Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club - Page 105

Re: Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club

Then just say that your cutting me some slack in the first place. It's all good.

Re: Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club

When did everyone in this thread get so testy? :p

Trying so hard to control a longwinded rant on Eurocentered film analysis and study:

All paragraphs in this post should be preceded with «mildly» because I have a very even tone in my head while I'm writing this. I'm discussing this over coffee and it's not noisy. I may get animated, but never harsh.


You mean like Eisenstein and the aforementioned Dozvhenko did? Half of Earth is cinematic architecture, the system of suturing the images together was dramatically different from Antonioni, but the concept of Objective Correlative and the effects of what you term 'Cinematic Architecture' was definitely being consciously implemented as a core feature of Soviet montage. Did you read Eisenstein in your studies? Youngblood may have used it in his commentary but the term comes from much earlier in film history. What is German expressionism without the use of the objective correlative? Lang and Hitchcock manipulated this concept throughout their early careers and in a completely different fashion across the world Ozu was a master of this though Mizoguchi used it as well. Except for all of these predecesors it was one aspect of a repertoire, not their entire repertoire.

'reinventing' an aspect of craft, isolating it and calling the isolated portion a totalized artform is actually a characteristic of modernism and postmodernism thoughout many arts.

I am deeply mistrustful of how strongly you base your thesis on a binary of 'literature' and 'architecture'.

Anthony Mann explored the same themes masterfully in Naked Spur. You'll also find the same themes explored and employed by George Stevens with Shane.

If you want a counterpoint example of a subtle examination of the themes that an alienating world should make love impossible, but ideally humanity can bridge that gap, look only to films such as "Here Comes Mr. Jordon" and "A Matter of Life and Death." The greatest alienating force, death, is overcome in both films by the tenacity of human endeavor. The main characters are literally unable to live in the modern world. And yes, it's significant both films were in the World War II era, just as it's significant that L'Avventura, Shane and Naked Spur all come from the Beat era (when Boomers came of age). Both eras felt extreme alienation, and both dealt with it in fascinating different ways.

My question is, are you elevating L'Avventura because the film is more difficult or for the quality of it's themes and filmmaking? Or does the 'otherness' of the filmmaking elevate it? I ask because there is a high critical value placed on both 'otherness' and perceived difficulty in accessing a work. and conversely, a low critical value is placed on more accessible work--Brokeback Mountain and Crash are excellent examples of this dichotomy. I would venture that the quality of the themes and filmmaking of the Hollywood examples I cited are equal to that of the art films, such as L'Avventura--as much as apples and oranges can ever be equal.

I love well made architectural films, such as Ozu's I was Born But or Mizoguchi's Sisters of Gion. I also love the films where the architectural aspects of objective correlative are combined with a system of suture for maximum impact, such as Battleship Potemkin and Earth. I take exception to an artist who focuses on one concept and whose films require the audience to do all the heavy lifting themselves. Noone here wants to be spoonfed, that's not what I'm getting at. Audiences want for a little bit of direction, leaving everyone wandering without a map is not appreciated. Alan Ladd can't rejoin society because who he is and what he does (and has done) is anathema to the society he longs to join. His identity is alienation and he would have to destroy himself (die) to change that. George Stevens shows us that with cinematic architecture, with dialogue, dopplegangers, plot progression, character development and interaction. He's not spoonfeeding us so complex a concept, but he's giving us all the nudges we need to get there consciously and / or subconsciously. And he didn't limit himself to express this Only through Architecture, and I think his exploration of the impossibility of llove and living in the modern world to be the more effective variant because it generates a meta understanding of the themes on multiple levels, rather than generating a somewhat distant and analytical intellectual understanding encouraged by Antonioni. In my mind the comparison is clear, the hollywood example is freeing while the art example is constricting.


Well you went and got me riled anyway. Seth/Brook/Lew, I'd love to hear their thoughts on this. I should have been asleep long ago.

