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TM2YC's 1001 Movies (Chronological up to page 25/post 481)

Zamros

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Here is the complete (Checkable) list on icheckmovies.

For someone that considers themself a film buff, I've seen a dissapointing few of these (Barely even seen 1/5th of the filmography). I keep trying to watch The Birth of a Nation, but I inevitably keep getting angry and lose interest. I'll watch it eventually, I'll just have to disconnect myself from watching something so atrocious. It's frustrating that one of the most important movies of all time is also one of the most despicable.

Gah, what the hell is going on with this formatting? I'm not doing this on purpose guys, promise.

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/1001+movies+you+must+see+before+you+die/
 

TM2YC

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100 years ago...

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Intolerance (1916)
Director: D. W. Griffith
Country: United States
Length: 177 minutes (3 hours)
Type: Silent, Historical, Epic, Social-Drama

After the last two offensive/wearisome entries, thankfully 'Intolerance' was a lot more enjoyable. Given the horrific racism of Griffith's last movie, I went into this with deep suspicion. I was concerned when it started down the "Passion of the Christ" route but it's a pretty progressive picture actually with little to get annoyed about. It refers to one evil character as being "effeminate" once but that's as far as the "Intolerance"  ;) goes. I watched a version with a score by Antoine Duhamel and Pierre Jansen which was note perfect. I can't speak for other soundtracks but this one felt very modern yet fitting, with epic pieces for the battle scenes.

The film has a heavy inter-cutting structure between four stories across the ages, exploring the theme of the title. For me, it didn't really work as the connections between the pieces were thematic but barely narrative/intellectual. However, I still enjoyed it, as the structure meant it was difficult to become bored as we are constantly moving between different time periods, keeping things fresh. The Biblical and Renaissance periods aren't lingered on long enough to have real impact.  Most of the time is devoted to a "modern" story about a mother being oppressed by the state and the fall of Babylon.

The modern story was good but as the central "Dear One/Little Wife" character is at the mercy of fate and the actions, or in-actions of others she wasn't all that interesting. I most enjoyed the Babylonian segment as it mainly focused on a character called "The mountain Girl". She felt like a character straight out of a movie of today. A girl railing against rules and conventions placed on women of the past. She refuses to be married/sold off, takes up armour and weapons in a colossal siege and rides off on a chariot to save the Kingdom. 'Intolerance' was also released as two separate movies (Babylon and Modern) and think it probably plays better that way.

The siege of Babylon is Epic on a scale that probably hasn't been outdone in the hundred years since. Vast sets, thousands of extras, sweeping FX and model shots. Stunt men (clearly not dummies) falling hundreds of feet from battlements. Gore effects and in-camera beheadings worthy of Peter Jackson. In fact the sieges of Minas Tirith and Helms Deep are brought to mind more than a few times.This is highly recommended for those interested in D.W. Griffith (Just skip 'Birth of a Nation').


'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' is up next which I've wanted to see for years.
 

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96 years ago...

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Director: Robert Wiene
Country: Germany
Length: 75 minutes (1 1/4 hours)
Type: Silent, Horror, Expressionist

This was a really excellent watch but to be honest I probably enjoyed the music the most and the film was a nice accompaniment. The unsettling discordant Jazz-Rock soundtrack by Donald Sosin, was exactly what the film needed. The madder the characters/story gets, the more unhinged go the musicians. At times it felt like the mood Wendy Carlos created for 'The Shining'.

The exaggerated set designs took some getting used to. For example... at first you just see some white boxes crudely daubed on a wonky wooden wall. Then you realise they are supposed to be Gothic windows. Throughout the "lighting" is created by the paint on the sets (or actors faces) and not by actual light sources. I found myself forgetting the literal look and just taking the intended effect in by the end. Perhaps it's not supposed to look as sharp and clear as the 4K restoration I watched? With much more contrast and less "stagey" set detail visible, the weird look of the scenes might be more effective.

