• Most new users don't bother reading our rules. Here's the one that is ignored almost immediately upon signup: DO NOT ASK FOR FANEDIT LINKS PUBLICLY. First, read the FAQ. Seriously. What you want is there. You can also send a message to the editor. If that doesn't work THEN post in the Trade & Request forum. Anywhere else and it will be deleted and an infraction will be issued.
  • If this is your first time here please read our FAQ and Rules pages. They have some useful information that will get us all off on the right foot, especially our Own the Source rule. If you do not understand any of these rules send a private message to one of our staff for further details.
  • Please read our Rules & Guidelines

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

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
I don't think the BFI's 2012 'Sight & Sound' magazine poll did 'Vertigo' any favours by declaring it the official "greatest film ever made" because it's just not, it's not even Alfred Hitchcock's best film. This is the 4th or 5th time I've watched it but I'm still not getting why it's considered the greatest. 

Totally with you on everything you said.  I've been digging in to the S&S lists recently, and various film critics' takes on them.  Roger Ebert wrote a piece the year when Vertigo displaced Kane where he commented on it.  He too said Vertigo wasn't even Hitch's greatest: he favored Notorious.  However, he said his mind was changed that year when he selected Vertigo for his famous Ebert Interruptus festival.  After going over the film frame by frame with an audience, he was convinced it was the better film.

I haven't watched it that way and honestly don't have the desire to.  Film is ultimately subjective and I find I disagree with the conventional critical take 90% of the time, so what's the point?  Maybe the best takeaway from critical standings is to view them as Ebert said he used to make them: to purposely put in films that he didn't think were objectively the best, but that he wanted to get stirring up conversation around.  Saying Vertigo is better than Kane or even Rear Window certainly does that.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
mnkykungfu said:
TM2YC said:
I don't think the BFI's 2012 'Sight & Sound' magazine poll did 'Vertigo' any favours by declaring it the official "greatest film ever made" because it's just not, it's not even Alfred Hitchcock's best film. This is the 4th or 5th time I've watched it but I'm still not getting why it's considered the greatest. 

Totally with you on everything you said.  I've been digging in to the S&S lists recently, and various film critics' takes on them.  Roger Ebert wrote a piece the year when Vertigo displaced Kane where he commented on it.  He too said Vertigo wasn't even Hitch's greatest: he favored Notorious.  However, he said his mind was changed that year when he selected Vertigo for his famous Ebert Interruptus festival.  After going over the film frame by frame with an audience, he was convinced it was the better film.

I haven't watched it that way and honestly don't have the desire to.  Film is ultimately subjective and I find I disagree with the conventional critical take 90% of the time, so what's the point?  Maybe the best takeaway from critical standings is to view them as Ebert said he used to make them: to purposely put in films that he didn't think were objectively the best, but that he wanted to get stirring up conversation around.  Saying Vertigo is better than Kane or even Rear Window certainly does that.

I enjoy contentious, contrary or provocative lists (such as this one, also from S&S: https://archive.org/details/Sight_And_Sound_2011.06_Forgotten_Pleasures_Of_The_Multiplex/mode/2up) but I also like "authoritative" ones like the S&S poll, which seeks opinions from a large range of critics. According to this post: https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/sightandsoundpoll2012 it was an aggregate of 846 top-ten submissions. So many of them must have had Vertigo in their top 10, I wonder how many would've actually chosen to place it at no1 though?

I found some more info on the Vertigo voting here (in which I notice it says that 25% of those asked were women): https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b9caca4/sightandsoundpoll2012

It was on just under 200 of the top-ten lists. You can also see what individual critics voted, like Ebert: https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/sightandsoundpoll2012/voter/142

We'll have to wait to 2022 to see if Vertigo slips back down the critical consensus. Surely by then they'll be able to poll 50% women/50% men and we could some different results.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
61 years ago...

