Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

The Young One (La Joven)
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Hugo Butler and Luis Buñuel from the story “Travellin’ Man by Peter Matthieson
1960/Mexico/USA
Producciones Olmeca
First viewing/Netflix Rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Tagline: “Don’t be frightened Evvie….”[/box]

This is a good movie about race relations in the United States.  Since Buñuel was at the helm, it also contains heaping helpings of sexual hanky panky.

The jazz musician Traver (Bernie Hamilton) lands on an island in his boat.  He is escaping the groundless charge of raping a White woman in town on the mainland.

The island is a hunting reserve with two cabins on it.  One belongs to the game warden Miller (Zachary Scott).  Since her grandfather died, the other is occupied by Evvie.  Miller begins by basically treating Evvie like his servant.  Unfortunately for her, he notices that she has blossomed into young womanhood and his attitude radically changes.

While Miller is on a brief trip in town, Traver and Evvie strike up a rapport.  She gives him Miller’s food, a rifle and ammunition.  When he accidentally shoots a hole in his boat, she gives him supplies to repair it.

Miller returns and spends much of his time thereafter hunting for Traver and seducing Evvie.  When Miller finally catches up to Traver, they too strike up a tentative understanding.  Then a minister and a redneck arrive.  The redneck is ready to kill Traver on sight.  The minister believes in his innocence.  The minister’s main agenda, however, is to protect Evvie from her abuser.

This English-language film at first did not seem to me like classic Buñuel.  Upon further reflection, the black humor and perverse sexuality are characteristic.  For one thing, we get shot after shot of legs and feet.  The race relations part is refreshingly complex.  Miller is deeper than your average bigot and eventually recognizes the many things the men have in common.  The sex part is pretty cringe-worthy but also complex.  We are left wondering whether Evvie is a woman or a child and even about the future of the “relationship”.  It makes one feel slightly dirty.

Clip

Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli) 
Directed by Luschino Visconti
Written by Luschino Visconti, Suso Cecchi d’Amico et al
1960/Italy/France
Titanus/Les Films Marceau
Repeat viewing/my DVD collection
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Mom loves the both of them/ You see it’s in the blood/ Both kids are good to Mom/ “Blood’s thicker than mud” – “Family Affair”, Sly and the Family Stone [/box]

Three hours of sadness and beauty are almost overwhelming in this retelling of the Cain and Abel story.

After the death of her husband, Rosaria Parandi (Katina Paxinou) leaves the rural South of Italy with four of her boys to join her eldest son in Milan.  She finds that son at a party celebrating his engagement to Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale).  None of the celebrants are happy to learn that Vincenzo now has a family of six to support, find work for, and house.

They learn of a scheme by which they can hire an apartment, stop paying rent, get evicted and become eligible for public housing.  It is then that the prostitute Nadia (Annie Giradout) comes into their lives.  She is just looking for a warm place to hide out from her father. Almost immediately, brother Simone (Renato Salvatore) falls for her and she exploits the situation.

Jobs are scarce in Milan and boxing promises a way out of poverty for the talented few. Simone is spotted at a gym and taken on by a promoter.  He wins his first fight and the prize money and acclaim immediately go to his head.  He gets in even deeper with Nadia. Unfortunately, Simone is basically lazy, hard-drinking, and  a coward in the ring.  His gentle brother Rocco (Alain Delon) is enlisted to keep an eye on him during training.

Rocco eventually is called up to military service.  More than a year passes and he runs into Nadia by chance.  She has just been released from jail.  He sees past her hard exterior and gives her hope.  When Rocco is discharged from the army, they meet again and fall in love.  Rocco has toughened up in the service and is now, by far, a better fighter than Simone.

Rocco’s relationship with Nadia drives Simone mad and threatens to destroy the entire Parandi family.

There are a couple of themes running through the film.  The first is the alienation and dislocation of a generation of migrants from rural to urban Italy and the toll this takes on traditional values.  Only the youngest of the Parandi brothers are left with any chance of truly assimilating.  The second is the Cain and Abel tragedy.  The matriarch has trained the boys well that the family is everything.  Rocco absorbs this lesson most completely and winds up sticking to Simone despite his degeneration and the truly horrifying series of crimes he commits against both the law and his family.

I was dreading the length of this film but it kept my interest all the way through.  Visconti breaks the story into episodes featuring each brother and that helps.  Although this is in the neo-realist style it also has the sweep and majesty of Visconti’s more operatic films.  I would give anything to see this in the restored version.  The acting is great.  Highly recommended.

Restoration trailer

The Apartment
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
1960/USA
Mirisch Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] C.C. Baxter: Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were.[/box]

I watch Billy Wilder’s bittersweet romantic comedy almost every New Year’s Eve.  It never gets old.

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is an up-and-coming insurance analyst with ambitions for early promotion to the executive corps.  His current ploy is to offer his apartment to managers for their extramarital liaisons.  Despite his go-getting attitude, Baxter is basically a shy and lonely guy.  He has a crush on winsome elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine).

