Even More of The Greatest part 2

More of my favourite films in no particular order.








70. The Swimmer (1968)
The Swimmer, adapted from a short story by John Cheever and directed by Frank Perry and Sydney Pollack, is the story of middle aged advertising executive Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster), who after visiting some friends decides to swim home via a "river" of swimming pools provided by his friends and neighbours: the New England, suburban social elite. After appearing unexpectedly from behind some foliage wearing only a pair of swimming trunks, he is welcomed warmly at first by close friends. It seems he's been away for a while, and apparently missed. When he reveals his plan it's taken with a pinch of salt, Ned is always the life and soul. As the journey progresses, each pool introduces another set of characters revealing different aspects of his past, and the at first vital and charismatic Ned is soon shown to be a man in extreme denial. This great story, adapted by Eleanor Perry (Franks wife), makes for one of the most interesting screenplays to come out of Hollywood in the 60s. Ned lives in the same world as Mike Nichols' Graduate, but he's looking at it from over the proverbial hill. Consequently, it's a much more cynical look at the American dream and its distinctive class system, which it subtley undermines.



























69. La Terra Trema (1948)

Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema is a masterpiece of world cinema and a shining example of the Italian neo-realist movement. It's a film about the exploitation of fishermen by ruthless wholesalers in a small coastal town in rural sicily. This subject is tipified by the plight of the Valastro's, a traditionally large and empoverished family of fishermen. The Valastro family were played by non actors, some of whom were actually related to each other, and all from Aci Trezza, the town the film was shot and set in. They seem to be playing themselves in their own story. This, and the deep, re-assuring voice narrative make the film seem almost like a documentary and it seems to embody in some way the spirit of Italian neo-realism. The tragic and complexed story is told partly through the beautiful cinematography, and its full of images that are unforgetable and iconic. The incredible beauty in this film is enhanced by its realness.










































68. Short Cuts (1993)

Robert Altman's magnum opus, Short Cuts is an epic three hour journey through the lives of a collection of over twenty main characters, played by an all star cast including: Tim Robbins, Matthew Modine, Jullianne Moore, Fred Ward, Andie MacDowell, Lili Taylor, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jnr., Chris Penn, Madeleine Stowe, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits and Jack Lemon. Adapted from the short stories of Raymond Carver, each characters stories meet and intermingle in different ways, the characters are all connected. The extent to which is offcourse only apparent to us, the audience. Seemingly, Short Cuts is a film about fate and chance, the things that affect us that we're not aware of. It's a film starring everyone, about everyone.


























67. Mad Max (1979)



























66. The Last Picture Show (1971)

Based on the book by Larry McMurty, Peter Bogdanovich's epic coming of age drama is one of the greatest ever to come out of Hollywood, influencing a generation of American arthouse films like Rumble Fish, The Outsiders and American Graffiti. It's episodic plot is told simply and beautifully in cold black and white, the harshness of the photography and the mono sound makes the film seem stripped down, older than it is, even of the early 1950s in which the story is set. Infact it was made twenty years later. Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) are two high school footballers living in a dying town in west Texas. Virtually everything that happens there centres around the diner, cinema and small pool hall all owned by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), an older, stetson wearing Texan archetype and father figure to both boys. Cloris Leachman won an oscar for her portrayal of Ruth Popper, the unhappy wife of the local football coach, and Cybill Shepherd is also great in her debut as the beautiful but selfish town princess Jacy Farrow.

























