Battle Royale #7: Battle of the New Wave (The Results)

We had ourselves a little technical trouble this time around, which is why the poll widget looks a bit different than in past days, and is why we extended the voting period by a week, but everything is back on track now, and we are finally ready to declare ourselves a winner - even if CNN still isn't ready to call Florida.  That latter bit was a rather topical election joke that may or may not stand the test of time.  Anyway, onto the results.

For this round, you were asked to make your decision between the duo known as the vanguard of the French New wave.  Did your vote go to François Truffaut, or are you more of a Jean-Luc Godard kind of person?  Well, as has been the case in every Battle Royale so far, it was a close race from beginning to end, appearing to maybe coming down to a veritable photo finish, but then some last minute precincts came in (another topical election reference that will probably bewilder future readers), and one candidate shot out in front - and stayed there.  That candidate was, and still is, Monsieur Jean-Luc Godard.  With a final tally of 34 to 30 (or 53% to 47% for the statistically-minded among us) the man who directed Breathless beat out the guy who wrote Breathless (and directed a few films as well).  My own vote, as one should already have figured out by looking at the avatar/profile pic I use everywhere, went to our eventual winner (based solely on the auteur's first decade - do not get me started on what the director has become lately) but this was a tougher decision than I expected it to be.  When I wore a younger man's clothes (wow, did I just quote Billy Joel!?) I was much more a fan of the films of Godard over Truffaut, but as I grow (and in theory, mature?) I see that gap between the director's getting smaller and smaller.  Perhaps someday, maybe someday soon, the gap will cease to exist, and after a crossing of the streams, said gap will go in the other direction.  Anyway, for now I am still on the Godard side of things, but who knows what the future will bring.  So there you go.  

In other news, our total vote count this time around, for those who do not care to do the math, was 64 - just two votes shy of the Battle Royale record of 66 held by the classic Astaire/Kelly bout.  I know we can beat those numbers next time around.  Let's shoot for triple digits, shall we?  Yes we shall.  Anyway, that aforementioned next time around will be coming around in just a few days, and this time it's going to be more than just one on one.  Perhaps it will end up being three on three (or four).  See ya soon.  And congratulations to M. Godard, here pictured with muse and wife Anna Karina.

Battle Royale #7: Battle of the New Wave

Welcome to the seventh Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar.

With our seventh edition of Battle Royale, I have decided to bring this usually classic Hollywood based contest into the modern day.  Well, by modern day, I am talking the 1960's - at least mainly.  This time around you are being asked to decide between those two rabble-rousing, young buck, revolutionary critics-turned-filmmakers (though I should probably say critics-turned-auteurs) who began it all with the Nouvelle Vague, or the French New Wave if you will, way back in 1959.  Now yes, there were a whole gang of cinematic thugs (and I use that term quite lovingly indeed) that helped create what would become known as the aforementioned Nouvelle Vague - Claude Chabrol arguably was the first to release a New Wave film, and Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, Jacques Demy and others were among the creative forces in the movement, but let's face it, it's all about Godard and Truffaut, and we know it.

François Truffaut, the man who, while writing for Cahiers du Cinema, gave us the auteur theory (later expanded and espoused by NY film critic Andrew Sarris) was the heart of the movement while fellow compatriot Jean Luc Godard was its brains - or perhaps the guts.  Your mission, if you accept it, is to pick the one you think is the greater filmmaker - the greater auteur.  Is it the romantic who gave us the acerbic sentimentalism of The 400 Blows or is it the man who broke it all open with Breathless a year later?  The man who brought us Jules et Jim and the Antoine Doinel series or the one who gave us Contempt, Band of Outsiders and Week-end?  The man who said "Film lovers are sick people" or the man who said "Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world" (sounds familiar, eh)?  It is a battle between all the Truffaut lovers and all the Godard heads out there.  The decision is yours o faithful readers and true believers.  All you need do is go on over to the poll (found conveniently near the top of the sidebar) and vote your collective little hearts out.

And please remember that one must go over to the poll to have one's vote counted.  You can babble away in the comments section all you want (and that is certainly something I encourage, as we never get enough feedback around these parts) but to have your vote count, you must click on your choice in the poll.  And also, please go and tell all your friends to vote as well.  Our biggest voter turnout since starting the Battle Royale series has been just 66 votes.  I know we can get that number to a cool one hundred before it is all said and done and the proverbial smoke does its proverbial clearing.  The voting period will last two weeks, so get out there and vote people, because all you sick film lovers out there who love the beautiful fraud that is cinema, will definitely need to be in on this one.

My Ten Favourite Things About Breathless (No, Not That One, the Other One, the Kinda Sleazy One from the 1980's)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, or À Bout de Souffle if you will (damn dirty translators), is one of the finest achievements of cinema in the whole damn history of cinema - and yes, the film, and its director, along with his Nouvelle Vague compatriots and their earliest films, pretty much changed the way cinema is made and seen lo these past fifty years or so.  Real important stuff indeed.  I personally rank the groundbreaking 1960 film in my twenty favourite films of all time, and place it as one of the greatest French films second only to Renoir's Rules of the Game.  So yes, Godard's Breathless is both an important film and great film, and a personal favourite of mine.  But alas, this particular subject has been kind of talked to death by now (including from yours truly) so why add to the muddle.  No siree!  Not gonna do it.

We are here today to talk about that other Breathless.  You know, the oft-maligned (and sometimes quite viciously) American remake version of 1983.  Yeah, that one.  Well guess what?  I like the damn thing.  I went many years refusing to see the movie - mainly due to my love of Godard's original masterpiece - but then, after hearing so much praise from one of my favourite current filmmakers (see number one below), I finally gave in and watched the thing up on the big screen at my cinema.  Now I am not about to say it is anywhere near as good as Godard's film, nor would I ever place it in my own top 100, let alone top twenty (though if I were to stretch my favourites list to 200, who knows what strange and unusual things might occur) but damn if it isn't entertaining as hell.  With that exclamation made, let us move on to exactly why I find it so damn entertaining - in seven and a half reasons or less.

1) Quentin Tarantino and His (Questionable) Taste in Film - Usually included in the same breath (yeah, that was a purposeful pun) as films like Taxi Driver, Rio Bravo and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, QT has been pretty consistent in his adoration for Jim McBride's quite unnecessary but quite fun remake.  A die-hard cinephile, who puts every once of his vast film knowledge into every moment of cinematic homage he puts on screen, how could I say no to his (imagined?) pleading for me to watch the damn film already.  Now granted, Tarantino does have a penchant for such low brow fare as women in prison movies and 1970's kung-fu films, so perhaps one should take a recommendation from the auteur with a proverbial grain of salt.  Then again, the other three aforementioned favourite films are all favourites of mine, so what the hell, I said to myself, I am going to watch this damn thing.  And watch it I did - projected up on the big screen at my cinema.  The rest, as they say (whomever they may be) is history.

