SMC Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill's Top 35 Films Conversation! 19 to 10...
#19 THE GODFATHERS PT 1 & II (1972, 1974, dir by Francis Ford Coppola, USA)
From here on in, this programmer is going to be counting certain series/trilogies as essentially 1 movie. Hopefully this doesn't feel like a cheat. For this programmer, it feels like a necessity. For example, how can you really separate THE GODFATHER 1 & 2 when together they tell the most powerful cinematic story of how someone can gain the world but lose their soul? THE GODFATHERS follow several generations of the Corleone family, an organized crime family, These movies also, in a perversely brilliant way, tell the story of the immigrant experience and the corrosive underbelly of the American dream. We see this told through the stories of Vito Corleone the Patriarch (played by Marlon Brando in GF1 and by Robert De Niro as a young man in GF2) and his son Michael Corleone (the series' real main character, played brilliantly by Al Pacino in both movies) who finds himself taking over the family business. Coppola directs both movies like Shakespeare. And in doing so, tells a gripping eternal story that moves from gangster movie to mythical archetypes.
#18 PERSONA (1966, dir by Ingmar Bergman, Sweden)
Ingmar Bergman is just a Mount Olympus director when it comes to movies. Bergman directed at least 1-2 plays and 1-2 movies EVERY YEAR for almost the entirety of his 1940's-2000's run. And the exquisite understanding of structure, craft, technique that comes from that kind of output is just evident in every frame of what he does. Case in point, Bergman's 1966 PERSONA tells the story of actress Elisabet Vogler (a stunning performance by Liv Ulman) who suddenly refuses to speak because of the horrors of the world and her nurse, Alma (a totally committed Bibi Andersson), who takes her to a small beach house to recuperate. This movie, like PORTRAIT OF JASON, is so good, so masterful, you NEVER think oh this is a movie with basically just 2 people. Instead what you get is a psychological high dive into the dark waters of the sexual and personal subconscious. Things get weird and confusing y'all as Elisabet and Alma begin to play mind games with each other and lose their personalities in each other. The entire movie is anchored by one of the greatest opening editing sequences and one of the greatest single mid-point monologues this programmer has ever seen. It's no mystery why one of the only fan letters Stanley Kubrick ever wrote was to Ingmar Bergman. We're all in debt to him.
#17 STAGECOACH (1939, dir by John Ford, USA)
Ford is one of those rare directors who has made at least 7-8 OUT & OUT ALL-TIME MASTERPIECES. This programmer picks STAGECOACH out of them because it really was in this movie that Ford tipped his hand that he's a poet. Adapted from a short story by 19th century French writer, Guy de Maupassant, STAGECOACH tells the story of 9 strangers who board a coach and end up going through a series of adventures together. The movie is filled with stock characters: the prostitute with the heart of gold, a young cowboy out to avenge the murders of his family, an alcoholic doctor who used to be good, a gambler, an elitist military wife, a hypocritical banker, etc. But Ford takes these characters and tells a thrilling humanist story about the the dangers of social prejudice. This movie plays out like a cowboy version of the gospel of Matthew's exhortation to "Judge not, lest ye be judged." The social outcasts rise to the challenge. The prominent members turn out to be raging cowards and hypocrites. STAGECOACH is so well structured, this was the ONLY movie Orson Welles watched in preparation to make CITIZEN KANE. And it has moments of such pure visual poetry (like this scene below) that you only need look at the still to understand the story. John Ford was a complicated human being. Despite or maybe because of this, he made some of the most tolerant, understanding, profound humanist movies in all American cinema.
#16 THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928, dir by Carl Theodor Dryer, France)
What's most amazing about this movie is how powerful it can be to spiritual and secular movie lovers alike. Dryer tells the story of Joan Of Arc (played in one of the great all-time movie performances by Maria Falconetti) based entirely on actual transcripts of her trial in 1431. The entire movie is her trial and its aftermath. The style is almost entirely comprised of revealing close ups of Joan and her judges (Priests, Bishops, leaders of the church). No one was allowed to wear make-up in the movie so the close ups are startling and revealing. The judges brutally interrogate Joan and she stands up for her faith with relentless sincerity. The hypocrisy and insecurity and political games those in power feel and play is communicated powerfully. But so to is the kind of indescribable inner strength someone possessed of true faith can have. It's impossible for this programmer to watch this movie without weeping about 3/4 of the time. It starts at 10 and never lets up. Whether viewed as a biting condemnation of predatory power or a startling cinematic portrait of spiritual faith (or both), THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC is one of the most powerful movies you will ever see.
#15 IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, dir by Frank Capra, USA)
Frank Capra made a helluva movie. And even though some of the endings and logic are a bit wonky, by and large, his run from IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT through IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has to be counted as one of the great directorial runs of all time. But WONDERFUL LIFE is his masterpiece & one of the towering movies of American cinema. We see the life of truly good person George Bailey from childhood through a key critical Christmas Eve crisis in middle age through the clever device of Angels having to get up to speed on him because a lot of prayers are going out. Bailey is always doing what's right by his family, by his community. He's the doppleganger to Mr. Potter, the richest man in Bedford Falls, who views people as mindless insects to be exploited to get a buck. What's hilarious about this movie is that the real key plot point doesn't kick in until minute 90 (it may have the longest first act of all cinema). But this is what triggers George's guardian angel, Clarence, who comes down to earth on a critical Christmas Eve. The third act of the movie, along with Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI's third act, may be the single greatest third act ever. What makes it eternal though is what it says about how community and looking out for others is its own reward. Maybe one of the most important movies we could re-watch in these anxious times.
