Sight and Sound 2022 Round 6: 101-120

I've all of these but The House is Black and Come and See and I guess what I want to know is...do I really need to watch Come and See?

This is where I vote very much in character: 1) Nashville, 2) Jaws, 3) GodfatherII. My guess for the winner will be Not Those.

it's good and the harrowing reputation is a bit overstated imo. probably prefer The Ascent tho.

a lot more blind spots for me this time: not seen The House is Black, La Maman et La Putain, Bringing up Baby, Liberty Valance or Touch of Evil

from what I have seen i think Texas Chain Saw, Don't Look Now, Goodbye Dragon Inn and Jaws all made the ranked portion of my film ballot last year and Vagabond wouldn't be far away either. tough one

xp

oh The Conformist made my ballot too

Still haven't seen La Maman et la Putain or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but Wild Strawberries, Come and See, Vagabond, Goodbye Dragon Inn and The Conformist are among my favorite films of all time

The Wizard of Oz, Rio Bravo, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Thing, Nashville, A Woman Under the Influence - those films are also all iconic

voting for Wild Strawberries, my favorite of Bergman and one of his most optimistic films

I like a lot of these, love some of them, but didn't have to think before voting Goodbye Dragon Inn. (I mean, I was literally just talking about it with my wife, who hasn't seen it — we were talking about signing up for Metrograph just to watch it.)

Regarding Goodbye, Dragon Inn, I watched it by myself, and a friend joined me toward the end. He was totally nonplussed, which kind of confirmed its greatness to me.

It could be the definition of slow cinema. You have to lose yourself by existing in the moment in a haunted theater about to close, in a rainstorm, which is showing a movie from the past where nothing really happens

...with all of the intimations of history, details of the lives of workers, explorations of the boundaries of sexual expression, and nostalgia for lost cinema that accompany it.

So many of the good theaters have closed recently in SF and Berkeley, so this film has extra resonance

Vagabond is my fave Varda but I have to vote for Come and See or Wild Strawberries but loads of good films in this section.

my fave cassavetes is here too

do I really need to watch Come and See?

https://i.imgur.com/yJFhoEQ.gif

The Conformist still amazes me.

The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)

TOO LOW

A couple of weeks ago I convinced some random person on twitter to spend Saturday night alone in their place to watch Come and See. A really great film.

Not seen:

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

Voting for Eustache. I think when the this is widely available it will be in it's rightful place in 2032 and hopefully knock off bilge that's currently in the top 20.

I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance not long ago and was not amused.

"So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt!"

lol all the old Hollywood heavy hitters are here: Rio Bravo, Bringing Up Baby, Liberty Vallance, Touch Of Evil, Wizard Of Oz.

Saw La Maman Et La Putain at Cine Lumiere some time ago. It's good, not really top20 material (and the top20 doesn't need any more white male boomers anyway), but def worth it for Jean Pierre Léaud's fits if nothing else.

Vagabond is really a remarkable film and I think prob Varda's "best" in many ways but also so unlike the rest of her world that I'd hate it to be anyone's introduction.

It was my introduction! It worked fine. But then my favorite Varda is Le Bonheur.

"(and the top20 doesn't need any more white male boomers anyway)"

Two of the main characters are women...and I'd rather have Leaud than Brando xp

I Saw La Maman Et La Putain on a dodgy dvdr a few years ago when I first got into film. I need to see it again.

It's obviously Goodbye, Dragon Inn for me, but Texas Chain Saw and Nashville are both also top-10-consideration great:

Also very very great:

The House Is Black (Forough Forkhzad, 1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

So much good stuff on this list

texas chainsaw

if you haven’t seen a theatrical screening of it, you haven’t seen it, you feel like a small speck in someone’s panicked eyeball

I Saw La Maman Et La Putain on a dodgy dvdr a few years ago when I first got into film. I need to see it again.

― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai), Wednesday, March 15, 2023 6:37 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hoping that Janus/Criterion make this and Eustache's other films more available in R1.

This is a tough for list for me; I finally went with THIB because of the virtues of brevity.

Going to give myself a few days to think about it before I vote, but it'll probably be Come and See.

Come and See -- now that's a war film.

the longer poll duration (3ish weeks now) means i'll have time to work up the courage to watch it.

this is a horror-rich part of the list...very tempted by The Thing or Jaws...though I'm gonna rewatch Dragon Inn.

Come and See is hard to take, but there's a point to sitting through it.

― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, January 24, 2021 5:54 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can you share the point in a sentence or two, bearing in mind that I already know that war is bad and that people will often mistreat each other given the opportunity?

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, February 3, 2021 7:16 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

unperson, the "point" of Come and See is that even through all the atrocities the main character encounters, there's a scene near the end showing his ability to retain his sense of compassion and mercy. But I wouldn't tell anyone "you must sit through" any film, and this one is certainly tougher than most.

― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, February 4, 2021 2:28 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'll continue with my totally uncool trend of voting for classic Hollywood stuff and go with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence over Touch of Evil.

evidently I missed something in Liberty Valence. Visually rich, elegiac, etc. But I've seen Wayne and Stewart in less musty Westerns and wearing better hairpieces. Lee Marvin was cool, though.

I should also add that though I haven't seen Come and See, The House Is Black, or La Maman et la Putain, I basically like or at the very least appreciate everything else on this list. Just as a standalone selection of films, this is a good list.

Liberty Valence is the classic Western that I would recommend to people who have never seen one and don't think they'd be into them. I don't find it musty at all (no comment on the hair).

I'm not as high on Bringing Up Baby as everyone else, but, yeah, it belongs.

iberty Valence is the classic Western that I would recommend to people who have never seen one

ha, see, I've recommended a couple of Stewart's Anthony Mann pictures, My Darling Clementine, and Fort Apache.

this is a horror-rich part of the list

Yep, but TCM >>> Don't Look Now >>>>> The Thing >>>>>>>>>>>> Jaws

I guess many would categorize Come and See as horror too but meh

Alfred, aside from the elegiac and visually gorgeous aspect, I think Liberty Vallance attracts people because it's such a clear thesis film - "our myths are bullshit but without them there is only barbarity". I don't agree with the stance at all but it's refreshing to see it laid out like that.

Refresh my memory, Alfred, outside of My Darling Clementine (and maybe Stagecoach?) are you into many Fords?

That scene with Woody Strode is very bad I'll admit.

Refresh my memory, Alfred, outside of My Darling Clementine (and maybe Stagecoach?) are you into many Fords?

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.)

Oh yeah!

1. My Darling Clementine
2. Young Mr. Lincoln
3. Rio Grande
4. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
5. Stagecoach
6. How Green Was My Valley
7. The Prisoner of Shark Island
8. The Grapes of Wrath
9. The Long Voyage Home
10. The Searchers
11. Cheyenne Autumn
12. Two Rode Together

this is a horror-rich part of the list...

Margaret Hamilton in Oz scared the crap out of me as a kid

xp see I must've misremembered because I thought you more or less hated The Searchers

i'm so basic but i can't deny that wizard of oz is one of my very favorite films. time spent watching it flies by, it's like a magic trick

i love liberty valence but it seems very specifically pointless to recommend to someone who hasn't seen any westerns

3. Rio Grande

find this the weakest of the cavalry trilogy by such a distance that anytime anyone praises it i can't shake the suspicion they're thinking of rio bravo

yellow ribbon + voyage home are faves

lol I don't hate The Searchers, but I do hate Natalie Wood's makeup in it.

The Prisoner of Shark Island is a real fun movie you can kick it with on a Saturday afternoon.

There are five of these I haven't seen; the further we get from the top of the list, the less pull the canon has on my viewing habits.

I pretty much hated A Woman Under the Influence for being an acting exercise with pretentions to making a serious statement, and disliked Don’t Look Now for wallowing in negativity (without the invention and energy ofTexas Chainsaw Massacre).

I'll vote Il Conformista over Nashville.

Cassavetes and I aren't simpatico at all -- other than Opening Night. I've had nights out with straight drunk dudes more entertaining, but I still wouldn't film them.

I agree, the concept of 'toxic masculinity' is a cliché, but some of his films like Husbands fully express it

Is that the one where the pick up some ladies and while Cassavettes is talking to the British one Peter Falk turns to his Asian companion and says “you’re inscrutable”?

They

The thing is, in Faces and Husbands at least, he's not "critiquing" masculinity; thanks to his static mise-en-scene he's just indulging drunk assholes. A Woman Under the Influence is better: there's a sense in which the Peter Falk character genuinely grapples with his wife, tries to fit her into the life he used to know.

Right, and also the sense that his approach is wanting in many ways.

yes all true

The Wizard of Oz, a personal childhood favorite that I still enjoy greatly
then To Be or Not To Be, one of the funniest movies ever made

have not seen: vagabond, come and see, the mother and the whore, goodbye dragon inn

I think you're either a Bringing Up Baby person or a His Girl Friday person, and I'm very much in the first group. Partially I think it's down to being raised on Carl Barks comics, which resemble BUB a lot in starting from a relatively mundane premise and then just upping the absurdity again and again. I also think ppl come in with the wrong expectation of Hepburn as a romantic lead when really she's more of a Marx Brother in it, just a total agent of chaos delighted by all the insanity they stumble into and invested in upping it at every opportunity.

His Girl Friday I have grudging admiration for, but it's such a grim viewing experience. I never buy for a second that Grant's character has any feelings for Russel's, he just doesn't want to lose his best employee (makes sense, since that's what The Front Page is about) and doesn't care what she thinks on the subject. I guess that's part of why others love it, fair enough, I'm not a "characters have to be likeable" guy, but I just want to slap the guy.

I'm not sure Hildy loves Walter either.

