MC Yearly Consensus - 1956

[Spinal]

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

The point system is as follows

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

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the 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. The Wrong Man
2. Aparajito
3. A Man Escaped

I want Derek to note that I am voting for a Bresson film. :)

[Russ]

1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
2. The Searchers
3. Forbidden Planet
4. The Bad Seed
5. Moby Dick

[Pop Trash]

1. The Killing
2. Baby Doll
3. The Mystery of Picasso
4. Bigger Than Life

I fully admit there are still a ton of films from this year I need to see, but I stand by these four as being pretty rad.

[Raiders]

1. A Man Escaped
2. The Wrong Man
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
4. Bigger Than Life
5. Attack!

Man, no room for The Burmese Harp and Baby Doll? Amazing year.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Very strong year.

1. Baby Doll
2. A Man Escaped
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
4. The Killing
5. Somebody Up There Likes Me

6. The Wrong Man
7. Bob le Flambeur
8. Samurai III
9. Forbidden Planet

[Yxklyx]

1. The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
2. The Searchers (John Ford)
3. Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock)
5. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Nunnally Johnson)

6. The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille)
7. The Killing (Stanley Kubrick)
8. Baby Doll (Elia Kazan)
9. Early Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
10. Attack! (Robert Aldrich)

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. The Searchers
2. Baby Doll
3. Bigger than Life (USA, Nicholas Ray)
4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
5. Written on the Wind

[Kurosawa Fan]

If Baby Doll ends up being another Hoosiers, I'm going to be very displeased.

[Yxklyx]

4. All That Heaven Allows


IMDB shows this as 1955.

[Derek]

I want Derek to note that I am voting for a Bresson film. :)

Alright, alright. I'll rep you for that. :)

[Derek]

1. The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
2. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
3. The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa)
4. Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
5. Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
****************************** *
6. There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk)
7. Lust for Life (Vincente Minnelli)
8. The Searchers (John Ford)
9. Seven Men from Now (Budd Boetticher)
10. The Killing (Stanley Kubrick)

HMs:
Hot Blood (Nicholas Ray)
The King and I (Walter Lang)
Samurai III: Duel on Ganryu Island (Hiroshi Inagaki)

I'll try to watch Bigger Than Life before this is over.

EDIT: ADDED Bigger Than Life

[Raiders]

I'll try to watch Bigger Than Life before this is over.

Whoa. I thought you had definitely seen that already.

[Yxklyx]

A lot of "Man" movies this year.

[Russ]

IMDB shows this as 1955.
Ah, so it does. I will edit my list.

[Watashi]

1. A Man Escaped
2. The Killing
3. The Wrong Man
4. The Searchers
5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers

[Derek]

Whoa. I thought you had definitely seen that already.

No, it's the one major Ray film I have left. I can't believe I haven't seen it yet either, so I'll make time for it in the next few days.

[Kurosawa Fan]

No, it's the one major Ray film I have left. I can't believe I haven't seen it yet either, so I'll make time for it in the next few days.

Go to Film Discussion and defend [rec]. My comments are on the second to last page. I need to know why you and others think so highly of it.

[Spinal]

Alright, alright. I'll rep you for that. :)

I just want your respect, man. But I'll take the rep anyway.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. A Man Escaped
2. Burmese Harp
3. Baby Doll
4. Bigger than Life
5. Written on the Wind

[soitgoes...]

1. The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa)
2. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
3. Aparajito (Satyajit Ray)
4. Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
5. The Searchers (John Ford)
----------------------------------------------------
6. Seven Men from Now (Budd Boetticher)
7. Attack (Robert Aldrich)
8. The Killing (Stanley Kubrick)
9. Early Spring (Yasujiro Ozu)
10. Baby Doll (Elia Kazan)
11. Beyond a Reasonble Doubt (Fritz Lang)
12. Flowing (Mikio Naruse)

[Derek]

I just want your respect, man. But I'll take the rep anyway.

