Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’italiana)
Directed by Pietro Germi
Written by Ennio De Concini, Pietro Germi, and Alfredo Giannetti
1961/Italy
Lux Film/Vides Cinematografica/Galatea Film
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries. Ambrose Bierce [/box]

I have an unrequited love affair with Marcello Mastroianni and consider this to be the peak of his acting career.  I just love this movie!

Fernando Cefalú (Mastroianni) is the first son in an impoverished aristocratic family.  Things have gotten so bad that Fernando’s father has had to resort to housing his brother and family.  This puts temptation in Fernando’s way in the shape of his shapely 16-year-old first cousin Angela.  She reciprocates his affection in an infatuated teenager sort of way,

Fernando is burdened by the existence of his relentlessly cheerful and clinging wife, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca).  The domestic and attentive Rosalia might be the perfect wife if it were not for her little mustache and her constant pestering for demonstrations of love.  Fernando finds her unbearable and the audience can see why.

Then Fernando gets an idea.  Divorce is out at this time in Italy but crimes of honor are lightly punished in Sicily.  What he needs to do is find a chump foolish enough to fall for Rosalia and catch them en flagrante.  This is both easier and more difficult than it might seem.

This is a very funny film thanks largely to the spot-on performances by Mastroianni and Rocca.  Mastroianni manages to create a totally insufferable egocentric Latin lover and at the same time get you to hope he will succeed in his project.  He must have had fun sending up the press’s portrayal of himself.  There are also many pokes at the Italian character and customs to savor.  Highly recommended.

Divorce, Italian-Style won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Actor and Best Director.

Clip

Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d’un été)
Directed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch
1961/France
Argos Films
First viewing/FilmStruck
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

This film gave the term cinema verite to the lexicon while at the same time foreshadowing such exercises as David Holzman’s Diary.

The filmmakers set out to make a film about a particular time and place – Paris in the summer of 1960 – and gathered a “cast” of non-actors to help them do so.  The main concern is how people live their lives.  This is approached by asking people whether they are happy. As the film begins one of the main subjects, Marcelline, takes to the streets with a colleague to stop random strangers with just this question.  She finds very few that will even give her the time of day.

Then we start focusing on the subjects who have agreed to participate in the project. They answer at length, sometimes with gut-wrenching honesty.  At the same time, the film explores the immigrant experience and feelings about the upheaval in the Congo and the war in Algeria.  The film concludes with a reflection on whether the camera has made the reactions filmed “false”.

There’s a lot to think about here.  The filmmakers picked their subjects with a lot of care – it’s not clear whether the people were all previously acquainted – and their stories and emotional and intellectual lives are all fascinating.  The film is beautifully done and I highly recommend it.

Clips with commentary by Jean Rouch

La Notte
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Ennio Flaiano, and Tonino Guerra
1961/Italy/France
Nepi Film/Sofitedip/Silver Films
Repeat viewing/FilmStruck
One of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die

[box] Giovanni: I no longer have inspirations, only recollections.[/box]

There is some gold within this sad film about ennui.

The story follows a day in the life of Giovanni (Marcello Mastroiani) and Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), a restless married couple.  Each is restless in his own way.   As the film begins, the couple visits a friend who is in the hospital in great pain.  The prospect of death has brought him some clarity and the three engage in some honest conversation.  But Lidia can’t take the strain and goes off wandering aimlessly.  Eventually, the two reunite.

Lidia doesn’t feel like another evening at home.  Neither does she want to go to a lavish party at the home of the Gherardinis.  So they go out to a nightclub and watch a mildly pornographic striptease act.  This wears down Lidia to the point that she is ready for the party.  At the party, the couple soon separate.  Temptation awaits each of them. Giovanni’s takes the form of Monica Vitti.

