AFI 100 Years Series Discussion & Challenges, vol. 2 - Page 13

Adam_S · 05-07-2008, 03:43 AM

I just watched the excellent Lavender Hill Mob which is listed for Audrey Hepburn, unfortunately she has only one line and about 15 seconds of screentime so it's another one of the imdb cameos/extras that we've been weeding out of the stars list since we came up with it. I've replaced it on the master lists with Wait Until Dark (a true Audrey Hepburn film with an excellent performance by her) which is her next highest ranked film on imdb.

**HTF Ads**

Adam_S · 05-09-2008, 03:29 AM

Tess of the Storm Country - 7 of 10
stars list - Mary Pickford

a solid film that's a bit overwrought in the melodramatic plot devices and villainous characters. Once again Mary Pickford saves this film with her phenomenal screen presence and magnetism. she almost makes you forget how ridiculous the story is, and she almost makes everything in the film work. but it's not quite there. not as impressive of a visual level as Daddy Long Legs and less humor, still Pickford cuts an impressive figure as a modern woman, she's certainly stands up for what she believes in, and she's often left standing alone by circumstances, but she'd rather be an outcast and true to her own independence than bending to the ideas of any other. The film also contains quite a lot of moralizing and religious education, which isn't so bad but due to the intertitles comes across as rather ham-fisted.
The transfer/film elements are also in very bad shape with the print often looking very disappointing, even for a 1922 film.

Tess Skinner is a squatter living with her father in a ramshackle 'house' on the edge of the coast. The wealthy man who owns the land wants the squatters out but can't manage it. his son is against accosting the squatters and his daughter (and her beau) are all for it. He conspires with the beau and the local game wardens to take the nets of the squatters and hopefully starve them into moving, Tess manages to hide her fathers nets, but they know they didn't get one net. They wait to hopefully catch them in the act of using the nets and be able to arrest them for breaking the law. Only when Tess' father is out setting his nets and the law is coming down on him, a local brute grabs Daddy Skinner's rifle and shoots the beau (unbeknownst to Daddy Skinner). Skinner takes the rap for the murder and the unmarried daughter is now left pregnant with no man to marry her and the son has fallen in love with Tess! Oh my! what melodramatic machinations will the plot twist to next? the film is often quite entertaining and interesting to watch, but it's not a great silent, by any means.

Adam_S · 05-09-2008, 06:33 AM

Orphans of the Storm - 3 of 10
stars list - Lillian Gish

I felt so triumphant for getting through the entire interminable runtime that I bumped the rating a whole point.

A 70 minute story stretched out to 160 makes Orphans of the Storm one of the weakest titles of the entire Stars list. Lillian Gish's performance is very good (as is that of her sister) but not as memorable as either of two Pickford films I've recently seen.

Two orphans are rescued by a destitute farmer from the the steps of Notre Dame cathedral, one is the bastard child of an aristocrat the other I forget who belongs to, perhaps the destitute farmer's own child. Anyway the two twerps are raised as sisters and we flash forward to the future (just before the french revolution) where something, presumably scarlett fever has left Louise, the aristocrat orphan, blind. They are not so destitute any more but comfortably middle class based on their clothing. Being that this is a silent film there is a magic cure for blindness available, but to get it they have to go to Paris. They go to Paris and are promptly separated by a nefarious aristocrat with designs of raping the notblind sister (Lillian Gish), he takes her to a party and tries to rape her publically to the bemusement of almost all the aristocrats but one (the son of the same countess making him the half brother of Louise) who gets notblind out of the vicious 'party' she then spends three or four hours of screen time looking for her sister. Meantime her sister has been taken by a nefarious and ultra ugly beggar woman (so you know she's evil, cuz she's ugly, this is Griffith afterall) and is mistreated and forced to be a beggar (her blindness is an asset to the begging trade). Naturally she runs into the magic blindness cure doctor and her mother at somepoint as well as her sister, only her sister is unable to reunite this early in the film because she's been arrested on trumped up charges as a fallen woman. Robespierre doesn't like notblind because she didn't give him the right gossip about her and shut a door in his face, how criminal! They did a great job casting Robespierre, at least one point of the rating is for just how viciously nasty and disgusting he comes off every time he's on screen, a prissy ass. Anyway then the French Revolution happens and its not very exciting. Eventually the lovers wind up in front of the 'court' that guillotines everyone, and they are so sentanced (naturally the court is the point when the sisters finally reunite), and in a classic and unsurprising griffith move there is lengthy cross cutting to create nonsuspense about whether or not the noble Dalton will be able to secure a pardon for our lovers and get it to the guillotine on time! of course he does and everyone lives happily ever after, and the sisters become sisters in truth when everyone gets married in the end.

