Scenes from a Film Study

1
Introduction

The First:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKLvKZ6nIiA
High Noon (1952)


The Milestone:

The Great Train Robbery (1903)


Keaton:


Kubrick:

Full Metal Jacket (1987)


2
City Symphony/Urban Jungle

The City Symphony:



Man With a Movie Camera (1927)

Lang:

M (1931)

Noir:

Double Indemnity (1944)

Neo-Noir:



Chinatown (1974)

NYC Take 1:

Taxi Driver (1976)

NYC Take 2:

Manhattan (1979)

Death of the Gangster, Take One:

Little Caesar (1931)

Death of the Gangster, Take Two:

The Roaring Twenties (1939)


3
The Land, The Road, The West





Bonnie & Clyde (1967)


The Wild Bunch (1969)


North by Northwest (1959)


El Topo (1970)


4
Documentary/Cinéma vérité



Grey Gardens (1975)


Grey Gardens (2009)


Salesman (1968)


Gimme Shelter (1970)


Fog of War (2003)

Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

Director: Werner Herzog

Dont Look Back (1967)

Director: D.A. Pennebaker

Network (1976)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Grey Gardens (2009)

"Well, mother and I are very entertaining, that's true... "

Director: Michael Sucsy
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Jessica Lange

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)

"I'd rather be damned-if-I-don't."

Director: Errol Morris

"I think the human race needs to think about killing.
How much evil must we do in order to do good."

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

"After all, a lot of people are going to think we are a shocking pair."

Directory: Stanley Kramer
Starring: Sidney Poitier, Katharine Kepburn, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Houghton

The Fisher King (1991)

"And the fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."

Director: Terry Gilliam
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams










Oh my God, Tom Waits cameo! Oh my God, this movie was really good!

The History Boys (2006)

"How do I define history? Well it's just one fucking thing after another. "

Director: Nicholas Hytner
Starring: Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, Richard Griffiths, Jamie Parker, Stephen Campbell Moore

Gimme Shelter (1970)

"Who's fighting and what for?"

Directors: Albert and David Maysles

Salesman (1968)

"A man who is bad at sales has gotta be good at making excuses."

Directors: Albert and David Maysles

Manhattan (1979)

"Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Beneath his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. I love this. New York was his town, and it always would be... "

Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Anne Byrne




Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face...

Watchmen (2009)

"Watchmen. One of us died tonight. Somebody knows why. Somebody knows."

Director: Zach Snyder
Starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Malin Akerman, Matthew Goode

re: The Oscars re: Best Actress re: Kate Winslet

Brilliance.

Orlando (1992)

"Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old."

Director: Sally Potter
Based on the novel by Virginia Woolf
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Quentin Crisp, Billy Zane









Wonderful and strange and very Jungian.
Because I am in the award-giving spirit I will say this for now:
The honor of "Achievement in Smoldering Bedroom Eyes" goes to...

Billy Zane!

Man on Wire (2008)

"To me, it's really so simple, that life should be lived on the edge. You have to exercise rebellion. To refuse to tape yourself to the rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge. Then you will live your life on the tightrope."

Director: James Marsh

Taxi Driver (1976)

"Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me."

Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodi Foster











Oh, I had to:

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

"They named a brandy after Napoleon, they made a herring out of Bismarck, and the Fuhrer is going to end up as a piece of cheese!"

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Starring: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny






I giggled like a school girl. As a lover of both Hamlet and that Mel Brooks-type comedy...this is something right on top of it, riding on the coattails of history.

MASH (1970)

"Attention. Tonight's movie has been "M*A*S*H." Follow the zany antics of our combat surgeons as they cut and stitch their way along the front lines..."


Director: Robert Altman
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman











Hotlips O'Houlihan: I wonder how such a degenerated person ever reached a position of authority in the Army Medical Corps.
Father Mulcahy: He was drafted.

La Double vie de Véronique (1991)

"What else do you want to know about me?"


Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Starring: Irène Jacob, Wladyslaw Kowalski, Philippe Volter









String of Adjectives: Haunting, Elegant, Beautiful, Mysterious, Sexy, Peculiar (...)
Very much Kieslowski as I know him thus far.

Girl Shy (1924)

"The Secret of Making Love...from the Author who knows, and knows, and knows."

Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston

The Wrestler (2008)

"The only one that's going to tell me when I'm through doing my thing is you people here."

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood








Beautiful, raw -- between the images themselves and the grainy, chapped reality of their collective story, The Wrestler is really something. Where it draws the weightiest blow is not in the nature of the plot necessarily but in the intensive study of human relationships within it. What's been said of Mickey Rourke groans with accuracy -- he's brilliant, powerful, vulnerable, unforgettable.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995)

"To direct a picture, a man needs humility.."

Directors: Martin Scorsese, Michael Henry Wilson












I hesitated to log this before I realized that it's way better to record everything I watch and not fuss over genres and classifications. I'm really enjoying it and plan on building up a response over time. This will be running (I'm only about 1/3 in. It is very long). So far I find myself occasionally slightly startled by the sweetness and sincerity in Scorsese's eyes (hehe), particularly at the start when he recollects falling in love with film. It is very intimate.

El Topo (1970)

"Too much perfection is a mistake."

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio

Lennon/Ono loved it. Bob Dylan loved it. Not surprised Dennis Hopper loved it. Definitely not surprised David Lynch loved it. I think the best part of this movie for me was that I watched it on a train where many of my fellow passengers had easy eye-lines to the screen. I can't imagine what one would think seeing just a clip from this, soundless, without any sort of context.

The religious imagery and references are most obvious, but I feel like it would take months of analysis and three more years of intensive comparative religion before I started piecing it all together in some comprehendible order. And even then, I'm sure there is plenty that no one will ever get as whole truth.

Alas. A strange, swell, mystic, bloody watch. From here on out I will be able to make warm and peculiar associations with men in leather, fruit innuendo, Psalms, duels and hidden inbred colonies. Si.

Suspiria (1977)

"Susie, do you know anything about... witches?"


Director: Dario Argento
Starring: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini










I went in having only seen the trailer, expecting to be amused, maybe to excite the nerves a little.



That is pretty much what happened. I'm worried my generation is a little jaded to what in cinema was originally supposed to incite fear. Or maybe not. Your thoughts?

For your records --the ending did not live up to the trailer hype..at all, but the film does open with one of the most gruesome murder scenes I've ever seen:



All right, folks, so as much as it was amusing it was also frightening...terrifying...scary...I can't quite decide which word carries the right tone. Regardless of the fright-content, I'd highly recommend this just for its general creepiness and simply how it looks...the lighting and the sets are astounding. Suspiria is the first in a trilogy. I will let you know how this goes.

Trivia to note: The film is also famous among filmmakers as the final feature film to be processed in Technicolor before the processing plant was shut down.

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

" I always say, when you got a job to do, get somebody else to do it."

Director: Raoul Walsh
Starring: James Cagney, Priscilla Lane









Best Trailer Ever.

I love James Cagney. He was fantastic in White Heat but I just loved him in this. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. 

Shallow Grave (1995)

"Victory is the same as defeat. It's giving in to destructive competitive urges."


Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston








1. Danny Boyle = yes.
2. The Last Scene of Shallow Grave = yesss.
3. The First Scene of Shallow Grave = yessss.
4. Shallow Grave = do I even need to say?

Man with the Movie Camera (1929)

Director: Dziga Vertov












Poetic, captivating, curious, and urgent. Very cool.