ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

i dont hate it i just hate the people who like it

Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, Outcast of the Islands, Our Man in Heaven, all good films.

I didn't catch The Third Man until the mid '90s and even then Harry Lime didn't engage my sympathy, way before we understood how gaslighting works. He was an engaging bastard who deserved to hang.

i dont hate it i just hate the people who like it

New board description

I get why people like The Third Man ... I can't fathom what people see in Odd Man Out

odd man out is particularly bad I barely made it through. unbearable gurning from gate actors.

fallen idol is at least competently made but its whole perspective really grated.

apologies, abbey actors - much worse.

I can't fathom what people see in Odd Man Out

― Rich E. (Eric H.), T

James Mason in stubble.

I feel like I'm definitely in the minority in finding the Third Man score p hideous.

It's fine for about three minutes and not continuous three minutes.

it's not very Austrian is it?

ah the old corrupt europe

The Third Man always surprises me with how exciting it is. The specificity of its setting, the minor characters (like the landlady), the way one of the MPs is a fan of Holly's books, just a wildly entertaining movie.

"A parrot bit me."

I can't fathom what people see in Odd Man Out

snow. beautiful snow

You are correct, but Welles' performance is so grand that viewers may overlook or excuse those crimes.

― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Thursday, February 8, 2024 8:46 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

not a bad thing! a good film needn’t be so didactic, and anyway I think a viewer with even the slightest degree of discernment can figure out who the bad guy is here. Holly is our stand-in, and his journey from dogged defender of lime’s name to working with the cops to take him down says it all.

saw this for the first time a few days ago and just loved it

I mean we’ve all read paradise lost, sometimes the bad guys are cooler than the good guys. we’re fallen

it's not very Austrian is it?

I believe the story is Reed caught Karas in a nightclub during filming and that's what lead to the choice, so it's authentically "something you could catch when going out in Vienna", tho I agree it doesn't sound it.

Well it means nothing to me

Sorry, anyway, on we go, interested on your different perspectives on this next one.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Rashomon_poster.jpg

Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa, 1950
Morbsies #151
Sight & Sound Critics #41
Sight & Sound Directors #20

Poster does not really give an accurate flavour of the film there IMO.

The Third Man always surprises me with how exciting it is.

I know more kids/young people that have enjoyed this movie than most ancient B&W movies. Not sure why, but maybe this is why? Shares a lot of zip with the best of Hitchcock.

https://i.imgur.com/Om9PGUe.gif

Poster does not really give an accurate flavour of the film there IMO.

are you saying...that's not how you remember it?

Well yes I have to post this I suppose

https://y.yarn.co/e38fdba7-18cb-4e8a-9d3e-0adff0a08aa0_text.gif

Rashomon was another Kurosawa film that got a Western remake - https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0058437/

Paul Newman, William Shatner... it's quite faithful and worth a watch

i saw this film at the bfi once and immediately after it ended someone turned around and said 'cracking film, absolute classic' and unfortunately i hate it now

lmaoo always a risk at the bfi

didn't post too much on this page but enjoyed the discussion
hope it continues x

i couldn't find this thread until you bumped it. thx.

I always thought kurosawa adapted the story into a deliberate take on the christian gospels. the story "in a grove" has two short, seemingly neutral accounts, followed by five longer accounts. The movie has four accounts, of which the first three are fairly similar, followed by a wild final account. much like how the first three gospels are the synoptic gospels, and john is the most different.

see also the movie kuroneko, the original japanese title translating to "in the grove of a black cat", for an early rashomon imitator.

oh god has it been three weeks?
Actually watched Rashomon last night.

So yeah, more than a quarter of a century since I saw this, not sure if there has been a major remastering job done or whether it always looked this incredible. The visual style was so vivid and restlessly creative throughout - the starkness of the light and the violence in the performances reminded me of Tetsuo, not a connection I made the first time round. The medium was definitely my favourite character, you can watch a hundred experimental films and not see anything that grabs you like that. Actual lol at how shit the samurai was at sword fighting - sure that was intentional.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Sunset_Boulevard_%281950_poster%29.jpg

Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder, 1950

Morbsies #25
Sight & Sound Critics #78
Sight & Sound Directors #62

Is it called "Sunset Boulevard" or "Sunset Blvd."? Nobody seems to have a definite answer on this, so going with the poster.

Oh it's okay. A bit too desperate to please.

Fun film, essential viewing for a hypothetical course about Movies About Movies.

I’m sure there was a point in my early cinephilia where this was a for-sure top 10 all-timer, before I’d seen many other noirs, or gothic thrillers, or satires … or really all that much other classic Hollywood. So I guess what I’m saying is, as a gateway film to other great things, it’s not bad

the Nancy Olson parts set my teeth on edge, but the Holden-Swanson scenes still kick. The last sequence earns the pathos.

In Oscar Wars, which I finished yesterday, the author notes how Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson, and Judy Holliday -- the Best Actress frontrunners and winner -- were all trapped and ruined by their most famous roles.

I wouldn't say that about Davis?

It's OK but yeah just wouldn't care to rewatch SB.

I have watched a couple more films for the first time in the S&S top 250.

The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
Twenty Years Later (Coutinho, 1984)

The latter is using half-finished footage from a film -- which the filmmakers couldn't finish at the time -- about a peasant leader's murder, as the military junta comes to power in Brazil. Some of the interviews of the people this leader knew: wife, friends, enemies are powerful though it's bizarre this is in the top 250 and Guzman's Battle for Chile didn't make it. The young ones who voted for it must really like pomo-y games.

I wouldn't say that about Davis?

― plax (ico)

I direct you to Another Man's Poison, The Star, and, I know I'm an outlier, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.

<3 buster keatons cameo

Enjoyed this a great deal. The only Wilders I'd seen before were Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, both of which are favourites, so guess I should check out some more. Did not realise quite how noir this one would be, surprising as it's really not that kind of a story for the most part.

Barely beneath the surface here there was a lot of thought about transactionality in relationships and how people live lives as a series of compromises, just the kind of messy stuff that usually gets glossed over in order to make a simpler plot, and that was the heart of it for me - and why the ending (as brilliant as it is) seemed to be from a more predictable film. Her being a deranged delusional primadonna is less interesting than her struggling to deal with the reality of her life.

Stanwyck makes that all plausible.

Swanson, surely?

"i saw this film at the bfi once and immediately after it ended someone turned around and said 'cracking film, absolute classic' and unfortunately i hate it now"

Me after watching:

To be or Not to be (Lubitsch, 1942)

--

Also watched:

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves, 1967)
Paris is Burning (Livingston, 1990)

Muttering 'this is fine' to the docs I am catching up on in the S&S top 250