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Pretty good list so far. Man With a Movie Camera, Vampyr, Meshes of the Afternoon, Out of the Past, Late Spring, and The Bridge on the River Kwai are my favorites of what's been listed so far. I wasn't a fan of Day of Wrath, but it's been awhile since I've seen it. In terms of essential films, I'd say The Passion of Joan of Arc is Dreyer's most important film, even if I prefer Vampyr by a bit. Limite is the biggest surprise of what I've seen so far since it isn't brought up that much.
Mini reviews of the 100 greatest films (according to Robert the List)
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Pretty good list so far. Man With a Movie Camera, Vampyr, Meshes of the Afternoon, Out of the Past, Late Spring, and The Bridge on the River Kwai are my favorites of what's been listed so far. I wasn't a fan of Day of Wrath, but it's been awhile since I've seen it. In terms of essential films, I'd say The Passion of Joan of Arc is Dreyer's most important film, even if I prefer Vampyr by a bit. Limite is the biggest surprise of what I've seen so far since it isn't brought up that much.
On Joan of Arc, I absolutely appreciate the technical excellence of the film. The close up on the face thing had been done by Griffith in Broken Blossoms, but not with the same art or with nearly the same emotional impact. There's some little bits I love, like the torturer with his menacing wheel, the bad guy looking into her cell, and 3 of them positioned back to back side to side in a forerunner of new wave and which I'm sure influenced Agnes Varda. Just for me, I find the whole thing somewhat boring to watch as a whole movie. I find it too samey. Not enough happens (and that's from someone who loves 'slow cinema'). Just my personal feeling although I fully recognise that it could easily belong in a list of 100 greatest films.
The one I am having more 2nd thoughts about leaving out is On the Waterfront.
By the way, in terms of the longshots, as well as (the gorgeous) Limite, I'd also suggest Little Fugitive and Paniue, and maybe La Pointe Courte as coming in that category? And The Great White Silence. Although overall I agree it's fairly conventional.
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-06-25 at 06:13 AM.
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Favorite Movies
I'm probably at my most unorthodox in the 80s.
I'd say 7 or 8 out of my 12 films are 'unusual'picks.
And in the 70s in terms of what I leave out.
Meanwhile, I currently have 102 films and something of a dilema.
I'd say 7 or 8 out of my 12 films are 'unusual'picks.
And in the 70s in terms of what I leave out.
Meanwhile, I currently have 102 films and something of a dilema.
X
Favorite Movies
35. The Naked Island 1960 Japan Kaneto Shindô
One of my leading contenders for the greatest movie of all time. You need a good copy as the cinematography is stunning. You might not notice, but it’s a silent film. There’s no spoken dialogue. It’s a story of the life of a hard working family on a remote Japanese island. The parents toil every day to grow (and ultimately) the crops. It’s a story of love, devotion, determination, loss and resilience.
Wikipedia
“The Naked Island (Japanese: 裸の島, romanized: Hadaka no Shima) is a Japanese black-and-white film from 1960, directed by Kaneto Shindō. The film is notable for having almost no spoken dialogue.
Plot
The film depicts a small family, a husband and wife and two sons, struggling to get by on the Seto Inland Sea's Sukune Island [ja] in Mihara, Hiroshima, over the course of a year. They are the island's only occupants, and survive by farming. They must repeatedly carry fresh water for their plants and themselves in a row boat from a neighboring island.
When the boys catch a large fish, the family travels to Onomichi by ferry, where they sell it to a fishmonger, then eat at a modern restaurant, see a television and travel in a cable car.
Later on, while the parents are away from the island, the older son falls ill. The desperate father runs to find a doctor to come to treat his son…
Production
Director and scriptwriter Kaneto Shindo decided to make this film because he wanted to make a film without any dialogue. The independent production company Kindai Eiga Kyokai was close to bankruptcy at the time this film was made, and Shindo sank his last funds into making the film. The film's financial success saved the company.
The lead actor Taiji Tonoyama was suffering from severe liver disease due to alcohol dependence, but recovered his health because there was no alcohol available near the filming location.
...
Shindo deliberately made the actors carry heavily-loaded buckets of water so that the yokes they were using would be seen to bend, symbolizing the harshness of their lives.”
Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes
Trailer:
Clips:
One of my leading contenders for the greatest movie of all time. You need a good copy as the cinematography is stunning. You might not notice, but it’s a silent film. There’s no spoken dialogue. It’s a story of the life of a hard working family on a remote Japanese island. The parents toil every day to grow (and ultimately) the crops. It’s a story of love, devotion, determination, loss and resilience.
Wikipedia
“The Naked Island (Japanese: 裸の島, romanized: Hadaka no Shima) is a Japanese black-and-white film from 1960, directed by Kaneto Shindō. The film is notable for having almost no spoken dialogue.
Plot
The film depicts a small family, a husband and wife and two sons, struggling to get by on the Seto Inland Sea's Sukune Island [ja] in Mihara, Hiroshima, over the course of a year. They are the island's only occupants, and survive by farming. They must repeatedly carry fresh water for their plants and themselves in a row boat from a neighboring island.
When the boys catch a large fish, the family travels to Onomichi by ferry, where they sell it to a fishmonger, then eat at a modern restaurant, see a television and travel in a cable car.
Later on, while the parents are away from the island, the older son falls ill. The desperate father runs to find a doctor to come to treat his son…
Production
Director and scriptwriter Kaneto Shindo decided to make this film because he wanted to make a film without any dialogue. The independent production company Kindai Eiga Kyokai was close to bankruptcy at the time this film was made, and Shindo sank his last funds into making the film. The film's financial success saved the company.
The lead actor Taiji Tonoyama was suffering from severe liver disease due to alcohol dependence, but recovered his health because there was no alcohol available near the filming location.
...
Shindo deliberately made the actors carry heavily-loaded buckets of water so that the yokes they were using would be seen to bend, symbolizing the harshness of their lives.”
Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes
Trailer:
Clips:
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:33 AM.
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Favorite Movies
36. Psycho 1960 USA Alfred Hitchcock
Wikipedia
“Psycho is a 1960 American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock…
Psycho was seen as a departure from Hitchcock's previous film, North by Northwest (1959), as it was filmed on a small budget in black-and-white by the crew of his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Initially, the film divided critics due to its controversial subject matter, but audience interest and outstanding box-office returns prompted a major critical re-evaluation.
…It has been hailed as a major work of cinematic art by international film critics and scholars who praise its slick direction, tense atmosphere, impressive camerawork, memorable score and iconic performances. It is regarded as "the most heavily analyzed film in the long career of the most investigated director in the history of American film"[ and often ranked among the greatest films of all time. It set a new level of acceptability for violence, deviant behavior and sexuality in American films, and has been considered to be one of the earliest examples of the slasher film genre. …
Production
Development
Psycho is based on Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name, loosely inspired by the case of convicted Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein. Both Gein, who lived only 40 miles (64 km) from Bloch, and the story's protagonist Norman Bates, were solitary murderers in isolated rural locations. Each had deceased, domineering mothers, had sealed off a room in their home as a shrine to them and dressed in women's clothes. Gein was apprehended after killing only twice.
…
Screenplay…
The screenplay is relatively faithful to the novel, with a few significant changes by Hitchcock and Stefano. Stefano found the character of Norman Bates unsympathetic—in the book, he is middle-aged, overweight and more overtly unstable—but became more intrigued when Hitchcock suggested casting Anthony Perkins. Stefano eliminated Bates' alcoholism, which necessitated removing Bates' "becoming" the mother personality when in a drunken stupor. Also removed was Bates' interest in spiritualism, the occult and pornography. Hitchcock and Stefano elected to open the film with scenes in Marion's life and not introduce Bates at all until the twenty-minute mark, rather than open with Bates reading a history book as Bloch does. Writer Joseph W. Smith observes that Marion's story "occupies only two of the novel's 17 chapters. Hitchcock and Stefano expanded this to nearly half the narrative".
…Stefano was in therapy dealing with his relationship with his own mother while writing the script. The novel is more violent than the film: Marion is decapitated in the shower rather than being stabbed to death. Minor changes include changing Marion's telltale earring found after her death to a scrap of paper that failed to flush down the toilet. This provided some shock effect because toilets were almost never seen in American cinema at the time of the film's release….
Pre-production
Paramount Pictures, whose contract guaranteed another film by Hitchcock, did not want Hitchcock to make Psycho. Paramount was expecting No Bail for the Judge, but Hitchcock scrapped the production after star Audrey Hepburn became pregnant and bowed out. The studio's official stance was that Bloch's book was "too repulsive" and "impossible for films", and nothing but another of Hitchcock's star-studded mystery thrillers would suffice. Paramount did not like "anything about [the book] at all" and denied Hitchcock his usual budget.
….The original Bates Motel and Bates house set buildings, which were constructed on the same stage as Lon Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera (1925), are still standing at the Universal Studios backlot in Universal City near Hollywood and are a regular attraction on the studio's tour.
As a further result of cost-cutting, Hitchcock chose to film Psycho in black-and-white, keeping the budget under $1 million. Among other reasons for shooting in black-and-white were Hitchcock's desire to prevent the shower scene from being too gory.
