MC Yearly Consensus -- 1928/1929

[Spinal]

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

The point system is as follows

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

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

You may begin now.

IMDB power search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Spinal]

1. Un Chien Andalou
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc
3. The Fall of the House of Usher
4. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
5. The Man Who Laughs

[Yxklyx]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel)
3. Asphalt (Joe May)
4. L' Étoile de mer (Man Ray)
5. The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni)

[Yxklyx]

3. The Fall of the House of Usher

Which one?

[Raiders]

1. The Man With the Movie Camera
2. The Cameraman
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc
4. The Crowd
5. The Last Command

Hm, lot of "The"s.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc
2. The Circus
3. Un Chien Andalou
4. Steamboat Bill, Jr.

[Velocipedist]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. The Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
3. Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel)
4. The Box of Pandora (Georg Wilhelm Pabst)
5. La Coquille et le clergyman (Germaine Dulac)

Honorable mentions:

6. The Wind (Victor Sjöström)
7. Arsenal (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
8. Oktyabr (Sergei Eisenstein)
9. Brumes d'automne (Dimitri Kirsanoff)

I'm surprised some of these haven't made other lists, particularly 4, 5 and 6.

[Mysterious Dude]

8. Oktyabr (Sergei Eisenstein)
This is 1928, now? That's good to know.

[Velocipedist]

This is 1928, now? That's good to know.

I only rely on imdb. :cry:

[Russ]

1. Un Chien Andalou
2. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
3. The Man With the Movie Camera
4. L’Étoile de mer
5. The Circus

[Mysterious Dude]

I only rely on imdb. :cry:
That's okay. I'm sure IMDB used to say it was 1927.

It's cool, though, because my 1928 list was quite a bit weaker than my 1927 list.

[Spinal]

Which one?

This one. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018770/)

[Boner M]

1. Man With a Movie Camera
2. Steamboat Bill Jr.
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc
4. Un Chien Andalou

[Raiders]

Bah.

The Cameraman > Steamboat Bill Jr.

[Boner M]

Bah.

The Cameraman > Steamboat Bill Jr.
h/s

[Derek]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapich)
3. Pandora's Box (G. W. Pabst)
4. The Crowd (King Vidor)
5. Man With the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
______________________________ ________

6. The Wind (Victor Sjostrom)
7. Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel)
8. The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg)
9. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Buster Keaton)
10. The Circus (Charles Chaplin)

Others very much worth your time:

H2O (Ralph Steiner)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein & Luis Buñuel)
Regen (Joris Ivens)
Brumes D'Automne (Dimitri Kirsanoff)
Speedy (Ted Wilde)
L'Étoile de mer (Man Ray)
The Seashell & the Clergyman (Germain Dulac)
The Cameraman (Buster Keaton)

[Raiders]

h/s

g/o/y/a

[Winston*]

g/o/y/a
Raiders! That's disgusting.

[Derek]

g/o/y/a

i/w/s/b/i/s/t/i/i/t/S/B/J!

It's worth seeing, but I still think it's inferior to Steamboat Bill, Jr.

[Boner M]

g/o/y/a
w/t/f

[Derek]

Raiders! That's disgusting.

Seriously, I know gerbils are just rodents, but that still sounds like animal abuse to me.

[Derek]

w/t/f

Get off your ass!

[Boner M]

I'd watch it on youtube, but all my experiences with watching feature length films in that format have been detrimental to them. I'll wait for better conditions.

[Spinal]

g/o/y/a

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/time-goya-painting.gif

[Boner M]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/time-goya-painting.gif
Yeah, I thought for a sec that Raiders was trying to imply that the film was a work of art.

[ledfloyd]

1. The Circus
2. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
3. Un Chien Andalou
4. Steamboat Willie

that's the only time you'll ever see me rank chaplin over keaton. in fact i feel dirty doing it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. The Circus
2. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
3. Un Chien Andalou
4. Steamboat Willie

that's the only time you'll ever see me rank chaplin over keaton. in fact i feel dirty doing it.

