MC Decade Consensus - 1960s

[Spinal]

Submit your ten favorite eligible films from this decade and in a week StanleyK will give you a top twenty.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-10 points
2nd Place- 8 points
3rd Place- 7 points
4th Place- 6 points
5th Place- 5 points
6th Place - 4 points
7th Place - 3.5 points
8th Place - 3 points
9th Place - 2.5 points
10th Place - 2 points

As you can see, the scale is weighted to give your top film a little bonus and to make sure that the difference between a 6th place and a 10th place is not too drastic.

Ten eligible films must be listed. Please make any edits by making a new post and telling me what changes have been made.

PLEASE READ:
In order to be eligible for this vote, a film must have placed in the top 10 for the Yearly Consensus Poll for the year it was released. Honorable mention films are not eligible. Since you only have ten slots to fill, I want you to focus on films that have a realistic chance of making the final list, so that we may achieve the most accurate results possible. My goal is to increase the influence of your vote. Please feel free to post an additional list that reflects your "true" top films of the decade. However, only lists with ten eligible films will be counted towards the final poll.

In order to add some suspense to the final results, you may (if you choose) PM your ballot to StanleyK instead of posting it in the thread below. Either method of voting will be acceptable. (But please do not do both.) "Secret" ballots will be revealed after the final poll is posted.

You may begin now.

Eligible films
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
8 ½ (Fellini)
A Hard Day’s Night (Lester)
A Man for All Seasons (Zinnemann)
A Woman is a Woman (Godard)
Alphaville (Godard)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
Army of Shadows (Melville)
Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
Band of Outsiders (Godard)
Belle de jour (Buñuel)
Blowup (Antonioni)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)
Breathless (Godard)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill)
Carnival of Souls (Harvey)
Charade (Donen)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda)
Contempt (Godard)
Cool Hand Luke (Rosenberg)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick)
Easy Rider (Hopper)
Eyes Without a Face (Franju)
Faces (Cassavetes)
Fail-Safe (Lumet)
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer)
For a Few Dollars More (Leone)
High and Low (Kurosawa)
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Jones/Washam)
I Am Cuba (Kalatozov)
If … (Anderson)
Il Posto (Olmi)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut)
Juliet of the Spirits (Fellini)
Kes (Loach)
L’Eclisse (Antonioni)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
La Jetée (Marker)
La Notte (Antonioni)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
L'Avventura (Antonioni)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
Le Samouraï (Melville)
Le Trou (Becker)
Loves of a Blonde (Forman)
Marnie (Hitchcock)
Masculin, féminin (Godard)
Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger)
Mouchette (Bresson)
My Life to Live (Godard)
My Night at Maud's (Rohmer)
Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
Onibaba (Shindô)
Pas de deux (McLaren)
Peeping Tom (Powell)
Persona (Bergman)
Pierrot le Fou (Godard)
Planet of the Apes (Schaffner)
Play Time (Tati)
Point Blank (Boorman)
Psycho (Hitchcock)
Red Beard (Kurosawa)
Repulsion (Polanski)
Rosemary's Baby (Polanski)
Satyricon (Fellini)
Scorpio Rising (Anger)
Shadows Of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)
Shock Corridor (Fuller)
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut)
Take the Money and Run (Allen)
The Apartment (Wilder)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
The Birds (Hitchcock)
The Firemen's Ball (Forman)
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Leone)
The Graduate (Nichols)
The Great Escape (J. Sturges)
The Haunting (Wise)
The House is Black (Farrokhzad)
The Hustler (Rossen)
The Innocents (Clayton)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
The Producers (Brooks)
The Servant (Losey)
The Shop on Main Street (Kadár/Klos)
The Trial (Welles)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy)
The Virgin Spring (Bergman)
The War Game (Watkins)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman)
Tokyo Drifter (Suzuki)
Viridiana (Buñuel)
Week End (Godard)
West Side Story (Robbins/Wise)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
Winter Light (Bergman)
Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
Yojimbo (Kurosawa)

[Spinal]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Winter Light
3. Dr. Strangelove
4. The Virgin Spring
5. The War Game
6. Onibaba
7. The Firemen's Ball
8. The Battle of Algiers
9. Satyricon
10. Hour of the Wolf

[Irish]

Toughest decade to whittle down to 10 movies, by far.

This will require some pondering.

Edit: Except if you're Spinal, who apparently had his list at the ready. :lol:

Here we go:

1. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
2. 8 ½ (Fellini)
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
4. A Hard Day’s Night (Lester)
5. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
6. The Apartment (Wilder)
7. Psycho (Hitchcock)
8. Breathless (Godard)
9. The Hustler (Rossen)
10. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)

I'm sure about the placement of my top 5, less so about the others. The Hustler and Liberty Valence won't be anywhere near the final consensus, but I had to vote for them anyway. They're great movies.

Especially Liberty Valence, because in my mind it's one of the most important westerns made, the perfect bookend to a genre that more or less started with Stagecoach, with story themes and stars that span the Ford/Wayne heroic western to the noirish Mann/Stewart teamups to the modern anti-hero of the Leone/Eastwood pictures.

Honorables:
Belle de jour (Buñuel)
Alphaville (Godard)
Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
Rosemary's Baby (Polanski)
The Great Escape (J. Sturges)
The Haunting (Wise)
For a Few Dollars More (Leone)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Jones/Washam)

In my heart of hearts, though, if I could choose what I wanted and make you all believe it, my vote would be this:

1. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
2. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
3. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
4. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
5. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
6. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
7. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
8. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
9. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
10. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)

For my money, there isn't anything in any decade that matches the power of that picture.

[StanleyK]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Winter Light
3. Dr. Strangelove
4. The Virgin Spring
5. The War Game
6. Onibaba
7. The Firemen's Ball
8. The Battle of Algiers
9. Satyricon
10. Hour of the Wolf

Half of your list being Kubrick + Bergman = win.

[Spinal]

Edit: Except if you're Spinal, who apparently had his list at the ready. :lol:

http://filmepidemiclist.blogspot.com/

[StanleyK]

1. Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
3. 8½ (Federico Fellini)
4. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky)
5. La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini)
6. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
7. Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman)
8. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
9. Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
10. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson) - tentative placement.

Window Water Baby Moving would make the list; so would The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West, probably, if I'd seen them recently.

Mo' great shit: Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard), L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni), Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean), Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero), Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville), The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman), The War Game (Peter Watkins), Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara)



The best decade.

[Eleven]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Play Time
3. A Hard Day’s Night
4. Night of the Living Dead
5. 8 ½
6. Lawrence of Arabia
7. Il Posto
8. Viridiana
9. The Battle of Algiers
10. Peeping Tom

HMs: Army of Shadows, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Kes, L'Avventura, Persona, Rosemary's Baby, The Firemen's Ball, The House is Black, The Virgin Spring, The War Game.

Not Eligible: Charulata, High School, I Fidanzati, Mandabi, The Exiles, The Exterminating Angel, The Manchurian Candidate, The Naked Kiss, The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, Titicut Follies.

[B-side]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
2. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
3. Faces (Cassavetes)
4. My Night at Maud's (Rohmer)
5. Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
6. Persona (Bergman)
7. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
8. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
9. Masculin, féminin (Godard)
10. 8½ (Fellini)

[Russ]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
2. Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
3. Play Time (Tati)
4. Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
5. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
6. Viridiana (Buñuel)
7. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
8. Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski)
9. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)
10. Psycho (Hitchcock)

[Pop Trash]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Psycho
3. The Graduate
4. Persona
5. La Jetee
6. Jules and Jim
7. Bonnie and Clyde
8. Breathless
9. The Apartment
10. Belle de Jour

[B-side]

Shame 2001 isn't going to make the list.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. The Battle of Algiers
2. Breathless
3. The Graduate
4. Satyricon
5. The War Game
6. The Virgin Spring
7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
8. Cleo from 5 to 7
9. Onibaba
10. A Hard Day's Night

With apologies to: Rosemary's Baby, Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe, Il Posto, The Birds

You people suck for ignoring: The Miracle Worker, Mamma Roma, The Pawnbroker, The Red and the White, Shame, Romeo and Juliet, Z, Double Suicide

First person not to list 2001, ftw!

[Pop Trash]

Shame 2001 isn't going to make the list.

It's underrated. People just need to give it chance.

[StanleyK]

How come you didn't wait for the 70's consensus to end, Spinal?

[baby doll]

Eligible:

L'Année dernière Ã* Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
Cléo de 5 Ã* 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
L'eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967)
Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

Ineligible:

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)
Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)
Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
Petulia (Richard Lester, 1968)
The Red and the White (Miklós Jancsó, 1967)
Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)
Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)

[Mysterious Dude]

The Battle of Algiers is eligible. Vote for it or I will cut you.

[Irish]

Shame 2001 isn't going to make the list.

Kinda surprised that so far Strangelove isn't getting more votes.

[baby doll]

The Battle of Algiers is eligible. Vote for it or I will cut you.I might, except that I've only seen it twice. That's good enough for my ineligible, doesn't-really-count list, but I'd like to see a film at least three times before actually voting for it.

[Spinal]

How come you didn't wait for the 70's consensus to end, Spinal?

Because it was taking a long time.

[Dillard]

1. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
3. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Leone)
4. Band of Outsiders (Godard)
5. Psycho (Hitchcock)
6. Play Time (Tati)
7. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
8. Le Samouraï (Melville)
9. La Notte (Antonioni)
10. The Hustler (Rossen)

[Adam]

1. Rosemary's Baby
2. Shock Corridor
3. The Apartment
4. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
5. Once Upon a Time in the West
6. High and Low
7. The Wild Bunch
8. Jules et Jim
9. A Woman is a Woman
0. Viridiana

[Watashi]

1. Dr. Strangelove
2. Winter Light
3. Au hasard Balthazar
4. 2001: A Space Oddysey
5. Once Upon a Time in the West
6. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
7. High and Low
8. The Apartment
9. Fail-Safe
10. Shock Corridor

[balmakboor]

1. Play Time (Tati)
2. My Life to Live (Godard)
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick)
4. 8 ½ (Fellini)
5. Peeping Tom (Powell)
6. I Am Cuba (Kalatozov)
7. Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
8. The Birds (Hitchcock)
9. Rosemary's Baby (Polanski)
10. Faces (Cassavetes)

[endingcredits]

1. Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
2. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
3. Persona (Bergman)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
5. Shadows Of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)
6, Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
7. Pierrot le Fou (Godard)
8. Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
9. 8 ½ (Fellini)
10. Week End (Godard)

[DavidSeven]

01. Point Blank (Boorman)
02. A Woman is a Woman (Godard)
03. Breathless (Godard)
04. High and Low (Kurosawa)
05. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
06. Charade (Donen)
07. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
08. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
09. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)
10. Le Trou (Becker)

Decade is so good. [/Franco]

[Irish]

1. Play Time (Tati)

01. Point Blank (Boorman)

Not at all what I expected as #1s, from either of you. Great choices.

[Fezzik]

La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
8 ½ (Fellini)
The Virgin Spring (Bergman)
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Leone)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill)
The Producers (Brooks)
A Hard Day’s Night (Lester)
The Hustler (Rossen)

[Raiders]

1. Persona (1966)
2. Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
3. My Life to Live (1962)
4. Woman in the Dunes (1964)
5. Play Time (1967)
6. Shock Corridor (1963)
7. Scorpio Rising (1964)
8. The Servant (1963)
9. Point Blank (1967)
10. Mouchette (1967)

HMs: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Trial, High and Low, The Innocents, Shoot the Piano Player, Repulsion, Masculin-Feminin, Marnie

[soitgoes...]

