Sight and Sound 2022 Round 2: 21-40

I can tell you what I WON'T consider:

Shoah
8 1/2
Taxi Driver
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

I like the four of'em to some degree, especially the last two.

Quite hard. Has the first film in both polls I've not watched (Chaplin).

I actually have six still unseen here (some really shameful): Joan of Arc, Au hasard Balthazar, The Night of the Hunter, Shoah, Daisies, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

oh man you gotta fire up Night of the Hunger right away

I tend to confuse the shorter Tarkovsky films.

Sorta proud my students dug Au hasard Balthazar last semester (they preferred Pickpocket tho).

Night of the Hunger

look who hasn't had breakfast yet

I've seen Au hasard Balthazar once, never have felt inclined to watch it again, and still consider it one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.

Sorta proud my students dug Au hasard Balthazar last semester (they preferred Pickpocket tho).

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

So do I but I might rewatch.

Confession: I've only seen it once too lol. That was my Big Reveal last semester. The ending unnerved me too much the first time.

of the ones I’ve seen, DO THE RIGHT THING

I was lucky enough to be shown Daisies when I was 17 and it was definitely a key text for my young brain in discovering how experimental cinema could be extremely fun and lively

gonna be hard not to vote for Playtime, one of those filmgoing experiences where i remember just floating out of the theater on a cloud of excitement. "comedy" isnt nearly a big enough word for what it does.

Hmm.

It's nice to see Daisies get recognized, it was pretty obscure when I saw it in an Eastern European humanities class in the early 90s.

Godard and Tarkovsky are my two favourite filmmakers, but Mirror never connected other than as a stylistic exercise, and Breathless is good but atypical. I saw M again last year and loved it a lot more than before, but I think I'll end up voting Balthazar.

I’ve seen more of these. Probably torn between Playtime and Balthasar.

Those two plus Daisies are to me fully realized visions that happen to attack the idea that a movie is a single kind of thing

Night of the Hunter

Taxi Driver — maybe a boring answer but also a top ten movie for me for many reasons.

I think Pather Panchali is the one which is closest to my heart.

Mirror is so good I'm afraid to say something cheap about it.

do the right thing was my #1 when we did the films poll recently. so that one.

Out of the 5 or 6 of these that I've seen, the only one I've rewatched recently is 8 1/2 (well actually only the last half or so, which I caught randomly on TCM one evening). Based on that, I feel confident that it still holds up. I saw it for the first time on the big screen, at a repertory cinema in SF in the mid-90s.

Voted donkey

My top 5, probably:

1. Pather Panchali
2. Taxi Driver
3. Rear Window
4. Night of the Hunter
5. I did, I think, really like Late Spring ages ago, but I'm not even sure it was that; it could have been Early Spring or Late Autumn. If not that, Psycho or Joan of Arc or Portrait of a Lady.

Two of these I haven't seen--Mirror and Daisies--and some I'm indifferent to: Some Like It Hot, Breathless, 8-1/2, and--I saw it again recently and was surprised how little I responded to it--City Lights. One of them, Playtime, I truly hated.

You have to watch Playtime knowing that it's a comedy where every joke falls flat.

I just didn't get it at all.

Just realized the coincidence of Night of the Hunter and Do the Right Thing being in the same group.

My tops:

L’Atalante
Pather Panchali
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Late Spring
Playtime
Do the Right Thing
Au hasard Balthazar
The Night of the Hunter
Psycho
Rear Window

One of them, Playtime, I truly hated.

― clemenza, Friday, January 20, 2023 11:04 AM (eleven minutes ago)

boooooooo

Night of the Hunter is great, cuts to the heart of how fucked up american protestants are

Just realized the coincidence of Night of the Hunter and Do the Right Thing being in the same group.

So coincidental that I don't get the significance.

yeah, clem, I'm not seeing the coincidence?

Both have four word titles with “the” in them

Bill Nunn recites Mitchum's love/hate speech.

finger tattoos

oh right!

electorate hasn’t watched do the right thing recently enough, poll results invalid

Night of the Hunter today, on another day it could be Mirror. With Balthazar and Do the Right Thing just behind

Seen all but Shoah and Some Like It Hot. Not sure I'll ever sit down and watch Shoah right through

One of them, Playtime, I truly hated.

― clemenza, Friday, 20 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

This is one where it really helps for everything to be blown up in the big screen.

