Which name did you impulsively click on first? I clicked on Werner Herzog, who likes "Freaks," "Intolerance," "Rashomon," "Nosferatu," and a movie I don't remember ever noticing before, "Where is the Friend's Home."
About "Rashomon" — which I once wrote an article about — he said:
It is probably the only film that I've ever seen which has something like a perfect balance, which does not occur in filmmaking very often. You sense it sometimes in great music, but I haven't experienced it in cinema, and it's mind boggling. I don't know how [Akira] Kurosawa did it. It's still a mystery to me. That's greatness.
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218 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 218 of 218Saint Croix wrote:
[Citizen Kane is] a diatribe against capitalism.
I think you need to establish this rather than asserting it. Your thesis would have more weight if Kane were a straight-forward capitalist rather than a newspaper baron. If anti-capitalism was Welles' bailiwyck then wouldn't such well-known capitalist figures like J. P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie be better patterns for Charles Foster Kane than William Randolf Hearst? Hearst was a self-professed populist (as close to a socialist as 20th century America would tolerate) and was an early supporter of William Jennings Bryan.
Did they sell the kid to the bank? I think they sold him to the bank.
You should watch the film again, and more closely. The film makes clear that young Charlie Kane is placed in the care of a guardian and trustee called Walter Parks Thatcher at the insistence of his mother, Mary Kane, who wants her son to grow up in the genteel East rather than in the rough and ready West. Kane's father, a unlettered sourdough who has struck it rich in the gold fields, is unhappy with the arrangement. The final scene showing Kane's sled burning with the unsold rubbish, the very sled he was playing with when Thatcher comes to collect him, implies that Charles Foster Kane might have been a much happier man if he had grown up under the guidance of his easy-going father rather than the fussbudget Thatcher. (Though the Hearst fortune was founded on Western gold claims, and CFH was born in San Francisco, a less wild and wooly place than the remote snowbound Kane cabin, Hearst parents were highly educated and cultured with no need of a Thatcher.)
Personally, I see no need to read any political subtext into Citizen Kane (This need to politicize art is a particularly latter-day obsession based on the Marxist paradigms that too many academics are completely unable to shed.) It seems to me that Charlie Kane is a fundamentally lonely man who tries to bargain his way to what he deems to be connectedness and fails utterly -- not too different from most of us unfortunately.
PS, if one insists on finding a political message in Citizen Kane, then I suggest re-examining the film in the light of a real newspaperman who comes to wield power in the political arena, someone much in the news in 1941. Can you guess who it might be?
Well--its 4 in the AM here I couldnt sleep--enjoyed the lists; in fact, the process of naming individuals top five movies in a group setting always egenders a lot of spirited conversation.
My faves are: The treasure of the Sierra Madre, Zulu, The man who would be king, African Queen, and any of the John ford cavalry triology--and somehow I would have to work Das Boot in there.
Lots of fun--and really appreciate the lists of all
If anti-capitalism was Welles' bailiwyck then wouldn't such well-known capitalist figures like J. P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie be better patterns for Charles Foster Kane than William Randolf Hearst?
You're kidding, right? Citizen Kane is all about money, how money corrupts you and poisons you. Kane is a newspaperman because when he's young he's a liberal. He wants to do good! He's not greedy. As he accumulates wealth he becomes more evil throughout the film. No one loves him, he's all alone in his big, big house.
The politics here seems to me to be pretty obvious. (Compare the treatment of great wealth to what Billy Wilder has to say in Sabrina!) And while I do say Citizen Kane is a brilliant film, arty and original, I also say that it gets put on so many top 10 lists because so many leftist film critics agree with the underlying politics.
In fact, if you look at the Sight and Sound polls, you can see this bias in many of their top films. For instance, The Godfather can be read as a criticism of American society, and how corrupt we all are. Our policemen are corrupt, our reporters are corrupt, our politicians are corrupt. How do you make money? You steal it!
And I really like The Godfather. It's a fun mobster movie. But all these critics are not picking The Godfather because it's a fun mobster movie. They're picking it because of its negative indictment of the American way of life.
Another top 10 hit, Rules of the Game is a horrible movie. It's really bad. But so many people (particularly Europeans) love it because of Jean Renoir's obsession with class. Rules of the Game is all about the upper class and the servants. Utterly boring, predictable, stupid. Americans are way more sophisticated about class. We've been skewering class since our country was founded! Look at the Marx brothers (who's very name references Karl Marx!) And yet the Marx brothers are brilliant and Renoir is embarrassing. Look at Sabrina (again!) or any of the Thin Man movies. We love to skewer class. Americans are very light-hearted about class. We don't take Marx seriously and people who do are idiots.
Yet another movie inspired by Marx is Battleship Potemkin, which is an actual Communist movie. Have you seen it? Do you watch it? It has an utterly brilliant scene on the Odessa steps. That entire scene is brilliant. One of the coolest and most awesome music videos ever made! But the rest of that movie is just horrible propaganda. It's really bad and unwatchable.
