Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Back To Film or Contempt: A Visual Reading and Other Loose Ends - Coda

Here's what I noticed:

Greed - 1924
L'Atalante - 1934
Brief Encounter - 1945
Late Spring - 1949
Stromboli - 1950
The River - 1951
Life of Oharu - 1952
El - 1953
Tokyo Story - 1953
Sansho the Bailiff - 1954
The Searchers - 1956
A Man Escaped - 1956
Pickpocket - 1959
Viridiana - 1961
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - 1962
Charulata - 1964
Husbands - 1970

Are the 1950s the golden age of film or what?!

Aren't there any good films shot after 1970? I bet there are, but this is a personal list and I can't think of any which impacted me as much as these ones.

Even worse than that. Here's an alternative list:

Sunrise - Murnau - 1927
The Wedding March - Stroheim - 1928
Queen Kelly - Stroheim - 1929
Young Mister Lincoln - John Ford - 1939
Bicycle Thieves - Vittorio de Sica- 1948
Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa - 1950
Ikiru - Kurosawa - 1952
Europe 51 - Rossellini - 1952
Ana-Ta-Han - Sternberg - 1953
Sound of the Mountain - Naruse - 1954
Ordet - C. Th. Dreyer - 1955
The Apu Trilogy - Satyajit Ray - 1955, 1956, 1959
The Apartment - Billy Wilder - 1960
Persona - Ingmar Bergman - 1966

See? More of the same...

I like Theo Angelopoulos, Abbas Kiarostami, Nuri Bilge Ceilan, and maybe, just maybe, I could think of some film made by these like Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami) 1997, even if I prefer the Kiarostami photographer to the Kiarostami filmmaker, or The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos) 1975, or Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders) 1976, but that's about it. Some Rohmer, I guess...I can't also forget two consecutive films by Martin Scorcese: the absolute delight that is the Proustian The Age of Innocence (1993) and the great Casino (1995).

1 comment:

Federico said...

Nice selection Isabelinho.
I agree with you, 50s and 60s can be considered as cinema golden age.
But I think you should check Tarkovskij's 70s and 80s films are amazing too.
As you may have already known Pedro Costa and Werner Herzog realized great stuff.
Or even more recent Béla Tarr and Weerasethakul.
Have a good vision
Federico