what is your favourite film from the top ten 2012 Sight & Sound list?

<3 Vertigo so much

Citizen Kane...which amuses me for some reason. 2001, as I've recounted on other threads, gets better each time I watch it. Two of these films are among my biggest blind spots. It's been so long since I saw Sunrise, in a way it's like I haven't.

gonna say 'vertigo' just because i saw it last and it's looming large in my memory more than 'kane' (which was my fav film period for years) and 'règle' (which i could watch once a month prolly).

Going with 8 1/2. Still haven't seen Sunrise.

tokyo story

2001

Kinda feeling like I haven't seen enough of these to justify a vote but, if I did, it would be 2001.

i've only seen six of these, but of those, it'd be citizen kane, with 2001 the no-surprise runner up. if it weren't for the overextension of the trip out sequence, i'd be a lot tougher to call between those two. and man with a movie camera isn't far behind.

in order, Vertigo, Kane, 2001. I think I've seen Tokyo Story 3x, the Vertov and Sunrise twice each, all the others more than that.

Probably was 12 when I saw 2001, 14 for Kane.

I don't think I saw a single one of these before I was 20.

Règle is pretty much my favourite movie. It makes me to declare fatuous things like "the only film masterpiece" and "the equal of Shakespearean comedy."

The people speak:

http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/12342-sight-sounds-10-greatest-films-of-all-time-and-their-one-star-imdb-reviews.htm

8 1/2 review otm

"i believe it received extremely limited distribution."

This movie goes on forever and never stops ever until it ends.

Claiming this for my next display name.

"the editing nonexistent"

clearly has it confused w/ Russian Ark

citizen kane
tokyo story
la règle du jeu

Lt me sleep on it.

searchers so good

also robert pippin wrote a kickass book about it

oh my god the searchers is just.. literally the worst movie i have ever seen. i don't get it i guess???

is that from one of the 1-star imdb reviews?

One of these four:

vertigo
la règle du jeu
sunrise
the passion of joan of arc

1-star review link isn't working for me for some reason.

vertigo v rules of the game v passion of joan of arc for me.

not sure which yet. i do think passion was incredibly powerful to watch when I was 16 or so, and that feeling hasn't gone away even as i haven't watched it in about a decade.

the whole thing is basically doughy agitprop for People Who Live in the Suburbs (southern california edition), john wayne is reprehensible, the plotting is totally flacid and incompetent. plus, the scene where they kill the buffalo. unpleasant and pointless. when it shows up on lists like this i feel like people are talking about a completely different movie.

xp yeah yeah

watch it again

probably règle. <3 man with a movie camera and all and just like everybody else was gobsmacked when i discovered it existed but elevating it (this far) over potemkin is so lolacademic.

haha re vertigo:

There is more car driving in this film than in maybe a hundred other films all put together.

totally legitimate criticism

i forgot 'passion'! saw it as a teenager with the sound on mute because a bunch of other ppl were in the room, had a predictably underwhelming experience. watched it again a couple years ago and it destroyed me. probably objectively the best thing here if the one i least want to watch again.

the whole thing is basically doughy agitprop for People Who Live in the Suburbs (southern california edition), john wayne is reprehensible, the plotting is totally flacid and incompetent. plus, the scene where they kill the buffalo. unpleasant and pointless. when it shows up on lists like this i feel like people are talking about a completely different movie.

woah woah woah. first of all, i don't know what doughy agitprop for People Who Live in the Suburbs means, but Searchers is def not that. John Wayne is reprehensible however - that's the point!

watch it again

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, August 2, 2012 1:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha no way in hell! not gonna make myself sick again. and i saw it on a big screen too. ooo pretty pictures of monument valley.

wanna enlighten me?

as i said on the other thread, it's 8 1/2 for me, and i suspect it will only come in ahead of the silents here.

i guess we all have blindspots. i've seen 8+1/2 twice and haven't enjoyed it once.

probably everyone was just sick of seeing 'potemkin' show up again on these lists but i feel like that one is a legitimately thrilling movie, like if you wanted to convert a bunch of kids to communism you'd show them that for sure.

yeah.