All the goings on in Baxter’s apartment make his neighbors think he is quite a swinger.  Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen), his next-door neighbor, thinks he should donate his brain to science.

Baxter’s strategy works all too well and soon head honcho Jeff D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) wants the apartment key in exchange for a private office.  But when Baxter discovers that Sheldrake’s bit on the side is Fran he must rethink his plan.  With Edie Adams as Sheldrake’s secretary and Ray Walston as one of the corporate lotharios.

I love this movie.  It must be the blackest romantic comedy ever made, dealing as it does with adultery, suicide, and corporate shenanigans.  The casting is pitch perfect.  MacMurray is always at his best playing heels and both Lemmon and MacLaine are irresistible.  Most highly recommended.

The Apartment won Academy Awards for Best Picture; Best Director; Best Writing – Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White; and Best Film Editing.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Actor (Lemmon); Best Actress (MacLaine); Best Supporting Actor (Kruschen); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; and Best Sound.

Trailer

Peeping Tom
Directed by Michael Powell
Written by Leo Marks
1960/UK
Michael Powell (Theatre)
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Arthur Baden: The silly bitch! She’s fainted in the wrong scene![/box]

Michael Powell’s twisted psychological thriller ruined his career but has stood the test of time.

From the first frame, we are witnesses to murder.  Immediately thereafter we learn that cameraman Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is the culprit.  He enjoys filming the death throes of his victims and is one sick puppy.

Mark works for a film studio but spends his off hours taking naughty pictures of naughtier models.  He picks his victims from this class.  At home, he becomes friendly with one of his tenants, young and earnest Helen Stephens (Anna Massey).  He confides his traumatic childhood to her and they fall in love.  But Mark is too far gone to be redeemed by love. With Moira Shearer as one of the victims.
Only a true cinemaphile could have made this movie.  It is less a thriller (the mystery is almost an afterthought) than an exploration of the acts of movie-making and movie-watching.  The audience becomes a voyeur and thus implicated in the heinous acts of the anti-hero.  This is made more powerful by the sympathy that Powell shows for him.  The use of color is more muted than in other films by the Archers but just as powerful. Recommended.

It was not until I listened to the commentary that I realized that Anna Massey was Raymond Massey’s daughter!

Trailer

Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage)
Directed by Georges Franju
Written by Pierre Gascar, Claude Sautet, Jean Redon et al from Redon’s novel
1960/France
Champs-Elysees Productions/Lux Film
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Doctor Génessier: Smile. Not too much. [/box]

“Beautiful” is not an adjective usually applied to horror movies.

Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) is a physician who experiments with tissue transplants in his off hours.  Many of these are performed on the kennel of dogs he has stolen.  When his reckless driving causes an accident that destroys the beautiful face of his daughter Christiane (Edith Scobe), he has a new project.

His technique actually had some success with Louise (Alida Valli).  Now she is his faithful assistant and sets about kidnapping girls with Christiane’s delicate beauty for the doctor’s horrendous facial transplant surgery.  In the meantime, Christiane’s simple wish is to go blind or die.

This is a horror movie without monsters or jump cuts.  The shivers come mostly from the artfully graphic surgery sequences.  Then there are all those enraged dogs.  This is a poetic, somberly paced film.  The black-and-white cinematography looks exquisite on the Criterion Blu-Ray.  Recommended.

Film club trailer

Critic Mark Kermode discusses the film

The Housemaid (Hanyo)
Directed by Ki-young Kim
Written by Ki-young Kim
1960/South Korea
Hanguk Munye Yeonghwa/Kim Ki-young Productions
First viewing/FilmStruck
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Everybody ought to have a maid,/ Someone who you hire when you’re short of help/ To offer you the sort of help/ You never get from a spouse – “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid”, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – lyrics by Steven Sondheim[/box]

Don’t you just hate it when the ending undoes the entire previous movie?  Until then, this is dark, dark, dark.

A music teacher has serious woman problems.  Two of his students are in love with him. His wife had been pumping for the new house he finally bought her, is not always in a great mood and is working her fingers to the bone.  Finally, one of the smitten students finds him a housemaid.  Then his troubles really begin.

Early on the maid discovers a rat and then some rat poison in the kitchen.  She plays games with the latter for the remainder of the film.  The maid is jealous of everything her employers have.  This is not assisted by the taunts of their children.  One night of passion with her employer leaves her pregnant with a due date near that of his wife.  This particular maid is not about to go without a fight.

This is a stylishly made melodrama with plenty of sex and violence.  The performances are all good, particularly that of the maid.  I was not prepared for the last minute or two!  Don’t know that I will seek this out again but I am glad I saw it.

Trailer (French subtitles)

Pickpocket
Directed by Robert Bresson
Written by Robert Bresson
1959/France
Compagnie Cinematographique de France
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#357 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Jeanne: I don’t know. Perhaps everything has a reason.

Michel: Jeanne, are you that naïve?[/box]

This is a thoughtful and beautiful film but keeps me at a distance.