Re: Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club

I'm probably not going to jump in too much into the discussion of L'Avventura cause I only saw it once, and it was a long time ago, and, unlike others, I found it unmemorable enough that I can't do such discussion justice. On the other hand, I do look forward to Thomas' treatise on the objectivity of art, and will certainly weigh in on that.

I will stick my big toe into the waters of this debate. I find it interesting that L'Avventura is being placed second to Citizen Kane, since, except for the narrative aspectes, much of what is placed forward as revolutionary about that former exists in the latter (and in many other films as Adam as pointed out).

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Hey not me. I'm keeping it light and breezy. That may explain why I'm mostly talking to myself though.

Speaking of other people jumping in, where the heck is Holadem? Long vacation I presume...

I've actually been putting off seeing L'Avventura. I did just watch Notorious though and loved it. I'll wait until curent discussion subsides though.

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Thomas:

It's not that you don't make some very strong points, you do. It's that I disagree with your basic premise. The key issue is not of lyrical versus narrative nor narrative versus architecture nor even ground breaking work ... it is ALWAYS front and center about telling a great STORY.

It's something like real estate, yes you may have a checklist a mile long of things you want to consider when buying a house but if it doesn't have a great LOCATION ... even if ALL the other factors are flat out terrific, it can't be a truly great choice.

Same with a film. It may have the most amazing aspects, wonderful actors, amazing dialog, great sets, artistic vision, camerawork as if decided by the gods, a score to beat the band but if it doesn't have a great STORY it cannot be a truly great film.

Now, I really like L'Avventura. Antonioni has a great eye for artistic expression and achieving it. He's also smart enough to give us some great looking Italian babes. Anybody that gave us Monica Vitti can't be all bad. Can I get an Amen from the congregation?

Now moving on to your points about the end of the film.

Sure, that's one interpretation but that doesn't make it correct nor does it make it a terrific film ending which was the way we got into all of this in the first place.

Where did she get this realization that she, in fact, is dominant? Was it three minutes earlier when she goes running and sobbing into the street like a jealous wife?

I'll give you a counter explanation for the ending. Doesn't mean I believe it, it just shows how open ended the ending is, uncompelling and left as if he had run out of money to continue shooting.

Claudio comes downstairs to find a champagne holder in her path, the upside down champagne bottle a very obvious symbol of the spent male. Seeing Sandro sleeping with some babe on the (casting) couch, we see the woman as a whore doing what it takes to get ahead.



A distraught Claudio, like a jilted wife goes running out of the house upset at Sandro's lack of faithfulness. She stares off, a very bushy tree to her immediate left representing the female as a grown woman.



Sandro catches up to her. Knowing that he has been a dick yet still wanting her is represented by the phallic symbol to his immediate left.



He is distraught, hunched over like an infant. Claduio comes over to him and gently touches him, in the background a dormant volcano to her immediate left representing the woman as entry for the phallic as well as a nurturing womb.





So, in a five minute segment that concludes the film we have the female shown in its three categories: whore, wife and mother and the male as he is; both infant and sexual animal controlled by his dumbstick.

It should be pointed out that this is well travelled territory. And if you want all of that as well as a great STORY that film has already been made ... it's called:

Re: Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club

I started that other thread I promised. It's called "A Certain Tendency in Contemporary Film Criticism." Winking homage, of course.

If I have time later today or tomorrow, I'll join this challenge. Thanks.

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Your quoted statement applies to narrative films. An actuality doesn't necessarily tell a story. Can they not be great? Godard's essayist films don't tell a story. Can they not have the potential to be great?

L'Avventura has a great story. The story, The Adventure, is an internal one. I already explained all of this.

Vitti's character becomes dominant when she sees Sandro sobbing on the bench.

Regarding 8 1/2, wasn't that made after L'Avventura? lol. Did you mean La Dolce Vita instead?

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Bob, I'm not talking to you, because you take the appropriate approach to L'Avventura. There's nothing much to add to that, lol.