2) Richard Gere's Final Shot - Now normally, considering it is the, duh...final shot of the film, I would place this as the last "thing" to like about a film, but since this one is so ridiculously great - ie, silly as all fuck - it needed to be talked about before we get to the end ourselves.  Breaking the fourth wall in a way (just like little Jean Seberg does at the end of the 1960 original, though to a less devastatingly tragic, more unbelievably comi-tragic way here) Gere looks right into the camera like some deranged, hipster clad Mr. Roper (those in the know get that reference) and yells Breathless.  Gotta admit, pretty fun stuff indeed.  Fun stuff that only a guy like Gere, at a time like 1983 (having just given such over-the-top performances as he had in American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentlemen the prior couple of years) could have pulled off as well as he did.  He did pull it off, right?  Anyway, I digress.

3) How the Film Resembles an Homage Made by a Shiny Guy Named Vince Who Hangs Out at Strip Clubs at Two O'clock on a Tuesday Afternoon - Now I am not saying director Jim McBride is actually a shiny guy named Vince who hangs out at strip clubs at two in the afternoon (though he may be, who knows), but let's face it, this film does look like it was made by such a guy.  That creepy guy drinking scotch and sodas, pinky ring extended so all can see, while getting a lap dance from somewhat bruised, drugged-out woman who goes by the name of Brandi but whose real name is Tina, and who says she is just doing "this" so she can feed her two year old son Tyler, who stays with his chain-smoking grandma while Tina/Brandi is hook...er, I mean stripping, but who in reality is actually doing "this" so she can feed her meth habit and pay for all the beers consumed by her boyfriend Gill, who beats her on a regular basis, but whom she cannot leave because she "loves" him....okay, perhaps this is dragging on too long, and maybe this really has nothing whatsoever to do with the film, and in essence is merely just a space filler because I could not come up with enough things I liked about Breathless to make up a respectably long enough post.  But yeah, this is the kind of guy one would expect to have made this ridiculous but quite entertaining little film.

4) How Film Snobs Look Down Upon the Whole Thing - You know what grinds my gears?  All those so-called film snobs, those who look down on any film that is not a pseudo-serious art film by Antonioni or Bergman (two directors I personally love, so this is not meant as a dig on them so much as on the aforementioned film snobs).  All those snooty bastards genuflect to anything and everything from someone like Tarkovsky or Fellini (again, two filmmakers I like) but toss aside most of the oeuvre of a Nick Ray or Sam Fuller (two more filmmakers I quite like) because they may not take themselves seriously enough.  All those narrow-minded cinephiles who cannot get past Citizen Kane being the greatest film of all-time (and once again, this is a film that I truly love and adore, but a film that I can see past to see other, somewhat non-canonical works to fill a best of list with).  Yeah, I hate 'em.  Now me on the other hand, I tend to lean toward the so-called film geek side of things.  That group that includes people like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich and Quentin "There is That Name Again" Tarantino.  Ones that can appreciate the finer things in cinema (the Bergman's, the Fellini's, the Antonioni's) while also taking great pleasure in the, for lack of a better term, seedier side of cinema (that would be your Polanski's, your Powell, Pressburger's, your, and here is the zinger, your Jean-Luc Godard's).  These aforementioned film snobs are the ones who will not even mention this film when talking about cinema other than to degrade it for their own wicked, self-serving purposes.  This was me for a while, but then, thanks to that Tarantino fella, I have now seen the goddamn light.  Hallelujah!

5) Sometimes It is All About the Music Baby - Now one would think, with me being born in 1967 and ostensibly growing up in what was the mid seventies and into the early eighties, my musical tastes would run somewhere in either the glam rock, disco, punk or new wave realms - and yes, to varying degrees, I do like most of those genres and their ilk - but thanks to my Elvis fanatic mom, my tastes go back a bit further than that.  My early introduction to the likes of Del Shannon and Frankie Lyman and Sam Cooke, and such long lost groups as the Diamonds and The Fleetwoods and The Crests, as well as Presley and Jerry-Lee and Bill Haley and the Comets, kinda makes me quite predisposed to the soundtrack that McBride puts together for this film.  Now granted, there is more modern music in here - Brian Eno, Phillip Glass, X, even a Dexy's Midnight Runners song can be heard at one point - but Gere's bad boy Jesse and his obvious love for the music of Jerry Lee Lewis (not to mention his wardrobe, which we will get to in a bit) send the feel of this film right back to those days that are so often called the days of old time rock and roll.

6) Gere Perfectly Cast as a Last Days of Disco era Belmondo - Perhaps Gere's coolness as an actor is not the same kind of coolness shown by Belmondo in his younger days (think Richard Widmark cool versus Humphrey Bogart cool) but there is no denying, as I more than alluded to way back at number two, that Gere in this time and this place - the Looking For Mr. Goodbar/American Gigolo Gere, not the Pretty Woman era Gere, though when you really look at it, he was pretty sleazy there as well - is perfectly cast to play cad cop killer Jesse Lujack.  And those eyes are so dreamy too.

7) Valérie Kaprisky, From Porn to Breathless, and then Into Obscurity - Let's face it, French actress Valérie Kaprisky, having starred in a few soft-core films in the early eighties (think French Skinemax), was not hired here for her great thespianic endowments.  Even Gere said he told McBride to cast her because she looked like someone who could make love to - a thing that was reputedly going on during the time of filming, and a thing the actress said was the most thrilling thing about filming her scenes ("It was half real" she said) though Kaprsiky has since denied such stories.  No siree, even though she would garbner a César nomination the year after Breathless (for La femme publique), Ms. Kaprisky was definitely hired for a different set of endowments than acting.

8) To Paraphrase a Famous Saying by Alfred Hitchcock and Twist it Around so it Sounds Like it Was Coming from Edith Head, Wardrobe Wardrobe Wardrobe - I told you I would get around to talking about the clothes in this film.  Gere's bad boy, like Belmondo's own bad boy, is dressed like someone on the edge of society.  In Belmondo's case it is a lot less noticeable due to men still having a rather sophisticated style in 1960, but in 1983 L.A., after the advent of the hippies and hipsters and punk and glam rockers, Gere's wardrobe shows how his character is not someone that you would trust to walk your dog...or your girl.  In fact he resembles what one would imagine Charlie Sheen to look like when he goes out on one of his strip club nights.  Hey, lookie there, we came back around to the stripper motif once again.

