The Fifth Hall of Fame

Unforgiven

I just completed yet another rewatch of this film. Ironically, this was not nominated by me yet it is in my top ten. This is what I consider the best Western of all time and it is one of Eastwoods best films as well. The acting is just great all around, every single performance is captivating. It's one of those movies that is flawless for me, and there is only about twenty or so films in my life that I have seen in which I can speak that way. Freeman, Hackman, and Eastwood are the main headliners certainly, and they each put up outstanding performances. The story is original and captivating and the camerawork is top notch. I think it is no surprise where this one will end up for me.

I highly recommend Dreyer's Day of Wrath.

I watched Divorce Italian Style last night and it was another nice surprise for me.

I did not think I was going to like this movie, and I'm not sure why. I've become somewhat of a foreign film lover recently, but I haven't had any experience with foreign comedies. In fact, despite my long time love for comedies, I dont watch nearly as many as I used to. Perhaps my doubts were just a product of the unknown.

*After about 15 minutes, all I could think about was how the main character was such a rat. After all, he wants to get rid of his wife, who granted is annoying and a butterface, but is also loving and attentive, so he can be with his underage cousin. I took a break and thought about how many of my favorite movie characters are psychotic scumbags, and put it on with a fresh point of view. It is just a movie, so I thought there is no need to be negative and judgmental. Once I was able to get past this minor obstacle, I was able to just sit back and enjoy.

The fact that this was a dark comedy helped me. It has elements of a screwball comedy, which I'm not into, but it never crosses the line into being silly. It's also very intelligent without being challenging. I thought it had great subtle humor, to go along with laugh out loud moments. It just seemed to be a perfect mix of humor, with many great scenes like when Ferdinando paraded his wife around hoping to draw a suitor, or when all the old timers were excited for the premier of La Dolce Vita.

A typical story like this would just go as the husband trying to find a way to do his wife in without getting caught. This story takes a totally different approach, with a few different twists, and it is executed brilliantly.

The acting across the board is superb, highlighted by a masterful performance from Marcello Mastroianni. The settings, musical score, and all technical aspects of the film are top notch.

I would imagine that this is a legendary film in Italy. I think it was a great nomination by wintertriangles, with the added bonus that it's eligible for the upcoming 60's list. I feel like the movie reached it's full potential, and I'm comfortable giving it a rating of

I still have to watch 10 more, including rewatches of Unforgiven, Sideways, and The Wizard of Oz. I may not watch any more until December, as I want to clean out my DVR and hammer down for the animation list.

Unforgiven

A film by Clint Eastwood (1992)

The Western. A genre that goes back to the dawn of movies and the beginning of the marvelous art form that we all love. Many film historians cite The Great Train Robbery (1904), a western, as the first movie that had a storyline – a start, a middle, and an end.

There were two great movie actors that were associated with the western in the Twentieth Century, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The film that should be compared to Unforgiven is The Shootist (1976). John Wayne’s character in The Shootist can be considered as a compilation, a summation of all the characters that Wayne has portrayed in his movie westerns from Stagecoach to Red River, though Rio Bravo and The Searchers to True Grit. It is the capstone to his career as a western hero.

Likewise, Unforgiven, can be considered as a compilation of, a summation of, all the characters that Eastwood has portrayed in his movie westerns. Whereas Wayne was seen as the ultimate western hero, Eastwood was billed in his western movie breakout as the anti-hero. He was The Man With No Name, the spaghetti westerns were revisionist anti-westerns.

Eastwood’s character in these movies did not seek to help civilize the west, he had a highly personal moral code that you did not cross or there would be violent and bloody retribution. From Hang’em High through High Plains Drifter to The Outlaw Joesy Wales, these were revenge fantasies, a settling of personal justice – not the civilized justice of the law, being brought to the wrongdoers.

In Unforgiven, Eastwood’s character is introduced as William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.

But now he has been reformed, turned from his violent ways by a woman whom he married. She died young but he cherishes her memory and stays true to his reformation and now has two small children and is a desperately poor hog farmer on the plains of Kansas in 1880. He has not touched a drop of liquor or fired his gun in a violent act in 11 years, but now a seeming random chance has given him an opportunity to make some money and help his children by killing two men who have committed a violent act against some prostitutes in a town called Big Whiskey Wyoming. Not an official act, but one of bringing a brand of personal justice, to be bought and paid for, by the prostitutes for the humiliation that they have received.

Eastwood teams up with an old partner of his (Morgan Freeman) and they begin their journey west to Big Whisky Wyoming to kill the two men and collect the reward.

But it is a nightmare journey for Eastwood – he sees the ghosts, the faces of the men he has killed in his past, faces filled with worms, the waste that his life had been before he had been turned from his violent and intemperate ways by his dear departed wife.

They arrive in the area of Big Whisky and Eastwood kills one of the two cowboys, his partner, Freeman is sickened by the senselessness of this revenge killing and leaves to return home. Eastwood helps to kill the second cowboy and, as they are being paid their bounty, he learns that Morgan Freeman has been caught by a posse and has been killed by the sheriff of Big Whiskey, called Little Bill (Gene Hackman). He tells the third member of his team of bounty hunters, a young brash kid who he has let kill the second cowboy and who has become sickened by what he has done, that it will never leave him. It is the climax of the film and is Eastwood’s statement of the use of violence and killing as a justification of justice – that there is no forgiveness – “It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.”

