Derek failed at finishing his top 100, but there are a lot of solid reviews in here!

[Boner M]

It's all my fault isn't it?

Our fault.

[Duncan]

Aww man, that Rear Window review is so much better than mine. This thread's gonna be so superior to the other one. I don't wanna live anymore.

Honestly, I always enjoy reading your reviews. I think you're a good writer.

[Boner M]

Honestly, I always enjoy reading your reviews. I think you're a good writer.

*blushes*

Thanks. That reminds me, I need to watch my #1 soon and devote sum words to it.

[MadMan]

I'm gonna get in on this thread while its starting. So far I've seen both movies reviewed. Cool.

[Melville]

That reminds me, I need to watch my #1 soon and devote sum words to it.

Indeed.


Anyway, I decided to just base my review around something I've already written, so here it is a day early:

100. Children of Paradise (Marcel Carne, 1945)

Children of Paradise is an epic tale of 19th Century Parisian life, at once a tragic romance and a study of performance on stage and in life. But despite its epic scope and grand metaphors, it is presented with a light touch, with humour and charm. In this sense, it is traditional storytelling at its best, resembling a Victorian novel that evokes a social milieu within a finely constructed narrative and makes sweeping statements about life only via that narrative. As such, although the cinematography and performances are a delight in themselves, the film’s narrative is its principal focus and its greatest asset.

That narrative is divided in two parts, and its most notable feature is the mirroring of those two parts. The film opens with a scene of Paris streets crowded with carnival-goers, a great mass of bustling life. In a sequence of short segments, beginning with a wonderfully immersive tracking shot, we are introduced to all the central characters as elements of this mass. But as the film progresses, those characters are singled out and the mass moves to the background. What at first seems to present itself as a broad story of the life of 19th century Paris instead turns into a very personal drama about a small cast of characters; as one character says, "Paris is very small for those who love each other with such a grand passion." (In keeping with the tone of the film, this weighty remark is stated almost facetiously and is in no way emphasized—only upon reflection does it resonate with the narrative’s structure.) The film’s second part reverses this movement. Again the crowds appear, greeting the return of the carnival, but now the central characters are cloistered away in hotel rooms and bathhouses rather than being part of the general mass. Over the course of the final scene, two of the characters are drawn out into the crowd, and despite the best attempts of one of them to catch the other, the crowd overwhelms him, at one point literally swirling around him, and the last we see of him is his disappearance amidst a sea of faces. Thus, the personal drama that arose from the mass of life is again subsumed by it.

One interesting aspect of this mirror structure is the way it influences our relation to the central characters. Most of these characters are stage performers, and at first we see their performances from their audience’s perspective, as objects for our entertainment (and they are most certainly entertaining—pantomime never looked so good!). The movement from the objectivity of the group to the subjectivity of the individual is then evinced by a shift in the depiction of the central characters’ stage performances: by the conclusion of the film’s first part, we see the performances purely in terms of what they mean to the characters themselves. In the reverse movement of the second half, the performances gradually disappear from the narrative, as the characters are dissolved into the mass: by the film’s conclusion, the characters have returned to the mass, but no longer as performers; their position as elements of the mass is now viewed from their perspective rather than from that of the mass as audience.

Of course, the film’s focus is not on the initial rise from the mass or the final return, but rather on the aforementioned central movement: that in which we see the performances in terms of what they mean to the characters themselves. One of the two principal male characters, Baptiste, is obsessed with perfect, consuming love, with his fate—generally, with "the real". He treats life as something deadly serious, and though he adopts a very mannered, exaggerated performance in life, he treats this role as a fixed idea. This attitude is reflected in his performance on the stage: the first part of the film ends with his production of a pantomime in which he places all his despair, and in which his performance literalizes his desperate love for an idealized, unattainable woman. It is as if he cannot, or will not, escape his notion of his own life. The second of the two principals, Lemaitre, is always aware of the world as a stage, always treating life as a play (in both senses of the word). Like Baptiste, he is ceaselessly performing in life, but he is self-aware in his performance—he knows that he is putting on a show. And, again, this is reflected on the stage: the second part opens (again, we see the film’s mirror structure) with a hilariously anarchic scene in which Lemaitre performs in a play that he doesn't care for, and which he proceeds to reinvent and mock as he performs it. Just as in life, he treats the play as pure play, as something somewhat unreal and certainly unfixed. However, he still thinks of both life and stage in terms of roles that he can adopt. Another character is a writer. Unlike the performers, he does not treat life as a stage on which he acts: he treats it as a story which he must control—and which, in the end, he does, essentially rewriting the story that the other characters think themselves to be in, and remaining constantly apart from the pull of the social mass.

