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What films can you recommend a film student? (1 Viewer)

MatthewA

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Ethan,
Your cinematography instructor should have them watch 1978's "The Wiz" and its dreary, diffused Eastmancolor, and then watch 1939's "The Wizard of Oz" and its fully lit, Glorious Technicolor.
 

Seretur

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As you can see, there will never be full agreement as to the list of must-see films, let alone their cinematography or other merits. While in film school, it's wise to stick to whatever your course requirements are, broadening them with copious helpings from the titles recommended by your colleagues and knowledgeable people on forums such as this.

Oh, and do try to see as many of them theatrically as you can. You'll reap the benefits.

Just remember: no matter how long you live, no matter how many movies you see, you will never get to experience enough of them. Provided you get the bug, this will be one passion that stays with you for life. These posts should vouch for it.

And Kane is as good a starting point as any. ;)
 

Stephen_J_H

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A few recommendations, from when I had a pair of film classes in university:
Run Lola Run
Gods and Monsters
The Big Lebowski
Titus
Smoke Signals
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Nosferatu (the F.W. Murnau original)
Jaws (or how to make a blockbuster when everything goes horribly wrong on set)
Suspicion
Strangers on a Train
Cabaret
I could go on, but this is good enough to start with.
 

andySu

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North by Northwest, has mystery suspense murder and a good bit of crop dusting as well!
 

george kaplan

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Well Ethan, if you don't like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World either, then it's obvious that it's just a matter of having a different sense of humor. Just because you don't find any of the lines funny doesn't mean that they aren't.

"We've figured it seventeen different ways, and each time we figured it, it was no good, because no matter how we figured it, somebody don't like the way we figured it! So now, there's only one way to figure it. And that is, every man, including the old bag, for himself!"

"So good luck and may the best man win!"

"Except you lady, may you just drop dead!"
 

nikkif99uk

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ok so not doing so bad from AFI movies I have

1. CITIZEN KANE (1941)
3. THE GODFATHER (1972)
19. CHINATOWN (1974)
24. RAGING BULL (1980)
28. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)
32. THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)
35. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
37. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)
47. TAXI DRIVER (1976)
60. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
61. VERTIGO (1958)
65. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
79. THE DEER HUNTER (1978)
94. GOODFELLAS (1990)

From BFI 100 I have

10. Trainspotting (1996)
14. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)
29. Withnail and I (1987)
67. Mona Lisa (1986)
99. Carry On Up The Khyber (1968)

also have
Rosemary's Baby
Notorious
Blue Velvet
Caligula
Wings Of Desire

not a bad collection so far, have loads more just some of the ones mentioned
 

nikkif99uk

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oh i also have Halloween that someone mentioned, have all of them except 6 which i still need to buy
 

nikkif99uk

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other mentions i have so far listed on theyshootpictures

His Girl Friday
The Exorcist
Only Angels Have Wings
To Have & Have Not
The Birds
Night Of the Living Dead (1968)
Repulsion
Dawn Of the Dead
Faster Pussycat Kill Kill
The Great Escape
Shawshank Redemption
Godfather Pt III
The Thing From Another World
Hour Of the Wolf
The Tenant
Edward Scissorhands
Lord Of the Rings: Fellowship Of the Ring
Breakfast At Tiffanys
The Matrix
Cul-De-Sac
Fight Club
The Thing
Day Of the Dead
Se7en
Jurassic Park
NightmareOn Elm Street
Rocky Horror Picture show
 

Simon Howson

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I think a film student would be better served closely watching every film that Hou Hsiao-hsien has made, rather than starting off with the AFI list.
 

Adam_S

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frankly, that's ridiculous, Simon

She's probably trying to build a vocabulary of film, not specialize in one obscure style and execution of the craft of filmmaking. And if she's based in the west, Hou Hsiao-Hsien is more of a curiosity than having any real world applicability towards building a successful career.

Though she should see at least one of his films, as I said building a vocabularly is important. To compare watching all the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien to learning spanish, that's like learning: el, la, los, las, un, uno, una, unos, unas and calling yourself fluent in Spanish. And I would say that the same would be true of Hitchcock, Spielberg, Kurosawa, Ozu, Renoir, Lang, Kieslowski, Kubrick etc. The problem is claiming that any one artist can demonstrate everything significant filmmaking has to offer.

As I've said before, these lists are like Gateways, they open up avenues of film you might not have stumbled across on your own, and like any Gateway drug they only lead to more use, in this case, filmwatching and tolerance increases for oddities and filmmakers who antagonize the audience, such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien
 

BernieV

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No film education can really be complete without some knowledge of the early works that influenced every great filmmaker of later decades. I refer to D.W. Griffith and his epics, Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. These pioneering efforts may not be considered great by modern standards, but in them you find the roots of cinematography and story telling that lay the foundation for the art form.
 

Corey

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-the philadelphia story
-all about eve
-sunset boulevard
-double indemnity
-some like it hot
-gone with the wind
-an american in paris
-the women
 

Simon Howson

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"Antagonize", WTF!?

I think Hou is a perfect candidate, because he 'challenges' a young person into testing what they think film can and should do. If you watch the AFI list then your impression of film will be too shallow.