The Graduate (Nichols)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
Winter Light (Bergman)
Il Posto (Olmi)
Red Beard (Kurosawa)
My Night at Maud's (Rohmer)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
Yojimbo (Kurosawa)
Band of Outsiders (Godard)

[Ezee E]

1. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
2. Psycho
3. Playtime
4. The Virgin Spring
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. The Apartment
7. High and Low
8. Once Upon a Time in the West
9. Band of Outsiders
10. Dr. Strangelove

[Duncan]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
2. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
3. L'Avventura (Antonioni)
4. Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
5. 8 ½ (Fellini)
6. La Jetée (Marker)
7. My Life to Live (Godard)
8. Play Time (Tati)
9. Winter Light (Bergman)
10. L'Eclisse (Antonioni)

Tough.

[Melville]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
2. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
3. Persona (Bergman)
4. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
5. Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
6. Scorpio Rising (Anger)
7. Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
8. Shadows Of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)
9. Pierrot le Fou (Godard)
10. L’Eclisse (Antonioni)

My true list would have Titicut Follies.

[Ivan Drago]

1. Contempt
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Breathless
5. 8 1/2
6. Week End
7. Persona
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
9. Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb
10. Once Upon a Time in the West

[Stay Puft]

1. La Jetée (Marker)
2. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
3. Le Samouraï (Melville)
4. Army of Shadows (Melville)
5. Scorpio Rising (Anger)
6. Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
7. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
9. 8 ½ (Fellini)
10. Blowup (Antonioni)

[Weeping_Guitar]

01. 8 ½ (Fellini)
02. A Hard Day’s Night (Lester)
03. Jules and Jim (Truffaut)
04. The Apartment (Wilder)
05. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
06. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned... Bomb (Kubrick)
07. Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut)
08. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
09. Winter Light (Bergman)
10. Army of Shadows (Melville)

[soitgoes...]

An alternate Top 10:


Harakiri (Kobayashi)
LBJ (�lvarez)
Yearning (Naruse)
The Naked Island (Shindô)
The Red and the White (Jancsó)
A Touch of Zen (Hu)
Nayak (Ray)
The Hand (Trnka)
El Verdugo (Berlanga)
An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge (Enrico)


I get that most of those didn't get enough support to be on the Master List, but Harakiri? Seriously? It's better than any of Kurosawa's films (actually it's the best of it's genre), and it is available for pretty much anyone to see.

I just looked at the 1962 thread, and only three of us voted for it. Amazing.

[Yxklyx]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
2. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini)
3. L' Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone)
5. The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
6. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
7. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
8. Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda)
9. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
10. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick)

[Boner M]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
2. My Life to Live (Godard)
3. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
4. Rosemary's Baby (Polanski)
5. Carnival of Souls (Harvey)
6. Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
7. Il Posto (Olmi)
8. Mouchette (Bresson)
9. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
10. Play Time (Tati)

Killed me to leave out: Faces, Last Year at Marienbad, Au Hasard Balthazar, High and Low

True list would likely have: Dillinger is Dead, The Exterminating Angel, Heaven and Earth Magic, Oh Dem Watermelons

[Mysterious Dude]

but Harakiri? Seriously? It's better than any of Kurosawa's films
Well, maybe some of them. It's certainly better than Sanshiro Sugata II.

[soitgoes...]

Well, maybe some of them. It's certainly better than Sanshiro Sugata II.Sweet.

[Derek]

1) Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
2) Play Time (Tati)
3) The Trial (Welles)
4) Pierrot le Fou (Godard)
5) Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
6) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
7) L'Avventura (Antonioni)
8) Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
9) Persona (Bergman)
10) Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut)

[B-side]

Alternate:

1. Harakiri (Kobayashi, 1962)
2. The Passion of Anna (Bergman, 1969)
3. Kwaidan (Kobayashi, 1964)
4. The Steamroller and the Violin (Tarkovsky, 1961)
5. Fando y Lis (Jodorowsky, 1968)
6. Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage, 1962)
7. Report (Conner, 1964)
8. The Shooting (Hellman, 1967)
9. Une Femme Mariée (Godard, 1964)
10. The Red Desert (Antonioni, 1964)

[Boner M]

1. Harakiri (Kobayashi, 1962)
3. Kwaidan (Kobayashi, 1964)
5. Fando y Lis (Jodorowsky, 1968)
8. The Shooting (Hellman, 1967)
10. The Red Desert (Antonioni, 1964)
You're killing me, B-Side. This is like my 'five films from the 60's that I should love but don't' list.

[B-side]

You're killing me, B-Side. This is like my 'five films from the 60's that I should love but don't' list.

Well, I'd never expect anyone else to be as fond of Fando y Lis as I am. I don't even know if I am!:P

[MacGuffin]

Well, I'd never expect anyone else to be as fond of Fando y Lis as I am. I don't even know if I am!:P

Yeah, I'm typically not as fond of movies I'm fond of either. :lol:

[B-side]

Yeah, I'm typically not as fond of movies I'm fond of either. :lol:

I'm never particularly confident in my opinions, which is why I try to avoid ratings and stress the "now"-ness of my lists and rankings. I feel like my taste changes daily, so I have no idea how I'd react to something I loved last week or what have you.

[dmk]

it must like really suck not to love the shooting you know.

...

i tried to make a top ten out of the list in the op, but i could only list eight, so i gave up. :cry::cry:

[B-side]

it must like really suck not to love the shooting you know.

Those poor bastards.

[soitgoes...]

I'm never particularly confident in my opinions, which is why I try to avoid ratings and stress the "now"-ness of my lists and rankings. I feel like my taste changes daily, so I have no idea how I'd react to something I loved last week or what have you.I give this post ***.

[B-side]

I give this post ***.

http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/60/rtdllg.gif

[ledfloyd]

1. L'Avventura
2. The Apartment
3. Once Upon a Time in the West
4. Dr. Strangelove
5. 8 ½
6. Army of Shadows
7. Pierrot le Fou
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
10. The Trial

[Yum-Yum]

1. Night of the Living Dead
2. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
3. Carnival of Souls
4. Eyes Without a Face
5. Rosemary's Baby
6. Midnight Cowboy
7. Planet of the Apes
8. Point Blank
9. The Innocents
10. Peeping Tom

[Bosco B Thug]

Have Winter Light in from Netflix, blind bought Hour of the Wolf recently because it was $2.99, and should really continue my stream of 8 1/2 (pretty good so far... [/lazy streamer]). Have to at least do the first!

Luv seeing the easily underestimated Carnival of Souls even getting mentioned multiply. A bit in conjunction, though, I resent you all also (except balmakboor), for the pitiable lack of The Birds.

[jamaul]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
2. Playtime (Tati)
3. 8 1/2 (Fellini)
4. Contempt (Godard)
5. Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
6. L’Avventura (Antonioni)
7. Persona (Bergman)
8. Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
9. Viridiana (Bunuel)
10. Repulsion (Polanski)

Wow, I thought the 70s was difficult--this was ten times harder. All of these films have alternated places on my personal top ten (and many of them currently do). Plus, there's almost one film per director that could sub in here as an alternative: La Dolce Vita, My Life to Live, Breathless, Pierrot Le Fou, Week End, Band of Outsiders, Red Desert, L'Eclisse, Blow-Up, The Exterminating Angel ... not to mention Lawrence of Arabia, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Wild Bunch, La Jetee, Psycho, Andrei Rublev, Battle of Algiers. Gosh!

And 2001's placing is a little tiring: I'm sick of hearing about my favorite film of all time.

[eternity]

1. 8 1/2
2. Blowup
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Pierrot le Fou
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. L'Avventura
7. Dr. Strangelove
8. The Apartment
9. Le Samourai
10. Persona

Too many damn things I had to leave out.

[MadMan]

1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
2. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
3. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
5. Le Samouraï (1967)
6. The Graduate (1967)
7. The Wild Bunch (1969)
8. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
9. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
10. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

I left way too many awesome movies off my list, once again. Its really difficult to vote during the 60s and 70s, as the two decades are chock full of amazing classics. This list is also too heavy on westerns, but oh well, as it really was the last great decade for the genre (okay, the 70s had some fantastic ones too, though).

[Bosco B Thug]

K don't know when I'm gonna get to watch Winter's Light sooo.

Oddly, this was an easier decade for me, likely due to all my blind spots, and my guiltless love for Hitchcock, Bergman, and Antonioni.

1. The Birds
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Persona
4. L'avventura
5. Marnie
6. Breathless
7. Viridiana
8. Through A Glass Darkly
9. The Servant
10. The Haunting

[Lazlo]

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
3. Rosemary's Baby
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
5. The Apartment
6. The Hustler
7. The Battle of Algiers
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. L'Eclisse
10. Red Beard

[Grouchy]

1. Once Upon a Time in the West
2. 8 1/2
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
5. Night of the Living Dead
6. The Wild Bunch
7. Dr. Strangelove
8. Rosemary's Baby
9. Midnight Cowboy
10. The Hustler

Alternate:


1. The Dirty Dozen
2. Hud
3. The Exterminating Angel
4. The Hill
5. Seconds
6. Harakiri
7. The Milky Way
8. From Russia with Love
9. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
10. Black Sunday

[dreamdead]

1. My Night at Maud's (Rohmer)
2. I Am Cuba (Kalatozov)
3. The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
5. My Life to Live (Godard)
6. Persona (Bergman)
7. The Birds (Hitchcock)
8. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
9. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
10. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)

What a painful decade to sort out.

[Chac Mool]

Hopefully not too late...

01. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
02. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
03. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick)
04. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
05. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Leone)
06. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
07. Persona (Bergman)
08. 8 ½ (Fellini)
09. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
10. Psycho (Hitchcock)

"Once Upon..." is maybe my favorite film: larger-than-life characters in an extraordinary setting, magnificently directed.

"Lawrence of Arabia" is just about there as well -- there aren't many moments more magical than Lawrence getting up from his dune in the middle of night, screaming "Aqaba!".

"Dr Strangelove" is one of the funniest films I've seen, and all the more impressive because it gets me laughing about a totally plausible end of the world; George C. Scott's performance is particularly sharp.

"La Dolce Vita" is my favorite Fellini, with a masterclass performance by Mastroianni (and the fountain scene is famous for a very good reason!).

"Good, Bad, Ugly" is the modern blockbuster as directed by a master filmmaker.

"2001" is, well, 2001. Not much left to say about that particular pièce de cinéma.

"Persona" is awesome Bergman, though not my favorite film of his (I prefer his less experimental, more deeply-grounded-in-emotion pieces (Face to Face, Cries and Whispers)).

"8 1/2" and "Andrey Rublyev" are grand statements by master filmmakers looking outward and inward.

Lastly, "Psycho" is a great genre film elevated into high cinema by Hitchcock's with and cleverness -- and that ending still thrills!

[origami_mustache]

1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick)
2. 8 ½ (Fellini)
3. Play Time (Tati)
4. I Am Cuba (Kalatozov)
5. Shadows Of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)
6. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
7. My Life to Live (Godard)
8. Onibaba (Shindô)
9. Persona (Bergman)
10. Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)

[StanleyK]

In roughly 24 hours, I'll commence with the list, so this is the last call for any edits or new votes.

