The List: The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1915)

So. Hmmm. I really disliked this movie. In fact, it took me many, many tries (and a few months of having it sitting here, sucking up netflix charges) for me to finally get through it. Given the triple whammy of its being...

A) silent
B) 3 hours long
C) incredibly offensive

...I never really expected any better. In any case, I'm gonna say as little about it as possible.

But I will give it this: watching it was an experience. Just not in the good way. Yeah, it was a technical milestone. Yeah, it was the first blockbuster. And yes, it may have secured the future of feature films as we know them. But damn if it isn't a total slog to sit through. The Lincoln assassination scene is cool, though.

The List: Double Indemnity (dir. Billy Wilder, 1944)

Despite the unfortunate tag line (click on that poster to the left), this was a goood one. I actually got to watch it at the screening I administer each monday night, for a class called "American Movie Genres". So that was convenient. I've been neglecting The List, so I'm glad I was forced to see this.

In it, a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage (Barbara Stanwyk) plots with her would-be lover (Fred MacMurray) to kill her husband and capitalize on his life insurance policy (the sum was doubled in this case by - you guessed it - double indemnity). From the moment they met, it was murder. But killing for love is a dangerous game, as our killers soon find out.

This a really excellent noir/thriller (and I usually say "meh" to film noir). MacMurray, who I'd never heard of before, is "aw shucks" cute while also darkly compelling. I loved him in this. He combines the best qualities of Bogart and Cary Grant, with just a touch of Jimmy Stuart. Very effective antihero. And Barbara Stanwyk is the ultimate femme fatale, providing far more depth than that archetype usually permits. Their talents make you actually sort of root for these people when they commit such despicable acts. The two great lead performances (plus some good supporting turns) are enhanced by brilliant cinematography and a haunting score. The whole tone of this film was so complex and well-balanced... it was all like some beautiful nightmare. Billy Wilder sure does know his stuff, doesn't he?

So yes. See this. Please. It's excellent. Shame about the tag line. And why is the poster PINK!? Seriously. That is not good marketing.

The List: Breaking the Waves (dir. Lars von Trier, 1996)

"And now for something completely different..."

(yes I DID actually watch this on the same day as the last two... I broke it up into a few separate sittings)

Hmm. I'd actually never seen this before, despite being a die-hard fan of Dancer in the Dark. And may I say, the similarities are uncanny. Not just in filmmaking style, but in the actresses' perfs as well. It seems many of Selma's mannerisms I assumed to be "Björkisms" are actually "Von-Trier-isms" that he seeks out/encourages in his women. You know... the wide-eyed innocence, the not-all-there-ness, the awkward speech patterns. Emily Watson's got that shit down (it's kinda scary).

Anyway... other impressions...

Stellan Skarsgård was quite the dish when he was younger. It's weird to see Mamma Mia first and then go back in time to THIS (rawr). Also, I loved how Bess "talked to God". Exceedingly creepy and "out there", but it totally rang true (I won't spoil the specifics for those who haven't seen it). I do feel the film went a bit off the rails in the last third - that hooker getup! - but with a Von Trier film, that might be a compliment, I'm not really sure.

All in all, though, this seems more like a warmup for Dancer than anything else (at least in retrospect). All the distinctive techniques and elements here seemed more fully realized and effective in that later film. Same weirdly angelic heroine, same practical but loving best friend/sister figure, same martyr complex... if you're a Dancer fan, you'll want to check this out. And even if you're not, you should still see it. Watson and Skarsgard are both fantastic, and Von Trier is out in full force. Essential viewing.

The List: Singin' in the Rain (dir. Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, 1952)

What is there to say?

This film is a classic. Arguably the greatest musical comedy ever made (there are plenty of great musical dramas, but comedies this buoyant and joyful are hard to come by), it's also a moving love story and a scathing satire of Hollywood. All that plus the actual "Singin' in the Rain" musical sequence (guaranteed to make you smile).

But I do have a few quibbles. Not with the film per se, but... WHY was Jean Hagen the only one in the cast who was up for an oscar??? Yes, she was great at playing a crappy singer/actress/bitch. But where's the respect who those who have the chops (and pipes) to play GREAT singers, actors and comedians? The three major players were all great, and IMO more award-worthy than Hagen.

And another thing. WHY did Donald O'Connor win the golden globe for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical? That was GENE KELLY'S award. No disrespect toward O'Connor, who was terrific... but he's not really the lead. Kelly is. And he wasn't even nominated for the frakkin' golden globe?? Go figure. I won't even get started on how he directed the film, too...

