Name some really important films that you've never seen

I suppose that would be "cinephiles."

I'm ashamed to list the number of great experimental works I've never seen, Hollis Frampton's "Zorns Lemma" and Michael Snow's "Wavelength" included.

Just because I haven't seen Persona doesn't mean I've not seen The Seventh Seal, Fanny & Alexander, Cries and Whispers, Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly, The Hour of the Wolf, Shame...

I haven't seen The 400 Blows, but it doesn't mean I haven't seen Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, Stolen Kisses, Fahrenheit 451, Day for Night, The Last Metro, The Wild Child, The Bride Wore Black...

Because I know nothing of Fassbinder doesn't imply that I don't know anything of Bresson, Godard, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Mann, Brakhage, Kurosawa, Hawks, Lang, Keaton, Herzog, Antonioni, Fellini...

I hope the topic of this thread isn't confusing.

There was a thread about Fassbinder C/D not too long ago. I would highly recommend checking out some of his films--"Fox and His Friends" or "Ali: Fear Eat Soul" being a good starting point.

what's nice about film is that if you watch movies pretty regularly, and see about 10-15 a year in the theater as i do, then you can pretty rapidly get a good handle on the canon. on the other hand my knowledge of the literature canon has enormous holes in it and i despair of ever really feeling "well read." (and i am working for a phd in english!) but i feel "well watched"

well seen? would be the term for that?

Last Sight and Sound poll: "The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums,"
#26
The Village Voice's "Films of the Century" list from 2000: "Ordet," #16
AFI's big list: "Amadeus," #53
AFI's comedies: "The Producers," #11
AFI's thrillers: "The Fugitive," #33

If all goes well, "Amadeus" will move to the front of the line and stay there forever.

I would agree with you Ryan, but that only qualifies as a piece of the cannon--not much experimental cinema makes it to commercial theaters or even VHS/DVD. And saying you have a true understanding of cinema based only on commercial narratives is like saying that you're well-read, but have never picked up a book of poetry.

Here's one to up the challenge of my previous statement--how many of you have seen Bill Viola's installation works? "The Crossing" is sure to go down as one of the most important experimental works of the past few decades.

My girlfriend has not seen any of "The Godfather" movies.

Films I haven't seen on the Village Voice Top 100:

Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Chantal Akerman)
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophuls)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
Ugetsu (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
The Rise of Louis XIV (1966, Roberto Rossellini)
The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, John Ford)
Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
An Actor's Revenge (1963, Kon Ichikawa)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Close-Up (1990, Abbas Kiarostami)
October (1927, Sergei Eisenstein)
Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann)
Les Vampires (1915-16, Louis Feuillade)
All That Heaven Allows (1956, Douglas Sirk)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper)
Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, Russ Meyer)
The Golden Coach (1952, Jean Renoir)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale)
Landscape in the Mist (1988, Theo Angelopoulos)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)
Suspiria (1977, Dario Argento

and you've changed my words, i never claimed to have a true understanding of cinema. i would indeed need to watch more experimental films if that were my goal. hell i would have to watch everything! but if these major lists are any indication i have seen *most* of the films on them. please dont interpret this as complacency towards things i havent seen.

I've never seen Forrest Gump, and don't plan to.

As for this comment--

but i fail to see how the overwhelming majority of experimental films that have come and gone without a trace represent some part of the canon

it's just incredibly naive. It's a shame that experimental film hasn't received greater exposure, but it certain hasn't "come and gone without a trace"--I can name you hundreds of books that have been written in the past few years about experimental films past and present. The films of Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Bruce Conner, Michael Snow, Kenneth Anger & hundreds of other avant-garde filmmakers have made films just as important as Hitchcock, Bresson, Godard, etc.

To me, it's just as simple as ignoring modern poets in the literary cannon. It's like saying that since Pounds, Eliot, cummings, etc. didn't sell as many books as Hemingway or Tolstoy that they don't belong on the list. Or that Kandinsky, Rothko or Klee don't belong in the museums beside Rembrandt, Picasso & Whistler.