9) On Meeting Kit Carson, the Guy Who Wrote the Damn Thing - I suppose talking about meeting screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson is not really a "thing to like" about the movie -and let's be honest, his actual screenplay really is not either - but it was fun to have the man who gave Gere his howl, as a guest of our cinema.  For those of you who are unaware (and really, why aren't you paying better attention to my life dammit), my lovely wife and I run a three screen arthouse cinema in Harrisburg Pa.  Last year, during our capital city's film festival, we hosted a screening of Jim McBride's 1967 film David Holzman's Diary.  The film starred the aforementioned Kit Carson, so somehow (he is such a big star after all) we managed to get him to come and do a Q&A after the film.  He seemed like a pretty fun guy while he was here - and he even signed the leg cast of one of our cinema employees.  Carson would later go on to write the screenplay for the modern classic Paris, Texas, as well as for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.  His screenplay for Breathless?  Certainly not great, but once again, a damn entertaining film.

10) Behold the Sentinel of the Spaceways, Norrin Radd, the Spectacular Silver Surfer - Being a comic book nerd from long ago, it should not surprise me that one of my favourite things about this particular film is Gere's character's obsession with that classic Sentinel of the Spaceways, the former herald of the Mighty World Devourer Galactus, and friend and ally to The Fantastic Four and belated founding member of the non-group super hero team The Defenders.  Yeah, I'm a nerd.  What's it to ya?  But I digress once again.  One of my favourite things about this version of Breathless, is how Gere's bad boy identifies with the loner Marvel super hero Silver Surfer.  This also brings us all the way back around to Quentin Tarantino, as we see Jesse's obsession with the Surfer copied in Reservoir Dogs, with a strategically placed Surfer poster in Freddy's (Tim Roth's Mr. Orange) apartment.  See, everything goes back to QT (and he likes strip clubs too), which is why you should listen to the man and watch this damn film.  So there.  Breathless!!

The Most Influential Directors

The following is my official entry in The Most Influential Directors Poll over at Michaël Parent's great movie blog Le Mot du Cinephiliaque.  We critics and cinephiles were asked to name the 10 directors we believe to be the most influential throughout film history as well as the film that best showcases said influence.  My choices for last year's poll (where I extended it to 25 due to my tendency to ramble on) can be viewed here.  As I am sure you will notice, I have made some changes to this new list.  

These changes come about not necessarily because these directors became more or less influential over the past year, but because (and I am stealing a line from Prince now) maybe I'm just like my mother, she's never satisfied.  Whatever the case, I have flip-flopped numbers one and two, changed a few others up and/or down, kicked three to the proverbial curb and replaced them with three that missed the cut last time around.  And please take note that this is not a list of my favourite directors, but of the ones I believe have had the biggest and most influence on film history and later directors.  Granted, there are several crossovers on these two lists, but I digress.  So, without further ado, here are my choices for the most influential directors of all-time.

1) Jean-Luc Godard - It is a common assumption amongst cinephiles that without Jean Luc Godard, modern cinema would, at least the better qualities of it, look a whole hell of a lot different than it currently does.  I believe this is more than just mere assumption, and instead falls firmly into the realm of direct fact.  Jason Kliot, of Open City Pictures and Blow Up Films, says, "Godard to modern film is what Picasso is to modern art—the ultimate daredevil and pioneer, the man who had no fear, the man willing to try anything in any genre and push it to its limits." Along with fellow New Wavers, Godard not only changed the way cinema was made, but also the way we looked at it.  Without Breathless, a groundbreaking work of the art, or films like Band of Outsiders, Contempt and Weekend, we may not have filmmakers like Wong Kar-wai, John Woo, Gregg Araki, Wes Anderson, Gaspar Noe, Catherine Breillat, Chantal Ackerman or Quentin Tarantino.  Just think about that baby.

2) Alfred Hitchcock - I had Hitch in the top spot when I did this list last year, but he has been taken out by Godard.  But this by no means should make one believe that the Master of Suspense has fallen from grace.  In fact, let's face it, this is pretty much a dead heat tie for the top spot really.  An influence on so many directors, from Spielberg to De Palma to Terry Gilliam, Hitchcock has defined what cinema has become lo these past sixty years or so.  I think Hitchcock's influence is more noticeable than Godard's, with more homages having been created to honour him, but I believe Godard's influence is more ingrained in the creation of cinema itself than Hitch's.  But still, without Hitch, we would not have had such great films like Jaws or Dressed to Kill or Play Misty For Me or Peeping Tom.

3) Orson Welles - Godard said that without Welles, none of us would be here.  Can't argue with that.  Always at odds with those in power - Citizen Kane is really the only Welles production that came out the way the director wanted it, without interference from the studio and/or money men - Welles probably had a lot more inside him, but being the cinematic genius that he was, it was always so hard to get things done.  But what he did get done - Kane, Ambersons, Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil, The Trial, his Shakespeare work - is all beyond brilliant.

4) Akira Kurosawa - The man who made the samurai into a legendary hero that transgressed genres and nations and became the symbol of bravery and chivalry - even moreso than the knight of old - one need look no further than John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (a remake of Seven Samurai), Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (based on Yojimbo) or George Lucas’ Star Wars (inspired by Hidden Fortress) to give credit where credit is most certainly due.  The most legendary of Japanese filmmakers who was actually more revered in the west than he ever was in his native land.  Good for us then.

5) Billy Wilder - I don't think there is a comedy today, be it high brow (Woody Allen's Manhattan) or low brow (Bridesmaids) that does not owe something to Billy Wilder.  And this was a guy who could do drama and noir and action just as well as comedy.  Simply put, he was so great at so many things, and without him, what would people like Woody Allen or Whit Stillman look like?

6) D.W. Griffith - I suppose without Griffith there would not be cinema at all.  No, he did not invent it, but he did re-invent it and made it what it became.  I also suppose that with this argument, one could easily make a case for the old Victorian charmer to top this list.  I mean, without him, there would be no Welles, and therefore no Godard, and therefore no modern cinema.  Hmmmm?

7) Howard Hawks - The man that could take any genre, from noir to western to adventure to musical to sci-fi to thriller to the screwball comedy that he near invented if not at least perfected, and make it sing like nothing else before it.  The precursor to such modern day equivalents as Steven Soderbergh and Richard Linklater, Hawks was, and always will be, simply put...The Man.

8) John Ford - The great man Ford claimed that he was just a guy who made westerns, but this modesty aside, he not only made westerns (and other types of films as well by the way) he made the western what it became and still is today - influencing everyone from Anthony Mann to Sergio Leone to Sam Peckinpah to Clint Eastwood to Andrew Dominick.

9) Stanley Kubrick - Kubrick is actually my personal favourite director of all-time, and his greatest masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey is number two on my favourite films list, and I would guess that he sits pretty high up on those lists made by Scorsese, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Chris Nolan, Tim Burton, the Brothers' Coen and Tarantino as well. 

10) John Cassavetes - Cassavetes' influence may be more on the improvisational style of acting in his films, than on his filmmaking techniques themselves.  Perhaps seeming to be too chaotic and and jumbled for mass audiences, nonetheless, the way Cassavetes and his stable of regulars would reach the deepest and darkest depths of human emotion is, save for perhaps Kazan, beyond reproach.