These broad character types, in their emergence from the social milieu surrounding them, and in their relationships with the personal melodrama that they emerge into, serve not only as well defined characters to root for or to loathe, depending on one’s personal inclination, but as distinct representations of modes of confronting life: as something to be lived in terms of fixed ideals and a striving for the Ideal; as a self-conscious dismissal and manipulation of abstract ideals in favour of pure living; or as a deliberate overthrow of those ideals, an attempt to force life’s narrative to conform to one’s own will.

[Duncan]

Haven't seen Children of Paradise, but that's a good write up.

I love all the Python I've seen. Life of Brian is my favorite, though. Then again, it's the one I've seen most recently.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Damn, these write ups put me to shame. If you guys are going to be this consistent, I think my brain will explode with the awesome. Love Holy Grail (do prefer Life of Brian) and Rear Window is among my favourites as well.

[Melville]

Damn, these write ups put me to shame. If you guys are going to be this consistent, I think my brain will explode with the awesome.

I don't know about the others, but I'm sure apathy will rapidly overtake me and reduce my reviews to copy-and-pastes from Ebert. Also, I was enjoying your reviews in your top 100.

[Derek]

To keep things moving, because I have a feeling I'll be the one slowing us down the most in the long run, I'm just revising an old review. For most of the films, I'm going to try following the iosos method of rewatching before doing each write-up. But without further ado, I give you...


#100 - Miss Julie (Alf Sjöberg, 1951)



To preface this write-up, I'd first like to point out that in my review 2 1/2 years ago, I wrote that "it's availability is scarce at best and its reputation almost non-existent. A sad state of affairs, but one that will hopefully be rectified by a quality DVD company such as Criterion." So for the Criterion DVD you all now have available to you, you're welcome.
______________________________ ___________________

Occasionally there are filmmakers so highly regarded both within and outside of their own country that they come to represent the totality of cinema for that nation. One such example is the great Ingmar Bergman, a man certainly deserving of his illustrious status in world cinema, but whose gargantuan reputation has cast a shadow over a number of excellent directors working in Sweden. Alf Sjöberg's Miss Julie is as good as almost any film in the Bergman canon, yet only since its recent Criterion release have its many charms begun to be unearthed by the critical community.

The film opens with a long shot of a line of servants gleefully prancing around the field on the estate where they work. At first their situation seems sublime and it is understandable why Miss Julie, the count's daughter, sneaks out to attend their parties. It soon becomes apparent that the strict 19th Century morals strongly frown upon mixing of the classes and when Julie's flirtations with an attractive young servant turn into true feelings, the oppressive nature of their environment is exposed. Julie and her lover, Jean, who has lived on the estate since his childhood wish only to be together, but realize it is impossible unless they leave.

It's a simple enough story on the surface that becomes something far more emotionally gratifying through its carefully detailed characters and Sjöberg's astoundingly beautiful direction. He uses unique editing techniques to seamlessly weave flashbacks into the present, creating a vivid portrait of class barriers, overbearing social mores and the torrid, forbidden love affair that is effected by it. The result is an incredibly layered narrative where the psychology of the characters and the details of their class status are traced back to their roots. A beautiful sequence detailing an encounter the two had as children shows the demoralization and constant negative reinforcement that is bestowed upon members of the lower class, not only dehumanizing them but turning them into mindlessly subserviant slaves. The story of Julie's mother is evidence of the suffering of women at the hands of men and her brutal revenge, starting with her eery laugh when her husband learns she gave birth to a girl, is the only way to achieve her freedom. These scenes are intertwined with the present where Miss Julie and Jean struggle to escape to Switzerland and while they begin as parallels, the two periods merge into a singular, grandiose tragedy. In their final attempt to flee without being detected, they see the servants dancing in the distance and slowly approaching them in a shot reminiscent of the opening, but in a devastating turn of events, what, at one time, represented a reprieve from social oppression now shows the danger lying in both classes blind reinforcement of their archaic rules and principles.

[Watashi]

I except this thread to fill up my Netflix queue quite fast.

[Melville]

Alf Sjöberg's Miss Julie is as good as almost any film in the Bergman canon, yet only since its recent Criterion release have its many charms begun to be unearthed by the critical community.

I've never heard of Sjöberg or Miss Julie. I must be at least a month behind the times.

[Derek]

I've never heard of Sjöberg or Miss Julie. I must be at least a month behind the times.

Sjöberg's not widely known and seems to be mentioned more for directing Bergman's very first script, Torment. That's a good film, but hardly on the same level as this one. The DVD just came out in January, so it hasn't yet taken the world by storm.

[Rowland]

Whew. If you guys are going to keep up this level of quality, you have a lot of work ahead of you. I salute your effort.

[Duncan]

Whew. If you guys are going to keep up this level of quality, you have a lot of work ahead of you. I salute your effort.

I'm seriously considering writing 99 haiku poems instead of these many worded paragraphs.

