Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club - Page 87

Jim_K · 02-03-2005, 06:32 PM

For 2 days Les Vampires was listed "in stock" at Netflix, but even though I have it #1 in my queue they shipped something below it instead. Now it is back to a "very long wait".

Maybe a higher power is trying to tell you something, like spending that 6 hours & 40 minutes on something else.

j/k

In all seriousness, keep it in your #1 spot & you'll get it eventually. Same thing happens to me all the time with Netflix.

Lew Crippen · 02-03-2005, 10:23 PM

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Strangely there are more of Christ’s teachings in noted atheist Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew than in any more recent movies about The Messiah. Indeed for Pasolini, it appears that the teachings of Christ are the message, as his low-key approach emphaizies the humanity of the downtrodden and minimizes the pain associated with his last days.

This is no doubt a radical, political view of Christ and his message, but then, at the time, it was a radical message. And given the proper emphasis, remains so today.

Brook K · 02-04-2005, 11:44 AM

Here, Here Lew!! It is so far beyond Hollywood's overdramatized treatments and remains unsurpassed IMO, in its depiction of Christ. The opening scene showing Mary while "Motherless Child" swells on the soundtrack is incredible.

The r2 DVD picture quality is excellent btw.

Netflix did it to me again, right now Les Vampires is in stock, but they shipped something below it. Also I sent back 2 movies yesterday, but they only checked one back in today. I always wonder how 2 envelopes from my mailbox could arrive at the same place at different times, but it could have to do with Netflix internal sorting system.

Seth Paxton · 02-04-2005, 12:48 PM

Boy is that annoying, Brook. Well at least NORMALLY the service is good enough to make you overlook glitches like this.

I actually made real progress again. Seems like I've been grinding while catching up with 2004 stuff.

L'Atalante
Okay, there are some pretty gorgeous shots in the film, but on the whole this film has serious editing problems. Often things just cut awkwardly and it takes a couple of scenes to even guess at what apparently was happening. I don't mind filling in the blanks, but even that should be indicated ahead of time by the director. This is just pure bad editing, either due to lost footage, alterations by people in power or troubled directing.

One thing I've noticed is that a director can be outstanding in many areas, yet utterly lacking in the craft of storytelling.

For example...
Alexander Nevsky
There are so many incredible shots, mise-en-scene, framing, lighting, and many outstanding edits, like the first introduction to the German army, what a set of cuts there. However Eiseinstien once again shows himself to be more of a propoganda, commercial creator than a true narrative director. He actually undermines some of his own work in terms of creating excitement and spectacle...like those very static close-ups of characters mid-battle who take time to preach a Stalinistic message to the people.

It's frustrating because he does have perhaps the greatest eye ever for shots and edits. But outside of Potemkin and Ivan 1 he hasn't impressed me at all as a storyteller.

This film is also hurt by the poor sound quality. Large scale battles are deduced to 5 guys in a foley room, or so it sounds most of the time. I'd really be interested in someone creating a version with new sound to see what they could do for the impact of the film.

Both of these films are plagued with stagey scenes that have all the life of someone sitting around reading the script in a monotone voice.

199 of 344 complete (or should it be 345?)

Adam_S · 02-05-2005, 01:04 AM

That's about how I feel about Nevsky Seth.

I saw AURENS! in 70mm a second time last night. I think it shot up my list of favorite/greatest films to the very top, number one or number two, the film is just so completely brilliant and perfect in every way, David Lean was a master!

Adam

Haggai · 02-05-2005, 01:08 AM

I also saw Lawrence in 70mm, a few months back. I don't know that it's my absolute #1 favorite movie (though it's no lower than all-time top 5), but that was the best experience I've ever had in a cinema, by several light years. Nothing else has even come close. The movie just leaps off the screen, and when it's THAT movie...wow.

Seth Paxton · 02-07-2005, 03:13 AM

I would love to have that experience. But until 2001 or Ben-Hur drop off the Earth, LoA remains 3rd on my list. One of the most amazing pieces of cinema ever.

Knocked 2 more back. First, I think I'm coming around on Godard after nipping at his heels for some aspects of Breathless.
Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live) really impressed me. While it cuts quickly and leaves much to the imagination at times, the 12 chapter structure makes it much easier to follow. Plus his camera movements are more flowing and stable, the film is more picturesque to me.

So I enjoyed Contempt and My Life to Live, was coolish to Breathless, and feel very mixed on Alphaville. I'm hoping that I find the rest of the Godards on the list more like the first 2 than the latter 2.

Now a real treat is a film that finally came out on DVD and which I have never seen, other than a few snippets.

White Heat
What a tight script. I couldn't get over how great the plot was, how balanced and well-thought the characters and situations were. There is constant tension without resorting to lowering the intelligence of any of the characters. It falls in line with films like Heat and High and Low in terms of "procedural" films, though H&L deals with only one side of it (it doesn't make the criminal stupid however).

It's funny because several of the historians talk about how avant-garde some of the character situations are, like the mother-son relationship, but I don't see it that way.

What I see is a classic screenplay structure with the hero getting all the sympathy, in this case Cagney. He loves his mother, he's smart, his girl is screwing him over as is one of his gang, and he's being double crossed by the other side, he's charasmactic, he even has a medical situation for us to feel sorry for. In all those ways this is a normal situation where you get the audience to side with the hero against his obsticles and for his qualities.

What this film does to twist all of that is simply alter him. By making him a crazy killer criminal, all of the rest falls in line with that, so you are still rooting for this dispicable guy and all the "good" things are wrong and most of the bad people are good guys.

It's like Liotta's classic anti-hero Henry Hill in Goodfellas.

There were so many iconic moments like the end or "let me give you some air (in that trunk)", but the most impressive scene and one which did the most to move the film beyond gangster melodrama was Cagney's incredible performance when he hears the news about his mother.

In short - loved this film!

Haggai · 02-07-2005, 09:19 AM

Seth, White Heat is an absolute fave of mine as well. One thing I didn't know until I checked the IMDB listing after watching the DVD was that the government agent--the guy who assigns Edmond O'Brien to the case--was played by Anne Archer's father, John Archer.

Adam_S · 02-11-2005, 04:44 AM

L'Avventura - ½
OARDVD
02/10/2005

The most laughable and weakest film on the list that I've seen since starting it. This is the sort of lame piece of junk that gives 'art' films and/or foreign films a bad name. I think it got exactly the right reception at Cannes, it's too bad the critics rallied around it and it didn't drop into obscurity. AFter reading the liner notes I've some idea of what's supposed to be going on, but Antonioni's essay was vastly more interesting and affecting than the entire film. Although the film was well shot and acted it only had one good scene (where S tells Claudia "I don't love you" because she asked him to but then pops back in to say he lied, he does love her--interesting poigancy here that was actually well done whereas it was just so hamfistedly artistic throughout the rest of the film that nothing could possibly be anything other than boring for me).

I'm going to modify a quote from Roger Ebert here (originally on Pearl Harbor), "L'Avventura is a half hour film stretched into two and half." I didn't realize until watching this film how good Renoir's A Day in the Country was (a film I disliked), at least Renoir had the ability to craft an effective film and know the limits of a story (critiquing the wealthy, iffy morality and poigancy about things lost).

And to think Antonioni has several films on this list «gags»

Adam

george kaplan · 02-11-2005, 08:10 AM

Adam,

I agree with almost everything in your review. The one disagreement is your ranking. That 1/2 star is way too generous.