Robert de Niro is reprehensible in Taxi Driver

well as far as i could tell john wayne's character was the hero! i guess there was the complicating central dramatic conflict between john wayne's character and his half-breed son: should we treat indians like animals or grant that they have a right to exist. progressive.

anyway

8 1/2 and The Searchers must be the least liked "great" films ever.

i don't know if i can objectively "defend" 8 1/2 to anyone who doesn't like it, but i've always responded very strongly to it. it feels very urgent and sincere in its chaos. and though the ending is a bit of a cliche it's a true and moving one if you give yourself over to it.

can i suggest u read this? it's very interesting + very well-written. i could summarize it, or quote the best passages if you'd like, but i started writing a whole response about john wayne's character as an alienated, abject figure, but then figured you might as well read it from the source: http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/pippin/What_is_a_Western.pdf

here's a good passage tho:

And in The Searchers (dir. John Ford, 1956) there is a direct confronta- tion with the fact that the origin of the territorial U.S. rested on a virulent racism and genocidal war against aboriginal peoples, a war that would not have been possible and perhaps would not have been won without the racist hatred of characters like the John Wayne character. The official avowal now is that we regret this and have overcome such attitudes. But the film manages to raise a number of subtle questions about the relation between such avowals and what is done or not done in any political present.

you should watch more carefully bcz Ethan Edwards does not have a son in the film, afaik

xxxp

I took a college class on "captivity narratives" and The Searchers really encapsulated, exposed, and critiqued so many archetypes and themes we had studied in that class it was kind of astonishing.

i don't really like the searchers cuz it never stops cutting back to the doofy subplot and i don't really think the last two seconds follow. i mean i get why people like it, there is a lot Going On in there.

also, you know, there is a direct visual quote of it in Star Wars.

There is more car driving in this film than in maybe a hundred other films all put together.

Can't wait til that review catches Taste of Cherry. Or The Truck.

xp i wanna see triumph of the will on one of these lists

it's often a copout to say that a particular critique was anticipated by the director, or was in fact the very point of the film, but in the case of the searchers it is true. the film is disturbing and upsetting, but intentionally so. in fact a lot of its beauty and impact come from - i think - the discrepancy between how it is shot (that gorgeous ford americana style) and the story it is telling.

i think there's a tension between greatness as a function of "this is a perfectly realized work of art" versus "this is a key text that represents a number of important tensions/themes/archetypes that can be written about in academic journals endlessly." The Searchers maybe shades into the latter category.

wanna enlighten me?

― lick of the rim (Matt P), Thursday, August 2, 2012 8:13 PM (2 minutes ago)

none of your criticisms really make any sense -- wayne is supposed to be a reprehensive, racist character (he is NOT a hero wtf), the buffalo scene is supposed to be unpleasant (i can't imagine they actually killed buffalo for this scene?) and it has an important function in the story, the storytelling is pretty deft and subtle for a rambling western epic (the scene where ford shows us that wayne's character is in love with his brother's wife is pretty moving), and no idea what 'doughy agitprop for People Who Live in the Suburbs' means. 'the searchers' is not really top 10 material for me but there are tons of astonishing things in it.

i think there's a tension between greatness as a function of "this is a perfectly realized work of art" versus "this is a key text that represents a number of important tensions/themes/archetypes that can be written about in academic journals endlessly."

my complete failure to tease out that tension probably is at the heart of my aesthetic preferences

like as far as i'm concerned, the productivity of a text is number one factor in its designation as perfectly realized work of art

the first time i saw the film it was on TCM being introduced by martin scorsese and he mentioned that his interpretation of the film's last shot (way to spoil the ending marty) was that ethan edwards is 'condemned to wander forever between the winds,' just like the souls of the people he killed.

between Kane and 2001 for me

pippin has a beautiful bit about how he doesn't get to come back inside after the film, that his actions set up the domesticity that becomes the centerpiece of american society, but that those very actions condemn him from ever participating in it xp

x-post to Mordy: yeah i think it's a big factor for me too, though I'm hesitant to reduce one to the other.

and of course half of this list I have no interest in at all lol

xp

his actions set up the domesticity that becomes the centerpiece of american society, but that those very actions condemn him from ever participating in it

yes this is a theme that runs WAY back, like back to the Puritans, Fenimore Cooper, etc and even forward to, like, The Dark Knight. It's an amazing persistent theme in popular culture.

