MC Yearly Consensus | 1949 |

[Llopin]

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

The point system is as follows....

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

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

You may begin now.

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

[Spinal]

1. Stray Dog
2. The Devil's Wanton
3. The Third Man
4. High Diving Hare
5. Kind Hearts and Coronets

[Russ]

1. The Third Man
2. White Heat
3. A Letter to Three Wives
4. Pinky
5. Puce Moment

[origami_mustache]

1. Stray Dog
2. Late Spring
3. The Third Man
4. Crows and Sparrows

[ledfloyd]

1. The Third Man
2. Kind Hearts & Coronets
3. High Diving Hare

I just watched High Diving Hare so I had enough to qualify. The other two films would both likely make my all time top 20.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. White Heat
2. The Heiress
3. Stray Dog
4. The Emperor's Nightingale
5. All the King's Men

6. Thieves' Highway
7. Kind Hearts and Coronets
8. The Third Man
9. The Window
10. Intruder in the Dust

[Russ]

I just watched High Diving Hare so I had enough to qualify.
That one's great, but if I chose one from this year (and I almost did), it would have been Long-Haired Hare. That's the one where Bugs drives the opera singer nutzo.

[Yxklyx]

5. Puce Moment

I just watched this the other week and it was listed as 1948. Not only that but I think in the commentary Anger says this one wasn't released until the 60s.

[Russ]

I just watched this the other week and it was listed as 1948. Not only that but I think in the commentary Anger says this one wasn't released until the 60s.
Sticking with IMDb, which lists it at 1949.

[Yxklyx]

1. The Third Man (Carol Reed)
2. Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin)
3. Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa)
4. Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
5. The Set-Up (Robert Wise)

6. Blood of the Beasts (Georges Franju)
7. White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
8. On The Town (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)
9. The Heiress (William Wyler)
10. Twelve O'Clock High (Henry King)

[Yxklyx]

Sticking with IMDb, which lists it at 1949.

Yeah I know - just saying that they changed it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Stray Dog
2. Long-Haired Hare
3. White Heat
4. The Heiress
5. Kind Hearts and Coronets

[Watashi]

1. Stray Dog
2. Kind Hearts and Coronets
3. The Third Man
4. White Heat

[soitgoes...]

1. The Third Man (Carol Reed)
2. Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
3. Blood of the Beasts (Georges Franju)
4. I Shot Jesse James (Samuel Fuller)
5. Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin)
----------------------------------------------
6. Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa)
7. Border Incident (Anthony Mann)
8. High Diving Hare (Friz Freleng)
9. Bitter Rice (Guiseppe De Santis)
10. Fast and Furry-ous (Chuck Jones)

[Spinal]

That one's great, but if I chose one from this year (and I almost did), it would have been Long-Haired Hare. That's the one where Bugs drives the opera singer nutzo.

I will give both a fresh viewing.

[Melville]

1. The Third Man
2. Blood of the Beasts
3. The Set-Up
4. Stray Dog

[ledfloyd]

That one's great, but if I chose one from this year (and I almost did), it would have been Long-Haired Hare. That's the one where Bugs drives the opera singer nutzo.
i just watched it and i don't agree with your assessment of the situation.

the best thing about these is whenever we get to these old years i watch a bunch of looney tunes shorts.

[Kurosawa Fan]

That one's great, but if I chose one from this year (and I almost did), it would have been Long-Haired Hare. That's the one where Bugs drives the opera singer nutzo.

I didn't see this until now, but yes! I thought that one would be getting much more support. As it is, I think I'm the only one who voted for it.

[Boner M]

1. Late Spring
2. White Heat
3. The Third Man
4. Blood of the Beasts
5. Thieves' Highway

6. Puce Moment
7. The Set-Up
8. Stray Dog
9. Jour de fête

[monolith94]

1. Kind Hearts & Coronets
2. Champion (soooo underrated/overlooked)
3. The Third Man
4. Stray Dog
5. The Set-Up

honorable mentions:

White Heat
Criss Cross
Whisky Galore!
Blood of the Beasts
Begone Dull Care (only 8 min. long, therefore ineligible, right?)

great, great year.

[Spinal]

That last two minutes of Long-Haired Hare is pretty sweet. But I think I'm going to stick with my initial choice right now. It's a coin flip really.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Late Spring
2. Blood of the Beasts
3. Puce Moment
4. The Third Man
5. Stray Dog

[Qrazy]

great, great year.