Get The Burmese Harp on your list and I'll take it into consideration. ;)

[Ezee E]

1. A Man Escaped
2. The Searchers
3. The Killing
4. Baby Doll
5. Bob Le Flambeur

[dreamdead]

1. A Man Escaped
2. The Burmese Harp
3. Early Spring
4. Written on the Wind

[Lazlo]

1. The Searchers
2. The Killing
3. A Man Escaped
4. Written on the Wind
5. The Red Balloon

[Raiders]

1. Late Spring
2. A Man Escaped
3. The Burmese Harp
4. Written on the Wind

What the? No one else has Ozu in the top five?

I had it as my #2 on my 1949 top five.

[soitgoes...]

1. Late Spring
2. A Man Escaped
3. The Burmese Harp
4. Written on the Wind

What the? No one else has Ozu in the top five?

Yeah I believe it's Early Spring that's in 1956. You need to get your seasonal Ozu movies in order.

[Qrazy]

1. Red Balloon
2. Baby Doll
3. A Man Escaped
4. The Killing
5. Duel on Ganryu Island

6. Bob the Gambler
7. Aparajito
8. Written on the Wind
9. The Searchers
10. Forbidden Planet

HMs: Street of Shame, Giant, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The King and I, Moby Dick, Mystery of Picasso, Bigger than Life

Need to see: Burmese Harp, The Wrong Man

To be honest I find it pretty difficult to rank for this year... some years the relative greatness of different pictures stands out more sharply in my eyes, but this year I feel about the same on most of the films... really like the majority, not particularly in love with any of them.

[dreamdead]

I had it as my #2 on my 1949 top five.


Yeah I believe it's Early Spring that's in 1956. You need to get your seasonal Ozu movies in order.

Oh. Heh. Where's that ol' blushing smikey when you need it. Off to edit...

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. The Searchers
2. Bob Le Flambeur
3. Written on the Wind
4. The Wrong Man
5. The Red Balloon

[Melville]

1. Bigger than Life
2. A Man Escaped
3. The Searchers

HMs: a whole bunch. These threads are definitely showing me that I'm less enamored with a lot of classics than most others around here seem to be.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
2. A Man Escaped
3. Aparajito
4. The Killing
5. Street of Shame

[Boner M]

1. Bigger Than Life
2. The Killing
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
4. A Man Escaped
5. The Wrong Man

HM: Seven Men From Now, Attack!, Bob Le Flambeur

[monolith94]

1. Baby Doll
2. A Man Escaped
3. Forbidden Planet
4. The Killing
5. The Red Balloon

[koji]

1. Samurai Trilogy 3: Duel at Ganryu Island (Hiroshi Inagaki)
2. Bob le Flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville)
3. The Killing (Kubrick)
4. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
5. The Burmese Harp (Ichikawa)
****************************** ******
6. Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse)
7. Crazed Fruit (Kô Nakahira)
8. Baby Doll (Kazan)
9. Attack! (Aldrich)
10. The Searchers (John Ford)

[Grouchy]

1. The Searchers
2. The Wrong Man
3. The Killing
4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
5. The Bad Seed

I'd like to include And God Created Woman, but come on, no way it's better than this Top5.

[baby doll]

1. Baby Doll (Elia Kazan)
2. Un condamné Ã* mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (Robert Bresson)
3. Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
4. The Searchers (John Ford)
5. Street of Shame (Kenji Mizoguchi)

[Spinal]

2. Un condamné Ã* mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (Robert Bresson)


A Man Escaped is so much easier to type.

[Ezee E]

A Man Escaped is so much easier to type.
But he feels so much cooler for doing all that.

[Qrazy]

But he feels so much cooler for doing all that.

Also what's the point of the excess titles?

You wouldn't write... Taxi Driver or Il Tassinaro

[Derek]

Added Bigger Than Life. That's about as strong a top 5 as I'll ever have.

[origami_mustache]

1. Crazed Fruit
2. A Man Escaped
3. The Red Balloon
4.The Killing
5. The Searchers

[ledfloyd]

1. The Searchers
2. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
3. The Man Who Knew Too Much

[baby doll]

A Man Escaped is so much easier to type.But if I typed that (or A Man Escaped or: The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth), I'd have a harder time justifying using the French title in the case of, say, La Pianiste or Eloge de l'amour, where the most common English titles aren't totally accurate translations.

