A few days ago I posted on the 10 Best Movies (I Saw) in 2011, but they weren't, actually, the 10 best movies I saw in 2011 - they were 10 Best 2011 movies I saw in 2011. I also spend a lot of time watching, usually re-watching, great movies from the past - as we all should, why not go back to movies we loved or explore the great ones we've missed? - same with books - so to complete the picture so to speak, here are the 10 Best (classic) movies I saw in 2011 (in alphabetical order):
Au Revoir les enfants: Louis Malle's great (autobiographic?)film about boys in a boarding school in rural France during World War II - including several Jewish boys protected by the priests. Some amazing scenes, especially the conclusion.
Blow-up: Maybe not Antonioni's best but one of his most accessible, at least to an English-speaking viewership, really captures its moment in history and stands up well as a portrait of alienation - way better than I thought it would be on a re-visit.
Casablanca: Could anyone not like this movie? Such total entertainment from opening moments to the famous conclusion on the tarmac. Great characters, Bogart's most famous role, romantic, funny, moving.
Les Diaboliques: Clouzot, more Hitchcockian than Hitchcock himself, another boarding-school movie, but this one focused more on the so-called adults, mean and nasty people, and a terrifically taut and surprising plot with a great bathtub scene.
Godfather and Godfather II: masterpieces, then and still. After seeing each, I tried to post lists of the great scenes in these movies and ultimately realized I would just be recounting the entire film. American epics, in every sense of the word.
Knife in the Water and Repulsion: These two by Polanski, both stark and simple, very few characters (esp in Knife, with only 3), psychologically for of weird twists and insights, Repulsion especially imaginative as we probe the mental breakdown of Deneuve, with the camera adopting her POV - he was obviously such a major talent, and it's such a tragedy that his personal life and failings have gotten in the way of the director he might have become.
Little Fugitive: a rarely seen or discussed film, one of my faves from childhood, even better seeing it today as it's an extraordinary time capsule of Brooklyn/Coney Island in the 50s, story of a young boy lost on Coney Island and older brother's search for him - fun and moving.
Rules of the Game: Renoir's greatest, and one of the greatest of all time, better and more deep on every viewing, no film has taken on issues of social class in pre-War Europe (or anywhere, for that matter) with greater insight, humor, poignancy. The hunting sequence one of the best ever filmed, and the image of the Buddhas and of the count next to his latest musical toy are unforgettable.
- Thank you, Tom B for two corrections: it's Deneuve, not Bardot, in Repulsion; it's Clouzot, not Chabrol, who directed Les Diaboliques. And I agree with Tom that Wages of Fear is even better than Les Diaboliques - but I didn't see it in 2011.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Excellent choices, as expected, and I will try and track down Little Fugitive, the only one I do not know. I agree that Polanski is a great director but his claustrophobic vision of life can be quite depressing, no doubt a reflection of the extraordinarily traumatic life he has lived. What I like about Repulsion, which features Catherine Deneuve (Sp?), not Bardot, is how we come to identify with her psychosis because we can no longer tell which events we see are real and which are not, which is also the case with The Tenant.
ReplyDeleteI love Diabolique but think Clouzot's nerve-wracking tale of capitalist exploitation in a squalid SA town, The Wages of Fear, is even better.
Your blogs are superb and thought-provoking. Keep it up.
T. Barrett