Really? I find it to be fairly weak.

1. The Third Man
2. Kind Hearts & Coronets
3. Blood of the Beasts
4. White Heat
5. Jour de fête

HMs: Stray Dog, Passport to Pimlico, Whiskey Galore

Need to see: Criss Cross, The Set-up, Great Madcap, Le Silence de la Mer, Thieves Highway

I too would vote for Begone Dull Care if I could.

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. The Third Man
2. The Set-Up
3. The Small Back Room
4. The Reckless Moment
5. The Heiress

Hon mentions: White Heat, Kind Hearts and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

[Raiders]

1. I Shot Jesse James
2. Late Spring
3. White Heat
4. Kind Hearts and Coronets
5. The Third Man

[Eleven]

1. Late Spring
2. The Third Man
3. The Great Madcap
4. Jour de Fête
5. Stray Dog

HMs: Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Small Back Room, The Set-Up, Crows and Sparrows, Knock on Any Door.

[MadMan]

Damn, I've only seen one film from this year.

[origami_mustache]

HMs: Crows and Sparrows

I'm surprised someone else here saw this...awesome.

[Mysterious Dude]

Begone Dull Care (only 8 min. long, therefore ineligible, right?)


There will be no restrictions on short films.

Begone Dull Care is good, but I still say Jiri Trnka's The Emperor's Nightingale is the best animated film of this year. It used to be on YouTube, but I guess it isn't anymore.

[monolith94]

Really? I find it to be fairly weak.

1. The Third Man
2. Kind Hearts & Coronets
3. Blood of the Beasts
4. White Heat
5. Jour de fête

HMs: Stray Dog, Passport to Pimlico, Whiskey Galore

Need to see: Criss Cross, The Set-up, Great Madcap, Le Silence de la Mer, Thieves Highway

I too would vote for Begone Dull Care if I could.
Well, I thought Champion and The Set-Up, both of which you don't appear to have seen, were excellent. Kind Hearts & Coronets is excellent, a personal favorite of mine. I've loved it ever since I was a kid.

Don't rush to see le silence de la mer. It's not essential.

[monolith94]

Well, I thought Champion and The Set-Up, both of which you don't appear to have seen, were excellent. Kind Hearts & Coronets is excellent, a personal favorite of mine. I've loved it ever since I was a kid.

Don't rush to see le silence de la mer. It's not essential.
for those who are interested:

Begone Dull Care
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC0w-yhkR1I

[baby doll]

1. Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
2. The Third Man (Carol Reed)
3. Les Sang des bêtes (Georges Franju)
4. Whirlpool (Otto Preminger)
5. Begone Dull Care (Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart)

[Spinal]

Top Songs of 1949:

1. "(Ghost) Riders In The Sky" - Vaughn Monroe
2. "Mule Train" - Frankie Laine
3. "A You're Adorable (the Alphabet Song)" - Perry Como
4. "You're Breaking My Heart" - Vic Damone
5. "I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" - Freddy Martin
6. "Some Enchanted Evening" - Perry Como
7. "A Little Bird Told Me" - Evelyn Knight
8. "Cruisin' Down the River" - Russ Morgan
9. "Baby, It's Cold Outside" - Dinah Shore & Buddy Clark
10. "That Lucky Old Sun" - Frankie Laine

source: popularsong.org

[Spinal]

Time Man of the Year for 1949 (and also Man of the Half-Century):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/415QNKDNWDL_AA280_.jpg

Winston Churchill

[Eleven]

Edited to put Late Spring on top.

[Qrazy]

Edited to put Late Spring on top.

Bastard.

[Yxklyx]

Bastard.

You totally missed the boat on this movie. :eek:

[Yxklyx]

I've seen The Third Man 3 or 4 times but it moved up in my appreciation the last time I saw it. The problem is that it has a really really slow pace and if you're not ready for that you'll find it a bit frustrating.

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. The Third Man
2. Kind Hearts & Coronets
3. The Set Up

[Derek]

I've seen The Third Man 3 or 4 times but it moved up in my appreciation the last time I saw it. The problem is that it has a really really slow pace and if you're not ready for that you'll find it a bit frustrating.

