MC Yearly Consensus - 1957

[Eleven]

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)

[Watashi]

1. 12 Angry Men
2. The Seventh Seal
3. Bridge Over the River Kwai

[Russ]

1. What's Opera, Doc?
2. 12 Angry Men
3. Wild Strawberries
4. The Bridge on the River Kwai
5. Three Little Bops

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Nights of Cabiria (Fellini)
2. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
3. Kanal (Wajda)
4. Kisses (Masumura)
5. Le Notte Bianche (Visconti)
------------------
6. 12 Angry Men (Lumet)
7. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa)
8. Seventh Seal (Bergman)
9. Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
10. The Cranes Are Flying (Kalatolozov)

[Spinal]

1. Wild Strawberries
2. Throne of Blood
3. The Seventh Seal
4. What's Opera, Doc?
5. 12 Angry Men

[Eleven]

1. The Seventh Seal
2. The Bridge on the River Kwai
3. What’s Opera, Doc?
4. Paths of Glory
5. Nights of Cabiria

5 HMs: Throne of Blood, Sweet Smell of Success, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Curse of the Demon, Wild Strawberries.

[Duncan]

1. Throne of Blood
2. Tokyo Twilight
3. Sweet Smell of Success
4. Nights of Cabiria
5. Paths of Glory

edit: Added Paths of Glory.
edit2: Removed What's Opera, Doc? and added Tokyo Twilight, which I completely forgot about.

[MadMan]

Everything I've seen from this year is on the "fresh" side. That's good I suppose. Oh and for the record Night of the Demon is also called Curse of the Demon as well. Its the same film.

1. 12 Angry Men
2. Night of the Demon
3. The Seventh Seal

[soitgoes...]

1. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
2. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
3. What's Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones)
4. The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov)
5. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
-----------------------------------------------------
6. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin)
7. Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
8. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa)
9. A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
10. Sweet Smell Of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)

One of the strongest years pre-1985, (when the number of films I've seen jumps up significantly. I'd be comfortable compiling a top 20 from this year. 1962 might be the only other year I can say that about.

[Boner M]

1. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa)
2. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
3. Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
4. Il Grido (Antonioni)
5. Nights of Cabiria (Fellini)

HM: 12 Angry Men (Lumet), The Sweet Smell of Success (McKendrick),
Forty Guns (Fuller)

[Sven]

Rep to those w/ SSoS in their top 5

1 The Sweet Smell of Success
2 The Three Little Bops
3 What's Opera, Doc?

[Lazlo]

1. Paths of Glory
2. The Bridge on the River Kwai
3. 12 Angry Men
4. Sweet Smell of Success
5. Old Yeller

[ledfloyd]

1. What's Opera, Doc?
2. 12 Angry Men
3. Witness for the Prosecution
4. Wild Strawberries
5. Night of the Demon

alot I haven't seen from this year.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Throne of Blood
2. Nights of Cabiria
3. The Incredible Shrinking Man
4. Paths of Glory
5. The Cranes Are Flying

6. Twelve Angry Men
7. The Bridge on the River Kwai
8. The Seventh Seal
9. Sweet Smell of Success
10. A Face in the Crowd

[Melville]

1. The Seventh Seal
2. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
3. Throne of Blood
4. The Bridge on the River Kwai
5. The Cranes are Flying

HM: Sweet Smell of Success, The Nights of Cabiria

[Qrazy]

Quite a few directors with the double punch this year... Kurosawa, Bergman (haven't seen Strawberries yet), Wilder... I also found it pretty much impossible to rank the top six. I think they're all incredible films.

1. Throne of Blood
2. Nights of Cabiria
3. Sweet Smell of Success
4. Paths of Glory
5. Bridge over the River Kwai

6. Seventh Seal
7. A face in the crowd
8. Kanal
9. 12 angry men
10. Cranes are flying

HMs: The Lower Depths, Spirit of St. Louis, Witness for the Prosecution, Night of the demon, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

Desperately want to see Il Grido.