To limit the "canon" to narrative cinema is a factor that limits cinema to not much more than a commercial entertainment medium (and, yes, I do think there are narrative films that are "art" as well).

oh well i have heard of those guys--but when you say "experimental films" i think of movies showing in museum hallways that no one ever stops to watch!

the filmmakers you mention are experimental filmmakers that have been adopted in the mainstream canon are they not?

i what we are arguing over is actually part of a fairly interesting wider issue about what different sets of society would consider "important" films. so in one sense i think you are right: there are a lot of films i havent seen and i need to recognize that gap in my knowledge. im sure experimental film plays a larger (and largely unnoticed) role in the more well-known canon that i can perceive.

(the funny thing is i dont think of experimental cinema as Pound and Eliot but more like the kid down the street who writes poetry. my loss i know--i'll work on it.)

yes, it's definitely your loss.

and plenty of folks do stop to watch those movies showing in the museum hallways. some even travel across the country to see them, including myself. i certainly wouldn't do the same to see the last piece of derrivate dribble that comes out of the average theater.

when did this become an issue of "society" and "culture"? If we were having this debate on literature from the same grounds, "important" texts wouldn't be limited to the NY Times bestseller list. It's a shame that film discussions always end up pandering the lowest common denominator.

anyway.

somehow i've never seen casablanca, lawrence of arabia, rashomon, metropolis, faust, the passion of joan of arc, the seven samurai, duck soup, and many, many more.

well if experimental cinema was more popular it would inevitably (by definition!) do the same. be careful what you wish for!

Voice poll: 9. Au Hasard Balthazar
AFI 100: 13. The Bridge on the River Kwai
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They composite 1000: 6. Seven Samurai
Sight & Sound poll: 11. Seven Samurai

I still have very little desire to see that Kurosawa film.

Man, just seeing these five titles in a row reminds me of why the VV poll was perhaps one of the most satisfying of those composite poll-result lists that usually bore me.

Are you happy now?

Someone wasn't paying attention to the ILF film downloading club a few months back.

Just to demonstrate that I'm as bad as anyone else here about not having seen stuff ("underscreened" is the word), here are the films that received 5 or more votes in the S&S poll that I haven't seen yet.

Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
Jules et Jim (Truffaut)
Pather Panchali (Ray)
La dolce vita (Fellini)
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi)
Les Enfants du paradis (Carné)***
Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
Andrei Roublev (Tarkovsky)***
La Grande Illusion (Renoir)***
Greed (von Stroheim)
Intolerance (Griffith)***
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
Mirror (Tarkovsky)***
Rio Bravo (Hawks)
Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi)
Shoah (Lanzmann)
The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos)
Two or Three Things I Know about Her (Godard)

*** = I have a copy of this on DVD or VHS that I will eventually get around to.

Singin' in the Rain (Kelley/Donen)
L'Atalante (Vigo)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
The Children of Paradise (Carne) - Criterion
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
The Third Man (Reed)
Blade Runner (Scott) (most, i turned it off)
Mirror (Tarkovsky)
Ordet (Dreyer)
Pierrot le fou (Godard)
L'Age d'Or (Bunuel)
[....]

Thanks for the shout-out Eric!

Anyway, I haven't updated my seen stuff in the last two months, so easily I've seen at least a couple dozen on the list that haven't been marked as such. But considering the magnitude, that's a small factor.

OTM. I will force myself to watch Seven Samurai if everyone who hasn't seen TCM does so presently.

Day For Night
Weekend
Bringing Up Baby
Reservoir Dogs
Some Like It Hot*
Taxi Driver**
Gosford Park***
Manhattan
Psycho****
8 1/2

*One of the handful of key Wilder's I haven't seen.
**I've actually missed this in rep TWICE in the past year and a half.
***The only real well-regarded Altman I haven't seen yet--unless I count Tanner '88.
****How sad is this--I saw Psycho II on TV as a kid, but never went out and looked for the original.