I could go on, but I will stop there.  To point out some other obvious runners-up though, one need only look at directors such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jean Renoir, Vincente Minnelli, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Luis Buñuel, Sergei Eisenstein, Francois Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, George A. Romero, Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Jacques Tati, F.W. Murnau, Mario Bava, Stanley Donan, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.  Just to name a few.

1967: It Was a Very Good Year

The following is my contribution to The Movie Waffler's The Year I Made Contact Blogathon, wherein we the contributors discuss the cinematic year of our birth.  As I just turned forty-five last week, that would make this contribution about the cinematic year of 1967, and me being me (ie: an obsessive list monger) I have decided to give you my ten favourite films of this very same year.  So, without further ado, here are my choices for the ten best films of 1967.

1. Bonnie and Clyde - One of the first films I ever saw (I was just sixteen in a high school film class at the time) that made me think perhaps that this thing called cinema had more to it than what one saw on the shiny surface.  Brilliant and subversive (and unbeknownst to my still uneducated mind at the time, one of the most important films that would revolutionize American cinema) there was something about this film that got me all quivery inside.  Perhaps it was Faye Dunaway and her sexy, brazen comehitherness, perhaps it was Warren Beatty and his rebellious anti-hero image, perhaps it was the violence that was like none I had seen at the time - whatever the case, the film has haunted me from the beginning as much as it still does today.  Not only the best film of 1967 but one of the greatest films of any year.

2. Playtime - Ever since seeing M. Hulot's Holiday, Jacques Tati's lovable bumbling M. Hulot has always held a soft spot in my cinematic heart.  With each subsequent adventure, Tati places his intrepid hero and alter-ego into an ever-increasing modernist nightmare of dangerous gadgets and disgruntled gadflies. The pinnacle of this almost dystopian comic effect (played out in the most giddy undystopian way of course) is the film Playtime.  Hulot, let loose on a modern society way ahead of his own old-fashioned comprehension, is a hoot, as they say, to watch.  And the gags - the ones that have come to verily define Tati's hapless alter-ego over the course of half a dozen films - are as sharp-witted as any dialogue anyone would attempt in such a film.  And it all comes off as a genius-level screwball comedy of pantomime.

3. Week-end - This was actually the first Godard I had ever seen (yes, even before Breathless) and I was immediately taken in by the Nouvelle Vague auteur's use of colour as well as his way of using the camera to as full effect as possible - and then taking it further.  Many consider this to be the director's final film of his so-called early days (I mean if you are going to call it a New Wave, it has to end sometime lest it become an Old Wave again) and thus it is a dividing point between Godard's early ultra-cinematic pieces and his later more essayaic pieces.  It is this more visually cinematic earlier period which I like the best and Week-end was a great introduction to it indeed.  Brash, bold and without reservations, Week-end is Godard at his visual apex.

4. The Graduate - A cinematic sign of its deeply disenfranchised times, Mike Nichols paean to teenage disillusionment, and the film that made stars out of both Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross (one's stardom has held up a bit better), is a deadpan comedic look at the youth in America not only at this quite turbulent time, but I believe the youth of all generations that have come after it.   Tossed off as a hipster movie by many critics, the film does go a lot deeper than this criticism makes you think, and its long term influence (many teens and young adults still see it as if were speaking to them personally) is what makes a classic a classic.  Plus, how can you beat that soundtrack.

5. Belle de Jour - Sexy, stunning and scary as hell.  These adjectives can be used to describe either star Catherine Deneuve, the film itself or in a strange kinda way, the entire oeuvre of director Luis Buñuel.   The story of a young wife who takes up the art of prostitution one day, Belle de Jour is more than meets the eye.  Taking on, as Buñuel is apt to do, the morality of society, pitting the bourgeois against the proletariat but never in the way one would expect a semi-surrealist, anarchist auteur to do, the film has been hailed as both a brilliant masterpiece and panned as a pretentious bore.  Why can't it be both in a way?  Probably a bit beyond my rather naive grasp when I first saw the film (around eighteen but still quite innocent in mind) it has however grown deeply into my psyche.  And then you have Deneuve - ooh la la indeed.

6. Point Blank - Let's face it, Lee Marvin was the very epitome of cool in his day and that assessment is no different in John Boorman's gangster exercise in cool cinema, Point Blank (incidentally the first film to be shot on location on Alcatraz after the prison's 1963 closing).  Marvin is tough as nails and love interest Angie Dickinson has never looked better.  Throw in Keenan Wynn and a wonderful turn from Carroll O'Conner (the man could do more than Archie Bunker ya know) and Point Blank just gets cooler and cooler and tougher and tougher.  How tough was Marvin you ask - so tough that when he and John Vernon were practicing a fight scene, Marvin hit Vernon so hard that Vernon fell to the floor crying.  'nuff said.

7. Two For the Road - The best of Stanley Donan's solo directorial work (Singin' in the Rain, co-directed with Gene Kelly, being the best overall) this quite acerbic non-linear tale of a marriage both coming together and falling apart is a revelation of dark comedy blended with giddy tragedy.  Shooting back and forth from present to past to future to past again and back (a trait that could be quite disorienting to a casual moviegoer), this way-ahead-of-its-time motion picture stars George Segal and Audrey Hepburn in what may be both actor's best performance.  Hepburn, usually more fairy tale-esque in her acting, opens up a whole new side of her ability here and proves to the world (or at least the handful of people who have seen this woefully forgotten film) that yes Virginia, she can act.

8. Mouchette - Along with Au hasard Balthazar the year before, this is Robert Bresson at his sentimental best.  A jarring and dangerous film (as is per usual with a filmmaker such as Bresson) about the tragic life of a young girl, Mouchette still manages to reach out from such pyschosexual depths with an undercurrent of strangely esoteric humanism.  I first saw this film (having seen just three Bresson's prior) after seeing it referenced in Bertolucci's The Dreamers and this drama of faith helped to solidify my already growing worship of the French auteur.  Someone once said that to not get Bresson is to not get cinema, and they may very well be true - even in what is probably one of the director's least cinematic films (and no, I do not mean that as an insult).

9. The Fearless Vampire Killers - This Roman Polanski comedy-thriller's full title, a la Dr. Strangelove, is The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck - how can one go wrong with that.  Sardonic, with more than a touch of that classic Polanski humour (and featuring the director's wife Sharon Tate in one of her final roles before that brutal night in the summer of 1969), this film is a multilayered romp of devilish delights.  Starring the elfin director himself in one of the title roles (years before any tabloid headlines would creep their way into his world) this may be one of the unscariest vampire movies ever made, but still it has a comic sense of dread that is palpable throughout its strangely partially-pantomimed two hours spent inside what seems like a beautiful yet quite macabre snow globe.