You shouldn't. The Circus is indeed the better film.

[Raiders]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/time-goya-painting.gif

h/s

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Passion of Joan of Arc
2. Man with a Movie Camera
3. L'Argent
4. New Babylon
5. Queen Kelly

[Eleven]

1. The Crowd
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc
3. The Cameraman
4. Man with a Movie Camera
5. Un chien andalou

HS: Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Wind, The Fall of the House of Usher.

[Llopin]

1. Big Business (Horne)
2. Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov)
3. The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (Florey)
4. Oktyabr (Einsenstein)
5. Liberty (McCarey)

Big Business is the funniest film I've seen guddamit.

[Derek]

Just an FYI, there are a ton of great short film from '28/'29 on the 2-disc Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and '30s set. It's really an amazing collection with little to no filler...on Netflix here (http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Avant-Garde_Experimental_Cinema_of_t he_1920s_and_30s/70034910?trkid=222336&lnkctr=srchrd-sr&strkid=170920496_0_0).

[Spinal]

Tabulators, just to make sure we're on the same page, the cycle should continue as follows:

1999 - Eleven
1989 - Llopin
1979 - KF
1969 - Spinal
1959 - Eleven
1949 - Llopin
1939 - KF
2001 - Spinal

[Eleven]

Tabulators, just to make sure we're on the same page, the cycle should continue as follows:

Gotcha. Start sometime in the next few days?

[Spinal]

Gotcha. Start sometime in the next few days?

Give it three or four days.

[Yxklyx]

I have not seen The Crowd or The Last Command. People need to see Asphalt, which Netflix carries. It has the best seduction sequence in the history of cinema.

[Yxklyx]

Tabulators, just to make sure we're on the same page, the cycle should continue as follows:

1999 - Eleven
1989 - Llopin
1979 - KF
1969 - Spinal
1959 - Eleven
1949 - Llopin
1939 - KF
2001 - Spinal

Let's vote on which one we do next :twisted:

[Ezee E]

1. Passion of Joan of Arc
2. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
3. Un Chien Andalou
4. Man With the Movie Camera
5. Steamboat Willie

[koji]

1. Big Business (James W. Horne, Leo McCarey
2. Pandora’s Box (Pabst)
3. The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni)
4. Man with the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
5. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)

[Mysterious Dude]

1. The Circus
2. Hallelujah
3. October
4. The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra
5. The Man Who Laughs

[Melville]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc
2. The Circus
3. Un Chien Andalou
4. Pandora's Box
5. October

[koji]

1. Big Business (Horne)
2. Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov)
3. The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (Florey)
4. Oktyabr (Einsenstein)
5. Liberty (McCarey)

Big Business is the funniest film I've seen guddamit.

Big Business (http://www.veoh.com/videos/v897910HsPEM58X) Good stuff.

[origami_mustache]

1. Man with a Movie Camera
2. Regen aka Rain
3. Un Chien Andalou
4. The Passion of Joan of Arc
5. Blackmail

Honorable Mentions:
The Cameraman
The Iron Mask
The Cocoanuts
H2O
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Seashell & the Clergyman

[soitgoes...]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
3. Big Business (James W. Horne, Leo McCarey) - Indeed.
4. Rain (Mannus Franken, Joris Ivens)
5. The Circus (Charles Chaplin)
---------------------------------------------------------------
6. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel)
7. The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton)
8. The Crowd (King Vidor)
9. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton)
10. L'Étoile de mer (Man Ray)

I have The Crowd, Queen Kelly, and the Marcel Carné/Sanvoisin short Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche in my possession. They might or might not get watched in time for this consensus.