Michel has a lot in common with Crime and Punishment‘s Raskolnikov.  Like Dostoevsky’s anti-hero he believes that many things are allowed to superior men.  Unlike Raskolnikov, he confines his criminal exploits to theft.  Much of the film is devoted to watching Michel’s increasingly audacious and skillful crimes, both with accomplices and without.

Despite his earnings, Michel lives in an austere life.  He seems to have only one friend, the moralist Jacques.  Michel’s mother is seriously ill. Her beautiful and virtuous young neighbor, Jeanne, encourages Michel to visit her, with little success.  Michel’s life of crime continues until its inevitable collapse and a redemption of sorts …

Many great directors have had a horror of emotive “acting”.  Bresson takes this to extremes and Martin LaSalle, the unknown who plays Michel, manages to betray zero emotion throughout this film.  This is despite a voice-over narrative that indicates that the character experiences ecstasy, sorrow, fear and more.  The result for me is that I do not care what happens to him.

The movie became a rather hollow academic philosophy exercise  The search for meaning is probably what Bresson wanted from his audience but is far too cold for me.  There are some very beautiful formal compositions to enjoy, however.

Anatomy of a Murder
Directed by Otto Preminger
Written by Wendell Mayes from a novel by John D. Voelker
1959/USA
Carlyle Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Lt. Frederick Manion: How can a jury disregard what it’s already heard?

Paul Biegler: [shaking head] They can’t, lieutenant. They can’t.

An anatomy of a lawyer’s mind.  I love this movie.

Since Paul Biegler (James Stewart) was defeated for his office as District Attorney in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, he has turned to private practice, with few clients thus far, and fishing.  He is lucky to have a devoted secretary, Maida (Eve Arden) and loyal friend Parnell Emmett McCarthy (Arthur O’Connell), a boozer who has either been disbarred or simply abandoned the practice of law.

Things start looking up when a murder case comes Paul’s way.  Laura Manion (Lee Remick) calls to ask him to defend her husband Frederick (Ben Gazarra) who shot Barney Quill, a saloon owner who raped her.  Frederick is under the impression that there is an “unwritten law” on his side but Paul disabuses him of the idea and together client and attorney come up with a defense that just might work.

Mrs. Manion is one hot cookie and enjoys toying with men. The trial eventually becomes more about whether or not there was a rape than whether her husband should be found guilty of murder.  Despite never having worked as a criminal defense attorney, Paul proves to be an extremely crafty advocate.  So much so that the man that defeated Paul in the election brings in Claude Dancer (George C. Scott), a famed prosecutor from the Attorney General’s office, for assistance.  A fascinating battle  of wits ensued.  With Joseph N. Welch, the attorney that defended the Army in the Army-McCarthy hearings {“have you no sense of decency?), as the judge.

I was a trial attorney in a previous incarnation.  I can’t stand many courtroom dramas but I adore this one.  Both the law and the strategies of both sides are absolutely spot on.

There are many, many moments that bring a smile to my face.  I also love the ambiguity of the thing.  Almost every actor that was not James Stewart could have with justice been nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar.  Lee Remick is absolutely perfect.  The film does not show the American justice system at its best but it does show how it really works at times.  Very highly recommended.

Anatomy of a Murder was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of: Best Picture; Best Actor (Stewart); Best Supporting Actor (O’Connell); Best Supporting Actor (Scott); Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; and Best Film Editing.  Lee Remick was robbed.

The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups)
Directed by Francois Truffaut
Written by Francois Truffaut and Marcel Moussy
1959/France
Les Films de Carrosse/Sedif Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#356 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Truffaut captures the giddy freedom of adolescence along with its worries and sadness.

The story is loosely based on Truffaut’s own past as a neglected youth whose juvenile rebellion gets him in nothing but trouble.  Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), Truffaut’s surrogate, is a thirteen-year-old Parisian.  He lives in a cramped apartment with his mother and her husband, whom we gradually learn is not the boy’s father.  Between their work, the mother’s extramarital affair, and simple selfishness, they have little time for their son.  For Antoine’s part, he steals from them when he can to get money for the days when he plays hooky from school.  These days are filled with movies, a visit to an amusement park, and exploration in the streets of Paris.

Antoine’s extracurricular activities necessitate many lies to both his parents and school authorities.  He is always found out.  Finally, the boy’s misconduct prompts his parents to agree to send him to an “observation camp”, which looks suspiciously like juvenile detention.

The film tells a relatively sad story but it is the pranks of the various boys that stick out in my memory.  Truffaut has an instinctive understanding of children.  Scenes where boys peel off in groups during an escort’s march through the city and rapt young children at a puppet show are particularly memorable.  Truffaut was blessed to have discovered the perfect Antoine, a child actor that is deeply sympathetic without exhibiting a trace of “cuteness.”

The cinematography is glorious.  I like the way the shooting combines improvisation with stunning formal shots.  One in which Antoine is surrounded by no less than three different mirrors is pretty jaw-dropping.  The music is fine as well.  Highly recommended,

The 400 Blows was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Material Written Directly for the Screen.