+12
Another from my list shows up! I wonder if we'll get all three parts of The Human Condition now.
52. Gone With the Wind - Long, long, long, long movie - I really don't know how cinemagoers had the stamina back then to take it. This movie is where I learned what "carpetbagger" meant, and it had my breath taken away many times as far as visuals are concerned. It's still stupendous, all of these years later it still feels like it would be a challenge pulling this off - all of the fire, extras, art direction and general production design. Once upon a time you simply couldn't rely on computers to fill in all the blanks, and as such you had to do the Herculean task of building a long-ago world from scratch and populating it with people wearing costumes that can't be bought at K-Mart. I'm not a huge fan of the story itself, but the film is so grand that it almost feels like the story is secondary. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh embody characters that are at times really hard to love, and the South as a whole fights for an abhorrent cause - but that adds to the drama. Enormous film - but there are other war films that crowd it out of my Top 25.
51. The Human Condition II : Road to Eternity - Watching the Human Condition series of films a little while ago was like a lightning bolt - as the title implies, it cuts right to the heart of the disparity between humanity and that activity that completely lacks humanity - war. It doesn't bother with nonsense - it burrows down deep and each chapter of Kaji's (Tatsuya Nakadai) journey deals with a large-scale aspect of the incongruity. Brilliant in every manner of filmmaking, this is part of a towering masterpiece from Masaki Kobayashi which examines war through the eyes of an uncommonly humane man - a real person who understands reason, truth and honor at a time when all of those personal benefits are lacking in nearly all who surround him. You can't go to war and expect reason, truth and honor to survive, but Kaji holds on to all of these things with grim determination - despite nothing making sense in relation to them. A stunning achievement, of which Road to Eternity is the middle chapter. Here Kaji finds himself conscripted, often punished for fighting a rotten system, but never tiring of his pursuit of natural justice. Every act of good has him slip further down into hell - as is the nature of war in it's worst sense. Loved these films, and I had Road to Eternity as my #7
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Seen : 32/50
I'd never even heard of :11/50
Movies that had been on my radar, but I haven't seen yet : 7/50
Films from my list : 3
#51 - My #7 - The Human Condition II : Road to Eternity (1959)
#70 - My #14 - The Caine Mutiny (1954)
#74 - My #16 - Shoah (1985)
Overlooked films : Breaker Morant, Fail-Safe
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Remember - everything has an ending except hope, and sausages - they have two.