Sight and Sound 2022 Round 2: 21-40

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