10. Wait Until Dark - I first saw this film in a film class I took in my senior year of high school.  Dissecting the film piece by piece in class (I had never done such a thing before) one could see the many layers that were going on in Terence Young's superb psychological thriller.  Still to this day, when I am watching the film and I see the demented Alan Arkin tormenting the seemingly helpless blind damsel-in-distress Audrey Hepburn, I feel a twinge of fear for the poor girl trapped in the dark,, I can feel her terror as this brutal and unknown force terrorizes her, even though I know full well she's going to wind up the victor when the end credits roll - and I know too that Arkin will get his much-deserved comeuppance as well. 

Special Mention: Wavelength - Experimental filmmaking icon Michael Snow's Wavelength consists of one shot (basically) that lasts for 45 minutes.  As time goes on, the camera edges, ever-so-slowly from one end of what appears to be a mostly empty warehouse to a picture hanging on its far wall.  Seriously, that is it.  Sure, the colour will fluctuate and every once and a while someone will walk into and out of the shot, but basically that is all it is.  I saw this film at MoMa a few years back and was oddly riveted to the screen for the entirety of the aforementioned 45 minutes.  I could hear people grumble in the background behind me (I of course was front and center) and I heard several get up and leave in what I must assume is frustration, but my eyes stayed glued to that strangely mesmerizing screen.  Granted, this is not a film I will likely revisit on many occasions, which is why it does not make the list, but it is still a fascinating experimental work that needs to be made mention of. 

A Few Runners-Up (in no particular order) - Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort; Miklós Jancsó's The Red and the White; John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye; Jean-Piere Melville's Le Samourai; D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back; Glauber Rocha's Terra em Transe; Luchino Visconti's The Stranger; Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood; Vigot Sjoman's infamous I Am Curious (Yellow) and Mark Robson's Valley of the Dolls (yeah, that's right).

Chained to the Fence of Cinephilia: A Brief and Quite Irreverent Look at Godard, Truffaut and The French New Wave

The things you are about to read are all part of what amounts to a not-so-humble contribution to the second edition of the LAMB's Foreign Chops Series, this time taking a look at all things French Nouvelle Vague.   In place of any sort of spoiler alert, please allow me to quote a certain Mr. Clemens from long ago. “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."  'nuff said.

It was Paris 1951, and three cats with appropriately French names like André, Jacques and...um, Joseph-Marie had just published the very first issue of Cahiers du Cinéma, a film magazine that would quickly become the standard bearer for all things cinematically written.  Thus was born the Nouvelle Vague, or the French New Wave if you will.  Well, okay, in all actuality, the New Wave would not hit for another eight years or so, but trust me, this was the beginning of the beginning.  The germ that would spread all over the so-called cinematic world.  Let us explore.

It was in 1954 that a then-critc and later director by the name of Truffaut would write an article called "La qualité française," which would introduce an oh so divisive manifesto for "la politique des Auteurs,"which in turn would be labeled as "The Auteur Theory" by a pompous windbag, albeit a film loving one, named Mr. Sarris.   Now what this manifesto said (in the most basic of terms) was that the director of a movie was the main (though some would say sole, which of course is going a bit too far) artistic force behind this work of art.    He or she (though let's face it, as lopsided as it may very well be, there were then and still are now, a whole lot more he's than she's in the moviemaking world) is the author, or auteur of the piece.  There is a defining signature running through all of a director's work.  When one watches a Hitchcock film or a Nicholas Ray film or something by Sam Fuller, Howard Hawks or Max Ophüls, one sees a creative through line that tells one that this is a film by blah blah blah.  

Now this theory, which the aforementioned pompous windbag (and I mean such a monicker in a strangely complimentary manner since I consider myself something akin to such a thing) used as a theoretical basis to create the seminal pocket book on all things American Cinema (those in the know have a dog-eared copy of it somewhere in their home I am sure - all others probably are not reading this anyway).  And now, with the notable naysayers such as the acerbic yet delightful grand dame of film criticism, the woman who turned many of us into adoring Paulettes (again, you know of whom I speak, or at least should - see, I told you I could be pompous) and a few others rambling and shambling around what we call the intrawebs, this theory is just mere fact.  When we see a Scorsese picture or one by Tarantino, we know what we are going to be in for, even as the direct...er, the auteurs weave their signature moves around to be ever unique, even in such familiarity.   Well, it gets complicated, but trust me, I really do know what I am talking about.

Anyway, as I digress, let us go back to those halcyon days of 1950's Paris, when a group of young critical upstarts - you know the names, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, Rivette and of course Godard - were furiously writing about all the films and all the directors they were so in love with.  These young turks would help bring obscure Hollywood directors back from the so-called dead.  Without the constant media and world wide web full of streaming and DVD and Bluray and such we take for granted today, these olden days were a time when the only real way to see a film was when it played in theaters (even TV was still just getting its land legs and beginning to crawl out of the primordial ooze).  Films and directors could easily be forgotten, so when these influential young critics wrote with such ardour about the so-called B-movies of someone like Anthony Mann or William Wellman, people sat up and did that noticing thing.  They would help refurbish the careers of the likes of Keaton and Hawks and Renoir.  And of course this all led to these critical cinephiles becoming directors themselves.

First Claude would make a film about a lost soul.  Then François would make a film about a lost soul.  Then Jean-Luc would make a film about a, well... about a lost soul.   Seriously though, a movement would be created that would - and this is not just mere hyperbole - change the very face of cinema as we know it.  With the Nouvelle Vague, we would not have Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, Bogdanovich, Lynch, Cimino, De Palma, Linklater, Kevin Smith, Todd Solondz, Wes or Paul Thomas Anderson, the Brothers' Coen nor Tarantino.  For reals people, for reals.  Without the Breathless's and 400 Blows of the French New Wave, cinema would look a hell of a lot different these days.  And I mean that as that would be a bad thing if that were to occur.   Many of these films are unknown to the multiplex horde that stand in for a real film loving audience these days (yeah, you know who the fuck I mean dammit!!) but nonetheless, they have changed the very face of cinema.  Hell, I even named my site after a famous quote by the one they called their leader (of sorts).

So when you watch cinema here in this new millennium - and I do not mean the Tyler Perry/Michael Bay/Adam Sandler version of cinema (though that middle guy was probably influenced by the new wave as well, even if he learned absolutely nothing) - remember that five guys named François, Eric, Claude, Jacques and Jean-Luc (as well as some fringy, Left Bank compatriots - even a woman for God's sake!) made it all possible.  And I am not just talking the obvious homages to the past - such as Bertolucci's The Dreamers from whence I have taken the allusion mentioned in my post title, or the works of the heir apparent, the young M. Honore - but to cinema as a whole.  The past has come back and the present has reaped the rewards.  I would like to close by spouting off just a bit more by the so-called team captain of the New Wave - a certain M. Godard.  

