MC Yearly Consensus - 1952

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the voting is closed, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[origami_mustache]

1. Ikiru
2. Life of Oharu
3.Umberto D.
4. High Noon
5. Singin' In the Rain

[Spinal]

1. Ikiru
2. Umberto D.
3. Rabbit Seasoning
4. Othello
5. Forbidden Games

[soitgoes...]

1. Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)
2. Forbidden Games (René Clément)
3. Magical Maestro (Tex Avery)
4. Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica)
5. Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Yasujiro Ozu)
------------------------------------------------------
6. The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli)
7. Duck and Cover (Anthony Rizzo)
8. Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly)
9. Rabbit Seasoning (Chuck Jones)
10. Feed the Kitty (Chuck Jones)

HM's
Limelight (Charles Chaplin)
The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Le Plaisir (Max Ophüls)
Park Row (Samuel Fuller)
Children of Hiroshima (Kaneto Shindô)
Casque d'or (Jacques Becker)
Operation: Rabbit (Chuck Jones)
Okaasan (Mikio Naruse)
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann)
Lightning (Mikio Naruse)
Water, Water Every Hare (Chuck Jones)
On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray)
The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith)

[baby doll]

1. Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
2. Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang)
3. The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli)
4. Angel Face (Otto Preminger)
5. Limelight (Charles Chaplin)

I assume it's patently unnecessary to vote for either Ikiru or Singin' in the Rain.

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. Umberto D
2. Singin' in the Rain
3. On Dangerous Ground
4. The Importance of Being Earnest
5. The Bad and the Beautiful

[Boner M]

1. Ikiru
2. Singin' in the Rain
3. Umberto D.
4. Life of Oharu
5. On Dangerous Ground

I assume it's patently unnecessary to vote for either Limelight or The Bad and the Beautiful, as I didn't like them as much as the above five.

[Russ]

1. Umberto D.
2. Feed the Kitty
3. Magical Maestro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBDYNnBoX3E)
4. Rabbit Seasoning
5. Singin' in the Rain

Great year for classic animation shorts.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Ikiru
2. Umberto D.
3. Life of Oharu
4. The Sniper
5. Forbidden Games

[Yxklyx]

1. Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)
2. Forbidden Games (René Clément)
3. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Orson Welles)
4. Bend of the River (Anthony Mann)
5. Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson)

6. The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer)
7. Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker)
8. The Marrying Kind (George Cukor)
9. Angel Face (Otto Preminger)
10. Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)

[Lazlo]

1. Singin’ in the Rain
2. Ikiru
3. High Noon
4. Umberto D.

[Grouchy]

1. Ikiru
2. High Noon
3. Singin' in the Rain
4. Othello
5. Angel Face

[dreamdead]

1. Ikiru
2. Singin' in the Rain
3. Umberto D.
4. Rabbit Seasoning

[The Mike]

1. High Noon
2. Don't Bother to Knock
3. The Quiet Man
4. The Narrow Margin
5. Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla

[monolith94]

1. Othello
2. Umberto D
3. Signin’ In the Rain
4. High Noon
5. On Dangerous Ground

HMs: Water, Water Every Hare
The Importance of Being Earnest

[Grouchy]

2. Don't Bother to Knock
Very good movie.

[Derek]

1. On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray)
2. The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
3. Lightning (Mikio Naruse)
4. Forbidden Games (Réné Clement)
5. Casque d'or (Jacques Becker)
**************************
6. Feed the Kitty (Chuck Jones)
7. The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray)
8. Europa '51 (Roberto Rossellini)
9. Umberto D (Vittorio De Sica)
10. Park Row (Samuel Fuller)

HMs: Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen)
The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer)
Water, Water Every Hare (Chuck Jones)
Rabbit Seasoning (Chuck Jones)
The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli)

[Raiders]

1. Park Row (Fuller)
2. The Lusty Men (N. Ray)
3. The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi)
4. Ikiru (Kurosawa)
5. The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli)

-----------------------------------

6. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles)
7. Singin' in the Rain (Donen)
8. Limelight (Chaplin)
9. Umberto D (De Sica)
10. Angel Face (Preminger)

[Pop Trash]

1. Forbidden Games
2. Ikiru
3. Umberto D.

Kind of an off year for cinema IMO.