As a further cost-cutting measure, and because he was most comfortable around them, Hitchcock took most of his crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents…
…Filming
…Nearly the whole film was shot with 50 mm lenses on 35 mm cameras. This provided an angle of view similar to human vision, which helped to further involve the audience.
…Lead actors Perkins and Leigh were given the freedom to interpret their roles and improvise as long as it did not involve moving the camera.
An example of Perkins' improvisation is Norman's habit of eating candy corn. Throughout filming, Hitchcock created and hid various versions of the "Mother corpse" prop in Leigh's dressing room closet. Leigh took the joke well, and wondered whether it was done to keep her in suspense or to judge which corpse would be scarier for the audience.
…Hitchcock was forced uncharacteristically to do retakes for some scenes. The final shot in the shower scene, which starts with an extreme close-up on Marion's eye and zooms in and out, proved difficult for Leigh because the water splashing in her eyes made her want to blink, and the cameraman had trouble as well because he had to manually focus while moving the camera…
…Filming the murder of Arbogast proved problematic, owing to the overhead camera angle necessary to hide the film's twist. A camera track constructed on pulleys alongside the stairway together with a chair-like device had to be constructed and thoroughly tested over a period of weeks.
…Shower scene
...The finished scene runs some three minutes, and its flurry of action and edits has produced contradictory attempts to count its parts. Hitchcock himself contributed to this pattern, telling Truffaut that "there were seventy camera setups for forty-five seconds of footage…Leigh herself was so affected by this scene when she saw it that she no longer took showers unless she absolutely had to; she would lock all the doors and windows and would leave the bathroom and shower door open.
…
Critical reception
….In his 1998 review of Psycho film critic Roger Ebert summarised the film's enduring appeal, writing:
What makes Psycho immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.
…
Themes and style…
Light and darkness feature prominently in Psycho....
The film often features shadows, mirrors, windows, and, less so, water....
….
Psychoanalytic interpretation
Psycho has been called "the first psychoanalytical thriller" The sex and violence in the film were unlike anything previously seen in a mainstream film….
Legacy
…The shower scene has become a pop culture touchstone and is often regarded as one of the most iconic moments in cinematic history, as well as the most suspenseful scene ever filmed. Its effectiveness is often credited to the use of startling editing techniques borrowed from the Soviet montage filmmakers, and to the iconic screeching violins in Bernard Herrmann's musical score.
…Psycho is considered by some to be the first film in the slasher film genre, though some critics and film historians point to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, a lesser-known film with similar themes of voyeurism and sexualized violence, whose release happened to precede Psycho's by a few months….…”
Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes
Trailer:
Wikipedia
“Psycho is a 1960 American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock…
Psycho was seen as a departure from Hitchcock's previous film, North by Northwest (1959), as it was filmed on a small budget in black-and-white by the crew of his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Initially, the film divided critics due to its controversial subject matter, but audience interest and outstanding box-office returns prompted a major critical re-evaluation.
…It has been hailed as a major work of cinematic art by international film critics and scholars who praise its slick direction, tense atmosphere, impressive camerawork, memorable score and iconic performances. It is regarded as "the most heavily analyzed film in the long career of the most investigated director in the history of American film"[ and often ranked among the greatest films of all time. It set a new level of acceptability for violence, deviant behavior and sexuality in American films, and has been considered to be one of the earliest examples of the slasher film genre. …
Production
Development
Psycho is based on Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name, loosely inspired by the case of convicted Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein. Both Gein, who lived only 40 miles (64 km) from Bloch, and the story's protagonist Norman Bates, were solitary murderers in isolated rural locations. Each had deceased, domineering mothers, had sealed off a room in their home as a shrine to them and dressed in women's clothes. Gein was apprehended after killing only twice.
…
Screenplay…
The screenplay is relatively faithful to the novel, with a few significant changes by Hitchcock and Stefano. Stefano found the character of Norman Bates unsympathetic—in the book, he is middle-aged, overweight and more overtly unstable—but became more intrigued when Hitchcock suggested casting Anthony Perkins. Stefano eliminated Bates' alcoholism, which necessitated removing Bates' "becoming" the mother personality when in a drunken stupor. Also removed was Bates' interest in spiritualism, the occult and pornography. Hitchcock and Stefano elected to open the film with scenes in Marion's life and not introduce Bates at all until the twenty-minute mark, rather than open with Bates reading a history book as Bloch does. Writer Joseph W. Smith observes that Marion's story "occupies only two of the novel's 17 chapters. Hitchcock and Stefano expanded this to nearly half the narrative".
…Stefano was in therapy dealing with his relationship with his own mother while writing the script. The novel is more violent than the film: Marion is decapitated in the shower rather than being stabbed to death. Minor changes include changing Marion's telltale earring found after her death to a scrap of paper that failed to flush down the toilet. This provided some shock effect because toilets were almost never seen in American cinema at the time of the film's release….
Pre-production
Paramount Pictures, whose contract guaranteed another film by Hitchcock, did not want Hitchcock to make Psycho. Paramount was expecting No Bail for the Judge, but Hitchcock scrapped the production after star Audrey Hepburn became pregnant and bowed out. The studio's official stance was that Bloch's book was "too repulsive" and "impossible for films", and nothing but another of Hitchcock's star-studded mystery thrillers would suffice. Paramount did not like "anything about [the book] at all" and denied Hitchcock his usual budget.
….The original Bates Motel and Bates house set buildings, which were constructed on the same stage as Lon Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera (1925), are still standing at the Universal Studios backlot in Universal City near Hollywood and are a regular attraction on the studio's tour.
As a further result of cost-cutting, Hitchcock chose to film Psycho in black-and-white, keeping the budget under $1 million. Among other reasons for shooting in black-and-white were Hitchcock's desire to prevent the shower scene from being too gory.
As a further cost-cutting measure, and because he was most comfortable around them, Hitchcock took most of his crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents…
…Filming
…Nearly the whole film was shot with 50 mm lenses on 35 mm cameras. This provided an angle of view similar to human vision, which helped to further involve the audience.
…Lead actors Perkins and Leigh were given the freedom to interpret their roles and improvise as long as it did not involve moving the camera.
An example of Perkins' improvisation is Norman's habit of eating candy corn. Throughout filming, Hitchcock created and hid various versions of the "Mother corpse" prop in Leigh's dressing room closet. Leigh took the joke well, and wondered whether it was done to keep her in suspense or to judge which corpse would be scarier for the audience.
…Hitchcock was forced uncharacteristically to do retakes for some scenes. The final shot in the shower scene, which starts with an extreme close-up on Marion's eye and zooms in and out, proved difficult for Leigh because the water splashing in her eyes made her want to blink, and the cameraman had trouble as well because he had to manually focus while moving the camera…
…Filming the murder of Arbogast proved problematic, owing to the overhead camera angle necessary to hide the film's twist. A camera track constructed on pulleys alongside the stairway together with a chair-like device had to be constructed and thoroughly tested over a period of weeks.
…Shower scene
...The finished scene runs some three minutes, and its flurry of action and edits has produced contradictory attempts to count its parts. Hitchcock himself contributed to this pattern, telling Truffaut that "there were seventy camera setups for forty-five seconds of footage…Leigh herself was so affected by this scene when she saw it that she no longer took showers unless she absolutely had to; she would lock all the doors and windows and would leave the bathroom and shower door open.
…
Critical reception
….In his 1998 review of Psycho film critic Roger Ebert summarised the film's enduring appeal, writing:
What makes Psycho immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.
…
Themes and style…
Light and darkness feature prominently in Psycho....
The film often features shadows, mirrors, windows, and, less so, water....
….
Psychoanalytic interpretation
Psycho has been called "the first psychoanalytical thriller" The sex and violence in the film were unlike anything previously seen in a mainstream film….
Legacy
…The shower scene has become a pop culture touchstone and is often regarded as one of the most iconic moments in cinematic history, as well as the most suspenseful scene ever filmed. Its effectiveness is often credited to the use of startling editing techniques borrowed from the Soviet montage filmmakers, and to the iconic screeching violins in Bernard Herrmann's musical score.
…Psycho is considered by some to be the first film in the slasher film genre, though some critics and film historians point to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, a lesser-known film with similar themes of voyeurism and sexualized violence, whose release happened to precede Psycho's by a few months….…”
Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes
Trailer:
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:33 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
37. La Notte 1961 Italy Michelangelo Antonioni
It's not a dream in the Mulholland Drive sense, but in the sense that we just watch and listen to things drifting along. One of my favourite sequences is where we follow Moraeu drifting around Milan, a little bit how she drifted around Paris in Elevator to the Gallows. There's some lovely cinematography, including an obviously off the cuff clip of Moreau rubbing her hand on some flaky heavily rusted metal, which Antonioni liked the texture of. There are several well considered and attractive shots of buildings and architecture. In one shot of Moreau crossing the road, Antonioni copies Ozu's shot in Late Spring where his protagonist crosses the road, and the buildings are used to show depth on the shot. In others he uses reflections in glass to create depth and optical illusions. There's a shot of Vitti and Mastroianni where in fact both of them are reflections.
