Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

There’s only 4 of these that I have any specific memory of how they go. Probably 2 or 3 others that I believe I’ve seen but have no memory of. I guess I shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but voting anyway, for SitR which is the only one I’ve rewatched recently and which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'm not gonna poll the directors' list because too much overlap but might be nice to have it here:

1) 2001
2) Citizen Kane
3) The Godfather
=4) Jeanne Dielman
=4) Tokyo Story
=6) Vertigo
=6) 8 1/2
8) Mirror
=9) In the Mood for Love
=9) Close-up
=9) Persona
=12) Taxi Driver
=12) Barry Lyndon
=14) Beau Travail
=14) Seven Samurai
=14) Breathless
=14) Stalker
18) Apocalypse Now
19) A Woman Under the Influence
=20) Bicycle Thieves
=20) Rashomon

Big outlier here is the Cassavetes, I think?

SiTR would be an extremely sensible pick for the greatest movie ever made, imo.

2001 kind of a perfect choice for directors since it probably represents their greatest dream: full control over a big studio budget, major cultural impact, personal/ambitious/uncompromising.

Big outlier here is the Cassavetes, I think?

Yes, that's interesting. It's almost surely the least scripted film on the list. I suppose it's because he was able to get such stellar performances from Rowlands and Falk.

Rewatched La règle for something like the fifteenth time. It is insane how good it is. Just wonderful acting on every level, even the smallest roles.

Nora Gregor's terrible!

Depends how much French you know to spot her rotten accent.

I'm not straight and am not inclined (ok maybe a little inclined) to connect with romantic films about straight people, but In the Mood for Love is an amazing film. As I mentioned before it is a compressed, complicated story that advances in largely shorthand scenes with unexpected moments that are suddenly intimately dilated. it is beautiful to watch

good posts abt regle de jeu. one of the most movie movies ever, a pleasure to watch be a movie. i like that in addition to being a “sumptuous farce” and having passages of terrifying gesamtkunstwerk stuff like the symphony-of-death hunting scene it also has classic instructional fun-w-yr-friends indie-filmmaking moments like the shot of someone fanning some smoke from out of frame left while renoir staggers up a nondescript hillock clutching his hat like wow what a terrible car crash!! great stuff.

du, lol.

Rules was for several years the required text in my film course's capstone project, but, alas, my students Just Didn't Get It. The last three semesters I've used The 400 Blows.

is that a Wilt Chamberlain biopic

Oscar Wilde biopic

Many will disagree, but I feel like the big Altman ensemble films do what La règle du jeu does while reflecting a social milieu closer to my own. La grande illusion is the only Renoir I've really loved throughout.

What other Renoir have you watched?

Watching the '30s films reissued by Criterion in the last decade (Toni, La Chienne, The Crime of Monsieur Lange), never mind Boudu and La Bête Humaine, have considerably enhanced my appreciation. He was already mastering deep focus for the sake of depicting characters interacting with freshness; he's one of those directors who captures the smell of air and grass.

Other than the two we're discussing, I've seen La Chienne, Une partie de campagne, La Marseillaise, La Bête Humaine, and The River, but it's been so long I had to look it up. I was bringing it up relating to reasons why your students might not respond to his films.

one of those directors who captures the smell of air and grass

I know what you mean, but from his films I remember a few minutes of nature and then long scenes of fairly theatrical dialogue in stuffy sets.

Which Altman films do you have in mind? I'm struggling to think of one where I, personally, relate to the social milieu but maybe I'm blanking on something obvious

the rough and tumble port life as depicted in Popeye

I was bringing it up relating to reasons why your students might not respond to his films.

Oh! Yeah, for sure.

I remember a few minutes of nature and then long scenes of fairly theatrical dialogue in stuffy sets.

What I love about Toni, Une Partie de Campagne, and La Bête Humaine is how often the characters lie on hills, sit by rivers, while his camera's alert to the sun and clouds.

gosford park borders on remake in places, but assume that's not the milieu in question

hard not to find yourself in nashville tho even if fleetingly

he's one of those directors who captures the smell of air and grass.

Yes, this is what I love about A Day in the Country. You could probably do a whole piece just on rivers in Renoir films.

Sesonske’s writings on these films are good – he likes finding mythic and pagan themes in Renoir, e.g. Marceau in The Rules of the Game as a Pan type who invades the castle and then retreats to the woods in the end.

or Boudu.

Nora Gregor's terrible!

lol, okay that's fair, I wasn't really thinking of her. I was more thinking of Lisette, Robert, Marceau, all the party guests (how common was it to have a sympathetically portrayed gay character in this period?)

Even so, the film is able to absorb her performance. Christine is supposed to have a conspicuous accent and be a bit out of her element, someone who doesn’t seem to possess much guile, which is why they all think they can keep the affair between la Chesnaye and Geneviève from her. She turns that to her advantage a few times. I love how everyone is delighted by her little speech where she declares that she and Andre spent so many afternoons "sous le signe si rare de l'amitié" while meanwhile Dalio is mugging like crazy right next to her.

mugging with relief and terror

I don’t think there’s a director with a fuller trove than Renoir. Boudu, M. Lange, Day in the Country, Rules, the River, Le petit theatre … even something like Grande illusion, which I love about as much as I can possibly love a war movie

Buñuel and Ozu maybe, yes

I've watched Elena and Her Men three times in the hopes that it'll click. I know it will.

I managed to totally forget Golden Coach and French Can Can … what a career

french can can is a riot

I still have a lot left to see. La Marseillaise was not great, as I recall.

Nobody mentioned La Chienne yet?

I did.

Oh, okay, I see now./zingproblems

La chienne is one I need to watch again. In my memory, it’s bested by Scarlet Street.

Just got La Chienne from the library.

La Chienneis one of my favorite Renoir films, it is very cynical and hard-bitten. Lulu and Dédé are conning Legrand, a clerk at a Parisian hosiery firm, and taking him for a ride. He eventually realizes he has been duped and

I won’t say what happens after that.

It is a noir film that anticipated the concept of film noir

Poetic realism innit.

Another great role for and performance from Michel Simon.

Maybe it's seeing them on so many scratched 16mm prints and bad video transfers 30 years ago that has left the Renoir films seeming so dusty in my mind.

a scratched 16mm print sounds like a beautiful way to watch a renoir

The beginning of La Bete Humaine with Gabin and Carette wordlessly operating the train is so good.

I discovered Bunuel thanks to bad video transfers. My uni had every Mexican film on terrible VHS. I binged in the '90s.

on a formal level la nuit du carrefour is essential renoir imo, sublime and uncanny

Get on those Criterion versions!

I discovered Bunuel thanks to bad video transfers. My uni had every Mexican film on terrible VHS. I binged in the '90s.

It also travelled to the heel of Italy and then back to the FIDI Alamo Drafthouse.

The local library's VHS copy of Hiroshima Mon Amour was so fuzzy that I didn't realize I was actually coming down with flu while watching it, I thought it just looked that way.

Everything had haloes.