65. The Ninth Gate (1999)

This is one of my favourite Polanski films, perhaps its not as celebrated as Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown or Frantic, but neverhteless its a film I end up re-visiting alot. I think its one of the most watchable and atmospheric of all his films, an example of a master at the peak of his ability. Adapted from the novel El Club Dumas By Arturo Perez-Reverte, the story incorporates horror and occult themes into a mystery thriller. Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is a ruthless, rare books dealer motivated solely by profit. One day a client, the publishing mogul and rare book collector Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), explains to Corso that he has acquired one of the only three existing copies of The Nine Gates To The Kingdom Of Shadows, a 16th century book written by an occultist who was burned at the steak for heresy. Balkan believes that his copy is a forgery however, and recruits Corso to go to Europe and acquire the other two copies at any expense, or by any means. The rusult is a thoroughly enjoyable, mystery adventure with ample helpings of the absurd, something which Polanski has a natural instinct for, and is counterbalanced by Depps unusually subdued performance. It's a film where the absurd and the unsetling often overlap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTEZ2Cf0ngQ


























64. La Residencia (1969)
La Residencia a.k.a. The Boarding School or The House That Screamed, is a Spanish gothic horror film directed by Narciso Ibanez Serrador, legendary writer director of Who Can Kill A Child? As the title would suggest, its set in a boarding school, a girls boarding school in France some time around the late 19th century. The story, written by Serrador, is a masterpeice of macabre subtletey and imagination. Revolving around the murders of five of the girls by an unknown assailant, the plot is full of twists and strange dissjointed scenes that set it appart from most horror films of the time. It also features a number of incredibly well drawn and very sinister characters, including the manacing and sadistic head girl Irene (played by Mary Maude), the stern disciplinarian head mistress Madame Fourneau (Lilli Palmer) and her voyeristic teenage son Luis (John Moulder-Brown). Serrador's direction is impeccable, the film looks beautiful and is incredibly atmospheric. Of his two films this is probably the greater. Good fun and perhaps the only gothic giallo.




























63. Parenthood (1989)

In 1989, Ron Howard, ex star of Happy Days and veteran director of family classics like Splash, Cocoon and Willow, wrote and directed Parenthood, his last foray into the genre before the more seriously toned Backdraft in 1991.
Parenthood in many ways is the ultimate family movie, it's actually about the family, and the generational divide. The story revolves loosely around three generations, and three units of the Buckmans. The excellent script deals with what are at times quite moving subjects, but with a subtlety and lightness of tone thats ultimately life affirming. Its simply one of the greatest screenplays to come out of Hollywood in the whole of the 80s. This film also has a great cast, including Jason Robards, Rick Moranis, Dianne West, Mary Steenburgen and most importantly Steve Martin, truly one of the greatest comic actors. Both funny and incredibly poignant, Parenthood is a film to literally make you laugh and cry.



























62. The Gospel According to Matthew (1964)

Pier Paolo Passolini's The Gospel According to Matthew (a 'St.' was added before 'Matthew' during translation against the directors will), is truly one of the greatest religious epics ever committed to celluloid. Pasolini was inspired to make it after reading a copy of the New Testament in a hotel room, regarding Matthew's version of the life and philosophies of Jesus as the most appropiate to the cinema. Much of the script that resulted was a more or less exact transcript of what the Gospel of Matthew actually says, none of the words are changed, and virtually no scenes where added for dramatic effect, it seems in part to be a reaction against the Hollywood style adaptation of the Bible. This is also apparent in the restrained visualisation of the miracles and the crucifixion, they are distinctly un-sentimental. Infact, the film is incredibly minimalistic visually, paying little attention to historical authenticity, and seemingly a direct influence on Scorcesse's The Last Temptation of Christ. The film pays some homage to Italian neo-realism, the entire cast consisted of non actors and it was shot in southern Italy rather than the Holy Land. Passolini also used handheld cameras for many scenes, and even zoom shots. His ongoing obsession with the human face seems most un-restrained in this film, especially in scenes with less dialogue (virtually all the talking is left to Jesus himself), and in few of his films are the faces so expressive. Another unconventional aspect of the film is the music. Instead of an original score, Passolini used an eclectic mix of popular and classical music, ranging from Mozart and Bach to Congolese gospel choir Missa Luba, and even the blues standards of Billie Holliday and Blind Willie Johnson. The film seems to be partly about the modern worlds relationship to Christianity, with Jesus as a champion of the peasantry, an angry working class hero. Whats remarkable is that it does this while changing virtually nothing from the Biblical source. The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the most authentic Biblical films, and certainly the most groundbreaking and inventive.




