[Grouchy]

1. Throne of Blood
2. The Seventh Seal
3. Paths of Glory
4. 12 Angry Men
5. The Curse of Frankenstein

[Yxklyx]

1. Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
2. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
3. The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)
4. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
5. Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)

6. Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni)
7. 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves)
8. A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
9. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
10. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)

Outstanding Year!:pritch:

[Philosophe_rouge]

Very good year

1. Sweet Smell of Success
2. Le Notti Bianche
3. The Seventh Seal
4. Paths of Glory
5. The Bridge on the River Kwai

[origami_mustache]

1. The Cranes Are Flying
2. Nights of Cabiria
3. The Seventh Seal
4. Throne of Blood
5. Wild Strawberries

[Pop Trash]

1. The Seventh Seal
2. Throne of Blood
3. Paths of Glory
4. Old Yeller
5. Your Mom

[baby doll]

1. Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
2. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin)
3. Tokyo Twilight (Yasujiro Ozu)
4. A King in New York (Charles Chaplin)
5. What's Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones)

[DSNT]

1. Throne of Blood
2. Bridge on the River Kwai
3. Paths of Glory
4. 12 Angry Men
5. Nights of Cabiria
6. Wild Strawberries

Great year for film. 3-6 are nearly a ties for me.

[Ezee E]

1. 12 Angry Men
2. Throne of Blood
3. The Seventh Seal
4. Paths of Glory
5. What's Opera, Duck?

[dreamdead]

1. Wild Strawberries
2. The Cranes are Flying
3. Paths of Glory
4. What's Opera, Doc
5. Throne of Blood

[SirNewt]

1. 12 Angry Men
2. The Seventh Seal
3. The Bridge on the River Kwai
4. Throne of Blood
5. Tokyo Twilight

We always say it's a tough choose and an amazing year and now we've made that an understatement for a year like this.

[DSNT]

Ugh, I forgot all about The Cranes Are Flying, but still don't have room for it on the list.

My top 10 for 1957:

Throne of Blood
Bridge on the River Kwai
Paths of Glory
12 Angry Men
Nights of Cabiria
Wild Strawberries
The Cranes Are Flying
The Seventh Seal
Witness for the Prosecution
Aparajito

[koji]

The sweet smell of a great year for films. I'd love to watch any of these, and others from '57, again.

1. The Nights of Cabiria (Fellini)
2. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa)
3. Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
4. The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
5. Le Notti bianche (Visconti)
*****************************
6. The Lower Depths (Donzoko) (Kurosawa)
7. Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
8. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
9. The Cranes Are Fying (Mikheil Kalatozishvili)
10. Witness for the Prosecution (Wilder)

[DrewG]

1. 12 Angry Men (Lumet)
2. Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
3. Nights of Cabiria (Fellini)
4. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
5. The Seventh Seal (Bergman)

[Duncan]

1. Throne of Blood
2. Tokyo Twilight
3. Sweet Smell of Success
4. Nights of Cabiria
5. Paths of Glory

edit: Added Paths of Glory.
edit2: Removed What's Opera, Doc? and added Tokyo Twilight, which I completely forgot about.

I don't know if my votes have been counted yet, probably not, but the edits are listed above.

[Eleven]

I don't know if my votes have been counted yet, probably not, but the edits are listed above.

I usually wait until right before posting results to add things up, so you're covered.

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. Paths of Glory
2. The Seventh Seal
3. Wild Strawberries
4. 12 Angry Men
5. The Bridge on the River Kwai

[Spinal]

Top Songs of 1957:

1. "All Shook Up", Elvis Presley
2. "Love Letters In The Sand", Pat Boone
3. "Jailhouse Rock", Elvis Presley
4. "Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear", Elvis Presley
5. "April Love", Pat Boone
6. "Young Love", Tab Hunter
7. "Tammy", Debbie Reynolds
8. "Honycomb", Jimmy Rodgers
9. "Wake Up Little Susie", Everly Brothers
10. "You Send Me", Sam Cooke

source: oldfortyfives.com

[SirNewt]

1. 12 Angry Men
2. The Seventh Seal
3. The Bridge on the River Kwai
4. Tokyo Twilight
5. Throne of Blood

We always say it's a tough choose and an amazing year and now we've made that an understatement for a year like this.

A minor, but important to me, edit.