You get the idea of Shoals after an hour. Or less.

Shoah. Lol

I feel like you'd get the idea after reading about it but maybe that's unfair. I mean obviously it's important

Lots and lots of moments in these films I have vivid memories of and Shoah has as many as any of them.

For what it's worth I saw Playtime in a theatre. When you're really disliking a film, that's a minus, not a plus.

only one of these featured the music of Public Enemy, so it's pretty easy

xp lol ok. I was thinking the sets look great in the theatre but nevermind.

I really don't mean to disparage the film. I think it's meant for a temperament far from my own.

only one of these featured the music of Public Enemy

M was about a public enemy though

I went with Playtime, but M is a close second.

(I've seen all of these but Shoah.)

voted for Taxi Driver, one of my favorite films of all time. It is totally surreal and seems to take place in a dream. the music is ravishing and seems out of time, and the cinematography is lurid and intoxicating

Sure Bergman gives women more screentime, but it's women as filtered through the psyche of a man from a certain era. Just as an example Isabella Rosselini recently gave an interview to Jesse Thorne where she talked about her mother and him clashing during Autumn Sonata because Ingmar just couldn't imagine a woman choosing a career and not feeling guilt over that.

By contrast with a lot of Fellini there's no pretension that we're getting a view into any psyche save his own. This certainly limits him in certain ways but as I said, it's very what you see is what you get.

Again this isn't meant as a take on the total value of these two directors, I don't need every artist to be a good feminist for me to enjoy their work, but I'm just talking within the confines of discursing straightness and masculinity, as per Dan's post.

Inevitably the roles of women will be filtered through Bergman as he writes the scripts. That's no different to any male director who does the same, like Fassbinder.

But it's not simply a case of more screen time is it? They have personalities and seem fully fleshed dramas, with all their faults. There is nothing comparable going on with Fellini. I can't imagine any actress clashing with Fellini over the psychology of the character on set.

What I'm suggesting is that Bergman's worldview is conservative. I mean obviously it is compared to Fassbinder, but in general the women being fully fleshed out characters doesn't clash in any way with the fetischization of certain norms - it actually kinda reinforces them, by acknowledging the conflicts therein and thus making the whole thing more believable.

I agree with you no actress would be in that situation with Fellini. Nor would any male actor, aside from the one playing his stand in.

You're both right, I think? While I've dinged Bergman here for titling a film Fanny and Alexander which cedes little space for Fanny, I can't think of a major director from the era, for example, writing speeches for Liv Ullmann's wife in Shame that lash against Max von Sydow's marginalizing of her domestic worries; or in limiting the husband's role in Autumn Sonata to observer, watching Ullmann and Ingrid B.'s drama (if I remember correctly Bergman doesn't even tell the film through the husband's POV).

I think of Buñuel, who once balked at being termed a feminist director because of Susana, Viridiana, Diary of a Chambermaid, and Belle de Jour; to a degree he was correct. But in at least a couple of those films he showed curiosity about a woman's role in domestic spaces dominated by men.

(sorry, long post)

Apropos of probably not this conversation, I did enjoy the explicit L'aaventura reference in S2 of The White Lotus.

I haven’t seen Juliet of the Spirits or Nights of Cabiria recently. La Strada seems like a transitional film for Fellini, where he is starting to define his style, with Giulietta Masina starring in a signature role, and with a completely savage performance by Anthony Quinn

What I like most about him though is the visual extravagance of mid-period films like La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and to some extent Amarcord. Whatever reservations I have about his world view and his detachment, there is no one else who approximates his visual aesthetic - depicting societal chaos, catholic superstition, wonder, nostalgia, carnality, altruism - all in an elegant and beautiful way in terms of concept, framing, cinematography.

The scores by Nino Rota were great too

playtime

Man, Night of the Hunter was so good.

What struck me most - and which I wasn't expecting - was just the eerie, hypnotic forward motion of it, the way it moves from tension to dreamy calm, and the recurring image of the stars overhead and the river below. So much of it is carried on the music and Mitchum’s singing, and the music and imagery flow together so perfectly. Absolutely crazy that this is Laughton's only directed film.

I will have to watch that film again

I can never remember anything, but I saw a film within the past month that I thought paid explicit homage to Night of the Hunter's river escape.