[Qrazy]

But if I typed that (or A Man Escaped or: The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth), I'd have a harder time justifying using the French title in the case of, say, La Pianiste or Eloge de l'amour, where the most common English titles aren't totally accurate translations.

If The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth were the primary title I would have gone back in time and punched Bresson in the face.

[Raiders]

But if I typed that (or A Man Escaped or: The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth), I'd have a harder time justifying using the French title in the case of, say, La Pianiste or Eloge de l'amour, where the most common English titles aren't totally accurate translations.

Then why isn't Mizoguchi's film Akasen chitai?

[baby doll]

Then why isn't Mizoguchi's film Akasen chitai?Because I didn't spend six weeks in Quebec last summer trying to learn Japanese.

[Spinal]

Llopin, can you tabulate this one?

[Spinal]

OK, I have this counted. Will post results sometime today.

[Spinal]

#10

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

The Red Balloon

Director: Albert Lamorisse

Country: France

A boy makes friends with a seemingly sentient balloon, and it begins to follow him. Boy and balloon play together in the streets of Paris and try to elude a gang of boys that wants to destroy the balloon.

Won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, making it the only short film to win an Oscar outside of the short film categories. Named Best Short Film at Cannes. The film had one of the largest non-theatrical runs in the history of American cinema. Thousands of 16-millimeter prints were distributed to schools across the country.

"Lamorisse deploys phenomenal special effects to make the balloon bob and weave around walls and through windows in order to get back to its master. Even more impressive is the film's sentiment, as the balloon takes on childlike characteristics, and even suffers some of the same separation anxiety and obnoxious bullying as Pascal." - Noel Murray

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/burma1.jpg

The Burmese Harp

Director: Kon Ichikawa

Country: Japan

At the end of World War II, while his platoon awaits repatriation at Mudon prison camp, a lute player is sent to convince a Japanese company dug into a mountain that it must surrender. While his companions fear he's been killed, he has in fact survived and disguised himself as a Buddhist priest.

Earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Won the San Giorgio Prize at the Venice Film Festival. In 1985, Ichikawa remade the film, this time in color.

"A tender almost-musical about the horrors of war and the obliteration of identity ... It may be one of the most warmly enveloping films ever made to include scenes of decayed bodies being burned." - Eric Henderson

[Spinal]

#8

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/biggerthanlifeshadow1.jpg

Bigger than Life

Director: Nicholas Ray

Country: USA

A schoolteacher who's been suffering bouts of severe pain and blackouts is hospitalized with what's diagnosed as a rare inflammation of the arteries. Told by doctors that he probably has only months to live, he agrees to an experimental treatment. But the "miracle" cure turns into its own nightmare as he starts to abuse the tablets.

Playwright Clifford Odets was invited on the set by Ray, where he worked on re-writing the final scene of the film. Ed starting to talk about Abraham Lincoln was Odets' contribution. Marilyn Monroe, who was shooting Bus Stop at an adjoining stage at 20th Century Fox, shot a brief cameo as a nurse during a hospital sequence. Her scene was deleted because the studio was afraid that she would use this cameo as the second film she owed under her contract.

"The pitch of emotional, psychological, religious, societal hysteria is all concentrated in [James] Mason’s quiet, firm take on the absolute assurance of the insane. It’s an assurance we might recognize many places and fear just as much." - Nicolas Rapold

[Spinal]

#7

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/written-in-the-windPDVD_01201.jpg

Written on the Wind

Director: Douglas Sirk

Country: USA

Mitch Wayne and Kyle Hadley, the playboy son of an oil tycoon, have been best friends since childhood. Mitch and Kyle both fall in love with Lucy, but she marries Kyle before Mitch can express his feelings.