[monolith94]

1. The Seventh Seal
2. Paths of Glory
3. Night Of the Demon
4. The Cranes Are Flying
5. What's Opera, Doc?

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Throne of Blood
2. Paths of Glory
3. The Bridge on the River Kwai
4. Wild Strawberries
5. The Lower Depths

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

more people need to see Kanal (grumble,grumble).....

[Dead & Messed Up]

01. Twelve Angry Men
02. The Seventh Seal
03. Night of the Demon
04. What's Opera, Doc?
05. Throne of Blood

[EyesWideOpen]

1. 12 Angry Men
2. Paths of Glory
3. Throne of Blood
4. The Seventh Seal

[Qrazy]

more people need to see Kanal (grumble,grumble).....

Agreed.

[soitgoes...]

more people need to see Kanal (grumble,grumble).....
I've seen it. While good, it just doesn't compete with the strength of this year's films. Number 20 overall.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

I've seen it. While good, it just doesn't compete with the strength of this year's films. Number 20 overall.

To each his own......cinema. :P

[Raiders]

1. Nights of Cabiria
2. Throne of Blood
3. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
4. The Cranes are Flying
5. A Face in the Crowd

[Eleven]

Results probably tonight.

[Eleven]

#10

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/1042/successxm4.jpg

Sweet Smell of Success

Director: Alexander Mackendrick

Country: USA

J.J. Hunsecker, the most powerful newspaper columnist in New York, is determined to prevent his sister from marrying Steve Dallas, a jazz musician. He therefore covertly employs Sidney Falco, a sleazy and unscrupulous press agent, to break up the affair by any means possible.

Ernest Lehman’s novelette on which the film is based is itself based on his own experiences working as an assistant to Irving Hoffman, a prominent New York press agent and columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. The character of J.J. Hunsecker is based on famed New York columnist Walter Winchell. Orson Welles was originally suggested for the role of Hunsecker. Hunsecker's apartment building is actually the show-business office tower at 1619 Broadway, also known as the Brill Bldg., a famous part of Tin Pan Alley.

“Sweet Smell of Success turns the whimsical Broadway of Damon Runyon on its head, looking at it from the angle of Runyon's close friend, the ruthless, fast-talking super-patriot Walter Winchell, on whom the odious Hunsecker is based. Probably only Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole has presented such an atrabilious view of unethical journalists at work, and it, too, was the work of a European and a box-office disaster. Alexander Mackendrick…was hitherto known for comedies like Whisky Galore! and The Ladykillers, but his vision was always a dark one and with conscious ambivalence Sweet Smell of Success captures the seductive, visceral excitement of New York's gleaming, dynamic nightlife and the sad and loathsome behavior of its amoral, hustling inhabitants.” – Philip French

[Eleven]

#9

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2452/cranesrv1.jpg

The Cranes are Flying

Director: Mikhail Kalatozov

Country: USSR

In Moscow, the young couple Veronika and Boris are in deep love for each other. With the World War II, Boris volunteers to join the army and is sent to the front on the day before Veronika's birthday, and they do not have the chance to say goodbye to each other. While waiting for news from Boris, Veronika is raped by Boris' cousin Mark and they marry each other. However, Veronika does not forget Boris, and keeps waiting for him.

“Kalatozov’s masterstroke, however, was to hijack Russia’s kino-fist style and use it to craft an emotionally expressionistic love story; the melding of virtuoso bombast to such swooning, punch-drunk material becomes a seamless marriage of form and content…Cranes is where their dizzy, delirious filmmaking feels truly revolutionary. When the film whips itself into one of its many operatic froths, it scores a direct hit to the heart that makes many of Borzage’s and Sirk’s hyperventilating romances seem kittenish in comparison.” – David Fear

[Eleven]

#8

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/3197/operazt3.jpg

What’s Opera, Doc?

Director: Chuck Jones

Country: USA

A lampoon of Wagnerian opera setting up the latest chapter in Elmer Fudd's hapless pursuit of Bugs Bunny.

The first cartoon selected for the National Film Registry. Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. only allotted five weeks for the production of each seven-minute short, but director Chuck Jones spent seven weeks on this short. In animation historian Jerry Beck's 1994 poll of animators, film historians and directors, this cartoon was selected as the #1 cartoon of all time. According to Chuck Jones, there are 104 cuts in this cartoon, an unusually high number for a Warner Bros. cartoon. For the ballet scenes, Chuck Jones and his animators studied dancers Tania Riabouchinskaya and David Lichine, who were working for Warner Bros. at the time and had previously worked on Fantasia as reference models for the "Dance of the Hours" sequence.

