Bertolucci again, in "1900" which I was enthralled with from beginning to end.
Oh, off the top of my head, yes,
Z
Battle of Algiers
Burn!
Battle of Chile
Night of the Shooting Stars
Riso Amaro
The one with Mastroianni, can't remember title. (organizer?)
Open City
Umberto D
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Bread and Chocolate
Some movie about Sicily that really got to me, no memory of name or even what happened in it. All I am left with is a sense of trap and destiny for the woman.
Some french movies, can't remember names.
Dodeskaden (Kurasawa)
Garden of the Finzi-Contini
one by Wertmuller, blank on name.
General della Rovere
Oh, well, there are more....
Hey, Ossobuco, I thought The Battle of Chile was almost totally unknown outside Latin America!
"The Organizer" (I compagni) is a great great film (among my top 20/2000). It's about a textile worker strike in early XX Century Turin.
Wertmüller has done some very good films, and wuite a few lousy ones. My favorite Wertmüller is "Film d'amore e d'anarchia" with Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato. About an anarchist who plans to assasinate Mussolini and is given shelter in a brothel.
Yes, I also loved that one. I looked up Giannini's movies and Wertmuller's and can't get a clue. I guess I'll have to rent and check! I'm picturing Giannini in the snow with the partisans...
"Shoah", the nine and a half hour documentary by Claude Landsman. It shook me to my foundation. It is a series of interviews with very ordinary citizens of Poland, Germany, France, and elsewhere dealing with the holocaust.
There is the interviewer and sub titles, but no narrator.
It builds slowly, very slowly, almost innocently, but inexerably to a condemnation of every attempt to excuse and diminish the ultimate horror. It is more powerful than movies dealing directly with the holocaust because of the lack of violence. The horror is created in our minds by the iinterviewees.
"Shoah" is indeed an example of remarkable filmmaking. What has stuck with me the longest (the atrocity aspect was not new) was the anti-semitism that is still present. It was especially vivid in the glee with which the Polish farmer spoke of the trains and the lack of guilt of the people who now owned the property of the slain Jews.
Yes, Flyboy, I remember that scene well too. Forgot Shoah on my quick list.
On a different note, "L"Aventura" for its examination of how fey humans can be about love. Of course, the film isn't very flattering towards men or women and explores the emptiness of that faction of society without avoiding that all of mankind is trapped in the enigma, rich or poor.
I watched "Hop" last night. A Belgium film of great beauty, humor and tenderness. Made with a digital camera in b/w. It is a DVD release from Film Movement that they believe "is a trend setter in cinema". It struck me that if it had been made in color it would be a lesser film than it is. I needed to be reminded how powerful black and white can be -- cf. Ansel Adams landscapes.