It's a film about atmosphere as much as anything, as well as a study of this married couple, and the use of images in film making.
Wikipedia
“La Notte ([la ˈnɔtte]; English: "The Night") is a 1961 drama film co-written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti. Filmed on location in Milan, the film depicts a single day and night in the lives of a disillusioned novelist (Mastroianni) and his…wife (Moreau) as they move through various social circles. The film continues Antonioni's technique of abandoning traditional storytelling in favor of visual composition, atmosphere, and mood.
…
Production…
Censorship
When La Notte was first released in Italy in 1960, the Committee for the Theatrical Review of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities rated it as VM16: not suitable for children under 16. In addition, the committee made the following censorship recommendations: 1) the scene at the hospital with Mastroianni and the young lady must end at the moment when the two start to kiss each other; 2) the scene in the dressing room in which it is possible to see the naked breasts of Moreau; 3) the word "whore", said by one of the two ladies walking in the park, must be removed; 4) the final scene in which Mastroianni and Moreau hug each other and start rolling down the grass, the scene can resume when the panning shot shows the landscape without displaying the two actors….
Critical response
…
In his review in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote: "...it is not the situation so much as it is the intimations of personal feelings, doubts and moods that are the substance of the film…Even boredom is made interesting by him. There is, for instance, a sequence in which a sudden downpour turns a listless garden party into a riot of foolish revelry, exposing the lack of stimulation before nature takes a flagellating hand. Or there's a shot of the crumpled wife leaning against a glass wall looking out into the rain that tells in a flash of all her ennui, desolation and despair.”
Running time: 2 hour 02 minutes
Full movie (hard subtitles):
It's not a dream in the Mulholland Drive sense, but in the sense that we just watch and listen to things drifting along. One of my favourite sequences is where we follow Moraeu drifting around Milan, a little bit how she drifted around Paris in Elevator to the Gallows. There's some lovely cinematography, including an obviously off the cuff clip of Moreau rubbing her hand on some flaky heavily rusted metal, which Antonioni liked the texture of. There are several well considered and attractive shots of buildings and architecture. In one shot of Moreau crossing the road, Antonioni copies Ozu's shot in Late Spring where his protagonist crosses the road, and the buildings are used to show depth on the shot. In others he uses reflections in glass to create depth and optical illusions. There's a shot of Vitti and Mastroianni where in fact both of them are reflections.
It's a film about atmosphere as much as anything, as well as a study of this married couple, and the use of images in film making.
Wikipedia
“La Notte ([la ˈnɔtte]; English: "The Night") is a 1961 drama film co-written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti. Filmed on location in Milan, the film depicts a single day and night in the lives of a disillusioned novelist (Mastroianni) and his…wife (Moreau) as they move through various social circles. The film continues Antonioni's technique of abandoning traditional storytelling in favor of visual composition, atmosphere, and mood.
…
Production…
Censorship
When La Notte was first released in Italy in 1960, the Committee for the Theatrical Review of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities rated it as VM16: not suitable for children under 16. In addition, the committee made the following censorship recommendations: 1) the scene at the hospital with Mastroianni and the young lady must end at the moment when the two start to kiss each other; 2) the scene in the dressing room in which it is possible to see the naked breasts of Moreau; 3) the word "whore", said by one of the two ladies walking in the park, must be removed; 4) the final scene in which Mastroianni and Moreau hug each other and start rolling down the grass, the scene can resume when the panning shot shows the landscape without displaying the two actors….
Critical response
…
In his review in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote: "...it is not the situation so much as it is the intimations of personal feelings, doubts and moods that are the substance of the film…Even boredom is made interesting by him. There is, for instance, a sequence in which a sudden downpour turns a listless garden party into a riot of foolish revelry, exposing the lack of stimulation before nature takes a flagellating hand. Or there's a shot of the crumpled wife leaning against a glass wall looking out into the rain that tells in a flash of all her ennui, desolation and despair.”
Running time: 2 hour 02 minutes
Full movie (hard subtitles):
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:34 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
38. Last Year at Marienbad 1961 France Alain Resnais
There is nothing else like it (other than a few similarities in Resnais’s Hiroshima film 1957). It’s gorgeous. It’s thought provoking. It does surprisingly suddenly become an impactful story near to the end, in a similar way to a horror film. The first watch feels like it takes forever (I actually recommend watching in instalments) presumably because your mind is working hard to work out what is going on, but the second viewing flies by.
Wikipedia:
“Last Year at Marienbad (French: L'Année dernière à Marienbad), released in the United Kingdom as Last Year in Marienbad, is a 1961 French New Wave avant-garde psychological drama film directed by Alain Resnais…
Set in a palace in a park that has been converted into a luxury hotel, the film stars Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi as a woman and a man who may have met the year before and may have contemplated or begun an affair, with Sacha Pitoëff as a second man who may be the woman's husband. The characters are unnamed.
Plot
In an ornate baroque hotel populated by wealthy individuals and couples who socialize with one another, a man approaches a woman and claims they met the previous year at a similar resort (possibly Frederiksbad, Karlstadt, Marienbad, or Baden-Salsa) and had an affair. He asserts that she responded to his request to run away together by asking him to wait a year. The woman, however, insists she has never met the man. He attempts to remind her of their shared past, while she rebuffs him and contradicts his accounts. Between interactions with the woman, a second man, who may be her husband, asserts his dominance over the first by repeatedly defeating him in a game of Nim.
Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorienting shifts in time and location, the film explores the relationships among the three characters. Conversations and events are repeated in different parts of the building and grounds, accompanied by numerous tracking shots of the hotel's corridors with ambiguous and repetitive voice-overs. The film offers no definitive conclusion regarding what is real and what is imagined…
Production
Last Year at Marienbad was created out of an unusual collaboration between writer Alain Robbe-Grillet and director Alain Resnais. Robbe-Grillet described its basis:
Alain Resnais and I were able to collaborate only because we saw the film in the same way from the start; and not just in the same general outlines but exactly, in the construction of the least detail as in its total architecture. What I wrote might have been what was already in his mind; what he added during the shooting was what I might have written. ... [P]aradoxically enough, and thanks to this perfect identity of our conceptions, we almost always worked separately.
The screenplay Robbe-Grillet wrote was very detailed, specifying not only the dialogue and gestures and décor, but also the placement and movement of the camera and the sequencing of shots in the editing. Resnais filmed the script with great fidelity, and when Robbe-Grillet, who was not present during the filming, saw the rough cut, he said he found the film just as he had intended it, while recognizing how much Resnais had added to make it work on the screen and fill out what was absent from the script. Robbe-Grillet published his screenplay, illustrated by shots from the film, calling it a "ciné-roman" (ciné-novel).
Despite the close correspondence between the written and filmed works, numerous differences between them have been identified. Two notable examples are the choice of music in the film (Francis Seyrig's score introduces extensive use of a solo organ), and a scene near the end of the film in which the screenplay explicitly describes a rape, whereas the film substitutes a series of repeated overexposed tracking shots moving towards the smiling woman.
…
Filming took place, using black-and-white film and the Dyaliscope widescreen process, over a period of ten weeks between September and November 1960. Most of Delphine Seyrig's dresses in the film were designed by Chanel. The locations used for most of the interiors and the gardens were the palaces of Schleissheim and Nymphenburg (including the Amalienburg hunting lodge) and the Antiquarium of the Munich Residenz, all in Munich. Additional interior scenes were filmed in the Photosonore-Marignan-Simo studios in Paris. No filming was done in Mariánské Lázně (Marienbad)…
Style
…In determining the visual appearance of the film, Resnais said he wanted to recreate "a certain style of silent cinema"…Resnais…asked members of his team to look at other silent films, particularly G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929), as he wanted Seyrig's appearance and manner to resemble that of Louise Brooks in that film. The style of silent films is also suggested by the manner in which the characters who populate the hotel are mostly seen in artificial poses rather than behaving naturalistically.
The film creates ambiguity in the spatial and temporal aspects of what it shows and creates uncertainty in the mind of the spectator about the causal relationships between events. This is achieved through editing by giving apparently incompatible information in consecutive shots, or within a single shot that seems to show impossible juxtapositions, or by means of repetitions of events in different settings. These ambiguities are matched by contradictions in the narrator's voice-over commentary. Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the château and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows (which were painted on the ground), the trees in the garden do not (and are, in fact, not real trees, but constructions).
The manner in which the film is edited creates a highly nonlinear narrative. It allowed the themes of time and the mind and the interaction of past and present to be explored in an original way. As spatial and temporal continuity is destroyed by the methods of filming and editing that are used, the film offers instead a "mental continuity", a continuity of thought.
While films that immediately preceded and followed Marienbad in Resnais's career showed a political engagement with contemporary issues, Marienbad focused principally on style.
Reception
Critical response
Contemporary critical response to the film was polarized. The controversy was fuelled when Robbe-Grillet and Resnais appeared to give contradictory answers when asked whether the man and woman had actually met at Marienbad last year or not, as this was used as a means of attacking the film by those who disliked it.