As in the other Antonioni films I have seen, the characters all seem to be searching for some meaning.  For all we know there is none to be found.  One has to be in the right mood to watch this stuff.  Yesterday, I enjoyed the poetry of the visuals but really wasn’t ready for the very bleak story.  My favorite part of this is actually the brief section where Monica Vitti plays the game with her makeup compact.

Trailer

La Dolce Vita
Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi
1960/Italy/France
Riama Film/Cinecitta/Pathe Consortium Cinema/Gray-Film
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Transvestite: By 1965 there’ll be total depravity. How squalid everything will be.[/box]

Life is bittersweet in this episodic tale about a man who cannot seem to find anything to hold onto in a world adrift.

Marcello Rubino (Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid journalist who works hand and glove with a pack of photographers (who would become known as paparazzi as a result of this film).  He spends much of his time collecting tidbits of gossip on Rome’s Via Veneto.  Marcello is also constantly up for a good time and collects a number of women from the same location.

The film follows a week in Marcello’s life as each wild night leads to a disillusioning dawn. Included in the episodes are his troubles with his clinging live-in-girlfriend, his encounter with a Swedish sex symbol (Anita Ekberg), a tentative relationship with an heiress (Anouk Aimee), an erzatz miracle, an intellectual salon, and an orgy.  All leave Marcello more depressed and less open to an authentic life than previously.

I don’t know what this says about me but I seem to have the same sense of humor as Fellini.  From the brilliant opening in which the Christ statue is borne by helicopter to the Vatican to the wistful ending, I am awestruck by the images and smiling throughout.  It’s the first of Fellini’s freak shows but I happen to find all the freaks amusing and rather endearing.  The film is more than just freaks, however.  Marcello, brilliantly portrayed by Mastroianni, is Everyman and we identify with his longing for something better and his desperation.  When you think of the scale of the production, it was quite an achievement.  The Nino Rota score is iconic.  Highly recommended.

La Dolce Vita won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Director; Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

L’Avventura
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, and Tonio Guerra
1960/Italy/France
Cino del Duca/Produzione Cinematografiche Europee/Societe Cinematographique Lyre
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Sandro: Why should we be here talking, arguing? Believe me Anna, words are becoming less and less necessary; they create misunderstandings.[/box]

The adventure in this hauntingly beautiful film is a young woman’s journey of self-discovery.

Anna (Lea Massari) is young, beautiful and rich.  She is also bored, dissatisfied, and conflicted about her engagement to Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti).  Sandro works as some kind of building consultant, having abandoned actual architecture.  The two have meaningless sex in lieu of communicating.  It’s hard to communicate with Sandro, who is seemingly a very simple sort of guy.

Anna’s friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) will accompany the couple on a yacht trip.  Along for the ride are two other couples, both of whom also have deeply conflicted relationships. Claudia is the witness to all this emptiness and despair.  She will be the only authentic human being we will meet in the course of the film.

The party visits a deserted rocky island where they continue to play out their psychodramas.  Suddenly, Anna has disappeared  Everyone looks for her with varying degrees of intensity.  Claudia is the most frantic.  But Anna is nowhere to be found.

Sandro comes on to Claudia before the yacht has even departed the island.  She flees to continue the search on the mainland.  He follows her.  Then they start searching together. Claudia eventually reciprocates his attentions but loving Sandro will not be easy.

This was my third viewing of L’Avventura.  The first time through I was just puzzled.  After a couple more tries at Antonioni’s films, I concluded that he made boring films about boredom.  The second time something clicked in me and I found the film fascinating and meaningful.  On this viewing, I was somewhere in between my two reactions.  The film seemed to drag on and on, yet every image was captivating and moving.  I love the ending when two characters seem able to grieve their losses.

I don’t know how fair it is to let a commentary influence one’s opinion about a film.  The one on the Criterion version is fantastic and explains so much.  It turns out that you have to pay attention to just about every detail in every frame to get the most out of this.  Nothing is there by accident.  When I watch the movie through this film historian’s eyes, it turns into a masterpiece.

