The Chorus Canon • Page 4

Haven't seen it because I don't believe in Tom Hooper

 

We need lists for So Bad it's Good and B-movies.

 

Some that often come up:

Ballet Mechanique
Un Chien Andalou
Land Without Bread
Meshes of the Afternoon
Night and Fog
La Jetee
Black Panthers
Je Vous Salue, Sarajevo
Scorpio Rising
Elephant
Various silent comedies (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, etc)
And a bunch of more overtly AG stuff like Snow’s Wavelength

 

The iconic eye-cutting scene in Un Chien Andalou is still more disturbing almost 100 years later than most of what hundreds of millions of dollars can come up with today. I still show Night and Fog to students every year; I get really depressed and usually cry by the end having watched it six times in a row.

 

I think I forgot La Jetee. I have Sans Soleil though, that one is essential to me. Maybe in my top 10.

 

Night and Fog is such an upsetting work. I can hardly stomach watching the whole thing, I always end up looking away repeatedly. I've seen it a handful of times and its harder each time.

 

I feel like @cshadows2887 could make a really good “essential” musicals list.

War Zone rules. It’s a Palestinian woman’s bloody, ridiculous movie based on Garth Ennis’ Punisher, which blends b-movie schlock & good filmmaking. An essential part of comic book movie canon imo.

 

I can get behind this

I found out Santa and Tom Hooper weren't real on the same day in second grade. I'm still recovering

 

Ooh. That'd be fun. I did a quick pass through the 300 or so musicals I've seen. Excluded animated because it was just too big a can of worms:

The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitcsh, 1929)
Le Million (Rene Clair, 1931)
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)
Swing Time (George Stevens, 1936)
Three Smart Girls (Henry Koster, 1936)
The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
Broadway Melody of 1940 (Norman Taurog, 1940)
Strike Up the Band (Busby Berkeley, 1940)
Road to Morocco (David Butler, 1942)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
Stormy Weather (Andrew L. Stone, 1943)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
On the Town (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly, 1949)
An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951)
Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly, 1952)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954)
Guys and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955)
It's Always Fair Weather (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly, 1955)
The Court Jester (Melvin Frank/Norman Panama, 1956)
The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956)
Les Girls (Geeorge Cukor, 1957)
West Side Story (Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins, 1961)
A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester, 1964)
Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1964)
My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)
Oliver! (Carol Reed, 1968)
Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison, 1971)
Godspell (David Greene, 1973)
The Muppet Movie (James Frawley, 1979)
The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1981)
Victor/Victoria (Blake Edwards, 1982)
Footloose (Herbert Ross, 1984)
Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino, 1987)
The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride (Aditya Chopra, 1995)
Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
Once (John Carney, 2006)
La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016)


Separate but also necessary category...concert films:

Jazz on a Summer's Day
The T.A.M.I. Show
Festival
Monterey Pop
Woodstock
Gimme Shelter
The Last Waltz
Stop Making Sense

 

Good list, though I'd say you probably would want to add Bruce Conner, Bruce Baille, Stan Brakhage, and Mary Ellen Bute.

 

These lists are awesome. Some slight adjustments I think could make them even better:

All awesome movies but maybe add some Rohmer (My Night at Maud's), Rene Clair (Le Million) and especially Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle or Playtime)

Gotta get SOME entertaining Bollywood in here. Mother India by Mehboob as the obvious pick. Also if you love Ray, Ritwik Ghatak's Subarnekha is key.

Oh man, there's fun stuff in the Czech New Wave. The Fireman's Ball, Closely Watched Trains, Ucho, and The Shop on Main Street immediately leap to mind.

I feel like this could use some John Ford. Stagecoach, The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance help tell the story of the genre pretty well.

I'd also put in at least one of the B-auteurs like Budd Boetticher or especially Anthony Mann (Winchester '73)


Also maybe an Italian section?

Rome, Open City
Bicycle Thieves
Umberto D.
La Strada
Nights of Cabiria
La Dolce Vita
Rocco and His Brothers
Black Sunday
Il Posto
Divorce, Italian Style
La Notte
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
The Battle of Algiers
Once Upon a Time in the West
Suspiria
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Cinema Paradiso

 

The ones left in the quote were in the original list, everything else I haven't seen and am very stoked on having a supplemental list for reference for my gaps, thank you!

 

That's the whole fun of all this! Discovering. Thanks for taking the time to make that list for everyone.

 

Maybe this will be helpful. I dunno.

Comedy Teams:

Duck Soup (The Marx Brothers)
Hips, Hips, Hooray (Wheeler and Woolsey)
Way Out West (Laurel and Hardy)
You Nazty Spy (The Three Stooges short)
Road to Morocco (Crosby and Hope)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Abbott and Costello)
Artists and Models (Martin and Lewis)
Up in Smoke (Cheech and Chong)
Life of Brian (Monty Python)

 

The Marx Brothers are a gap I’ve been thinking about filling sometime soon, and I’ve thought about throwing some Laurel and Hardy in there as well

 

Duck Soup holds up REAL WELL.

 

The Cocoanuts is a little spotty (as were almost all talkies in 1929) but the run of Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, A Night of the Opera, and A Day at the Races is unimpeachable. Just wonderful anarchy.

 

Im not too knowledgeable on these types of films as a whole but in terms of silent shorts, im a big big fan of the consequences of feminism.

106 years old at this point but just as relevant.

 

any claude sautet fans in the chat?

 

I checked Criterion Channel and saw there’s a Three by Raj Kapoor collection. Awaara is on there, it’s in my canon, and I’m excited to watch Shree 420 and Sangam. He’s a great entry point for Indian cinema outside of the mostly better known Satyajit Ray.

 

I need to make time for Awaara at the very least, it’s been on my watchlist for ages. I was actually hoping to see it in a course on love and desire in Indian cinema that I took last semester but the syllabus skewed almost exclusively towards the 21st century. I’ve also heard incredible things (and seen incredible screenshots) from Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker.

 

Where should I start with Cassavetes? The beginning, or one of the better known films?

 

Faces, Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence.

 

Faces is my favorite but A Woman Under the Influence might be the best starting point. haven't seen Husbands

 

i don't think i've seen any of his directorial stuff but he's incredible in mikey and nicky