Author Topic: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time  (Read 50774 times)

Bondo

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #220 on: May 14, 2020, 06:57:26 PM »
Me seeing the low score:



I watched it pre-forum I think, but don't remember liking it much.

MartinTeller

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #221 on: May 14, 2020, 10:13:09 PM »
I know you don't like me using art as an indicator of anything about the end user, but don't you think our choices in art say anything about us?

Hmm, maybe I only don't like it when it's about ME? But for real, I just find "if you like (or don't like) X, then you must be Y" comments to be trouble, and over the years I've tried harder and harder not to make them myself. Comment on the movie, not what you think about other people based on their opinions of it.

Yes, it's unfortunate that Heston is playing a Mexican. But that was sadly the norm in Hollywood at the time so I don't hold it against the film too much. I also don't find it to be a particularly degrading or stereotypical depiction, though I recognize I'm not the one to make that call.

Perhaps I use such words as conscience because that is how I experience them, and I think it's worth imploring people to look at their own when it comes to what we find acceptable in what we take in. It doesn't mean you have to, you can totally disagree, that's most understandable, at least to me. But whitewashing and problematic representations of people of color by white people is not something I can easily abide. I also just didn't like the film. At least I took a stab at what I didn't like though, the only way one could try to rebut it. Better than that than to just put, "I think Orson Welles is an overrated actor and this film has a way of dealing with culture and minorities that are poor and outdated." Less to rebut, but far less thought.

Yours is definitely a thorough and thoughtful review. When I said I didn't expect to convince you, I wasn't trying to imply you were stubborn, but rather that you and I appreciate different things in film.

Wanted to update, I read through your review twice. I know through your posts that you have a little one, so I get why you don't write these anymore, but I like how both personal and nuanced your analysis is.

Thanks! I wrote reviews for 12 years, but only the ones from last few years were any good. The earlier ones were quite lazy. The ToE review happens to be one of the better ones.

The point on Welles' acting is well-taken, though I disagree with it at least in part, and no need to rehash it, my word is above. Your words on cinematography are interesting, too, I definitely noticed the interesting framing, but I also noticed a lot of low camera shots, which I know can be used to aggrandize certain strong characters, but I felt were a little overkill in places. Anyway, I appreciate getting a look at a good counterpoint

Sometimes overkill is a good thing!

Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #222 on: May 14, 2020, 11:22:19 PM »
The Leopard
LUCHINO VISCONTI, 1963
2.5 STARS OUT OF 5

How far can pure visual appeal take a film? Visconti’s epic on Italian reunification and its implications for embedded, likely fossilized aristocratic institutions is a miracle of cinematography, especially if you love wide shots stuffed with ravishing opulence, natural or manmade. I often caught myself staring, eyes not focused on exactly the right person moving about the alluring frames, especially during the famed scene at the ball at the end. But it’s the story that doesn’t work for me on most levels.

As a cultural commentary, this film glorifies the aristocracy and “old ways” far too much to credibly critique anything. I’ve come across writings that describe Prince Don Fabrizio Salinas as a man who understands his place in history, and as being in a push-pull kind of place, knowing that change is for the better, yet having a hard time accepting it because the status quo benefits him so much. When he’s asked to be a senator, there’s just no way. He’s like the moral gunslinger in the wild west, the John Wayne character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he knows the time for his kind is up, and he goddamn can’t stand it. But John Wayne shows up at all the meetings for statehood and burns his house down anyway. The prince continues about his aristocratic world, in which Visconti and his cinematographer Giussepe Rotunno revel. His nephew, Tancredi, may be part of the new military and political world, but we’re talking new uniforms, old ways, as the prince suggested, and frankly it doesn’t all seem that bad. It makes his great quote on being a leopard ceding his position to hyenas and sheep, while partially self-effacing and bitter, seem quite hollow. Really, the leopard just has different clothes.

If you’re looking for anything close to a decent melodrama, there’s nothing like that here. Essentially, you have Tancredi on the rise, looking to marry. The woman he falls on, the gorgeous daughter of an upstart, Angelica, comes to him like a dream. The prince falls in love with her, too, but he’s got no real shot, and in the end she’s like the young hitchhiker Sara is to old Isak, a reminder of youthful love as opposed to a real love interest. There’s also a bit of obvious sexism here, with the prince denigrating the girls congregating in the sitting area during the ball, referring to them as “frogs”, but going further in manner and tone in his critiques. It’s not a huge black eye on any of this, but it’s repulsive enough in its moment to mention.