The best scene features Caligari being chased around by onscreen text that appears as if my magic in the air, taunting him. I'm not sure how the FX were achieved but it was impressive. Perhaps they exposed the animated text onto the negative, wound it back and then filmed the live-action scene? Maybe they simply painted it onto the negative in black paint afterwards?

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Zamros

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Just a wee bit of trivia when it comes to "Intolerance".

Griffith made it in response to "The disgusting intolerance shown by critics towards my film The Birth of a Nation"...

This fuckin guy...
 

TM2YC

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Zamros said:
Griffith made it in response to "The disgusting intolerance shown by critics towards my film The Birth of a Nation"...

Yes I was bit surprised when I read that in the book. However, he's gone a ways to redeeming himself in my eyes with the next film I watched (Which could be considered a kind of apology on the racism front)...




97 years ago...

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Broken Blossoms (1919)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Country: United States
Length: 89 minutes (1.5 hours)
Type: Silent, Tragedy, Romance, Domestic-Violence

Many films of this era I've watched fit squarely into the "Silent Films" genre (with the problems that can entail) but this is one of the rare Silents that feels like just a film that happens to not have words. I'm sure anybody could sit and watch this and be captivated. The acting is almost realistic, as is the design/costuming and the filmmaking itself feels much more assured than earlier works. If you are skeptical of silent cinema, this is a good place to start. It's the story of a brutalised sad young London girl, befriended by a gentle, lonely and defeated Chinese Buddhist missionary. The 2011 film 'Tyrannosaur' is like a modern day counterpart.

Griffith is much more famous for his two big epic films but this small-scale drama is far superior in my opinion (Apparently, he went small after 'Intolerance' bombed to his near financial ruin). When he's just focused on the love between two damaged souls, it feels more confident than when he's trying to marshal thousands of extras and vast unwieldy plots. The scenes of domestic-violence are upsetting but the romantic scenes are beautiful by contrast. The intertitles often read like poetry, even if the occasional ill-chosen period phrase like "Chinky" and "Yellow Man" are off putting (I'm sure they were seen as harmless at the time).

I listened with Carl Davis' orchestral arrangement of the original 1919 score and it was simply gorgeous and romantic stuff, soundtracking every moment to emotional effect. The main theme was particularity strong. A cylinder recording of said theme...


It's shame this hasn't received an HD restoration yet. I'd buy this in an instant on blu-ray and look forward to repeat viewings.


There are two more Griffith films in the book (Including the next one 'Way Down East') and if they are both as good as 'Broken Blossoms', I might consider forgiving him for 'Birth of a Nation'... but I doubt it :D .
 

ssj

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^ now there's a ripe target for new subs. :D
 

TMBTM

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You made me want to watch some of those movies.

Caligari: good enough (Tim Burton touch with a twist à la Night M. You could almost see Johnny Depp in the role of Cesare...) but I'll not watch again.
Broken Blossoms: Very good (for those who likes sad stories). I agree that it needs a restoration though.
 

L8wrtr

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This is an awesome(ly daunting) endeavor. In the category of 'I totally want to do that... but probably never will' :(
 

TM2YC

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L8wrtr said:
This is an awesome(ly daunting) endeavor. In the category of 'I totally want to do that... but probably never will' :(

I'll never watch them all I imagine... it's more about the attempt and the films I'd otherwise never see if I didn't try. Right now, I want to get to 1927, so I can watch my new 5.5 hour 'Napoleon' blu-ray set (That I got for Christmas) in context :) .




96 years ago...

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Way Down East (1920)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Country: United States
Length: 149 minutes (2.5 hours)
Type: Silent, Romance, Morality-Tale

Another entry from D.W. Griffith, which at times is the equal to and even surpasses 'Broken Blossoms'. However, it's padded to hell with annoyingly irrelevant comedy skits, inflating the runtime way beyond what it needed to be and testing the patience.  The stock of comedy character types are ludicrous and unconnected to the main plot (until the very end and then only just).  It really could do with a fanedit.

