"Fluke" masterpieces

Ridley Scott will probably never surpass Blade Runner again.

An obvious choice: Kevin Costner and Dances with Wolves.

Although Peter Jackson's film's are constantly entertaining, Heavenly Creatures is his only film that has the makings of a masterpiece. The same could be said about Luc Besson and Léon.

I wouldn't call Gas Food Lodging a masterpiece (it's solidly great, though), but has Allison Anders ever matched that one?

Another name that usually pops up in discussions like this one is PETER BOGDANOVICH (but for the record, I thought Mask was good, and I hear The Cat's Meow is not too shabby).

Also, I think Ernest is being unfair to Carol Reed, who also directed The Fallen Idol, Odd Man Out and many others.

Bogdanovich is an another story, as many people give his ex-wife Polly Platt a lot of credit for his early films.

(ps this is a very auteurist discussion no?)

Ridley Scott can make a crap story at least look very cool, check out "Black Rain" to see what I mean.

You're right. I think The Third Man is one of the best movies I've ever seen, and it's kind of like saying to Welles, "Why haven't you matched Citizen Kane?"

i really, really like heavenly creatures but uhh, don't the lord of the rings flicks total solar eclipse it? they're an irresistable force.

as for ridley scott, alien is great, as slutsky said.

i'd like to nominate nick gomez for laws of gravity, though i guess maybe it's not really a masterpiece. just a relative one. new jersey drive was garbage and, uh...drowning mona... i see now he's doing tv shows, according to imdb. good luck with that, nick.

i just don't "get" citizen kane. touch of evil on the otherhand...

Does it? I mean, this thread is about how great movies by non-auteurs are flukes--which seems to imply that they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

They're good entertainment, yes, but they're not masterpieces, because those books simply cannot be filmed in a satisfying way. But this a subject for another thread...

Does it? I mean, this thread is about how great movies by non-auteurs are flukes--which seems to imply that they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

B-b-but Mathieu Kassovitz has written the script for all his films, and so have Peter Jackson and Luc Besson; and according to IMDb, Peter Bogdanovich has written half of his films too.

Does it? I mean, this thread is about how great movies by non-auteurs are flukes--which seems to imply that they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

-- slutsky (parrisactava...), May 22nd, 2003.

Yeah this seems to reinforce the auterist way of thinking rather than the other way 'round.

-- amateurist (amateuris...), May 22nd, 2003.

BTW, you are both right!

I don't think you necessarily have to write yr own films to be considered an "auteur" (a term and concept I hate, btw): Hitchcock and John Ford mostly relied on other people to do the screenwriting.

I find Noel Carroll to be too dry and turgid sometimes and sometimes he's just unbelievably wrong but he has an essay which I'll try to dig up which talks about the problems w/auterism in terms of trying to understand film style. i.e. how auterism can fail on its own terms (sort of).

I don't think even such an obvious auteur as Hitchcock could rely on visual style only. His greatest movies are those where bot the script and the visual style are superb; films like Spellbound or Secret Agent, where the directing is great but the story is lacking, feel simply half-baked.

I do think script-writers deserve more credit, yes. There are of course films where the script doesn't matter that much, but those are rare cases, and usually fall in the category of "experimental". It bugs me when directors who are clever visualists but not much more are held as geniuses/auteurs (Ridley Scott and David Fincher, for example), and when they suddenly make mediocre films, everyone is asking "What's wrong with Scott/Fincher?", when it's obvious they've just picked a mediocre script. Such directors rise and fall on the strength of their source material.

I'm not trying to discredit "hired gun" directors or belittle the importance of visual style in film, it's just that people often fail to recognize there's more to film-making than directing.

Is there any mileage in the skill being partially in seeing potential in a script and being able to visualise how it is best realised.

I think Hitchcock mastered exactly this skill.

Diving back into Sarris in antipation of the auteur thread. I recall he named Casablanca as the ultimate fluke masterpiece (again maybe too strong a word). Although the direction is vital to the success of that work it seems wrong to give Curtiz too much credit (NB I can't recall ever seeing another of his movies).

These include: Mildred Pierce, Angels With Dirty Faces, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood and, well, 168 others. So I wouldn't write the dude off.