The Third Man is slow!? Maybe it's just me, but I think it has a relatively brisk pace, certainly aided by the awesome zither score.

[Melville]

I've seen The Third Man 3 or 4 times but it moved up in my appreciation the last time I saw it. The problem is that it has a really really slow pace and if you're not ready for that you'll find it a bit frustrating.
That's crazy talk.

[dreamdead]

It appears that I've only seen Late Spring and The Third Man from this year. Thus, I cannot participate, but both seen to be doing well enough without me. More people need to love Ozu...

[Qrazy]

You totally missed the boat on this movie. :eek:

Nah, I put the hole in the boat and sunk everyone in it.

[Grouchy]

How long is this gonna go on? I have The Third Man and Stray Dog to vote for, but without Gun Crazy (IMDb says 1950) I've only seen two weak movies, Mighty Joe Young and Knock on any door.

[koji]

1. White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
2. Stray Dog (Kurosawa)
3. Late Spring (Ozu)
4. Too Late for Tears (aka Killer Bait) (Haskin)
5. The Heiress (Wyler)
****************************** ***************
The Third Man (Carol Reed)
The Blood of the Beasts (Franju)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer)
Rotation (Staadt)
Tension (Berry)
The Big Steal (Siegel)
Thieves Highway (Dassin)
The Set-up (Robert Wise)
Criss Cross (Siodmark)
I shot Jesse James (Fuller)
Whirlpool (Prminger)

[Spinal]

The following television shows premiered in 1949:

The Lone Ranger
Bozo the Clown
The Voice of Firestone
Captain Video and His Video Rangers
The Goldbergs (the first American sitcom)

In January of this year, the first Emmy Awards were held. The first Emmy (Outstanding Televison Personality) was awarded to Shirley Dinsdale, children's entertainer and ventriloquist, for her work on Judy Splinters.

[Spinal]

Llopin?

[Llopin]

Sorry, I've been having connection problems these days.

I'll tally this up and post the results tonight.

[Llopin]

#10

http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/media/jessejames.jpg

I Shot Jesse James
director: Samuel Fuller

Bob Ford murders his best friend Jesse James in order to obtain a pardon that will free him to marry his girlfriend but is plagued by guilt and self-disgust

Sam Fuller said that he wanted to make this picture because, unlike many filmmakers in Hollywood, he did not see Jesse James as a "folk hero" or someone to be admired. Fuller saw him as a cold-blooded psychopath who shot down women, children, the elderly, the helpless (his gang once stopped a Union hospital train and executed every wounded federal soldier on it) and, in Fuller's words, Bob Ford "did something that should have been done quite a bit earlier in the life of Jesse Woodson James". The film was shot in ten days.

"Fuller loads the film with an abundance of claustrophobic close-ups, an extreme visual strategy that suggests the psychological turmoil of its characters, especially Ford. The economic favoritism of character over environment, while a direct result of budgetary means, is a deliberate inversion of the language of Western filmmakers like John Ford. That Fuller’s film is a Western is practically an afterthought since its titular betrayal happens in the first reel, subjecting Ford to a fate not of heroic gun slinging and horse wrangling, but of self-destructive opportunism" - Zeth Lundy

[Llopin]

#9

http://www.weirdwildrealm.com/filmimages/thieves-highway.jpg

Thieves' Highway
director: Jules Dassin

A war-veteran-turned-truck driver attempts to avenge the crippling and robbing of his father at the hands of an amoral produce scofflaw. According to director Jules Dassin, Jack Oakie'was completely deaf by the time of this film. "He caused absolutely no delays," the filmmaker said.

"The film should not be mistaken for a simple political morality play. Dassin may have been a socialist—something that would lead to his blacklisting only three years after this film—but he was a man of the theater first, and the film maintains a dramatic urgency throughout. The movie t is an example of the near-perfect combination of entertainment and social concern that was mastered in the 40s, became overripe in the 50s, and is almost never even attempted today" - Nathan Williams

[Llopin]

#8

http://www.achievement.org/achievers/deh0/large/deh0-009.jpg

The Heiress
director: William Wyler

In 1840's New York Catherine lives with her father, Dr. Sloper. Her mother died some years before, and Dr. Sloper still idolizers her, and never misses an opportunity to compare her daughter to her -- a comparison the daughter can never win. When Morris Townsend, a handsome but pennyless young man, comes along, and woos and wins his daughter's heart, Dr. Sloper is sure that he is after her considerable inheritance, and opposes their marriage. Dr. Sloper takes his daughter to Europe in hopes she will forget Morris, but she does not. After Catherine returns to New York, the young lovers plan to elope. Dr. Sloper threatens to disinherit his daughter. Will this dissuade Morris?