For the most part, the story follows penniless innocent girl Anna who is essentially sexually-assaulted by a rich b**tard... comedy skit... she falls pregnant, he abandons her to her fate... comedy skit... infant mortality... comedy skit... general misery... comedy skit... etc etc... happy ending.  Anna and her love-interest are once again played by Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, rekindling their chemistry from 'Broken Blossoms'. Two very good actors in any film era!

The finale is a chase across a vast broken ice drift. Watching real stunt men/women leap from shaky ice, to crumbling ice, knowing they lack any sort of modern thermal wet-suit, or a helicopter-based rescue-team is nerve shredding to watch. To think people were losing their sh*t because Leonardo DiCaprio ate some sushi in 'The Revenant' :D . I hope Griffith gave his performers some serious hazard pay for the scene... assuming they survived.

'Way Down East' is well worth the watch by the time you reach the crowd-pleasing end... but I wouldn't be surprised if many got frustrated and gave up halfway through.



Next up is the earliest surviving film by an African-American Director, made in response to 'Birth of a Nation'. This should be interesting!
 

ssj

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this might be a misperception, but i get the sense you dig cinema. :D
 

TM2YC

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96 years ago...

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Within Our Gates (1920)
Director: Oscar Micheaux
Country: United States
Length: 78 minutes
Type: Silent, Historical, Drama, Political

'Within Our Gates' is the earliest surviving film by an African-American Director and only Oscar Micheaux's 2nd feature. It's clearly a thematic response to D.W.Griffith's horrifically racist blockbuster 'Birth of a Nation'. It even follows Griffith's style and narrative signatures, but for me, done better.

The story mainly follows Sylvia and her struggle to raise money for a black school in the Southern US. Not only must she struggle against rampant racism and general indifference to her cause but against the very idea that educating black people is a good idea. The film concludes with an extended flashback sequence where we learn the pre-history of Sylvia and how she became who she is. A distressing history of murder, attempted rape and lynching with Sylvia and her family the blameless victims. It's pretty strong stuff for 2016, never mind 1920. So it's perhaps unsurprising that this finale was often cut from contemporary screenings (or the film was outright banned). Maybe it was deemed too inflammatory for audiences who weren't used to being shown the awful truth of racism (The earlier fictions of Griffith being more palatable).

The inter-titles even feature politics and statistics. One inter-title says "The state pays only $1.49 a year to educate every Negro child". The image below (I found on Google) indicates that you could take the whole family for a night at the movies in 1920 for less than that. It makes you angry a century later, that human-beings could be valued so little.

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The most interesting aspect for me was seeing the acting. Anybody familiar with films from the first-half of the 20th century, will recognise the ridiculous and offensive "minstrel"/"Yes massa" style of performance. Micheaux uses it... but to subvert it. The good characters and the educated characters act realistically and truthfully (I don't mean silent-acting-realistic, I mean today-realistic). Where as the subservient characters and the "Uncle Toms" perform in the hyper-exaggerated "minstrel" style.

Micheaux's intent is clear. To not just attack the message of Griffith's film but the methods too. The silent movies I've watched so far often have a certain naiveté for the times, but there is no naiveté here. Michauex knew exactly what he was doing and says it with anger and conviction. I'm sure Spike Lee is proud that African-American cinema started on this sure footing (His 2000 movie 'Bamboozled' is worth checking out on the "minstrel" subject by the way).


Sweden's first entry, 'The Phantom Carriage' is next.
 

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95 years ago...

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The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Director: Victor Sjöström
Country: Sweden
Length: 106 minutes (1 3/4 hrs)
Type: Silent, Ghost-Story, Drama

A style of film I love is of the flashbacks-within-flashbacks type. It's something only film can do, slipping easily between time and space in an instant. It's used beautifully here (A 3-layer deep flashback structure is practically 'Inception' :cool: ) to tell a New Year's Eve ghost story about a drunken father/husband consumed by hatred and self-loathing, his long-suffering wife, a kindly Salvation-Army nurse who is intent on saving his soul and the Grim-Reaper's apprentice. It's like 'A Christmas Carol' meets 'Final Destination' ;) .