49845250786_0c9d996cf5.jpg


Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
Director: Andrzej Wajda
Country: Poland
Length: 103 minutes
Type: Drama

'Ashes and Diamonds' ('Popiol I Diament') is ahead of it's time, you'd guess it was from the 60s, not the late 50s. The protagonist, an underground resistance assassin in post-war Poland played with quirky energy by Zbigniew Cybulski looks like a mix of James Dean and Chow Yun-Fat.  The black & white Cinematography by Jerzy Wojcik and Direction by Andrzej Wajda is beyond stunning. The shafts of light spilling into smoky, crumbling, antique interiors put me in mind of 'Blade Runner' (but maybe that's because I've been seeing a lot of it recently). Alcohol is a constant theme, we see people drinking 'til they're paralytic, toasting fallen comrades with flaming shot glasses, reminiscing about binges from their youth and several scenes take place at a drunken banquet, or in a bar. The Poles have just won their freedom from the Nazis but now face the Soviets, so nobody can decide if they are drinking at a party, or a wake. The assassination scene, backlit with fireworks, is a tragic image that'll stick long in my mind, as is the shot of a broken statue of Christ hanging upside down in a bombed out church. A total masterpiece that is sure to get even richer with repeat viewings.


A fantastic video essay on the movie...


The first Hammer Horror film in the book next!
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
I enjoy contentious, contrary or provocative lists (such as this one, also from S&S: https://archive.org/details/Sight_And_Sound_2011.06_Forgotten_Pleasures_Of_The_Multiplex/mode/2up) but I also like "authoritative" ones like the S&S poll, which seeks opinions from a large range of critics. According to this post: https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/sightandsoundpoll2012 it was an aggregate of 846 top-ten submissions. So many of them must have had Vertigo in their top 10, I wonder how many would've actually chosen to place it at no1 though?

I found some more info on the Vertigo voting here (in which I notice it says that 25% of those asked were women): https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b9caca4/sightandsoundpoll2012

It was on just under 200 of the top-ten lists. You can also see what individual critics voted, like Ebert: https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/sightandsoundpoll2012/voter/142

We'll have to wait to 2022 to see if Vertigo slips back down the critical consensus. Surely by then they'll be able to poll 50% women/50% men and we could some different results.

That first link of yours appears to go to a full magazine issue?
The 2nd one...I liked checking out the Director's List.  I've come to believe that any discussion by a group of critics is inevitably shaped by the nature of their job.  They tend towards things that are jarringly different, even if they don't really work.  Because they have to watch 10 films a week and they get numbed to films that tow the line.  They tend towards techniques that subtly hearken back to film greats.  Because they all took Film 101, and 201, and maybe more, and they enjoy seeing that knowledge reflected back at them.  They're the first people to shout from the rooftops that some director is a new auteur and everyone should rush to see their phenomenal new work... and then the last people to actually put that work on any "Best Of" list.  Because they've been forced to "pay their dues" for 20 years and think everyone else should have to as well.  In short, what and how critics respond to film is a poor barometer of how an average filmgoer would respond.  The entire film criticism industry is kind of a big
circle jerk
, which is a big reason it has declined so much.

Directors of course are impacted differently by different things, too, as you can tell from looking at their list.  It's almost just a list of Best Directors, lol.  Personally, I'm more interested in actors' lists, as they sometimes are really impressed by a director's efforts, sometimes by performances, sometimes cinematography or script... they tend to have a lot more variety, and aren't afraid to throw in films that don't try to re-invent the wheel but are very emotionally affective.  

But I digress.  I like reading through your reviews of this list because, while you have far more love and tolerance of ancient films than I do, you seem realistic about their relative strengths and weaknesses.  It's good for making mental notes of which films I might possibly enjoy if I'm in a mood to "eat my vegetables".
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
62 years ago...