To help Olivia de Havilland achieve the physically and emotionally weary and worn effect that he wanted, director William Wyler packed books into the suitcases that the actress lugged up the staircase in the scene where her character realizes that she has been jilted by her lover. De Havilland chose Wyler as her director, wisely considering that such a meticulous director would be able to coax a strong performance from her. As it turned out, Wyler became a staunch supporter of his leading actress, particularly in regard to the sneering attitude that Montgomery Clift displayed towards her (he didn't rate her talents as an actress) and Ralph Richardson taking every opportunity to steal scenes from under her nose with his improvisations.

"With typical understatement, Wyler finds the most telling angles with which to observe his characters as they get lost in kindness that hides cruelty and abuse with unimpeachable intentions. But the story beneath it all is written on de Havilland's face, which by the film's end, looks like it belongs to another woman, shaped not by prosthetics, but by the knowledge that sometimes hate and disappointment let us come into our own" - Keith Philips

[Llopin]

#7

http://wesclark.com/ubn/set_up_19.jpg

The Set-Up
director: Robert Wise

Over-the-hill boxer Bill 'Stoker' Thompson insists he can still win, though his sexy wife Julie pleads with him to quit. But his manager Tiny is so confident he will lose, he takes money for a "dive" from tough gambler Little Boy...without bothering to tell Stoker. Tension builds as Stoker hopes to "take" Tiger Nelson, unaware of what will happen to him if he does.

Based upon a narrative poem published in 1928 by Joseph Moncure March, who gave up his job as the first managing editor of "The New Yorker" to devote himself to writing. On the strength of it, he went to Hollywood as a screenwriter, remaining there for a dozen years. In 1948 he volunteered to work on this film, but was turned down. He was incensed that his black boxer Pansy Jones was changed into the white Stoker Thompson.The movie plays in real time, and Robert Ryan was a boxing champion while a student at Dartmouth college.

"Ryan, a former boxer himself, invests his battered not-quite-contender with a desperate determination that makes you root for him to come out swinging, even as you know the consequences of his winning will be dire. There's nothing fancy about Wise's direction, which is the best thing about this movie; it's like a Clifford Odets movie without the phony gutter poetry. At 72 minutes, there's no room for it" - Sam Adams

[soitgoes...]

#10
I Shot Jesse James
director: Samuel Fuller


Nice. Hopefully more people see this one.

[Llopin]

#6

http://actualites34.blog.lemonde.fr/files/2007/05/franju.1179872680.jpg

Le Sang des Bêtes
director: Georges Franju

An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the nearby slaughterhouses.

"Franju's documentary thus elicits a primarily physical response, although he's said in interviews that he was aiming for a more distanced, aestheticized perspective from his audiences. But the sheer horror of these sequences, and the film's insistence on intimately capturing every step in the process, makes it difficult to step back from the images and view them objectively. It's a tough, uncompromising film, exposing the violence that exists within the hazy, fog-shrouded streets of romantic Paris" - Ed Howard

[Llopin]

#5

http://www.murphsplace.com/guinness/images/kind2.jpg

Kind Hearts and Coronets
director: Robert Hamer

Louis Mazzini's mother belongs to the aristocratic family D'Ascoyne, but she ran away with an opera singer. Therefore, she and Louis were rejected by the D'Ascoynes. Once adult, Louis decides to avenges his mother and him, by becoming the next Duke of the family. Murdering every potential successor is clearly the safest way to achieve his goal

The scene where six members of the D'Ascoynes family, all played by Alec Guinness, are seen together took two days to film. The camera was set on a specially built platform to minimize movement. In addition, the camera operator spent the night with the camera to ensure that nothing moved it by accident. A frame with six black matte painted optical flat glass windows was set in front of the camera and the windows opened one at a time so each of the characters could be filmed in turn. The film was then wound back for the next character. Most of the time was spent waiting for Guinness to be made up as the next character. In 2000, Mike Nichols was planning a remake with Robin Williams in the Alec Guinness roles and Will Smith in the role played by Dennis Price. Thankfully, it never came to fruition. Novelists Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh were hired independently to work on various drafts of the script, though apparently none of their contributions survived in the film as shot.