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Adam, all those films that you say exemplify cinematic architecture before L'Avventura did...they're all based off of narrative conventions. (Admittedly, I haven't seen them all, but that's what I gather).

I already wrote this. Earth uses narrative as a springboard. L'Avventura is a completely different approach.

George, Citizen Kane does not have ALL the elements L'Avventura does. Welles would be offended to here you say that, actually. He hated Antonioni's style.

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Yeah, you COULD do it that way, but that's ignoring a lot of other things. Characters, acting, dialogue, cinematography, music, pacing, mood, style, art direction, etc etc etc. You equate the story to a steak, and the symbolism to the seasoning. What about the salad, the wine, the appetizers, the dessert, the ambience, the service? There are so many different reasons to enjoy a movie, sometimes the plot isn't all that important. Sometimes the plot isn't even there (you can have fish instead of steak, you know). If you gave JUST a plot summary of Catcher in the Rye, it would sound like a horrible book.

The other problem with this is that you're assuming that no resolution to the murder = BAD STORYTELLING. I disagree. For one thing, I appreciate that he's doing something different. Right away, that earns points with me. DEFYING EXPECTATIONS is often a great storytelling device.

You describe the tennis match as some kind of random non-event which can be easily replaced with zebras discussing Sartre. A lot of Blow-Up is about subjectivity, which applies to both the murder (did it actually happen, or is it in the protagonist's imagination?) and the tennis game (after he "participates" by picking up the ball, he can suddenly hear the match). It's not as random and disconnected as it appears on the surface.

The fact that this isn't immediately obvious is one of the nice things about the film. It requires some thought, maybe even some research. I didn't "get it" at first, I was confused too. But I LIKED that feeling of confusion and how it drove me to ponder what I'd witnessed. I've seen Last Year in Marienbad three times and it still confuses me, but I love trying to puzzle it together in my mind... every time I glean new ideas and themes from it.

Would The Birds be a better film if Hitchcock told you why the birds attacked? Does The Birds make him a shitty storyteller who doesn't know how to end a movie? Isn't it more fun to speculate on your own about the reasons why?

And isn't the most universally hated thing about Psycho the godawful psychiatric explanation of Bates' motives? We don't always need to be told why something happens, or how it started, or how it ends. Sometimes a good story is NOT knowing.

It's easy to blurt out all kinds of "emperor has no clothes" sentiments. I used to do it myself a lot. But I grew out of that. It became clear to me that if a large number of people (especially people well-versed in the language and history of film) are getting great things from a movie that I'm not, then I'm missing something. In some cases, something about the film will grate against my personal tastes so much that I'll never get it. For example, The Searchers. I hate John Wayne, I think he was a giant douchebag. I know he's SUPPOSED to be a douchebag in The Searchers, but I can't get beyond my hatred of him (or traditional Western conventions in general) enough to get into it.

But then there's something like Andrei Rublev. I did not "get", and still do not get, what is so great about this movie. For the most part, I hated it. But there must be something. I loved The Mirror and Stalker, and to a lesser degree Solaris, so perhaps some day I'll give it another go and try to be more attentive. And if I find meaning or pleasure or something there, I can admit I was wrong the first time.

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Martin, sounds like you're echoing some of the points I made in my other thread. I agree with most of what you wrote here. *thumbs up*

Cheers.

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George: NO IT'S NOT TRUE, I'LL NEVER JOIN YOU

Unfortunately no time to read through the ongoing discussion. I'll try to catch up in the next couple of days to seen if I can contribute anything more than high blood pressure.

Actually today was a great day S&S wise. We went to the Kirkwood library to get library cards and they have a treasure trove of old VHS tapes. At least 10 S&S films I haven't seen as well as additional films not on the list I haven't seen by Rohmer, Fassbinder, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, and many more.