61. Andrei Rublev (1966)

Andrei Tarkovsky's episodic re-imagining of the life of the 15th century icon painter and monk, Andrei Rublev, is both epic in scale and dreamlike. Tarkovsky manages to reflect the serenity and calm of Rublev's art in his camera style, encorporating slow, contemplative tracking shots and images of natural beauty that are simply and profoundly moving. This is juxtaposed in a segment like The Raid, a sequence depicting the sacking of a town by Mongolic 'Tartars'. The Raid is filmed in long continuous tracking shots, making these scenes seem chaotic and giving the feeling of spontaneity. A riderless horse is shown stumbling down stairs during This segment, apparently symbolic of tainted innocence and the chaos of war. Wild or lone horses feature regularly in the films imagery. They seem to also represent the kind of natural benevolence, purity, serenity and perfection apparent in Rublev's art. His paintings seem to conjure the divine.

This is a film made in and for a devoutly religious country, specifically dealing with Russian faith and belief. Other segments of the film include The Fool, Andrei's Passion, The Last Judgement and The Bell. This last segment, in which Rublev is the aged observer of the casting of a huge bronze bell, is perhaps the most moving and a seemingly perfect metaphor for the creative process. This depiction of the creative act is one we share with Rublev himself. In the end he seems to be rewarded with some understanding of the beauty he has given to the poor, suffering people of Russia, and to humanity itself.

Even More of The Greatest part 1

As before they're not in any particular order.











60. Ride in the Whirlwind (1965)

Some time during the mid sixties Roger Corman gave director Monte Hellman the money to make two western b-movies, to be shot more or less at the same time. The first was The Shooting, a kind of existential take on the traditional western stereotypes whith Jack Nicholson as a black clad, sociopathic gunfighter and Warren Oates as kind of architypal western hero in the style of Ethan Edwards. Infact, Oates characters paternal relationship with a younger protagonist is like a straight up homage to John Wayne in The Searchers. The Shooting has much of the best things of the traditional hollywood western, while at the same time waving farewell to it. The second film to be made was Ride in the Whirlwind. Made with much of the same cast as The Shooting (minus Oates) and from a script knocked together by Jack Nicholson, it nevertheless marks a drastic departure from its predecessor.
The architypes are replaced with beleivable characters. The incredible dialogue which carries most of the film is a sometimes bareley comprehensible stream of authentic 1870s north american slang and inflections. Watching this film you feel as if you're listening in on the old west, perhaps from an early record. Harry Dean Stanton plays a one eyed bandit called Blind Dick, who's gang robs a stagecoach in the opening scene of the film. They are tracked down and killed by a vigillante mob, who then mistake some nearby cowboys, Wes (Jack Nicholson) and Vern (Cameron Mitchell), for outlaws. Wes and Vern are forced to go on the run and even take a family hostage in order to escape their pursuers, essentially becoming what they where accused of being in the first place. Seemingly then, the film is a comment on subjective justice as a kind of physical embodiment of the 'lawlessenes' of the old west. Jack Nicholson, already one of the great actors, can apparently write too. Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting could also be seen as direct predecessors to a later more famous western, The Missouri Breaks, which also stared Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton (alongside Marlon Brando) and had a similar sense of authenticity and approach to dialogue.














































59. The Name of the Rose (1986)

Jean-Jacques Annaud adapted this from a book by Umberto Eco, it's basically a murder mystery set in a remote abbey in northern Italy during the middle ages. It's thickly atmospheric, feeling for the most part like a horror film, Annaud seems to have deliberately chosen the ugliest actors to play the various characters, who in turn have been exagerated to the level of gargoyles. Sean Connery and Christian Slater play franciscan monks who have been sent to the abbey as representatives during a theological conference. As certain monks start turning up dead they soon uncover a conspiracy that reveals corruption in the catholic church itself, represented by an inquisitor played by a demonic looking F. Murray Abraham. It's good, late night fun.















