"Kind Hearts And Coronets couldn't be further from Ealing's tradition of folksy, light-hearted comedies, and for that reason, it was treated coolly by the studio and American censors, who forced the filmmakers to tack on a thuddingly literal ending. Even still, the film proves just how little the production code could do to keep sinful content from the screen so long as it played by the rules; its scenes of sinister deviance and eroticism follow the letter of the code while ignoring its intent. For that and other reasons, it served as the model for all black comedies that followed" - Scott Tobias

[Llopin]

#4

http://www.filmreference.com/images/sjff_01_img0532.jpg

White Heat
director: Raoul Walsh

Cody Jarrett is the sadistic leader of a ruthless gang of thieves. Afflicted by terrible headaches and fiercely devoted to his 'Ma,' Cody is a volatile, violent, and eccentric leader. Cody's top henchman wants to lead the gang and attempts to have an 'accident' happen to Cody, while he is running the gang from in jail. But Cody is saved by an undercover cop, who thereby befriends him and infiltrates the gang. Finally, the stage is set for Cody's ultimate betrayal and downfall, during a big heist at a chemical plant.

If the surprise expressed by James Cagney's fellow inmates during "the telephone game" scene in the prison dining room appears real, it's because it is. Director Walsh didn't tell the rest of the cast what was about to happen, so Cagney's outburst caught them by surprise. In fact, Walsh himself didn't know what Cagney had planned; the scene as written wasn't working, and Cagney had an idea. He told Walsh to put the two biggest extras playing cons in the mess-hall next to him on the bench (he used their shoulders to boost himself onto the table) and to keep the cameras rolling no matter what. In the prison eating hall scene when Cody Jarrett finds out his mother is dead, one of the cons who passes the word to him is sports legend Jim Thorpe. The unusually close relationship between Cody Jarrett and his domineering mother was inspired by real life bank robbers Kate Barker (aka "Ma Barker") and her sons.

"Cagney still personifies underworld cool, with a gun in one hand and a chicken leg in the other, he's also become a little pathetic. The man on the rise has become a man out of time, his ambition accompanied by blinding headaches and a Freudian mother fixation. White Heat completes the thought with a nuclear-era exclamation point, as Cagney shouts, "Made it, ma! Top of the world!" before the refinery he's standing on explodes into a mushroom cloud" - Noel Murray

[Llopin]

#3

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/protectedimage.php?image=NoelM egahey/latespringcrit2.jpg

Late Spring
director: Yasujiro Ozu

Noriko is 27 years old and is still living with her father Somiya, a widower. Noriko just recovered from an illness she developed in the war, and now the important question pops up: when will Noriko start thinking about marriage? Everybody who is important in her life tries to talk her into it: her father, her aunt, a girlfriend. But Noriko doesn't want to get married, she seems extremely happy with her life. She wants to stay with her father to take care of him. After all, she knows best of his manners and peculiarities. But Noriko's aunt doesn't want to give up. She arranges a partner for her and thinks of a plan that will convince Noriko her father can be left alone.

"This is symptomatic of the emotional force that we get from Ozu’s work through his characteristic restraint and control; here, it’s all the more effective that Hattori and Noriko’s feelings are not mirrored directly in facial expression. In Late Spring as elsewhere in Ozu, simple, restricted, limited actions — placing a teacup on a table, picking something off the floor, peeling an apple — are expressive of deep emotional states, as are ways of talking" - Ian Johnston

[Llopin]

#2

http://filmsnoir.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/straydog4.jpeg

Stray Dog
director: Akira Kurosawa

Murukami, a young homicide detective, has his pocket picked on a bus and loses his pistol. Frantic and ashamed, he dashes about trying to recover the weapon without success until taken under the wing of an older and wiser detective, Sato. Together they track the culprit.

During the opening credits, there is footage of a panting dog. However, when American censors saw the footage, they assumed that the dog had been harmed. This run-in with American censors caused Kurosawa to remark that this was the only time he wished Japan had not lost WWII.

