Man With A Movie List

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: Michael Powell and others Year: 1940 Run-time: 1 hr 46 min - This was a pretty fun one, a Technicolor special effects spectacular similar in tone to Robin Hood .  Staying close to an Arabian Nights theme, it mostly sidesteps outright racism, although it's just as orientalist as its source material.  It's pretty fun to explore how they did most of the effects - Ebert claims there's almost no effect in Star Wars that wasn't seen (in less advanced form) here. - The other striking thing that almost all of the plot ingredients in Disney's Aladdin  would originate here, to such a degree that I'm surprised no lawsuit was involved.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock Year: 1935 Run-time: 1 hr 26 min - The modern thriller has been refined so much that it would be difficult to place The 39 Steps  in the top 5, but that doesn't mean that this isn't an extremely fun film to watch.  Watching Hannay be so awful to Pamela when she still believes him to be a murder is pretty cringe-inducing, but it doesn't ruin the film.  There are so many astounding shots that make for a cinematography master-class.  I'll be thinking of the seamless transition from a scene inside the car to a shot following the car.  That one's not easy to pull off today.

Director: Basil Wright Year: 1934 Run-time: 38 min - Compared to Salt for Svanetia,  this doesn't have the same larger agenda of promoting Soviet unity and progression. It's actually a sympathetic portrait of a land on the edge of British colonialism, and melancholic about what the future would have in store for its people.  It isn't particularly interested in having the Sinhalese narrate their own story, instead choosing to recount a British sailor's account of the island (I didn't catch much of the narration, since the version I picked on Youtube had poor sound issues). Nevertheless it's the strongest documentary we've seen so far, unless you count Man with a Movie Camera .

Director: Alfred Hitchcock Year: 1929 Run-time: 1 hr 24 min Source: Amazon Video Wikipedia Notable for:   Where do I start?  Blackmail is the first film on our list with spoken dialogue (although not the first with a synchronized soundtrack - that would be Sunrise ).  This is surprising, since sound films had been prominent, at least in America, for two years by this point.  Many of the American silents featured recently here, such as The Wind and Docks of New York , were well behind the times when they came out, and suffered in the box office because of it. Blackmail is credited as the first British sound film, at least, and it's here that British cinema could be said to truly begin in earnest.  It helps, of course, that it's helmed by a young, but already experienced director named Alfred Hitchcock.  Ironically, Blackmail was not planned as a sound film, but when the producers suggested just before production that a few scenes be filmed with s...

Director: E. A. Dupont Year: 1928 Run-time: 2 hrs 5 min Source: Blu-ray I'm back for the new year with the first British film on the list.  Well, of a sort anyway - the British film industry was a couple decades away from its golden age, and the director and much of the cast were brought in from the continent. Moulin Rouge  isn't related to the Baz Luhrmann film I grew up with, but it does share the same madcap energy.  Although the plot contains a melodramatic love triangle with strong lead performances, and excellent cinematography, the film's real fascination for me was in its authentic depiction of the Paris cabaret scene, in all its triumphs (luscious sets, gaudy costumes, and a mesmerizing can-can), and horrifying relics of the past (a blackface minstrel skit and a gross parody of a Japanese play).  We also get great scripted audience reaction shots, with leering mustachioed Frenchmen, and their snooty wives.  Its a blockbuster that revels in pure s...