Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Shh, My List is Starting

Figured I might as well keep digging my hole of self-referentiality deeper and climb on in. With a movie projector. Here's the favorite foreign films (that means British and Canadian, too--since when Tancredo's president they'll have to get the films over the wall) list I put together in 1999. (Note, unsubtle readers--that means they're aren't any films since 1999.)

I couldn't keep quiet on this subject, now, could I? So, here is a randomly ordered, completely personal, decidedly arbitrary list. Trying to compile it shocked me, once again--there's so much I haven't seen. And then there's so much I just don't get, like Bresson and Dreyer, and my soul, I realize, is poorer for it.

But there are things I left off intentionally, even if others love them; for just three quickies which sure don't feel quick when I watch them, there's Blow-Up, Repulsion, and Cinema Paradiso. And My Life as a Dog. And anything with Gerard Depardieu (although 1900 is campy fun, especially when Donald Sutherland is about killing things). Stop me before I pan again.

  • Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 55)
  • Dead of Night (Dearden, Cavalcanti, Hamer, Crichton, 45)
  • Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 61)
  • Wings of Desire (Wenders, 87)
  • Ikiru (Kurosawa, 52)
  • all the Quay Bros. shorts--especially Street of Crocodiles (Brothers Quay, 84+)
  • The Earrings of Madame de... (Ophuls, 53)
  • The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 39)
  • Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder, 80)
  • L'Atalante (Vigo, 34)
  • Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 72)
  • Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, 60)
  • Stalker (Tarkovsky, 79)
  • The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan, 97)
  • The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 35)
  • Masculin/Feminin (Godard, 66)
  • Breaking the Waves (von Trier, 96)
  • Drowning by Numbers (Greenaway, 87)
  • The Ladykillers (Mackendrick, 55)
  • Irma Vep (Assayas, 97)
  • Pandora's Box (Pabst, 29)
  • Simon of the Desert (Bunuel, 65)
  • Metropolis (Lang, 27)
  • Grand Illusion (Renoir, 37)
  • Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog, 72)
  • The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 54)
  • The Duellists (Scott, 78)
  • Tokyo Story (Ozu, 53)
  • Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (Tanner, 76)
  • Amarcord (Fellini, 73)
  • Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 72)
  • A Day in the Country (Renoir, 36)
  • Un Coeur en Hiver (Sautet, 92)
  • Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 66)
  • Menilmontant (Kirsanov, 24)
  • Ulysses' Gaze (Angelopoulos, 95)
  • The Ballad of Narayama (Imamura, 84)
  • Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 74)
  • Nosferatu (Murnau, 22)
  • The Company of Wolves (Jordan, 84)
  • Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 45)
  • The Road Warrior (Miller, 82)
  • Great Expectations (Lean, 46)
  • Potemkin (Eisenstein, 25)
  • Red (Kieslowski, 94)
  • Los Olvidados (Bunuel, 50)
  • Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 53)
  • Mr. Hulot's Holiday (Tati, 53)
  • High Hopes (Leigh, 88)
  • The Nasty Girl (M. Verhoeven, 90)
  • M (Lang, 31)
  • Diva (Beinex, 81)
  • Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 65)
  • The Conformist (Bertolucci, 70)
  • The Story of Qiu Ju (Yimou, 92)
  • Henry V (Olivier, 45)
  • Bedazzled (Donen, 67)
  • Stroszek (Herzog, 77)
  • The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, 48)
  • The Man Who Would Be King (Huston, 75)
  • Tampopo (Itami, 86)
  • Children of Paradise (Carne, 44)
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 66)
  • Boudu Saved from Drowning (Renoir, 32)
  • The Smallest Show on Earth (Dearden, 57)
  • Scenes from a Marriage (Bergman, 73)
  • Europa, Europa (Holland, 91)
  • Providence (Resnais, 77)
  • Carnival in Flanders (Feyder, 35)
  • The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 38)
  • Miss Julie (Sjoberg, 51)
  • Seven Beauties (Wertmuller, 75)
  • Les Visiteurs du Soir (Carne, 42)
  • Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 61)
  • The Servant (Losey, 63)
  • Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 51)
  • La Belle Noiseuse (Rivette, 91)
  • Night of the Shooting Stars (Taviani Bros, 82)
  • Smash Palace (Donaldson, 81)
  • L'Age D'or (Bunuel, 30)
  • 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould (Girard, 93)

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8 Comments:

Blogger ahab said...

Lots of fun reviewing these lists, George. Thanks for taking the trouble. There's so much greatness out there. I see lots of titles I'm unfamiliar with and lots it's time to see again.

Seven Sisters, for example. God, what a flick!

Time to put the HDTV screen to work on something worthy of it.

12:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Uh oh: George is a listmaker!

That's a great list, but where oh where is Hallström's My Life as a Dog (1985)? And Satyajit Ray? (I know, I know: one can't include everything)

Good thing Children of Paradise is there; not enough people know about that.

2:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Woops. Maybe I should have read your introductory text. Bummer that My Life as a Dog wasn't much fun for you. I think it's in my Top 5.

2:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now your preference for older movies really undermines your selections

How you can overlook such recent films as Best of Youth (Giordana) and Barbarian Invasion (Arcand) escapes me.

6:02 PM  
Blogger George said...

Anon 6:02--

Clearly you didn't read my intro--this list was compiled in 1999 and I didn't take the time to update. As smart and tasteful as I am, I didn't know what good films would be made from 2000-2007 in 1999.

Best of Youth would most defintiely make the list now. Incredible 6 hours.

10:14 PM  
Blogger George said...

Oh, Kusala, I'm sad to report I have not seen the Apu Trilogy.

But it is good to have such greatness ahead of me.

11:06 PM  
Blogger ahab said...

I meant Seven Beauties, of course.

But it is good to have such greatness ahead of me.

That's the spirit, George.

4:40 AM  
Blogger Mike said...

Nice to see Tampopo make your list. I love it, and we actually own it.

I see you're not an Antonioni fan, but everyone has his faults.

Interesting to see that you'd include Best of Youth, which I desperately wanted to like, but really didn't. Just a melodramatic soap opera at the end of the day. Then again, I don't much like Once Upon A Time In America either.

A suggestion to see if you have not: Forbidden Games. Renee Clement, 1952. A sad, but beautiful movie. Really stays with you long after it's over.

And finally, did you leave Battle of Algiers off intentionally, or had you not seen it until it was re-released recently?

7:24 AM  

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