I think it is important that young(er) people understand that some of the best films arise from filmmakers overcoming constraints. Hou seems to be a good candidate to get that message across. The creation of art doesn't require freedom, it requires filmmakers thinking up interesting solutions to (often) self imposed problems. Too many young film fans seem to think that the opposite is true.
 

george kaplan

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Adam, I'm with you! Hou as the place to start?!?!? The AFI list would be much better. And if you had to start with just one director, there would be much better choices - Hitchcock, Kubrick, Bergman, and many, many others.
 

Adam_S

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self-imposed problems in photography is usually executed as Conceptual Art, it can be astonishing, such as the Bechers, or so poorly conceived that its a barely veiled attempt to hide a complete lack of inspiration, artistic inclination, or, in my experience, talent.

That said I've had a lot of fun doing artworks based on exactly what you're describing. How can I expand the boundaries of a still frame to comment on the limitations of the frozen image and incorporate time and expand my conception of photography by using a long exposure (such as an 1/8 or a 1/4 second) and in essence painting with the camera to create an impression or evocation of the intangibility of memory. The results of my best prints were spectacular, and interestingly enough, to my later surprise, dovetailed perfectly with a series I spontaneously did on rushing water macros during a completely different photo expedition. That's when I realized I'd developed a personal style, a way of looking and making choices that built on all I had learned (my artistic vocabulary) as well as the skills and experiences I had developed with photography. But I couldn't have done that without a wide array of experiences that came before it. That's what I mean by vocabularly of film--only in this case it was more of a vocabularly of art.

Your point has validity, a Conceptual approach has its merits and place in artistic expression but (and this was lost on one photography teacher I had) it is only one facet of art. The Hou Hsiao Hsien films I've seen have been compelling and interesting but they're not what I'd consider consider a good foundation for understanding film. Rather the other way around. After you are well versed in film, you'll have a good foundation to appreciate Hou Hsiao Hsien's artistic endeavors. But it's antagonizing to an audience unprepared to appreciate his accomplishment--that's why artists like Hsien or Kim Ki Duk rely on western distribution agreements and sales in Europe and America to continue making films, they're often failures in their own countries, but have enough exotic 'otherness' to sell elsewhere so their voices and ideas can be heard.

Hou Hsiao Hsien could and probably should be part of a filmic education, but it's not the place a general person should begin their education.

Have you seen The Good German yet? Soderbergh uses primes, old cameras, classic staging and set a great deal of limitation upon himself to create a film in the style of Michael Curtiz. But the experiment is a failure because the script doesn't work, and sometimes hurts the movie with voiceovers, and the actors have no chemistry. He missed the important things, but was doing all the interesting artistic things within his set limitations. And he still failed in that. He moves the camera in a manner reminescent of Curtiz, and he uses some editing techniques reminescent of the 40s but neither the photography nor the editing show a mastery of those styles. Curtiz would have never lit every actor with a three stop difference on the sides of faces for every shot. Unmotivated harsh differences like that came in with low budget films Tourneur made, because energy was being rationed by the studios for minor films. Curtiz in general used 2/3 to 1.5 stops difference between the sides of the face. He also lit fairly evenly and flatly for dialogue scenes, though he would go for dramatic use of shadows for action scenes. He didn't shoot for large depth of field, that was a favorite device of Toland and Miller, neither of which worked much with WB. And it's a good thing Soderbergh made the film the way he did, because he photographed it in the manner he felt worked best, he didn't stay under the limitation of shooting precisely like Curtiz, but what best suited the material. Unfortunately the material let him down.

As for your comment about freedom I'm showing enormous restraint in not taking it out of context and giving you a history lesson, because the way you phrased it set me to twitching for some odd reason.

:D:D:D
 

Simon Howson

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I haven't seen The Good German yet, I don't think it opens here until 26th December.

Regarding the Jacques Tourneur films, he often worked with the cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who has to be one of the most under rated camera men ever.
 

Adam_S

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ah, see, I study film for what it teaches me about storytelling and improving my understanding of why we tell stories and why we need to them (speaking of multiple levels here, individual, family, community, regional, cultural, national, archetypal). To me, any film is worth seeing because someone felt it was worth the effort of telling that story. The social industrial contexts are sometimes very significant in understanding a film and putting the decisions of the filmmakers in perspective (or understanding why there isn't a story such as "Goodbye Dragon Inn").

If you're actually studying film, or discussing it at HTF, you find out very quickly that they haven't been removed from their contexts, because any discussion or study of the film is naturally going to include those contexts. Rather the lists serve to highlight standout examples from all different eras and genres. The processes by which a canon is created and arrived at (and challenged, adapted, updated and inverted) are an important cultural force in the study of art, and with a form as young as film, it is an exceptionally dynamic aspect of the ongoing discourse about film studies. What Cahiers did for Citizen Kane and La Avventura, what Mulvey did for Vertigo and Rear Window or Kael did for Bonnie and Clyde are significant milestones in our understanding and appreciation of film, and go on to lay the parameters for how we generate academic dialogue about film's historical poetics.
 

Jeff Gatie

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Hey, I just watched Citizen Kane for the first time. What's the big deal about this old black and white movie about some dumb guy and his sled? I mean how good can it be when it isn't even in widescreen? I had to put it in stretch mode just to fill my new HDTV. :D
 

Mike Frezon

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How does one pronounce Hou Hsiao Hsien? Could anyone give an ignorant brother a clue? :) Guess I've got some more learnin' about movies to do.

I figure it's a name ripe for "Who's on First"-type jokes...Either "Who's the best director...? Yes!" Or, "How'd the director do that? You bet!" Either way...
 

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