The film uses few intertitles but when the performances are as good as they are here, words aren't needed. It's all there on the actors faces, minutes can go by without an intertitle and you always know what is happening, or what the characters are feeling. Director Victor Sjöström takes the lead role, with Hilda Borgström and Astrid Holm as his female co-stars. Any of the three would walk away with the best-actor Oscar, if they'd been awarding them in 1921.

Double-exposeers are used to create many in-camera FX shots of the half-visible ghosts. There is probably as much FX footage in here as you'd get in the average CGI blockbuster today. The atmospheric lighting is about as good as it's possible to be on film. Compared to others films from the 1919-1920s produced in America, the Swedish were obviously light-years ahead. It's operating on another level of the cinematic art. For me, this the first fully realised film masterpiece. Everything before, was just experimenting with how cinema could work.

I'm going to be re-watching this many times in the future! (Every New Year's Eve perhaps, for extra spookiness).


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However, I thought the last intertitle was a bit insulting to the audience...

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(p.s. It's interesting to note that smelly drunk hairy Swedish tramps from 1921, look exactly like 2016 Hipsters :D )
 

ssj

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thanks for the find, tm2yphantomcarriage!

adding that to my list, if only for the last title.
 

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95 years ago...

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Orphans of the Storm (1921)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Country: United States
Length: 150 minutes (2.5 hours)
Type: Silent, Historical, Melodrama

'Orphans of the Storm' is the last Griffith film in the book and after my recent viewing of the superior 'The Phantom Carriage', I could understand why. He hasn't really progressed as a filmmaker in terms of editing, acting, staging, lighting, writing, framing, camera-movement, or anything really, beyond scale and set decoration. He clearly thought you made films better by having them bigger, more elaborate, longer and with more characters. Instead of thinking of ways to tell the story better through film techniques.

The characters are one dimensional, the compositions are flat, the performances are mostly pantomime (The male lead, the Austrian born Joseph Schildkraut is an exception) and no thought is given to lighting. One scene takes place at night and at day, inter-cutting the two as if there is no difference. In another scene an intertitle appears telling us that a character is giving a great impassioned speech on which the plot turns, instead of you know, actually telling us what he said and showing him saying it.

That said, the story is dramatic and emotionally engaging, so I still enjoyed myself. It's very similar in subject and tone to Les Misérables. Two orphans (Played by the Gish sisters) are caught up in the middle of the French Revolution and fate will decide if they'll end up in the Guillotine. The overall story is kept interesting as many plot threads established early, come back and pay off at the end.


Next up is an apparent early feminist French film from Germaine Dulac.
 

Vultural

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Griffith persevered another decade, but of his final output I've only watched America (stiff and creaky),
and Sally Of The Sawdust (good W C Fields vehicle, which is why I viewed it).

I have read for years he was involved in One Million Years BC (1940), a Hal Roach film.
That would have been his final work.

My own preference is for his Biograph shorts.
I would recommend D.W. Griffith: Years of Discovery 1909-1913.
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There are 20 shorts in that compilation and essential for film buffs and those interested in cinema history.
Audio commentary available on several.
 

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Vultural said:
I would recommend D.W. Griffith: Years of Discovery 1909-1913.

There are 20 shorts in that compilation and essential for film buffs and those interested in cinema history.

I'm not that keen to watch more Griffith right now, as he seems quite "amateurish" (in terms of technique) compared to his contemporaries round the world. But I might do in future and will check out those shorts if I do. Perhaps when he's not trying to be overly ambitious and is just doing a short story he's better.




94 years ago...

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The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922)
Director: Germaine Dulac
Country: France
Length: 38 minutes
Type: Silent, Feminist, Blackly-Comic

This is the first film in he book Directed by a woman and it does bring a fresh perspective (introspective even) compared to the others so far.  The Direction mints that kind of existential French cinema that is almost a cliche to viewers now. The Madame Beudet of the title is an intelligent artistic dreamer trapped in a marriage to a mundane and oafish husband. We see her idle fantasies/dreams of murdering him but it mostly amounts to nothing more than moving a vase of flowers off center to irritate him. That is until she loads his favourite gun with live ammunition, leading to a blackly comic finale.