Anyway, for the record, the nominations should've gone like this:

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE: Gene Kelly
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE: Debbie Reynolds
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Donald O'Connor
BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Jean Hagen
BEST PICTURE OF 1952: Singin' in the Rain

The under-awardage of this film when it was released was pretty criminal. Luckily, film history would provide some vindication.

The List: Top Hat (dir. Mark Sandrich, 1935)

Yay for Top Hat! One of the most random and fun film titles ever.

I finally got going again with my "list" viewings (I'm getting way behind); both this and Singin' in the Rain were playing free at school (on actual film, or so it seemed) this past weekend. What a fun double feature! I made a point of seeing this one first, since I knew Singin' would top it easily (no pun intended).

Anyway... mistaken identity, romance, singing, dancing (tap dancing in a hotel room to be specific), and lots of Ginger Rogers to be ogled. By golly, she sure is pretty. I had no idea. I also had no idea Fred Astaire had such a weirdly triangular face... I guess I imagined him as more classically handsome. He is a great dancer, though.

A bit of trivia: there was apparently an oscar for "best dance direction" back in the day, since it's one of the four this film was up for. Best pic is another, as is best song for "Cheek to Cheek", an Irving Berlin original. I actually knew the "Cheek to Cheek" sequence already (from the immortal Purple Rose of Cairo) but didn't know it came from this particular film. That was a fun bonus.

All in all, a very cute depression-era charmer, with a timeless musical sequence in "Cheek to Cheek". It has an elegant simplicity and sense of purity (despite numerous continuity errors). Worth checking out, even if it's not on your list of 200 required classic films.

The List: Voyage to the Moon (dir. George Méliès, 1902)

Yeah... this one's the very first on the list. It's quite primitive.

I'm watching it right now on YouTube. So I guess this is sort of a liveblog? Méliès basically set up a camera and had people walk and flail around in front of it... which I guess is still fundamentally what filmmaking's about anyway. There's lots of discontinuous editing (not sure if that's the correct term... I should know that). Eventually, the people board a little spaceship, as the French narrator man is telling me now. Then they fly up to the moon and the spaceship hits it in the eye, and looks like a bullet. The moon looks mad (it has a face, btw). Now they're on the moon. And the audio track for the second segment has changed from french narrator man into this bizarre techno/Philip Glass score. I kind of like it. French narrator man was getting boring. The sets are actually very elaborate. I wasn't noticing that before, because the actual filmmaking is so nonexistent. But I guess this qualified as "spectacle" back in 1902. It actually resembles a sort of filmed ballet. That's kind of cool. Yay, I'm appreciating it. Now there are all these primitive-looking moon natives with spears (to expound on the "primitive" theme). And the techno score is kicking serious ass. Oh my, they're on a cliff! Somebody's gonna fall. Oh wow, the whole spaceship fell. But they got away from the natives. That's good. And it landed in the ocean. Which I'm assuming is back on Earth. But who knows. This movie is trippy.

I'm now watching it again with a different audiotrack. This time there's a narrator AND a musical score. Awesome. The audiotracks MAKE this thing. I'm definitely appreciating it more now. It's like sci-fi meets vaudeville. And they made it over 100 years ago. Awesome.

The List: The 39 Steps (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)

This is out of order, but I had to watch this today for my London study abroad prep class, as part of the "history of British cinema" - a snapshot of British film in the 1930s. So I figured I might as well do an entry about it. The whole "chronological order" thing was kind of a pipe dream anyway.

Anyway, what struck me most about this fun little early Hitchcock thriller was how much Robert Donat (the lead) seemed like a youngish Clark Gable. In fact, I thought maybe he was a youngish Clark Gable... such is the depth of my ignorance of early film. So yeah, I was fairly tired this morning when I watched this (first day of summer school, don'tcha know), but basically Robert Donat aka "Richard Hannay" encounters a beautiful but enigmatic young female spy who is killed, and then spends the rest of the film being hunted down after being accused of her murder. Eventually one skeptical woman is forced along for the ride, and later learns the truth and helps him fight for his freedom.

It's fun to see this kind of old-school spy thriller, even though it's rather pedestrian by today's standards. I am curious what compelled UM's committee to choose this particular Hitchcock as required viewing, when gods know he's done plenty of worthy stuff. There is of course other Hitchcock on the list, too. But I forget which ones. I guess you can never get enough Hitchcock. But this is not one of my favorites of his. Whatever.

The point of watching it for this particular class is to see what Hitchcock's (and others') films were like before he (and they) came to America. I, for one, never even realized he was British. Whoops.

P.S. This entry was way longer than I'd planned. If I wrote this much about all 200 of these, I'd go nuts. This was supposed to be just a paragraph. So expect that much in the future.

The List!

Below is the complete list of films I must watch for my master's degree, in chronological order. Forgive the lack of italics, but I just spent hours typing them out and putting them in chronological order, so you know...

Anyway, here they are:

Voyage to the Moon (George Mélies, 1902)
Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine, 1919)
Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919)
Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux, 1920)
The Blot (Lois Weber, 1921)
The Sheik (George Melford, 1921)
Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
The Last Laugh (F. W. Murnau, 1924)
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)
It (Clarence G. Badger, 1927)
The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dali, 1929)
Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
Betty Boop and Popeye shorts (Max & Dave Fleischer Studios, 1930s)
Morocco (Joseph von Sternberg, 1930)
A Propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, 1930)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
M (Fritz Lang , 1931)
Land without Bread (Luis Buñuel, 1932)
Red Dust (Victor Fleming, 1932)
Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932)
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
I Was Born, But… (Yasujiro Ozu, 1933)
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)
Composition in Blue (Oskar Last Fischinger, 1935)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)
The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937)
Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
Dance Girl Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1941)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
Maria Candelaria (Emilio Fernandez, 1944)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1944)
Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)
The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
D. O. A. (Rudolph Maté, 1949)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950)
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951)
The Hitchhiker (Ida Lupino, 1951)
Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954)
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman, 1954)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Voyage to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)
Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
Mon Oncle (Jacques Talli, 1957)
What’s Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones, 1957)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)
Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)
Hiroshima, mon Amour (Alain Resnias, 1959)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
The World of Apu (Satyajit Ray, 1959)
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
Primary (Drew Associates, 1960)
Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, 1961)
Cleo from Five to Seven (Agnes Varda, 1961)
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1962)
8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1963)
Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1963)
This Sporting Life (Lindsey Anderson, 1963)
Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha, 1964)
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965)
Shop on Main Street (Jan Kadar, 1965)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)
The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968)
High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)
The Hour of Furnaces (Fernando Solanas & Octavio Getino, 1968)
Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)
Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
Le Boucher (Claude Chabrol, 1969)
Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
Salesman (Albert & David Maysles, 1969)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)
Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1971)
Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls, 1971)
Aguirre, Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
State of Siege (Constantin Costa-Gavras, 1973)
Ali, Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1975)
Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976)
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorcese, 1976)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Asparagus (Suzan Pitt, 1979)
El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983)
Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983)
Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige, 1984)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (Hector Babenco, 1985)
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Susaña Muñoz & Lourdes Portillo, 1985)
The Offical Story (Luis Puenzo, 1985)
Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986)
She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, 1986)
Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986)
Street of Crocodiles (Brothers Quay, 1986)
Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988)
The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Robert Zemeckis, 1988)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
Roger & Me (Michael Moore, 1989)
Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
To Sleep with Anger (Charles Burnett, 1990)
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991)
Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)
Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1992)
Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambety, 1992)
Like Water for Chocolate (Alfonso Arau, 1992)
The Player (Robert Altman, 1992)
Tale of Winter (Eric Rohmer, 1992)
Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
Menace II Society (Hughes Brothers, 1993)
The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
Wallace and Gromit in the Wrong Trousers (Nick Park, 1993)
Red (Krysztov Kieslowski, 1994)
Strawberries and Chocolate (Gutiérrez Alea & Carlos Tabió, 1994)
Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)
A Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998)
Earth (Deepa Mehta, 1998)
All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)
Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1999)
Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano, 1999)
Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
City of God (Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund, 2002)
Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)

My new thing is that I'm going to watch them all in chronological order over the next year, as a sort of guided tour through the history of film. That's roughly one film every two days. Yikes! But I can do it. Netflix is my friend. I just wonder how I'm going to fit in the rest of the Streepathon, Altmanathon, and all the contemporary stuff. Right now, of course, there's nothing good in theaters, but that'll change in a few months. Sigh.

But I guess there are worse things to complain about.

The List

This post is an announcement of an upcoming blog project: The List.

Every time I see one of the films on The List of 200 Films I Have to See Before I Graduate, I'm gonna do a little post about the film and my reactions to it. Eventually, there should be 200 posts. They'll include basic information like characters and plot points (so I can refer to them later before the test) along with some subjective opinion and qualitative analysis.

This is mainly a project for me, a way for me to record lots of info and refer to it later, but you're all welcome to read and enjoy the posts, too. If you have strong feelings about a particular film, or anything you'd like to say, please do so in the comments of each post.

My first screening for The List is on monday; I'll have a post up shortly thereafter. Enjoy!