[soitgoes...]

1. Forbidden Games
2. Ikiru
3. Umberto D.

Kind of an off year for cinema IMO.I think it's another great example of why the 50's pretty much rule.

[Ezee E]

1. Umberto D
2. Ikiru
3. On Dangerous Ground
4. High Noon
5. Singin' In The Rain

[thefourthwall]

1. Singin' In the Rain
2. High Noon
3. The Quiet Man

[soitgoes...]

This one will be wrapping up shortly as well. Get those ballots in!!

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Ikiru
2. Limelight
3. High Noon
4. Water, Water Every Hare
5. Umberto D.

[soitgoes...]

I'm probably not going to have enough time to get to this until Friday. Besides this needs more ballots.

[Duncan]

1. Othello
2. Ikiru
3. Rabbit Seasoning
4. Singing in the Rain

Lots to see, obv.

[Spinal]

More?

[soitgoes...]

Closed. This is going to be a Top 9 apparently, as the tenth place film failed to receive 10 points. :|

[soitgoes...]

#9

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/looneytunes_bugs.jpg

Rabbit Seasoning (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=53147316748511 92994&ei=S0DKSJ2iKYSKqQOyoPS2Ag&q=rabbit+seasoning)

Director: Chuck Jones

Country: USA

Daffy Duck tricks Elmer Fudd into believing it's rabbit season; but Bugs Bunny uses a female disguise and faulty pronouns to fight back.

It is the sequel to Rabbit Fire, and the second entry in the "Hunting trilogy" directed by Jones and written by Michael Maltese. (The only major difference in format between Rabbit Fire and Rabbit Seasoning is that the former takes place during the springtime, while the latter takes place in autumn. The third cartoon, Duck! Rabbit! Duck!, takes place in the winter.)

"The art of Rabbit Seasoning is superb, but the dialogue and direction here really crackle. Interplay between Bugs and Daffy is always a good thing, and here (as it should be) it's very snappy, which is a credit to both Maltese as a writer and Blanc as a performer, who for all intents and purposes, was arguing with himself." - Ryan Arthur (Not a lot in the way of critical quotes for this one.)

[soitgoes...]

#8

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/on_dangerous_ground.jpg

On Dangerous Ground

Director: Nicholas Ray

Country: USA

Hard, withdrawn city cop Jim Wilson roughs up one too many suspects and is sent upstate to help investigate the murder of a young girl in the winter countryside. There he meets Mary Malden, whom he finds attractive and independent. However, Mary's brother is chief suspect in the killing. And Mary herself is blind.

After being completed, the film was shelved for two years, which was not uncommon in RKO under the control of Howard Hughes. Upon Hughes insistence, 10 minutes was cut out of the film, and a scene which originally was just before the ending, the assassination of Myrna, was moved to the ending of the first part of the film.

"One of noir’s most soulful and poetic expressions of hope and redemption – two commodities usually in short supply in the fatalistic genre – Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground begins hard and bitter, only to slowly transform into something gentle and poignant." - Nick Schager

[soitgoes...]

#7

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/othello_welles-1.jpg

The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice

Director: Orson Welles

Country: USA/Italy/France/Morocco

Desdemona, daughter of a Venetian aristocrat, elopes with Moorish military hero Othello, to the great resentment of Othello's envious underling Iago. Alas, Iago knows Othello's weakness, and with chilling malice works on him with but too good effect...

The movie was shot over three years and production was stopped twice, mainly because Wells ran out of money. He then starred in the films The Third Man (1949) and Prince of Foxes (1949). He took his payment from those films and used them as money for Othello.