58. The Double Life of Veronique (1991)













































57. Satyricon (1969)

Federico Fellini's adaptation of the Roman text by Petronius, the story of Satyricon basically follows the exploits of two Roman men who start out as rivals in a love triangle with a young boy and then end up in a series of misadventures that take them on a kind of tour through Roman society. The original text is basically an attempt by a Roman writer to update, or satirise, the kind of Greek heroic myths in which young men are sent on these long journeys of discovery. In Satyricon however the two protagonists are distinctly un-heroic, and their journey is a chaotic series of mishaps brought about by their initial capture into slavery. In alot of ways this is a typical Fellini movie, lots of scary women with painted faces and the narrative progresses in this kind of dreamlike way, but it seems to take his cartoonish stylisation to a new level. It's a beautiful dream.
I think it's also notable among his films as being an adaptation of a well known work of literature rather than his own story. Usually I think of Fellini as a very autobiographical director who wrote most of his more well known films with a kind of confesional quality. This is apparent in what are arguably his three most famous films: 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita and Amacord (which translates as I Remember). The only other story that I'm aware of him adapting would be his 1976 film of Casanova's memoirs. Satyricon has something of the same atmosphere as Casanova, as I've said before it's very visually exagerrated, as if the further back he goes historically, the less 'realistic' he's prepared to be. Perversely, this can also add to the veiwers historical curiosity, a curiosity Fellini reveals himself in a film he made not long after Satyricon, Fellini's Roma.















































56. Tokyo Story (1953)

Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story is perhaps one of the greatest human dramas ever made. It's about the generational divide and the certainty of change and eventually death, set against the backdrop of what was apparently a transitional period for Japan in the early fifties. Ozu is well known for his family drama's and his distinctive visual style, the kind of odd low camera angles and tendency for filming actors straight on so that they are almost talking into the camera. The audience experiences the story as if a participant, first hand. Ozu himself is a slightly mysterious character. He seems to have rareley, if ever, given interviews. Ozu comes from the generation of directors who basically taught themselves how to make films from just watching movies, and apparently he spent much of his formative education in the cinema instead of the classroom. He was eventually expelled from the boys school he attended for sending love letters to a fellow student, so its possible he was a homosexual, a huge taboo in the Japan of the twenties. In Early Summer, a film he made a few years before Tokyo Story, the subject of arranged marriages is dealt with with vaguely homoerotic undertones. Like Tokyo Story and another film called Late Spring, Early Summer follows the character of Noriko (played as always by Ozu's muse, Setsuko Hara), a twenty something who is presurised to marry by her family. During the course of the story she is forced to decide whether she even wants to marry anyone. She remains reluctant untill almost the end of the film, and when she does finally choose a man it seems to be mostly because of his friendship and apparent loyalty to her dead brother (the war is never far away). No romantic melodrama here. The scene in which she asks his mother for her consent seems bizarre, as if she's asking his mother to marry her instead of him. The theme of repressed homosexuality is subtle but it's there. Tokyo Story was the last in this 'Noriko Trilogy', and I think the most succesful in achieving a sense of genuine pathos with the character's. In this film Noriko is a war widow who's relationship with her dead husbands parents is much deeper than that of their real children. The drama is understated as ever, but seemingly all the more poignant. The plot of Tokyo Story is episodic, like real life. One of the most distinctive things about Ozu's films is his sense of this kind of simple beauty in the cinematography, particularly in his famous establishing shots, and also his sense of rythm in the editing, it's just really well made, pure filmaking.



























