I don't think it matters as much as it does in HGF, as said she is an agent of chaos, might as well wonder how Bugs Bunny really feels about Elmer Fudd. Some asshole wanting his paper to keep afloat does not compare.

Good point, Alfred The only one who is definitely really in love is Ralph Bellamy. Or is it Don Ameche?

Oh wait I got the character's names confused, thought you meant KH and CG in Bringing Up Baby. My bad.

Hily's careerism -- a match for Walter's -- still looks refreshing in light of how American film would regard women in similar positions fifteen years later. See: Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo or Nina Foch in Executive Suite

I agree with the "agent of chaos" view of Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. She's kind of a manic dream girl (even if her physical presence is too commanding to qualify as "pixie").

And yeah, I think Hildy and Russell benefit from the role having been written for a man. The film layers a certain amount of sexism on top, but you never doubt that she's "one of the boys" as far as being a reporter goes.

She's a cool brassy reporter, no doubt. But that makes her taming at Grant's hands all the more enraging to me.

voting for Wild Strawberries, my favorite of Bergman and one of his most optimistic films

― Dan S, Wednesday, 15 March 2023 01:47 (yesterday)

Same here, its due a rewatch. I actually havent seen it since I was a teenager.

For me this is down to Come and See, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, To Be or Not to Be, and maybe The Wizard of Oz, though it's easy to take that movie for granted.

Is she tamed?

I think so, yeah. I understand that a reporter's life provides more freedom than the married domesticity she's trying for at the begining, but it also seems clear to me she's trying for that out of a desperate impulse to cut Grant's character - who she knows is bad for her but she's also attracted to, if not in love with - out of her life. The end is her capitulating, and the fact that her professional life is gonna be more exciting doesn't change that Grant will continue doing whatever he was doing before to make her the steps to cut him off in the first place.

Make her take the steps

His Girl Friday reminds me of The Taming of the Shrew: what looks like domestication is actually a bomb left in the knitting basket.

I am definitely not a Bringing Up Baby person.

Feet up in a celestial anteroom with Preston Sturges for company, Morbs cackles darkly.

I thought Don’t Look Now was an amazing film about a man who is desperate to turn back time because of a tragic event in his life, to escape from the randomness of existence and cruelty of nature. He comes to Venice, where order is imposed on chaos, but ultimately finds that chaos prevails and he can’t escape

with Vagabond, it’s initially easy to relate to her and not accept her passivity, until you realize she just wants to bring her life to an end

I don't get any human feeling from Don't Look Now other than a clammy nihilism. Roeg was a good cinematographer who became convinced (or decided to act like) he was a visionary; to me, he's the actual example of "cold-hearted director manipulating the audience" that some people accuse Kubrick and Greenaway of being. Walkabout is quite good, though.

I don't much care for Roeg either; even The Man Who Fell to Earth can't find a rhythm.

I don't think 'cold-hearted director manipulating the audience' is an accurate description of it at all - the whole thing is about human feeling

Have y'all read the Daphne Du Maurier story.

Roeg isn't cold (nor is "cold" a bad thing, esp in a director); his movies just don't hold my attention.

"I don't get any human feeling from Don't Look Now other than a clammy nihilism."

A couple go to Venice as an aftermath to their child's death. The 'clinical' shooting of scenes is maybe a balance to this obviously, potentially cheaply, manipulative background.

it's been a while so i reserve the right to change my mind but DLN is full of the horror of mortality and loss

That’s what I remember although it’s been a while for me too.

I rewatched DLN a few weeks ago and accusing it of lacking human feeling is baffling

There is also a famous scene of married people doing something that I don’t think has been mentioned yet.

Yeah, but we're all firmly against being shown sex scenes without our consent now

The film is dealing with a heavy subject (and Sutherland does his best), but it's more interested in throwing up chic enigmas than dealing with the emotional ramifications of that subject.

TIL the tide has very much turned against Don’t Look Now. How annoying

agreed... idk i don't find that movie nihilistic at all

I still have a week to watch Come and See...but will I? Stay tuned. Barring that....might be that guy and go for Jaws

The Man Who Fell to Earth is more legit concerned with chic enigmas, i.e. "How good will David Bowie look shirtless in bed?"

but it's more interested in throwing up chic enigmas than dealing with the emotional ramifications of that subject.

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 22 March 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Or it's dealing with a highly charged subject in a way you aren't expecting.

the chic enigma that is death

Sounds like the title of one of tyler’s vu boots

the chic enigma that is death

I can't get this phrase out of my head

Austin Film Society is running Don't Look Now this week...never been a huge fan of it but trying to decide if I should give it a re-view or not..sometimes actually seeing something in a theater totally changes how I feel about it.

Go!

What theater do they do screenings in?

a fuzzy grim reaper would fit right in

https://i.discogs.com/ETH6FuoHU8_Eu9eM6rMIuV0dNpZB4MFy0jR_HzDTq98/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:576/w:580/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQzNzIy/NTctMTM2MzEyMzE3/Ny00MTIzLmpwZWc.jpeg

Lol