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. Pandora’s Box
2. La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc
3. The Circus
4. Diary of a Lost Girl
5. Show People

[monolith94]

1. Speedy (1928)
2. The Cameraman (1928)
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
4. The Docks of New York(1928)
5. Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

6. The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929)
7. The Circus (1928)
8. Man With A Movie Camera (1929)
9. The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)
10. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

11. The Man Who Laughs (1928)
12. Pandora's Box (1929)
13. New Babylon (1929)
14. Un Chien Andalou (1929)
15. Piccadilly (1929)

honorable mentions:

Storm Over Asia (1928)
The Wind (1928)

[Spinal]

Top songs of 1928-1929:

1. Louis Armstrong "West End Blues" 1928
2. Jimmie Rodgers "Blue Yodel (T for Texas)" 1928
3. The Carter Family "Wildwood Flower" 1929
4. Fats Waller "Ain't Misbehavin'" 1929
5. Charley Patton "Pony Blues" 1929
6. The Carter Family "Keep on the Sunny Side" 1928
7. Blind Willie McTell "Statesboro Blues" 1928
8. Fats Waller "Handful of Keys" 1929
9. Eddie Cantor "Makin' Whopee" 1928
10. Blind Lemon Jefferson "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" 1928

source: acclaimedmusic.net

[baby doll]

1. Spies (Fritz Lang, 1928)
2. La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
3. Un chien andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1929)
4. Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929)
5. The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928)

[dreamdead]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2. The Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
3. The Cameraman
4. Pandora's Box (Pabst)
5. Diary of a Lost Girl (Pabst)

[soitgoes...]

I did end up watching The Crowd, Queen Kelly and Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche, but alas the best that any of them could manage was 8th. The Crowd is definitely worth a look though.

[Spinal]

Fun Facts for 1928-1929:

* Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to successfully pilot an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/825254.jpg

* Alexander Fleming discovers Penicillin.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/penicillin.jpg

* Seven gangsters, rivals of Al Capone, are murdered in Chicago in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/9yoe99o2.jpg

* 1st Academy Awards are presented at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California, with Wings winning Best Picture.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Wings.jpg

* The New York Stock Exchange experiences the most devastating stock market crash in American history, marking the beginning of the Great Depression.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/1929crash.jpg

[Spinal]

Last day for this poll.

[Spinal]

#10

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/sjff_01_img0119.jpg

The Crowd

Director: King Vidor

Country: USA

John sets out to make his mark in New York City, but ends up a faceless worker in a large office of a large business. After 5 years, he has a son and a daughter and the same dead end job. When tragedy strikes, he must find the conviction to continue or lose what little he has left.

Earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director (Dramatic Picture) and Best Picture (Unique and Artistic Production). In one scene, a police officer is looking toward the camera, admonishing someone to "move along". In fact, he was actually addressing Vidor and his disguised film crew.

"The Crowd ... is not an easy movie. It's not in any way driven by star power. In its spirit and approach, it's completely outside the mainstream of films made in its time, or ever. It's an art film, but an expensive one, made by a major studio." -- Mick LaSalle

[Spinal]

#8 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/BigLag1.jpg

Big Business

Director: James W. Horne and Leo McCarey

Country: USA

Stan and Ollie are Christmas tree salesmen in California. Business is slow and a simple argument with one grumpy prospective customer escalates into full scale mutual destruction.

Producer Hal Roach bought a house and its contents from a man for use in the film. When it came time to shoot, Roach arrived on location late in the afternoon and found that the actors and crew had actually destroyed the house next door. The film was deemed culturally significant and entered into the United States National Film Registry in 1992.

"Big Business is the funniest film I've seen guddamit." -- Llopin

[Spinal]

#8 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/man_who_laughs_4535-71_6.jpg

The Man Who Laughs

Director: Paul Leni

Country: USA

Gwynplaine has a permanent smile carved on his face by the King, in revenge for his father's treachery. He is adopted by a travelling showman, becomes a popular idol and falls in love with a blind woman. The king dies, and his evil jester tries to destroy Gwynplaine.

Gwynplaine's fixed grin and disturbing clown-like appearance was a key inspiration for Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson in creating Batman's enemy, The Joker. The grotesque grin was achieved with prosthesis. Conrad Veidt was fitted with a set of dentures that had metal hooks to pull back the corners of his mouth.

