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The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2020) 180-161

Introduction

180. Double Indemnity (1944) Dir. Billy Wilder, 107 mins.

The film stars Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman, Barbara Stanwyck as a provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead, and Edward G. Robinson as a claims adjuster whose job is to find phony claims.

179. On the Waterfront (1954) Dir. Elia Kazan, 108 mins.

The film focuses on union violence and corruption amongst longshoremen on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey. Marlon Brando makes a huge impact as a dockworker and once promising boxer whose brother is the right hand man of a mob connected union boss.

178. Nosferatu (1922) Dir. F.W. Murnau, 81 mins.

F. W. Murnau’s landmark vampire film begins in the Carpathian mountains, where real estate agent Hutter has arrived to close a sale with the reclusive Herr Orlok. Despite the feverish warnings of the local peasants, Hutter journeys to Orlok’s sinister castle and soon discovers that Orlok is no ordinary mortal.

177. Scenes From a Marriage (1973) Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 169 mins.

Spanning a period of 10 years, the story explores the disintegration of a marriage between Marianne, a family lawyer specialising in divorce, and Johan, a college professor. Buy

176. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) Dir. Robert Altman, 120 mins.

In a small American frontier village, a stranger named McCabe (Warren Beatty) builds a brothel with the help of experienced madame Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie). The town soon prospers, and success brings the jealous, and potentially deadly, attentions of a wealthy mining company.

175. Fitzcarraldo (1982) Dir. Werner Herzog, 158 mins.

It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), who has to pull a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory.

174. High and Low (1963) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 142 mins.

Toshirô Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in Akira Kurosawa’s highly influential crime drama.

175. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (2000) Dir. Edward Yang, 173 mins.

The film’s theme centres around the emotional struggles of an engineer named NJ (Wu Nien-jen) and three generations of his middle-class Taiwanese family who reside in Taipei.

172. Manhattan (1979) Dir. Woody Allen, 96 mins.

Woody Allen’s love letter to cinema, Manhattan sees him co-star as a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway) but falls in love with his best friend’s mistress (Diane Keaton). Watch

171. Le trou (1960) Dir. Jacques Becker, 132 mins.

The film is based on a true event concerning five inmates in La Santé Prison in France in 1947.

170. A Separation (2011) Dir. Asghar Farhadi, 123 mins.

It focuses on an Iranian middle-class couple who separate, the disappointment and desperation suffered by their daughter due to the egotistical disputes and separation of her parents, and the conflicts that arise when the husband hires a lower-class caregiver for his elderly father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.

169. Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) Dir. Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 97 mins.

With international revolutionary fervour at its height, Alea made this subtle and complex political drama that looks at the alienation of a bourgeois intellectual within the revolution. It follows the indecisive Sergio (Sergio Correri) who even though he refuses to flee Cuba in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion, is seemingly happy to see his wife, parents and friends leave for Miami. He is sceptical of the ability of the Revolution to make a real change to Cuban life, observing that it is only the latest passion for an ever-changing society. Teeming with originality, Memories of Underdevelopment intelligently portrays the end of an old Cuba and the struggle to bring in a new one.

168. Jules and Jim (1962) Dir. Francois Truffaut, 105 mins.

Set around the time of World War I, it describes a tragic love triangle involving French Bohemian Jim (Henri Serre), his shy Austrian friend Jules (Oskar Werner), and Jules’s girlfriend and later wife Catherine (Jeanne Moreau).

167. The Forgotten Ones (1950) Dir. Luis Bunuel, 85 mins.

The story concerns a gang of juvenile delinquents, whose sole redeeming quality is their apparent devotion to one another. Watch

166. Cinema Paradiso (1988) Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore, 155 mins.

The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town’s former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man’s official son.

165. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 116 mins.

Its storyline follows a platoon of U.S. Marines through their training, primarily focusing on two privates, Joker and Pyle, who struggle to get through camp under their foul-mouthed drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and the experiences of two of the platoon’s Marines in the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Becomes somewhat disjointed when it reaches Vietnam but that’s probably to do with war being just that.