55. Hardware (1990)

Richard Stanley's horror sci-fi debut, Hardware is a cult oddity, crafted from elements of eighties's classics like The Terminator, Alien, Blade Runner and Mad Max. As an amalgamation of these films, it seems to represent a kind of quintessential eighties sci-fi action movie, with an added influence of the european horror films of Bava and Argento. In the comentary of the Optimum dvd release Stanley even admits to the film being "..a rip off of Terminator and Alien", it seems as if this was Richard Stanley trying to appease movie producers as much as the immagined audience. It was never more than a cult hit, this may be dew to the emphasis on dialogue and character development and lack of action in the first half. Hardware has some of the slow burning elements of a John Carpenter movie like The Thing or Assault on Precinct 13. Like Rio Bravo for the MTV generation. When it reaches its climactic second half the violence is concentrated and brutal, the film kind of explodes. Some of the eye gouging and various other things were cut out on it's initial release, and there are some other sequences that have stayed with me since I saw it when I was 11. The plot is looseley adapted from a story in the comic weekly 2000 A.D., about a homicidal skull faced robot called The Mark 13 that goes on the rampage through a post apocalyptic urban slum of the future. The use of eighties rock songs like P.I.L.'s The Order of Death and Iggy Pop's Cold Metal seem fitting and are well placed. More music by bands like Gwar and Ministry add to the film's gothic industrial aesthetic. Also of interest are the cameos: Fields of the Nephilim singer Carl McCoy plays an enigmatic "zone tripper", Lemmy from Motorhead appears as a taxi driver and Iggy Pop's voice is heard as a radio personality called Angry Bob. Bob's rants at the beginning and end of the film serve a narrative purpose, establishing first of all the context of the story, and finally the outcome in a kind of verbal epilogue, giving the feeling of a medieval play. It's certainly as violent and existential as any work of Shakespeare.










































54. Immoral Tales (1974)

Walerian Borowczyk's Immoral Tales is one of the most famous erotic films of the seventies, but it has a dreamy quality and sense of the surreal that sets it apart from films like The Story of O and Emmanuelle. Immoral Tales is made of four segments, which regress cronologically, starting on a French beach in the present day and ending in fifteenth century Rome. The film is obviously about sex as sin. All the characters missbehave by the standards of their time, and seem to get worse as we go on, as if we are regressing also in a moral sense. Borowczyk's film seems to imply that morality itself is relative. The earlier scenes are atmospheric, closer to todays reality and more subdued. The later stories are presented rather more dramatically. The Countess Bathory segment is perhaps the most interesting and memorable, filled with surreal images. Paloma Picasso's performance as Elizabeth Bathory is detached and somewhat menacing. The Borgia family in the final segment are presented as the ultimate symbol of corruption, their incestuous relationships are a subversion of the family, in the Catholic Church in which the family is an important symbol of the relationship between man and God. It seems as if the more repressed the time and place the characters are from, the more corrupt they infact become, and sex and sensuality are represented as all the more enjoyable for being 'wrong'. The characters are not judged or punished by Borowczyk, they are shown objectively, as if specimens in a zoo.














































53. Death in Venice (1971)

Luchino Visconti's masterpiece is an adaptation of the famous novel by Thomas Mann. The story concerns a 19th century Viennese composer Gustave Aschenbach, apparently based on Gustav Mahler, who travels to Venice after suffering from health problems brought about by a series of personal and artistic failures. Upon arrival he becomes secretly obssessed with a young Polish tourist called Tadzio. Eventually he tries to leave Venice, which appears to be in the grip of a cholera epidemic, only to return straight away after a minor problem concerning his luggage. It seems as if he is glad to return. He begins to openly follow the boy, to the extent that Tadzio's family notice him. Tadzio reminds him of his own past, seeming to embody everyone he has ever loved, including his dead daughter. It's incredibly poignant and sad. Visconti creates a sense of profound isolation around his central character, a solitary figure who hardly speaks to anyone. Aschenbach is a man at the end of his life, alone in a foreign country and trapped by his past. The dialogue is minimal, much of the film is carried by Dirk Bogarde's incredible performance as Aschenbach, and the music of Mahler resounds through the opening and closing scenes of the film, it seems like a wordless opera.

















