I recently read somewhere online (by my own critical compatriot, though I forget exactly which one - so if you recognize your Twitterverse pontificating, please let me know so I can rightfully acknowledge you) that if we took away Truffaut, we would lose some very good films, but if we took away Godard, we would take away modern cinema.  It went something like that (if you do read this, perhaps you can get the phrasing back to where it belongs too) but you get the gist.   The French New Wave changed everything - and perhaps Godard more than any of them - and we should be grateful and all that jazz, and perhaps even watch some of these films now and then.   I know when I saw Breathless on the big screen - TWICE (one can read about that here) - it was something akin to a religious experience.  Now you go and do that too.  Fin.....for now.

Been Wondering What My Favourite Films Are? Thought So.

For all those oh so regular readers (and for all you irregulars too) that have taken the time to peruse the various tabs poised near the top of this, your favourite site in the whole web wide world, I am sure you have come across the one titled "My Favourite Films."  I am also quite sure that for near six months now, these inquisitive visitors have been stymied by a nearly blank page, with just two tiny words to unceremoniously greet them - coming soon.  Otherwise just a page full of nothing.  Nothing at all.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Well guess what true believers?  If you will excuse the purposely poor grammar - it ain't nothing no more.  In fact, it is decidedly something.  Something.  Something.  Something.

What it is, is just what it says - or wysiwyg for those acronym minded among you.  It is now a bonafide page of my favourite films.  Twenty-five of them to be exact.  My 25 favourite films.  These are, according to yours truly here, the creme de la creme of the film world.  Twenty-five damn fine works of cinema indeed.  But why just twenty-five you may ask.  Good question.  Actually this is just a start.  I plan on periodically expanding this list throughout the rest of the year until I reach a top 1000.  Yeah, you read that right - a top thousand.  That of course will not come to fruition until I finish My Quest in November.  For right now, it is a top 25.  Eventually a top 100 - in preferential order.  After that, I will extend it to the aforementioned 1000 - this time in chronological order, though with the top 100 still being highlighted. 

Anyway, I suppose you probably want to know what is on this list, huh?  Of course you do.  Well for starters, yes Citizen Kane is on there, but guess what?  It is not number one as it is in so many other lists.  But it isn't all that far down the list either.  There are a few surprises on the list, but none really shocking - even if my lovely wife questioned my number three choice (I believe ridiculous was an adjective she used during this questioning).  The big surprise is what is not on the list.  At least it came as a surprise to me.  No Wilder.  No Griffith.  No Fellini.  No Truffaut.  No Rossellini.  No Minnelli.  No Lubitsch.  No Keaton.  And stranger than strange - no Howard Hawks!?  Really?  I guess not.  Though a certain Girl Friday may be coming as soon as the list is expanded into a top thirty.

Anyway, as they say, perhaps it is about time you check out the list yourself.  And remember to periodically check back (at the tab titled "My Favourite Films" of course) as the list will be growing throughout the year.  And of course please give any feedback you wish in the comments section of the page, because I am sure there will be many disgruntled naysayers out there - and we always love hearing from them. 

25 Most Influential Directors

The following is my official entry in The Most Influential Directors Poll over at Michaël Parent's great movie blog Le Mot du Cinephiliaque.  We are asked to name the 10 directors we believe to be the most influential throughout film history but since I can never stop at just 10 (or at the very least have a really difficult time doing so) my list is the 25 most influential directors of all-time.  Take that conformity!

1) Alfred Hitchcock

From Spielberg to Scorsese to De Palma to Tarantino to Godard and Truffaut to Cronenberg to Fincher to Aronofsky to P.T. Anderson to Joe Dante, David Lynch and J.J. Abrams - all these filmmakers (and many many more) owe at least part of their styles and their careers to the Master of Suspense.  His use of colour and the way he moved (or did not move) his camera were highly influential on just about every director that came after him.

2) Jean-Luc Godard

Without Godard, there would not be modern cinema.  Nor for that matter would their be auteurs like Quentin Tarantino or Wong Kar-wai or  Lars von Trier.  More than mere hyperbole, Godard did actually change the way movies were made.  He wasn't alone in doing so (his fellow New Wavers, Truffaut, Rivette, Chabrol and Rohmer were part of this paradigm shift as well) but it was he who was first and foremost when the change in cinematic thinking came about.

3) D.W. Griffith

The originator of feature narrative filmmaking, Griffith set the way for many of the early cinema techniques that are now standard filmmaking fundamentals.  Chaplin called him "The teacher of us all" and Welles said of him "No town, no industry, no profession, no art form owes so much to a single man."  He may not have invented many of the techniques and film grammer he is credited for but he most certainly was the first one to perfect them.

4) John Ford

Perhaps not the creator of the American western but most certainly its perfectionist.  Working with a steadfast attitude and the eye of a poet (though he would never say anything of the sort, choosing instead to describe himself as such, "I'm John Ford.  I make westerns.") Ford gave us what the western was to become, until the revisionists came around, and even then Ford showed them how that was done as well.  Sure, he made other types of movies (and made them extremely well), but it is the western he will be remembered for.

5) Akira Kurosawa

One of those filmmakers highly influenced by early John Ford is that most western of Japanese directors, Akira Kurosawa.    He in turn would influence everyone under the sun.  Several of this master's films were remade in Hollywood and the Spaghetti Western was pretty much created from the ashes of his jidai-geki samurai films.  Even George Lucas took one of his films and turned it into one of the biggest blockbusters of all-time.  His Seven Samurai is still considered, by critics and directors alike, as one of the greatest films ever made.

6) Howard Hawks

The man who could make any movie in any genre.  Hawks made comedies, dramas, westerns, musicals, biblical epics, film noirs, action movies, war films, and made them all with that same determined steady hand that would make him one of the greatest and most revered Hollywood filmmakers of all-time - and probably the most eclectic as well.  Credited with creating the screwball comedy and with making both noir and westerns his own, Hawks is the spiritual grandfather of such directors as diverse as Robert Altman, Richard Linklater, John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino.

7) Charles Chaplin

With an innate ability to make us both laugh and cry within a single scene, Chaplin gave comedy its heart.  While Keaton and Lloyd and others were the better gag writers of the time, it was Chaplin who would create characters and situations that could dig into a viewers subconscious better than anyone.  Highly influential on directors such as Woody Allen and Jacques Tati, Chaplin gave comedy both a new born modernism and a much needed humanism.

8) Jean Renoir

Upon the great directors death in 1979, Orson Welles wrote an article for the L.A. Times called "Jean Renoir: The Greatest of all Directors" - this should say it all.  Renoir, son of the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, is one of those filmmakers one can call Earth-shattering.  Changing the views of how cinema should be made, Renoir was a master of Poetic Realism in film and had a huge impact on every generation that came after him.