49845555222_640c65c1c4.jpg


Dracula (1958)
Director: Terence Fisher
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 82 minutes
Type: Horror

After Hammer scored a big hit with 'The Curse of Frankenstein' the year before, moving on to vampires was inevitable. The same two actors return, Peter Cushing as Van Helsing and Christopher Lee as Dracula, along with Michael Gough. It was titled simply 'Dracula' but re-titled 'Horror of Dracula' in the US to differentiate it from the earlier Universal film. The mix of garish red blood, Gothic atmosphere and sexuality set the blueprint for Hammer's own Horror sub-genre. Cushing looks so young, energetic and dashing as the hero. I watched the 2012 Hammer blu-ray restoration which incorporated a few extra shots that had been censored to achieve the original 1958 BBFC 'X' Certificate, sourced from a battered old near-mystical Japanese print. The quality is noticeably poorer than the rest of the film (although amazing considering the damaged condition of the source) but they do add an extra bit of impact.


Another Jacques Tati film next.
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
89 years ago...

34167045060_2d325667e9_o.jpg


The Crowd (1928)
Director: King Vidor
Country: United States
Length: 103 minutes (1 3/4 hours)
Type: Silent, Drama

'The Crowd' is an unusual film, the kind where you are constantly thinking "Where is this going?". A thought it manages to stretch out 'til the last shot, when you understand it's been going nowhere, on purpose. You think it's a triumph-over-adversity story about a struggling family in the Big Apple, who are going to make it someday! But really they aren't going to "make it" because they are just normal and unremarkable people. Two contemporary reviews reacted differently, one positively "A powerful analysis of a young couple's struggle for existence in this city" and one negatively "a drab action-less story of ungodly length and apparently telling nothing". I think it's somewhere in between, maybe a film can be too realistic.

It makes you realise how very rare it is for a film to show random people, to which random things happen, over a random period of time... the end. It still has strong dramatic scenes (the death of a child, suicide and despair) but without the usual greater meaning that these things would usually hold in a structured plot with defined character arcs.

The male star James Murray overacts wildly but his female co-star Eleanor Boardman is grounded and convincing. Murray's life tragically reflected his character, becoming alcoholic and homeless. Vidor tried to help him when he found him on the street, offering him the sequel but he angrily rejected it and committed suicide not long after. His character in the movie drinks to excess, barely keeps a roof over his family's head and contemplates suicide after refusing a job out of pride. Life imitating art, in another King Vidor picture it seems. Carl Davis provides yet another great score (that's three in a row!).


By the way, I ordered the DVD for this from France and it turned out to be the new worst DVD in my collection. Not only was the picture clearly taken from an old VHS tape (and a very bad one at that) but it had burned in French subtitles and an appalling Jazz-band score that bore no resemblance to the action on screen. Luckily I found a version online that did have perhaps a worse image but no distracting subtitles and the better Carl Davis score. So that was a waste of money :mad: . I'll give the movie another go when it gets a blu-ray release.

Next is the first film in the book by Josef Von Sternberg.

This sounds like EXACTLY the kind of film I don't have time for.  I can watch random things happen to no effect with wild over-acting in my own life, thanks very much.  (But no judgement on those who enjoy such things...also, I've got some home movies to sell you.)
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
This new teaser/scene for the just released BFI 'The Informer' blu-ray showed me I had to have it. The way the camera is still then suddenly glides away towards the crowd is great...






The real highlight of this scene for me is the score.  You don't often hear what sounds like a harmonica and an accordion used for a dramatic score, but the mood and rising tension they produce here is great.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
^ Dammit, that Informer blu-ray is still sitting unwatched on my shelf. FYI: The score is by a guy called Garth Knox.

<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />

62 years ago...

