Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club - Page 54

Holadem · 03-22-2004, 11:16 AM

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Just so you can make a check mark on a list and say "yeah I saw that, it blew"?

Well, I am no DOme, but that is kind of the point of this challenge...

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H - No?

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george kaplan · 03-22-2004, 11:28 AM

Well Brook, I have 507 movies on my to rent list, but my viewing order is pretty much determined by what is broadcast (and hence recorded on my tivo), or what is available in my greencine (my alternative to netflix) list. Hopefully some more of the S&S films will show up soon.

However, just to take the heat off of Jim (who is spot on in his take on The Seventh Seal and 2 1/2 stars too generous to Cries & Whispers

), I read an interesting review of The Searchers the other day. Just so there's no mistake, this review is entirely a positive one as can be seen in the closing paragraph "In 1992, The Searchers was voted the fifth greatest movie of all time in a poll of international film critics held by Sight & Sound magazine. That's quite an accolade, but Ford's picture lives up to it."

However, what struck me was the following, "The true genius of The Searchers is in its being able to keep the audience's sympathy for Ethan, despite the evident fact that his is a murderous racist."

I obviously disagree with this review. But I found it striking that at least this reviewer and I were seeing something the same, though interpreting it differently. What he views as the true genius of the movie, is to me the fatal flaw of the movie. It is the very fact that the movie makes a murderous racist sympathetic that leads me to label this movie as racist itself. I have no problem with depictions of racist behavior, and even complex characterizations of racists, but I don't like seeing them made the hero or protagonist of a film.

Dome Vongvises · 03-22-2004, 01:25 PM

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Dome, if you're going to continually insult these movies and feel that if a moovie aspires to be art that it is pretentious, why are you wasting your time here watching all these "artsy-fartsy" things?

Cause not all films that aspire to be art are pretentious (e.g. The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries). It's crap like L'Avventura and Trois Colours: Bleu that irritate the hell out of me.

And there are three good reasons why I watch these films:

1. To educate myself in the cinematic language on a technical and artistic level and to evaluate them on a superficial to critical level.

2. There are movies other than Star Wars out there.

3. Gotta do something with the three hours I don't dedicate to this forum, weightlifting, going to class, cooking, writing a book, and drinking on Thursday nights.

These Euro films that deal with isolation, desolation, depression, seperation, or any other "tion" bug me. Life is so much richer and livelier than that. Every time I sit down to watch a Euro movie, I have a mental check list of cliches I find in them. Unhappy marriages, affairs, the idle rich, you name it, it probably has it. The thing that irks me the most is the huge significance that is attached and such said significance is suppose to be more profound than anything else a "simpler" film has to say. Horse's ass is what I call it.

If Film Y is supposed to be such and such, why can't people apply same said criteria to film X. At this point, I'm surprised why people don't see Showgirls as a religious experience...

Lew Crippen · 03-22-2004, 02:37 PM

There is much in what you say Dome, but I would suggest that you would be hard pressed to come up with very many movies that are both great and simple.

Now you may not like the complexity of movies such as L’Avventura and perhaps some (not necessarily you) might claim that Star Wars is only a simple movie.

But for me at least, most (perhaps all) great films are also complex. True the complexity may appear to just a simple story, but I would suggest that such simple films as Snow White, Star Wars, Singin’ in the Rain and The Wizard of Oz are far more complex that the simple stories they tell on the surface.

There are plenty (well some) of European films on the S&S list that I find not very good even though they have solid intellectual and critical support. Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet is one such example. But I would hesitate to use the word pretentious in explaining why I don’t care for the movie (I actually may have done so, but if so, it was an error in judgment). Cocteau was no mere intellectual pretender, but a significant artist during a period that saw many establishment art from under attach by young, anti-establishment artists, many of whom were most certainly pretenders. But not all, and by now the genius of a man who could create a Beauty and the Beast is hard to question.

This does not mean that he (or anyone) always got it right or should be above criticism (my problem with Blood of a Poet is that I don’t think it is a very well-made movie and that Cocteau’s intent is not well presented).. It is just that pretentious is an easy word to use, when not liking certain types of films. I just don’t think that it necessarily applicable to Antonnioni or much of the French New Wave.