164. Day of Wrath (1943) Dir. Carl Theodor Drayer, 97 mins.

After his  previous film, Vampyr was badly received, Dreyer spent a decade on failed projects and had even returned to his former career as a journalist before he was able to direct Day of Wrath. The film tells the story of a young woman who is forced into a marriage with an elderly pastor after her late mother was accused of witchcraft. She falls in love with the pastor’s son and also comes under suspicion of the dark arts. Stark and restrained, its style pushing towards abstraction and enhanced by high contrast photography, Day of Wrath is a powerful statement on faith, superstition and religious intolerance.

163. The Sacrifice (1986) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 149 mins.

Starring Erland Josephson, it centres on a middle-aged intellectual who attempts to bargain with God to stop an impending nuclear holocaust.

162. Sans Soleil (1983) Dir. Chris Marker, 100 mins.

Recognised as one of the major films of the 1980s, Chris Marker’s documentary, with a narrative concerning time travel, is a meditation on the nature of human memory, showing the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory, and how, as a result, the perception of personal and global histories is affected. With haunting images from Tokyo and Guinea Bissau, Sans Soleil is an eloquent melancholic take on the perishable ideological certainties of the 1960s.

161. Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 894 mins.

Originally broadcast in 1980, as a 14-part West German television miniseries, Berlin Alexanderplatz was adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from the Alfred Döblin novel of the same name.

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The Pendragon Society’s 1000 Greatest Films (2019) 180-161

Introduction

180. The Last Laugh (1924) Dir. F.W. Murnau, 90 mins.

Regarded amongst the greatest silent films of Weimar cinema, Murnau’s drama was hugely influential for its combination of Karl Freund’s remarkable cinematography and Emil Jannings lead performance. The only international star working in Germany in the 1920s, Jannings brought his commanding presence to the role of a hotel doorman, who, fiercely proud of his job, comports himself like a general in his resplendent costume, and is treated like royalty by his friends and neighbours. The posh hotel’s insensitive new manager, noting that Jannings seems winded after carrying a heavy trunk for a patron, decides that the old man is no longer up to his job and demotes him to a restroom attendant. Although criticised for an upbeat commercial fantasy ending, that was insisted on by the UFA, The Last Laugh heralded a new presence for German films internationally. It remains notable thanks to the psychological realism of Jannings’s acting,  Freund’s exceptional camera work, with which he attained an unprecedented degree of camera movement and for Murnau’s creation of an artistic language of film based purely on the expressive qualities of the image.

179. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Dir. Jonathan Demme, 118 mins.

An adaptation of Thomas Harris’s best selling novel and the first horror film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, The  Silence of the Lambs follows Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a young working class FBI recruit, who puts herself in physical and psychological danger by seeking the advice of the imprisoned former psychiatrist and cannibalistic murderer, Dr. Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to apprehend another serial killer, known only as “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine) and rescue his latest victim. While lacking the atmospheric style of Michael Mann’s earlier Manhunter (also based on Harris’s novel), the film works thanks to tour de force performances by a memorably chilling Hopkins, a creepy Levine and the compelling Foster. The latter had to fight hard for what would be her second Oscar winning role (the part being originally earmarked for Michelle Pfeiffer), but her strong performance was somewhat overshadowed by a campaign to out her as gay that came after criticism of the film by LGBT groups for its portrayal of Buffalo Bill as bisexual and transsexual.

178. The Departed (2006) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 151

Based on the internationally acclaimed Hong Kong actioner, Infernal Affairs and it’s two sequels, The Departed transports the story of deception and conflicted loyalties, within the police and a criminal group, to Boston. Irish Mob boss Francis “Frank” Costello (Jack Nicholson) plants Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) as a mole within the Massachusetts State Police. Simultaneously, the police assign undercover state trooper William “Billy” Costigan (Leonardo Di Caprio) to infiltrate Costello’s crew. The outstanding ensemble cast, the stylish direction of Scorsese and his and William Monahan’s intelligent adapted screenplay helped garner not just popular and critical acclaim but also significant recognition at the academy awards.

