Man With A Movie List

Director: Georges Méliès Year: 1902 Seeing the painstakingly restored hand-colored print of A Trip to the Moon, in a literally mind-numbing 14 frames per second, makes it utterly clear that cinema is and has always been witchcraft. Every frame of this short feels bursting with magic, and even watching it on a modern TV in a space age that would have blown the mind of any of the actors of this film, you're left thinking "How did they do that?".

Directors: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera Year: 1947 I'm sure it's no coincidence that music plays such a strong role in many of the animated films featured on the list. By this point, there's nothing especially novel about this Tom and Jerry  short by another great animation studio led by Hanna and Barbera, except that the execution is so spot-on. This is eight minutes of pure delight. 

Director: Roberto Rossellini Year: 1946 The greatest innovation in cinema around this period is the emergence of mainstream films that are anchored so specifically in contemporary life, that were deliberately not timeless. Rossellini went further than anyone else in this direction - Paisan  deliberately interweaves stock war footage with staged settings, real actors with non-professionals, to create something that deliberately skirts the line between fiction and documentary. Paisan  is also the first great bilingual film on the list, not only featuring English and Italian but many different dialects, making the film extremely difficult for a native Italian to understand. The performances are often extremely stilted, and there are glaring editing mistakes, but many of the stories are extremely compelling. 

Director: David Lean Year: 1946  - We're getting a few new classic directors entering the list this year (although both Lean and Ford and been working for a while by this point). Great Expectations  wouldn't seem to have much in common with Lawrence of Arabia  for a David Lean neophyte, but it is an excellent film. Lean seems to dial directly into the right level of melodrama for a Charles Dickens classic, and the film veers between Gothic horror and mannered period drama in just the right ways to make for a really fun movie, especially if like me you didn't know much about the source material. Look out for a young Alec Guiness (with ridiculous curled up hair). I was struck by many plot similarities between this and Les Miserables, which were published within a year of each other on both sides of the pond.  

Director: John Ford Year: 1946 - This film is perhaps the strongest example (at least in America) of a film where directorial vision determines the film much more than script or performances. On the surface, this is a bog-standard early Western - as this film and Destry Rides Again  would seem to reveal, before the genre took itself more seriously in the 50's the standard template was something close to self-parody. (Something similar seemed to happen with secret agent films in the early 60's.) This film is full of ridiculous and fun Western cliches. However, the long, languid takes, where characters are frequently displayed with their faces in complete darkness, uplifts the film into a ponderous and fascinating study of violence. It might be my favorite Western. It is dragged down by some unnecessary racism, although it's much less of an offender than Stagecoach  or The Searchers , which had been removed from the list for just that.

  The Killers  uses up every noir cliche that had developed by this time - the detective story with flashbacks from Laura , the insurance investigator from Double Indemnity, the seductive femme fatale from Gilda - but somehow manages to feel wholly original. I thought that I'd grow weary of noirs by this point, but they are getting better, and there's no doubt that it's a fun genre, if there's not always much going under the pristine surface. There's some tremendous acting, and I unabashedly love the opening scene with the titular killers - the only part that seems to have been actually adapted from the Hemingway short story (Ernest himself was nevertheless a fan) - but the ending doesn't really work. It's a bit easier to follow than The Big Sleep, but it has a few too many twists for what is ultimately a pretty straightforward story without any real morals. Still, I have to recommend it, and it would definitely be up there in my list of best noirs.

Director: Charles Vidor Year: 1946 Is there any other two-second shot as iconic as Rita Hayworth's introduction in this film? She certainly dominates any scene that she's in, but Glenn Ford also deserves a lot of credit, and I wish this film did a little more with the strange homoerotic love triangle that he forms with George McReady. The film has a strange and interesting tone until its bizarrely unearned happy ending. I still quite like the film - it's a noir in which the nebulous crimes committed are the least interesting aspect, and it's certainly very unique (with good music to boot, although I don't really need to hear "Put the Blame on Mame" twice). 

Director: William Wyler Year: 1946 Out of the list films so far, this is the one that sounded most like "Oscar bait" (even though Oscar bait as a term wouldn't be coined until the early 80's).  The premise, with 3 returning servicemen each facing their own ordeals, certainly sounds melodramatic. Due to excellent direction and strong performances, it's superb. It's certainly well-attuned to the reality of the situation, with each character embodying a different aspect of Wyler's own experiences when he returned home - however, the film stays true to its unique characters that evolve and grow.  There are many scenes that feel like they were written to elicit our emotions, but in almost all cases, there is significantly more nuance in the direction. It's a historical artifact that has something to say about values are baked into the American experiment. In contrast to so many contemporary noirs, it tells a strong story with characters that feel true and r...

 Director: Frank Capra Year: 1946 - I don't have too much to add to what is probably one of the most over-analyzed films in history, but I can see that seen outside of its usual Christmas context, it's still a remarkably well-made film. There are a few films out there can survive being so hopelessly sentimental, but this is one of them, and that's a testament to just how well each scene works. If you're new to the film, then the slow build-up isn't going to mean much, but for old veterans each scene just works better and better. I still find it remarkable that everything the film is most well-known for (and most parodied for) happens in the last third of the film. But the enduring premise of a man who never got to the live he wanted but still mattered deeply to his community will always hit home for me. This film is just going to keep getting better.

Director: Howard Hawks Year: 1946 While  The Maltese Falcon cares deeply about its plot, which ends up pretty simple if very well-paced, The Big Sleep  revels in its complexity, is extremely difficult to follow, even if it ultimately cares much more about its characters than most "puzzle films". This film clearly had a big influence on  Inherent Vice. I'm not sure I love it - my wife got so confused she couldn't keep watching - but I think there's certainly a lot more to it than most of the noirs we've seen so far. Bacall is excellent, and Bogart is just perfect. I would certainly watch it again to see how it holds up now that I have a better idea of what's going on.

Director: Jean Cocteau Year: 1946 My wife tells me this version of the classic tale is more accurate than the Disney version, but it does add some plot elements like the rival suitor, which the cartoon would turn into a more flagrant asshole - here he seems genuinely good for Belle, at least at the beginning. The plot tensions in this version are pretty interesting - here Belle has a ...financial duty to stay with the Beast that continues throughout the film. But honestly, I think it's a bit slow. I think it's well remembered especially for how it creates its atmosphere through clever use of practical effects (it's not surprising that del Toro is a big fan), but the film is a bit long for what it is, and our familiarity with the story doesn't do it any favors.

Director: Marcel Carné Year: 1945 - It's impossible to imagine what it would be like to be in France, bruised and battered, at the eve of its liberation from the Nazis, and to see this impossibly beautiful and poetic film celebrate life and love. There is so much that could be said about this excellent film, but for me this goes to show how so many directors, including Renoir no less, make their best films when they break out of the strong but "comfortable" film-making modes they had been accustomed to. This is almost certainly untrue, but I could so easily imagine Carné, observing how his genre of "poetic realism" had been adapted by America to tell mastercrafted but relatively empty stories about moral failings, and decided that he needed to show the world a little pure beauty. This film succeeds at that, and in our modern times it shines even more brightly.

Director: John M. Stahl Year: 1945 - The first thing that struck me about this film is its stark beauty - it's really the first color film on the list to make good use of natural sets. The various wilderness settings (New Mexico, Maine) serve a function as well, highlighting the lead woman's "wildness", and later on, her increasing desperation to have her husband to herself. This film noir, more than most, highlights the sexism inherent in the genre, but for a moment early on, it's easy to be sympathetic towards her, and it's not to the film's credit that we abandon any sympathy for her by the end of the film.

Director: Michael Curtiz Year: 1945 - Putting aside from a moment the context surrounding this film, and Crawford's own (possible) parenting methods, I thought Mildred Pierce  was a solid and well-acted drama that was let down by its potboiler twists. The awful, greedy daughter was too exaggerated and out of the realm of possibility. In a better movie, the character of Mildred Pierce is such a cool, strong female role, but it's let down by the movie she's in. Curtiz' directing does the film quite a few favors, and it has the excellent pacing that we're starting to expect from Hollywood in its fascination with noir, but this one veers too far from verisimilitude to be one of the best.

Director: Sergei Eisenstein Year: 1944 I have great admiration for Eisenstein's early films, and their distinct non-Western communalist style. His later films, with their integration of distinct characters, don't work quite as well for me.  It's hard at the beginning of this film to recognize which characters are important - since the camera moves back and forth quickly, with frequent dialogue meant to establish communal opinions, it takes a while for me at least to recognize the main leads. Combined with the often glacial pacing, this was a difficult watch for me. Nevertheless, the always excellent cinematography leads to a fever-dream atmosphere that I appreciated (it's a dangerous film to watch in an anxious state) and the characteristic symbolism makes it possible to follow on a subconscious level, even if it's not clear what's going on in terms of events. I am looking forward to Part II to get a better analysis.

Director: Otto Preminger Year: 1944 - Laura  continues some of the noir trends of the era, especially with its brick-wall male lead who calls women "dames", but it's probably more worthwhile for being the first fun mystery film on the list. None of the suspects have an ounce of subtlety, but the acting is strong, and it's hard not to like Dana Andrews as the gruff detective who can't stop playing his little baseball marble game. Clare and I had a lot of fun watching this, and it did keep us guessing.

Director: Billy Wilder Year: 1944 - This is the film that cemented the American noir tradition. Unlike the French films that came before it, American noirs seem a little de-fanged. They have great atmosphere, excellent acting (although none of the American leads, even Bogart, are in the same lead as Jean Gabin in my opinion), and exquisite pacing, but so far they're a bit colder and with less pathos. Double Indemnity  is a fun film, and Barbara Stanwyck knows how to underplay her character in the right ways. It's comfort food, despite the sexism baked in to the genre.

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer Year: 1943 Run-time: 1 hr 40 min There's too much to break down here. But while there are fascinating readings of this film that reflects a totalitarian society like the Nazi rule of Denmark at the time, I feel like that allegory is a little indirect. Ultimately, I see this as Dreyer's return to the themes and pacing of The Passion of Joan of Arc , and though the comparison is interesting, the film can't really escape the large shadow that the predecessor casts. Dreyer expressed much more with faces in the earlier silent film than he does with the simple and plaintive dialogue in this one. Though there are beautiful, haunting moments, it doesn't quite work for me. 

Directors: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Year: 1943 Run-time: 2 hr 43 min This is a pretty fascinating film that takes an unpredictable turn out the front gate - it takes an unflattering comic book caricature of a pompous English general and spends two hours humanizing him, in the meantime philosophizing about what it will take to win the war. As Patton Oswalt said while praising the film, it's as if someone were to adapt Family Circus into The Ice Storm . There are many unflattering aspects of being British on display here - not the least of which is the colonialism which is unfortunately only indirectly hinted at - but whatever your final verdict on the message of the film, it's a powerful one that deserves to be watched, especially in these uncertain times.

Director: Jacques Torneur Year: 1943 Run-time: 1 hr 9 min - If I were a snarky Youtube reviewer, I would subtitle this movie " Jane Eyre , with added sexism and racism". And there is some truth to that - the "wife in the attic" becomes the titular zombie, but her fate is largely due to her own desires to run away. Also, although Torneur takes a more honest look at the effects of colonialism and slavery than any contemporary film, the needs of the schlock-horror setup means that, yes, the powers of voodoo are actually real. Ultimately, this was a fascinating film, but a deeply flawed one. Torneur has a wide oeuvre, though, so I have rising hopes for the others of his films on the list.