"For all the liberties taken with the play, Orson Welles's 1952 independent feature may well be the greatest Shakespeare film (Welles's later Chimes at Midnight is the only other contender)--a brooding expressionist dream made in eerie Moorish locations over nearly three years, yet held together by a remarkably cohesive style and atmosphere." - Jonathan Rosenbaum

[soitgoes...]

#6

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/a20RenE920ClE9ment20Forbidden2 0G-1.jpg

Forbidden Games

Director: René Clément

Country: France

A small girl fleeing the Nazi conquest of Paris in 1940 with her family loses both of her parents and her dog to a strafing attack. She is taken in by a nearby peasant family and quickly develops a close friendship with their son. When she buries the dog, the two of them decide to create an entire animal cemetery and then go to great lengths to obtain crosses for the graves.

In a television interview Brigitte Fossey, who played the little Paulette, revealed that the film had originally been shot as a short, and then it was later decided to extend it into a feature film. Unfortunately she had lost her milk teeth and Georges Poujouly (who plays the boy Michel) had had his hair cut to play in Nous sommes tous des assassins (1952). So, in many scenes of the movie Paulette has false teeth and Michel is wearing a wig.

"Clémént's aesthetic isn't faultless. Unlike De Sica or Téchiné, he's unable to give his fairy-tale iconography the explicitly lyrical affectation that might have helped to ease the dilemma of his cartoonish vision of peasant life, but the man had an uncanny gift for structural and theoretical contrast... Besides, it's difficult to fault a film that scrutinizes the veracity of childhood with such clarity." - Ed Gonzalez

[soitgoes...]

#5

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/oharu10_00_39_38-1.jpg

The Life of Oharu

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

Country: Japan

A fifty-year-old prostitute, no longer able to attract men, looks back on her sad life. Once a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court at Kyoto, Oharu fell in love with, and became the lover of, a man below her station. They were discovered, and Oharu and her family were exiled. For Oharu there followed a life filled with one sorrow and humiliation after another.

This film, which was director Kenji Mizoguchi's dream project, was severely under-financed, and the production was forced to use a warehouse instead of a regular sound stage. This warehouse happened to be located near railways, and each time a train passed by, they had to stop shooting, which made the shooting of the film even more difficult with the director's obsessive use of long, continuous, uninterrupted takes. The same warehouse was also used for Josef Von Sternberg's film 'The Saga of Anatahan'.

"Life is Oharu is not a ghost story in the same way that Ugetsu is, but it sure feels like one. Via the film's unnerving pictorialism and Ichirô Saitô's equally spare original music, Mizoguchi evokes a culture's disconnect from the soul, represented in the film by Oharu herself." - Ed Gonzalez

[soitgoes...]

#4

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/high-noon.gif

High Noon

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Country: USA

On the day he gets married and hangs up his badge, lawman Will Kane is told that a man he sent to prison years before, Frank Miller, is returning on the noon train to exact his revenge. Having initially decided to leave with his new spouse, Will decides he must go back and face Miller. However, when he seeks the help of the townspeople he has protected for so long, they turn their backs on him. It seems Kane may have to face Miller alone, as well as the rest of Miller's gang, who are waiting for him at the station...

Bill Clinton's all-time favorite film. He watched it seventeen times during his two terms as President of the United States. This film was intended as an allegory in Hollywood for the failure of Hollywood people to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era.

"Familiar but far from conventional in the fabric of story and theme and marked by a sure illumination of human character, this tale of a brave and stubborn sheriff in a town full of do- nothings and cowards has the rhythm and roll of a ballad spun in pictorial terms. And, over all, it has a stunning comprehension of that thing we call courage in a man and the thorniness of being courageous in a world of bullies and poltroons." - Bosley Crowther

[soitgoes...]