(the scene where ford shows us that wayne's character is in love with his brother's wife is pretty moving),

ward bond is incredible in that scene

I said it in the other thread, but if we're all obsessing over which ones we hate on this list instead of the ones we love, I'm not a huge fan of 8 1/2.

and of course half of this list I have no interest in at all lol

ok, why

As I've said before I can think of at least six Westerns I prefer to The Searchers (I hate Natalie Wood and Jeffrey Hunter in it), but your criticism, Matt, makes no sense.

yeah, something about 8 1/2 really rubs me the wrong way xxp

My least favorites:

8 1/2
2001
The Searchers

let's be grateful High Noon and Unforgiven are nowhere in sight

John Simon bon mot re 2001: "a shaggy God story"

like as far as i'm concerned, the productivity of a text is number one factor in its designation as perfectly realized work of art

― Mordy, Thursday, August 2, 2012 1:30 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think this but i remember when i got old/whatever enough to start seeing everything in terms of okay where did this come from, why is it the way it is, which of its implications is it aware of and which are unconscious, what is this voice that i am hearing. i started liking almost everything!

pippin has a beautiful bit about how he doesn't get to come back inside after the film, that his actions set up the domesticity that becomes the centerpiece of american society, but that those very actions condemn him from ever participating in it xp

― Mordy, Thursday, August 2, 2012 1:31 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and yeah i like this stuff a lot too, altho it is really just a partic deft approach to what seems like a pretty standard western thing right? the cowboy who through his noble violence builds the west but from whom civilization once built turns its squeamish face. xps oh ryan just said that (that it was common/old).

lol high noon. i like unforgiven tho. it has gene hackman.

i still resent 8 1/2 cuz when i got it from netflix at age 16 or whatever the little dvd sleeve said that it was 50 minutes long, and i was like oh awesome! gonna get a classic under my belt before the hour's out! and then.

there's something unpleasantly egotistical and macho about '8 1/2' that i don't like. there's plenty of fellini films i think are great, espec 'nights of cabiria.'

everybody else otm about the searchers. it critiques certain aspects of the western myth, particularly the brutality that comfortable american normalcy depends on, and ethan's racism is a big part of that. that the film doesn't condemn ethan outright (in fact, it seems to romanticize him) does complicates things, but in an interesting way. it's at least as interested in its characters as people as in what they seem to represent.

who thinks a great low-budget ILX film would be me and Mordy taking a road trip to Monument Valley?

yeah I want to be careful not to misrepresent pippin who does not claim this narrative is unique to the searchers (only well executed by) and in fact argued that it is a foundational part of te western genre xpz

I would go xp

there's something unpleasantly egotistical and macho about '8 1/2'

i agree with this, though maybe i'd say it's narcissistic--but that it's also about narcissism and overcoming it, about losing the need to control and be the center of your own life. i dunno maybe i read a lot into it!

Ford made an overtly pro-Indian movie in '64, Cheyenne Autumn, but it's second-tier at best. (It admittedly suffers from Anglo or Latino actors being cast as Natives, near the end of when that was unquestionably accepted)

Fellini is clearly aware of the vanity element in his alter ego.

ok, why

you are correct that nights of cabiria >>>> 8 1/2 (a film I never want to have to sit through again)

everything I've read about Ozu does not make his films sound appealing to me

and early experimental silents are a hard sell for me. I do like Metropolis, to some extent.

There is more car driving in this film than in maybe a hundred other films all put together.

Can't wait til that review catches Taste of Cherry. Or The Truck.