[Mr. Pink]

1) Psycho
2) The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
3) The Virgin Spring
4) Night of the Living Dead
5) Yojimbo
6) Dr. Strangelove
7) Jules and Jim
8) Once Upon a Time in the West
9) Peeping Tom
10) The Birds

[balmakboor]

In roughly 24 hours, I'll commence with the list, so this is the last call for any edits or new votes.

You get rep if you beat the '70s to number 1.

[StanleyK]

#20

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Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1962)

The moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship? God's silence.



Bergman on religion:
"As the religious aspect of my existence was wiped out, life became much easier to live. Sartre has said how inhibited he used to be as an artist and author, how he suffered because what he was doing wasn't good enough. By a slow intellectual process he came to realize that his anxieties about not making anything of value were an atavistic relic from the religious notion that something exists which can be called the Supreme Good, or that anything is perfect. When he'd dug up this secret idea, this relic, had seen through it and amputated it, he lost his artistic inhibitions too. I've been through something very similar. When my top-heavy religious superstructure collapsed, I also lost my inhibitions as a writer. Above all, my fear of not keeping up with the times. In Winter Light I swept my house clean. Since then things have been quiet on that front."

Unsurprising:
When she saw the completed film, Ingmar Bergman's then wife Kabi Laretei said, "Yes, Ingmar, it's a masterpiece. But it's a dreary masterpiece."



Match-cut weighs in:


It is one of the best films ever, and is the best film of perhaps the best filmmaker who ever lived.

soitgoes...


Obviously there are films that are memorably bad (Winter Light comes to mind)...

baby doll

[StanleyK]

#18 (tie)

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Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)

It's useless. The sand can swallow up cities and countries, if it wants to.



Anton Bitel on this film:
"Does the entomologist embody post-war Japan, trying to claw its way out of a dead-end past to a more rationalised future? Is he a 20th century Everyman, alienated, rootless, restless, emasculated and incapable of love? Or is he a Sisyphus figure, doomed forever to a hell of futilely repetitive labour? Or perhaps a Kafkaesque anti-hero, pinned down like one of the bugs that he collects yet longing to take wing and rise above his mundane existence? Is his relationship with the widow outlandish from start to finish, or is it really just like any marriage of convenience, complete with opportunistic sex and the sort of guarded affection that comes only from habit? Is the entomologist ultimately a deluded prisoner, or has he achieved true freedom in the most unlikely of circumstances? And might not the film's decidedly surreal events all just be dreamt up by the entomologist as he dozes under the sun and tries to imagine escaping a troubled marriage and an over-regimented life in the city?"



What do RT users think?
1. i read the book and loved it
2. I checked out a foreign 1960s movie, and that's what I got.
3. This is about an entomologist!!???

Match-cut weighs in:


astonishingly awesome

endingcredits' current signature

[StanleyK]

#18 (tie)

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Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.



Jonathan Richards on this film:
"Bogart never goes out of style. And when in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless Jean-Paul Belmondo lingers in front of a Paris movie theater to admire Bogey's image in a poster for The Maltese Falcon, and passes his thumb over his lip, it’s a Promethean moment, a passing of the torch, that somehow against all probability works. Belmondo was cool, is cool, and always will be cool."



What do IMDB users think?
1. Am I missing something here?
2. What's with the 'jumpy' editing?
3. Not sure what to make of this.

Match-cut weighs in:


The technique in Godard's film isn't used to bring attention to itself. The jumps are used for the sole purpose of removing excess - getting to the point faster. They are used to support and enhance the structure rather than take away from it.

DavidSeven


I watched Breathless tonight for the first time in quite a few years. When I was 18, all I noticed were the jump cuts. This time, it didn't seem like there were all that many of them. Also, I'm pretty sure the screenplay is mostly gibberish.

Isaac

[StanleyK]

#17

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My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)

The more one talks, the less the words mean.



The film depicts the consumerist culture of Godard's Paris; a shiny new world of cinemas, coffee bars, neon-lit pool halls, pop records, photographs, wall posters, pin-ups, pinball machines, juke boxes, foreign cars, the latest hairstyles, typewriters, advertising, gangsters and Americana. It also features allusions to popular culture; for example, the scene where a melancholy young man walks into a cafe, puts on a juke box disc, and then sits down to listen. The unnamed actor is in fact the well known singer-songwriter Jean Ferrat, who is performing his own hit tune "Ma Môme" on the track that he has just selected.

Susan Sontag on this film:
"a perfect film [...] one of the most extraordinary, beautiful, and original works of art that I know of."



What do IMDB users think?
1. Pretentious?
2. An unrealistic death.
3. About film, please reply FAST

Match-cut weighs in:


Pretty damn great film, My Life to Live. Easily the best Karina performance I've seen. 2 highlights: the scene in the theater when Karina watches The Passion of Joan of Arc, and the letter-writing sequence. Something about the latter scene struck me as really tragic stuff.

Brightside


My Life to Live is extremely irritating.

Qrazy

[B-side]

Nice work so far.

[StanleyK]

#16

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Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

That's where the money is, right? The commercials.



Dying for your art:
When Farrow was reluctant to film a scene that depicted a dazed and preoccupied Rosemary wandering into the middle of a Manhattan street into oncoming traffic, Polanski pointed to her pregnancy padding and reassured her, "no one's going to hit a pregnant woman". The scene was successfully shot with Farrow walking into real traffic and Polanski following along, operating the hand-held camera since he was the only one willing to do it.

Mia Farrow actually ate raw liver for a scene in the movie.



What do RT users think?
1. For an old horror movie i made it through the whole film.
2. No way I will ever watch this :S
3. The neighbours were on crack.

Match-cut weighs in:


The film up through when she's still in pain was 9/10 material. But when Rosemary stops being taken advantage of and the film just starts developing her paranoid protectiveness of her baby, I found less to read into in the film. Plus, it loses steam towards the end, and I have to admit getting a bit impatient with it as it trudges along its plot and revelations as if we haven't figured it all out already.

Bosco B Thug


See, that's why I think it's more effective as a tragedy than a mystery. Once the initial conditions are set up, it seems pretty damn obvious what's happening, and while it could all be in her head, Polanski sets up the atmosphere of the location and the suspects to such effect that I never once considered that a viable alternative.

So what's left? An air of inevitability and sadness, and, for me, genuine anger at the clan of Satanists, who are far more terrifying in their capacity for selfishness than any beast of Hell.

Dead & Messed Up

[StanleyK]

#15

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Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

A boy's best friend is his mother.



Hitchcock was a cocky bastard:
One of the reasons Alfred Hitchcock shot the movie in black and white was he thought it would be too gory in color. But the main reason was that he wanted to make the film as inexpensively as possible (under $1 million). He also wondered if so many bad, inexpensively made, b/w "B" movies did so well at the box office, what would happen if a really good, inexpensively made, b/w movie was made.

A bold film which took risks:
First American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen.



What do IMDB users think?
1. Was anyone really surprised?
2. Scooby Doo Wrap-Up
3. Can't believe he was a ghost the whole time...

Match-cut weighs in:


The resonance in Psycho for me lies in its particular American-ness. The books I read pointed out the perceived scandalousness of hotel love affairs, Marion's desire for wholesomeness, the leering cowboy boss, the role of pretty little secretaries, Norman's inadequacy in light of all that and the US highway that has secluded him, etc.

Bosco B Thug


Not difficult to be better than Psycho.

transmogrifier

[MadMan]

Rosemary's Baby and Psycho are among the best horror movies I've ever seen. Haven't viewed the rest, sadly.

[StanleyK]

#14

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Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)

Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.



Enforced special effects:
When the zombies are eating the bodies in the burnt-out truck they were actually eating roast ham covered in chocolate sauce. The filmmakers joked that it was so nausea inducing that it was almost a waste of time putting the makeup on the zombies, as they ended up looking pale and sick anyway.

What could have been:
Co-written as a horror comedy by John Russo and George A. Romero under the title Monster Flick, an early screenplay draft concerned the exploits of teenage aliens who visit Earth and befriend human teenagers. A second version of the script featured a young man who runs away from home and discovers rotting human corpses that aliens use for food scattered across a meadow.

"Don't use that word! It's ridiculous!"
The word "zombie" is never used. The most common euphemism used to describe the living dead is "those things," mostly by Cooper.



What do IMDB users think?
1. Boring Movie.
2. Nekkid zombie butt.
3. Ben = Barack Obama? (spoilers)

Match-cut weighs in:


Regarding Vietnam and Night of the Living Dead, I'm of the opinion that even if Romero didn't intend it to be there (which I doubt), if a large number of people found the film allusive to that social problem, then the zeitgeist (sp?) permeated the film enough that the subtext is there, whether intentional or not.

Grouchy


Some would call his films gritty, but I'm saying "kinda ugly." Night of the Living Dead in particular never really transcends its low-budget origins - something that can still be expected from a low-budget product - and the sense of terror never truly escalated for me. Still, perhaps zombies are inherently unfrightening to me due to the comedic way in which they stagger and moan.

Morris Schæffer

[StanleyK]

#13

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L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

I simply loathe it, yet I must conform; what can you do?



Art from adversity:
The boat which the main characters holiday on was seized by the owner for non-payment. This is why the boat appears to be bigger in some scenes as the replacement that Antonioni procured was actually a little larger.

Folks at Cannes had ADD:
During its notorious first showing at Cannes, one scene in particular drew specific derision. It is the scene when Monica Vitti rushes down a corridor looking for someone. Audience members were repeatedly shouting "Cut" during this lengthy scene.




What do IMDB users think?
1. Aren't adventures supposed to be exciting?
2. men are pigs
3. I AM THRILLED!

Match-cut weighs in:


Finally knocked out Antonioni's L'Avventura. Marvelously cold filmmaking, and intriguing in its study of how little one's disappearance affects a larger community, as romance and desire continue unabated. While some of that, of course, is a critique of bourgeois ethics, I think the repurcussions of this extend beyond that. It's equally interesting in its gender politics, especially in how the finale signals a transformative movement away from desire for Claudia even if Sandro remains impotent in his static repetitions of longing.

dreamdead


Yep. It's meh. I like the Vitti scene where all the Italians are eyeing her though.

Other then that, someone disappears, we never find out where or why, and that's all I really remember. Maybe I'll check it out again.

Ezee E

[StanleyK]

#12

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La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)

You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, devil, earth, home.



The famous scene in the Trevi Fountain was shot over a week in winter: in March according to the BBC, in late January according to Anita Ekberg. Fellini claimed that Ekberg stood in the cold water in her dress for hours without any trouble while Mastroianni had to wear a wetsuit beneath his clothes - to no avail. It was only after "he polished off a bottle of vodka" that Fellini could shoot the scene with a drunk Mastroianni.

Life imitates art:
The film contributed the term "paparazzo" to the language. The term derives from Marcello's photographer friend Paparazzo. Fellini took the name "Paparazzo", as he explained in a later interview, from the name of someone he met in Calabria (Southern Italy) where Greek names are still common.
[...]
It seems that term "paparazzo" was coined by Federico Fellini himself. Paparazzo means "sparrow" in one Italian dialect (in normal usage the Italian for "sparrow" is "passero"). Fellini explained that the photographers hopping and scurrying around celebrities reminded him of sparrows.



What do IMDB users think?
1. Made me want to kill my family
2. I kind of like it despite the length and some scenes!
3. Makes Gigli

Match-cut weighs in:


8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita have varying degrees of artificiality and surrealism in them, but the difference is that those movies are never inauthentic and never betray audience expections for no reason.