Contrast Casablanca, which is an amazing, amazing bit of propaganda. The whole point of Casablanca is to bring America into World War II, right? And yet you don't even think about it because the love story is so amazing. There are still ideas and ideology behind Casablanca, but the filmmakers understand the importance of human emotion and individuals. People adore Casablanca to this day.
Americans love Casablanca because it's so romantic. It speaks to us. The film is literally designed to speak to Americans as a people. And while I find the politics of Casablanca far more appealing than Marxist politics, as a matter of craft Americans are so utterly brilliant at getting our ideas out into the world that people don't even realize they're hearing a speech. I just find it insane that incompetent storytelling like Potemkin gets props as one of the finest movies ever made. Give it an Oscar for editing, sure. But as a whole that movie is a mediocrity.
I've written a book, My Absolutely Insane Attempt to Rank All Cinema. And I call it insane because I simply can't capture it all. There's just too much cinema. And more every day!
So I'm kinda embarrassed to say I haven't seen Zulu. Everybody's going "Zulu!" and I'm going "Zulu?" So now I have to watch it and I appreciate the tip!
I don't blame leftists for voting for leftist films, by the way. How can I, right? You look at my top 10 list, I'm sure people are going, "What a fucking Republican!"
On another thread Althouse asks why conservatives are happier than liberals. You actually see this in our art. Republicans are happy about American society. So we like John Ford movies, we like Singin' in the Rain, we like Casablanca.
John Ford was a liberal Democrat, but I don't believe he would be today. Our art has really shifted to the left. Today conservatives adore Ford because he's so sympathetic to the military, and he loves America and loves our history. As leftism has swamped liberalism, artists like John Ford and Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock all seem conservative to us. Among other things, they don't curse! Sex is repressed, violence is repressed. And it's interesting to think about how their uptight repression makes their art more likable and enjoyable to us. It makes us happier to watch it.
Saint Croix wrote:
You're kidding, right? Citizen Kane is all about money, how money corrupts you and poisons you. Kane is a newspaperman because when he's young he's a liberal. He wants to do good! He's not greedy. As he accumulates wealth he becomes more evil throughout the film. No one loves him, he's all alone in his big, big house.
No, you must be kidding. You're either kidding or off your chump. Whatever your describing it's not Citizen Kane
Pauline Kael is really, really good on Citizen Kane, in my opinion. Long but good.
Westerns
The Cowboys
Shane
Ride the Wild Country
Monte Walsh (either version)
Unforgiven
Ride the Wild Country ?!?
Ride The High Country perhaps ...
Rusty wrote:
Westerns...
I like your list and would add a seldom seen classic Will Penny (1968)
I like Shane with reservations. Brandon DeWilde's acting always sets my teeth on edge. Shane's buckskins look over-the-top, like they were taken from a B-Western's prop room. And that singlefooting horse he rides, sheesh... that's a hard way to to get anywhere. Did Alan Ladd have hemroids or something? Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider covered the same ground with better performances, a more intriguing plot, the added attraction of possible otherworldly goings on, and a beautiful horse for the hero to ride beautifully!
Rusty, I love westerns!
Stagecoach
Fort Apache
Support Your Local Gunfighter
Unforgiven
My Darling Clementine
Rio Bravo
High Noon
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Dead Man
Breaker Morant
I'm never sure if it's fair to call Breaker Morant a western, since it's set in South Africa. Awesome flick, though.
Any Western with Jimmy Stewart should be on the A-List, with one exception: Cheyenne Autumn (1964). What a gawd-awful mess. It seems that John Ford, after almost single-handedly transforming the Western into an art form, decided to end his career by metaphorically blowing his brains out Van Gogh style. Steward makes a cameo appearance as who? Wyatt Earp?! Decked out in a white suit and hat no less, as if Wyatt Earp had beat Col. Sanders in a hand of strip poker! Don't get me started.
I'm never sure if it's fair to call Breaker Morant a western, since it's set in South Africa...
Horses, bleak landscape, broad-brimmed hats, guns... yup, all the elements of a Western. You now have my official permission to henceforth deem Breaker Morant a non-Western.
Horses, bleak landscape, broad-brimmed hats, guns... yup, all the elements of a Western. You now have my official permission to henceforth deem Breaker Morant a non-Western.
LOL. Your subconscious disagrees with you!
Any Western with Jimmy Stewart should be on the A-List.
I love Winchester '57. Awesome.
my second ten...
Blazing Saddles
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Son of Paleface
Ruggles of Red Gap
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Red River
Winchester '57
The Searchers
The Bear
Ride the High Country
Not sure it's fair to call The Bear a western, either. Among other things, it's shot by a Frenchman!
@Roger J said:
My faves are: The treasure of the Sierra Madre, Zulu, The man who would be king, African Queen, and any of the John ford cavalry triology--and somehow I would have to work Das Boot in there.
I think that's the only group of five movies that I've seen all of them and think they are all first class.
LOL. Your subconscious disagrees with you!
Evidently you didn't hear the snort of derision that came between the words Western and You.
Late mention:
Ponette.
Sita Sings the Blues.
When the Wind Blows.
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