#14 THE DEKALOG (1989, dir by Kryzstof Kieslowski, Poland)
A limited Polish TV series where each episode is an irreverent, deeply perceptive take on one of the 10 commandments as experienced by different people all living in the same huge Warsaw apartment complex. The episodes are so cleverly sequenced and interconnected that this really becomes one huge movie (like David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS SEASON 3). One of the most ambitious yet intelligently conceived works of cinematic art ever made. What gives these episodes their rigor is how often they point out how difficult it is to live by the commandments given the complexity of life/existence. And they ask as many unsettling questions as any kind of viewpoint they give. Still, there is something fundamental and profound at work here. And the experience of watching the entire series (which interestingly moves from nearly unwatchable tragedy to comedy) is one of the great overpowering experiences in all of cinema. Each episode is a gem.
#13 SUNRISE (1927, dir by FW Murnau, USA)
Possibly the single greatest pre-sound era movie of visual poetry ever made. A Husband decides to kill his wife and run away with his lover to the city only to have a change of heart at the last moment. . .and this is just the first 20 minutes of the movie! From there, the Wife and Husband go on a kind of cathartic redemptive journey to the city that reminds them of the key fundamentals of life itself. This programmer has often said this but this is the movie that starts a whole chain reaction in cinema. Murnau used every visual trick in the book in this movie as well as huge dollops of German Expressionism. . .John Ford saw the movie and changed his style forever. . .Kurosawa, Fellini, and Bergman saw John Ford and adapted their styles off his. . .Scorsese and Spielberg saw Kurosawa and John Ford movies and. . . .Deep focus, background action, expressionistic lighting, sets, texture. This is where it all crystalized. Plus it's one hell of an emotional movie.
#12 SHOAH (1985, dir by Claude Lanzmann, France)
Claude Lanzmann's SHOAH is an impossible film. Over 10 hours long, it documents the holocaust in WWII through a kaleidoscope of first-hand interviews -Concentration camp survivors, Nazis, Polish freedom fighters, casually anti-semitic villagers only too happy to recount their memories of watching the Jews being carted to Auschwitz. Lanzmann makes the revolutionary decision never to show archival footage or photos. In some ways, Lanzmann is telling us the holocaust was so unnatural, horrific, unbelievable that it is impossible for us to understand it. Still, Lanzmann (clearly a relentless bulldog of an interviewer) gets his subjects to tell stories they've probably buried for 20-30 years. One of the most unsettling scenes in all of cinema is the one captured in this still. A Jewish Barber who cut the hair of his fellow Jews just before they were gassed and had to lie to them while he did it recounts what he went through while he cuts hair in Israel. The most surreal thing is the scene is staged. But Lanzmann could never get the man to talk in any other setting. But as he goes about his trade, he opens up and the story he tells is so horrific in its scope you feel yourself screaming inside. This is what documentary filmmaking can achieve: an irrefutable proof of necessary horribly uncomfortable truths the snake charmers and revisionists will never be able to talk away.
#11 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981, dir by Steven Spielberg, USA)
Archaelogist Indiana Jones teams up with ex-flame Marion Ravenwood to find the biblical Ark of the Covenant before Hitler and the Nazis. In a career of amazingly crafted master entertainments, this is Spielberg at the absolute top of his game. Coming off the disastrous reception of his WWII comedy 1941, Spielberg took his friend George Lucas up on the opportunity to make an action-adventure movie that would prove Spielberg could work on budget & on schedule. To do so, Spielberg STORYBOARDED EVERY SINGLE SHOT in the movie. What we get is a movie more MAD MAX FURY ROAD than MAD MAX FURY ROAD. Two hours of blisteringly brilliantly conceived action setpieces, comedy, storytelling, and wonder. But possibly the secret of the secret sauce here is the subtle development of Indy's character from cockiness to humility in the face of the transcendent. And how, like in WIZARD OF OZ, Indy's and Marion's love for each other becomes the human correlative to the power of the Ark. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? gets inverted here to: For what shall it profit a man if he loses the whole world but gain his own soul? Isn't that the whole game?
#10 THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE'S OWN EYES (1971, dir by Stan Brakhage, USA)
USA Avant-garde & experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage realized he needed to find a cinematic way of dealing with death. So he went to a Pittsburgh morgue in 1971 and filmed a night of forensic pathologists conducting autopsies. He observed a few basic rules of decorum: none of the bodies are filmed in a way that would reveal their identities, there is no sound, there is no sensationalism. The movie becomes a 32 minute meditation on the nature of death. As this programmer sat there watching the doctors conduct the autopsies and thus the viscera, thoughts began to come. "What are our bodies really?" "What is the connection between our consciousness and the matter that makes us?" "What will happen to my body after I die?" Because of the respectful yet experimental nature of the editing, these questions come in a manageable way because the movie gives you the space to go where you need to go. Brakhage made hundreds of movies that innovated everything from editing to sound/music montage to superimposition to direct painting/manipulation of film itself. He was influenced by Eisenstein and Cocteau and almost certainly influenced Scorsese, Malick, Lynch, Fincher among others. If you need to discover a moviemaker who will blow the doors off what you think possible in movies, start here. Stan Brakhage is one of the all-time greats. And this movie is one of the most unflinching thought provoking you'll ever see. Just brace yourself.
Written by Craig Hammill. Founder and Programmer of Secret Movie Club.