Irish


I made it through two hours of La Dolce Vita tonight. I wanted to finish it, but I was having trouble staying awake. Flick needs zombies or laser beams or something.

Dead & Messed Up

[MadMan]

LOL Morris and IMDB.com (Morris is still good people anyways, though :) )

[StanleyK]

#11

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The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)

I was jinxed from the word go. The first time I was ever kissed was in a cemetery.



Enforced method acting:
To get Fran (Shirley MacLaine) to look genuinely startled when her brother-in-law punches Calvin (Jack Lemmon), director Billy Wilder smacked together two pieces of 2x4 during the shoot.

It was said that while filming the scene where C.C. Baxter sleeps in Central Park in the rain, Billy Wilder had to spray Jack Lemmon with anti-freeze to keep him from freezing.

A product of careful planning:
According to Shirley MacLaine on her official web site, much of the movie was written as filming progressed. The gin rummy game was added because at the time she was learning how to play the game from her friends in the Rat Pack. Likewise, when she started philosophizing about love during a lunch break one day, this was also added to the script.

The film's classic last line was thought up by the writers at the last minute on-set.



What do IMDB users think?
1. Why didn't they just rent a hotel room?
2. Is this movie SEXIST?
3. Shirley MacLaine was super hot in this

Match-cut weighs in:


This movie is wonderful. It was sad and beautiful and charming. I loved it.

Kurosawa Fan


I think my expectations for The Apartment might have been too high. It was a fun breezy romantic comedy, but I guess I just don't care for those types of contrived films all that much.

Benny Profane

[StanleyK]

#10

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Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)



What would baby doll say about this?
Co-writer Bernardo Bertolucci says on the film's DVD that when he first suggested to director Sergio Leone that the film's central character be a woman, Leone was hesitant. Leone first budged on this subject by suggesting the introductory shot of Jill would be from below the train platform so the camera could see under Jill's dress and show she wasn't wearing any undergarments. Claudia Cardinale says she was never told this idea and says she probably wouldn't have agreed to be in the movie if it required this shot.

Moving up in life:
The Flagstone set reportedly cost as much as the entire budget for Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.



What do IMDB users think?
1. Petition for girls under 18
2. A collassal bore...
3. Is Harmonica gay on this movie?

Match-cut weighs in:


Just saw Once Upon a Time in the West on the big screen. Piss off, other movies.

Winston*


Or maybe I'm just surprised that nobody else shares my dislike for Once Upon a Time in the West, a painfully dull movie bloated by its air of self-importance.

Melville

[MadMan]

Or maybe I'm just surprised that nobody else shares my dislike for Once Upon a Time in the West, a painfully dull movie bloated by its air of self-importance.:lol:

And it wouldn't suprise me at all if OUATITW made the list but GBU did not.

[Bosco B Thug]

My Life to Live is extremely irritating. Haha... I think it's a great film, but I can see where this is coming from. Its affects are pretty thickly poured, even for Godard.


Rosemary's Baby I stand by my mild dissatisfaction with the film's latter, "paranoid fantasy or not???" half.

Well, I am glad to see Psycho on here, since Hitchcock's other, better films won't be making an appearance. :P I thought it very possible it would be snubbed/overlooked due to its exposure.

[MadMan]

Well, I am glad to see Psycho on here, since Hitchcock's other, better films won't be making an appearance. :PLet me guess: you think highly of Marnie, if I recall correctly. Yeah, no :P

[Bosco B Thug]

Let me guess: you think highly of Marnie, if I recall correctly. Yeah, no :P Yeah, well, I'm actually not too sure of it either! Marnie suffers from at least as much niggling problems as Psycho does, or vice versa. But then they're both masterworks.

[Raiders]

Psycho is magnificent up until the big shocker in the middle, and even gets a great sequence in with Balsam's unfortunate detective, but most of the second half is pretty dull with the real lameness coming in the last five minutes.

Marnie and The Birds are both superior.

[StanleyK]

#09

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Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

You'll cast bells. I'll paint icons.


Tarkovsky on color and horses:
"Unless one is as sensitive to colour harmony as a painter, one does not notice colours in everyday life. For example, for me cinematic reality exists in the tones of black and white. Yet in Rublev we were to relate life and reality on the one hand with art and painting on the other. This connection between the final colour sequence and the black and white film was for us a way to express the interdependence of Rublev's art and his life.
[...]
I'd like to point out the film ends with an image of horses in rain. It is a symbolic image as horse for me is a synonym of life. When I'm looking at a horse I have a feeling I'm in direct contact with the essence of life itself. Perhaps it's because horse is a very beautiful animal, friendly to man, and is moreover so characteristic of the Russian landscape. There are many scenes with horses in Rublev. Take the scene in which a man dies after an unsuccessful attempt to fly. A sad-looking horse is a silent witness to the scene. The presence of horses in the last, final scene means that life itself was the source of all of Rublev's art."



What do IMDB users think?
1. I only wish a shirtless pagan would rape me
2. Which Tarkovsky movie will save my soul?
3. cant even pronounce the title...

Match-cut weighs in:


This is a fascinating piece of work that has left me hungry to understand more, to mine its secrets and meanings. There is likely a lot more I will learn about this film that will only increase my appreciation for it. There is likely a lot I missed. And yet it also works so magnificently on a visceral, immediate, affecting level and cannot be passed off as some arthouse enigma (most of it is actually pretty straightforward) but heralded as an emotional and resonating tour de force.

Amnesiac


Andrei Rublev I found tedious and had to fight to get through the first time. When I watched select scenes a second time, I was able to pick up on and appreciate the technique and the spiritual theme. I can't say it's a movie I enjoyed watching, but I can respect the ability.

DSNT

[MadMan]

Yeah, well, I'm actually not too sure of it either! Marnie suffers from at least as much niggling problems as Psycho does, or vice versa. But then they're both masterworks.Ah. So were you then thinking of The Birds? That one I have to rewatch, as I viewed it when I was even younger and thus not so able at picking up on its sub-contexts.

[Bosco B Thug]

Psycho is magnificent up until the big shocker in the middle, and even gets a great sequence in with Balsam's unfortunate detective, but most of the second half is pretty dull with the real lameness coming in the last five minutes. I don't disagree with this, but then I always think: how could Psycho be changed? Maybe making Leila and Sam and co. more thematically-evolved figures, or making the second half as insinuated with pathos as the first half, would actually ruin or alter its vision?

I'm also on the side of the ardent defenders of the psychiatrist bit.


Ah. So were you then thinking of The Birds? That one I have to rewatch, as I viewed it when I was even younger and thus not so able at picking up on its sub-contexts. Oh yeah, I find The Birds his no-contest masterpiece.

[Irish]

Whoa! I was quoted in something there! Neat.

(Surprised the Night of the Living Dead is ranking so highly.

Always been indifferent to Once Upon a Time in the West. Yes, it's beautiful, but most of the time I wish Leone would just get to the effing point. Another way of saying it's self indulgent in ways that his other spaghetti westerns are not).

[Irish]

Marnie and The Birds are both superior.

The Birds is a good movie, but it's a little too linear to me. It doesn't have Psycho's ambition (or it's flaws, either, but hey, eggs/omelet).

You've got to be completely high to think Marnie is anywhere in the same league as either of them.

[StanleyK]

#08

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)

Such ingratitude after all the times I saved your life...



Stunt doubles? Who needs stunt doubles?
Wallach was almost poisoned during filming when he accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a film technician had set next to his soda bottle. Wallach mentioned this in his autobiography and complained that while Leone was a brilliant director, he was very lax about ensuring the safety of his actors during dangerous scenes. For instance, in one scene, where he was to be hanged after a pistol was fired, the horse underneath him was supposed to bolt. While the rope around Wallach's neck was severed, the horse was frightened a little too well. It galloped for about a mile with Wallach still mounted and his hands bound behind his back. The third time Wallach's life was threatened was during the scene where he and Mario Brega - who are chained together - jump out of a moving train. The jumping part went as planned, but Wallach's life was endangered when his character attempts to sever the chain binding him to the (now dead) henchman. Tuco places the body on the railroad tracks, waiting for the train to roll over the chain and sever it. Wallach and, presumably, the entire film crew were not aware of the heavy iron steps that jutted one foot out of every box car. If Wallach had stood up from his prone position at the wrong time, one of the jutting steps could have decapitated him.



What do IMDB users think?
1. After watching this film I check under my bed for Clint Eastwood
2. Closer to Twilight than you'd imagine
3. this movie was great because it had no women

Match-cut weighs in:


I ADORE the GBU, I always saw it as an opera... and a comedy... and a tragedy. Mostly comedy, and mostly opera. It's glorious.

Philosophe_rouge


A first level reader simply wants to know what happens in the story (i.e, does Blondie get the treasure). I don't think The Good, the Bad and the Ugly functions even on that level because, at nearly three hours, it is so drawn out with gratuitous set pieces, like civil war sequence which is only tangentally related to the main throughline--in other words, it's a big show stopper that exists for its own sake in isolation from everything else.

baby doll

[Raiders]

You've got to be completely high...

This is generally true.

[Irish]

This is generally true.

:lol: Fair enough.

[StanleyK]

#07

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/Au_Hasard_Balthazar.jpg

Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

I believe in what I own. I love money. I hate death.



Balthazar was an untrained donkey during most of the filming, which made Bressons's work a real challenge. The only scene for which the donkey was trained was the circus math trick.

Godard on this film:
"Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished, [...] because this film is really the world in an hour and a half."



What do IMDB users think?
1. Did Marie remind anybody else of Napoleon Dynamite?
2. Gerard looks like Roger Federer?
3. Eddie Murphy?

Match-cut weighs in:


Au hasard Balthazar is pretty much the only film to ever elicit a strong emotional reaction out of me on multiple viewings.

Epistemophobia


I'm pretty sure that my theories on art and cinema are approximately the polar opposite of Bresson's.

Spinal

[Dukefrukem]

Where are the user comments coming from? I love it .

[StanleyK]

#06

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/playtime3.jpg

Play Time (Jacques Tati, 1967)



Peter Canavese on this film:
"The satire is inescapable: the inhospitable space-age sterility and harsh lines of a glass-and-steel skyscraper's business spaces include a maze of cubicles, elevators and escalators (cf. Terry Gilliam's Brazil). The human contents of a tour bus demonstrate the widespread idiocy of tourists and consumers who giddily accept inane substitutes for the rich history of France. Drawn to consumer showrooms and led by the nose from hotel to designated restaurant and back, the tourists uniformly collect Eiffel Tower knick-knacks, but can't seem to see the monument's essence any more than we can in its two-dimensional appearance on a travel poster or its fleeting reflection in a glass door. In one devastating bit of set decoration, the posters advertising travel to all of the world's destination cities feature identical skyscrapers."



What do RT users think?
1. ITS a film by Tati...
2. I wouldn't recommend watching this movie sober...
3. maybe a bit to ... old? artistic? dunno

Match-cut weighs in:


Playtime celebrates all our imperfections and the follies and absurdity of modern technology and urban congestion. What could be depressing or overly cynical is instead boisterous and full of life. Not to suggest the film doesn't cast things in a negative light, but it accepts what cannot be changed and presents it to us in a comical light, effectively reshaping the way we view our own surroundings and interactions with technology and other people.

Derek


Well, while I can appreciate Tati's films on a technical level, a lot of his humor falls flat.

soitgoes...