49845250616_10fd889466.jpg


My Uncle (1958)
Director: Jacques Tati
Country: France
Length: 120 minutes
Type: Comedy, Satire

Like other Jacques Tati films 'My Uncle' ('Mon Oncle') utterly delighted me and tested my patience in about equal measure. It's packed with "jokes" but they are so subtle and small-scale that they stretch the definition of the word. I got enough little chuckles out of the two hours to enjoy the film and the dinner party scene did have some genuine big laughs. Again Tati plays his 'Monsieur Hulot' character, a gentle, absent-minded fellow who inadvertently causes chaos and disruption wherever he goes. This time he's the uncle to the son of two frightfully middle-class parents living in a ridiculous mockery of an ordered, modernist, automated 1950s home. My favourite bits were the silhouettes of two people in windows appearing to be eyes and Hulot destroying a fountain by accident. The whole film is a sharp satire of "progress", "efficiency", materialism, social-systems and daily routines. So even if you don't find any of it funny, you can appreciate it on that level. The densely layered soundscapes of whirring machines, trickling water and blaring buzzers is very David Lynch. I kinda want to watch it again already because I reckon it gets better with every viewing, as you spot more and more detail and comedic repetition.



Another Satyajit Ray film next.
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
87 years ago...

34659743316_835ac2abaa_o.jpg


'An Andalusian Dog' ('Un Chien Andalou') is the famous surrealist short by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí

Oh man, how can you not mention the eyeball cutting?  One of the most horrific images I've ever seen in my life.  I watched this at the Dali Museum in Florida, and that image was the big takeaway for me.  A mish-mash of ideas designed to provoke thought more than to say anything specifically: if you're going to do an arthouse film, this is the ultimate realization of that ethos.
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
Director: Charles Reisner & Buster Keaton
Country: United States
Length: 70 minutes
Type: Silent, Comedy


34760825805_10071f2961_o.gif
Cool!  I forgot what this was from.  Jackie Chan is a huge Buster Keaton fan, and he copied a scaled up version of this stunt for his film Project A II.  I'd never seen the original.
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
86 years ago...

34968232421_217e7b207e_o.jpg

The best bits edited down to something like 30 minutes would be a riot, instead of a bit of a chore.

I'm looking forward to your 2021 series of silent-film fanedits.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
mnkykungfu said:
TM2YC said:
'An Andalusian Dog' ('Un Chien Andalou')

Oh man, how can you not mention the eyeball cutting?  One of the most horrific images I've ever seen in my life.

Oh yeah. I guess it's so ubiquitous that I forgot to mention it.

mnkykungfu said:
I'm looking forward to your 2021 series of silent-film fanedits.

There are silent edits on ifdb. I'd be more interested in making a sound film silent, then trimming a real silent. I was part way through creating a version of Fritz Lang's full-length Metropolis with English intertitles of my own design:

33778417492_e2c1dc110a_c.jpg
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
61 years ago...

49845250611_6d81296848.jpg


The Music Room (1958)
Director: Satyajit Ray
Country: India
Length: 100 minutes
Type: Drama

Satyajit Ray's 'The Music Room' ('Jalsaghar') depicts the final days and years of a cultured feudal lord (from a line of rulers) whose money, land, palace and prestige have all but faded. His reputation as a lover and patron of Indian classical music is all he has left to cling to, spending his dwindling money on staging lavish concerts for local dignitaries in order to maintain his prestige... a pursuit that costs him everything, in all senses. His fall is mirrored by the rise of a crass money lender. The combination of Ray's direction, Chhabi Biswas' otherworldly performance and Vilayat Khan's Sitar music create an intoxicating and hypnotic mood. The long musical sequences were a little lost on me because I don't know enough about the art form, they're good but I think I was supposed to be in awe of their technical genius.


The first film in the book by Truffaut and the first of the New Wave.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
61 years ago...

50080714051_97f1aba9b4.jpg


The 400 Blows (1959)
Director: Francois Truffaut
Country: France
Length: 99 minutes
Type: Drama