[Rowland]

I'm seriously considering writing 99 haiku poems instead of these many worded paragraphs.

Pretend your entries are Twitter posts. Problem solved.

[Bosco B Thug]

I, for one, think Popeye can only possibly serve to spice up the relationship.

100. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)

Both the film and the viewer must be in full view of one another, and by the interaction of their gazes they define each other. For how could I know myself if I was not being watched?

And then there are those films that let you explore their courtyards on your own terms, eroding the barriers that separate discovery and creation.

Very nice. The best films always seem to weave, in free and non-dictatorial ways, the playful and/or meaningful POV and audience perception.

[megladon8]

Great write-ups guys.

I wish I could comment, but I've only seen two of the films, and neither of those were recent.

Keep up the great work!

[ledfloyd]

not to single anyone out as all four reviews are fantastic. but that rear window review is one of the best i've read on here.

[Watashi]

I enjoyed Duncan's Rear Window review a lot even if the last paragraph is pretty corny.

[Sven]

Melville, rep points coming your way for a fabulous film (2 lo! 2 lo!).

Derek, have you seen Figgis's adaptation of Miss Julie with Saffron Burrows and Peter Mullan? I'm not the hugest Figgis supporter in general, and the film is lacking a real thrust (though definitely not from the pelvis), but as always, Mullan is totally great in it.

[Sven]

These things always start off with the ball rolling way too fast.

#99 - Tron



Tron does not ease you into its story; its immediate dedication to its own mythology is quite disorienting. It opens inside a computer where we see programs that have been stolen by the MCP (Master Control Program) who are forced into a gladiatorial battle where they fight in elaborate, shiny games to stay alive. One discontented accounting program complains about the stringent MCP, indignantly asking “Who does he calculate he is?”. Cut to: caption reading “Meanwhile, in the real world...” Fade in on Jeff Bridges (never more rakish), performing some kind of hacking business with some kind of program. We soon see that the program he’s manipulating is a mini-Jeff Bridges-looking thing driving a tank around the motherboard and/or network of some sort of database that he’s trying to infiltrate. This hacker program is discovered and killed, and Jeff Bridges sighs. “That was my best program.”

At this point, not ten minutes into the movie, I realize that I am not going to be watching this movie for coherence. It makes pretty much no sense at all. There’s some sort of world within a world, where the programs wonder about the existence of “Users” the same way we wonder about the existence of God. Here, both the Creators and the Creations are fallible and sentient. Artificial Intelligence doesn’t exist, as we’re meant to take for granted that, somehow, intelligence just is. This world takes place between physical reality and digital abstraction. Surely we’re not meant to believe that there are little men and women running around on our motherboards and through our Ethernet cables. Or are we? -- Still, no matter how strangely it is told, Tron’s unique construction of anthropomorphic digitization is a brilliant concept. The tyranny of the MCP over the digital realm echoes our human malaise and prompts us to question the systems (and ideologies) that we serve (or adhere to).

All that stuff is okay. In a weird way, it works. But the most wonderful thing about Tron is not the narrative or thematic complexity. What really elevates it in my esteem is its beautiful, and I mean exquisite, special effects and camera work. In many ways, Tron is more akin to the early German films of Wiene and Murnau than it is to Spielberg or Lucas. The focus here is on the expression of the face and placement within an entirely fabricated, though not unrecognizable, universe—a suitable alternative title could be The Hard Drive of Dr. Caligari. The blues and the reds feel tangible (naturally, most of the film’s set is just digital color), and the landscape patterns slice and curve in dreamlike patterns. The special effects here are at once a product of the times and yet way ahead of their time. Compare the blue screen work here to that of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe or even Peter Jackson’s Tolkien trilogy to see that Tron’s composite effects are still a revelation. In essence, the film’s makers have managed, at its conception, to craft a wild and original aesthetic while truly understanding their limitations. The result is an interesting and bizarre story told with great expression within a world that still looks unique and nearly flawless.

Kristen: Two weeks later, little remains of this movie in my memory but a vague sense of enjoyment, only 25% of which is ironic. Its striking visuals point an accusing finger at films whose more “advanced” computer graphics overreach the technology of the day while neglecting style (Star Wars prequels, I’m looking at you).

[Watashi]

Awesome. Tron rules.

[Eleven]

Completely arbitrary David Warner count: 1.

This would've been higher if you'd gone with Time Bandits.

[Sven]

Completely arbitrary David Warner count: 1.

This would've been higher if you'd gone with Time Bandits.

There are actually about three or four other David Warner films that just barely missed the grade, actually. Alas, my list has but one more appearance by the dude. Which is rather unfortunate.

[Eleven]

There are actually about three or four other David Warner films that just barely missed the grade, actually. Alas, my list has but one more appearance by the dude. Which is rather unfortunate.

I will continue reading despite this. But only just.