[Spinal]

Not too crazy about the list so far, gotta say.

[Irish]

Not too crazy about the list so far, gotta say.

Really? I think this one is the most fun, and most interesting yet. I'm not wild about the dual-inclusion of Leone, but he's kind of a fan favorite.

[StanleyK]

#05

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/Persona.jpg

Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

To change oneself. My trouble is laziness.




Bergman on art:
"At some time or other, I said that Persona saved my life - that is no exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make the film, I would probably have been all washed up. One significant point: for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success. The gospel according to which one must be comprehensible at all costs, one that had been dinned to me ever since I worked as the lowliest manuscripts slave at Svensk Filmindustri, could finally go to hell (which is where it belongs!)

Today, I feel that in Persona - and later in Cries and Whispers - I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instance, when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover."



What do RT users think?
1. I *napped* while watching this movie, *napped*.
2. heavily recommended, so.
3. crap and go away not seen it and i dont care

Match-cut weighs in:


I'm taking a break from Persona after about ten minutes (something came up). I'll assume it gets better, because all that junk at the beginning was uber pretentious. Unless of course it all ties in with the rest of the movie, then I'll shut up. But, it kinda reminded me of Illeana Douglas' short in Ghost World.

Cult


Persona is amazing and I'm pretty sure if Raiders ends up in here he'll smack you down!

SirNewt (responding to a post by Qrazy)

[StanleyK]

#04

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/lawrence-of-arabia.jpg

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.



Does not pass the Bechdel test. (http://bechdeltest.com)
Although 227 minutes long, this film has no women in speaking roles. It is reportedly the longest film not to have any dialog spoken by a woman.

Peter O'Toole was kind of a dick:
While filming, Peter O'Toole referred to co-star Omar Sharif as "Fred," stating that "no one in the world is called Omar Sharif. Your name must be Fred."

Peter O'Toole claims he never viewed the completed film until nearly two decades after its original release, by which time he was highly impressed.



What do IMDB users think?
1. Lawrence of aLABIA
2. Where are the women?
3. Time for a remake?

Match-cut weighs in:


Saw Lawrence of Arabia on a big screen this weekend. You can't help but bask in a film like this. Some of the compositions made me weep a bit, right there in my seat. Details that I had once complained about were swept aside. What a great goddamn movie.

Wryan


Watched half of Lawrence of Arabia. First viewing. It's all right.

megladon8

[StanleyK]

#03

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/DrStrangelove2.jpg

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Well boys, I reckon this is it. Nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the russkies.


What could have been (and I'm personally glad isn't):
It was originally planned for the film to end with a scene that was filmed, with everyone in the war room involved in a pie fight.

Accounts vary as to why the pie fight was cut. In a 1969 interview, Kubrick said: "I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film." Critic Alexander Walker observed that "the cream pies were flying around so thickly that people lost definition, and you couldn't really say whom you were looking at." Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, suggested the fight was intended to be less jovial. "Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead of having that totally black, which would have been amazing, like, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for all of the missiles that are coming, as well, you just have these guys having a good old time. So, as Kubrick later said, 'it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.'"
[...]
The assassination of JFK also serves as another possible reason why the pie-fight scene was cut. In the scene General Turgidson exclaims, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!" after Muffley takes a pie in the face. Editor Anthony Harvey states that "[the scene] would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president's family."



What do IMDB users think?
1. B-O-R-R-I-N-G!!!
2. Movie is very funny and proved to be 100% WRONG!

Match-cut weighs in:


Dr. Strangelove has never been that funny of a comedy to me (at least in laugh-out-loud factor), but it is my number 3 film of all time because it's absolutely brilliant in every way.

The funny thing about it is, well, the characters really aren't pure satirical portrayals by any means.

Barty


I like it more than I did the 3 times I saw it 5, 6 and 7 years ago.

However, I still don't love it by any means. In fact, it still gets a mere passing grade from me. Much of it is still completely un-funny to me, in particular Sterling Hayden's character and all the "precious bodily fluids" talk.

Now, I know everyone would just LOVE to jump on me and say "you just didn't get it", but you know what? I did get it. I just didn't think it was funny.

Peter Sellers was marvelous, but such is to be expected.

megladon8

[StanleyK]

#02

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/8-inside.jpg

8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.



Desson Howe on 8½
"If 8½ seems stuck in the early 1960s, it's only superficially so. Somehow, the movie is more than the dated crisis of a naval-contemplating artist. It's about the inability in all of us to make sense of our lives, put it all together and come up with something meaningful."


Match-cut weighs in:


Whenever I think of a film that is self-aware of its own process of being made, this is the first, and perhaps best, film with which my minds aligns itself. It's a wonderment.

dreamdead


I grow tired of them [movies about movies] much more quickly. Too much self-reflexivity tends to lose my interest. Even films like Day for Night and 8 1/2 I don't love as much as

most film buffs.

Qrazy

[Irish]

YES! A breath of life & light after the snooze-inducing Lawrence and the humorless Strangelove*!

*Disclaimer: Yes, I know they're very well done. Whatever contrary thing you're about to say, let's cut to the quick and assume I agree with you on the merits of these films. I never found Lawrence particular entertaining as a kind of "epic movie" and Strangelove bends over backwards to be funny; it's the beef I have with a lot of Kubrick's work, ie, he's too smart for his own good, and the intelligence of his movies oppress their humanity, squeezing the life out of them. Give me A Night at the Opera over a visit to Dr Strangelove any day.

[MadMan]

I disagree with both rouge and baby doll's quotes concerning GBU. But I'm glad about it making the list.

Also I should finally get around to watching my Criterion copy of 8 1/2. I haven't do so partly because I'm afraid it won't live up to the hype.

Its telling that most of the RT thread titles are just as dumb as the ones featured on IMDB.com's message boards. Both sites are terrible for film criticism.

PS: I approve of the movies featured on this list that I have actually viewed.

[Qrazy]

#02

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/8-inside.jpg

8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.



Desson Howe on 8½
"If 8½ seems stuck in the early 1960s, it's only superficially so. Somehow, the movie is more than the dated crisis of a naval-contemplating artist. It's about the inability in all of us to make sense of our lives, put it all together and come up with something meaningful."


Match-cut weighs in:



dreamdead



Qrazy

Just to be clear and I'm not sure if I said so in my original post, but I do like both films quite a lot I just don't fully love them and I think that has much to do with their self-reflexivity. That's why I prefer La Dolce Vita, La Strada, and Nights of Cabiria to 8 1/2... although I'd probably have to allow it 4th place even though Juliet of the Spirits, Amarcord and Toby Dammit are all strong contenders.

But Fellini definitely made the film about the process of filmmaking imo.

[StanleyK]

#01

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/2001-a-space-odyssey_592x299.jpg

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

Dave... I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. I can feel it.



Kubrick on film interpretation:
"You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film- and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point."

"How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas, 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover'? This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001."



What do IMDB users think?
1. A Lion Picking It's Nose
2. How would Hitler interpret this movie?
3. Bad Movie, Great Screensaver

Match-cut weighs in:


Big, bold, and beautiful. Ponderous, yes, but never less than exhilaratingly so.

Sven


Funny thing, it's been a while since I last watched 2001, so I think I'll watch that tonight. If I remember correctly, my last thoughts on it were somewhere between "this really is very interesting" and "Jesus Christ just get on with it, seriously."

BuffaloWilder

[Spinal]

3. Bad Movie, Great Screensaver



Oh, no you didn't!

[StanleyK]

With the list Dead & Messed Up PM'd me, there were a total of 40 votes:


01. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
02. The Apartment (Wilder)
03. Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
04. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
05. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)
06. The Haunting (Wise)
07. Peeping Tom (Powell)
08. La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
09. Persona (Bergman)
10. The Producers (Brooks)



Complete scores (list mentions in parentheses, mentions at #1 in brackets):

2001: A Space Odyssey - 218 (29) [11]
8½ - 109 (18) [2]
Dr. Strangelove - 96 (18) [2]
Lawrence of Arabia - 82 (12) [2]
Persona - 75 (15) [2]
Play Time - 71.5 (12) [1]
Au Hasard Balthazar - 67 (11) [2]
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 66.5 (11) [1]
Andrei Rublev - 65 (10) [1]
Once Upon a Time in the West - 64.5 (14) [2]
The Apartment - 55.5 (11)
La Dolce Vita - 42.5 (7) [2]
L'Avventura - 41.5 (7) [1]
Night of the Living Dead - 40.5 (7) [1]
Psycho - 38.5 (7) [1]
Rosemary's Baby - 36.5 (7) [1]
My Life to Live - 35 (6)
Breathless - 31 (6)
Woman in the Dunes - 31 (6)
Winter Light - 30.5 (6)
The Battle of Algiers - 29.5 (6) [1]
The Virgin Spring - 29 (5)
The Graduate - 28 (4) [1]
A Hard Day's Night - 25.5 (5)
Last Year at Marienbad - 22 (4) [1]
Pierrot le Fou - 21.5 (5)
The Wild Bunch - 21.5 (6)
Viridiana - 21 (7)
My Night at Maud's - 20 (3) [1]
Bonnie and Clyde - 19.5 (6)
Contempt - 19.5 (3) [1]
La Jetée - 19 (3) [1]
The Birds - 18.5 (4) [1]
I Am Cuba - 18 (3)
L'Eclisse - 17.5 (5)
Jules and Jim - 17.5 (4)
Le Samouraï - 17.5 (4)
High and Low - 17 (4)
Point Blank - 15.5 (3) [1]
Peeping Tom - 15 (5)
Shock Corridor - 14 (3)
Hour of the Wolf - 13 (4)
Il Posto - 13 (3)
Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors - 13 (3)
The Hustler - 12.5 (5)
Scorpio Rising - 12.5 (3)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - 12.5 (3)
Army of Shadows - 12 (3)
Carnival of Souls - 12 (2)
Cleo from 5 to 7 - 12 (3)
Band of Outsiders - 10.5 (3)
A Woman is a Woman - 10.5 (2)
Blowup - 10 (2)
The War Game - 10 (2)
Onibaba - 9.5 (3)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - 9.5 (3)
Faces - 9 (2)
The Trial - 9 (2)
Satyricon - 8.5 (2)
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! - 8 (1)
Mouchette - 8 (3)
Week End - 8 (3)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 7 (2)
Red Beard - 7 (2)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - 7 (3)
Midnight Cowboy - 6.5 (2)
Eyes without a Face - 6 (1)
The Haunting - 6 (2)
The Servant - 5.5 (2)
Shoot the Piano Player - 5.5 (2)
Marnie - 5 (1)
The Producers - 5 (2)
Yojimbo - 5 (1)
Charade - 4 (1)
The Firemen's Ball - 3.5 (1)
Planet of the Apes - 3.5 (1)
Through a Glass Darkly - 3 (1)
Fail-Safe - 2.5 (1)
The Innocents - 2.5 (1)
Masculin Feminin - 2.5 (1)
La Notte - 2.5 (1)
Belle de Jour - 2 (1)
Repulsion - 2 (1)
Le Trou - 2 (1)



Of the 101 that qualified, 17 didn't receive a single mention:
Alphaville
A Man for All Seasons
Cool Hand Luke
Easy Rider
For a Few Dollars More
The Great Escape
The House is Black
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
If...
Juliet of the Spirits
Kes
Loves of a Blonde
Pas de Deux
The Shop on Main Street
Take the Money and Run
Tokyo Drifter
West Side Story

[MadMan]

Cliche choice, but I don't really care-the movie is brilliant. Also Spinal's review of it is still excellent, from what I remember.

