Sight and Sound 2022 Round 6: 101-120

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.

I can see hating A Woman Under the Influence. Most Cassavetes films are so stagy that I think you have to be a theater person to appreciate them.

Ha, otm.

I really liked Opening Night for its protagonist Gena Rowlands worrying about her advancing age and possible replacement. She has an experience with a fan that turns tragic, and in her subsequent drunkenness she barely makes it to the stage for an opening night performance.

She then improvises wildly and forces her co-star Cassavetes to improvise. It is absurdly theatrical and seems like a parody of stage acting, but is also pretty great

Wild Strawberries is about how relationships define your life, no matter how fleeting, and how disappointment and loneliness can take it over if you don't give yourself over to other people

just watched Bringing Up Baby having switched it off after 10 minutes the last time I tried a couple of years ago. didnt enjoy it any more this time but persevered, v much not for me. I was a big fan of His Girl Friday but this was just an icecream headache of a film

I will never learn the lesson of Wild Strawberries but I voted for it

just watched Bringing Up Baby having switched it off after 10 minutes the last time I tried a couple of years ago. didnt enjoy it any more this time but persevered, v much not for me. I was a big fan of His Girl Friday but this was just an icecream headache of a film

We're getting far enough from the "acknowledged film classics" and into a more eclectic mix so it seems unlikely to me that anyone would love all 20 films on this list.

Um, I don’t totally buy this since I probably like more of these films than on the prior polls.

It's been years since I've seen Bringing Up Baby, but my takeaway from it was that Katherine Hepburn was so much fun to watch. I think that's the main reason it lingers. Cary Grant is good but he had plenty of better performances.

Sorry, KathArine

Wild Strawberries is about how relationships define your life, no matter how fleeting, and how disappointment and loneliness can take it over if you don't give yourself over to other people

Oh damn, this actually makes me want to watch it again immediately for very personal reasons

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.

great turnout, every film received a vote. there's your answer if it's worth carrying on, ryan!

voted TCM in the end but happy with that winner

Result!!

Lol victory

As someone who does like The Thing considerably, also happy to see TCM trounce it here

Will post 121-140 later this morning

Sight and Sound 2022 Round 6: 121-140