Jim, for example is not alone in his dislike of Jules and Jim, a film that at least one famous critic confessed to not liking (and for some of the same reasons as Jim).

But I ramble. In short, (1) although there are plenty of pretentious movies made, I don’t think that are too many on this list and (2) I don’t think that there are many great films that are also simple.

Adam_S · 03-22-2004, 05:24 PM

Battleship Potemkin -

Simply an incredible work. Outstanding film. I've seen the fouth part, the odessa stairs before ( a teacher screened it before showing us Brazil), but it was amazing to see the rest of the film. i think my favorite two parts are the first two. Truly incredible the tension that is built before the men are sensible and revolt. The editing all around was incredible, but one very brief sequence in particular stuck out to me. It's when a man breaks a plate that says "give us this day our daily bread" It starts out in a close up, cuts to a medium shot continuing the motion, cuts to an extreme close up of his face, cut to the plate breaking cut to the medium shot of his following through with the motion, cut to a close up completing the follow through. All in the space of about four seconds, but it's incredibly powerful and very impactful!

On another note, I'm going to the premier of the brand new print of Sunrise at the Academy theatre on Thursday, can't wait to check that out. And I'm going to be watching Rear Window on the Big Screen on Wednesday, hopefully it'll be better the fourth time...

Adam

Dome Vongvises · 03-22-2004, 06:01 PM

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But for me at least, most (perhaps all) great films are also complex. True the complexity may appear to just a simple story, but I would suggest that such simple films as Snow White, Star Wars, Singin’ in the Rain and The Wizard of Oz are far more complex that the simple stories they tell on the surface.

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I don’t think that there are many great films that are also simple.

But that's the beauty of film: they do indeed exist. It seems like there are certain directors that completely abandon a simply, interesting narrative. It's asking for attention that simply isn't warranted.

Gary Tooze does an extremely valuable service to this forum both in the technical aspects of DVD and introducing world cinema. But damn does this statement and analysis grate my nerves:

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As Antonioni states "I prefer to set my heroes in a rich environment because then their feelings are not determined by material and practical contingencies." In fact, there are no ' heroes' in this film, but the point is made that they have no mitigating factors to encourage their selfish behavior. Their foibles are bred through wealthy meaninglessness, not usual neo-realistic poverty and despair. In essence, these characters have nothing to overcome... no abject hardships to suppress or hurdles to leap. Because of this, we discern Claudia and Sandro's behavior that much more abhorrent in our eyes. The characters alligator tears and bluffed investigations of Anna's disappearance become an inquisition of who we are... our own superficialities become transparent and it is the viewer who is redeemed for reaching this conclusion.

bold emphasis mine

My superficialities? The inquisition of my character? I could've told you all that without having to watch this film! There are loads of films out there where the audience is left scratching their heads with, "what the fuck is wrong with these people?". But L'Avventura gets the praise for bringing about such audience self-analysis.

This is one of the things I hate about film criticism, it's that it's so uneven and that there's an elitist agenda out there. Such "objective" criteria feels artificial and ludicrous to me.

Then there's the whole essay from Criterion. Lack of moral evolution? That's the funny difference between artists and scientists. Scientists like to ask questions and wonder if they have the means to answer them. They ask for research grants, perform experiments, and throw all the dirty work at Post Docs and graduate students. Artists just simply like to ask the question and revel in it, not really too concerned with making a concerted effort of answering the question. That's how the tone of the essay with Antonioni feels like. Moral advancement? Advance where?

And don't get me started on Trois Colours: Bleu.

Jim_K · 03-22-2004, 06:49 PM

Yikes! I feel a little guilty that Dome is getting raked over the coals after my reviews.

Anyhow the next two Director reviews are dedicated to Dome (thanks for being my asbestos suit)

George Lucas

Star Wars

No other single film has captured the imagination of a generation as much as this one. Lucas borrows much from mythology, Flash Gordon serials, classic Westerns, & Samurai films to produce a smorgasbord of pure entertainment.

Steven Spielberg

Jaws

Pulse pounding film that starts out as a Big Budget Horror/Exploitation flick then transforms into a visceral tale of male bonding & man against beast. Holds up extremely well after a quarter century.