Won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Dorothy Malone). Also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Robert Stack) and Best Original Song. The movie was rumored to be based on the life of tobacco heir Zachary "Smith" Reynolds, the youngest son of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds.

"To appreciate the trashiness of Written on the Wind is not to condescend to it. To a greater degree than we realize, our lives and decisions are formed by pop cliches and conventions. Films that exaggerate our fantasies help us to see them--to be amused by them, and by ourselves. They clear the air." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#6

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

The Wrong Man

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Country: USA

An honest hardworking musician goes to the local insurance office to borrow on his wife's policy when she needs money for dental treatment. Employees at the office mistake him for a hold-up man who robbed them the year before and the police are called.

Although based on a true story, Hitchcock deliberately left out some of the information that pointed to Manny's innocence to heighten the tension. Hitchcock narrates the film's prologue - the only time he spoke in any of his own films.

"Hitchcock's shadowy mise-en-scène is given a greater sense of veracity through his use of actual NYC locations and simple, almost workmanlike camera compositions ... [W]hen Rose's mind begins to unravel under the pressure of her own culpability in his alleged crimes (unlike many other Hitchcock characters, the real-life figure of Rose shoulders the guilt without any qualm), the sense of moral responsibility in Hitchcock's films may have never felt more imperative and succinct." - Ed Gonzalez

[Spinal]

#5

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

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Director: Don Siegel

Country: USA

A doctor finds several of his patients suffering the paranoid delusion that their friends or relatives are impostors. He is initially skeptical, especially when the alleged dopplegängers are able to answer detailed questions about their victim's lives, but he is eventually persuaded that something odd has happened.

Throughout the years, Sam Peckinpah (who appears briefly in the film as the meter reader) claimed that he had done work on the script ranging from modifications to major overhauls. Those who worked on the film claimed that if Peckinpah had made any changes to the script, it was limited to a few lines of dialog. After screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring threatened to file an official complaint with the Writers Guild of America, Peckinpah backed down. The film has been read as both an allegory for the perceived loss of personal autonomy in the Soviet Union and as an indictment of McCarthyist paranoia about Communism during the early stages of the Cold War. Producer Walter Mirisch claims that neither the director nor the writers intended to create an allegorical work.

"The film's greatest asset is its ability to generate unease and fear of the unknown with a general discomfort of a race, or nation, under attack from a force unforseen that only lives in the shadows until it is time to take over. Even if the studio-imposed bookends to the film are unfortunate inclusions, it has already worked itself as a hyperactive, paranoid thriller that is cynical enough to criticize the same fear it generates while never letting up on its excrutiating, breakneck pace." - Raiders

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/aeliakazanbabydollcarrollbaker PDVD_.jpg

Baby Doll

Director: Elia Kazan

Country: USA

A middle-aged cotton gin owner, can hardly wait for the 20th birthday of his childish bride Baby Doll, when he'll be allowed to consummate the marriage...he thinks. But a rival owner suspects him of burning his gin down, and takes an erotic form of vengeance.

Nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Actress (Caroll Baker), Best Supporting Actress (Mildred Dunnock), Best Black and White Cinematography and Best Adapted Screenplay. Feature film debut of Eli Wallach. Francis Cardinal Spellman condemned the film from the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral two days before the film opened and exhorted all Catholics to refrain from patronizing the film "under pain of sin". All over the country, almost 20 million Catholics protested the film and picketed theaters that showed it. The Catholic boycott nearly killed the film; it was cancelled by 77% of theaters scheduled to show it, and it only made a meager $600,000 at the box office.

"The picture is hilariously charged along primitivist throughlines that shoot through the race and gender issues in the text like electrified rails. There's a lot happening on the surface of the piece ... but the subtext is so bulbous and protruded that Baby Doll is most accurately described as a bald, sublimely ridiculous, astonishingly observant sex comedy." - Walter Chaw

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Killing4.jpg

The Killing

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Country: USA

An ex-convict masterminds a complex race-track heist, but his scheme is complicated by the intervention of the wife of a teller in on the scheme, the boyfriend of the wife, airport regulations, and a small dog.

