Brandon Recommends 1-10:

Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky - 1971

Awesomely, my introduction to Tarkovsky was his very first feature, an excellent Criterion title named Ivan's Childhood.  It featured exquisite black and white cinematography emphasizing the natural elements and a gripping story emphasizing the natural performances.  Andrei Rublev is his second feature, an epic exploration of art, philosophy, religion, and Russia.  It was completed in 1966, but suppressed by the Soviet government until it premiered at Cannes in 1969, out of competition.  It was awarded the international critics prize since the Soviets wouldn't let it compete for the Palme D'or, and yet they still kept it from being shown until it finally opened in theaters in 1971.  Criterion restored its original 205-minute cut, and I dearly hope they re-release the DVD with way more features, because it was incredible.  It's told in chapters with an unrelated prologue displaying the highs and lows of boundless, reckless imagination and an epilogue featuring icons by the historic Andrei Rublev, a famous national icon himself, set to a score.  Tarkovsky has always been a very nature-focused director, at least in the films I've seen, and this one, with its emphasis on animals from a snake in the woods to a cow set on fire to repeated use of horses--just after the prologue, a horse lying down rolls over, at the midpoint, a horse famously falls down stairs, and the final shot, after the epilogue, is of horses standing by a lake--is no different.  I can't wait to see this one again, but like I said, I'd really love to buy a DVD of it with a ton of features. 

The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir - 1939

Un!  Deux!  Musique!  When we went to the museum to see Army of Shadows, they played the trailer for Rules of the Game, and I have never forgotten the glorious introduction.  The trailer is astoundingly good at selling the film, and I'm glad I finally got to see the movie.  What's more, little did I know, The Hills-loving pop culture aficionado that I was, Renoir's The Rules of the Games is heralded as one of the greatest films ever, second on many lists only to Citizen Kane.  If I knew that before watching, I would have scoffed and blown it off.  But lucky for me, I went it just on the thrill that the trailer gave me.  It's an hour-and-a-half critique of French society on the eve of WWII.  Thinking about stuff like that always excites me; Robert Wiene shot The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari before The Great Gatsby was even written!  Anyway, it's an upstairs/downstairs drama with mirroring love triangles (an airman loves a rich woman who's married to a man that's cheating, and her maid is married to another servant but sought after by a new servant) that results in tragedy, as any French film in 1939 should.  Awesomely, and I had no idea, Renoir also starred in one of the bigger roles of the ensemble.  In the trailer, Altman said "The Rules of the Game taught me the rules of the game," and after seeing it, I can clearly see where Gosford Park and Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night came from.  It's by turns funny, wildly entertaining, enlightening, and tragic, and I think, like Citizen Kane or Casablanca, it holds up very well today.  I'd say it's the best film of the entire 1930s, but hyperbole is easy and you wouldn't believe me anyway (also, The Lady Vanishes was pretty friggin' spectacular).  I expect for it to rise up on my top 250 as I rewatch it, but my next order of business is to buy the DVD. 

Cleo from 5 to 7 by Agnes Varda - 1962

The only female New Wave director, and one of the only major female directors ever, Agnes Varda's best-loved New Wave work is the fairly feminist Cleo from 5 to 7, a near-real time experience that oozes style.  The opening is a sumptuously colored tarot deck, as a psychic instructs Cleo that her future card is one of transformation, and she probably has cancer.  Cleo just had a biopsy, you see, and at 7 she will get the results.  At this point, the movie intercuts color and black/white, and from when Cleo leaves the psychic on, the movie is black/white, an effect that I thought was incredible.  We also get periodic chapter titles, although they occur over the action and, to me, seem a bit off.  Cleo travels all over Paris, subtly growing from the spoiled pop singer she was into someone that has such love for life that she can share her joy.  In a taxi, we get radio updates about the war in Algeria, or about Kennedy or Khrushchev, and Varda's photojournalist background especially influenced her shots where Cleo walks the street.  Overall, it's an excellent addition to the New Wave, and I look forward to seeing Varda's other work. 