Night of the Hunter is on my short list of films that actual manage to feel dreamlike, in the unpredictable and sometimes threatening way of real dreams.

actual-LY, as Tom Lehrer would say.

It's amazing how it gives us the literal facts of Mitchum's character right away in his very first scene. We know right off the bat that he's a serial killer, that he's hunting a widow... but he achieves so much more depth and menace the more we listen to his voice, and finally becomes a kind of nightmare abstraction as this silhouetted figure on horseback.

yeah i might be swayed to night of the hunter tbh

Watched Daisies and--as I suspected--not really for me. I know it's an angry film, but in execution it's whimsical and slapstick-y; much as with Playtime, when it comes to whimsy, I'm like Lou Grant responding to spunk on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I liked the surf music during the mock fashion show, and it looked like no other film I've ever seen, and that's an achievement.

Absolutely crazy that this is Laughton's only directed film.

Peter Lorre had a similar post-war fate. He returned to Germany to direct and co-write a great movie called 'Der Verlorene' ('The Lost One') in 1951, but was never asked to direct again.

This was probably because, at a time when West German cinema was churning out soft-focus Heimatfilme for a traumatised audience, 'Der Verlorene' focuses on the remorse of a scientist who had done secret research for the Nazis and murdered his fiancée when he discovers that she had been working with the Allies. The film didn't go down well at all with German cinemagoers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_q3FcVsLr8

I hate to say it, but I wouldn't mind seeing this series of polls carry on for the directors' poll results, as well (where La Jetee was in the top 35, its highest ranking ever to my knowledge).

I thought we might poll the films on the directors' list that didn't make it to the critics'.

Do you know if the 101+ results might be out by then?

They've got two more days to make good on releasing the ballots in January. My hunch is maybe by the end of February tho.

wonder what's keeping them

They're watching Jeanne Dielman.

They've got two more days to make good on releasing the ballots in January. My hunch is maybe by the end of February tho.

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Sunday, January 29, 2023

I thought I read that they were going to release the top 250 this Tuesday

Ah, indeed:

Get ready for round two: the top 250 of the #SightAndSoundPoll will be revealed on Tuesday 🍿 pic.twitter.com/w2wK0QKle0

— Sight and Sound magazine (@SightSoundmag) January 27, 2023

I would be happy if we continue to poll the films in groups of 20 for both the critics and directors

I'm reading Robin Wood's book on the Apu Trilogy right now, and it's wonderful. I keep wanting to post quotes here.

I feel like before I watch The World of Apu I should rewatch the first two again

I definitely would. I'd rewatch the first as a standalone, but I think the other two are best seen in sequence.

Re-watched Balthazar last night. Hits differently when you get to know an animal.

Besides all that whenever I watch Bresson it's such a reset. The acting, mannerisms, Balthazar is so obliquely told.

Boccaccio was a reference point for the multiple changes of fortune.

Anyway this is mad hard. I have just reasoned out Tarkovsky and Late Spring but I cannot decide between this pair.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)
L’Atalante (Vigo, 1934)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

good winner, Balthazar deserved more votes probably

Love the spread of votes (went for L'Atalante in the end). Shoah not getting any votes is interesting.

I'd vote for any Lanzmann because some of his interviews are like the most heightened drama I've ever seen. The Rabbi who had Eichmann threatening to murder him if he didn't do ridiculous amounts of scholarly research within the hour (so he could pass himself off as a Jewish emigration expert). Dude that planted an axe into a Nazi deathcamp commander's head. It's god's work that he captured this stuff while the people were still alive.

Shoah perhaps needs some updating for contemporary audiences, you could insert pop songs and a narrator saying "but this was an illusion".

Snark aside tho a nine hour documentary about one of the most horrific events in human history is a tough sell, and even if you've gotten around to watching it (my DVD box has been staring at me unwatched for years) you're prob unlikely to think of it as a "favourite", it feels v apples and oranges to compare it to anything else on this list.

BBC2 screened it over two Sunday evenings. I definitely watched the first part, but now come to think of it I don't think I watched the 2nd.

I guess few would think as a favourite. Guessing you didn't vote in the poll, Calzino?

ILX Shoah watchalong club when

Christmas?

xxp

no didn't vote! for anyone put off by the sheer length of Shoah there is Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. and The Last of the Unjust which are both essential and unforgettable.

well, I'm glad my lurker vote for playtime made the difference