“What's stunning about these touches is the way they further the notion that these characters have personalities and artistic temperaments that exist outside of the running time of this cartoon; that they're actors, dammit, and they're so obviously thrilled (and perhaps surprised and gratified) to have been asked to appear in a 'serious' production that they're pulling out all the stops. These non-existent, two-dimensional constructs give the performances of a lifetime. Cartoon characters have rarely seemed so human.” – Matt Zoller Seitz

[Eleven]

#7

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/356/strawberriesdp4.jpg

Wild Strawberries

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Country: Sweden

Professor of medicine Isak Borg travels to Lund University in order to receive his anniversary title. Along the road he meets strangers and relatives, and in his dreams he is confronted with his own past as well as fear of insufficiency.

Won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Included on the Vatican Best Films List, recommended for its portrayal of a man's "interior journey from pangs of regret and anxiety to a refreshing sense of peace and reconciliation." Final screen appearance of Victor Sjöström.

“A quarrelling, neurotic couple picked up en route reveal the hell of a bad marriage; a trio of high-spirited students amuse and enchant the old man with their generosity and innocence. Critics have found influences in Strindberg and Dickens; I think there is some Shakespeare, too. In Borg, Sjöström and Bergman created cinema's domestic, bourgeois, 20th-century answer to Lear.” – Peter Bradshaw

[Eleven]

#6

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7462/bridgegr1.jpg

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Director: David Lean

Countries: UK, USA

The film deals with the situation of British prisoners of war during World War II who are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge but, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson, they are persuaded that the bridge should be constructed as a symbol of British morale, spirit and dignity in adverse circumstances.

Screenwriters Michael Wilson and 'Carl Foreman' were on the blacklist of people with accused Communist ties at the time the film was made, and went uncredited. The sole writing credit, and therefore the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, went to Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original French novel but did not speak English. Alec Guinness initially turned down the role of Colonel Nicholson, saying, "I can't imagine anyone wanting to watch a stiff-upper-lip British colonel for two and a half hours." At one point, Sam Spiegel wanted Humphrey Bogart to star and Nicholas Ray to direct. In 1984 the Academy retrospectively awarded the Oscar to Wilson and Foreman. Sadly Wilson did not live to see this; Foreman died the day after it was announced. On the first take of the final bridge sequence, the explosions on the bridge didn't detonate. The train crossed over safely, only to crash down a hill on the other side.

“Most war movies are either for or against their wars. The Bridge on the River Kwai is one of the few that focuses not on larger rights and wrongs but on individuals…By the end of Kwai we are less interested in who wins than in how individual characters will behave.” – Roger Ebert

[Eleven]

#5

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/3174/cabiriasj1.jpg

Nights of Cabiria

Director: Federico Fellini

Countries: Italy, France

The film follows Cabiria as she searches for love but encounters frequent heartbreak. Mistreated and taken advantage of by almost everybody she encounters, Cabiria eventually meets a man who promises her a respectable future and falls head over heels in love with him. What follows is a series of humiliating episodes, in which the defiantly positive Cabiria is hurt, but never broken.

Giulietta Masina won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is the basis for the musical Sweet Charity.

“Fellini's structuring of his heroine's story as a series of incidents rather than a linear plot was innovative at the time, doubly so because examples of a woman at the center of a picaresque adventure are exceptionally rare. Part of the picaresque tradition, one that dovetails nicely with Fellini's own inclinations, is a fervent anti-clericalism. Nights of Cabiria is filled with such feeling. In a particularly grim sequence, Cabiria and some of her friends join a pilgrimage to beg for redemption. This presumably solemn event turns out to be anything but, with pilgrims screaming and smashing into each other, hysterical pleas for cures unmet, and peddlers rudely hawking religious paraphernalia.” – Gary Morris

[Eleven]

#4

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/3715/angrymenki4.jpg

12 Angry Men

Director: Sidney Lumet

Country: USA

The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case of murder soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.

