Director's Final Films

Guess the thread title really out to be "Directors' Final Films."

Hard to look beyond L'Argent, really, tho' of course there are other great movies here, too. The list sort've puts the lie to the received wisdom that cinema is a young person's gam (tho LOL at Passage to India)

game!

Excellent idea. So many of these I haven't seen, I probably won't vote. Of the ten or so I have seen, Yi Yi and The Dead seemed like very honorable exits.

nice formatting

They must have counted Bergman's TV work, else I would think Fanny and Alexander would be an obvious inclusion (contender for #1, even).

un flic was on tcm recently when they did a denueve day. the beginning bank robbery scene in the fog is p great, lil downhill from there but im not a big noir dude so ymmv

Would welcome a follow up poll on the 50 best young people's gams.

Pretty impossible for me to decide between 1, 2, 8, 11 and 20, specifically. Big love for most of these tho.

Yeah, I think TV films count, otherwise they would've gone with a different Renoir, no?

My favourite film of all time is in this list, so a fairly easy vote

that said, I've only seen 4 of these in total (3, 19, 21, 35) so I'm probably not cut out for this thread

No idea why they wouldn't include L'Atalante on that list, early death/short career or no.

Huh, good list!

Yeah, including Tabu but not L'Atalante seems weird. Tabu is not a very good movie, btw, and Murnau is probably in my top five directors ever.

Always thought Hawks's last couple of westerns (Rio Lobo would be the one for the list) were generally well regarded, at least among auteurists. I've got Prairie Home Companion at home, maybe I'll finally watch that this weekend.

i love a lot of these, aficionado of the "late style" that i am. it's between Eyes Wide Shut and L'Argent, I think.

Probably seen about half of these, only a few that can compete w/ Gertrud, L'Argent and That Obscure Object of Desire.

A few aren't v good at all (Querelle, Lilith).

But "Age of Consent" isn't Michael Powell's last film, is it?

Are they not counting Big Trouble (1986, Love Streams was 1984) as Cassavetes final film? Not that I don't understand the temptation to erase it from history.

Which is Lang's last also seems to be up for debate.

I adore Cluny Brown, and since L'Argent will get lots of votes, I'll swing for it.

Runners-up;

Imitation of Life
Mooladé
Yi Yi
The Dead
Red

A Passage to India is good so long as Alec Guinness is offscreen.

The Dead better than Red.

Love Streams feels as much Cassavetes film as Control feels like Janet Jackson's debut. Alternate histories just make more sense in some cases.

feels as much LIKE Cassavetes' FINAL film, that is to say

If you want "feels like," what's missing is Me Too by Aleksei Balabanov.

Street of Shame is the best of Mizoguchi films (that I've seen), and in general among my top 20 movies of all time, so it's pretty easy to vote for that.

i don't think i've seen any of these.

The Dead better than Red.

― midnight outdoor nude frolic up north goes south (Eric H.),

better Dead than Red.

The Cinematheque did a similar list a while back (can't find link now) and included Night of the Hunter on their list, which cannot help but feel like cheating to me.

well, as wd L'Atalante, really

(xpost) Yes, Night of the Hunter is absurd. (Don't remember that series...)

probably Huston's "The Dead" which is pretty great. "Salo" is... something. most of these are pretty bad.

A Prairie Home Companion is a hell of a final film about last performances. Voted Blue before seeing it on the list.

Billy Wilder's Buddy Buddy left off the list out of respect for the deceased.

Of the eight I've seen, I'll vote for the Ozu, though Kieslowski comes close. I saw The Dead when it was released, but don't have much memory of it.

APHC is the warmest possible farewell film a director could make. I voted for it.

the grand budapest hotel

a great film in the grandest ophulsian manner, a profoundly elegiac swansong

Back when it was one of the few Buñuels available on decent VHS transfer I watched That Obscure Object of Desire often without being crazy about it. The same goes for An Autumn Afternoon.

nilmar you're in a very naughty mood today

TOOOD is perfection IMO but I've banged on about it at such length before it'd be wasteful to say much else

most of these are pretty bad.

As always, I stand corrected.

where's Cracking Up?

I should probably have specified "of the ones I've seen" (which is by no means all).

idg the praise for APHC

This one is just too difficult. "L'Argent", "...Astrea & Celadon", "F For Fake" and even the batshit wonder that is "7 Women" would all take top spot for me. Oh, and "Le Trou", The Buñuel... Nope. Impossible.

Wait - is Fellini's last one in here? Don't see it. Has one of the few Benigni performances I can tolerate. Strange and wonderful film.

Raul Ruiz's last one "La Noche De Enfrente" is wonderful as well. Very nearly trumps "Mysteries Of Lisbon" for me.

(apologies for overuse of 'wonder/ful', btw)

This is impossible.

yes plenty of people are in love with this movie and it's baffled me for a long time

what's wrong with it? obviously it's 90 minutes of orson welles vanity, but flipped around it's 90 minutes of being a guest at the greatest after-dinner speech ever recorded

plus it engages with the idea of the fictional narrative with loose-limbed & mischievous delight, which I enjoy. it's intelligent and sparky, the very opposite of complacent

it's not terrible but it is at best an amusing trifle. Just because a master made it doesn't make something a masterpiece.