Francois Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows' ('Les Quatre Cents Coups') has a heavy rep, as a pioneering entry in the French New Wave movement, The Criterion Collection's spine #5, Timeout's 9th greatest French film ever and a place in Sight & Sound Magazine's Top-50 films of all-time list. 14-year old Jean-Pierre Leaud plays Antoine Doinel (who he would play four more times), a troubled and in trouble boy. It's a semi-autobiographical film about Truffaut's own upbringing and has some elements that mirror Leaud's life too. We are shown Doinel's low-level bad behaviour from the start, stealing, lying, playing truant from school and sneaking into the cinema instead but we learn the causes as the story progresses. The shaky marriage of his parents, his ineffectual step-father, unfaithful mother, unsupportive teachers and brutal treatment in a Borstal. We watch them from his eye level, seeing their muddled attempts to correct him, the little cruel things he overhears and POV observations of their mannerisms and clothing. The scene where Doinel is driven away in a police van is very sad, his tear streaked face through the bars, as lullaby style music plays. It all feels very emotionally real but I wasn't able to see why 'The 400 Blows' is held as such a masterpiece of cinema? Sure it looks modern and unflinching next to other more artificial Hollywood films of the late 50s but it's no more naturalistic and gritty than the Italian neorealist films of the previous decade.



Another Hitchcock film next.
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
84 years ago...

38273472076_c7a2c56df9_o.jpg


Footlight Parade (1933)
Director: Lloyd Bacon & Busby Berkely
Country: United States
Length: 102 minutes
Type: Musical, Comedy, Drama

At first I found the super-rapid pace of dialogue in 'Footlight Parade' to be hard to follow (like they were being paid based on how many words they could squeeze into the picture) but once I'd caught up with who the characters all were, it was frenetic fun.  James Cagney plays a theatrical Producer of short live musical "Prologues", or "Units" used to preface movies (A practice I'd never heard of). Joan Blondell is his tough, hard-working, no-nonsense Secretary who keeps this particular Genius on the level. She is also in love with him (a fact clear to everyone except him) and stole the film from Cagney  for me.

38296778582_8573ac42cd_o.gif


This is basically the exact same plot from '42nd Street' done again but done even better. The three Busby Berkely musical extravaganzas at the end are fantastically lavish and inventive but this time they find a way to more smoothly integrate the film's plot into the dance numbers. One of the characters is a prudish (but hypocritical) censor, who everyone hates and makes fun of. This combined with the film's later stages including scenes celebrating unmarried sex, prostitution, drunkenness, near nudity and drug-abuse must be seen as a big f**k you to the proponents of the "Hays Code" that would soon come into force 9-months later.


Busby Berkely's 'Gold Diggers of 1933' is next.

I'm thinking the Coens must be big fans of Busby Berkely...hasn't he influenced several of their films.  That shot you pulled is homaged in The Big Lebowski, for example... or am I crazy?
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
mnkykungfu said:
I'm thinking the Coens must be big fans of Busby Berkely...hasn't he influenced several of their films.  That shot you pulled is homaged in The Big Lebowski, for example... or am I crazy?

They're definitely into referencing old song and dance movies but I haven't seen Big Lebowski in forever.

<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />

61 years (and 7-days) ago...

50088274396_eeaa68cb04.jpg


North by Northwest (1959)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country: United States
Length: 136 minutes
Type: Thriller

The middle film in Alfred Hitchcock's "perfect triptych" is his ultimate expression of the type of adventure/mistaken-identity/spy-thriller which he had been re-working since 1935's 'The 39 Steps'. The plot is utter genius (so I won't give it away), Bernard Herrmann's score has at least two of the finest themes he ever wrote, Saul Bass' titles are once again iconic and the chemistry between the two leads is electric. As soon as Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint's characters meet on a train, the sexual tension is edge-of-the-seat stuff. The cracking dialogue finds a way for Saint to offer Grant to "go back to her cabin and f**k" without ever saying it. Every scene oozes style and sophistication, sharp clothes, tasteful cinematography, modernist architecture, luxurious interiors, chrome plated trains and an endless supply of cocktails. You can tell Hitch is having fun in the way he ends the film on a train euphemistically entering a tunnel, or when the premise requires that one character explain the plot so-far to another, he just drowns out their dialogue with a plane's engine noise to show the audience that he knows it's irrelevant and that we know that he knows it's irrelevant. I never get tired of re-watching 'North by Northwest'.


The official AFI "funniest film ever" next.
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
^Under-rated in favor of Vertigo and Psycho by most people, imho.