9) Ernst Lubitsch

A director not often cited in such lists as this but a director that damn well should be.  Bringing a European flair to the early sound comedies of Hollywood (the Lubitsch Touch it was called) Lubitsch had a certain way of making innuendo sound so classy.  The implementation of the production killed may have killed this style of elegant comedy but its influence is long-lasting.  If Chaplin gave comedy its heart, Lubitsch gave it its sophistication.

10) Sergei M. Eisenstein

The greatest of the Soviet auteurs, Eisenstein chopped cinema up and turned it on its proverbial head.  A master at montage filmmaking and Eisenstein not only influenced many a future director (especially when it would come to editing) but also made it easier for many of the more experimental filmmakers to make their collective marks on cinematic history.  The careers of such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Nicholas Roeg, Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone (to name just a few) owe much thanks to Eisenstein.

11) Orson Welles

Many may be tempted to put Welles higher on the list than this (and I was too) but here he is at number eleven.  Making Citizen Kane, considered by many to be the greatest film ever made, Welles had a great influence on many younger filmmakers.  Unfortunately for Welles (and for us) Hollywood was not kind to this obvious master director and many of his later films were rarely seen until the cinephile boom of the 1960's.  Still though, he had a great influence on directors such as Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich, and more recently P.T. Anderson and (of course) Quentin Tarantino.

12) Fritz Lang

From his use of German Expressionism and dark themes, Lang was the perfect director to take up the mantle of Hollywood film noir master.  His unique style (partially based on his younger days in Germany's Weimar Cinema and partly on 19th century art) had a strong influence on many a director, including Godard, Rivette, Friedkin and Spielberg.

13) Stanley Kubrick

One of the most visually expressive directors ever, Kubrick is one of those filmmakers responsible for what modern cinema has become (the good parts!) and at the same time, showing what cinema could be in the future.  A cult director of sorts (but not the kind that conjures up memories of B-movie delights) Kubrick's films are fascinating works of ultra-modernist art and therefore has been a huge influence on many of today's younger directors - most notably Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and P.T. Anderson.

14) Anthony Mann

If Ford invented the western, or at least perfected it, then Mann's psychological revisionaries of the genre re-invented the western and thus made room for the likes of Peckinpah, Leone and later Tarantino (and perhaps even Takashi Miike) when they would revolutionize the genre.  Blurring that line between good and evil in the iconography of the western, Mann made a series of these (mostly starring James Stewart) that would lead to the aforementioned revolution in the genre.

15) Ingmar Bergman

As diverse an influence on such diverse of filmmakers as Lars von Trier, Woody Allen and Terry Gilliam, Bergman was the epitome of what we now call arthouse cinema.  Giving his cinema a sense of austere surreality, Bergman could also be considered the epitome of acquired taste.   Whatever the case, the fact that Bergman is essentially the spiritual father of art cinema is what puts him on this list.

16) Martin Scorsese

So many directors today - Linklater, Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Fincher - owe a great debt to Scorsese just as he himself owes a great debt to past directors such as Kurosawa, Powell & Pressburger, Hitchcock, Nick Ray and Lang.  Being a sort of father to modern American cinema, Scorsese plays as not only an influence as a director but with his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, as a historian as well.

17) Federico Fellini

A mad man maestro of world cinema, Fellini's cinema was a mindfuck of storytelling.  His greatest masterpiece, 8 1/2, laid the groundwork for so many younger directors to follow.  From Gilliam to Greenaway to Nanni Moretti and Woody Allen, Fellini was a precursor to all the giddy oddities that these directors could come up with.

18) John Cassavetes

From younger contemporary Robert Altman to spiritual godson Jim Jarmusch to all those actor-turned-directors around today, Cassavetes is the true grandaddy of indie cinema - the real indie stuff.  With low budgets and a set team of recurring actors (including his wife Gena Rowlands), Cassavetes made the little look gigantic.

19) Billy Wilder

Chaplin created comedy, Lubitsch made it sing and Wilder gave it the chutzpah. What comic director, from Woody Allen to Whit Stillman, doesn't owe some sort of debt of gratitude to the man who is probably the best writer of comedy to ever work in Hollywood.  In my opinion, Some Like it Hot still stands as the best comedy of all-time.

20) David Lean

Personally I find David Lean to be one of the dullest filmmakers of all-time (and his masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia to be highly overrated) but this doesn't blind me from seeing his influence on everyone from James Ivory to Steven Spielberg (of course I am not a big fan of either of these directors either).  Nonetheless, the vast spaces of Lean's cinema (he did know how to shoot a scene though) make for a great influence on many.

21) Woody Allen

I suppose the same argument that one makes for Billy Wilder, one can surely make for Allen.  A great writer of comedy (though perhaps no longer in his hey day) Allen is an obvious influence on filmmakers such as Albert Brooks, Whit Stillman and Edward Burns.  Just his long streak of great films (w/o exception, from 1973 through 1989 the man directed sixteen well-made, important films in a row) should be enough to insure inclusion on this list.

22) Yasujiro Ozu

Much more Japanese in his approach to cinema than his higher ranked younger contemporary Kurosawa, Ozu made quiet, delicate films that splashed around with the love and collectiveness of family and duty and honour.  Influencing not only his fellow countrymen like Takeshi Kitano and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and neighbour Hou Hsiao-hsien from Taiwan, but also Americans like Jarmusch and Finns like Kaurismaki.

23) Elia Kazan

The man who gave us acting - method acting.  Kazan and his New York School which in turn gave us Brando, Steiger, Dean, Monroe and others, is responsible for the maturation of acting in American cinema.  This quite outspoken director (he named names!) is a major influence on the likes of Scorsese and Coppola as well as many of his contemporaries such as Cassavetes and Fuller.

24) Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

This pair, known collectively as The Archers, are way up there on my list of great filmmakers.  In a six year period they made six of the greatest films ever made.  Their influence probably isn't quite as high as my personal admiration of their talents, but Scorsese say he has gotten everything from these two men, so who am I to argue.  Coppola is a big fan as well.

25) Steven Spielberg

By a few years, Spielberg is the youngest director on this list (and the only bona fide baby boomer) so his influence doesn't reach quite as far as others, but the influence is definitely there.  I cannot say I am much of a fan (though I do greatly respect him as a filmmaker) but others - such as Dante, Zemeckis and Stephen Sommers (yeah I know, not the greatest of the pantheon) - do love the man's work.  And I suppose pretty much inventing the blockbuster (for better or for worse) gets him this last spot on the list.  And I do really like Jaws.