52. Tenebrae (1982)

Tenebrae is Dario Argento's last great giallo, it's also probably my favourite film of this much underrated genre. It's an incredibly violent film, almost all the characters are eventually killed, but as always the deaths are beautifully elaborate, his style is indesputable and very Italian. I particularly love the fact that in one scene a young girl is chased into the path of her killer by an over enthusiastic doberman, a cruel twist of fate typical of Argento's films. His characters often die in the most unlucky ways. Daria Nicolodi, the mother of Argento's daughter Asia, was often the brunt of these sadistic ironies: in Terror at the Opera she's not only shot in the head but through the eye. In Phenomena she's mauled by a razor weilding chimpanzee. In the climax of his early giallo, Cat o' Nine Tails, the murderer receives their comupence by falling down a lift shaft (after being shot) and on the way down burns their hands trying to hold on to the lift cable. He seems to like making his characters suffer, beyond what is required. Argento's violence is literally excessive.














































51. 3 Women (1977)
By far Robert Altman's most disturbing and strangest film, 3 Women is a schizophrenic nightmare. Millie (Shelley Duvall) and Pinky (Sissy Spacek) share an appartment and work together at a health spa. They are both archetypes. Modern girl Millie is outgoing, sexually confident and shallow. Pinky is a country girl, shy and childlike. The appartment complex they live in is owned by an older woman, Willie (Janice Rule) a pregnant artist who paints horrific murals, depicting ferral, ape like creatures. The two younger women are also sporadically bothered by Willie's over sexed husband, Edgar. The three central characters are so exagerrated, Duvall and Spacek are clownlike.
Millie, Pinky and Willie all seem to exist apart from their surroundings and are treated with indifference and sometimes hostility. By the end of the film the three women have swapped roles to the extent that it suggests that they are merely facets of the same woman. In this sense it's similar to Bergman's Persona. This idea is more blatantly suggested in the ending which is horrific and mysterious.

Samuel Fuller, Pete Walker, Death In Venice, Los Olvidados, Bunuel

Recently been kind of re-discovering Samuel Fuller. I was always a big fan of Shock Corridor, Fullers psycho-thriller about an ambitious journalist who infiltrates an asylum by pretending to be mad, but I never realised the amount of other really interesting films he made. His films remain largely unknown, and mostly unavailable in this country, but he's a legend amongst his peers. Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese have both mentioned his films as a major influence. Fullers follow up to Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss, is a strange, noirish melodrama about a prostitute who escapes her old life to become a nurse in a small town, only to discover that the handsome town patron whom she has an affair with, seen at the end of this clip, harbours a dark secret.























Also discovered these Pete Walker films, Die Screaming Marianne and Frightmare. Walker seems to have made quite a few decent exploitation movies during the 1970's, I see him as maybe like a British answer to Jess Franco. Like Franco, Pete Walker's films are characterised by camp dialogue, unnecessary nudity, bizarre sadistic characters, pacey and unpretentious plots and cinematography that sort of harkens back to classical hollywood and old gothic horror movies.





















Having finally watched Death In Venice, the amazing film by Luchino Visconti, I can safeley say it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen.















Recently I bought Los Olvidados, a film directed by Luis Bunuel, about street kids in Mexico City. Bunuel left Spain to escape fascism, its pretty clear if you watch any films of his, such as Viridiana or Exterminating Angel, that he was quite radically left wing and anti church. Los Olvidados is also famous for this dream sequence.


Un Chien Andalou's eye slicing sequence is probably the most iconic of any of his films.


Exterminating Angel is about a group of South American aristocrats at a dinner party who find themselves suddenly an inexplicably unable to leave their hosts small drawing room. It seems to be about what happens when culture and propriety give way to survival.