#3

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/singinrain36-1.jpg

Singin' in the Rain

Directors: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly

Country: USA

In 1927, Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont are a famous on-screen romantic pair. Lina, however, mistakes the on-screen romance for real love. Don has worked hard to get where he is today, with his former partner Cosmo. When Don and Lina's latest film is transformed into a musical, Don has the perfect voice for the songs. But Lina - well, even with the best efforts of a diction coach, they still decide to dub over her voice. Kathy Selden is brought in, an aspiring actress, and while she is working on the movie, Don falls in love with her. Will Kathy continue to "aspire", or will she get the break she deserves?

Gene Kelly insulted Debbie Reynolds for not being able to dance. Fred Astaire, who was hanging around the studio, found her crying under a piano and helped her with her dancing. Gene Kelly had a 103-degree fever when he danced to the title song.

"Take as a token of the picture its title, Singin' in the Rain, which has no more to do with its story than it has to do with performing dogs. Of all things, this song-and-dance contrivance is an impudent, offhand comedy about the outlandish making of movies back in the sheik-and-flapper days when they were bridging- the perilous chasm from silent to talking films. And its plot, if that's what you'd call it, concerns a silent film star who is linked with a slut-voiced leading lady while wooing a thrushy new young thing." - Bosley Crowther

[soitgoes...]

#2

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/menuumbd01-1.jpg

Umberto D.

Director: Vittorio De Sica

Country: Italy

Umberto Domenico Ferrari, an elderly and retired civil servant, is desperately trying to maintain a decent standard of living on a rapidly dwindling state pension. But he's up against his tyrannical landlady, who keeps demanding rent that he can't pay (while renting his room out to prostitutes during the day), and his only friends are the pregnant housemaid and his little dog Flike...

Many in the film's cast were new to acting, including Carlo Battisti and Maria-Pia Casilio, the two principal actors. Others, including Umberto's cruel landlady, Antonia (Lina Gennari), were established professional actors.

"Umberto D tells what could be a formula story, but not in a formula way: Its moments seem generated by what might really happen. A formula film would find a way to manufacture a happy ending, but good fortune will not fall from the sky for Umberto. Perhaps his best luck is simply that he has the inner strength to endure misfortune without losing self-respect. It is said that at one level or another, Chaplin's characters were always asking that we love them. Umberto doesn't care if we love him or not. That is why we love him." - Roger Ebert

[soitgoes...]

#1

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee171/soitgoes22/ikirublog-1.jpg

Ikiru

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Country: Japan

Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing. He learns he is dying of cancer and wants to find some meaning in his life. He finds himself unable to talk with his family, and spends a night on the town with a novelist, but that leaves him unfulfilled. He next spends time with a young woman from his office, but finally decides he can make a difference through his job...

The song sung by Kanji Watanabe, in the bar, is called Gondola no Uta, "The Gondola Song". Written in 1915, it is a song about women and how they should find love before their time has run out.

"It's extremely uneven-there are slick and sentimental passages and some that are impenetrable. But there are also emotional revelations and there's a superb sequence-almost an epiphany-when the dying man, who has accomplished what he hoped to, sits in a swing in the snow and hums a little song." - Pauline Kael

[soitgoes...]

1. Ikiru - 64
2. Umberto D. - 49.5
3. Singin' in the Rain - 39.5
4. High Noon - 29
5. The Life of Oharu - 23
6. Forbidden Games - 21
7. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice - 19.5
8. On Dangerous Ground - 17
9. Rabbit Seasoning - 13

HMs: The Bad and the Beautiful - 8.5

[Kurosawa Fan]

A disappointing amount of participation this time around. Still, the right film landed in the top spot, so I shouldn't complain.

[thefourthwall]

No Quiet Man. :sad:

[soitgoes...]

A disappointing amount of participation this time around. Still, the right film landed in the top spot, so I shouldn't complain.Yeah, I'm surprised.