Nominated for Best Film at the BAFTA awards. Stanley Kubrick took no fee as director of the film. The film was shot in 24 days. Initial test screenings were poor, citing the non-linear structure as the main problem. Kubrick was forced to go back and edit the film in a linear fashion, actually making the film even more confusing. In the end, it was released in its original form, and is often cited as being a huge influence on films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

"Proficiently splicing and reshuffling the action until it seems that only fate (or the ever-godlike director) is fully in control of [Sterling] Hayden and his crew's destinies, Kubrick generates portentous suspense via discordant staging and methodical camera calisthenics until, faced with inescapable failure, Hayden's thug can barely muster the energy to utter, 'Eh, what's the difference.'" - Nick Schager

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/searchers2.jpg

The Searchers

Director: John Ford

Country: USA

An ex-Confederate soldier from the Indian Wars, finds that his family has been massacred and his niece captured by the Comanches and vows to bring her back and kill everyone of the Indians who did this to him.

In the climactic scene, John Wayne and Natalie Wood run up the side of a hill in Monument Valley, Utah and come down the other side of the hill in the Bronson Canyon area of Griffith Park, Los Angeles. Considering the part of Ethan Edwards to be the best character he ever portrayed on-screen and his favorite film role, John Wayne named a son Ethan in homage. Buddy Holly's song "That'll Be the Day" was inspired by John Wayne's frequent use of the phrase in this film.

"In The Searchers I think Ford was trying, imperfectly, even nervously, to depict racism that justified genocide; the comic relief may be an unconscious attempt to soften the message. Many members of the original audience probably missed his purpose; Ethan's racism was invisible to them, because they bought into his view of Indians ... [W]e can see Ford, Wayne and the Western itself, awkwardly learning that a man who hates Indians can no longer be an uncomplicated hero." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/aemanescapedPDVD_007.jpg

A Man Escaped

Director: Robert Bresson

Country: France

French Resistance activist Andre Devigny is imprisoned by the Nazis, and devotes his waking hours to planning an elaborate escape. After he is given a new cellmate, he must decide whether his new company can be trusted and whether or not he can proceed with his plan.

Won Best Director at Cannes. Bresson himself had been a prisoner of war during WWII. It was the first film of Bresson's where he used a completely non-professional cast. After seeing the film, Jean-Luc Godard said that Bresson was "to French cinema what Mozart is to German music and Dostoevsky is to Russian literature".

"The genius of the film is obvious from the start: The way Bresson breathlessly postures Devigny's autobiographical account as a modern spiritual fable and the intensely suffocating aesthetic that truly evokes the squashing of the human soul ... That's not to say that Bresson lays on the spiritual allegory thick. Yes, there's plenty of talk about ghosts, temptation ... the purging of sins, and relationships to no doubt sacred mothers, but A Man Escaped isn't so much an avowal of religious dogma as it is a deeply humanistic proclamation of the power of faith." - Ed Gonzalez

[Spinal]

1. A Man Escaped (73.5)
2. The Searchers (51.5)
3. The Killing (42.5)
4. Baby Doll (33.5)
5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (33)
6. The Wrong Man (32)
7. Written on the Wind (27.5)
8. Bigger than Life (25)
9. The Burmese Harp (19)
10. The Red Balloon (16)

Not Quite:
Aparajito (11)
Bob le flambeur (10.5)

[soitgoes...]

Not Quite:
Aparajito (11)

Really Match Cut? For shame!

[Spinal]

Really Match Cut? For shame!

Don't blame me. I voted Satyajit.

[dreamdead]

This is an incredible year from the five on the list that I've seen, so I think I'll make the others a priority. Including the runners-up, since my first experience with Ray was quality.

[Derek]

#1

A Man Escaped

Director: Robert Bresson

:cry:

Tears of joy, MatchCut. Tears of joy.

You can all ignore the fact that I put this behind The Wrong Man...

[soitgoes...]

Don't blame me. I voted Satyajit.
You and Antoine are safe from blame.

[Ezee E]

That's a surprise. Sweet!