Jules et Jim by Francois Truffaut - 1962

Following up my New Wave/Truffaut-a-thon, I had to see this seminal work.  It turns out, it's an even bigger influence on Vanilla Sky than I thought, and that is very much a good thing.  Jules is an Austrian who meets French Jim while in Paris, and the two bond over art and literature.  They quickly also bond over Catherine, a charming, vivacious, and liberal young woman that becomes the object of their affection.  Well, Jules begins a romance with her, and eventually so does Jim.  When WWI breaks out, Jules and Jim are each called to fight, for opposing sides, and after it's over, Jules and Catherine movie to Austria, where Jim spends lengthy vacations.  But there is far more than this love triangle of a plot.  First of all, it feels distinctly New Wave, with its pop culture references, freeze frames, and comedic elements that I call dorky--which isn't to say they're not funny.  Truffaut is a gifted director, as you can see in the scene where the trio races across a bridge alone, much less the rest of this great movie.  After reading the book, Truffaut called it a hymn to love and life, and I'd say he did a brilliant job of translating that to the screen. 

Shoot the Piano Player by Francois Truffaut - 1960

Just when I thought I didn't care about the French New Wave (apart from Resnais), I see Shoot the Piano Player, an underrated highlight of the entire New Wave.  I loved every scene of this film, about a timid piano player named Charles trying to romance a waitress at his bar when his brother, on the run from even bigger gangsters, gets him involved.  Truffaut's direction is superb, whether it's a low-angle chase scene that opens the film or a 360 degree pan that knows exactly where it's headed (Charles' face) or the finale at a snowy cabin.  In fact, I tried to get some pictures of any scene from the snow, because I find it so stunning, but apparently nobody else on this series of tubes cares about it.  Thematically, it's quite the study of nonintervention, from Charles' relationship with the waitress to his dealing with the gangsters, emphasized by his neurotic thought voice-overs.  But the New Wave influences come through in the virtuoso direction, the film noir elements, and the sort of dorky humor that is kind of excellent.  It has a 7.6 on IMDb right now, and always falls below The 400 Blows or Jules et Jim when discussing Truffaut, much less Godard and the rest of the New Wave, but apart from the exquisite mind-game that is Last Year at Marienbad, this is my favorite film from all of the French New Wave. 

Les Diaboliques by Henri-George Clouzot - 1955

Clouzot has been called the French Hitchcock, and while I'm not sure the title is apt beyond Clouzot's penchant for suspense, the French director is certainly worthy of that level of esteem.  Les Diaboliques is about a boarding school head who is murdered by his wife and mistress.  The whole world knows he was cheating on his wife, including her, and the movie starts off with their scheming.  Their plan feels elaborate, but necessary, and by the time they return to the school and dump the body, it seems like they've been successful.  But then the crime drama becomes a suspense thriller as weird things start to happen, culminating in a pulse-pounding finale.  I don't want to say anything about the final twenty minutes or so other than I loved it, and it turns into a horror movie that's creepy with moments of actual fright, much like Hour of the Wolf.  The film is very pretty, but more importantly, an aura of dread hangs over every scene, and the very last scene is the perfect touch.  Don't read the IMDb plot description, because it saves most of the surprises but does ruin one of the inciting incidents that I think is more interesting as a surprise, but other than that, I'd say definitely check it out, possibly as a double feature with Hour of the Wolf. 