It was hard to decide what to check out first, but since I don't have much time for movie watching until we get finished unpacking, I went with the shortest of the bunch, Renoir's A Day in the Country.

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Amen!


And L'Avventura isn't? The act of consciously denying narrative conventions (which I'm not convinced the film does to the degree you claim) means a filmmaker is more focused on those conventions than someone who is embedded in them.

And whose narrative conventions? You're lumping everything into a narrative (literary) versus architecture (otherness) binary. Film is a narrative form. Even in the sort of experimental animated work by Man Ray and the Dadaists still had a narrative because they were specifically structured. Even actualities are narrative because it's an event the Lumieres (et al) chose to recreate or chose what to record--that choosing creates a narrative. You're making a semantical distinction with your architecture argument but your discussion and examples from the film are still based in narrative-oriented analysis. You still treat the film subconsciously as a narrative even as you claim it's a nonnarrative based form.

Out of curiosity, you said L'Avventura was the greatest film since Citizen Kane, so I'm making a presumption that CK is either your greatest or one of the greatest films for you. What's your argument in favor of CK?

Adam

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If a film does not have a great story then no, it can not be considered a truly great film. Fun film, interesting film, important film yes, but not to be considered one of the best films of all time as you have submitted for L'Avventura.


Not that I read. You took a crack at explaining the end of the story not explaining why it's a great story. Yes, you mentioned your view of WHAT the story is. That, however, does not make it a great story.

In his L'Avventura commentary Mr. Youngblood mentions that there are no answers in life but merely a widening mystery that gets bigger and bigger. Well, that may have some truth in it, but IF that is what the director was going for (a big if) that still doesn't make it a great story.

So there may or may not be a discernable story here and there may or may not be a message. If filmmakers want to send messages, I suggest they use Western Union, it's a lot easier and cheaper.


No I meant 8 1/2. There is a big difference from saying a film already HAS been made to saying one HAD been made.

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I certainly don't agree with this. While I think a good story is probably what I often require most in my favorite films, movies can still be "great" even without a great story - and without any story. 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY is a great film with no clear story, if any.

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What more can I say? This quote speaks volumes.

Then just count your blessings that you weren't alive during the first decade of the movies.

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Adam, there's no conscious denying of narrative going on. I agree with you about that. I don't know why you think I'm arguing that. I'm talking more about the film not directly conveying to the audience the conflict, turmoil, tension, etc. of character states through the cause and effect of their external actions. In classical Hollywood cinema, the outward world acts as a syphon to the inward world. Not completely in L'Avventura. (Admittedly, now I'm reducing my analysis to a single paragraph, which is insufficient. However, I feel that my rather lengthy previous post about the film was succesful at getting my ideas across.).

Other things:

I don't think otherness is a synonym for architecture in this context. Any architectural students in here? Is a Gehry building architecturally "great" simply because of its otherness?

I don't feel inspired right now to spend a couple of hours writing at length about Citizen Kane. Maybe somebody should use some absurd hyperbole to knock the film. That usually does the trick, as it did to spawn my contributions to this thread in the first place, with regard to L'Avventura.

Re: Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club

actualities still had stories, The waterer watered, feeding a baby, destruction of a wall, these all were tiny mini stories. Then as filmmaking moved into the glass houses the stories started to get more complex. the concept of the cut was discovered to work for an audience (rather than hopelessly confusing them) and film continued to develop and lengthen from there. Certainly, arrival of a trian at the station, or workers leaving the factory are not (by any stretch of the imagination) great stories, but that's why they're presented mostly as historic curiosities as some of the first films exhibited, not as great films. But Voyage to the Moon and Great Train Robbery, The Lonedale Operator etc definitely are presented as great films because of the quality of their story and the growing sophistication of their filmmaking technique.

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Oh, and Adam, yes, my top three is:

Citizen Kane
L'Avventura
The Seventh Seal

I also am disturbed by my active particpation in compiling a canon of films made by "Great White Males." That's self-criticism, which could and should also be aimed at this Sight and Sound list as well, for the most part.