Re-release trailer

Breathless (À bout de souffle)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Written by Jean-Luc Godard; story by Francois Truffaut
1960/France
Les Films Imperia/Les Productions Georges de Beauregard; Societe Nouvelle de Cinematographie
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Patricia Franchini: We look at each other in the eye, and it’s no use.[/box]

I’m not a big Godard fan but I remember liking this one.  Sadly, it did not survive a repeat viewing.

Even Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Bemondo) himself realizes he is an a-hole.  He starts off the movie by stealing a car and killing a police officer.  For the rest of it, nearly every action is some kind of crime or callousness.  He fancies himself to be a Humphrey Bogart kind of guy but he doesn’t even come close.  He claims to be in love with young American student/newspaper vendor Patricia Franchini.  Clearly, this is only because she is undecided about him.

The story mainly concerns Michel’s efforts to get some money he is owed, bed Patricia, and drag her into his life of crime.  With director Jean-Pierre Melville as a famous writer.

This, like every other Godard film I have seen, is almost purely an exercise in style.  Since I find the style to be pretentious navel-gazing and winking at the audience, this movie left me cold except for the times I was yelling at Belmondo through the TV screen.  I think Michel is easily one of the most unlikeable protagonists in the history of cinema.

Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste)
Directed by Francois Truffaut
Written by Francois Truffaut and Marcel Moussy from a novel by David Goodis
1960/France
Les Films de la Pleiade
Repeat viewing/Netflix Rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] “Over the piano was printed a notice: Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.” – Oscar Wilde, Impressions of America [/box]

Truffaut goes meta for his second picture, with shots taken from film noir and text that could be from Woody Allen.  It’s enjoyable if superficial.

Since the death of his wife, concert pianist Edouard Saroyan (Charles Aznavour) has worked in a dance hall under the name Charlie Kohler.  Despite his shy manner and slight stature, he is quite a favorite with the ladies.  He is raising his youngest brother Fido.

As the film begins, brother Chico runs into the bar fleeing a couple of gunmen.  He explains that he and brother Richard participated in a heist with the gangsters and made off with all the loot.  Chico runs out of the club one step ahead of his pursuers.  These now begin to follow Charlie to find out the location of their family home.  They kidnap Fido for the same purpose.

In the meantime, Charlie is forming a tentative new relationship with waitress Lena.  He does as much as possible to remain uninvolved but the gangsters are unrelenting.  We continue to follow the chase.

The film’s look borrows heavily from American film noir of the 40s and 50’s.  It has more in common stylistically with Godard’s Breathless than it does with The 400 Blows.  Truffaut clearly had a good time experimenting throughout.  All the characters are far more concerned with their relationships, or lack thereof, with women than they are with the crime plot.  Except when they are on the business end of their guns, these are some of the most laid back gangsters you will ever see.

Trailer

Spartacus
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Dalton Trumbo from a novel by Howard Fast
1960/USA
Bryna Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Spartacus: [to Crassus, about the slain Antoninus] Here’s your victory. He’ll come back. He’ll come back, and he’ll be millions!

I am not big on 3 1/2 hour sword-and-sandal epics.  This one is so grand, however, that it keeps my interest.

Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) was sold away from his slave mother when he was 13.  He now is sentenced to a lifetime of brutal hard labor.  He rebels and is sentenced to death by starvation.  Luckily, Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) spots him and think he will make an ideal trainee at his gladiator school.

The school is equally brutal and Spartacus shows talent as a scrapper.  While there, he falls in love with slave-prostitute Varinia (Jean Simmons).  One day, the aristocratic Senator Crassus (Laurence Olivier) shows up with his daughter and new son-in-law (John Dall) and pays Batiatus big money to entertain their party with a death match.  The event sparks a slave revolt that destroys Batiatus’s premises.  The gladiators, lead by Spartacus, march through the country to the sea, collecting recruits as they go.

In the meantime, there is a political feud between Crassus and the democratically-minded Senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton).  In addition, Crassus fell in lust with Varinia during his stop and the school and attempted to buy her.  He is not one to be frustrated for long.