Sunrise:  A Song of Two Humans by F.W. Murnau - 1927

At the very first Oscars, they gave away two Best Pictures.  "Best Picture, Production" went to Wings, some film about WWI airmen being romantic rivals, but "Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production" went to Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.  It's about a country man whose city mistress wants him to kill his wife so they can be together.  He prepares, and takes her out for a boat-ride, and he even stands up and creeps his way over to her in a moment of surprising terror, but he can't bring himself to do it.  They row to the other side, and she immediately runs off into the city, but he apologizes, and the rest of the movie is their trek through the city, falling back in love.  It really explores the scope of emotions, and like I said, the horror parts are satisfyingly creepy.  Murnau is, of course, a German expressionist, so there are plenty of those influences creeping through, like the stark moon against the night sky.  Also, Sunrise is an incredibly inventive picture in that a few scenes are double-exposed, and it's an effect I can't sufficiently describe.  At first, I wasn't sure if it was better than my previous Best Picture of 1927, Metropolis, but it grew on me even more in the next few days.  I even woke up the next morning thinking about my favorite parts, and that clinched it. 

Hiroshima Mon Amour by Alain Resnais - 1959

Of course I had to watch this after falling in love with Last Year at Marienbad, and it is quite a beautiful stepping stone to that film's glory, though not quite as good in my opinion.   It's about a young French movie starlet filming a movie in Hiroshima.  She meets a Japanese guy and they have a brief affair--since the movie wrapped, she's headed back home in a couple days.  But he reminds her of her first lover, and she recounts her memory of her time with him, but soon, as in Marienbad, we have to question what is true.  The backdrop being Hiroshima is perfect, as we get inundated with the horrors of the atomic bomb, a symbol of oblivion further emphasized by fading memories.  Also like Marienbad, guilt is a major theme--her first lover was a German soldier during the French occupation.  In fact, this is one of those films that launched the French New Wave, along with Truffaut's The 400 Blows, due to its innovation and play on traditional story and themes, and you can tell that Resnais is building his style as an auteur.  It's beautifully directed, as I've come to expect of Resnais, and extremely inventive, a perfect companion piece to his followup.  I wonder what other work Resnais has done in the vein of these two. 

Last Year at Marienbad by Alain Resnais - 1961

Yep, one viewing and this is one of my all-time favorite movies.  It's by the director of Night and Fog, a short Holocaust documentary that is well-done but not my thing, per se.  This one, however, is Resnais' complete immersion in fiction.  Mamet said every movie is a dream, and this is one of those movies, like Altman's 3 Women, that supports his theory beautifully.  It opens dreamily gazing at the ceiling of this gloriously cathedral-like hotel while all the upper class guests are watching a movie (or a play, I don't really remember).  Afterward in the lobby, one of them notices a woman he was with last year in the same hotel, or was it a different hotel, or was it a different girl?  She claims not to remember--maybe she doesn't--so he recounts last year at Marienbad.  By the way, none of this takes place at Marienbad, but that is a possible location thrown out.  The movie then becomes a dreamy hypothetical, doubling back on itself, correcting the timeline, etc.  It's a fantastic experiment, predating Lynch, Lost, and Memento by decades, and I haven't even mentioned the stunning cinematography. 

Hour of the Wolf by Ingmar Bergman - 1968

Nobody really talks about this Bergman because it doesn't fit in neatly with the rest of his oeuvre.  It's not explicitly about God, psychology, or art, although I'd assert it is in fact about all of those subjects.  I'd call Hour of the Wolf a classy horror film.  It's not really all that scary, but it is creepy, and it has moments of extreme weirdness and hints of suspense.  It's the kind of movie I'd like to watch on Halloween--concerned with perennial Halloween subjects like wolves and castles, but more weird than scary.  It's about a man recounting his most painful memories to his wife.  He's an artist, there is a murder, and their neighbors are some sort of quasi-vampire cult.  You can follow it to a point, but I got off just before the end, where the movie spins wildly out of control like a Lynch film.  It's consistently beautiful to watch, and like I said, the eerie mood is maintained perfectly throughout.  Similarly, I think it's quite an imaginative exploration of guilt, ennui, and the role of the artist.  Maybe that's just because it came at the end of my Bergman spree, but I'm pretty sure this is quite the intellectual horror film.  But save it for Halloween.  And make sure to invite me.