Sight and Sound 2022 Round 7: 121-140

Probably going for Parajanov but a couple of other considerations.

The Colour of Pomegranates (Sergei Paradjanov; 1968)
The Ascent (Larissa Shepitko; 1977)
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman; 1957)

Not seen:

Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks; 1939)
It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra; 1946)
Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné; 1945)

I've not seen this either

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch; 1932)

have fun!

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this is actually the first section of the list where there's none I have a strong personal connection too

fanny and alexander is so incredible but i will prob vote for the slightly dearer to my heart johnny guitar

The coincidental sequence here of Johnny Guitar-Umbrellas-Pomegranates is quite the visual feast. (I suppose you could add The Matrix there too, but ... nah.)

would be interesting to end on The Ascent, which does so much with the color white

regarding All That Heaven Allows - the incredible expressionist coloring of the film especially at the end, the camera frames, the uptight family and melodrama of a small town scandal about an older woman and younger man, the fairytale ending - I try to imagine what people at the time thought of it

Do people like Johnny Guitar more for being in the Almodóvar movie? I think I do.

Meanwhile: I'm rewatching _The Color of Pomegranates_. Every early MTV director stole a medium shot and visual effect.

regarding All That Heaven Allows - the incredible expressionist coloring of the film especially at the end, the camera frames, the uptight family and melodrama of a small town scandal about an older woman and younger man, the fairytale ending - I try to imagine what people at the time thought of it

― Dan S

if the movie had ended with Wyman entombed with the TV set bought by her children, it might've been the American equivalent of Dreiser or something

Ha!

I still have a blind spot on that one, maybe because I haven’t really watched it enough times or even watched it properly once. Magnificent Obsession I’ve seen enough to like, to name the most adjacent film of his.

all that heaven allows is such a pure paean to unashamed desire and love of self and it has shades of everything that tugs at my own desire and sexuality, even as it's somewhat aware that those things are often seen as foolish by everyone else and that it can't help but be a somewhat unreachable fantasia in the end. i saw it first in college, the first time i'd seen rock hudson in a movie, and he made a big impression on me lol. you have to really have a soft spot for like thoreau and whitman to really fall for it imo. it also helps to be somewhat familiar with what it's like to be a closet case. i'm very emotionally attached to it and i'll be voting for it in this poll.

it's also a deeply american film that's kind of about moving out west even if no one in it actually moves anywhere. maybe i just like to imagine that idk. it's a huge 'comfort food' movie for me. also agnes moorehead is such a supreme best friend and jacqueline dewit as mona is so purely detestable, i love both of them. i don't recall seeing a movie that shows just how contemptible one's own adult children can be and i love it for that. idk maybe these things are more standard soap opera romance archetypes than i imagine, it's not like i know much else in this genre, but they're just perfectly handled in this movie.

those are great posts map, which really describe the film for me

on another front, Aguirre is about a harrowing journey over the Andes and down the Amazon by conquistadors in search of El Dorado. Aguirre, the second in command of the expedition, becomes obsessed by a vision of great achievement and goes insane. The scenes toward the end of him floating down the river by himself are haunting

if the movie had ended with Wyman entombed with the TV set bought by her children, it might've been the American equivalent of Dreiser or something

True, and I'm glad the movie continued after that just as I am that A.I. continued after the Blue Fairy sequence.

I particularly love the arc that Cary's daughter goes through, from the overly analytical stick in the mud to the very-much-still-a-teen child to the one, of the two, who realizes the mistake she's made.

Wyman and Hudson are genuinely touching together.

TMI

too little information

Trouble in Paradise, with Fanny and Alexander and Pulp Fiction being other contenders.

A Day in the Country -- watched it recently. The P-A Renoir look I didn't care much of, but that ending is a gut-punch. Criterion special features indicate that it was always intended as a short film.

Only Angels Have Wings -- sorry, cary grant's character is just a conservative prick, letting employees die to make a little more money.

That's a reductive reading of what his character suffers when Thomas Mitchell dies or earlier when Joe dies (the "Where's Joe?" sequence is masterful in nailing a certain American attitude toward death), not to mention that he's not sympathetic at all. The film's on Jean Arthur's side.

compassionate conservative, then -- he cares, but does nothing

I want to say that I don't really get how someone could love Taxi Driver and hate Raging Bull--there's such a continuum there for me--but Kael felt exactly the same.

― clemenza, Tuesday, April 4, 2023 10:57 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Late to the party, but Taxi Driver is easily a top ten film for me and I don't even put Raging Bull in my top ten Scorsese films. As much as I really really like it, I think it's beautiful and well-done and acted in ways that take me out of it, it's kinda of a cold movie for a movie with such hot blooded emotions running thru the characters. I also probably find Travis' slow hazily outlined descent more compelling, the way DeNiro manages to create such a multifaceted character who is at war with himself and everyone else, who is in some scenes such a good guy and in others a nightmarish stalker figure, and he seems like a "walking contradiction" but like many irl reporting later, he's just a quiet nice guy a lot of the time who keeps to himself. It's just that no one knows what he's thinking or planning.

It does help that it's beautiful to look at, w/a really remarkable soundtrack (frighteningly off-kilter when it's not achingly beautiful), and mesmerizing in the way an insomniac might see the world at 3am. Idk the cinematic intelligence it took to create this is just sky high.

So yeah to sum up TD is immersive and I could watch it once per week for life, RB is I think largely brilliant but in a way that keeps me on the outside looking in, which is not the case w/my preferred Scorsese jams. Also should add in TD I feel like I'm watching Travis Bickle, in RB I feel like I'm watching what is genuinely an amazing DeNiro performance.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Fanny and Alexander is an incredibly beautiful and very dark Christmas film, with resonant scenes of childhood in relationship to ritual, family secrets, religion, and the theater.

I mentioned elsewhere that I read that maybe Bergman neglected focusing on Fanny in the film because of his fraught relationship with his sister, but that is just speculation

Nice of him to give her first billing, in any case

I can't embrace it totally because Franny interests him not at all

it is a movie like all other movies with completely arbitrary characters and titles that sometimes don't make sense

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

I’ll take it

Nice. I expected to be the only Children of Paradise voter, glad I'm not! This is stacked list, though, so many great movies.

I’ll take it too.

Johnny Guitar deserved a vote, tho

Thought the same.

it is a great film

Nobody warned me about the ridiculous fart gags in Fanny And Alexander.

Maybe you should have expected it after reading the directorial credit.

what if fanny & alexander fought the farting kids from Ozu's Ohayu

Loool!