There are others I probably should have included on the list, but even I have to stop somewhere.  These sad exclusions are Francois Truffaut, Buster Keaton, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roman Polanski, George A. Romero, William Castle, Mario Bava, Nick Ray, Satyajit Ray, Ida Lupino, Luchino Visconti (one of my personal all-time favouruites!), John Huston, Frank Capra, Andrei Tarkovsky, F.W. Murnau, Vincente Minnelli, Francis Ford Coppola, Alice Guy Blache, William A. Welmman, Kenji Mizoguchi, Shohei Imamura, Peter Bogdanovich, Walt Disney, Carl Dreyer, Robert Altman, Cecil B. DeMille and Rene Clair (those latter three being my most regretted omissions).  Of course there are younger directors such as David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, Wong Kar-wai, Chris Nolan, Richard Linklater, Lars von Trier, The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino that one day will be on a list such as this.

Well that is my list.  Perhaps I would change much of it tomorrow, switching certain directors around on a critical whim (in fact I did make several changes as I was finalizing my draft) but for right now, on this date, these are my choices for the Most Influential Directors of All-Time.

Weekly Film Poll #2: The Results

This week, faithful readers, you were asked to name your favourite French New Wave director.  Granted, the outcome was a forgone conclusion (wasn't it?) but you voted anyway - and I thank you for such.

I chose the above picture of Godard and (then) wife Anna Karina to honour both JLG (for winning the contest this week) and Anna on what is the actress/new wave icon's 70th birthday.

The results (based on 22 votes) are as follows:

Jean-Luc Godard - 10 (45%)

Francois Truffaut - 6 (27%)

Jacques Rivette - 3 (13%)

Eric Rohmer - 3 (13%)

Claude Chabrol - 0 (0%)

The saddest part is that poor M. Chabrol did not receive even a single vote.  Granted, he is my personal least favourite of the five, but hey, the poor guy just died, how about at least a pity vote.

The new poll can be viewed in the ledfthand sidebar.  This time, in anticipation of the new Coen Brothers film coming out at year's end (their remake of True Grit) you are asked to choose your favourite Coen Brothers movie.  

Our goal this week is to have at least 50 participants in our little film poll.

City Cinema: September 2010

Here is the link to my September 2010 City Cinema column for the Harrisburg PA alt-monthly The Burg.  I blather on about Winter's Bone and JLG's Breathless restoration, so I am sure you will want to read it.  Plus it's another excuse to post another great poster image from that fabulous French film of yesteryear.

The above link is to the column as it appears on my website, The Cinematheque, but the actual column can be read in the hard copy edition itself (yeah, they still make those) for all those local fans, or at The Burg's website (in PDF form) for those far far away.

Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

When one has gone through pretty much their entire adult life (from about 20 to the current 43) completely in love with Jean-Luc Godard's revolutionary French New Wave film A Bout Souffle (aka, Breathless) it is completely appropriate (and not strange or ridiculous at all, mind you!) for one to jump up and down like a giddy schoolgirl once one finally sees the film (that shook the world!) in a theater, up on the big screen, in a glorious (and quite gorgeous) newly minted 35mm 50th anniversary restoration print. Not strange or ridiculous at all, right? C'mon people, help me out here. Not strange or ridiculous at all - and completely appropriate. Right? Right?

Now I do want to clarify by saying that all this hullabaloo (not strange or ridiculous at all, mind you!) took place at the cinema I run with my lovely wife Amy, hours before we opened for business for the day, and that I was alone in said theater, so my giddy schoolgirl antics did not disturb a single soul. There may have also been a point where I lightly caressed the screen as that pixie darling Jean Seberg was hawking her New York Herald Tribune up and down the Champs-Elysees, but we probably shouldn't go into that because even I am beginning to think this may be quite strange and equally quite as ridiculous (though still quite appropriate).

Giddy schoolgirl antics aside, Godard's film was truly revolutionary as far as world cinema goes. Changing the way cinema works - or breathes if you will - Godard, along with his Nouvelle Vague compatriots, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol and Rivette, were upstart pioneers for at least three (so far!) generations of filmmakers to come. Without Godard and his Breathless (and for full disclosure - Truffaut and his 400 Blows) there would never have been a Scorsese, a Bogdanovich, a Coppola, a Cimino, a Hopper. There would never have been a De Palma, a Ferrara or an Oliver Stone. There would never have been a Christophe Honore or a Arnaud Desplechin. There would never have been a Linklater, a Todd Haynes or an Anderson (neither Paul Thomas nor Wes). There would never have been a Wong Kar-wai or an Abbas Kiarostami.  There would never have been a Tarantino.  Not even a Spielberg (whether that's a bad thing or not).

Okay, I may be treading pretty far into the old hyperbolic swamp, but in essence, all I stated in the above paragraph is quite true. These filmmakers would still exist without the new wave of course (though as deeply ensconced in post-new wave mentality as Christophe Honore is, there can be a good case made for his possible inexistence otherwise) but they would probably exist in a somewhat altered manner. Seemingly simplistic in its plot (a girl and a gun is what Godard said) and mostly accidental in its style (his jump cuts were just his idea of cutting the film without editing out any sub-plots) the film nonetheless helped create a new way of tackling cinema.  A way that was the polar opposite of what was considered great cinema prior to the new wave.  I way that only the fresh minds of a group of motley cinephiles (all working as that most dreaded of writer - the film critic!) would dare attempt.

Yet, even as revolutionary as this movement, this film, was to cinema and the generations of so-called movie brats that came after them, it was just as revelatory to a young buck cinephile who was just coming into his own as a lover of cinema.  Watching just the usual gang of typical hollywoodie stuff throughout my childhood (my misbegotten youth if you will) it was when I graduated that I first dove into cinephilia.  Seeing Ran and Brazil in back to back weeks at a local cinema in 1985, I began seeking out more arthouse fare.  This led to my early love of Kurosawa, Bergman and Fellini, which in turn led me into Truffaut and Godard.  My first viewing of Breathless (at around 20 or so) was a shock to the system so to speak.  Sure, I still to this day love many of the films that came before (my favourtite time in cinema is still the fifties!), but there is just something so urgent about the French New Wave that makes it seem more important in a way.  Of course I was reading a lot of the Beats at the time too.  All in all, it led into the deep seeded cinephilia that enraptures me to this very day (and beyond I am sure)

Now of course the reason I am even writing about this particular film at this particular moment in time is that the aforementioned 50th anniversary restoration print is out and (as I am sure you have gathered from my earlier giddy schoolgirl antics) is currently playing at Midtown Cinema - the (again) aforementioned arthouse that my lovely wife and I run together.  So far business hasn't exactly been brisk (my film buyer warned me that Harrisburg would not come out for classic films - even if they are on 35mm!) but I have faith it will pick up over the weekend (and vindicate me with my film buyer!!).  I mean c'mon, how can they not come out for such a revolutionary film as Breathless?  Really, tell me how.  I know I am still going to act like a giddy schoolgirl (who wouldn't with Jean Seberg up on the screen!?) - as ridiculous and strange as it may seem.