177. Fitzcarraldo (1982) Dir. Werner Herzog, 158 mins.

It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), who has to pull a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory.

176. Nights of Cabiria (1957) Dir. Federico Fellini, 117 mins.

Based on a story by Fellini, the film is about a prostitute in Rome who searches for true love in vain.

175. My Darling Clementine (1946) Dir. John Ford, 97 mins.

John Ford’s western takes its inspiration from the life and legend of Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda), the frontier lawman who teamed with Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) for the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

174. Last Year at Marienbad (1961) Dir. Alain Resnais, 94 mins.

Set in a palace in a park that has been converted into a luxury hotel, it stars Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi as a woman and a man who may have met the year before and may have contemplated or started an affair, with Sacha Pitoëff as a second man who may be the woman’s husband.

173. Oldboy (2003) Dir. Chan-Wook Park, 120 mins.

The film follows the story of one Oh Dae-Su, who is locked in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing his captor’s motives. When he is finally released, he is trapped in a web of conspiracy and violence.

172. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) Dir. Chantal Akerman, 201 mins.

In this experimental film about a middle-aged widow driven to desperation by the crushing boredom of making beds, cleaning bathtubs, cooking, dusting, and even just eating, the real-life time needed to make that bed or to cook is exactly the time used in the film, an effect which makes some viewers just as bored and restless as the widow, and which brings home the point of the film quite well.

171. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 86 mins.

The film tells the charming story of the two young daughters (Satsuki and Mei) of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits, particularly Totoro, in postwar rural Japan.



170. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Dir. Michel Gondry, 108 mins.

The film uses nonlinear narration and neosurrealism to explore the nature of memory and romantic love.

169. King Kong (1933) Dir. Merian C. Cooper, 100 mins.

The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling gorilla-like creature called Kong who is taken to New York and dies in an attempt to possess a beautiful young woman. The original and still the best.

168. The Great Dictator (1940) Dir. Charles Chaplin, 125 mins.

During World War I, a Jewish barber (Chaplin) in the army of Tomania saves the life of high-ranking officer Schultz (Reginald Gardiner). While Schultz survives the conflict unscathed, the barber is stricken with amnesia and bundled off to a hospital. Twenty years pass and Tomania has been taken over by dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin again) and his stooges Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) and Herring (Billy Gilbert).

167. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 137 mins.

It is a cinematic rendition of the story of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Saint Matthew, from the Nativity through the Resurrection.

166. Star Wars (1977) Dir. George Lucas, 121 mins.

Lucas’s space opera follows farmhand Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who’s isolated life is disrupted when he inadvertently acquires two droids that possess architectural plot focuses on the Rebel Alliance, led by Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and its attempt to destroy the Galactic Empire’s space station, the Death Star.

165. Yojimbo (1961) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 110 mins.

It tells the story of a rōnin, portrayed by Toshiro Mifune, who arrives in a small town where competing crime lords vie for supremacy. The two bosses each try to hire the newcomer as a bodyguard.

164. Unforgiven (1992) Dir. Clint Eastwood, 131 mins.

Eastwood’s revisionist western portrays William Munny (Eastwood himself), an ageing outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after he had turned to farming.

163. Amarcord (1973) Dir. Federico Fellini, 123 mins.

Amarcord is a comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi-autobiographical tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the village of Borgo San Giuliano (situated near the ancient walls of Rimini) in 1930s Fascist Italy.

162. All About Eve (1950) Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 138 mins.

The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but ageing Broadway star. Anne Baxter plays Eve Harrington, an ambitious young fan who insinuates herself into Channing’s life, ultimately threatening Channing’s career and her personal relationships.

161. Cinema Paradiso (1988) Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore, 155 mins.

The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town’s former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man’s official son.



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