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.

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.

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.

On Watching a 16mm Print of Truffaut's The Green Room

There I sat, on a Wednesday evening at a filmclub of sorts called Moviate, in Midtown Harrisburg, snugly nestled amongst the throngs of film lovers packing the screening of Truffaut's all-but unknown 1978 film adaptation of the Henry James novella "The Altar of the Dead".  Well, most of that opening sentence is correct at least.  The blatant lie shoved in there, like a glaring, flaming albatross (at least to me) is the whole flapdoodle about the throngs of film lovers.  In sad reality, there were only three of us (four if you include Moviate's head honcho and projectionist) at this Wednesday evening screening - but even more sadly is the fact that this is probably considered a good crowd for such an event here in the boondocks of central PA.

Anyway, soapboxing about the dearth of culture in America aside (and trust me, I can ramble on quite incessantly about that angering subject!), allow my short critique about this mid-week cinematic experience to get under way before everyone is completely bored out of their respective skulls at the aforementioned rambling.

The Green Room has got to be one of the least known (and least seen) of all of Francois Truffaut's oeuvre, so even on the scratchy, colour-saturated 16mm print that we throngs of three were privy to is a welcome kind of joy.  Based on the aforementioned James novella, Truffaut weaves a story of a disenfranchised man in the late 1920's, having been through the horror of the Great War only to return and lose his beautiful young bride mere months after their wedding.  This quite morose protagonist, played by Truffaut himself with an almost zombie-like stoicism (perhaps this is less a character driven thing and more an inability to act kind of thing in many ways), makes it his life's duty to honour "his" dead - those who have been part of his life (either in a major way or the most minor).

This self-imposed honourable duty begins in the titular green room of the man's provincial French house and eventually concludes in a newly-rebuilt chapel, with enough fluttering candles and Gothic atmosphere to make one expect a horror movie to pop out of the woodwork at any moment - it is after all, based on Henry James.  It is a strange movie indeed, never really going anywhere, but never really meaning to either.  Perhaps not up there with the so-called creme de la creme of Truffaut works, but with its deep set cinematic eyes and its overtly Gothic mannerisms and the director's strangely one-note performance, The Green Room is more than an interesting diversion on a Wednesday night in Midtown Harrisburg.

The thing that most satisfied me - and the film historian inside me (and the self-referential junky inside there) - was what would be the semi-climactic set piece of the renovated chapel and the "dead" laying to rest there.  Candles burning in every corner, Truffaut's character has hung pictures of all those he has lost, and it is in these pictures that we see a glimpse of the cinephile inside Truffaut (not that he has ever kept this persona very hidden from us).  Pictures of Oskar Werner, Jeanne Moreau, Oscar Wilde and even Henry James line these flame-lapped walls as an ode to Truffaut's own "dead" (or in some cases, his past friends and idols).

What more can one say?  Not much I suppose.  The Green Room, while interesting and even exhilarating at times, never imposes the feelings films such as The 400 Blows or Jules et Jim or The Wild Child or Shoot the Piano Player have and still do.  Still though, this little seen film (even on scratchy 16mm) is a fun look at the auteur of all auteurs at his Gothic giddiest - stoic as it may well seem, in what very well may be the director's least lively tale ever.  Perhaps it is my desire for the life in cinema as opposed to the death inside it, that makes me place this film lower on the proverbial totem pole than I probably should, for it is a well-crafted and well-manicured look at death and what it means to those still living.

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.

Weekly Film Poll #1: The Results

THE GREAT AND POWERFUL MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUD IN THE WORLD CINEMA POLL has concluded its first week.  You were asked (in anticipation of Sofia Coppola's 4th film, Somewhere)  to name your favourite Sofia Coppola film thus far.  Seventeen people voted in the poll (not bad for a first time??) but, and I believe I speak for Mr. Murray as well, more would be better. 

The results were as follows.

Lost in Translation - 8 votes (47%)

Marie Antoinette - 5 votes (29%)

The Virgin Suicides - 4 votes (23%)

Not a real surprise.  My favourite came in second, but....ah well.

The new poll can be found in the lefthand sidebar.  This week, in memory of Claude Chabrol, you get to choose your favourite French New Wave director.  Vote away.....