"Kurosawa’s ninth film is generally considered his first masterpiece, or at least the first for which the term can be reasonably argued. And no wonder. All the elements that would distinguish his later work are in place. There’s the epic sweep, in which a very personal story focusing on a troubled individual(s) is told against a grand background, in this case the panorama of a defeated and humiliated occupied Japan. Dostoyevskian themes and motifs — humanism, class conflict, masculine pain and guilt, doppelgangers — abound. There are stellar performances throughout, including the first great coupling of Mifune and Shimura. And of course the film’s elaborate visuals, formal complexities, and dramatic pacing announce a career that would be internationally acclaimed with Rashomon just a year later" - Gary Morris

[Llopin]

#1

http://www.celestialmonochord.org/log/images/thrid_man_ferris_wheel.jpg

The Third Man
director: Carol Reed

An out of work pulp fiction novelist, Holly Martins, arrives in a post war Vienna divided into sectors by the victorious allies, and where a shortage of supplies has lead to a flourishing black market. He arrives at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job, only to discover that Lime has recently died in a peculiar traffic accident. From talking to Lime's friends and associates Martins soon notices that some of the stories are inconsistent, and determines to discover what really happened to Harry Lime.

Rumors have long since been widespread that Orson Welles wrote all of Harry Lime's dialogue and even that he took over the direction of his own scenes. Everyone involved, including Welles himself, have always insisted that the film was directed by only Carol Reed. Welles did claim that he wrote most of Lime's dialogue, which is also a fabrication. The extent of Welles' contributions were Lime's grumbling about his stomach problems (which were improvisations) and the famous "cuckoo clock" spiel at the end of the ferris wheel scene. During meetings between Graham Greene and Reed with David O. Selznick, Greene was less than impressed with Selznick, who had (according to Selznick's own son) "become something of a parody of himself". Greene later mocked Selznick's dependency at the stage on the drug Dexedrine, better known as "speed". Coincidentally, Reed also became hooked on Dexedrine while shooting the time-consuming film. Both Reed and Selznick were operating on as little as 2 hours of sleep a day.

"Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies. I saw it first on a rainy day in a tiny, smoke-filled cinema on the Left Bank in Paris. It told a story of existential loss and betrayal. It was weary and knowing, and its glorious style was an act of defiance against the corrupt world it pictured. Seeing it, I realized how many Hollywood movies were like the pulp Westerns that Holly Martins wrote: naive formulas supplying happy endings for passive consumption. I read the other day that they plan to remake The Third Man. Do you think Anna will cave in to Holly--or will she remain true to her bitter cynicism and unspeakable knowledge?" - Roger Ebert

[Qrazy]

I actually preferred Drunken Angel to Stray Dog. I found the former film to be more structurally resonant and generally tighter and more engaging. While I enjoyed the latter film well enough, I'd classify it as middle to lower tier Kurosawa.

[dreamdead]

Holy hell, that's a damn fine top ten of auteur directors. Pleased that Ozu finished that high; Wyler and Wise are two filmmakers that I think I'll dig into more this year.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Great list, a lot of recommendations too!

[Llopin]

Final results (Lime owning all):

The Third Man 70
Stray Dog 42
Late Spring 38.5
White Heat 31
Kind Hearts and Coronets 29
La Sang des Bêtes 21.5
The Set-Up 17
The Heiress 12
Thieves' Highway 9
I Shot Jesse James 8

runners-up:

High Diving Hare 6.5
Puce Moment 6
Jour de fête 5.5

[Qrazy]

Holy hell, that's a damn fine top ten of auteur directors. Pleased that Ozu finished that high; Wyler and Wise are two filmmakers that I think I'll dig into more this year.

Yeah, been wanting to see Thieves Highway for a long time now.

[Grouchy]

Cool. I've only seen the top two, so the rest are nice to have in mind. Specially I Shot Jesse James and Kind Hearts and Coronets.

[Yxklyx]

I actually preferred Drunken Angel to Stray Dog. I found the former film to be more structurally resonant and generally tighter and more engaging. While I enjoyed the latter film well enough, I'd classify it as middle to lower tier Kurosawa.

I prefer Stray Dog. Its story was better realized and it had a few more standout scenes - like the ending for example.

Just saw I Shot Jesse James, very good. Would have been my #9.