At the beginning of the film, the cameras are all positioned above eye level and mounted with wide-angle lenses to give the appearance of greater distance between the subjects. As the film progresses the cameras slip down to eye level. By the end of the film, nearly all of it is shot below eye level, in close-up and with telephoto lenses to increase the encroaching sense of claustrophobia. Because the painstaking rehearsals for the film lasted an exhausting two weeks, filming had to be completed in an unprecedented 21 days. Lumet had the actors all stay in the same room for hours on end and do their lines over and over without taping them. This was to give them a real taste of what it would be like to be cooped up in a room with the same people. Nominated for 3 Oscars, the film lost out in all its categories to The Bridge on the River Kwai.

“12 Angry Men is a study of how ordinary men take their jury duty as an opportunity to vent about the injustice they see around them every day. The facts of the case mean what they need them to mean, whether it's that all immigrants are liars, or that the younger generation lacks the proper respect, or even that the American legal system is inept. Though the jury in 12 Angry Men reaches a verdict, neither Rose nor Lumet definitively state whether they're ‘right.’ The point—as Lumet well knows—is that when it comes to making sense of a picture, a lot depends on the framing.” – Noel Murray

[Eleven]

#3

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/8461/pathsxd5.jpg

Paths of Glory

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Country: USA

The futility and irony of the war in the trenches in WWI is shown as a unit commander in the French army must deal with the mutiny of his men and a glory-seeking general after part of his force falls back under fire in an impossible attack.

Director Stanley Kubrick met Christiane Kubrick (then Christiane Harlan) during filming; she performs the singing at the end of the film. He divorced his second wife the following year to marry her, and they remained married until his death in 1999. Kubrick's numerous fluid tracking shots required that the trenches be two feet wider than the original World War I trenches - six feet as opposed to four feet - to allow room for the roving camera dollies. Winston Churchill claimed that the film was a highly accurate depiction of trench warfare and the sometimes misguided workings of the military mind. Stanley Kubrick has been quoted as saying that he never interpreted the movie as "anti-war." He instead characterized Paths of Glory as "anti-authoritarian ignorance." The title is a quotation from Thomas Gray's “Elegy written in a country churchyard”: “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“Kubrick's pitiless evocation of World War I's Western Front (based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel, itself inspired by actual events footnoted in the book) demonstrates that the primary victim is the enlisted man. With its modernist score, economical characterizations, and repeated dollies through the trenches, Paths of Glory looks forward to later Kubrick. There's a near mathematical logic to the scenario and the cruelty is compounded by class…” – J. Hoberman

[Eleven]

#2

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/6995/sealif6.jpg

The Seventh Seal

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Country: Sweden

A Knight and his squire are home from the crusades. Black Death is sweeping their country. As they approach home, Death appears to the knight and tells him it is his time. The knight challenges Death to a chess game for his life. The Knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.

Won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The last-but-one scene in which Death is dancing away with his followers was shot when some of the actors had gone home for the day, using some technicians and a few tourists as stand-ins.

“To understand Bergman one must recognize that his genius is essentially theatrical. This is not to say that his films don't possess strong visual qualities--just that the images almost always serve a simple dramatic structure. In this case, to present such weighty moral and metaphysical concerns in an abstract way, like a folktale or parable, goes against the naturalistic tendency of cinema, but Bergman went ahead and tried it anyway, as he continued to do throughout his film career in one form or another, because his interest is with the dramatic conflicts occurring in the soul rather than with form or even a realistic depiction of the world.” – Chris Dashiell

[Ezee E]

Impressive list.

[Eleven]

#1

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/3355/bloodze4.jpg

Throne of Blood

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Country: Japan

A transposition of Shakespeare's Macbeth to medieval Japan. After a great military victory, Lords Washizu and Miki are lost in the dense Cobweb Forest, where they meet a mysterious old woman who predicts great things for Washizu and even greater things for Miki's descendants. Once out of the forest, Washizu and Miki are immediately promoted by the Emperor. Washizu, encouraged by his ambitious wife, plots to make even more of the prophecy come true, even if it means killing the Emperor...