The war scenes in the film are ravishing and virtually bloodless, and a good representation of what’s wrong with this film. The war shots are as the ball shots, the former can no more critique war than the latter can comment on class. They just look too good and contain no real consequences to anything. Yes, there’s an impromptu firing squad, but we know no one being fired upon and we don’t linger there long enough to understand the gravity of what’s happened. In the ball, we linger too long and end up mesmerized by the ornamentation. This film proves to me that gorgeous visuals can keep your attention for three hours without much in the way of a satisfying story or interesting, sympathetic characters. They just can’t make a film great by themselves.

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A Note on Dubbing, Here and Elsewhere:
I didn't know going into it that the vocals were dubbed in Italian. I figured the thing was in Italian considering it's an Italian feature, but a lot of what I learned about the production, including the casting of Burt Lancaster, came after watching it. It didn't really bother me, and I think that's because I was too occupied reading subtitles to focus solely on their mouths. With The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, a film where the dubbing didn't work as much for me, I am thinking the English-to-English dubbing created a bizarre effects where the lips (in English for most of the primary characters) didn't match all the vocal inflections and exact speech (in English), maaayyyyybe. Dubbing has never bothered me in Japanese video games or anime, either, but maybe that's because lip movement in animation isn't as precise as live action anyway. Maybe the voice acting in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly just isn't good. I don't really know, but I do know the dubbing didn't bug me here enough to have it interfere with the rest of the film or really sway my already mixed-to-dubious opinion of it.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2020, 12:07:12 AM by etdoesgood »
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #223 on: May 15, 2020, 11:47:49 PM »
M
FRITZ LANG, 1931
2.5 STARS OUT OF 5

This is a murder mystery that has interesting camera angles and audacious editing going for it, and a fairly contrived conflict and resolution against it. I was fairly hooked into this drama, intrigued by the wide shots of the city, the use of shadows and light to provoke unease, helping to make the building blocks of future cinema noir, though absent the fast talking, which is a positive in my book. The whistling you heard whenever the child killer, Hans Beckert, was near created a special sense of dread, though he ends up being a gigantic putz. I contemplated though, that perhaps this whistling might have influenced the creators of The Wire to have infamous thief (of drug dealers, no “civvies”), Omar Little, whistle (primarily The Farmer in the Dell) whenever he was arriving on the block. The effects are similar, even if the criminals are worlds apart. Anyway, the shots in this film are worthy of their own art book, whether we’re looking at the blown-up picture of the fingerprint seen from behind the detective/presenter, Beckert seeing the M on the back of his jacket in the mirror, or the shot above, looking through the hole the criminals created to infiltrate the office building, where Beckert was hiding, to do their own type of justice. This inventive type of shooting is something sorely lacking in modern narrative cinematic storytelling, the will to experiment with the camera, let be what may. Back then, I’m guessing it was all experimentation as sound in film was still relatively new in 1931.

The larger problem of this film’s plot and characterization weighs it down heavily for me. It’s possible to have all the visual storytelling elements in play, but ultimately, and something I point to in a lot of films I don’t really like, are that there are a lack of characters and the plot is obviously engineered and artificial. There is the “Films aren’t real” argument, but I’m fairly sure the point should be to trick you into believing they are, and I never had that with M. Beckert, who's a simple, deranged child killer. He’s having a negative impact on society, civil and criminal, especially messing with layers of society that are part of organized crime. Thus, you have two opposing parties looking to do the same thing and take Beckert into custody, or take him out. Yet, none of those individuals in pursuit are real, they are just part of larger organizations. One side cares about the crimes, the other side does, too, but also about profit. Writers Thea von Harbou, Lang’s wife at the time, and Lang himself went with basically the worst crime ever to ratchet up the stakes as high as they could go. Children are largely shown through missing person’s signs hanging around the city, making the crimes both terrible but also remote. In some ways, I like the emphasis on procedure, and the contrast between the cops and criminals, which becomes more and less distinct through various phases of the film. Though, with child murders, emphasis on procedure comes off as a bit cold, with more focus paid to the killer than the victims. I think this is another situation in which our intrigue in regards to crime trumps where our concerns ought to be, with those being hurt. And anyway, Beckert isn’t a very interesting study. He may be psychologically unstable, he may not be, but we never get into the nuances of it, so he ultimately comes off as a bad man who verbally rationalizes the worst of the worst crimes to no interesting end. (Then again, even if the ends were provocative, then you could assert the film is exploitative. There’s no winning.) I also thought the scene where he was caught and being pushed through a kangaroo court to be, narratively-speaking, a dud (though it looks fantastic and has a great panning shot of the gallery), as nothing really comes of browbeating Beckert, nothing really proven by the grandstanding. Finally, I've read people praising the last few words and the dissolve at the end, but to me it was far too abrupt, and left me with little more than a shrug.

I take this as a foundational work for film noir specifically and talkies in general, and it’s visually as splendid as probably most pictures from that time, or even well after. Having seen Metropolis, and now M, Lang could certainly pull off a vision. The narrative and characters do drag this down, though. A good and important watch, but seriously flawed.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2020, 03:52:48 AM by etdoesgood »
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Teproc

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #224 on: May 16, 2020, 02:56:56 AM »
It’s possible to have all the visual storytelling elements in play, but ultimately, and something I point to in a lot of films I don’t really like, are that there are a lack of characters and the plot is obviously engineered and artificial. There is the “Films aren’t real” argument, but I’m fairly sure the point should be to trick you into believing they are, and I never had that with M. Beckert is a simple, deranged child killer.

I'm not sure I follow this. You seem to be arguing that all films should aim for naturalism, but clearly that's not your actual position since you liked THe Night of the Hunter quite a bit, a film that has no interest in naturalism at all.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #225 on: May 16, 2020, 04:07:45 AM »
I'm just arguing for more developed characters that come closer to being people as opposed to just a group of actors on the stage. The may speak naturally in some cases; they may need the actor to adopt certain mannerisms, affectations that would further assist in the characterization of the character, or in actually taking a character and making them a person you can believe exists on and off screen. No one in the police nor the crime bosses had any distinct characters, there were just two mobs applying different rules to finding this killer. We need to know who some of these characters are, what makes them tick, and show some real conflict beyond the basic good vs. evil, society vs. child killer. At least, that's part of how I see it, I'm a little...mmm...tired right now.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2020, 02:12:33 PM by etdoesgood »
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Teproc

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #226 on: May 16, 2020, 06:53:27 AM »
I'm just arguing for more developed characters that come closer to being people as opposed to just a group of actors on the stage. The may speak naturally, for one film that would; they may need the actor to adopt certain affections that would further assist in the characterization of the character, or in actually taking a character and making them a person you can believe exists on and off screen. No one in the police nor the crime bosses had any distinct characters, there were just two mobs applying different rules to finding this killer. We need to know who some of these characters are, what makes them tick, and show some real conflict beyond the basic good vs. evil, society vs. child killer. At least, that's part of how I see it, I'm a little...mmm...tired right now.

I guess I just disagree that every film needs to be about characters. M has one fully fleshed-out character, everyone else is functional, and that's just what the film needs them to be: groups, not individuals. So of course these aren't characters; because that's not the point. The good v bad question is another one entirely, I do find the final scene to be very effective at putting that aside: this is a sick man who has done evil things, and punishing him solves nothing. It doesn't mean that he shouldn't punished, but I think that's where the film is more complex than that.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #227 on: May 16, 2020, 02:36:21 PM »
I'm just arguing for more developed characters that come closer to being people as opposed to just a group of actors on the stage. The may speak naturally, for one film that would; they may need the actor to adopt certain affections that would further assist in the characterization of the character, or in actually taking a character and making them a person you can believe exists on and off screen. No one in the police nor the crime bosses had any distinct characters, there were just two mobs applying different rules to finding this killer. We need to know who some of these characters are, what makes them tick, and show some real conflict beyond the basic good vs. evil, society vs. child killer. At least, that's part of how I see it, I'm a little...mmm...tired right now.

I guess I just disagree that every film needs to be about characters. M has one fully fleshed-out character, everyone else is functional, and that's just what the film needs them to be: groups, not individuals. So of course these aren't characters; because that's not the point. The good v bad question is another one entirely, I do find the final scene to be very effective at putting that aside: this is a sick man who has done evil things, and punishing him solves nothing. It doesn't mean that he shouldn't punished, but I think that's where the film is more complex than that.

Edited just a few words in that last post, as I had to take a sleep aid last night. Could've deleted it all, but you quoted it, and I don't want your response to seem random or out of context, because it's interesting and I want to respond. I don't ever seem to learn that on those nights I need to stay away from the computer, though.

We differ on that scene toward the end, the kangaroo court of sorts. I think it ended up showing the obvious, that mob rule outside the rule of law is bad. Like I said before, I don't feel much comes of the grandstanding on behalf of the mob and criminals or the rationalizing and rambling of Beckert.

Of course, stock characters pop up in basically every film, but in M - and in most of the noir I've been exposed to recently - they are too prominent, asked to carry too much of the film. Additionally, I don't think Beckert is fully fleshed-out, all we know is he likely has a severe mental health condition and kills compulsively. His character is not enough to carry the film. Another area we differ.

In terms of plot-driven vs. character-driven films, I think even if a film is plot-driven, characters and caricatures you can't believe in are problematic to the suspension of reality. That suspension of reality is crucial to the experience, at least for me. If the leads aren't fully realized people, I struggle to believe in the film, even if they are not actually regular human beings, but superheroes or aliens. In that, world-building is also important, setting-as-character of course enhances the experience. That's just my philosophy, I generally have a hard time when I'm watching a movie driven by a one-dimensional beings. There are exceptions, but M didn't work for me much in that regard.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #228 on: May 17, 2020, 06:45:27 PM »
Raging Bull
MARTIN SCORSESE, 1980
3.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Jake LaMotta is a subject I don’t think hardly anyone would dare touch today, and Martin Scorsese did it justice back in 1980, for the most part. The combination of prize fighter, someone people would automatically look up to and admire for that position, and abusive, self-centered father and brother, is an incredibly volatile mix. It’s said Scorsese found interest in LaMotta, and the idea you just keep on getting back in the ring with the bullshit in life, after he himself nearly died of a drug overdose. It’s hard to say if he did it out of admiration, self-hate, or both. But whether he kept getting back in the ring or not, Jake LaMotta deserves your contempt, even if you find a shred of understanding for him, which I think comes through loud and clear in Raging Bull.

The intensity in Raging Bull is often dialed up to ten, and it is an brutal watch, even if there is a bit of fascination involved. The boxing scenes themselves do anything but actually glorify the sport of boxing, where the sound effects and jerking of heads and bodies making you feel like you yourself have a concussion after each match. The squirting and dripping of the blood just ratchets up the tension all the more. Two of the most intense scenes I’ve ever seen in film are on the domestic violence side, the first when LaMotta takes an off-handed comment about performing sexual acts on his brother, Joey (Joe Pesci), and beats both Joey and hits his wife, Vikie (Cathy Moriarty), dead on, as if she were in the ring with him. The second is of LaMotta in jail, pounding his fists and head against the concrete wall. It is such a raw and awful self-hate flowing through him that’s palpable. The light and shadows in this scene show a man trapped in the basement of his own consciousness, totally helpless, totally rock bottom. I had to look away a few times during the film, something that rarely ever happens, and I wonder how Scorsese himself could continue to watch DeNiro carry on, though he is astounding in portraying the self-destruction, raw anger, and total self-absorption required for the role. It’s also a great move in the writing department that we learn very little about LaMotta’s past, how he got to be as he is, because with that often comes rationalization of his present actions. Considering what we’re witnessing, no one needs to worry on a sad backstory or daddy issues. If anything, we’re looking at 1964, sad and out of shape LaMotta, and getting the story of how he got there, again without pity.

No matter how awful LaMotta looks, by the end, he seems to be getting a second shot at life, performing a comedy (one-man show?) routine to a crowd. This part bugs me more than a little. It’s one thing to watch him bombing in bars and making an ass out of himself, as his second act in life backfires from the beginning, and serving alcohol to young girls out of his bar puts him behind bars. Yet, the last scene, where he is performing in front of three mirrors - which is wonderfully shot, as we see him looking at himself, parts of his face in each mirror, or at least two (to my recollection), maybe an indication that he cannot be whole, or maybe that he remains self-obsessed and unchanged - indulges LaMotta far too much. For a movie so raw in intensity, so fair to its characters throughout, we could’ve left without this. Then again, it’s based on a book by its subject, which can also be rather troublesome - it did last year’s The Irishman in a little, too - so maybe it’s to be expected that we didn’t finish with LaMotta in jail banging his head against a concrete wall. Overall, this may be the most well-crafted, tonally consistent and compelling of the Scorsese films I’ve seen, though the ending troubles me. No one’s coming out of this thing wanting to be Jake LaMotta, but he’s done too much to earn a closing monologue.

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Postscript:
Getting to the halfway mark of the marathon, and to be frank, I’ve already started rethinking how the marathon itself has begun to impact how I think and feel about some of these films, as well as others I have considered to be good or great. It’s why rating films is such a difficult process for me. I’m forever trying to figure out exactly what I like and don’t like in movies. I can already say I’ve soured on Chinatown and Blue Velvet, primarily because I find their protagonists irritating and that they include more than a little shock value. I think I gave them good ratings because I regarded them highly the first time I saw them, but I’m more dubious now. The initial plan was to revisit ratings at the end, because I’m not all that good at rating films in the first place, though to be honest, there are only 3 or 4 I’d change as of right now. Anyway, I think I’ll finish this off with a “Upon Further Consideration” bit where I consider the body as a whole, where I might have gone wrong, and then start planning follow-ups to watch more films from new directors I’ve discovered.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2020, 03:43:14 AM by etdoesgood »
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #229 on: May 19, 2020, 03:47:55 AM »
Rear Window
ALFRED HITCHCOCK, 1954
3 STARS OUT OF 5

Revisiting Rear Window, I fully realized the extent to which this is a better film to talk about than actually view. When you talk about it, you can focus on what Hitchcock is communicating about film-making and viewing as an essentially voyeuristic practice. We can discuss how, through what Jeff, Lisa, and their friends see through that telephoto lens, binoculars, and old-fashioned eyeballs, the lived realities of others are colored. And there are expectations set by the viewers/voyeurs for each “character” in their own rear window theater, from the lonely lover to the social butterfly of a dancer to the piano-playing composer. It deconstructs the experience, shows us, the audience, what we’re really doing when we are watching movies, theater, etc. Another layer is added when Detective Doyle comes in and spoils - if temporarily - some of the juicer theories about what’s going on in the Thorwald residence. Not that our watching the lives of others is bad, necessarily, but it’s the fact that we’re primarily doing it without consciously realizing and coming to grips with the act that make this an interesting view.

Yet, practically, when you are sitting and watching the film, there is a lot of empty (emptier?) space. Jeff and Lisa come from different socioeconomic worlds with their work and backgrounds, so we get a degree of bickering and played-out battle-of-the-sexes talk. Worse, a certain portion of this film is given to Grace Kelly just to play dress up for James Stewart’s (and our, given how we are watching the watchers, here) pleasure. Considering the meta elements of this film, I’m sure there is a way one could justify the filler, but I see it as just that, filler. The murder mystery and the various goings-on of the other apartments likely aren’t enough to fill a feature-length film, so we get a sort of 50’s fan service to go with these more intriguing elements. One other smaller issue is with the overreach on special effects, namely the helicopter at the beginning, the flashbulb eyes, and then the fall from the window, all just very, very bad, and none of them are necessary. Could it be that they looked realistic in the 50’s? Even if, these elements date the movie terribly.

I still like Rear Window for what it can give me to think and talk about, even if on a minute-by-minute visceral level, a lot of it is annoying, silly, and/or dated. The concept itself is great, the set is a marvel, and the way they edit all the action together is impressive. I just can’t escape the more superficial aspects, and I’m not going to attempt to explain them away, as they definitely detracted from my revisit. Between this and Vertigo, I understand some of the Hitchcock mystique, even if the films don’t really hold up for me. There are definitely higher quality and more intriguing selections on this Sight & Sound list, Vertigo at the top spot be damned. Then again, another Hitchcock is up in this marathon, North by Northwest, so we’ll see where I stand after that one.
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