Thanks to this thread, I'm reminded of why IMDB.com's message boards are full of hilarious idiocy.

[Irish]

Like BuffaloWilder's quote on 2001.

As for the IMDb quotes .. "How would Hitler interpret this movie?" Seriously? Wtf?!

[StanleyK]

Where are the user comments coming from? I love it .

The ones from RT are headlines from user reviews, the ones from IMDB are thread titles.


Just to be clear and I'm not sure if I said so in my original post, but I do like both films quite a lot I just don't fully love them and I think that has much to do with their self-reflexivity. That's why I prefer La Dolce Vita, La Strada, and Nights of Cabiria to 8 1/2... although I'd probably have to allow it 4th place even though Juliet of the Spirits, Amarcord and Toby Dammit are all strong contenders.

But Fellini definitely made the film about the process of filmmaking imo.

My bad, but it wasn't easy finding negative quotes for some of these films.

[Stay Puft]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (****)
2. 8½ (***½)
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (***½)
9. Andrei Rublev (****)
10. Once Upon a Time in the West (***)
12. La Dolce Vita (****)
14. Night of the Living Dead (****)
15. Psycho (**)
16. Rosemary's Baby (***)
17. My Life to Live (***½)

[Irish]

StanleyK, thanks for putting this together. Awesome job (I really enjoyed the hell out of the trivia, the quotes, and the IMDb blurbs).

[StanleyK]

Easy copy-pastable list for ratings:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. 8½
3. Dr. Strangelove
4. Lawrence of Arabia
5. Persona
6. Play Time
7. Au Hasard Balthazar
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
9. Andrei Rublev
10. Once Upon a Time in the West
11. The Apartment
12. La Dolce Vita
13. L'Avventura
14. Night of the Living Dead
15. Psycho
16. Rosemary's Baby
17. My Life to Live
18t. Breathless
18t. Woman in the Dunes
20. Winter Light

Within shot of the top 20:

The Battle of Algiers
The Virgin Spring
The Graduate
A Hard Day's Night
Last Year in Marienbad
Pierrot le Fou
The Wild Bunch
Viridiana

[soitgoes...]

2001: A Space Odyssey ****
8½ ***½
Dr. Strangelove ***½
Lawrence of Arabia ****
Persona ***½
Play Time ***½
Au Hasard Balthazar ***
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ***½
Andrei Rublev **½
Once Upon a Time in the West ****
The Apartment ****
La Dolce Vita ***
L'Avventura ***½
Night of the Living Dead **½
Psycho ***
Rosemary's Baby ***
My Life to Live ***
Breathless **½
Woman in the Dunes ***½
Winter Light ****

[StanleyK]

StanleyK, thanks for putting this together. Awesome job (I really enjoyed the hell out of the trivia, the quotes, and the IMDb blurbs).

Thanks! I'm glad I could hold a candle to Spinal's amazing work for the 2000's thread.

[StanleyK]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - ****
2. 8½ - ****
3. Dr. Strangelove - ****
4. Lawrence of Arabia - Need to rewatch.
5. Persona - ****
6. Play Time - **½
7. Au Hasard Balthazar - **** (could go red on a 2nd viewing)
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
9. Andrei Rublev - ****
10. Once Upon a Time in the West
12. La Dolce Vita - ****
13. L'Avventura - **½
14. Night of the Living Dead - ****
15. Psycho - N2R
16. Rosemary's Baby - N2R
18t. Breathless - ****
18t. Woman in the Dunes - **** (could go red on a 2nd viewing)
20. Winter Light - ****

The Virgin Spring - ****
The Graduate - ****
The Wild Bunch - N2R
Viridiana - ****



Very solid list.

[soitgoes...]

And on to the 50's, where hopefully my list will have more of an impact.

[Spinal]

Brilliant:
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Dr. Strangelove
20. Winter Light

Excellent:
2. 8½
4. Lawrence of Arabia
5. Persona
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
10. Once Upon a Time in the West
11. The Apartment
12. La Dolce Vita
13. L'Avventura
14. Night of the Living Dead
15. Psycho
17. My Life to Live
18t. Woman in the Dunes

Not a fan:
6. Play Time
7. Au Hasard Balthazar
9. Andrei Rublev
16. Rosemary's Baby
18t. Breathless

I guess the list was pretty good after all.

[baby doll]

I disagree with both rouge and baby doll's quotes concerning GBU. But I'm glad about it making the list.Keep in mind that I have a deep-seated aversion to giant sausage-fests.

It's actually kind of surprising how much I like Kubrick considering how blatantly misogynist so much of his work is: The Killing is a very typical noir film in terms of its treatment of women; Paths of Glory has no women until the final sequence, when she's trotted out to make an anti-war statement; Dr. Strangelove has virtually no women at all, except a secretary in a bathing suit for five seconds; 2001 has some mute flight attendants and a gay computer; in A Clockwork Orange the female characters are just there for the hero to rape; and the only women in Full Metal Jacket are either nameless Vietnamese prostitutes or nameless Vietnamese snipers.

[Melville]

Great job with the presentation.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - 10
2. 8½ - 9
3. Dr. Strangelove - 9
4. Lawrence of Arabia - 10
5. Persona - 10
6. Play Time - 8.5
7. Au Hasard Balthazar - 9
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 9
9. Andrei Rublev - 10
10. Once Upon a Time in the West - 3.5
11. The Apartment - 7
12. La Dolce Vita - 5.5
13. L'Avventura - 6
14. Night of the Living Dead - 3
15. Psycho - 9
16. Rosemary's Baby - 9.5
17. My Life to Live - 8
18t. Breathless - 6.5
18t. Woman in the Dunes - 10
20. Winter Light - 7.5

The Battle of Algiers - 9.5
The Virgin Spring - 8.5
The Graduate - 7.5
A Hard Day's Night - na
Last Year in Marienbad - 7
Pierrot le Fou - 9.5
The Wild Bunch - 8
Viridiana - na

[baby doll]

Graded:

A
L'Année dernière Ã* Marienbad (Resnais)
Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
L'avventura (Antonioni)
La dolce vita (Fellini)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Persona (Bergman)
Playtime (Tati)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

A-
À bout de souffle (Godard)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
The Apartment (Wilder)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
A Hard Day's Night (Lester)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
Pierrot le fou (Godard)
Psycho (Hitchcock)
Rosemary's Baby (Polanski)
Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (Godard)
Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
Viridiana (Buñuel)

B+
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)

B
The Graduate (Nichols)
The Night of the Living Dead (Romero)

C
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)

Need to re-watch: Winter Light (Bergman)

[Mysterious Dude]

2001 has some mute flight attendants and a gay computer
HAL 9000 is gay?!

[Pop Trash]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - 10
2. 8½ - don't remember liking it much, but needs a rewatch
3. Dr. Strangelove - 8
4. Lawrence of Arabia - n/s
5. Persona - 10
6. Play Time - n/s
7. Au Hasard Balthazar - 8 maybe? I'm still undecided how much I like Bresson
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 9 but needs a rewatch
9. Andrei Rublev - needs a rewatch
10. Once Upon a Time in the West - needs a rewatch
11. The Apartment - 9
12. La Dolce Vita - see 8 1/2
13. L'Avventura - 7
14. Night of the Living Dead - 9
15. Psycho - 10
16. Rosemary's Baby - 9
17. My Life to Live - needs a rewatch
18t. Breathless - 9
18t. Woman in the Dunes - n/s
20. Winter Light - n/s

Within shot of the top 20:

The Battle of Algiers - n/s
The Virgin Spring - 9
The Graduate - 10
A Hard Day's Night - needs a rewatch
Last Year in Marienbad - needs a rewatch
Pierrot le Fou - 8
The Wild Bunch - 9
Viridiana - 8

[Derek]

HAL 9000 is gay?!

He prefers the company of men.

[Pop Trash]

I can't believe Rushmore got in the top five of the 90s, but The Graduate couldn't even get in the top twenty of the 60s. What bullshit.

[baby doll]

I can't believe Rushmore got in the top five of the 90s, but The Graduate couldn't even get in the top twenty of the 60s. What bullshit.Everybody knows Rushmore is a better film (or at the least, a more successful one) than The Graduate, which would've been more interesting if it were about Mrs. Robinson, instead of following Dustin Hoffman to Berkley, at which point the film becomes a fairly routine romantic comedy.

[Spinal]

I can't believe Rushmore got in the top five of the 90s, but The Graduate couldn't even get in the top twenty of the 60s.

A fair point actually.

[Derek]

The 60s was by far the best decade for film. The 90s were amazing as well, but still can't match it. And yes, Rushmore is better than The Graduate, though I love both.

[Spinal]

I'm in the 'Rushmore can't carry The Graduate's jock' camp.

[Raiders]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - 10.0
2. 8½ - 9.0
3. Dr. Strangelove - 8.0
4. Lawrence of Arabia - 9.0
5. Persona - 10.0
6. Play Time - 10.0
7. Au Hasard Balthazar - 10.0
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 9.0
9. Andrei Rublev - 8.0
10. Once Upon a Time in the West - 9.5
11. The Apartment - 8.5
12. La Dolce Vita - 7.0
13. L'Avventura - 8.5
14. Night of the Living Dead - 8.0
15. Psycho - 7.5
16. Rosemary's Baby - 9.0
17. My Life to Live - 10.0
18t. Breathless - 8.0
18t. Woman in the Dunes - 10.0
20. Winter Light - 4.0

[Derek]

I'm in the 'Rushmore can't carry The Graduate's jock' camp.

Does a film really need a jock strap? And if it does, shouldn't it be wearing it to support its junk and not having other films carry it for them?

[Derek]

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - 10.0
2. 8½ - 9.0
3. Dr. Strangelove - 8.5
4. Lawrence of Arabia - 8.0
5. Persona - 9.5
6. Play Time - 10.0
7. Au Hasard Balthazar - 10.0
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 9.0
9. Andrei Rublev - 8.0
10. Once Upon a Time in the West - 9.5
11. The Apartment - 8.0
12. La Dolce Vita - 7.5
13. L'Avventura - 10.0
14. Night of the Living Dead - 7.0
15. Psycho - 8.5
16. Rosemary's Baby - 7.0
17. My Life to Live - 9.5
18t. Breathless - 8.5
18t. Woman in the Dunes - 10.0
20. Winter Light - 5.5

[B-side]

It's actually kind of surprising how much I like Kubrick considering how blatantly misogynist so much of his work is: The Killing is a very typical noir film in terms of its treatment of women; Paths of Glory has no women until the final sequence, when she's trotted out to make an anti-war statement; Dr. Strangelove has virtually no women at all, except a secretary in a bathing suit for five seconds; 2001 has some mute flight attendants and a gay computer; in A Clockwork Orange the female characters are just there for the hero to rape; and the only women in Full Metal Jacket are either nameless Vietnamese prostitutes or nameless Vietnamese snipers.

*sigh*

Anyway, great work, Stan.