"The Man Who Laughs took the Universal 'super jewel' series of gothic horror to new and unparalleled heights in cinematic intelligence. Like many a German expressionist nightmare, The Man Who Laughs ... is a collision of non-complementary angles and framing that confuses as often as it elucidates." -- Eric Henderson

[Spinal]

#7

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/18437820.jpg

The Cameraman

Director: Edward Sedgwick

Country: USA

After becoming infatuated with a pretty office worker for MGM Newsreels, Buster trades in his tintype operation for a movie camera and sets out to impress the girl with his work.

It was the first film that Buster Keaton made with a prepared script. The Cameraman was used for many years by MGM as an example of a perfect comedy. They would get all their directors and producers to watch it and learn.

"The Cameraman's most tangible moral is that, if you want to achieve unfussy filmed drama, you'd do best to take your lessons from an organ-grinder's monkey. As far as I'm concerned, this is a message for the ages." -- Eric Henderson

[Spinal]

#6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/116.jpg

Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Director: Charles Reisner

Country: USA

Willie is the effete son of riverboat captain Steamboat Bill coming to see his dad after years of separation. Bill tries to turn his son into a man. When his father is arrested, Willie decides to get him out of jail.

The stunt where the wall falls on Buster Keaton was performed with an actual full-weight wall. Half the crew walked off the set rather than participate in a stunt that would have killed Keaton if he had been slightly off position. This film was used as a model for Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse's first cartoon with sound.

"Daringly, the movie doesn't extinguish Keaton's 'feminine' weakness so much as work through it; if it hasn't been appropriated by queer theorists, now would be the time." -- Sam Adams

[Kurosawa Fan]

Woo Hoo! The Circus made the top 5!

:pritch:

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/18783662.jpg

Pandora's Box

Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Country: Germany

Lulu is an entrancing and beautiful free-spirited girl who lives on the beneficences of the men who fall under her powerful yet somehow innocent spell. When his affair with Lulu becomes public, Dr. Schön believes he must marry her, even though he has been engaged to a proper young woman of his own class.

Countess Anna is considered by historians to be cinema's first lesbian character. According to Pabst, Marlene Dietrich was in his office waiting to sign a contract to play Lulu when a cable came from Paramount saying that Louise Brooks was willing to play the role.

"Brooks's Lulu was a new kind of femme fatale—generous, manipulative, heedless, blank, democratic in her affections, ambiguous in her sexuality. This exotic singularity was compounded by the aroused hostility the actress experienced on the set. Pabst wanted the men in the cast to feel Brooks's skin and get her under theirs." -- J. Hoberman

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Circus_croped_341_big.jpg

The Circus

Director: Charles Chaplin

Country: USA

The Tramp finds himself at a circus where he is promptly chased around by police who think he is a pickpocket. Running into the bigtop, his efforts to elude the police make him an accidental sensation. The ringmaster immediately hires him, but soon discovers the Tramp cannot be funny on purpose.

Earned Chaplin an Honorary Academy Award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing." Though nominated for best actor, the Academy decided to remove Chaplin's name from the competitive classes and instead award him this special award. Chaplin's studio burnt down during production. This, combined with a number of major personal issues that arose during production, led to his nervous breakdown.

"Although steady Chaplin cinematographer Roland Totheroh continues the same static camera shots from Chaplin's early work, more variety in both the editing cuts and angles provides more dynamic photography. Especially effective are the virtuoso combinations of low angle, high angle, and close-ups in Chaplin's climatic tightrope sequence." -- John Nesbit

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/chien20andalou.jpg

Un chien andalou

Director: Luis Buñuel

Country: France

Seventeen minutes of bizarre and surreal images that may or may not mean anything. A small cloud formation obscures the moon, an eye is slit open, a man drags two grand pianos containing dead and rotting donkeys and live priests, and a man's hand has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge.

The priest being dragged with the piano is Salvador DalÃ*. At the Paris premiere, Luis Buñuel hid behind the screen with stones in his pockets for fear of being attacked by the audience. The film is referenced in the Pixies' song "Debaser".