― Eric H., Thursday, 2 August 2012 21:26 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, says the weekend fan.

really into this:

"The next hour is fastforwardable as it is only about the couple going through the city smiling and loving each other"

My problem with 8.5 is the conception itself. Is "director's block" the same as writer's block?

the vertigo review is a blatant troll, if you look at the guy's other reviews

directors seem to love 8 1/2, so i guess something about it really speaks to them

lol yeah there's that. feel like directors love it in the same way writers love reading books about how difficult it is to write a second novel

My indifference to The Searchers and 8 1/2 is just a problem of taste... I don't particularly go to movies in order to think about intellectual issues. The movies that stick for me are ones that provide fun and relief, and the best have a special kind of accessible brilliance.

Rossellini rather more of a pioneer than Fellini, but it may be hard to boost him in future over F.F. on these lists unless some more of his best films get Criterioned.

The Searchers is a western and was a hit! It's nt "intellectual"!

*not

Writers will love Ruby Sparks.

i think i just hate films about directors struggling to make their next film (except 'sullivan's travels' obv).

'tokyo story' is the only thing i haven't seen on the list. i always mean to rent some ozu but i kind of never feel in the mood for them.

Tokyo Story is amazing, as is Late Spring (which i believe is just a little further down the list). Probably my 3rd fav out of this 10.

re: directors struggling/8 1/2

I still have time for Stardust Memories why becuz joeks

Ozu is great but his domestic dramas move glacially by western standards. It can take 2 or 3 films to settle into his groove.

They are an off-putting combo of slow (non?) plot, square frame composition and surprisingly fast editing.

Weird that more people don't press a case for him as a secret a-g smuggler.

also am not yet convinced Naruse isn't on Ozu's level

Still not sure how I feel about Naruse tbh.

Have only seen a couple of his tho. Same as Mozogucho.

*Mizoguchi

Imamura and Kon Ichikawa are far less leisurely, and I might put their best ahead of Ozu.

Kind of think we should be comparing Ozu to, I dunno, Ross Hunter.

Or Michael Snow

the only Naruse I saw is the only one available domestically on DVD and was probably closer to Sirk-Hunter

Back to Fellini: I understand why I vitelloni and Variety Lights made Simon's list. When I finally saw the former it was so fresh, so removed from the forced gaiety of the sixties epics.

this is kindof a hard qn

Joan of Arc by quite a distance.

Got to laugh at some of the choices:

- Man With a Movie Camera is the most exciting technical demonstration - fine. But top 10?
- Can't fake more of an emotional punch to La Regle de Je I'm afraid
- Kubrick and Fellini are pathetic. Makes me angry just to see their names in the list.
- I'd vote for Kane to take the piss out of this poll. Its great but I possibly hate how it dominated this poll for so long.
- Ozu is awesome - love Late Spring more.

Vertigo would be my no.2 out of this bunch.

Kubrick & Fellini are pathetic? LOL... sounds like somebody doesn't like visual symbolism.

impossible poll.

this is from the paper Mordy referenced above which i think is telling:

Ford goes so far with Ethan that it is hard to imagine how he thought he
could get away with it. This is a central character who spews racist invective at
every opportunity, who mutilates the bodies of the dead, shooting out the eyes
of a dead Indian and scalping an adversary (even though he did not “earn” that
warrior right by killing him himself), who slaughters buffalo in an insane rage
just to deprive Indians of food, and who is out to murder a child. (Not to
mention that Ethan interrupts funerals, scoffs at religion, uses racial epithets
like “blanket-head,” shoots both whites and Indians in the back, and runs over
women and children when on horseback.) He is probably a criminal, even
though he seems paradoxically uninterested in money. How could such a
story ever be pitched to a studio head? It is clearly a great experiment, one that
baffled and angered early critics. But Ford is also at his most ambitious here,
setting out a Conradian framework as sweeping asHeart of Darkness, in which
an outward quest or search figures the search within, the place of Ethan’s heart
of darkness. True to all great works of art, nothing is resolved in all this, and the
ending scene here is as complex as the fiction that the narrator invents and
reports to the beloved in Conrad’s novella.

like heart of darkness, it's basically "morally complex," heightened racism, and it fully embodies the attitudes it supposedly critiques. it seems to want to make a statement about the founding of the republic but that statement is just as bankrupt as the founding of the republic itself. and what i meant by justifying suburban life was that its vision of domestic order looks and sounds like glendale ca. 1956. anything not shot on location is laughably suburban looking. i don't have images from the film in direct recall to argue anything more specific. great, maybe this thread is going to make me watch it again.

it literally never shows us an indian character that isn't a stereotype, like heart of darkness never shows us an african character that isn't a stereotype. it can't rise above the level of its own hubris.