Ugh, the film was terrible, long, boring, and endlessly frustrating at all the nonstop melodramatic plot devices designed to prevent any progression from being made and forcing a repeat over and over (and over and over) of scenes of notblind weeping about Louise and Louise being all mistreated by the beggars. Thank god I'll never have to watch that again.

Adam_S · 05-09-2008, 08:22 AM

This year's new list and TV special is coming a couple weeks earlier, airing on Tuesday June 17th on CBS at 8pm

I was looking at the lists again and came up with one or two movies per category that I know aren't going to make it but I think absolutely should make it on the final top ten. These are the ones I'm prepared to be disappointed by the AFI:

Animated: The Iron Giant
Fantasy: Harvey
Gangster: Miller's Crossing
Sci fi: AI Artificial Intelligence, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Western: Bend of the River, Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (holding out hope this one may possibly make it in)
Sports: Bull Durham
Mystery: Big Lebowski, Se7en
Romantic Comedy: Shop Around the Corner
Courtroom Drama: A Man for All Seasons
Epic: Dances with Wolves

Lew Crippen · 05-11-2008, 08:23 AM

Miss Keene are you Mrs. Petrov? Or should I say, Mrs. Petrov are you Miss Keene?

About as weighty a question as is ever asked in Shall we Dance, a Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire, lightweight vehicle of 1937. The plot is what one expects, but the movie is worth watching for a couple of the dance sequences (especially the one on roller skates), some of the sets (the ship’s engine room is noteworthy) and a couple of the Gershwin tunes. The only reason this movie is on the AFI list, is due to the song, ’They Can’t Take That Away From Me’. This standard is almost a throwaway in the movie, even though it is placed at a critical point in the plot.

A solid, if overlong and not top-shelf entry in the Rogers/Astaire legacy.

Lew Crippen · 05-12-2008, 07:50 AM

I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.

So begins Out of Africa, an ‘A’ list Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack), Hollywood movie of the old school, but magically restrained. Redford is not too golden and Streep is restrained.

This movie won a ton of awards, none more deserving than Pollack’s direction. A ‘must-see’.

Adam_S · 05-12-2008, 08:02 AM

I rather liked Shall we Dance more than you did, I think, but didn't care quite so much for Out of Africa.

Lew Crippen · 05-12-2008, 09:43 AM

Something that bothers me a lot about any of the Rogers/Astaire movies is when the start to sing. As magical dancers as they are, once they move to singing—well both need to keep their day jobs.

One of the things that I find lacking in most of these films is cohesion. As much as I might like some individual scenes, numbers and so on, I find it hard to love the move as a whole.

But something that more modern movies could emulate would be the long takes in the dance numbers (are you listening Chicago).

Adam_S · 05-12-2008, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lew Crippen

Something that bothers me a lot about any of the Rogers/Astaire movies is when the start to sing. As magical dancers as they are, once they move to singing—well both need to keep their day jobs.

One of the things that I find lacking in most of these films is cohesion. As much as I might like some individual scenes, numbers and so on, I find it hard to love the move as a whole.

But something that more modern movies could emulate would be the long takes in the dance numbers (are you listening Chicago).

Oh I agree, Astaire has a weak voice and you're spot on with the cohesion problem, I haven't absolutely loved any of them, though many of the dance numbers are breathtaking and some of the songs, such as the one in Shall we Dance, have such clever lyrics and are sold so well by the on screen business that it makes up somewhat for the weaknesses of the plot and the leads' voices, but I don't think any of them count amongst the greatest musicals.

And I couldn't agree more on the long takes of the dance numbers

george kaplan · 05-13-2008, 09:55 AM

I'd have to disagree about Astaire. Top Hat is amongst the greatest musicals, and his voice in no way ruins songs like Cheek to Cheek. At least, IMO.

Lew Crippen · 05-13-2008, 12:06 PM

I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to see an Astaire movie without having heard the music first. By the time I have heard Fred and Ginger sing such Gerswhin classics as Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off or They Can’t Take That Away From Me, I’ve already heard a plethora of great singers like Ella put their spin on these songs.

Even if Fred were a very good singer, rather than barely adequate, he would suffer by comparison.