…
Interpretations
Numerous explanations of the film's events have been put forward, among them: that it is a version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, that it represents the relationship between patient and psychoanalyst, that it all takes place in the woman's mind, that it all takes place in the man's mind and depicts his refusal to acknowledge he has killed the woman he loved, and that the characters are ghosts or dead souls in limbo. Some have noted the film has the atmosphere and the form of a dream, and claim the structure of the film may be understood by the analogy of a recurring dream, or even that the man's meeting with the woman is the memory (or dream) of a dream.
Others have heeded, at least as a starting point, the indications given by Robbe-Grillet in the introduction to his "ciné-novel" of the screenplay: "Two attitudes are then possible: either the spectator will try to reconstitute some 'Cartesian' scheme—the most linear, the most rational he can devise—and this spectator will certainly find the film difficult if not incomprehensible; or else the spectator will let himself be carried along by the extraordinary images in front of him ... and to this spectator, the film will seem the 'easiest' he has ever seen: a film addressed exclusively to his sensibility, to his faculties of sight, hearing, feeling." As a suggestion of how one might view the work, he offered, "The whole film, as a matter of fact, is the story of a persuasion: it deals with a reality which the hero creates out of his own vision, out of his own words."
Resnais, for his part, gave a more abstract explanation of the film's purpose: "For me this film is an attempt, still very crude and very primitive, to approach the complexity of thought, of its processes."
Influence
The impact of Last Year at Marienbad upon other filmmakers has been widely recognized and variously illustrated, extending from French directors such as Agnès Varda, Marguerite Duras, and Jacques Rivette to international figures such as Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.
…The film inspired a brief craze for the variation of Nim played by the characters.
Marienbad served as the main inspiration for Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel spring–summer 2011 collection, as Coco Chanel designed the costumes for the film…”
Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes
Trailer:
There is nothing else like it (other than a few similarities in Resnais’s Hiroshima film 1957). It’s gorgeous. It’s thought provoking. It does surprisingly suddenly become an impactful story near to the end, in a similar way to a horror film. The first watch feels like it takes forever (I actually recommend watching in instalments) presumably because your mind is working hard to work out what is going on, but the second viewing flies by.
Wikipedia:
“Last Year at Marienbad (French: L'Année dernière à Marienbad), released in the United Kingdom as Last Year in Marienbad, is a 1961 French New Wave avant-garde psychological drama film directed by Alain Resnais…
Set in a palace in a park that has been converted into a luxury hotel, the film stars Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi as a woman and a man who may have met the year before and may have contemplated or begun an affair, with Sacha Pitoëff as a second man who may be the woman's husband. The characters are unnamed.
Plot
In an ornate baroque hotel populated by wealthy individuals and couples who socialize with one another, a man approaches a woman and claims they met the previous year at a similar resort (possibly Frederiksbad, Karlstadt, Marienbad, or Baden-Salsa) and had an affair. He asserts that she responded to his request to run away together by asking him to wait a year. The woman, however, insists she has never met the man. He attempts to remind her of their shared past, while she rebuffs him and contradicts his accounts. Between interactions with the woman, a second man, who may be her husband, asserts his dominance over the first by repeatedly defeating him in a game of Nim.
Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorienting shifts in time and location, the film explores the relationships among the three characters. Conversations and events are repeated in different parts of the building and grounds, accompanied by numerous tracking shots of the hotel's corridors with ambiguous and repetitive voice-overs. The film offers no definitive conclusion regarding what is real and what is imagined…
Production
Last Year at Marienbad was created out of an unusual collaboration between writer Alain Robbe-Grillet and director Alain Resnais. Robbe-Grillet described its basis:
Alain Resnais and I were able to collaborate only because we saw the film in the same way from the start; and not just in the same general outlines but exactly, in the construction of the least detail as in its total architecture. What I wrote might have been what was already in his mind; what he added during the shooting was what I might have written. ... [P]aradoxically enough, and thanks to this perfect identity of our conceptions, we almost always worked separately.
The screenplay Robbe-Grillet wrote was very detailed, specifying not only the dialogue and gestures and décor, but also the placement and movement of the camera and the sequencing of shots in the editing. Resnais filmed the script with great fidelity, and when Robbe-Grillet, who was not present during the filming, saw the rough cut, he said he found the film just as he had intended it, while recognizing how much Resnais had added to make it work on the screen and fill out what was absent from the script. Robbe-Grillet published his screenplay, illustrated by shots from the film, calling it a "ciné-roman" (ciné-novel).
Despite the close correspondence between the written and filmed works, numerous differences between them have been identified. Two notable examples are the choice of music in the film (Francis Seyrig's score introduces extensive use of a solo organ), and a scene near the end of the film in which the screenplay explicitly describes a rape, whereas the film substitutes a series of repeated overexposed tracking shots moving towards the smiling woman.
…
Filming took place, using black-and-white film and the Dyaliscope widescreen process, over a period of ten weeks between September and November 1960. Most of Delphine Seyrig's dresses in the film were designed by Chanel. The locations used for most of the interiors and the gardens were the palaces of Schleissheim and Nymphenburg (including the Amalienburg hunting lodge) and the Antiquarium of the Munich Residenz, all in Munich. Additional interior scenes were filmed in the Photosonore-Marignan-Simo studios in Paris. No filming was done in Mariánské Lázně (Marienbad)…
Style
…In determining the visual appearance of the film, Resnais said he wanted to recreate "a certain style of silent cinema"…Resnais…asked members of his team to look at other silent films, particularly G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929), as he wanted Seyrig's appearance and manner to resemble that of Louise Brooks in that film. The style of silent films is also suggested by the manner in which the characters who populate the hotel are mostly seen in artificial poses rather than behaving naturalistically.
The film creates ambiguity in the spatial and temporal aspects of what it shows and creates uncertainty in the mind of the spectator about the causal relationships between events. This is achieved through editing by giving apparently incompatible information in consecutive shots, or within a single shot that seems to show impossible juxtapositions, or by means of repetitions of events in different settings. These ambiguities are matched by contradictions in the narrator's voice-over commentary. Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the château and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows (which were painted on the ground), the trees in the garden do not (and are, in fact, not real trees, but constructions).
The manner in which the film is edited creates a highly nonlinear narrative. It allowed the themes of time and the mind and the interaction of past and present to be explored in an original way. As spatial and temporal continuity is destroyed by the methods of filming and editing that are used, the film offers instead a "mental continuity", a continuity of thought.
While films that immediately preceded and followed Marienbad in Resnais's career showed a political engagement with contemporary issues, Marienbad focused principally on style.
Reception
Critical response
Contemporary critical response to the film was polarized. The controversy was fuelled when Robbe-Grillet and Resnais appeared to give contradictory answers when asked whether the man and woman had actually met at Marienbad last year or not, as this was used as a means of attacking the film by those who disliked it.
…
Interpretations
Numerous explanations of the film's events have been put forward, among them: that it is a version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, that it represents the relationship between patient and psychoanalyst, that it all takes place in the woman's mind, that it all takes place in the man's mind and depicts his refusal to acknowledge he has killed the woman he loved, and that the characters are ghosts or dead souls in limbo. Some have noted the film has the atmosphere and the form of a dream, and claim the structure of the film may be understood by the analogy of a recurring dream, or even that the man's meeting with the woman is the memory (or dream) of a dream.
Others have heeded, at least as a starting point, the indications given by Robbe-Grillet in the introduction to his "ciné-novel" of the screenplay: "Two attitudes are then possible: either the spectator will try to reconstitute some 'Cartesian' scheme—the most linear, the most rational he can devise—and this spectator will certainly find the film difficult if not incomprehensible; or else the spectator will let himself be carried along by the extraordinary images in front of him ... and to this spectator, the film will seem the 'easiest' he has ever seen: a film addressed exclusively to his sensibility, to his faculties of sight, hearing, feeling." As a suggestion of how one might view the work, he offered, "The whole film, as a matter of fact, is the story of a persuasion: it deals with a reality which the hero creates out of his own vision, out of his own words."
Resnais, for his part, gave a more abstract explanation of the film's purpose: "For me this film is an attempt, still very crude and very primitive, to approach the complexity of thought, of its processes."
Influence
The impact of Last Year at Marienbad upon other filmmakers has been widely recognized and variously illustrated, extending from French directors such as Agnès Varda, Marguerite Duras, and Jacques Rivette to international figures such as Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.
…The film inspired a brief craze for the variation of Nim played by the characters.
Marienbad served as the main inspiration for Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel spring–summer 2011 collection, as Coco Chanel designed the costumes for the film…”
Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes
Trailer:
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:34 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
39. Lola 1961 France Jacques Demy
Oh lala, Lola. So. There are 2 stories going on here, with the minor story foreshadowing and mirroring the minor major story.
Roland bumps into and has a crush on Lola the nightclub dancer, who he knew as children by her real name Cecile. Lola’s backstory which she explains to Roland is that when she was 14 she met and fell in love with Michel, but who left after getting her pregnant (yes, I know).