We see him begin to drink from a whiskey bottle, something he has not done for 11 years as he prepares himself to, as we moderns would say, to go down into his dark side, to his own hell to become once again the violent, bloody murderer he once was, and to seek his revenge against those who have killed his friend Morgan Freeman.

The final fate of Bill Munny, Eastwood’s character is left to the imagination of the audience, a rumor that he found at last peace and prosperity elsewhere.

As a Western Film it’s fate is assured. It is one of the great western films of all times, a summation of Eastwood’s thoughts and ideas and of the place his western filmography has had over the years. It is the sine gua coda to his western film career. It is IMO the Anti-Anti-Western. It puts its stamp of Paid In Full to all the revenge fantasies that proceeded it.

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That's my favorite Dreyer that I've seen by a pretty wide margin.

The Wizard of Oz

I was quite excited to see this movie, as its one of my friends favorite movies among Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and A Clockwork Orange. He has a quite special taste in movies, so its nearly always interesting to watch some of the movies he recommend.

I was actually quite disappointed with the movie as it seems to be a rather straight story. It however did have some laugh out loud scenes because of the awkwardness / strangeness. The style of the film is not really interesting to me and neither was the acting. I think most people hold it in high regard due to nostalgia and that is fine with me. I have the same nostalgia towards films like Total Recall and Akira, but as an 29 year old arthouse buff The Wizard of Oz seems really mediocre. I would however say i was glad that i have seen it but its not something im planning to revisit again.

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That's fair, Tokeza. I can understand how an adult who is used to a certain kind of film can have a hard time getting into The Wizard of Oz. As much as I love it, I consider it to be not much more that a nostalgic children's movie, albeit a great one, or more precisely for me, the best one.

Yeah its not like i cant understand why it could be magical to other people, but i have a hard time seeing this as one of the all-time greats

But each to his own!

I'm curious to see how I react to it after not seeing it for many years.

I think it's worth taking into account just how influential and iconic The Wizard of Oz has been, how many other works, not just films but songs, phrases and a whole variety of things have been inspired by it. It may not make you like the film any more, but it might explain why it is viewed as a classic worthy of a hall of fame for reasons more than mere childhood nostalgia.

Quotes from the film (some of them misquoted) are widely used and known, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain", "Ding dong the witch is dead", "Toto I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore", "there's no place like home", "lions and tigers and bears oh my", "fly my pretties, fly, fly", along with references to the yellow brick road, "over the rainbow" and the image of ruby slippers.

I watched Wreck-It Ralph the other day and there's a clear reference to The Wizard of Oz there with the Oreo guards, just one recent example.

Over the Rainbow is also one of the best movie songs ever.

There are also numerous references to The Wizard of Oz in music, including the comedy song, "Existential Blues":

Yeah, I was going to bring that up before this was all over. The influence is in so much from books to songs to graphic novels to movies etc. etc. Oh, yeah, Lost. Lost was highly influenced by The Wizard of Oz.

I certainly can't make people like it, but Wizard of Oz has a lot going on in the impact it made that I think should be considered when people rank their movies.

Getting back to this over the next two weeks or so. I'm going to watch, Wages of Fear, It's Such a Beautiful Day, A Women Under The Influence, Bullets Over Broadway and Divorce Italian Style, that will take me to 12 watched. Hoping to finish this a month or two before the deadline so i can actually read all of the posts.

That reminds me. I need to get in touch with Cobpyth and see if he is still with us.

I watched Le Trou. I'm going to do the 20 questions thing and then come back here. I forget who nominated it, but good choice.

I just saw Quills and i really dont have anything productive to say, so i wont. If it wasnt for the Hall of Fame i would have turned it off quite quickly.

Why?

It doesn't matter it what you have to say isn't positive, it's still productive to have a discussion about what people didn't like about a film they didn't like in the hall of fame.

That you say you would have turned it off quite quickly suggests you didn't really give it a fair chance.

A Separation

This was a really well made film, gripping and intense. I like that the characters were flawed and the moral situations were complex. Most of them were dishonest and/or insensitive at one point, but all of them are under different pressures, so you can understand their reasons, even if you can't always sympathise with them. Razieh in particular made me angry with her lies and neglect and lack of consideration about how her actions would affect the family and a certain amount of religious hypocrisy, although you couldn't help but feel sorry for her too, thrust into a job she couldn't handle, dealing with her husband's debts and volatile temper and losing her child, trapped by the lies she's already told.

It was a difficult film to like, though, since it consisted for a large part of people arguing. A scene that stood out for me was when the father was making his daughter decide whether he was guilty or not, a lot of pressure to put on a barely eleven year old child. It seemed to pose a lot of questions about justice and truth and compassion without necessarily answering them, which was interesting. I liked the way the daughter's final decision about which of her parents she would live with was left unresolved, the film focusing on the fractured relationship between the parents and the chaotic court corridor and keeping the general feeling of unease and uncertainty that pervaded the whole film.

I'm having trouble finding Le Trou. I thought it was on Hulu but can't find now.

It was the one that wasn't. I had to get it through Netflix DVD.

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