"A movie like this is a tonic. It assaults old and unconscious habits of moviegoing ... Most members of today's audiences are not offended, and maybe that means the surrealists won their revolution." -- Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Vertov_Man.jpg

The Man with the Movie Camera

Director: Dziga Vertov

Country: Soviet Union

A cameraman travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

The film is famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invents, deploys or develops, such as double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, animations, and a self-reflexive style. Vertov belonged to a movement of filmmakers known as the kinoks who declared it their mission to abolish all non-documentary styles of film-making.

"Man With A Movie Camera is something of an impenetrable masterpiece, and a stylistic dead end, but in the same sense as Joyce's Ulysses. It's a unique, unforgettable, enlightening experience." -- Keith Phipps

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Joan-715129.jpg

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Country: France

A chronicle of the trial of Jeanne d'Arc on charges of heresy, and the efforts of her ecclesiastical jurists to force Jeanne to recant her claims of holy visions.

After completing the original cut of the film, Dreyer learned that the entire master print had been accidentally destroyed. With no ability to re-shoot, Dreyer re-edited the entire film from footage he had originally rejected. None of the actors wear makeup, which was unheard of in the silent era.

"The scenes where Jeanne is finally led to the stake in the Place du Vicux Marché, Rouen, are agonizing in their remarkable realism ... It makes worthy pictures of the past look like tinsel shams. It fills one with such intense admiration that other pictures appear but trivial in comparison." -- Mordaunt Hall, New York Times (1929)

[Qrazy]

"A stylistic dead end, but in the same sense as Joyce's Ulysses."

I don't understand what this is supposed to mean.

[Spinal]

1. The Passion of Joan of Arc (77)
2. The Man with the Movie Camera (50)
3. Un chien andalou (44)
4. The Circus (26.5)
5. Pandora's Box (24.5)
6. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (22)
7. The Cameraman (15)
8t. The Man who Laughs (13.5)
8t. Big Business (13.5)
10. The Crowd (11)

Near misses:
The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (10.5)
October (9)
Diary of a Lost Girl (8)

[Velocipedist]

My first four made it, and they're exactly 1, 2, 3 and 5. After that, zero.

Grand year, what with Joan probably making my top 10 or 15 and Movie Camera top 25 or 30 (I don't want to disclose certain rankings in case I ever do an official rundown of my top).

[Kurosawa Fan]

Perfect choice for #1. Nicely done Match Cut.

[monolith94]

Kind of sad to see Speedy not getting much love... Oh well.

[Grouchy]

"A stylistic dead end, but in the same sense as Joyce's Ulysses."

I don't understand what this is supposed to mean.
It means that it exhausts the stylistic possibilities of cinema, just like Ulysses does with literature. He's calling it a "dead end", yet citing Joyce to make it clear that he considers that a good thing.

Me, I'm just offended that a braindead offspring of a mouse like Ebert gets spotlighted for something as brilliant as Un chien andalou.

[Raiders]

Me, I'm just offended that a braindead offspring of a mouse like Ebert gets spotlighted for something as brilliant as Un chien andalou.

Stop it. The poor horse has been dead for ages now.

[Melville]

It means that it exhausts the stylistic possibilities of cinema, just like Ulysses does with literature.
I'm pretty sure it means that The Man with the Movie Camera exhausts its own particular style, not every possible style; in other words, the film's particular style is a tremendous innovation, but not much can be done with it that The Man with the Movie Camera hasn't already done. I doubt that anybody would seriously say that Ulysses exhausts every stylistic possibility of literature.

[Qrazy]

I'm pretty sure it means that The Man with the Movie Camera exhausts its own particular style, not every possible style; in other words, the film's particular style is a tremendous innovation, but not much can be done with it that The Man with the Movie Camera hasn't already done. I doubt that anybody would seriously say that Ulysses exhausts every stylistic possibility of literature.

Either way I think the original comment is relatively worthless given the number of exceptional works which both Ulysses and Man with a Movie Camera have stylistically inspired. I acknowledge Hall meant it in a positive way, but it still strikes me as an uninteresting observation.