Given some time in the next few months, I'll try to whittle this down a bit.

the biggest ones I've not yet seen:
L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)

directors where i've only seen one movie: ozu, herzog, cocteau, marcel carne, clouzot, bresson, tarkovsky (this will change over the weekend), david cronenberg, steven soderbergh, vittorio de sica.

whole SERIES of goddamn films where i haven't seen any of them: any star wars movie, any back to the future movie, any godfather movie (did i mention i'm italian, also?), any indiana jones movie.

individual films (obv. some overlap with my first list): it's a wonderful life, raging bull, vertigo, citizen kane, the rules of the game, the wizard of oz (all the way through), fantasia, the night of the hunter, the birth of a nation, tokyo story, city lights, king kong, metropolis, singin' in the rain, the battleship potemkin, blade runner, mean streets...

and i'm quite sure there's a LOT more i'm forgetting right now.

meanwhile, i HAVE seen michael snow's wavelength and frederick wiseman's titicut follies (though i wouldn't consider either one "not important.")

If we get you started on a steady diet of Passolini & Nick Zedd, you could become quite a warped individual in a matter of a few months! And the most artsy transgressive filmmaker since John Waters!

Dance my puppet....dance!

Alright, I'm calling your bet..... I just got done watching this about an hour ago. Good watch -- thanks for the recommendation. Nice and short too, hehe, unlike SS. Very chaotic, a lot of screaming, great use of soundtrack, implied horror (a nice touch!), and an oddly hilarious scene where they keep giving grandpa the hammer.

(Hmm... doesn't look like it, but Yojimbo is on the schedule, oddly enough!)

THEN YOU GOTTA WATCH THE SS.

Haha, nah, actually, I'd rather watch "Yojimbo" over "Seven Samurai" most days anyway.

I wish there was a theatre that plays a range of films like that around here; the only thing here are the typical "arty" cinemas where they all show the same run-of-the-mill junk.

The series of Sight & Sound titans throughout late April is to celebrate the theater's 10 year anniversary. I've seen almost all of them, but will mos def be making time to catch, for instance, Ugetsu.

Also, yeah, I love how tossed off something as vital as a Peter Kubelka mini-series seems on this awesome schedule. I'll have to miss Tuesday's program, but will definately be there for Thursday's.

seeing as how the Kubelka talk brought up experimental film, just wanted to recommend "Visionary Film" by P. Adams Sitney to anyone interested in learning more about key Ex/AG works.

and yeah, i'll big up visionary film too. his daughter taught my film class last semester and it was one of our texts. her modesty about it all was unwarranted, i think - if my dad wrote that book i'd rub it in people's faces all the time ;)

Highest ranking film I haven't seen from IMDB's top 250: Lord of the Rings, part 3: Tfe King's Return

Highest non-LOTR film: Surprise, surprise... Seven Samurai

200procrastin8 upd8:

directors whose films i haven't seen: antonioni, hitchcock, eisenstein, powell/pressburger, mizoguchi, welles, sergio leone, john ford, carl dreyer, bertolucci, d.w. griffith, jean vigo, preston sturges, rossellini, theo angelopoulos, volker schlondorff, jim jarmusch, jean renoir, luchino visconti, fritz lang.

directors where i've only seen one movie: ozu (have now seen 2), herzog (3 or 4), cocteau, marcel carne (2), clouzot, bresson (3 or 4), tarkovsky (this DID change, to 4), david cronenberg (2), steven soderbergh, vittorio de sica (2).

whole SERIES of goddamn films where i haven't seen any of them: any star wars movie, any back to the future movie, any godfather movie (did i mention i'm italian, also?), any indiana jones movie. (none of this has changed)

individual films (obv. some overlap with my first list): it's a wonderful life, raging bull, vertigo, citizen kane, the rules of the game, the wizard of oz (all the way through), fantasia, the night of the hunter, the birth of a nation, tokyo story, city lights, king kong, metropolis (technically: fell asleep watching it), singin' in the rain, the battleship potemkin, blade runner, mean streets...

'08 update: david lean besides lawrence of arabia, howard hawks besides gentlemen prefer blondes, terminator 2 (have seen the first and third, bogglingly), the matrix.

Vertigo! Singing in the Rain! Nashville! Ozu! (except for The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice)

godfather

i need to see nashville! i used to live there and i like him, the director guy

the biggest ones I've not yet seen:
L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)

― a banana (alanbanana), Wednesday, March 16, 2005 10:06 PM (3 years ago)

I have since seen these. L'atalante is quite good if a bit uneven, Birth is really, really racist, Tokyo Story is a bore (and I've also seen Floating Weeds now too, and it isn't boring, although I didn't love it either.)