Schindler’s List

The Horror of the Holocaust is the backdrop in this heartrending story of Oskar Schindler, a German who turned his factory into a haven for the Jews.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

Excellent sci-fi fairy-tale about the friendship between a fatherless boy & an abandoned alien.

Brook K · 03-23-2004, 12:12 AM

George, I didn't mean anything negative by my comment. You were just complaining that noone was coming after you so I was jokingly saying that you needed to do a review first. I know, my queue is large as well and I space out the S&S films rather than watching them all at once.

On The Searchers, I don't consider Ethan the hero or really have sympathy for him. He is a figure to be pitied, consumed by hate, doomed to be alone, and all that. Also, it becomes a bit murkier, for me anyway, to condemn The Searchers or other earlier depictions of Native Americans on film when official racism was the policy of our government at the time. Its always a difficult judgement to make, whether or not to apply current standards to past events.

Do we condemn Gone With The Wind as racist? These are more heroic and celebrated figures than Ethan Edwards. I think Song Of The South is very racist and can understand why Disney wouldn't want to put it out, but there are a zillion people out there who say it "isn't so bad" or isn't racist at all and a "celebration of folk lore". Do we love Preston Sturges films any less because they almost all have some ridiculous "stepinfetchit" "comic" moment with a black character?

I'm rambling here but what I'm getting to is that Ethan Edwards is a man of his time. It isn't unthinkable that this man would be racist. And he isn't a hero or celebrated for it. His hatred condemns him. We are shown over and over that his hate keeps him separated from society. Others fear him, but they can't love him. There isn't enough human being left in Ethan to love.

george kaplan · 03-23-2004, 05:36 AM

Brook,

I didn't take your comment as negative, I was just responding to it.

As far as the Searchers, I think it's pretty obvious that you disagree with me and this reviewer, who doesn't see the film as racist, but does see Ethan as sympathetic. I guess if one doesn't see him as the hero/protaganist or being portrayed in a positive or sympathetic light, then I can see how the film would be viewed as NOT being racist. But I still think it's interesting that at least one reviewer agrees with me about how Ethan is portrayed. I know that when I finished watching the Searchers I felt exactly that a racist had been the movie's hero, and hence my feelings that it was racist.

As far as Song of the South, the heroes/protaganists in that film are little white kids and an old black man and an animated rabbit, none of which are racist as far as I can tell, so I don't see that film as racist.

I don't like Gone with the Wind, and I think it is racist in a different way (because of the portrayal of happy black slaves), but except for Rhett (whom I don't remember being overtly racist in the film), I don't consider the leads particularly heroic, especially not Scarlett who is just a bitch (IMO).

I am willing to cut films a bit of slack for being products of their time, but that doesn't stop me from thinking that films like Birth of a Nation and The Searchers are racist. But I am willing to forgive things like blackface in Holiday Inn, which might be non-pc in today's environment, but wasn't mean-spirited or promoting racism as far as I can tell (I'm making a specific argument about the use of blackface in that film, not blackface in general).

Lew Crippen · 03-23-2004, 09:16 AM

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There is much in what you say Dome, but I would suggest that you would be hard pressed to come up with very many movies that are both great and simple.

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But that's the beauty of film: they do indeed exist.

Can you name a few Dome? I am not saying that they do not exist, but I really can't think of any off the top of my head. Or perhaps you and I assign differernt meanings to the word 'simple'.

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Then there's the whole essay from Criterion. Lack of moral evolution? That's the funny difference between artists and scientists. Scientists like to ask questions and wonder if they have the means to answer them. They ask for research grants, perform experiments, and throw all the dirty work at Post Docs and graduate students. Artists just simply like to ask the question and revel in it, not really too concerned with making a concerted effort of answering the question. That's how the tone of the essay with Antonioni feels like. Moral advancement? Advance where?

I can't tell from this, but are you angry that art is not science?

To use your own phrase, I could have told you that without any analysis at all.

Jim, I’m not raking Dome over the coals, just challenging his continual, pejorative and inaccurate (to my mind) use of the word pretentious, when describing a film that he does not like.