For The Big Lebowski, I can't find the exact shot, but this scene:
C0165i.jpg
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
61 years ago...

50091027518_07813d30b5.jpg


Some Like It Hot (1959)
Director: Billy Wilder
Country: United States
Length: 121 minutes
Type: Romantic Comedy, Farce

I thought I'd watched 'Some Like It Hot' before and I have owned the blu-ray for a few years but I soon realised I hadn't.  Sometimes a movie is such a famous classic that you've seen enough clips to make you feel you have. Billy Wilder writes, produces and directs this expertly paced farce that was placed at No. 1 on the AFI's Top 100 comedies list. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play two starving Chicago musicians who witness the 'Saint Valentine's Day Massacre' and fearing for their lives accept a job at a Florida resort masquerading as "Josephine and Daphne" in an all-female band. I guess this kicked off a whole sub-genre of cross-dressing comedy, followed by movies like 'Tootsie' and 'Mrs. Doubtfire', although of course Shakespeare started it really. They soon befriend (and one falls in love with) Marilyn Monroe's ditzy Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk character. The comedy has barely aged a day, the two boys are shown enjoying exploring their feminine side, they quickly experience what it's like to be harassed by men and by the end a same-sex marriage is on the cards. The farcical plot really kicks up a gear halfway through when Curtis starts pretending to be an eccentric millionaire yachtsman to impress Sugar. He does a note perfect Cary Grant send-up and Lemmon cheekily remarks "Where did you get that phony accent?! Nobody talks like that!". The script is packed with quotable and memorable lines but the one that got the biggest line from me was very Groucho Marx:

Sugar: "Water polo? Isn't that terribly dangerous?"
Joe: "I'll say! I had two ponies drowned under me"


An Otto Preminger courtroom drama next.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
61 years ago...

50091027808_0906a00365_o.jpg


Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Director: Otto Preminger
Country: United States
Length: 160 minutes
Type: Courtroom Drama

I do love a good courtroom drama and this is one of the very best. It's kinda the polar opposite of '12 Angry Men' with it's high ideals of the law, 'Anatomy of a Murder' is about two lawyers dueling with every sly maneuver they can muster. James Stewart's defense attorney character plays up his trademark folksy 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' shtick for the sympathy of the jury. George C. Scott plays his opposite number, wise to Stewart's playbook, with a few tricks of his own. Everything is grey, the truth is malleable and nobody is entirely innocent. The case is about a jealous and volatile Army Lieutenant accused of killing the man who is alleged to have raped his flirtatious wife. It's a premise cleverly constructed to make us doubt the evidence because of our suspicions about the various dubious characters and that's the point the film is trying to make about how the justice system works. I was a little startled to hear some of unfiltered graphic sexual language of the script coming out Stewart's mouth in a 50s B&W film, I guess Director Otto Preminger was again pushing the boundaries of the censors. Preminger also got in Jazz legend Duke Ellington to do the score (and he appears in one scene playing piano with Stewart), making this the first major Hollywood film sound-tracked by an African American. The court Judge is brilliantly played with a twinkle ever in his eye by non-actor and real-life lawyer Joseph Welch, who was famous for having dressed down the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy (see video below). Welch sadly died a year after the film came out.



A French Horror film net.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
60 years ago...

50091844462_5329c48f07.jpg


Eyes Without a Face (1959)
Director: Georges Franju
Country: France
Length: 84 minutes
Type: Horror

An early French "art house" spin on the Horror genre. The Third Man's Alida Valli plays a women abducting young female students for a Frankenstein-esque plastic surgeon who wants to use their faces to repair that of his disfigured daughter. Edith Scob in her smooth white face-mask is simultaneously unsettling and sympathetic. The very real looking scene of a girl's face being slowly peeled away with a scalpel still looks shocking. The score by Maurice Jarre alternates between a macabre waltz and an beautifully sad piano theme. I bet Dario Argento was obsessed by this movie.



A Western from Budd Boetticher next.
 
Top Bottom