Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

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.

Hell of a story wrt La Chienne

In the film Michel Simon falls in love with Janie Marèse, and he did off-screen as well, while Marèse fell for Georges Flamant, who plays the pimp. Renoir and producer Pierre Braunberger had encouraged the relationship between Flamant and Marèse in order to get the fullest conviction into their performances (La Chienne was Flamant's first acting experience). After the film had been completed Flamant, who could barely drive, took Marèse for a drive, crashed the car and she was killed. At the funeral Michel Simon fainted and had to be supported as he walked past the grave. He threatened Renoir with a gun, saying that the death of Marèse was all his fault. "Kill me if you like", responded Renoir, "but I have made the film".[2]

christ

Forgot about that.

:(

Very French

Ah ha. Back to the Copacabana.

Wow, that is a strange story. Michel Simon's Legrand faints during the sentencing in the film as well.

Ended up voting for SITR, tho Kiarostami and Ozu are strong contenders too.

Watching Beau Travail again, I thought, Claire Denis could do Paul Bowles justice.

La Chienne was good. I like the seediness of the art world - basically no distinction between the pimps, critics, and art dealers.

I am puzzled on one plot detail: Is it supposed to be ambiguous whether Maurice killed Lulu? It looked to me like the knife fell on the bed and neither of them saw it, so I thought that she had accidentally been cut. The Wiki plot description says that he attacks her with the knife. But we don't see it happen; instead there's that strange cut to the outdoor scene and a kitten outside. I guess it's more explicit in the novel, probably.

Pulled the trigger for Close-Up but Rules of the Game was the closest of seconds, followed by Dielman

Missed this earlier this month:

RIP Michael Snow (1928-2023)

He cast his votes for the Greatest Films of All Time in the 2022 #SightAndSoundPoll, selecting four films, three of which are his own pic.twitter.com/d8bVeVk2G3

— Sight and Sound magazine (@SightSoundmag) January 6, 2023

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Watched the first 30 seconds of Seven Samurai last night

Just kidding

I liked what Ebert said, that Seven Samurai "represents a great divide in his work; most of his earlier films … subscribe to the Japanese virtues of teamwork, fitting in, going along, conforming. All his later films are about misfits, noncomformists and rebels.”

it still wouldn't be in my top 10 for this poll, though

I have made sure that some of you will be aghast when The Godfather's one vote places it above films you love.

lol, that is sure to be the case for In the Mood for Love

re In the Mood for Love, “The food culture of 1960s Hong Kong plays a central role throughout the film. The lonely pair continue to run into each other at the dai pai dong, ordering noodles to eat by themselves while their respective spouses “work late.” Mrs. Chan offers to make taro soup for Mr. Chow. When a drunken landlord accidentally traps them together inside Mr. Chow’s bedroom, they pass the time by eating.”

I have probably seen seven samurai over a dozen times and I will likely watch it again this year