directors on this list, Bresson’s films often seem stronger taken as part of the series than separately. Any one of them can represent all of them.
# 45 - I wish Mouchette had made the cut, though.
20 Satantango directed by Béla Tarr - the other film I have only seen once, this year even. Sat through the whole thing more or less straight (there were intermissions) - if I hadn’t had other obligations I would have done it again the next day.
# 97 - not too surprising: another hard one to get to see, and I can imagine even movie fans thinking, what the hell am I doing here? But if you're into it, you're into it for real.
21 Cleo From 5 to 7 directed by Agnes Varda - I can’t think of anything to say about it. It’s all in the film, I guess.
# 89 - kind of wish this were higher.
22. Day of Wrath directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer - all about mothers loving sons...
# 98
23. Open City directed by Roberto Rossellini - Rosselini is like Bresson - sometimes hard to get a handle on the individual films. They seem better in the aggregate than individually,though all of them gain from their collective power. Since this is nominated, it is the one I’ll vote for.
# 78 - that's a mealy mouthed comment - more ambivalent than I feel. Open City is a great, marvelous film.
24 L'Eclisse directed by Michelangelo Antonioni - the only film on the ballot I haven’t seen in a theater. I made up for it the usual way, watching the DVD through two or three times, with and without the commentary. Still, DVD is no substitute for seeing films as films, especially when they look like this. This is a vote mostly for the potential: if it is this powerful seen in mediocre conditions, think how good it must be for real. That and the ending - which is still pretty breathtaking.
# 57 - that's lower than I would have expected - if just because Antonioni's death put him in people's minds.
25 Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar-Wai - this is an almost completely political pick. Chinese films and the 90s are both very badly represented on the nomination list. Satantango and maybe White are the only 90s films worth consideration; Chungking Express and Yi Yi the only Chinese films worth considering. Should I vote for it as a kind of proxy for the film I really want to be there, Fallen Angels? I guess so - I’m voting, unapologetically, for Open City because Germany Year Zero and the Flowers of St. Francis aren’t available; why not Chungking Express, as a stand in for Fallen Angels, Happy Together and 2046, and Wong Kar-wei as a stand in for any number of Hong Kong films, for Hou Hsiao Hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, Jia Jiang-ke, even the Zhang Yimou films that came in the '00s and deserved to be considered? Nothing can make me vote for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, or Raise the Red Lantern, or even Farewell My Concubine, but I can live with Chunking Express. Though it would probably be more honest to vote for one of the Truffauts or another Kurosawa or Godard.
# 63 - that's a really whiny comment. But I went through it all before. I do really like this film...
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