(That's a separate discussion, only if we collectively want to go there...)

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They're great because of how they told their stories rather than the stories they told. Even in 1902, was a heist such a revolutionarily great story in itself?

Separate point:

But if I pointed my camera at the World Trade Center on 9/11, for 10s of the buildings burning, I think that's a great film, because it captured an extraordinary 10 second moment in time. .... But that film, that footage, doesn't have a narrative. It's 10s of buildings burning. That's not a narrative. Yes, the footage provides an emotional pathway of sorts to let you mentally re-capture the 9/11 story in your mind, but the footage itself does not tell that narrative. But it's still great footage, at the same time.

Thus, yes, a movie can be great, even if it doesn't have a narrative.

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Joe,

I'm on record as stating that many of my favorite films don't have clear-cut endings which by definition makes their stories unclear. No problem.

2001 is open-ended and a thing of beauty because if it. It certainly is one film that many, many film-goers have thought about and enjoyed thinking about.

But I'm curious, you mentioned great films "without any story." If you truly meant that, please share a title of a truly great film (say top 100 film in your viewpoint) that has no story or even precious little story (let's not get caught in technicalities).

Thomas,

I don't see the relevance to talking about Edison era films, short films, documentaries, film clips or an 8 mm from your Great Aunt Lola's birthday party. They hardly represent the Greatest Films in History list. (No offense to Great Aunt Lola).

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You really can't call those Edison or Griffith films "short films" since there were no other form of films at their time. They were certainly the films of their time and I also think it would be foolish for anyone to overlook their importance to what we now consider movies. To me, some of these pre-20's films are among the most natural and most realistic films ever made.

The 1899-early 1900 films had pretty much no stories since most films at that time were running anywhere from three seconds to a minute at most. Today these are best viewed as documents of their time. However, Porter and Griffith certainly took this to a new level where stories, editing, lighting, camera movement and so on formed this format.

The Movies Begin, Treasures From the Film Archives, Unseen Cinema as well as Edison and Griffith boxes are out there to be seen so people can track the progression of this format. For any real film buff these serve as much more of a teaching lesson than any AFI or S&S list.

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I've been too busy to check in, and can't really respond point by point here, but will just make a couple of quick general comments.

Lots of films before Antonioni rejected conventional narrative a lot more than he ever did (e.g., L' Age d'or, The Man with a Movie Camera, etc.). Antonioni wasn't ground-breaking in that sense.

What he did was tell a straight narrative story (let's face it, Blow Up is as straightforward and wonderful a narrative as anything that ever came out of the Hollywood studio system) until the very end, and then he jumped to a ridiculous ending that said, "fuck you, that great story I was telling you, I'm not going to tell you how it ends, cause I'm the director and you're not "

This isn't like some great atonal new kind of symphony, rather it's like Beethoven's 7th, except for the final 80 bars, each of which was written by someone different (Cage, Varese, etc.). I like Cage's 4.33 as an "idea" of art, but it's not something I'm going to listen to. If you want to mess up the ending of a film like Blow Up, go ahead, but while the idea might be fine, the end result is no better than another "fine as an abstract artistic idea", namely a shot for shot remaking of Psycho.

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emphasis mine:

Still trying to figure out how this doesn't apply to Man With a Movie Camera, Un Chien Andalou, Earth, Potemkin, etc. Likewise some of the Japanese and Chinese films of the 20s and 30s were less rooted in literature than they were in the particular theatre traditions of those cultures, such as No, so is that a third variation to go with literature and Architecture? Should I also bring up Bollywood? it is hardly based in the narrative of western literature. So that gives us four. Should I go on? Please explain why the otherness of Architecture (you're the one setting it up as other to literature, not me) is so revolutionary in comparison to the breadth and variety of what came before, because there have been many cinemas not rooted in literature.