The remainder of the film is devoted to all these complications plus the efforts of the Romans to put down the slave revolt. With Tony Curtis as Crassus’s house slave and John Gavin as Julius Caesar.

This is probably the least Kubrickian film that Kubrick directed, but his talent shows through in every frame.  The many crowd and battle scenes are magnificent.  It’s an interesting and not too melodramatic story about freedom fighters as well.  Just reading the cast list should give you an idea about the acting.  Recommended.

Spartacus won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Supporting Actor (Ustinov); Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; and Best Costume Design, Color. It was nominated in the categories of Best Film Editing and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer

Psycho
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Joseph Stephano from a novel by Robert Bloch
1960/USA
Shamley Productions
Repeat viewing/My DVD collection
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Norman Bates: I think I must have one of those faces you can’t help believing.[/box]

I would give anything to have seen this, uncontaminated, on opening night.  I knew the ending before I ever saw the film and had seen it several times before this viewing.  Then again, familiarity only leaves room to appreciate the excellencies of all its elements.

As the film begins, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is enjoying the “last” of her lunch-time liaisons with Sam (John Gavin), a divorced lover who cannot afford to marry her.  She announces she can’t take any more hiding.  When she returns to her work as a secretary in a real estate agency, opportunity falls into her lap in the form of $40,000 cash with which a client is paying for a property.  He is such an old lech that she feels little guilt in misappropriating the money, which she has been tasked to deposit in the bank.  She heads for Sam’s place in California.

On a dark and stormy night, she is forced to stop at an isolated motel en route to her destination.  There she befriends the awkward young manager Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).

When Marion fails to report to work on Monday, her sister (Vera Miles) and a private investigator (Martin Balsam) begin to search for her and the missing $40,000.  With Patricia Hitchcock as an irritating co-worker.

This far from my favorite Hitchcock.  The ending is anti-climactic and the climax is gimmicky, especially when you are expecting it.  But the elements are all so brilliant!  The famous shower scene is breathtaking, especially when the camera descends on Leigh’s frozen eye as it ends.  The score has never been topped.  Perkins was unfortunately so convincing that he was mostly condemned to reprising this role for the rest of his career. Highly recommended.

Psycho was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Supporting Actress (Leigh); Best Director; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

Trailer

Black Sunday (La maschera del demonio)
Directed by Mario Bava
Written by Ennio De Concini and Mario Serandrei from a story by Nikolai Gogol
1960/Italy/USA
Galatea Film/Jolly Film/Alta Vista Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Princess Asa Vajda: You, too, can feel the joy and happiness of hating.[/box]

Director Bava shows off his skills as a cinematographer in this graphic witchcraft/vampire film.

The setting is Moldavia.  As the film opens, Princess Aja (Barbara Steele) is being burned at the stake as a witch along with her faithful servant Ivan.  The last punishment before the fire is lit is to place a spiked mask of Satan on her face.  Aja’s brother brought the charges against her and as the flames rise higher she curses her entire family and its descendants in Satan’s name.

Segue to two hundred years later, in what looks like the 19th Century.  Two doctors are traveling to a conference and come upon a ruined crypt when their carriage breaks down. There Dr. Krujevan discovesr the coffin of Aja.  He accidentally cuts his finger and the few drops of blood are all Aja needs to begin to come to life.

Outside the crypt, the travelers meet Princess Katia (Steele again), Aja’s descendent.  They proceed to an inn but Krujevan is called to the home of Katia’s father Prince Vajda.  Little does he know that the coachman sent for him is actually Ivan.  So begins Princess Aja’s revenge.

Barbara Steele is very good in her dual role.  Her Princess Aja is truly evil and scary.  There are a lot of moments that will make your skin crawl.  The film looked beautiful on Blu-Ray. I watched the Americanized version.  Recommended to horror fans.

American Trailer