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She often stares outwards at the camera with her misery obvious to the audience (thanks to Germaine Dermoz's wonderful performance) but invisible to her husband. A strong early cinematic argument for divorce.


Next up is a the great Fritz Lang's first entry in the book (I'm already halfway through it).
 

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94 years ago...

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Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)
Director: Fritz Lang
Country: Germany
Length: 268 minutes (4.5 hours)
Type: Silent, Crime-Drama, Mystery

The first film the book by the famous Fritz Lang is subtitled 'der Spieler', translating as player, gambler, puppeteer, or actor. So "the Gambler" doesn't quite capture the full meaning of the translation, although gambling (in the literal sense) is the main focus of the plot. Dr. Mabuse is a gambler with cards (Baccarat) but more importantly with people. In a chilling scene/intertitle he says "Nothing in this world is interesting in the long run, except for one thing. Gambling with people and with the fates of people".

He manipulates, coerces, tricks and even hypnotises people to do his bidding, to lose money, or to kill themselves. The State Prosecutor, Von Wenk is constantly on his tail but always ones step behind thanks to Mabuse adopting myriad disguises and personalities. I was reminded a lot of Holmes and Prof. Moriarty. With rewritten intertitles and some clever edits this could easily become a Sherlock fanedit ;) .

The central performance by Rudolf Klein-Rogge with his intense staring eyes makes Dr. Mabuse's hypnotic powers very believable.

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My attention was captured for the full 4.5 hours, although it's actually broken into two films: 'Part I - The Great Gambler: A Picture of the Time' and 'Part II - Inferno: A Game for the People of our Age', so I watched them on separate days.

One of the intertitles towards the end gave me a genuine LOL moment. During a shootout with the police/army, one of Mabuse's minions is angrily told to...

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...before he snorts a handful and continues to fire back at the authorities. It's Scarface, 1922 style :D . I thought maybe @"ssj" had written the blu-ray subtitles for a moment :cool: .



Next up is the first "documentary".
 

Vultural

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^ Been rewatching Mabuse a couple days now.
Brilliant film.  My favorite Lang.
 

TM2YC

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Vultural said:
^ Been rewatching Mabuse a couple days now.
Brilliant film.  My favorite Lang.

I've not seen too many Lang films, Metropolis and a couple of  Film Noirs. The book misses out on a few of his more famous works like Die Nibelungen, Spione, Dr. Mabuse 2&3 and the 2x Indian films. I might try and fit them in too.




94 years ago...

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Nanook of the North (1922)
Director: Robert J. Flaherty
Country: United States
Length: 67 minutes
Type: Silent, docu-fiction, historical, nature

There is a long and complicated controversy about how much of 'Nanook of the North' is documentary and how much is staged fiction. It's best to ignore all that, as a real 1920s Eskimo spearing a real Seal, capturing a real Snow Fox and building a real Igloo in real freezing conditions is damned interesting stuff, regardless of whether the Director shouted "Action!" first or not.

I watched a new 2015 BBC Radio version with a live soundtrack featuring the Inuk "throat singer" Tanya Tagaq. It's a really strange and fitting accompaniment. Piercing strings, guttural vocals and sounds from nature. Here is a sample...


Filming out in what are clearly treacherous Arctic conditions must have been damned difficult with 1920s equipment. A particularly effective sequence intercuts a snarling ravenous Husky's teeth, with the Eskimo family killing a Seal, skinning it and then happily tucking into the raw flesh, with the blood running down the little hands and faces of the children. It's man meets nature, at the limits of survival, with the division between the two less than clear.


Next up is the famous 'Nosferatu'. I've wanted to see it for years but needed an excuse. Now's the time.
 
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