[Bosco B Thug]

Of the 101 that qualified, 17 didn't receive a single mention:
Alphaville
A Man for All Seasons
Cool Hand Luke
Easy Rider
For a Few Dollars More
The Great Escape
The House is Black
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
If...
Juliet of the Spirits
Kes
Loves of a Blonde
Pas de Deux
The Shop on Main Street
Take the Money and Run
Tokyo Drifter
West Side Story Ah, this is interesting to know. No attachments here to complain about, though... this time.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - 9
2. 8½ - N2R
3. Dr. Strangelove - 8.5
4. Lawrence of Arabia - n/a
5. Persona - 9
6. Play Time - n/a
- I've non-diligently sat through Mon Oncle and M. Hulot's Holiday... don't think I'm a Tati guy...
7. Au Hasard Balthazar - N2R
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 8
9. Andrei Rublev - n/a
10. Once Upon a Time in the West - 8
11. The Apartment - n/a
12. La Dolce Vita - n/a
13. L'avventura - 9
14. Night of the Living Dead - 7.5
15. Psycho - 8.5
16. Rosemary's Baby - 7.5
17. My Life to Live - 8
18t. Breathless - 9
18t. Woman in the Dunes - n/a
20. Winter Light - 9

Within shot of the top 20:

The Battle of Algiers - 8.5
The Virgin Spring - 8
The Graduate - n/a
A Hard Day's Night - n/a
Last Year in Marienbad - n/a
Pierrot le Fou - 6.5
The Wild Bunch - N2R
Viridiana - 8.5


Loved Winter Light, would've been on my list.

[Derek]

6. Play Time - n/a
- I've non-diligently sat through Mon Oncle and M. Hulot's Holiday... don't think I'm a Tati guy...

I like both of those, especially Mon Oncle, but I think his best work came later with Playtime, Trafic and Parade. Mon Oncle was just as charming to see in the theater as it was on DVD, but the latter 3 almost play almost like entirely different films with an audience and a larger scope, Playtime to a degree equal to 2001. Obviously if you're not a fan of his style in those earlier films, there's not a huge chance you'll love these, but don't write him off just yet.

[Pop Trash]

It's actually kind of surprising how much I like Kubrick considering how blatantly misogynist so much of his work is: The Killing is a very typical noir film in terms of its treatment of women; Paths of Glory has no women until the final sequence, when she's trotted out to make an anti-war statement; Dr. Strangelove has virtually no women at all, except a secretary in a bathing suit for five seconds; 2001 has some mute flight attendants and a gay computer; in A Clockwork Orange the female characters are just there for the hero to rape; and the only women in Full Metal Jacket are either nameless Vietnamese prostitutes or nameless Vietnamese snipers.

This is a fair criticism and I've had this convo with a female cinephile friend of mine (who isn't a Kubrick fan for this reason). Keep in mind Match-Cut (with a few exceptions) is a sausage fest and we might not even view films through a female prism.

[B-side]

This is a fair criticism.

No, it's not. Why should Kubrick conform and contort his art to meet your silly standards of gender equality? Come to think of it, there aren't enough fat guys in movies. And definitely not enough fat guys who aren't immature and narrow-minded. And Breillat needs to put more strong male characters in her films because that's what I want. Who cares if that has anything to do with her vision? I demand equality!

[Pop Trash]

No, it's not. Why should Kubrick conform and contort his art to meet your silly standards of gender equality? Come to think of it, there aren't enough fat guys in movies. And definitely not enough fat guys who aren't immature and narrow-minded. And Breillat needs to put more strong male characters in her films because that's what I want. Who cares if that has anything to do with her vision? I demand equality!

I take it you avoid gender theory courses?

[MadMan]

Keep in mind that I have a deep-seated aversion to giant sausage-fests.Touche. And I'm biased in that its my favorite movie...


It's actually kind of surprising how much I like Kubrick considering how blatantly misogynist so much of his work is: The Killing is a very typical noir film in terms of its treatment of women; Paths of Glory has no women until the final sequence, when she's trotted out to make an anti-war statement; Dr. Strangelove has virtually no women at all, except a secretary in a bathing suit for five seconds; 2001 has some mute flight attendants and a gay computer; in A Clockwork Orange the female characters are just there for the hero to rape; and the only women in Full Metal Jacket are either nameless Vietnamese prostitutes or nameless Vietnamese snipers.I'm not sure if one can consider his work misogynist-if so, then one must also attack much of Cronenberg's work, or Von Trier's Antichrist for being so as well (I don't agree that Cronenberg or Von Trier are misogynistic btw). Perhaps the fact that Kubrick hardly includes female characters or treats them poorly can also be explained by the fact that he doesn't know how to write for them or direct them. But then again he had female main characters in Bary Lyndon (I haven't seen that movie so I can't commit), and The Shining (where the female character eventually attacks the male character out of self defense and ends up asserting herself). So perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle, or I'm willing to ignore misogynistic behavior in Kubrick's works and others because I'm a young adult WASP. Could be.

This is all a discussion for another thread. As much as I like discussion in film consensus threads, I feel that many of them would be better suited being spun off to a seperate thread.

[Irish]

No, it's not. Why should Kubrick conform and contort his art to meet your silly standards of gender equality?
I think baby doll's insight is astute. It's something I never noticed about Kubrick before.

On one hand, you can make the argument that, well, maybe this was a guy whose primary concerns centered around male themes. (You can make similar arguments about Scorcese.) Maybe that's not a big deal, because these are movies about traditional male roles, dealing with soldiers and boxers, thugs and gangsters.

On the other hand we're not talking about some small, obscure demographic that's being underrepresented at the movies. The fat guy analogy doesn't hold because we're talking about fifty percent of the entire population of the planet.

You won't see this as an issue at all unless (1) you know someone it's directly effected and they beef about it (2) or you've lived in a homogenous population where your image doesn't exist in large numbers in the people around you or in popular media.

If you're a white guy in America, move to Korea and Japan for awhile, where you're the perpetual outsider in life and your image is marginalized or cartoonish in the media almost all the time. Then imagine what that must feel like when it's your own homeland and you can't just move again to make yourself part of the majority.

[jamaul]

No, it's not. Why should Kubrick conform and contort his art to meet your silly standards of gender equality? Come to think of it, there aren't enough fat guys in movies. And definitely not enough fat guys who aren't immature and narrow-minded. And Breillat needs to put more strong male characters in her films because that's what I want. Who cares if that has anything to do with her vision? I demand equality!

Seriously.

What if Kubrick saw his ability to construct female characters as one of his creative weaknesses? Is that at all a bad thing? Does every work of cinema need to represent a gender equality in which either sex is afforded mutual screen time and development? If you put a female lead in Full Metal Jacket, or Dr. Strangelove, I'm sorry, they cease to be the same films, and honestly, I think they would be severely weakened. And what role WOULD a female have in FMJ, especially considering the narrative perspective? It's a baseless nitpick that has zero bearing on the work itself. Ditto to Strangelove, a military film set in a satirized 60s, which would have bordered on fantasy if a woman held any job more than the level of secretary in this world.

And not to mention, call me pedestrian, but I thought the female characters in The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, while supporting players, still very fascinating. Kidman's Alice, in EWS is one of the greatest and strongest of all Kubrick characters, bringing that film to a conclusion (and ultimately, a career culmination), to a peak of certain optimism, mostly missing in most of Kubrick's work. And on that note, have you ever noticed that one of the biggest themes in all of Kubrick's films have been the dark sides and downfalls of human nature? And what gender does he usually incorporate to investigate those themes of human inadequacy?

Males.

[jamaul]

Perhaps the fact that Kubrick hardly includes female characters or treats them poorly can also be explained by the fact that he doesn't know how to write for them or direct them.

Kubrick does not treat his female characters (or actors) badly. His characters though, on occasion, do.

As far as I'm concerned, females don't have a place in many of his films because of setting and location. The 'carting out a female' at the end of Paths of Glory, while sentimental, was precisely the unexpected note that this brutal war film needed to end on, and it is probably the only Kubrick scene that moves me to tears (yeah, call me easily manipulated, that scene's left-field arrival seriously engraved itself into my mind). Not to mention, he married the woman he 'carted' out, in real life. (and honestly, Baby Doll is usually go-to for some of the smartest posts on this message board, but that Kubrick-Sexist rant was ridiculously reductive, inaccurate, and really, not very funny).

Watch Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. Kubrick adored and respected women. He lived with and surrounded himself with them. But the worlds that fascinated Kubrick, that pushed him to the obsessive drive to craft his work, didn't usually involve female characters.

And yes, a lot of this is wrought from my own bias towards Kubrick. I've been in love with his films for nearly a decade and I will argue his relevance, intuition and brilliance beyond the infinite. That's a threat and a challenge.

[Bosco B Thug]

^^ I'm with Brightside and jamaul. None of his non-skills and rhetorical usages of women characters preclude a disregard or flippancy with them.


I like both of those, especially Mon Oncle, but I think his best work came later with Playtime, Trafic and Parade. Mon Oncle was just as charming to see in the theater as it was on DVD, but the latter 3 almost play almost like entirely different films with an audience and a larger scope, Playtime to a degree equal to 2001. Obviously if you're not a fan of his style in those earlier films, there's not a huge chance you'll love these, but don't write him off just yet. Certainly. I've heard that his continuing work does "evolve" in some sense, and I must admit I am curious as to how, since his style is already so singular and completely formed. Hope he doesn't become too "darker!" and "edgier!" Tati.

[jamaul]

Certainly. I've heard that his continuing work does "evolve" in some sense, and I must admit I am curious as to how, since his style is already so singular and completely formed. Hope he doesn't become too "darker!" and "edgier!" Tati.

The scope broadens, and Tati explores modernization to an extent that his lead character, M. Hulot, is delegated to something of a 'Where's Waldo' background character. It's really quite brilliant. If I'm not mistaken, there isn't a single close-up in Playtime. I can imagine that watching the film with an audience would be ideal ... when I first saw Playtime, I watched it three times that same day ... first with subtitles, twice more without. I was flabbergasted: it transcends the very notion of character, conventional narrative, linear plotting, and the language itself ... Tati dares you to look at anything in any kind of preconceived formal way. And the most wonderful thing about all of it: it isn't dark or edgy at all, rather, it's exuberant and infectiously optimistic.

[Bosco B Thug]

The scope broadens, and Tati explores modernization to an extent that his lead character, M. Hulot, is delegated to something of a 'Where's Waldo' background character. It's really quite brilliant. If I'm not mistaken, there isn't a single close-up in Playtime. I can imagine that watching the film with an audience would be ideal ... when I first saw Playtime, I watched it three times that same day ... first with subtitles, twice more without. I was flabbergasted: it transcends the very notion of character, conventional narrative, linear plotting, and the language itself ... Tati dares you to look at anything in any kind of preconceived formal way. And the most wonderful thing about all of it: it isn't dark or edgy at all, rather, it's exuberant and infectiously optimistic. Cool, and very interesting, but me and my seemingly deplorable attention span will just have to see.

[MadMan]

Kubrick does not treat his female characters (or actors) badly. His characters though, on occasion, do.

As far as I'm concerned, females don't have a place in many of his films because of setting and location. The 'carting out a female' at the end of Paths of Glory, while sentimental, was precisely the unexpected note that this brutal war film needed to end on, and it is probably the only Kubrick scene that moves me to tears (yeah, call me easily manipulated, that scene's left-field arrival seriously engraved itself into my mind). Not to mention, he married the woman he 'carted' out, in real life. (and honestly, Baby Doll is usually go-to for some of the smartest posts on this message board, but that Kubrick-Sexist rant was ridiculously reductive, inaccurate, and really, not very funny).