8 1/2

i don't have anything to say about it other than it's the one that i "connect" with the most

equal parts narcissistic, self-deprecating, bitter, nostalgic, warm, critical and funny

ilx?

oh yeah, i'm voting for 'sunrise' btw

I've got a lot of problems with Heart of Darkness too but its racism isn't one of them.

you know i think a lot of conrad's characters scan as a stereotypes to a 21st century reader

the white ones, too

i'm not trying to make excuses for conrad or whatever, i'm just saying the racism is one of the least exceptional things about heart of darkness, lord jim, etc

i like conrad (certainly more than john ford), i was just trying to make a vague parallel between how i felt about the searchers and chinua achebe's critique of heart of darkness. but yeah i probably need to review my sources before i take it any further.

matt p otm

I lol'd

xp exit stage left

People Who Live in Suburbs

*test

Jonathan Rosenbaum's list and thoughts:

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?cat=9

it literally never shows us an indian character that isn't a stereotype

IT WAS 1956, DUDE

Geez, I thought you were talking about Pather Panchali when I first read that--was ready to argue one that to that ground.

I liked 8 1/2, it had a rocketship and saucy ladies.

Voted for Vertigo, saw it w/the Other J.D. and it's still in my head every day. WHAT DOES IT MATTER TO YOU WHAT COLOR YOUR HAIR IS??

Kind of want to see 20000-01 a space odyssey as I understand it has a rocketship, but I suspect it falls really short on saucy ladies.

Is VPL from the space stewardesses saucy enough for you?

it literally never shows us an indian character that isn't a stereotype

The Searchers isn't one of my favourite films, but I like it better than Vertigo. (I tend to think of them together: the two most prominent reclamation projects of Sarris and the auteurists, at least in terms of the Sight and Sound poll.) It looks great, and Wayne is amazing. Parts of it are pretty hokey.

I don't usually wade into this topic, but its stereotyping doesn't bother me, or seem as pronounced, as some of the more egregious Stepin Fetchit stuff from American films of the '30s and '40s. Scar seems more a stereotypical villain in general to me than he does a stereotypical Native American. Having just seen The Dark Knight, you could almost plunk him into one of the Batman films. He's forbidding, devious, and, for much of the film, more of a phantasmagoric presence than actual being. The Other and all that, yes--but he's not cartoonish. The really hateful racist stuff in the film comes via Wayne, and that's its complexity.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

wheres pootie tang

Pulled the trigger on La regle.

I can watch CK or Rules of the Game anytime anyplace.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well, I guess it's really official now.

poor 'man with a movie camera.'

Poor Dziga Vertov got the shaft. It's top five for me out of this ten, but alas, not my favorite.

Well, I guess it's really official now.

Movie of the moment.

seeing 'passion of joan of arc' in a theater is a pretty harrowing experience. an experience that was weirdly complemented by the old guy sitting next to me -- who bore an eerie resemblance to one of the tormenters in the movie -- who kept snorting at every possible moment you could get a chuckle out of. (not many, really.) about a minute after the movie ends, with most of the audience still deadly silent, we hear him say 'i'm still not convinced it's worth owning.'

"worth burning" woulda been funnier.

"worth urning"

"worth burning" woulda been funnier.

LOL!

Passion of Joan Arc is the one film in the Sight and Sound Top Ten that's currently unavailable on DVD in the UK, tho' it appears that Masters of Cinema are bringing out a new edition later this year.

The BFI are also promising a Blu-Ray of Potemkin, and I hope that's some kind of restoration, as the current UK DVD issue is a shockingly ragged print. Aside from its obvious quality, I'm sure that Sunrise placed so highly because it looks fantastic on the Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray.