Nora Ephron had a bad marriage to Carl Bernstein the Watergate journalist and Washington pants-man and out of it wrote Heartburn, the first novel with recipes in it, and her most enduring masterpiece, Julie/Julia, was about cooking too. The word ‘romcom’ erupted out of the success of When Harry Met Sally and the great Australian auteur Richard Curtis owed a lot of the mingled poignance and pratfalling of Love, Actually and Four Weddings to the path she trod before him; and so did Sex In The City.
She was the first female director to show you can tell it all, and not lose the admiration of your gender. The orgasm-feigning sequence in WHMS is proof of that; and Julia Child grieving when her sister has a baby when she cannot. All the colours and sadnesses of women are on her palette; and always, always, redeeming, purging laughter too. I suspect I learned more about women from Julie/Julia than from any other recent film: the obsessive need to fulfil a chosen task, the love of ingredients, the hero-worship of an unseen mentor she dares not strive to meet; the ache for task that comes from childlessness; the sorrows of being tall.
This is a tremendous loss. Though she made few films, there are not that many by Woody Allen that are up to her standard of completion, roundedness, punchline, joy in living: Annie Hall, Vicki Cristina Barcelona, Manhattan and Midnight In Paris and the list is at an end. Ephron has left us with five great perfect films which, like those of Preston Sturges, and those of Curtis and Woody, and Wyler’s Roman Holiday, remind us that Shakespearean levels of love and saddening laughter have been available, abundantly and generously and poignantly, in our time.
Name:
RIP – she’ll certainly be missed.
I recall my pleasure when she endorsed my memory by saying that nobody said “fuck” in the 60s…the context was how films/tv looking back at the period (annoyed/enraged..something like that) her.
All well and good until you suggest by your descriptive joy in living that her body of work is somehow superior to Woody Allen’s. Five perfect films ? What about one very good film script (highly derivative of Allen) and a couple of saccharine, formulaic, mixed efforts.
Please add to your list of Allen’s masterworks that balance the joy & melancholy of living – Love and Death, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands & Wives
and then tell me straight faced that the director/writer of Bewitched, Michael and Mixed Nuts is Woody Allen’s equal. I think not.
That aside, a sad loss, thoughts go out to … etc.
I find it disappointing no one mentions Allen’s “Take the Money and Run”, and despite its lesser “film making” how fresh and funny, laugh out loud funny those early films were. Allen’s character faces punishment in the “sweat box” of a Southern US prison, descends the stairs discussing possible policy options with a Mutual Funds salesman who’s going into the box with him.
Yes, that one too. And without wanting to piss too much on the legacy of an otherwise talented & enjoyable writer, let’s add Play it Again Sam to the towering superiority of the Woodster’s oeuvre.
Julie/Julia is one of the twenty best films in English, a list Woody does not make. Sleepless In Seattle is better than all of Woody and as good as An Affair To Remember, praise indeed. When Harry Met Sally as good as Annie Hall.
Discuss.
I’ve got a feeling Bob, your 20 best films of all times in English list probably has around 87 examples.
Can you put up the list? It will go hard for you Bob, the culling I mean, there will be tears and gnashing of teeth when you do.
“Go hard on you”?!?!
Good God man!
Ellis’ absurd “Julie/Julia is one of the twenty best films in English” see’s him poised between Spleenblatt and allthumbs!!!
A pincer movement worthy of Cannae!
I see Bob losing about 20 kilo’s in the effort!
That or banning about 4,000 people for “lies”.
Julie/Julia is a patchy, formulaic, marketing driven, Hollywood movie – save for Stanley Tucci’s typically understated, bemused performance, it is completely forgettable. Streep’s performance is annoying beyond endurance. One of the Best 20 Films in English to the exclusion of Hannah & Her Sisters ? Crimes & Misdemeanors ?
Ha !
Sleepless in Seattle better than all of Woody Allen ? You must be getting sentimental.
Produce the list.
Your assessment of Julie/Julia is too kind.
Yes Bob, give us a list on a separate thread. An appropriate subject for a proper discussion
I didn’t say all put together.
Our own Judy Davis was a perfect Woody woman in Husbands and Wives, slightly neurotic…
Allthumb’s suggestion for Bob to put up his top 87 here is a good idea, will you do it for us, Bob?
The list of twenty.
Modern Times. The Best Years Of Our Lives. The Hustler. North By North-West. Double Indemnity. The Road To Perdition. Love, Actually. Julie/Julia. Brief Encounter. Casablanca. Taxi Driver. It’s A Wonderful Life. Beneath Hill 60. An Affair To Remember. Chariots Of Fire. Cabaret. Pierrepoint. Michael Collins. Hunger. Barney’s Version.
OK I want a clean fight, no hitting below the belt, no rabbit punches, if I say break you break, and when I give the count you return to your corners. So shake hands and when the bell rings come out fighting.
Not one Charlton Heston fiim, not one.
Are you mad?
Maybe its the Whole Michael Moore cum NRA gun totin’ influence weighing on me, but I never wanted to look at Heston again after Bowling for Columbine.
Heston was a more complex character than that, he was an anti-vietnam, pro-civil rights guy and became more conservative as he got older.
He was absolutely terrific in Omega Man, and apart from anything got to say to an ape “get your stinking paws off of me”, the line was used by Meg Ryan character to Billy Crystal, but judiciously cut from the final Ephron script (rumour has it) and they ate salad (unconvincingly)instead.
Movies – without even venturing past the last decade OR considering foreign films – Gerry, Noise, Memento, Michael Clayton, Syriana, The Sweet Hereafter, Elephant, Revolutionary Road, Assassination of Jesse James, Heights, Nine Lives, 21 Grams, Rabbit Hole, Doubt, Barney’s Version, The Visitor, Into the wild, No country for old men, a Single man, a Serious man, Blue Valentine, kings speech, winters bone, drive, the tree of life, biutiful, babel, Little Children, Black Swan…………………
ALL better than Julie/Julia.
You have no business placing Double Indemnity or Brief Encounter
beside Love, Actually.
No business whatsoever.
You also over-rate Beneath Hill 60.
PD, I started making my list, but then I realised Allthumbs and Bob were talking about movies in English, so I had to start again, I had many Italian ,French, Swedish etc…
Anyhow I was pleased to find the Canadian movie The Sweet Hereafter on your list, loved that film.
A Serious Man was shithouse.
A rare misstep from the brudders.
Shithouse? they may indeed be true.
Yet still far better than Julie/Julia.
A wholesome list, but not particularly sexy, even with those couple pieces of bubblegum thrown in. I wouldn’t want to fuck it, if you’ll pardon the Ellis-ism.
OK, Spleenblatt, now you have made me curious about your choice, give us your favorites or your best…
Well, seeing as you’re so sweet, Helvi, my top 20 films in English…
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, A bout de souffle, Les 400 Coups, Jules et Jim, Belle du Jour, L’Amour a l’Apres Midi, La Grand Bouffe, Le Retour de Martin Guerre, Jean de Florette, Manon Des Sources, Le Gloire de Mon Pere, Chateau de ma Mere, Danton, Ridicule, La Crise, Le Mari de la Coiffeuse, Il y a des jours et des lunes, 37.2 le Matin, Chaos, L’Homme du Train.
Anglais, Français, pas beaucoup de différence?
Spleenblatt, you are the sweet one, I agree with your choice, meaning with the ones I have seen, I just remembered Louis Malle whose movies I enjoyed, and a movie called Cousin, Cousine, whoever made it…
C’est si bon, c’est fantastique!
La Belle Noiseuse, Les Enfants du Paradis et Troi Couleurs . . . bonne chance!
I have been absent for some time, it is good to see something other than Julian Assange getting a run.
To the late Patrick Dignam,
The question was the best twenty English-speaking films ever, you fool, not ones made since youcame out of nappies.
Gerry is among the worst five films of all time, Memento makes no sense at all, The Tree Of Life is moronic and some of your ideas are okay. You lied elsewhere saying I had banned four thousand people and I do not print liars and you are banned for life.
If my list were thirty it would include Unforgiven, In The Valley Of Elah, Badlands, The King’s Speech, No Country For Old Men, A Single Man, Midnight Cowboy, Flags Of Our Fathers, Crimes And Misdemeanours and Roman Holiday.
The best film ever made in any language is Downfall.
To the Foolish and Fickle Bob Ellis,
The question may have been “the best twenty English-speaking films ever” but my list was constructed to highlight the sheer absurdity of YOUR list by choosing films ONLY from the recent decade that far surpass your beloved Julie/Julia. If one had to choose from “ever” then your inclusions of “The Love, Actually and Julie/Julia, would languish at the bottom of some rancid cesspit and serve only to confirm your poor judgement.
Julie/Julia over Midnight Cowboy for a top twenty placing??!?!
Do not lie about me Bob Ellis. I said no such thing. Please learn to read. Please learn basic comprehension. Once again I challenge you: if you can find a lie of mine I shall leave dutifully chastened. Till that time leave me be to chat with these good people.
Downfall was excellent.
As was the original “The Vanishing”, “Three Colours: Red and Blue”, Le Boucher, Funny Games, Hidden, the Lives of Others…and about 100 others.
You said all my opinions were cut and pastes of other people’s opinions and I had none of my own.
That is a lie and demonstrably so.
Fuck you.
Go away.
What is wrong with Beneath Hill 60?
What?
I said no such thing you addled, foolish old man!
Bob, please, I implore you to familiarise yourself with the rudiments of language and comprehension before you go off – hair trigger – and embarrass yourself before those who hold you, or at least held you, like myself, in high regard.
I said that about Quixote. Not you. Quixote.
And it is no lie.
Cite for me the quote and you will see its context.
This is not the first time you have failed to follow these admittedly confusing threads. And other Innocent heads have rolled for your negligence.
As I said before, and I say again, for the last time, I have told no lie.
Leave me be to chat with those whose opinions mean something.
Leave me be.
The best film ever, whatever language? One of Andrei Tarkovsky’s works? Or from Jean Renoir? Akira Kurosawa or Michelangelo Antonioni or Krzysztof Kieslowski or Ingmar Bergman or Alejandro Jodorowsky? Or a hundred other visionary film makers.
My stake in the ground? Akira Kurosawa, for a range of reasons not obsessively held.
I loved Kieslowski’s Decalogue more than the Red,White,Blue, series. Can I nominate the collected works of Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidel? And almost anything with Klaus Maria-Brandauer in it, and, and,
Canguro, most of your favourite movie makers are mine as well, I was pleased to see that you mentioned Bad Boy Bubby, who could forget that Aussie master piece…
Enjoyed Ran and Seven Samurai
Ran is a superb movie, extraordinary in its fusion of colour and music and dramatic interplay, a beautifully rendered tragedy that never fails to leave me agape.
Duh! Italics should finish after Ran
Wish we could edit our posts!
Have you seen Downfall?
A one word answer will do.
To whom is the question addressed?
If moi, yes.
Nine words. This tendency toward creeping prolixity mustn’t be encouraged.
I have watched this film very often and I would be interested in why you think it is the best film?
The politics concerning the existence of the film has been pretty divisive, but what elements in the film puts it so high in your list Bob?
Twelve people in it commit suicide for slightly different reasons we understand and feel with. A woman kills her six children and we understand why. Speer tries to stop her but lacks the social skills to persuade her to live and let them live.
Hitler is simultaneously a loveable rumpled bohemian genial man who eats with his underlings and is correct and well mannered with women, and a ruthless, murderous dictator and we understand this division in him. We understand too why the women he offers safety choose to stay and perhaps die beside him, and why Eva Braun dresses up to suicide with him.
No other film gives us this variety of sympathy. The Lives Of Others comes close. Also, every word of it is true, and in world drama only Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Kershner’s Operation Thunderbolt and, perhaps, Cooper’s John Adams is like that.
Frau Goebbels’ decision has always disturbed me deeply. ‘Downfall’ comes closest to providing some sort of explanation, of her mental state and that of Goebbels himself. Stange as it seems to us, Himmler’s reactions seemed the more sane : he tried to cover up the holocaust from October 1944, tried to negotiate with the Allies, fled in disguise and only committed suicide when he was caught and faced a likely hanging after such a trial as Nuremberg, or perhaps worse being handed over to the Russians for ‘special treatment’.
I think the film showed that there was no division in Hitler, and his manners and solicitousness of others were all of one cloth not simultaneity as was talking of the murderous eradication of human beings while at table, or screaming at generals or tweaking the cheek of a boy soldier while giving him a medal in the ruins of the Chancellery.
This capability of politicians to compartmentalize their decisions, thoughts, actions, beliefs, which you see very well portrayed in West Wing (“what’s next”), or the Whitehouse tapes of Nixon, I think was non-existent in Hitler. To him the beer hall tirades, the invasion of Russia and the extermination camps were one and the same and therefore the claim against the film “humanizing” Hitler doesn’t stand.
Mine are favourites that when I saw them made me feel as if I had seen something special in some aspect. Some are because they realised cinematically what was evoked in the original source such as a book. Most are fairly wordy examples,full of language.
The Big Sleep, Babel, Five Easy Pieces, Sid & Nancy, Do the Right Thing, Raining Stones, Nashville, Cabaret, Apocalypse Now, My Dinner with Andre, Fight Club,
The Court Jester, Billy Liar, The Hill, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humoresque,
This is England, Seven, The Indian Runner, Godfather 1,
That is an honourable list, Patrick Dignam’s one intermittently unhinged. In Gerry two young men walk in one shot for ten minutes through indifferent scenery unspeaking. In The Tree Of Life they all end up on a beach in heaven.
God rest his soul.
Gerry: someone once remarked that it was a union of Sam Beckett and Ansell Adams. I have heard no better assessment. I had not seen its like before and it still lingers, years on. An extraordinary piece of film.
Tree of life: there is more originality, Imagination and ‘story-telling’, in its first ten minutes than Julie/Julia has in its 90.
Beneath hill 60: it is a fine film, tarnished only by its failure to reconcile, convincingly, the story of the Front with that of Cowell’s home/romantic self; The dovetail seems forced and leaden – a distraction rather than a compliment.
‘Noise’ is far better.
Far better.
Failure to reconcile WHAT?
Have you seen the film?
Or did you doze through it on an aeroplane?
What cinema did you see it in?
Don’t lie to me.
What a tosser you are.
Please answer this.
I will delay your extinction until you do.
Ellis! Shut up!
Sheath your bullish hubris and dull hyperbole!
I am not one of your catamites cowering at the thought of engagement!
What’s the matter with you?
What is the matter with you?
Do I sound as if I would comment on things unseen?
Do I?
You are running headlong into puerile caricature.
Do it somewhere else, do it for someone else.
I’m no longer interested,
You fell off my pedestal long ago.
And that, that, was a sad thing.
Just leave us to chat.
Just leave me to chat,
Please.
We (I) seem to be doing just fine.
Just fine.
Allthumbs, that “something special” of yours? It is my “something different”.
I can remember the first time I saw “The Vanishing”. Was it the time or the place or my life circumstances, was it the drinks or the company?
Who knows?
But I was frightened for the first time in my life, as an adult.
Quite remarkable.
Films, like novels and art and music and architecture, seem to signpost my (our) life. Who can guess at the course,
or plot the folds of the ribbon?
The Robin Wright Penn segment of “Nine Lives” tore at my heart.
A tear moistened my eye at the quiet, lonely slow dying of Idealism in “Into the Wild”.
I struggled, desperate, to contain the agoraphobia and rising anxiety in “Gerry”.
And my heart burst in utter astonishment and immeasurable joy at the inclusion of Eno’s Apollo soundtrack in the supermarket and elevator scenes of “Drive”.
A Dedalean epiphany! Radiant. Resonant.
Nothing less.
So again I ask,allthumbs, who can fathom the nature of the umbilicus that tethers us to these…things?
What unguessed coordinates determine our steps?
Lovely post, Mr Dignam.
We’re all entitled to our own private lists of favourite flics, and that’s as it should be – my love of flowering bulbs ought not trump your affection for orchids under any circumstances but the net effect is the same, isn’t it? One’s experience of being in the presence of, say, a bunch of Ranunculi or blooming Irises is no more or less intense than another’s love of Paphiopedila or Oncidia.
We react, or respond, in equal measure.
And I guess, to some extent, that measure of egalitarian response is one of the primary elements of our relationship to cinema, in its never-ending capacity to allow us to empathise with the human condition in all its kaleidoscopic potential.
The genres are well-established, and the stories are told, and behind each production are the creators who are moved by the same sets of impulses as we are.
Similar to the flocking behaviour of birds and the shoaling of fish, we participate in what Dr. Jung termed the collective unconscious.
I saw the movie Tangshan Earthquake / Aftershock last year in China, in a cinema full of Chinese people. I think maybe the whole audience were bawling, including me, even though I understood less than 10% of the spoken Mandarin.
We’re genetically coded to respond emotionally to signals (and that’s why psychopaths are such dangerous people, with their inability to feel empathy).
Thanks for that post. I’d have to google the horticultural names to understand anything of the first part and yet the meaning was perfectly clear to me.
But I thought your account of the Chinese cinema experience was at once fascinating and uplifting. The kind of memory I could imagine anyone would treasure.
I second that Hudson, nice one from Canguro.
May I add I had no problem with the Latin names of the flowers; every summer during my high school years we had to collect, dry and name hundred different plants…we had to fix them onto huge sheets of artists paper…a job and a half!
Thank you Canguro for your kind words.
I feel the same way; never convinced by the Lockean psychology of the tabula rasa, I sought refuge in Jung’s ever recurring patterns.
Whenever I find myself in doubt as to the “truth” of this, I look at Hamlet and am quickly returned to the fold.
I notice that you mention “empathy” twice. The term remains a primary motif for me; I could probably say that it is my first lens.
So many conversations, so little time…;
Good man Canguro.
PD,I think you would enjoy the work of Peter Kubelka, I don’t think any of it exists in English, interesting guy.
Now that I reflect on it, Kubelka’s work and lectures include a lot on semiotics. I came across him via a documentary way back in the early 90′s I think made (I’m guessing) by the ORF.
Don’t ask me to describe it, it’s pure film, film is the message, the medium, like I said don’t ask me to describe it.
Hello allthumbs.
Thank you for that link.
Could you describe it for me?
Perhaps I can surprise you a little.
On the left hand wall of my dining room, above the sideboard, I have a large canvas – 2200mm*1800mm – of the binary detail of “Arnulf Rainer 1960″.
And it looks like this:
http://prehysteries.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/peter-kubelka-arnuf-rainer.html
It was an investigation into (the minimal treatments of)Sequence as a Dynamic System, and Series as a Genetic one.
Admittedly my prime influences were the minimalists in both art and architecture – but this image of Kebulka’s film score you see before you now is as perfect an expression of that aesthetic (and investigation) as anything given us by Judd or Mies, Andre, Tando, Barragan, Morris or Martin.
When you come for dinner you will see it for yourself. Bring Canguro, word has it he has a bottle of baijiu that needs drinkin’!
Now, about that description…..
Everytime i have mentioned Kubelka to anyone they have thought it to be a soup dish from Romania.
Wow!
Drive is a computer game, well rendered. The Vanishing is excellent, but, like Run, Lola, Run, an anecdote rather than, like North By North West, a full-blown film. Gerry is not only logical nonsense — where do all those extra mountains come from? — but among the worst three films I have ever seen, the others being Sunrise At Campobello and Star of Texas.
If you have not seen the films I have cited you are, once again, as is your habit, lying.
And are banned, and banned, and banned, for life.
Again?!?!
Damn you Ellis!
You want to play this Russian roulette with me?
Load your chamber man….and pull the trigger!
Cite the lies!
Cite them!
Pull the trigger!
Di di mau!
Di di mau!
Cite them!
Cite the lies!
Do it!
Damn you, pull the fucking trigger and cite the lies!
Otherwise,
put it down, step away from the table and walk away.
Don’t even look back to apologise,
Damn you!
You are haunted by “lies” and see them everywhere.
Even where there’s none to be seen.
If you seek my answer to your question; one I’ve already broadly outlined, then you shall have to ask me with your bloodied Sword of Damocles sheathed.
I told you once before, I shall not stand on your scaffold Ellis.
Perhaps there was a time when I would have, but that time has long passed.
Ask it befitting our station as adults.
Or don’t ask it at all.
i never sought to Vex your ghost:
I sought simply to let you pass,
I don’t hate you enough that i would,
upon the rack of this tough world,
Stretch you out longer.
Leave me be,
“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
Leave me be.
Just go away.
Leave me alone.
Done.
A Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Casablanca, The Terminator, The Lord of the Rings (3 of them), Dr Strangelove, Life of Brian, The Exorcist, Blade Runner, Paths of Glory, Shawshank Redemption, North By Northwest, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, Battleship Potemkine, and why not Mad Max to round it out.
A good list.
I’d but 10 bucks down saying Mr Ellis has never seen Donnie Darko.
What about Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando? Apocalypse now? Easy Rider?
I’ve seen it. It is very fine. Keep the money. The Brando Mutiny has a good Bligh but Brando has an ‘anyone for tennis? ‘ accent which makes the whole thing ludicrous. The Laughton-Gable one, by the same screenwriters, is twice as good.
Apocalypse Now is for two hours a very great film indeed but Brando’s fat paratrooper reciting T.S. Eliot and Dennis Hopper’s improvised crazy rants and bizarre exit kibosh it in the last two reels.
And it’s a pity.
No, no, no, no, no, Bob, Hopper is magnificent, although I’m not sure he was acting. Witness the performance of an almost medieval acolyte, beatific, awestruck, scared shitless, a man reduced in the presence of God to an idiot with St.Vitus Dance.
It reminds me of the character in Herzog’s Nosferatu, the Count’s manservant.
It was to you. To Patrick Dignam, I address again the question, while he lives, what is wrong with Beneath Hill 60?
What World War 1 film is better?
I’m aghast.
The Missouri Breaks!?
The man was brilliant!
I’ve seen a decent version of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front. I’m going to watch downfall and rip it to shreds. Shreds sir.
You will be astounded.
Watch it sober, with someone you love.
I thought:
All Quiet…
Paths to Glory
Gallipoli
Lawrence of Arabia
better.
Gallipoli? See my review in these pages.
Madness. Madness.
Aha Ellis, my sneaky, slippery antagonist!
You took the bait “Gallipoli”, but left the others unmentioned!
So, you thought Hill 60 better than “All Quiet…” and “Paths to Glory”?
Really?
Tell me, tell us, why.
Let me get comfortable.
More roundedcharacters. Better mud. Better reconnaissance scenes. Batter dialogue. Better central performance. Scenes of home and postwar trauma. Picture of a society I belong to.
Hill 60?
The scenes from the Front; bombs, digging, sweat, dirt, flares, guns, artillery were intense, claustrophobic, and superbly done.
No argument.
However, seeking to flesh out the character of Woodward (Cowell’s); to give it the history and depth the director imagined we needed, the cut away’s to his life in Australia and his romance did little, I thought, to add to the film’s strength .
What it did do, unfortunately, was temper the Front scenes; offer a respite where none should have been given; dull the intensity, when that intensity was cutting its deepest.
What it did do, unfortunately, was dilute the resonating and evocative power of those carefully constructed scenes of Horror; those slowly, steadily repeated scenes of mud, anxiety and fear.
Contrasts or juxtapositions are wonderful things – they can throw into sharp relief motifs, symbols, experiences – but they can also diminish themselves.
And that’s what I think happened here.
I believe it was an error of judgement on the part of the director/writers.
They, no doubt, sought compliment, context, and richness – they achieved, to my mind, only dilution and distraction.
You don’t slow a punch, mid throw, because you’re considering what to do with the other hand.
Aside from that, an excellent film.
“Noise” was better though.
I thought.
Why no tempering? Why take out the context? Why not see where he came from, who he was, and why he went to war?
Why?
Why?
I’ll address this below
Each to their own, and enjoy your arguments. My ten cent’s worth…
Repulsion, In Cold Blood, Catch-22, A Woman Under the Influence, Raging Bull, Fool For Love, The Usual Suspects, Dead Man, L.A. Confidential, Mulholland Drive, Adaptation, The Assasination of Jesse James, Bad Boy Bubby, The Proposition, Prospero’s Books, Nightwatching, Dr Strangelove, The Third Man, Sexy Beast, The Reckoning.
That’s a lotta bang for your 10 cents Canguro. A whole lotta bang!
Re: Strangelove, I was always more drawn to its book-end “Fail Safe”.
Wrong to compare Strangelove with Fail-Safe. Like comparing Downfall with Duck Soup.
Oddly enough it could be argued that the plethora of Downfall parodies on YouTube make that very thing possible.
The makers were wrong to try and censor them though, they drew attention to what was a very fine film in my view. And taking an empathetic view of the situation made me wonder, not for the first time, about the implications of ideology.
Might it be possible, perhaps even more so, for even the best of ideologies to compel people to act in a totalitarian manner? In accepting no substitutes for that which they regard to be the most superior ideal it could be argued that few if any ideologies could not be used to accrue power to some form of despotic regime.
Totalitarianism is a possible outcome with any form of utopian thinking.
Some might say a likely one.
That is so because those who are certain – certain – that they have the one true revelation are beholden to proselytise and enforce their vision of society.
There is no more chilling phrase in the language than “God is on my side” or its secular equivalent of certainty.
I agree
Out of that lot I have seen and enjoyed:In cold Blood, A Woman Under The Influence,, The Usual Suspects (was it one of Tarantino’s?),Bad Boy Bubby, The Third Man…
I loved Tarantino’s movies, once I was the only female in audience…hubby preferred a coffee and cake next door…
The worst five movies in English: the Nostradamus Kid, My First Wife, Goodbye Paradise, Newsfront and Fatty Finn.
Discuss.
Even I would ban you for such impertinence. The only dud there is Fatty Finn. And that wouldn’t even make a list of the worst 100 Australian movies.
Hasn’t Bob Ellis’s rancid mayonnaise been previously banned for similar idiotic offerings?
Does anyone agree with this list?
Anyone?
Why say it?
I’ve just tried to ignore him along with that other twat, Tiny Dancer. I am suprised it took him so long to come up with it.
I will hear nothing ill said of that luminous masterpiece, The Nostradamus Kid. Shame!
Go fuck yourself.
It’s an okay film but nowhere near Hill 60, Samson and Delilah, Flirting, The Year My Voice Broke, Angel Baby, Lonelyhearts, Careless Love or Breaker Morant.
Or its closest equivalent, A Serious Man.
I would have to take issue with you here. Newsfront was great, one of the better Australian films.Nostradamus, First Wife and Goodbye Paradise were certainly all better than most of the recent crap produced in Australia.
I hated Fatty Finn but then I have always been a Ginger Meggs man.
My list off the top of my head: Casablanca, Manhattan, Dr Zhivago, Z, The Big Country, Gone with the Wind, Butch Cassidy, In a Lonely Place, The Big Sleep, The Caine Mutiny. Lawrence of Arabia, Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, High Noon, LA Confidential, Paths of Glory,Hannah and her Sisters, On the Waterfront, Dr Strangelove, Godfather 1, Godfather 2.
That too is a good list, and further proof that Patrick Dignam, poor sad soul, was, while he lived, deranged.
Cool Hand Luke, The Great Dictator, One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest, Being John Malkovich, 12 Angry Men, The Grapes of Wrath, The Maltese Falcon, Pulp Fiction, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, The Usual Suspects, Blade Runner, Raging Bull, Life of Brian, Night on Earth, Seven Samurai, To Kill a Mockingbird, The third man, A clockwork Orange, Nosferatu and Citizen Kane….
All of these are great films and I had fun sharing a list, but now is not the time to say they were better of worse that Nora Ephron’s. She had a deft touch, she will be missed and she grows on me as time passes, which bodes well I think for her legacy.
Of your list only To Kill A Mockingbird and The Grapes Of Wrath are flawless and should, perhaps, be in my first thirty. Asked in 1970 what what were the best ten American films of all time were, Peter Bogdanovitch said, ‘Don’t talk to me. I’m still trying to work out what the best films of 1939 were.’
And he cited Goodbye Mr Chips, How Green Was My Valley, Stagecoach, Young Mr Lincoln, the Wizard Of Oz, Bringing Up Baby, Dr Jeckyll And Mr Hyde, Mr Smith Goes To Washington and Gone With The Wind.
You see the problem.
Yes 1939 though some decades before my inception was I think the year that Gone with the Wind beat the Wizard of Oz at the Academy Awards. I suppose just about anyone would have to call that spoiled for choice.
Oddly in my generation I suspect The Wizard of Oz has perhaps gained greater recognition.
It is hard to beat old films though. I simply marvel at the Globe scene in The Great Dictator, and for that alone put it slightly ahead of Modern Times.
How Green Was My Valley was 1941 and aced Citizen Kane remember?
By John Ford? As was Grapes of Wrath and Stagecoach?
Well I don’t remember at first hand. But I’m familiar with the history, and I always thought that decision was probably politically motivated.
If you are talking about Citizen Kane I agree. Really political (well maybe commercial and not that Academy Awards are all about quality anyway – well not today at least).
I just wanted to have a slight dig at Bob for joking the othger day about Craig Lahiff being better than John Ford. Whenever I see a great Ford movie in Bob’s lists I like to mention it.
Oh and the last of the Fabulous Five from 1939 was Beau Geste
Hudson, I like your selection, most of your favourites get my blessing; Cool Hand Luke, Pulp Fiction, Life of Brian, Malkovich, Cuckoo’s nest…there eccentricity, humour, morality…perfect…
Thanks Helvi,
It has been interesting reading other’s posts about European cinema I still have to look forward to.
I know my list by comparison with Bob’s and those of some others is perhaps full of more mainstream favourites. Perhaps the charm of some of the more off beat suggestions, is that they suggest something we may have overlooked or want to investigate further. Though I don’t know how Bob sets such finely honed criteria for cinematic greatness, I couldn’t order my top 20 in any kind of ascendency for trying.
If somebody knows how you compare Chaplin with Kurosawa with Jarmusch or Tarantino then by all means I must’ve lost the memo. I just love them all and Nora Ephron made that class too, and maybe Allan Konigsberg is a little overrated but who am I a non film-maker to look askance at the least of these?
What happened to talking about Nora Ephron? It was a lovely tribute to a great writer – a brilliant essayist, too. And don’t forget she also wrote Silkwood and Heartburn.
Good point. Although I’m guilty of meandering a bit as well, pondering my own film favorites (Barb Wire, Independence Day etc).
You left out a lot of “The” movies,
The Killers (Burt Lancaster version) The Searchers The Deer Hunter, The Sailor from Gibralter, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Godfather, The Third man
Forgot The Train.
Good to see that so many films enables so much enjoyment to so many. Just goes to show ‘best’ is not normally general or achievable.
Of so many good Bette Davis movies I still like ‘Old Acquaintance’ as MY best (most enjoyable) for example.
The Train is very fine. So too is The Manchurian Candidate, my number 31.
For this intervention, you are reprieved.
Welcome back.
Thank you to all contributors; there isn’t a bad movie amongst the top 20s, and many are so good that my top 20 is now about 100 . . .
A question Bob : which films do you regard as the most influential – not necessarily good in themselves?
All Quiet On the Western Front, perhaps? Citizen Kane, Psycho, Nosferatu, It Happened One Night, 2001, Fantasia?
Bob mentions Modern Times, and I’d throw in Keating’s The General and Metropolis for good measure just to go back early enough so as to be able to see where you could see the medium of film being explored by some pioneers.
There was a famous documentary about the Inuit called Nanook of the North. There’s some controversy about faked scenes, but the detractors be damned, it showed what was possible with documentary.
And your list seems good, each one picked out not just for greatness but for bringing something new to the screen. I’d add The Graduate and things like 2001 A Space Odyssey, Night of the Living Dead, Easy Rider, Enter the Dragon, Jaws and Star Wars. Not all for being particularly great but for more or less creating genres or sub-genre’s of films that either got copied or entered the zeitgeist in terms of the number of jokes and cultural references that they spawned.
If you want to add Deep Throat for films that had a slightly less tasteful influence then fair enough, but the only joke about that I can think of is Cheech & Chong’s “I know her sister, Sore Throat.”
Oh Bugger my spell checker, or by thumbs have gotten Buster Keaton tangled up with Paul Keating, which is ironic because when his was PM I remember it often defaulted to Cheating…
Everyone’s a critic!
OK I will put two more out there for comment. The Lion King. Shakespearian Tragedy at its finest, combines Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth and Richard the Third, with tunes and lyrics that put to shame any of the musical interludes performed at the Globe. Vast in scope and ambition with more laughs in one Nathan Lane routine as Pumbaa than all of the “comedies”.
Second is “Mousehunt” I consider it to be the perfect film comedy, not a dull spot from beginning to end, nothing rivals it, nothing.
PD, here is a DVD of PK, Film as Even, Film as Language, Thinking as Film.
It is in German no subtitles, not as good as the original documentary I saw on him many years ago, but a film of one of his lectures.
They ship to Australia.
http://www.hoanzl.at/film-als-ereignis-film-als-sprache-denken-als-film.html
If I were listing forty I would add The Manchurian Candidate, The Train, A Man For All Seasons, In Which We Serve, An American In Paris, Night On Earth, Daniel, Midnight In Paris, Annie Hall and Blume In Love.
Listing foreign films is impossible. The forty film festivals I have been at have shown me dozens that I thought in the top five for a while.
And I missed, literally, thousands of others.
I said it before Bob, get some more of these posts out there and you will be surprised (a bit less than I have been, possibly) by the non-political interests of your readers.
I, for one, get a lot out of them and perhaps your disappointments about the political comment will be compensated for somewhat.
thank you allthumbs.
I shall look into it immediately.
My German is atrocious, I must confess.
Aside from entschuldigen Sie bitte,
Wo ist……toilets, cigarettes, gin,
I know little else.
Some Nietzsche, some Heidegger, some Husserl, but that’s about it.
In Nov 1989 I found myself standing about 50, 60 meters to the right of Brandenburg Gate, along the wall. Two East Berliners, father and son, were hammering at the wall with small 4 pound hammers and a cold chisel. They were placing the small pieces, stone aggregate on one side and brightly colored graffiti scrawl on the other, into a small dark blue bag – an old 1950′s Lufthansa travel bag, one strap wrapped in duct tape.
They wore flimsy spray jackets, like the ones we used to see in K mart or Big W, in the 70′s.
They had tears in their eyes and I offered them cigarettes to relieve either the bitter cold or their grieving hearts.
I didn’t know which and was too young to ask.
The two men talked to me in German, thinking I understood more than I did. I simply nodded and kept offering the cigarettes. They were probably tell me of what the Wall meant to them; of what calamities it had wrought upon their lives, of friends perhaps killed crossing, of lives and histories irrevocably stricken, ruptured, of families lost; of empty, cold, sad and bitter lives.
I understood not a word.
But kept offering the cigarettes, They were duty free Marlboro 100′s and it was all I had to bring to this melancholy table.
We three smoked two packets in under 2 hours.
The weight of their story, even without meaning, took its toll and I bid them a tearful tschus and wandered off, dejected and confused, back up the path onto the Eberstrabe.
It was so cold.
My pockets full of small chunks of the Berlin Wall.
And now they sit, static and poignant, less than 20 feet from me; a memory to my to that cold morn where language let me down.
It’s difficult for me to think of the German language – guttural thing it is – without thinking of those two men and my inability to reach across the chasm.
It saddens me still.
I am rambling again.
I think yesterday’s conversation with both yourself and Canguro has left an impression.
And so to you both I say, thank you.
Thank you.
I never found German to be gutteral, the Swiss for sure, perhaps because the Austrian dialects are softer, smoother,isshiness more than ikkichichness.
Two of the greatest voices in the German language, both Austrians were those of Oskar Werner and Writer, Director, Producer, Axel Corti. Both gone to early.
No one has mentioned the seminal, early nineteen thirties movie “Freaks”. Nothing in any medium has managed to be so guilelessly, innocently radical before or since. Moving? This film will haunt you across a thousand lifetimes. Favourite scene;- with no relevance to the plot, the camera lingers for five minutes on a man with no arms or legs rolling a cigarette. It is more physically beautiful than Viv Richard’s bowling action. And talk about a denouement! You will never think of the phrase chicken lady in the same way again. Plenty of heart. Five stars.
And it beats the shit out of Love Actually.
Reading McMurtry,I remembered The Last Picture Show based on his book.
Other good one, in no special order: Woman Of The Dunes, My Life As a Dog, Rosemary’s Baby, anything by Lina Wertmuller, Bertoluzzi, Bergman,Kaurismaki..
Death in Venicea Man and Woman, The Lives Of Others, Blue Velvet….
Lina Wertmuller, there’s a name that brings back memories, Giancarlo Giannini, a bassett hound in a suit but more soulful.
Helvi, Polanski, God knows I have tried, really tried, I know about Chinatown and rebirth of Noir and all that, I just find the films of Polanksi I have seen, pedestrian. Dead of Night was scarier than Rosemary’s baby, I couldn’t watch Ron Blaskett for years. But that spurs another association, John Cassavete’s “Husbands” can’t remember a thing about it, but thinking at the time, this guy was really good.
Not to forget Visconti, and the Greek movies like Z, Never on Sunday and Zorba…
I saw a little show about Greese, presented by Joanne Lumley on ABC1,
Those wonderful bare rocky hills, so beautiful…the little old lady looking for wild asparagus for her own, and for her rare visitor’s supper. She was modest, content and hospitable, heart-warming stuff….
I’ve enjoyed everybody’s lists, particularly being reminded of films I’d forgotten. Here’s my list. Not the 20 best, because that’s complicated and possibly undesirable, just 20 that come to mind when I think about movies:
Pandora’s Box, White Heat, Sunset Boulevard, Coup de Torchon, Dog Day Afternoon, Roma, The Conformist, Throne of Blood, The King of Comedy, Blade Runner, A Prophet, Election, Old Boy, Red Cliff, Three Monkeys, Lebanon, Gimme Shelter, Fog of War, Inside Job, Until the Light Takes Us.
That is a good list with no bad film in it.
I wonder why this Dignam is deranged?
Sometimes he seems deranged and sometimes not. Of course, he may be more than one person.
Double Indemnity is also a film I’m very fond of. I really liked the comment a foreign director (I can’t remember who) made at the Oscars when receiving his Best Foreign Film award: “I don’t believe in God, so I’m going to thank Billy Wilder”.
Me?
Deranged?
And yet it was you who…ahem…placed “Julie/Julia” above “midnight Cowboy”, above “Manchurian Candidate”, above “The Grapes of Wrath”, above “the apartment”, night of the hunter, Cuckoo’s nest, Apocalypse now, Rear Window, king lear (peter Brook),
godfather 1,2….
dear oh dear….
Let the rationalising commence!
Next time, if you have something to say, something to ask, ask it directly to me.
I await too your response on my Hill 60 thoughts.
Let’s have them.
…seen The Conformist many times,a fantastic movie.
Bob, from your questions above:
The Last time.
*The return home, to me, lacked in “fullness”.
* It offered no (deeper) appreciation of the man that I didn’t already possess.
* Signposting cliche markers as motivations is not suggestive of a great, rich, or valuable work.
*The return home sequences delivered no “deep well”, pullulating with great character insight, psychological motivation, or subtle, shifting, revelations.
*These sequences were, to my mind, a rudimentary schema – bordering in parts on cliche.
*** And so, I thought, the movie suffered NOT as a result of taking us back, but for taking us back to such lite fare.
Again, the powerful and painstakingly constructed arc of blood and mud of the Front scenes were punctuated by this…this, gossamer chord.
The tracing of Tension was broken.
If you seek a greater understanding of my notion of “compliment” then look no further than – Sonnet 73, Gloucester in Lear, Pozzo’a speech in Godot, Kilgore in Apocalypse, the 1907-1911 painting of Picasso and Braque, the whispers in Tree of Life, the silence in “Gerry”, Kubrick’s monolith tablet on the artwork of Judd, Morris.
Do you follow?
By all means contextualise.
By all means.
Just do it with the same imaginative force as the rest of the movie – do it with the same strength of vision as the rest of the movie – do it with the same verve and gusto as the rest of the movie – do it with the same eye toward what Coleridge would term the “natural” as the rest of the movie.
Forsake the soft cliche.
Do you understand, now?
You can keep your mud and your aerial reconnaissance scenes.
They are but a technical piffle on Paul’s outstrectched arm,
reaching for the butterfly.
Bob Ellis, you were never going to escape this Julie/Julia thread with your dignity intact.
Never.
It was over before it began.
Pfffft!
Goodbye forever.
I had decided to reprieve you but you are an idiot.
Not that it matters but Beneath Hill 60 was a true story about a real man and where he came from and who he married.
How dare you say these things should have been left out of his biography.
It would have been a world first.
Go away. Just go away.
And never come back.
I don’t think you even saw the film.
Didn’t see the last titles, did you?
Clearly.
Go away.
If there is a hell you will be in it, watching Gerry forever and clawing at your eyes until they bleed.
Goodbye.
Banned for life.
A Preface
Ellis, you don’t “decide” to reprieve me.
You have no hold,
I stand on no scaffold,
“Not that it matters but” – it is difficult to locate a more reprehensible qualification in all of the English language than that.
I care not a jot if it be a “a true story about a real man”.
We were discussing the value judgement “better”. The one YOU proposed as the defining arbiter.
Remember???
Biography didn’t even enter into it. But I do believe you did mention what must have been, to you, more salient features – ah yes, i remember now, it was “Better mud. Better reconnaissance scenes”.
Nothing really about “a true story about a real man”.
“I don’t think you even saw the film”
Really? You think that?
After all the words I’ve invested in answering your question, you really think I haven’t seen the film?
This puerile mannerism of yours, where outright accusatory lies are dressed as questions, has lost its charm.
“If there is a hell you will be in it” – the final disgraceful, contemptible words of a moribund mind.
Epilogue.
Bob Ellis, your trade is polemic. Your overuse of this tool see’s you lose more arguments than win.
But that’s a second order issue.
What is of greater concern is this: you are a moral coward and you resort to intellectual laziness. Why? How? You shift the goalposts too much, too often. It cuts the rug out from under every position, every argument, every possibility. It destabilises the lines of rhetoric and discourse and neuters any kind of intellectual/ moral amelioration.
After so many years, so many words, so many arguments…..it is a bitter and ruined legacy to bequeath.
You’re now an old man, change it while you can.
Change it before it’s too late.
Change it.
Patrick Dignam
Ghosts of the Civil Dead.
Stone.
These are great Aussie films not mentioned.
I said I’d rip Downfall to shreds, it is hard though to culturally criticize a war film.
It seems in a war film you get away with a lot more than you would in any other film, it’s all the explosions and shots of hacked off limbs in buckets that keep the Audience’s attention and as long as the violence is “authentic” the Audience seems to approve.
I had seen it before, and I’ll admit to skipping though Hitler rants.
Personally I would of liked the film better if somewhere along the line somebody stopped and reflected, “I wonder what became of poor old Hess?”.
Then I went in search of revisionist Historians.
Downfall is, as near as we can figure at this remove, historically accurate.
The respect and awe in which the Fuehrer was held by his associates and even his generals would beggar belief if we did not know the history of events before the film starts. We would wonder who is the more deranged – the leader himself, or those who allowed themselves to be led by him.
All About Eve, Bringing Up Baby, City Lights, Manhattan, Dances With Wolves, Bladerunner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Amadeus, Colonel Redl, Night of the Shooting Stars, Sunshine, Cosi, Silkwood, Crimes of the Heart, Frances, Rebecca, Lsura, Persona, Scenes from a Marriage, A woman under the influence, Plenty.