Watch Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. Kubrick adored and respected women. He lived with and surrounded himself with them. But the worlds that fascinated Kubrick, that pushed him to the obsessive drive to craft his work, didn't usually involve female characters.

And yes, a lot of this is wrought from my own bias towards Kubrick. I've been in love with his films for nearly a decade and I will argue his relevance, intuition and brilliance beyond the infinite. That's a threat and a challenge.Welcome back to the boards, dude. And I figured that sooner or later someone had actually seen all of his movies (I have yet to view Eyes Wide Shut, Barry Lyndon, or Killer's Kiss yet) so I was wondering what the input would be from someone who's a huge fan of his and has viewed all of his movies.

Also I agree with Brightside's reply on the issue to a certain degree.

[B-side]

I take it you avoid gender theory courses?

You're reaching pretty far if you think Kubrick's decision to utilize the male perspective more often than not is a sign of some sort of institutionalized misogyny.

[B-side]

I think baby doll's insight is astute. It's something I never noticed about Kubrick before.

On one hand, you can make the argument that, well, maybe this was a guy whose primary concerns centered around male themes. (You can make similar arguments about Scorcese.) Maybe that's not a big deal, because these are movies about traditional male roles, dealing with soldiers and boxers, thugs and gangsters.

On the other hand we're not talking about some small, obscure demographic that's being underrepresented at the movies. The fat guy analogy doesn't hold because we're talking about fifty percent of the entire population of the planet.

You won't see this as an issue at all unless (1) you know someone it's directly effected and they beef about it (2) or you've lived in a homogenous population where your image doesn't exist in large numbers in the people around you or in popular media.

If you're a white guy in America, move to Korea and Japan for awhile, where you're the perpetual outsider in life and your image is marginalized or cartoonish in the media almost all the time. Then imagine what that must feel like when it's your own homeland and you can't just move again to make yourself part of the majority.

Fat people represent a growing population, so why shouldn't they be represented? What happens when 2/3 of the population is overweight? Do we then have to adjust our new arbitrary standards to fit this new trend? It's a stupid point of contention. No film is ever going to represent every point of view equally, and it's not their job to do so.

[Qrazy]

Agreed with B.

Furthermore not featuring women does not make a film or filmmaker misogynistic. And no one seems to have remembered that he made Lolita. And if one were to read that film as in praise of man and in condemnation of women, then one would be entirely missing the point of the work imo.

[MadMan]

Damnit, I can't believe I forgot about Lolita. Maybe its because of my rating for it, and the fact that its not as spectaluar as say, The Shining, or his other movies, that I overlooked it, even though my rating for it is higher than The Shining's and The Killers' rating as well. How would the film be in praise of man?
Lolita spoilers:
To me, the movie ends up being rather damning of a man who throws away everything over his obession for this girl. And then ruins his life just because he loses her, and another man tries to steal her. Which his response is to kill said man, and therefore his fate is to die in jail. Meanwhile, the woman leaves him in the end. Its depressing, and a rather bitter and bleak commentary on the folly of love.

Whether or not that's accurate, its what I got out of the movie, at least for the most part. Oh and that James Mason and Peter Sellers are both excellent.

[Irish]

Fat people represent a growing population, so why shouldn't they be represented? What happens when 2/3 of the population is overweight? Do we then have to adjust our new arbitrary standards to fit this new trend? It's a stupid point of contention. No film is ever going to represent every point of view equally, and it's not their job to do so.

Seriously, dude. The fat people thing is a ridiculous argument. POP QUIZ: WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN FAT PEOPLE RULE THE EARTH, IRISH? WHAT. DO. YOU. DO?!

I agree that it's not the responsibility of any individual film to deliver the widest demographic representation. I'm not even arguing that it should be attempted, every time, just for the sake of it.

My beef mostly lies in the systemic approach to media that skews in a large, undeniable way towards males.

This isn't a political beef. It's an entertainment beef. To have women represented the same way, almost all the time, is really fucking boring.

And frankly, there isn't a good reason why female characters in stuff like Boardwalk Empire or Iron Man 2 can't have the same kinds of conversations as the guys. There's no reason why they can't have their own arcs, their own stories.

[B-side]

Seriously, dude. The fat people thing is a ridiculous argument. POP QUIZ: WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN FAT PEOPLE RULE THE EARTH, IRISH? WHAT. DO. YOU. DO?!

I agree that it's not the responsibility of any individual film to deliver the widest demographic representation. I'm not even arguing that it should be attempted, every time, just for the sake of it.

My beef mostly lies in the systemic approach to media that skews in a large, undeniable way towards males.

This isn't a political beef. It's an entertainment beef. To have women represented the same way, almost all the time, is really fucking boring.

And frankly, there isn't a good reason why female characters in stuff like Boardwalk Empire or Iron Man 2 can't have the same kinds of conversations as the guys. There's no reason why they can't have their own arcs, their own stories.

The fat people analogy is perfectly legit. People also bitch about black people not being represented enough in films. It's the same thing. There are plenty of female directors offering the female perspective in the realm of art. And women are not always represented the same way. You're exaggerating for the sake of a point. And why would females have the same conversations as guys? They're different genders, thus they tend to have differing interests and ideas. The same way women are often seen gossiping or shopping in films, men are often seen drinking beer and being neglectful. This is a two-way street. I'm not arguing that there isn't misogyny in the entertainment industry, there is, and it's everywhere else, too. But again, criticizing art for not conforming to your arbitrary guidelines of equal representation is stupid.

[Irish]

The fat people analogy is perfectly legit. People also bitch about black people not being represented enough in films. It's the same thing.
No, it's not. Not by a long shot. Neither group is half the population of the entire planet.

Seriously, it's an inane and ludicrous argument. "What about one legged lesbian albinos, Irish? Where's their media representation, smart guy?"


There are plenty of female directors offering the female perspective in the realm of art.
Wow. No. No there's not. There's no question the movie industry is male dominated. (Off the top of your head, you can probably name a dozen male directors who are not only famous on a national level, but also have complete creative control of their projects. I bet you can't even name three female directors operating at that level. I'll save you the time: You can't, because there aren't any. Here's another tricky one: Name three female directors who have won Academy Awards -- without looking it up.)


And why would females have the same conversations as guys?
Uh, I dunno. Because they're human beings?

Take something simple like Iron Man 2. There are two major female roles in the movie, both played by well known actresses (one of them is an Academy Award winner, ffs).

Take a guess how much onscreen time they share. Now take a guess how many conversations they have with one another.

I'll give you the answer to this one: It's less than 5 minutes, they have a single conversation during the entire film, and no surprise, it's about a man.

You don't find that kind of thing not only skewed, but really boring? Especially after seeing that same exact dynamic being played out in film after film, tv show after tv show?

It's 2010, ffs. Why are we still playing to gender roles that are out of 1970?

[B-side]

I don't understand. There's not much stopping a woman from entering the directorial business. Seems more an issue of them simply not wanting to. You can't blame the public for telling the entertainment industry what they want with their money and getting precisely that in return. Is it unfortunate that so few females have such major roles in the entertainment industry? Yes. Does it mean art should be criticized for not pandering to your wannabe uber-liberal equality stance? No.

[Irish]

I don't understand. There's not much stopping a woman from entering the directorial business.
If that were true, don't you think there would be more women in influential positions? Or are you assuming it's because of some weird -- and non existent -- gender specific lack of interest?


Seems more an issue of them simply not wanting to. You can't blame the public for telling the entertainment industry what they want with their money and getting precisely that in return. Is it unfortunate that so few females have such major roles in the entertainment industry? Yes.

Ah, you are assuming it's because of some gender-specific lack of interest.

Really? I mean, do you really think that? Women and minorities don't have these jobs because they're simply not interested? Really?


Does it mean art should be criticized for not pandering to your wannabe uber-liberal equality stance? No.

I'm not talking about pandering. I'm talking about a world where this isn't so completely and utterly skewed. Where women aren't automatically relegated to the girlfriend/wife/mother/whore role that doesn't change and has no real arc to it.

Where two female characters can have onscreen conversations with each other nearly as often as the guys, and those conversations don't always revolve around a man or babies.

[B-side]

Ah, you are assuming it's because of some gender-specific lack of interest.

Really? I mean, do you really think that? Women and minorities don't have these jobs because they're simply not interested? Really?

I think it's a lot more challenging for minorities than it is for women in America. Maybe women just aren't as interested in these positions of power as men are? There is misogyny everywhere, but if a woman really wanted to make films, she would. It hasn't stopped every other filmmaker truly invested in the medium from making them when nobody wanted to finance or produce their stuff. I don't know the answer. And again, I'm not denying the existence of misogyny in the entertainment industry, but I think there are far more factors at play here than some made up conspiracy to keep women away from art.


I'm not talking about pandering. I'm talking about a world where this isn't so completely and utterly skewed. Where women aren't automatically relegated to the girlfriend/wife/mother/whore role that doesn't change and has no real arc to it.

Where two female characters can have onscreen conversations with each other nearly as often as the guys, and those conversations don't always revolve around a man or babies.

Tell that to the viewing public.

[Eleven]

I straddle the line on this, because there are undoubtedly industry-wide issues of gender imbalance and pigeonholing women into various roles both in front of and behind the camera. That said, bringing up the gender imbalance of Kubrick's stable of characters is to concern oneself with artistic temperament more than industry practice, I think. Ophuls and Mizoguchi and Hawks all had, under various industry standards and conditions, wonderful female characters, and someone like Kathryn Bigelow made some macho genre flicks.

The Bechdel Test has value over a wide swath of examples, but when one applies to individual films, one has to examine what the film is, what opportunities for passing the various aspects of the Test were squandered (or could be invented), and whether passing the Bechdel Test makes any difference to its worth.

[B-side]

This is the issue, though. Why are people criticizing the art and not the viewing public?

[baby doll]

This is the issue, though. Why are people criticizing the art and not the viewing public?If women aren't better represented in commercial films, I don't think that's because women don't go to movies or women don't want to see films about women--except an incredibly stupid one like Sex and the City or Twilight, and only then once in a blue moon (never-mind that most reviewers treated both films with a level of scorn that would seem excessive if it were directed at a James Bond adventure or a Judd Apatow comedy). As Manohla Dargis put it recently, the film business is a bunch of guys in baseball caps making deals with other guys in baseball caps.

Going back to Kubrick, whether or not he was a misogynist personally, he often made movies designed to appeal to teenage boys (and the teenage boy in all of us), like science fiction and war movies. Some folks have cited Nicole Kidman's performance in Eyes Wide Shut as a strong female performance, and I can't argue with that. But it's worth noting that the film wasn't a hit, and neither was Barry Lyndon, because unlike Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, they're not films that generally appeal to teenage boys. (To be fair, I was a teenage boy myself when I saw them for the first time, and loved both, while A Clockwork Orange left me cold.)

[MadMan]

The majority of my Kubrick viewing has occured during my post-teen years. I viewed The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket when I was in high school. However, it wasn't until college and after taking some film courses and spending countless times writing reviews that I actually understood what those films meant.

PS: Wait, no, I think I saw The Shining when I was in middle school, actually. I can't remember.

[Russ]

#01

http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad271/PTA-Dre/2001-a-space-odyssey_592x299.jpg

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
Found (http://blastr.com/2010/12/-17-lost-minutes-of-2001.php) - 17 minutes of edited footage that Kubrick cut from 2001 shortly after its initial release—and the footage is perfectly preserved.