Originally, Kurosawa was planning on building merely a facade castle for the film, but this proved to be an impractical step, prompting the building of full-on castle sections to use in shooting. These were built with the help of United States Marines who were based in the area. Takeshi Katô (Guard killed by Washizu) was worried about the thrust of Toshirô Mifune's sword, so he placed a block of wood in his arm pit. Unfortunately Mifune's thrust split the block and wounded Katô. He carries a scar to this day. The famous arrow scene near the end was in fact done with real arrows. That is, the arrows hitting the wooden planks were not done with special effects, but rather choreographed with archers. Mifune waves his arms to brush away the arrows sticking from the planks, indicating to them that he wanted to go in that particular direction. The real arrows were included to get Mifune's facial expressions of real-life fear, which is exceptionally hard to imitate. Of course, the arrows that hit the Mifune character were bamboo fakes.

“At the end of this game, nature, not any man, is the true ruler of the land. Everything about Throne of Blood is similarly focused on an earthy insistence that these ambitions are entirely unnatural. Instead of chastising her husband’s masculinity as Lady Macbeth did when Macbeth balks before killing the king, Lady Washizu prods her husband onward by reminding him that the king himself killed his predecessor to ascend to the throne. This radical shift in the text slides the blame from Washizu specifically onto the culture at large. He’s not transgressing the rules of his society so much as living up to its skewed standards.” – Jeremy Heilman

[Eleven]

Results
1. Throne of Blood 72.5 (18 votes)
2. The Seventh Seal 70 (18 votes)
3. Paths of Glory 69.5 (19 votes)
4. 12 Angry Men 65
5. Nights of Cabiria 51
6. The Bridge on the River Kwai 39.5
7. Wild Strawberries 39
8. What's Opera, Doc? 37
9. The Cranes are Flying 23
10. Sweet Smell of Success 22.5

No other films were within one vote of the Top Ten, but the next three vote-getters were:
Night of the Demon 13.5
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? 11.5
Tokyo Twilight 10.5

[Kurosawa Fan]

Fucking awesome. :cool:

[Qrazy]

7. A face in the crowd
8. Kanal

A bit disappointed neither of these even touched the list but I didn't put them in my top five either so I can't complain.

[MadMan]

Looking at this list 1957 strikes me as a year I need to defiantly see more of. Wow.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Throne of Blood and the Cranes are Flying are the only two I need to see.

[Yxklyx]

Kanal is my #11 but it's the only one I've seen at least twice except for my #1 to #3. I think it's a great mood piece with excellent atmosphere but in the end it's kind of one note with not a lot more to say than what I've seen in other war movies.

What's up with there only being 11 men in the 12 Angry Men photo?

[Qrazy]

Kanal is my #11 but it's the only one I've seen at least twice except for my #1 to #3. I think it's a great mood piece with excellent atmosphere but in the end it's kind of one note with not a lot more to say than what I've seen in other war movies.

I dunno I think it has a lot to say and at least it has a very unique storyline compared to other war films. It's not one of the absolute greatest war pictures, but it's up there.

[MadMan]

Kanal is my #11 but it's the only one I've seen at least twice except for my #1 to #3. I think it's a great mood piece with excellent atmosphere but in the end it's kind of one note with not a lot more to say than what I've seen in other war movies.

What's up with there only being 11 men in the 12 Angry Men photo?The 12th man is the Lee J. Cobb character. The other 11 are looking at him because at this point in the film he's the only left who thinks the kid is guilty. Everyone else has been convinced by Henry Fonda's character that the kid isn't guilty by reasonable doubt.

[Eleven]

What's up with there only being 11 men in the 12 Angry Men photo?

It was part of a short-lived William Castle-esque publicity stunt called Jur-o-Vision: "YOU decide! YOU ARE the twelfth angry man! Unless you're a woman, in which case they're still looking at you accusingly! Get out, this is angry men's work!"

[Raiders]

What's up with there only being 11 men in the 12 Angry Men photo?

I think it was a homage to the folks at Criterion who created the original Seven Samurai cover.

[MadMan]

It was part of a short-lived William Castle-esque publicity stunt called Jur-o-Vision: "YOU decide! YOU ARE the twelfth angry man! Unless you're a woman, in which case they're still looking at you accusingly! Get out, this is angry men's work!"Eleven's answer is superior to mine. I bow to his hilarity skills. And I scheme to steal some of them for my own ;)