Lola currently has a lover who is briefly in town, an American sailor called Frankie, who reminds her of Michel (she does not initially disclose this to Roland).
In separate scenes, Roland also meets a 14 year old girl called Cecile and her mother, and makes friends with them after he helps them to find a book they were looking for when they were all customers in a small bookshop. The 14 year old Cecile then meets Frankie, who (innocently) befriends her.
Frankie leaves town due to being reassigned by the Navy.
Michel returns to town and surprises Lola.
We find out that the younger Cecile has run off to find Frankie.
The main focus of the film though is in the delightful Lola, played by the gorgeous Anouk Amie.
There is a connection between this film and some of Demy’s later works including Les Dameoiselles de Rochefort, which references a dancer called Lola.
The story of the 14 year old girl becomes weird at the end when it’s become apparent that she has run off after Frankie, apparently in some kind of fate/destiny mirroring Lola (also Cecile)’s romantic fling with Michel when she was 14. That’s particularly weird as the actress playing Cecile is just a child. So it seems a bit creepy to say the least. But if you can get past that it’s overwise a delightful film, with some lovely camerawork, and just a fun atmosphere to it with some cute music. It is very French.
Wikipedia:
“Lola is a 1961 romantic drama film written and directed by Jacques Demy (in his feature directorial debut) as a tribute to director Max Ophüls, described by Demy as a "musical without music". Anouk Aimée stars in the title role. The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda.
The names of the film and title character were inspired by Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film The Blue Angel, in which Marlene Dietrich played a burlesque performer named Lola Lola.
Plot
In the seaside French town of Nantes, a young man, Roland Cassard, is wasting his life away until he has a chance encounter with Lola, a woman he knew as a teenager before World War II, who is now a cabaret dancer. Although Roland is quite smitten with her, Lola is preoccupied with her former lover Michel, who abandoned her after impregnating her seven years earlier. Also vying for Lola's heart is American sailor Frankie…
Struggling for work, Roland gets involved in a diamond-smuggling plot with a local barber. Cécile, a 13-year-old girl, crosses paths with Roland; in many ways she reminds him of Lola, whose real name is also Cécile.
Critical reception
Lola received moderate reviews from critics. Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote it was "among the most neglected major works of the French New Wave" and "in some ways [Demy's] best feature."
Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes
Oh lala, Lola. So. There are 2 stories going on here, with the minor story foreshadowing and mirroring the minor major story.
Roland bumps into and has a crush on Lola the nightclub dancer, who he knew as children by her real name Cecile. Lola’s backstory which she explains to Roland is that when she was 14 she met and fell in love with Michel, but who left after getting her pregnant (yes, I know).
Lola currently has a lover who is briefly in town, an American sailor called Frankie, who reminds her of Michel (she does not initially disclose this to Roland).
In separate scenes, Roland also meets a 14 year old girl called Cecile and her mother, and makes friends with them after he helps them to find a book they were looking for when they were all customers in a small bookshop. The 14 year old Cecile then meets Frankie, who (innocently) befriends her.
Frankie leaves town due to being reassigned by the Navy.
Michel returns to town and surprises Lola.
We find out that the younger Cecile has run off to find Frankie.
The main focus of the film though is in the delightful Lola, played by the gorgeous Anouk Amie.
There is a connection between this film and some of Demy’s later works including Les Dameoiselles de Rochefort, which references a dancer called Lola.
The story of the 14 year old girl becomes weird at the end when it’s become apparent that she has run off after Frankie, apparently in some kind of fate/destiny mirroring Lola (also Cecile)’s romantic fling with Michel when she was 14. That’s particularly weird as the actress playing Cecile is just a child. So it seems a bit creepy to say the least. But if you can get past that it’s overwise a delightful film, with some lovely camerawork, and just a fun atmosphere to it with some cute music. It is very French.
Wikipedia:
“Lola is a 1961 romantic drama film written and directed by Jacques Demy (in his feature directorial debut) as a tribute to director Max Ophüls, described by Demy as a "musical without music". Anouk Aimée stars in the title role. The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda.
The names of the film and title character were inspired by Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film The Blue Angel, in which Marlene Dietrich played a burlesque performer named Lola Lola.
Plot
In the seaside French town of Nantes, a young man, Roland Cassard, is wasting his life away until he has a chance encounter with Lola, a woman he knew as a teenager before World War II, who is now a cabaret dancer. Although Roland is quite smitten with her, Lola is preoccupied with her former lover Michel, who abandoned her after impregnating her seven years earlier. Also vying for Lola's heart is American sailor Frankie…
Struggling for work, Roland gets involved in a diamond-smuggling plot with a local barber. Cécile, a 13-year-old girl, crosses paths with Roland; in many ways she reminds him of Lola, whose real name is also Cécile.
Critical reception
Lola received moderate reviews from critics. Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote it was "among the most neglected major works of the French New Wave" and "in some ways [Demy's] best feature."
Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 05:38 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
40. La Jetee 1962 France Chris Marker
Probably makes my top 10. A magnificent short story. Apparently the still images were due to budget constraints but they were still an idea at some point, and they work brilliantly. The selection of the images, and their presentation is masterful. The score and narration (whether the French or English version) also work wonderful well.
Wikipedia
“La Jetée…is a 1962 French science fiction featurette directed by Chris Marker and associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the stable time loop story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is 28 minutes long and shot in black and white.
…
Plot
A man is a prisoner in the aftermath of World War III in post-apocalyptic Paris, where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present." They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. The scientists eventually settle upon the protagonist; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory from his pre-war childhood of a woman he had seen on the observation platform ("the jetty") at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He did not understand exactly what happened, but knew he had seen a man die.
After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society.
Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently; but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned to the past, placed on the jetty at the airport, and it occurs to him that the child version of himself is probably also there at the same time. He is more concerned with locating the woman, and quickly spots her.”
(SPOILER) “However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his jailers who has followed him and realizes the agent is about to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the incident he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him ever since, was his own death.”
…
Production
La Jetée is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying rhythm. It contains only one brief shot (of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up) originating on a motion-picture camera, this due to the fact that Marker could only afford to hire one for an afternoon.
The stills were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35 mm Arriflex. The film has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German and people talking in an airport terminal. The story is told by a voice-over narrator….
The editing of La Jetée adds to the intensity of the film. With the use of cut-ins and fade-outs, it produces the eerie and unsettling nature adding to the theme of the apocalyptic destruction of World War III…”
Running time: 28 minutes.
Trailer:
Review:
Probably makes my top 10. A magnificent short story. Apparently the still images were due to budget constraints but they were still an idea at some point, and they work brilliantly. The selection of the images, and their presentation is masterful. The score and narration (whether the French or English version) also work wonderful well.
Wikipedia
“La Jetée…is a 1962 French science fiction featurette directed by Chris Marker and associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the stable time loop story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is 28 minutes long and shot in black and white.
…
Plot
A man is a prisoner in the aftermath of World War III in post-apocalyptic Paris, where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present." They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. The scientists eventually settle upon the protagonist; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory from his pre-war childhood of a woman he had seen on the observation platform ("the jetty") at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He did not understand exactly what happened, but knew he had seen a man die.
After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society.
Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently; but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned to the past, placed on the jetty at the airport, and it occurs to him that the child version of himself is probably also there at the same time. He is more concerned with locating the woman, and quickly spots her.”
(SPOILER) “However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his jailers who has followed him and realizes the agent is about to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the incident he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him ever since, was his own death.”
…
Production
La Jetée is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying rhythm. It contains only one brief shot (of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up) originating on a motion-picture camera, this due to the fact that Marker could only afford to hire one for an afternoon.
The stills were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35 mm Arriflex. The film has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German and people talking in an airport terminal. The story is told by a voice-over narrator….
The editing of La Jetée adds to the intensity of the film. With the use of cut-ins and fade-outs, it produces the eerie and unsettling nature adding to the theme of the apocalyptic destruction of World War III…”
Running time: 28 minutes.
Trailer:
Review:
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:35 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
41. L'Eclisse 1962 Italy Michelangelo Antonioni
Firstly the bad. There is a scene in which a guest character makes very racist comments about Kenyan people. There were references in a couple of the films of the 1920s which today are offensive, but it’s clear that they were not included in the film gratuitously or on the basis that they would cause offence. The brief offending dialogue in L’Eclisse though is gratuitous, it’s completely unnecessary and it’s just Antonioni being a racist *******, just as Blow Up shows him being a sexist *******. I suspect this is a mjor reason why the film has been largely forgotten today, because it simply isn’t acceptable (and rightly so) to show this scene to international audiences. The scene – which is otherwise beautiful, not least as it displays gorgeous printed images from Kenya – isn’t vital and could be cut, which I think it ought to be if the film is resurrected.
That’s the major negative issue with it, although I also find some of the scenes in the noisy stock exchange where Delon works, slightly
irritating without really adding anything.
That’s the bad. But there’s a lot of good. The cinematography is gorgeous. Many scenes just look lush. Amongst others, we have another great city ‘wandering’ scene, this time with Vitti instead of Moreau. There’s an interesting method of camera tracking, where the camera follows the subjects above their heads, which creates an interesting sense of their movement and perspective. This is used a couple of times. The light soundtrack, with a little jazz infusion, is also very effective.
But the final parts of the film in which Vitti and Delon are courting are just beautiful. They don’t actually have personal sexual chemistry, like Delon had with Cardinale in The Leopard, but the narration of the developing relationship is perfectly framed, with a surprise first kiss, and one terrific shot where a coy Vitti has kept him waiting for more, and kisses him through a glass window they are standing either side of. The cutting and lighting, and the reactions of the actors really capture the excitement and fun of a new sexual relationship, and all this interspersed with suggestive images and sounds such as wind rushing through leaves on a tree; it’s just a wonderful translation of courtship onto camera.
The ending of the film is also memorable, as Antonioni ends with a shot showing the folly of the risk of nuclear war which the world was in at that point, against the backdrop of the excitement of life which he had just depicted. For me, the film works – flaws and all - as an advertisement for living.
Wikipedia:
“
L'Eclisse (English: "The Eclipse") is a 1962 romantic drama film co-written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Alain Delon and Monica Vitti,...Filmed on location in Rome and Verona, the story follows a young woman (Vitti) who pursues an affair with a confident young stockbroker (Delon). Antonioni attributed some of his inspiration for L'Eclisse to when he filmed a solar eclipse in Florence. The film is considered the last part of a trilogy and is preceded by L'Avventura (1960) and La Notte (1961)…
Reception
…
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film "visionary" and argued "Antonioni opens up a sinkhole of existential dismay in the Roman streets and asks us to drop down into it. What a strange and brilliant film it is".
…Director Martin Scorsese, in his documentary about Italian films titled My Voyage to Italy, describes how the film haunted and inspired him as a young moviegoer, noting it seemed to him a "step forward in storytelling" and "felt less like a story and more like a poem". He adds that “…The final seven minutes of Eclipse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless".
…Susan Doll wrote that if Antonioni's works are "out of vogue with movie goers captivated by postmodern irony and fast-paced editing...we are the worse for it. His work reflected not only a major change in Italian society but also a profound shift in film culture. His visually driven style and provocative approach to narrative raised the bar of what constituted popular filmmaking"
Runtime: 2 hours 6 minutes
Trailer:
Clip:
Firstly the bad. There is a scene in which a guest character makes very racist comments about Kenyan people. There were references in a couple of the films of the 1920s which today are offensive, but it’s clear that they were not included in the film gratuitously or on the basis that they would cause offence. The brief offending dialogue in L’Eclisse though is gratuitous, it’s completely unnecessary and it’s just Antonioni being a racist *******, just as Blow Up shows him being a sexist *******. I suspect this is a mjor reason why the film has been largely forgotten today, because it simply isn’t acceptable (and rightly so) to show this scene to international audiences. The scene – which is otherwise beautiful, not least as it displays gorgeous printed images from Kenya – isn’t vital and could be cut, which I think it ought to be if the film is resurrected.
That’s the major negative issue with it, although I also find some of the scenes in the noisy stock exchange where Delon works, slightly
irritating without really adding anything.
That’s the bad. But there’s a lot of good. The cinematography is gorgeous. Many scenes just look lush. Amongst others, we have another great city ‘wandering’ scene, this time with Vitti instead of Moreau. There’s an interesting method of camera tracking, where the camera follows the subjects above their heads, which creates an interesting sense of their movement and perspective. This is used a couple of times. The light soundtrack, with a little jazz infusion, is also very effective.
But the final parts of the film in which Vitti and Delon are courting are just beautiful. They don’t actually have personal sexual chemistry, like Delon had with Cardinale in The Leopard, but the narration of the developing relationship is perfectly framed, with a surprise first kiss, and one terrific shot where a coy Vitti has kept him waiting for more, and kisses him through a glass window they are standing either side of. The cutting and lighting, and the reactions of the actors really capture the excitement and fun of a new sexual relationship, and all this interspersed with suggestive images and sounds such as wind rushing through leaves on a tree; it’s just a wonderful translation of courtship onto camera.
The ending of the film is also memorable, as Antonioni ends with a shot showing the folly of the risk of nuclear war which the world was in at that point, against the backdrop of the excitement of life which he had just depicted. For me, the film works – flaws and all - as an advertisement for living.
Wikipedia:
“
L'Eclisse (English: "The Eclipse") is a 1962 romantic drama film co-written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Alain Delon and Monica Vitti,...Filmed on location in Rome and Verona, the story follows a young woman (Vitti) who pursues an affair with a confident young stockbroker (Delon). Antonioni attributed some of his inspiration for L'Eclisse to when he filmed a solar eclipse in Florence. The film is considered the last part of a trilogy and is preceded by L'Avventura (1960) and La Notte (1961)…
Reception
…
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film "visionary" and argued "Antonioni opens up a sinkhole of existential dismay in the Roman streets and asks us to drop down into it. What a strange and brilliant film it is".
…Director Martin Scorsese, in his documentary about Italian films titled My Voyage to Italy, describes how the film haunted and inspired him as a young moviegoer, noting it seemed to him a "step forward in storytelling" and "felt less like a story and more like a poem". He adds that “…The final seven minutes of Eclipse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless".
…Susan Doll wrote that if Antonioni's works are "out of vogue with movie goers captivated by postmodern irony and fast-paced editing...we are the worse for it. His work reflected not only a major change in Italian society but also a profound shift in film culture. His visually driven style and provocative approach to narrative raised the bar of what constituted popular filmmaking"
Runtime: 2 hours 6 minutes
Trailer:
Clip:
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:36 AM.
X
Favorite Movies
42. Lawrence of Arabia 1962 UK David Lean
Simply epic.
Wikipedia:
“Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 epic biographical adventure drama film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence and his 1926 book Seven Pillars of Wisdom…It was directed by David Lean…The film stars Peter O'Toole as Lawrence with Alec Guinness playing Prince Faisal. The film also stars Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains and Arthur Kennedy….
The film depicts Lawrence's experiences in the Ottoman provinces of Hejaz and Greater Syria during the First World War, in particular, his attacks on Aqaba and Damascus and his involvement in the Arab National Council. Its themes include Lawrence's emotional struggles with the violence inherent in war, his identity, and his divided allegiance between his native Britain and his new-found comrades within the Arabian desert tribes.
…
Cast
Albert Finney was a virtual unknown at the time but he was Lean's first choice to play Lawrence. Finney underwent a successful screen test but turned down the part as he did not want to sign a long-term contract with producer Sam Spiegel. Marlon Brando was also offered the part, while Anthony Perkins and Montgomery Clift were briefly considered before O'Toole was cast.
…Faisal was originally to be portrayed by Laurence Olivier. Guinness had performed in other David Lean films, and he got the part when Olivier dropped out. Guinness was made up to look as much like the real Faisal as possible; he recorded in his diaries that while shooting in Jordan he met several people who had known Faisal who actually mistook him for the late prince. Guinness said in interviews that he developed his Arab accent from a conversation that he had with Omar Sharif….
(author’s note: incredible that Guinness could actually believe who knew Prince Faisal mistook him for the Prince because he had put some make up on and adopted a daft inflection in his voice. The man must have been beyond delusion)
…Jack Hawkins as General Edmund Allenby. Spiegel pushed Lean to cast Cary Grant…Hawkins shaved his head for the role and reportedly clashed with Lean several times during filming....Hawkins became close friends with O'Toole during filming, and the two often improvised dialogue during takes, to Lean's dismay…
Omar Sharif as Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish. The role was offered to many actors before Sharif was cast…. Alain Delon had a successful screen test but ultimately declined because of the brown contact lenses he would have had to wear....
…Claude Rains as Mr. Dryden. Like Sherif Ali and Colonel Brighton, Dryden was an amalgamation of several historical figures…
…
Historical accuracy
Most of the film's characters are based on historical figures, but to varying degrees. Some scenes were heavily fictionalised, such as the Battle of Aqaba, and those dealing with the Arab Council were inaccurate since the council remained more or less in power in Syria until France deposed Faisal in 1920…The second half of the film presents a fictional desertion of Lawrence's Arab army...
…Lawrence's involvement in the Arab Revolt prior to the attack on Aqaba is absent, as are his involvement in the seizures of Yenbo and Wejh.
…The film shows the Hashemite forces consisting of Bedouin guerrillas, but the core of the Hashemite force was the regular Arab Army recruited from Ottoman Arab prisoners of war. They wore British-style uniforms with keffiyehs and fought in conventional battles.
…assacre, but most current biographers accept the film's portrayal as reasonably accurate.
Representation of Lawrence
Many complaints about the film's accuracy concern the characterisation of Lawrence. The perceived problems with the portrayal begin with the differences in his physical appearance — the 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) Peter O'Toole was almost 9 in (23 cm) taller than the 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) Lawrence — and extended to his behaviour.
…Production
Pre-production
…
Lean reportedly watched John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers to help him develop ideas as to how to shoot the film...Lean biographer Kevin Brownlow noted a physical similarity between Wadi Rum and Ford's Monument Valley.
