At the movies

 

By Temple Ligon

Last week this column carried a creative approach to film analysis. The Graduate was discussed in free-flowing language, while I was trying to make a point about director Nichols and his stand on the Vietnam War. Many responses came back to me, and they set up a critical mass to reveal an under-appreciation of film history and in one case a poor opinion of film directors, like they couldn’t think, just entertain.

In undergraduate school I majored first in English and finally in art history, which might explain my career track as a delightful dilettante, but my liberal education did make room for three courses in film history.

That brief education in film history afforded me a fine appreciation for the movies and also a picky approach to the product. Some movies are just godawful, but they are even worse to someone who regularly reads serious film criticism. On the other hand, that same orientation can lead to memorable times, good times, at the theater when a genuine jewel gets out. The Graduate comes to mind.

And in the theater with a few hundred other people is where you want to be. Something magical happens when the big screen entertains hundreds at one time, something never happening at home in front of the television, no matter how big they’re getting.

One approach to begin taking movies more seriously is to take in the last century’s most notable and most awarded. Two ideas come to mind.

First, try to take the time for as many Academy Awards for Best Picture as you can, starting with Wings from 1928, which is not only the first to win the award but it is also the only silent film on the list. Work down the list year after year to the present.

Second, Google the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958 and research the gathering there of the world’s film critics and historians. In the world’s first universal film poll, they were asked to rank the world’s movies for the history of film. The first feature length multi-reel movie was shown in Australia in 1896, so that can be the beginning of the movies.

Among the top dozen at Brussels, nine were silent. The Jazz Singer (1927), the first talkie, was 31 years old, but somehow the film authorities in Brussels were more impressed with what came out before the talkies, all of which, of course, were in black and white. The sounds and the colors in Gone With the Wind and the Wizard of Oz didn’t make the cut.

In Sight & Sound Magazine every ten years a greatest films poll is published. In August 2012, Citizen Kane by Orson Welles was finally bumped down to the #2 slot, so the greatest film of all time is now Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Down in #7 is John Ford’s The Searchers with John Wayne. A John Wayne western is in the top ten among these film snobs? Yes. The snobs will allow a little fun, but they know a great film when they see it. Do you?

Appreciation of silent movies is probably a whole new hobby for most readers, but please give it a shot sometime soon. When I first saw The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927), I was amazed at how I put voices into the film’s actors. One fun part seeing silent films from around the world – Joan is French – is that language skills are not necessary. The printed narration is always in English around here. And, of course, you have to pay full attention to catch everything. You really have to project yourself into the action and lose yourself for the duration of the film.

Speaking of early influences in film history, the Canadians are talking to you. The Passion of Joan of Arc was declared in 2010 to be the most influential film of all time by the Toronto International Film Festival.

The best movie of all time as of 1958, according to the world’s most accomplished critics in Brussels, was Battleship Potemkin (1925), made by the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Second on the list, by the way, was America’s Charlie Chaplin and The Gold Rush (1925).

Clearly, no one is going to read this article and proceed to take in every Academy Award winner for Best Picture while also working down the dozen from Brussels. Why even hint at such a ridiculous abuse of personal time? Still, get started and contemporary movies will begin to mean more and to entertain more.

If you want to be academically correct, Sight & Sound’s recent list of the ten favorite movies among the world’s film directors will get you under way. I would guess all of them can be checked out at the Richland Library, but let me encourage you to try the schedule at Nickelodeon and at USC. Admittedly the Graduate is not on any of these lists, but like last week I am happy to recommend it to you.

1- Tokyo Story
2- 2001: A Space Odyssey
2- Citizen Kane
4- 8 1/2
5- Taxi Driver
6- Apocalypse Now
7- The Godfather
7- Vertigo
9- Mirror
10- Bicycle Thieves

I’m writing a suggestion to the Richland Library at the corner of Hampton and Assembly. I’m guessing one technique to help the part-time film historian is to put all of the Academy Award winners for Best Picture and also the winners of the Best Foreign Picture category on the shelf in chronological order. That way when someone wants to pull a movie off the shelf, but the choice isn’t clear, any year’s Best Picture winner is there shelved with all the others. Whatever gets pulled down is guaranteed to be a great movie.

 

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