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Wow Lew, out of those 85, other than a one star difference on a few, the only real disagreement I'd have is Ivan The Terrible, which I'd give 3 stars on that scale. But then I'm a Russian history buff for which even hearing mention of the words Boyars or Oprichnyna puts a smile on my face.
You have seen 4 that I haven't seen yet - Beauty and the Beast, Salo, Orphee, and The Life And Times of Col. Blimp (which I own but haven't watched).
I'm up to 205 with L'Atalante the highest ranked film on the list that I hadn't seen. Having recently watched Under The Roofs of Paris, I found this in the same vein of Poetic Realism as Clair's film, but L'Atalante is definitely the better of the two. Some very and beautiful cinematography (including an aerial shot) goes hand-in-hand with magical romance (reminding me slightly of Fellini), mundane reality, startling eroticism, and humor to create a most delightful and fantastic film.
While I would not rate it ahead of Children of Heaven, I was very impressed and pleased with the movie and will be adding it to my collection in the future.
I love The Blue Angel, it is pretty close to a personal top 10. Got to see it in a theater last year and it completely won over the crowd which was a mix from college film students to seniors. I would probably rank it right up with Bunuel's best, but I don't think it is necessarily comparable to Obscure Object which casts a much wider net and is speaking of mankind universally, while The Blue Angel is much more of a character driven piece of storytelling.
I just recently saw the Sirk films myself and found All That Heaven Allows, while not quite as good as Written on the Wind, to be outstanding.
As for Paisa, I don't believe more than a handful of Italian films were shot sync sound until the 70's or even 80's. Fellini shot almost all of his movies dubbed, Argento, Bava, Rosellini, De Sica, etc, all of these films are dubbed, it was standard practice in the Italian film industry. And given the less than shoestring budget that most of the neo-realist films were made, especially in the war years and immediately after when the Italian economy (and most of continental Europe for that matter) was in a shambles, sync sound was a financial impossibility. Particularly when you're talking about films made with nonactors.
I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that. - George Bailey
2002 Sight & Sound Challenge: 312 Last Watched: The Life of Oharu
Last 10 Films Watched:
There Was a Father - A- / The Battle of the River Plate - B
In Bruges - B / My Blueberry Nights - C+
WALL*E - A- / Presto - B+
Definitely, Maybe - C+ / Shanghai Express - B+
Persepolis - B+ / The Life of Oharu - B
DVD BEAVER My Collection
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