…In an interview with The Washington Post in 1989, Lean said that Lawrence and Ali were written as being in a gay relationship…Lean also compared Ali and Lawrence's romance in the film to the relationship of the two main characters in his 1945 film Brief Encounter.
Filming
… desert scenes were shot in Jordan and Morocco and Almería and Doñana in Spain…
Lean planned to film in Aqaba and the archaeological site at Petra, which Lawrence had been fond of as a place of study. The production had to be moved to Spain due to cost and outbreaks of illness among the cast and crew before these scenes could be shot. The attack on Aqaba was reconstructed in a dried river bed in Playa del Algarrobico, southern Spain…
…O'Toole was not used to riding camels and found the saddle to be uncomfortable. During a break in filming, he bought a piece of foam rubber at a market and added it to his saddle. Many of the extras copied the idea and sheets of the foam can be seen on many of the horse and camel saddles. The Bedouin nicknamed O'Toole Abu-'Isfanj (أبو إسفنج), meaning "Father of the Sponge"....
Super Panavision technology was used to shoot the film, meaning that spherical lenses were used instead of anamorphic ones, and the image was exposed on a 65 mm negative, then printed onto a 70 mm positive to leave room for the soundtracks. Rapid cutting was more disturbing on the wide screen, so film makers had to apply longer and more fluid takes…
O'Toole did not share Lawrence's love of the desert and stated in an interview "I loathe it".
Music
The film score was composed by Maurice Jarre, little known at the time... Jarre was given just six weeks to compose two hours of orchestral music for Lawrence. The score was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Sir Adrian Boult is listed as the conductor of the score in the film's credits, but he could not conduct most of the score, due in part to his failure to adapt to the intricate timings of each cue, and Jarre replaced him as the conductor…it is now considered one of the greatest scores of all time…
Producer Sam Spiegel wanted to create a score with two themes to show the 'Eastern' and British side for the film. It was intended for Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian to create one half and British composer Benjamin Britten to write the other.
Release
…Jordan banned the film for what was felt to be a disrespectful portrayal of Arab culture. Egypt, Omar Sharif's home country, was the only Arab nation to give the film a wide release, where it became a success through the endorsement of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who appreciated the film's depiction of Arab nationalism.
The original release ran for about 222 minutes (plus overture, intermission, and exit music). ...In January 1963, Lawrence of Arabia was released in a version edited by 20 minutes… When it was re-released in 1971, an even shorter cut of 187 minutes was presented….
A restored version was undertaken by Robert A. Harris and Jim Painten under the supervision of David Lean. It was released in 1989 with a 216-minute length (plus overture, intermission and exit music). “
Running time: 3 hours 42 minutes (full version)
Full movie:
Simply epic.
Wikipedia:
“Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 epic biographical adventure drama film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence and his 1926 book Seven Pillars of Wisdom…It was directed by David Lean…The film stars Peter O'Toole as Lawrence with Alec Guinness playing Prince Faisal. The film also stars Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains and Arthur Kennedy….
The film depicts Lawrence's experiences in the Ottoman provinces of Hejaz and Greater Syria during the First World War, in particular, his attacks on Aqaba and Damascus and his involvement in the Arab National Council. Its themes include Lawrence's emotional struggles with the violence inherent in war, his identity, and his divided allegiance between his native Britain and his new-found comrades within the Arabian desert tribes.
…
Cast
Albert Finney was a virtual unknown at the time but he was Lean's first choice to play Lawrence. Finney underwent a successful screen test but turned down the part as he did not want to sign a long-term contract with producer Sam Spiegel. Marlon Brando was also offered the part, while Anthony Perkins and Montgomery Clift were briefly considered before O'Toole was cast.
…Faisal was originally to be portrayed by Laurence Olivier. Guinness had performed in other David Lean films, and he got the part when Olivier dropped out. Guinness was made up to look as much like the real Faisal as possible; he recorded in his diaries that while shooting in Jordan he met several people who had known Faisal who actually mistook him for the late prince. Guinness said in interviews that he developed his Arab accent from a conversation that he had with Omar Sharif….
(author’s note: incredible that Guinness could actually believe who knew Prince Faisal mistook him for the Prince because he had put some make up on and adopted a daft inflection in his voice. The man must have been beyond delusion)
…Jack Hawkins as General Edmund Allenby. Spiegel pushed Lean to cast Cary Grant…Hawkins shaved his head for the role and reportedly clashed with Lean several times during filming....Hawkins became close friends with O'Toole during filming, and the two often improvised dialogue during takes, to Lean's dismay…
Omar Sharif as Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish. The role was offered to many actors before Sharif was cast…. Alain Delon had a successful screen test but ultimately declined because of the brown contact lenses he would have had to wear....
…Claude Rains as Mr. Dryden. Like Sherif Ali and Colonel Brighton, Dryden was an amalgamation of several historical figures…
…
Historical accuracy
Most of the film's characters are based on historical figures, but to varying degrees. Some scenes were heavily fictionalised, such as the Battle of Aqaba, and those dealing with the Arab Council were inaccurate since the council remained more or less in power in Syria until France deposed Faisal in 1920…The second half of the film presents a fictional desertion of Lawrence's Arab army...
…Lawrence's involvement in the Arab Revolt prior to the attack on Aqaba is absent, as are his involvement in the seizures of Yenbo and Wejh.
…The film shows the Hashemite forces consisting of Bedouin guerrillas, but the core of the Hashemite force was the regular Arab Army recruited from Ottoman Arab prisoners of war. They wore British-style uniforms with keffiyehs and fought in conventional battles.
…assacre, but most current biographers accept the film's portrayal as reasonably accurate.
Representation of Lawrence
Many complaints about the film's accuracy concern the characterisation of Lawrence. The perceived problems with the portrayal begin with the differences in his physical appearance — the 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) Peter O'Toole was almost 9 in (23 cm) taller than the 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) Lawrence — and extended to his behaviour.
…Production
Pre-production
…
Lean reportedly watched John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers to help him develop ideas as to how to shoot the film...Lean biographer Kevin Brownlow noted a physical similarity between Wadi Rum and Ford's Monument Valley.
…In an interview with The Washington Post in 1989, Lean said that Lawrence and Ali were written as being in a gay relationship…Lean also compared Ali and Lawrence's romance in the film to the relationship of the two main characters in his 1945 film Brief Encounter.
Filming
… desert scenes were shot in Jordan and Morocco and Almería and Doñana in Spain…
Lean planned to film in Aqaba and the archaeological site at Petra, which Lawrence had been fond of as a place of study. The production had to be moved to Spain due to cost and outbreaks of illness among the cast and crew before these scenes could be shot. The attack on Aqaba was reconstructed in a dried river bed in Playa del Algarrobico, southern Spain…
…O'Toole was not used to riding camels and found the saddle to be uncomfortable. During a break in filming, he bought a piece of foam rubber at a market and added it to his saddle. Many of the extras copied the idea and sheets of the foam can be seen on many of the horse and camel saddles. The Bedouin nicknamed O'Toole Abu-'Isfanj (أبو إسفنج), meaning "Father of the Sponge"....
Super Panavision technology was used to shoot the film, meaning that spherical lenses were used instead of anamorphic ones, and the image was exposed on a 65 mm negative, then printed onto a 70 mm positive to leave room for the soundtracks. Rapid cutting was more disturbing on the wide screen, so film makers had to apply longer and more fluid takes…
O'Toole did not share Lawrence's love of the desert and stated in an interview "I loathe it".
Music
The film score was composed by Maurice Jarre, little known at the time... Jarre was given just six weeks to compose two hours of orchestral music for Lawrence. The score was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Sir Adrian Boult is listed as the conductor of the score in the film's credits, but he could not conduct most of the score, due in part to his failure to adapt to the intricate timings of each cue, and Jarre replaced him as the conductor…it is now considered one of the greatest scores of all time…
Producer Sam Spiegel wanted to create a score with two themes to show the 'Eastern' and British side for the film. It was intended for Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian to create one half and British composer Benjamin Britten to write the other.
Release
…Jordan banned the film for what was felt to be a disrespectful portrayal of Arab culture. Egypt, Omar Sharif's home country, was the only Arab nation to give the film a wide release, where it became a success through the endorsement of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who appreciated the film's depiction of Arab nationalism.
The original release ran for about 222 minutes (plus overture, intermission, and exit music). ...In January 1963, Lawrence of Arabia was released in a version edited by 20 minutes… When it was re-released in 1971, an even shorter cut of 187 minutes was presented….
A restored version was undertaken by Robert A. Harris and Jim Painten under the supervision of David Lean. It was released in 1989 with a 216-minute length (plus overture, intermission and exit music). “
Running time: 3 hours 42 minutes (full version)
Full movie:
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:36 AM.
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Favorite Movies
CUT Le Mepris / Contempt 1963 France Jean Luc Godard
THIS MOVIE HAS BEEN DROPPED
I think it's fun. The very repetitive music grates with me a little (much more so than say The Third Man), but I can handle it.