WELL I THINK IT IS

wonder who my fellow Bunuel voters were :D

4 votes for Gertrud is surprising. I always associate it with the most difficult of difficult cinema but maybe that's due more to the circumstances in which I watched it (like 13 years ago on a really blurry VHS).

yeah, i share yr surprise - on two separate viewings it struck me as a rather stagey, ponderous chamber piece, far less compelling than Day of Wrath or Ordet. some wonderful camera movements, mind.

what's wrong with it?

Nothing's particularly WRONG with it except Orson Welles made at least ten better films.

All of which would've also placed highly in this poll had they been his final film (which as someone pointed out upthread, F4F isn't actually either, but whatev).

but Gertrud MIGHT be Dreyer's best film.

I voted for Gertrud, and it's not my favorite Dreyer, but it's just my favorite of these films, of which I haven't seen everyone. I'm not really a fan of final films, it seems. My second place was Cluny Brown, I think.

Gertrud is fantastic. That would have been my vote. Saw it for the first time maybe two years ago and it never registered to me as super difficult. Talky, stagey, yes, but always engaging.

Count me in the "shrug" category for F for Fake.

ok who voted Querelle

Each man votes the thing he loves.

Sorry, but whenever I watch Gertrud all I can think about is the diseased liver transplant in The Kingdom.

Baard Owe is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3US46U6-fc

Shoot, wanted that to embed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3US46U6-fc

are those windows intentionally kubrickian or is that just a bad transfer?

It's intentional.

Man, forgot how beautiful and ghostly the lighting could be in this. Need a rescreen soon.

Watched some "Making of" extra and he talked about how difficult it was to talk slow enough for Dreyer, iirc.

yeah i'd like to watch it again in ideal viewing circumstances.

i regret that my prime cinephile days were 2000-2002 before most of this stuff was on DVD.

feeling that

Well, to be honest the biggest difference is something else. The ability to read about this weird indonesian director, check up on him on the internets, and a couple hours later watch one of his films on my HDTV. That is insane.

yeah i feel like i was on the tail end of the era of certain films being elusive or even apocryphal.

think that out of all the films ever made, there's still a relatively small proportion of them available to view, and there are plenty of movies, some of them quite urgent and key, that have never had a home viewing issue of any kind. but obv there's more than enough to be getting on with right now

are those windows intentionally kubrickian

My friend calls late Kubrick style "glare."

haha. i love my blu ray but i yearn to see EWS on film again. thought it was one of the most beautiful movies ever when i first saw it.

Baffled by that. I thought EWS was unbearably ugly, all those cold primary colors clashing with each other.

I'm with ryan.

i may be alone in that sentiment! (xp: or not!) i do like primary colors. (loved this about JLG late 60s films too). EWS is certainly "garish" in its color scheme but it just seems so information-dense to me. love how the colors seems to insist on some kind of symbolism that remains elusive. anyway, im a sucker for kubrick's hermetic late style.

I like JLG-colors as well, but they are considerably lighter and warmer than in EWS. I think of the red billiard table under the green lamp, and it's just ugly to me.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llcoh95nzM1qisxvio1_1280.jpg?.jpg

Ugh

that scene is so fucking great.

Three Colors: Kubrick

Kubrick didn't live long enough to see EWS released in cinemas and - in the UK at least - he was, unsurprisingly, pretty exacting about the way his movies were projected. I saw EWS the day it opened in UK cinemas and was massively disappointed by the quality of the print - the colours were very washed out, the image quite grainy. The DVD/Blu-ray corrects this to some extent, but I do think that if Kubrick had lived a little longer the film would've looked better on the big screen.

the graininess and washed out colors are part of what make the intensity of the color scheme work, imo.

i am one of the disgusting animals that voted for f for fake fyi

meh, horrorfans I give a pass to, what can ya do

Reductum ad Morbsurdum

haha to both of you

same principle when one finds one's copy edited by someone who writes a long thoughtful review of the new Cher album

Was almost going to poll this before realizing I already had.

it still bugs me that f for fake won despite not being welles's actual last film!

(even tho i like it)

Love Streams also not technically Cassavetes' final film.

How did Imitation of Life not run away with this?!

I was wondering that too.

I think that was because the top three vote-getters are all better films than it.

Tbf it’s been a while since I’ve seen Imitation of Life, so maybe it’s time for a rewatch.

Of the eighteen I've seen, I'd have voted for The Sacrifice. My notes indicate that I saw The Ascent in the theatre, and I have absolutely no memory of it. Weakest is probably Lola Montes, a big fancy cake that spins and spins in front of the camera.
I have a pet theory that if Tarkovsky had lived to make another film, it might well have been terrible. He was keeping such a careful balance of mysticism and absurdity, and I can't imagine him pushing forward from this film without that equilibrium collapsing. But who knows whether it would have been made back in the USSR or in the West, and how that might have affected the production and the reception of it.
Most notable final film that's not on the list is The Turin Horse, which I regard less as a movie than a preview of dying.

That Tarr is still alive just underlines that.