You missed my point with your world trade center example. It is the choosing that creates the art--and in the case of cinema also creates a narrative. Go back to some of the dadaists films of the 1910s-20s. They can seem like random bits of black white and gray, sometimes mixed in with text, sometimes just by itself. But the films were carefully constructed. In many instances more so than some non-avante garde films, and that construction is a narrative process for the artist, deciding what comes before and what comes after. So the audience is still receiving a narrative because of the choice and the construction, whether or not its apparent.

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The first film I mentioned earlier, which was the first to come to mind, was Kubrick's 2001. I don't think of it as having a story, really; it's great mainly for its visuals and ability to transport you, as a "space opera," like sitting in the Hayden Planetarium.

12 ANGRY MEN is a great film to me but it may be considered to have "precious little story," and is just a character study of the men in a confined jury room and how they interact. I'm not saying there is "no" story at all, of course; but its power there is not centered on an involved narrative.

What I actually meant to convey in my first post was that, while I'm always a sucker for a good story and I think it's important, I don't know that a film would necessarily require one to be considered "great".

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I would not agree that either 2001 or 12 Angry Men don't have stories. As a matter of fact they have great stories. Now, the story in 12 Angry Men is one of a bunch of people sitting around a table talking, but the story is still moving foward in a coherent fashion.

2001 is a bit trickier, as the story is admittedly hard to follow in places if one is unfamiliar with it. Having read the book before I saw the film, the story was very clear to me, and it's difficult for me to know how the film's story would stand completely on it's own. Certainly some of what is underlying both the beginning sequence, and the very end would be unclear, but certainly the key ideas are clear in both bookends, and the middle part is a very clear story to me. At first glance, this might seem to have the kind of ending I'm complaining about in Blow-Up, but it's definitely not. Unlike that film, this one doesn't have Dave go into the monolith and then take the film completely away from the story. What happens in the monolith is surreal, but we see his transformation into the star child (which is a logical conclusion to the story), whereas an Antonioniesque ending to 2001 would have had us believe there never was a monolith, etc. 2001 might leave a lot of details unexplained, as do all films, but it does tell, and finish, a story.

I can't think of any plotless, storyless films in my top 100. I guess the closest would be certain segments of Fantasia.

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Aguirre Wrath of God - - 6 of 10
200th Sight and Sound film
OARDVD
01/07/2007

Portions of this film are terrific. It's also langorous, but I kind of like that, otoh, not the best choice when you're laying on the couch after eating pasta for dinner.

But outside of Klaus Kinski as Aguirre and the monk there's an amateur veneer the film couldn't quite shake. I never really believed in the mileau. It felt more like Deliverance era than the 1500s. The costumes seemed like theatre costumes and many of the performances were not that great. Still it was an ambitious and quite enjoyable film to watch.

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Joe:

I'm staying away from 2001 simply because of time (or lack thereof to cover it).

12 Angry Men certainly is a fine film. The compelling story (to me) is about one man alone among his 'peers' facing off against 11 men becoming 11 men facing off against one man alone against his 'peers.' And isn't that what a compelling story is, taking one truly interesting concept and playing it out for all its worth? Without that story would the actors have invested as greatly in their roles? Or heck, would the film have even been made?

Fantasia is an interesting film in that I think that the lack of one central story really keeps the film from being truly compelling. It's more a series of short stories in classical music videos. It does have a lot going for it, no doubt. But I think it fits my theory about the core importance of story.

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I'm trying to figure out why you spent the time talking about FANTASIA and 12 ANGRY MEN, but not 2001?

I used 12 ANGRY MEN to answer the quote of "precious little story".

By the way, Rich - I'd never disagree that story is very important. It's often the first thing I single out when people ask me what I like about the best films.

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Yes, you made that quite clear.

As for 2001, I meant that a discusssion of its story is more involved then I can give it any justice to right now. If you are interested of why I think it's a great story that is.

If you only wanted a quick comment on 2001 .... terrific film, terrific story