It just squeaks into the 100. Something not mentioned in Wiki is that this film has been said to be about his relationship with his (soon to be ex) wife Anna Karina.
Wikipedia:
"Contempt (French: Le Mépris) is a 1963 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on Alberto Moravia’s 1954 novel Il disprezzo. It follows a playwright, Paul Javal, whose marriage begins to fall apart during the troubled production of a film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. The film stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, and Giorgia Moll.
…
Production
Italian film producer Carlo Ponti approached Godard to discuss a possible collaboration; Godard suggested an adaptation of Moravia's novel Il disprezzo...in which he saw Kim Novak and Frank Sinatra as the leads; they refused. Ponti suggested Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, whom Godard refused. Anna Karina (by then Godard's former wife) later revealed that the director had travelled to Rome to ask Monica Vitti if she would portray the female lead. However the Italian actress reportedly turned up an hour late, "staring out the window like she wasn't interested at all".
...In the film, Godard cast himself as Lang's assistant director, and characteristically has Lang expound many of Godard's New Wave theories and opinions….
…Half the film's budget went on Bardot's fee.
Filming
…In a sequence, the characters played by Piccoli and Bardot wander through their apartment alternately arguing and reconciling. Godard filmed the scene as an extended series of tracking shots, in natural light and in near real-time…
Godard admitted his tendency to get actors to improvise dialogue "during the peak moment of creation" often baffled them. "They often feel useless," he said. "Yet they bring me a lot... I need them, just as I need the pulse and colours of real settings for atmosphere and creation."
Critical reception
…Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Contempt "is not one of the great Godard films, for reasons it makes clear. In a way, it’s about its own shortcomings. [...] It is interesting to see, and has moments of brilliance (the marital argument, the use of the villa steps), but its real importance is as a failed experiment. Contempt taught Godard he could not make films like this, and so he included himself out, and went on to make the films he could make."
Sight & Sound critic Colin MacCabe referred to Contempt as "the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe."
…The extended apartment sequence that occurs in the film, where Paul and Camille's marriage unravels, has been praised by critics and scholars. In February 2012, Interiors, an online journal that is concerned with the relationship between architecture and film, released an issue that discussed how space is used in this scene. The issue highlights how Jean-Luc Godard uses this constricted space to explore Paul and Camille's declining relationship.”
Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes
Trailer:
Review:
THIS MOVIE HAS BEEN DROPPED
I think it's fun. The very repetitive music grates with me a little (much more so than say The Third Man), but I can handle it.
It just squeaks into the 100. Something not mentioned in Wiki is that this film has been said to be about his relationship with his (soon to be ex) wife Anna Karina.
Wikipedia:
"Contempt (French: Le Mépris) is a 1963 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on Alberto Moravia’s 1954 novel Il disprezzo. It follows a playwright, Paul Javal, whose marriage begins to fall apart during the troubled production of a film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. The film stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, and Giorgia Moll.
…
Production
Italian film producer Carlo Ponti approached Godard to discuss a possible collaboration; Godard suggested an adaptation of Moravia's novel Il disprezzo...in which he saw Kim Novak and Frank Sinatra as the leads; they refused. Ponti suggested Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, whom Godard refused. Anna Karina (by then Godard's former wife) later revealed that the director had travelled to Rome to ask Monica Vitti if she would portray the female lead. However the Italian actress reportedly turned up an hour late, "staring out the window like she wasn't interested at all".
...In the film, Godard cast himself as Lang's assistant director, and characteristically has Lang expound many of Godard's New Wave theories and opinions….
…Half the film's budget went on Bardot's fee.
Filming
…In a sequence, the characters played by Piccoli and Bardot wander through their apartment alternately arguing and reconciling. Godard filmed the scene as an extended series of tracking shots, in natural light and in near real-time…
Godard admitted his tendency to get actors to improvise dialogue "during the peak moment of creation" often baffled them. "They often feel useless," he said. "Yet they bring me a lot... I need them, just as I need the pulse and colours of real settings for atmosphere and creation."
Critical reception
…Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Contempt "is not one of the great Godard films, for reasons it makes clear. In a way, it’s about its own shortcomings. [...] It is interesting to see, and has moments of brilliance (the marital argument, the use of the villa steps), but its real importance is as a failed experiment. Contempt taught Godard he could not make films like this, and so he included himself out, and went on to make the films he could make."
Sight & Sound critic Colin MacCabe referred to Contempt as "the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe."
…The extended apartment sequence that occurs in the film, where Paul and Camille's marriage unravels, has been praised by critics and scholars. In February 2012, Interiors, an online journal that is concerned with the relationship between architecture and film, released an issue that discussed how space is used in this scene. The issue highlights how Jean-Luc Godard uses this constricted space to explore Paul and Camille's declining relationship.”
Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes
Trailer:
Review:
Last edited by Robert the List; 03-14-25 at 01:40 AM.
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Favorite Movies
11 of the first 41 start with the letter L, including the latest 6 lol.
Readers may be relieved to know that there are only 3 more that start with an L!
Readers may be relieved to know that there are only 3 more that start with an L!
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Favorite Movies
Lawrence all the way down at 40!
Curious to see the rest of the entries...
Curious to see the rest of the entries...
__________________
“Film can't just be a long line of bliss. There's something we all like about the human struggle.” ― David Lynch
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Lawrence all the way down at 40!
Curious to see the rest of the entries...
Curious to see the rest of the entries...
I think it's being done chronologically, not in order of greatness
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I think it's being done chronologically, not in order of greatness
Carry on!
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Indeed, it does appear to be so...
Carry on!
Carry on!
I've marked Lawrence as "ESSENTIAL" in the OP incidentally Sedai. One of only 8 with that accolade so far!
I should add it in to the individual posts where applicable though (and will also clarify in the OP that it's chronological, as the years aren't highlighted and in fairness you'll only pick it up otherwise if concentrating).
Pleased the list's of interest anyway. I'm enjoying sharing it, and doing the wikipedia research on the films too.
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Favorite Movies
38. La Jetee 1962 France Chris Marker
Probably makes my top 10. A magnificent short story. Apparently the still images were due to budget constraints but they were still an idea at some point, and they work brilliantly. The selection of the images, and their presentation is masterful. The score and narration (whether the French or English version) also work wonderful well.
Wikipedia
“La Jetée…is a 1962 French science fiction featurette directed by Chris Marker and associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the stable time loop story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is 28 minutes long and shot in black and white.
…
Plot
A man is a prisoner in the aftermath of World War III in post-apocalyptic Paris, where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present." They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. The scientists eventually settle upon the protagonist; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory from his pre-war childhood of a woman he had seen on the observation platform ("the jetty") at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He did not understand exactly what happened, but knew he had seen a man die.
After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society.
Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently; but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned to the past, placed on the jetty at the airport, and it occurs to him that the child version of himself is probably also there at the same time. He is more concerned with locating the woman, and quickly spots her.”
(SPOILER) “However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his jailers who has followed him and realizes the agent is about to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the incident he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him ever since, was his own death.”
…
Production
La Jetée is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying rhythm. It contains only one brief shot (of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up) originating on a motion-picture camera, this due to the fact that Marker could only afford to hire one for an afternoon.
The stills were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35 mm Arriflex. The film has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German and people talking in an airport terminal. The story is told by a voice-over narrator….
The editing of La Jetée adds to the intensity of the film. With the use of cut-ins and fade-outs, it produces the eerie and unsettling nature adding to the theme of the apocalyptic destruction of World War III…”
Running time: 28 minutes.
Trailer:
Review:
Probably makes my top 10. A magnificent short story. Apparently the still images were due to budget constraints but they were still an idea at some point, and they work brilliantly. The selection of the images, and their presentation is masterful. The score and narration (whether the French or English version) also work wonderful well.
Wikipedia
“La Jetée…is a 1962 French science fiction featurette directed by Chris Marker and associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the stable time loop story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is 28 minutes long and shot in black and white.
…
Plot
A man is a prisoner in the aftermath of World War III in post-apocalyptic Paris, where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present." They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. The scientists eventually settle upon the protagonist; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory from his pre-war childhood of a woman he had seen on the observation platform ("the jetty") at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He did not understand exactly what happened, but knew he had seen a man die.
After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society.
Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently; but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned to the past, placed on the jetty at the airport, and it occurs to him that the child version of himself is probably also there at the same time. He is more concerned with locating the woman, and quickly spots her.”
(SPOILER) “However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his jailers who has followed him and realizes the agent is about to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the incident he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him ever since, was his own death.”
…
Production
La Jetée is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying rhythm. It contains only one brief shot (of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up) originating on a motion-picture camera, this due to the fact that Marker could only afford to hire one for an afternoon.
The stills were taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35 mm Arriflex. The film has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German and people talking in an airport terminal. The story is told by a voice-over narrator….
The editing of La Jetée adds to the intensity of the film. With the use of cut-ins and fade-outs, it produces the eerie and unsettling nature adding to the theme of the apocalyptic destruction of World War III…”
Running time: 28 minutes.
Trailer:
Review:
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