Stuff in the VV list I haven't seen yet:

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Chantal Akerman) [i got this from KG but never watched it]
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophuls) [on my rent list]
Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966, George Kuchar) [never heard of it]
The Rise of Louis XIV (1966, Roberto Rossellini) [never heard of it]
The Apu Trilogy (1955-59, Satyajit Ray) [on my rent list]
The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)
An Actor's Revenge (1963, Kon Ichikawa) [never heard of it]
Close-Up (1990, Abbas Kiarostami)
Los Olvidados (1950, Luis Bunuel)
Paisan (1946, Roberto Rossellini) [never heard of it]
Performance (1970, Nicolas Roeg & Donald Cammell) [on my rent list]
Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann)
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
Les Vampires (1915-16, Louis Feuillade) [i've seen the first few, but got bored and gave up]
Pierrot le Fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)
Fox and His Friends (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow) [never heard of it]
Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Andrzej Wajda) [kanal sucked]
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, Russ Meyer)
The Golden Coach (1952, Jean Renoir)
Salo (1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)
Masculine-Feminine (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
Landscape in the Mist (1988, Theo Angelopoulos) [never heard of it]

Also, Godzilla.

Stuff from the VV list I haven't seen yet:

2. The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
4. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
5. The Man With a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)
6. Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
7. L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
8. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
9. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
13. Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)
14. The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)
17. Ordet (1955, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
18. Intolerance (1916, D.W. Griffith)
19. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Chantal Akerman)
21. Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
22. M (1931, Fritz Lang)
24. The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophuls)
25. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
26. A Man Escaped (1956, Robert Bresson)
27. Broken Blossoms (1919, D.W. Griffith)
28. Greed (1924, Erich von Stroheim)
29. Ugetsu (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi)
30. The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
32. The General (1927, Buster Keaton)
36. Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
38. City Lights (1931, Charles Chaplin)
39. King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)
40. Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang)
41. My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie) (1962, Jean-Luc Godard)
42. Sherlock Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)
43. Aguirre: the Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)
44. Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)
45. Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
46. Barry Lyndon (1975, Stanley Kubrick)
47. The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut)
48. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928, Buster Keaton)
49. Contempt (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
50. The Gold Rush (1925, Charles Chaplin)
52. Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966, George Kuchar)
53. The Rise of Louis XIV (1966, Roberto Rossellini)
54. The Apu Trilogy (1955-59, Satyajit Ray)
55. Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
57. The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
58. The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
59. The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)
60. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, John Ford)
61. Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
62. An Actor's Revenge (1963, Kon Ichikawa)
63. Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
64. Close-Up (1990, Abbas Kiarostami)
65. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1965, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
67. Modern Times (1936, Charles Chaplin)
68. October (1927, Sergei Eisenstein)
69. Los Olvidados (1950, Luis Bunuel)
70. Paisan (1946, Roberto Rossellini)
71. Performance (1970, Nicolas Roeg & Donald Cammell)
72. Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann)
73. Singin' in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)
74. Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
75. Umberto D (1952, Vittorio De Sica)
76. Les Vampires (1915-16, Louis Feuillade)
78. All That Heaven Allows (1956, Douglas Sirk)
79. Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein)
80. Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)
81. Pierrot le Fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)
82. Fox and His Friends (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
85. Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)
86. Ashes and Diamonds (1958, Andrzej Wajda)
87. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, Russ Meyer)
88. The Golden Coach (1952, Jean Renoir)
89. Salo (1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
90. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)
91. Masculine-Feminine (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
93. Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)
94. Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)
95. Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale)
97. Landscape in the Mist (1988, Theo Angelopoulos)
98. Mean Streets (1973, Martin Scorsese)
99. Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)

Wait--I HAVE seen Rules of the game; I have NOT seen Citizen Kane.

Don't waste your time. That list is chock full of boring.
I still haven't seen The Thing or They Live!!

are you joking? duuuuude. both of those are mandatory.

you haven't seen star wars? what were you raised in a a bantha swamp?

at this point it's totally ok to have not seen star wars

tombot would luv they live

Tombot rong, mostly

I don't know if I've ever watched A Bout de Souffle all the way through ... but the rental DVD came in the post today! maybe watch it tonight or demain soir.

Also, next up after this: Bande a Part.