SMC Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill's Top 35 Films Conversation! 9 to 1...
#9 BLACK NARCISSUS (1947, dir by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, UK)
An order of nuns inherit a former brothel/harem high in the Himalayas and convert it to a convent. But the local people, sensual environment, and clash of cultures end up wreaking havoc with the nuns' plans and psyches. The Archers (directors/writers Powell & Pressburger) made a series of movies in the 40's-50's that are all incredibly singular, wildly stylish, daringly unique. NARCISSUS, in this programmer's meager opinion, is their crowning achievement. I had seen this movie 4-5 times before I found out it was shot ENTIRELY on ENGLISH soundstages. The filmmakers use models, matte paintings, cinematography, production design, movie tricks so brilliantly, I swore it was shot on location in India, Nepal, or Tibet. The brilliance of this movie comes in its incredible marriage of form and function to get at a contradictory truth: the more the nuns are forced to deal with their own humanity, temptations, desires, emotions, the closer they are probably getting to the source of all existence. The very famous climax (which we won't spoil here) is one of the ALL TIME great movie sequences. Powell achieved it by storyboarding then timing every single shot to music and making sure the camera movement, actor performance, etc all matched the music tempo. What you get is a ballet of terror and cinema. ONE OF THE ALL TIME GREAT MOVIES.
#8 DAYS OF BEING WILD/IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE/2046 (1990, 2000, 2004, dir by Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong)
Each movie in Kar Wai's "Love Trilogy" subtly focuses on three different stages of romance: the romances you have before you meet the love of your life, the love of your life, and the romances you have after the love of your life. And these movies are actually EXPLICITLY linked. Characters from DAYS show up in 2046. The Tony Leung character at the end of DAYS becomes his character in MOOD and 2046, etc. Kar Wai is one of the single greatest practitioners of style in all of cinema. He's great because he puts his style genius at the service of expressing and evoking emotions that are often hard to put into words or dialogue. Certainly the romantic arcs of the characters here are not the only universal romantic arcs (many of us experience tremendous loneliness or find a life partner, or are happy to be unattached, etc). But many of us do have intense love relationships that end that we always remember and that affect us the rest of our lives. This trilogy of movies captures that essence possibly better than any other single work of cinema ever made.
#7 PATHER PANCHALI/APARAJITO/THE WORLD OF APU (1955, 1956, 1959, dir by Satyajit Ray, Bengal India)
The story of Bengali boy Apu from his birth through a critical crisis moment in his adulthood. Filmmaker Satyajit Ray, already a famous illustrator, spent years making the first movie (his wife pawned almost everything she owned for its completion). Through incredible struggle, lack of money, meager resources, he produced one of the most universal, profound, heart wrenching documents on the struggles all of us as families go through in existence. When the movie became an international success, Ray was able to return to the Apu character in two subsequent movies so that we see Apu in childhood, in adolescence, in adulthood. Each movie is marked by incredible triumphs and incredible losses. And the entire trilogy deals head on with death and loss AND tremendous life affirming joy. This is, in the end, existence as this programmer understands it. Akira Kurosawa himself said "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon." Satyajit Ray devoted his life to his belief in cinema's power to address our existential issues. And Ray proved that cinema was up to the task.
#6 LOVES OF A BLONDE (1965, dir by Milos Forman, Czech Republic)
Andula, a young female Czech country factory worker, has a one night stand with Milda, a piano player from big-city Prague. Believing they're in love, she travels to the city to be with him only to get a rude surprise. Director Milos Forman would go on to direct many more well-known movies (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEXT and AMADEUS among them) but for this programmer's money, this one is the best. Everyone in this movie (a mix of actors and non-actors) give performances of such vitality, naturalism, complexity that it's almost impossible to wrap your head around how Forman got them to be so relaxed. The movie also does what comedy can do in those rare moments it's able to become sublime: get us to laugh at the most painful truths we all have to wrestle with about human nature. Forman also has the genius NOT TO JUDGE any of the characters. We see their foibles but stop any rush to judgement. We've all been in their shoes. This movie is both hilarious and heart breaking from start to finish. It achieves one of the most miraculous sustained tones in all of cinema. And shows us sometimes to get deep, we have to stay light.
#5 REAR WINDOW (1954, dir by Alfred Hitchcock, USA)
Famous photographer LB Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart killing it again) lies around his Greenwich Village apartment while his broken leg heals and spies on his neighbors. When Jeff thinks he's just observed a murder, he has to convince his girlfriend Lisa (a blinding star wattage Grace Kelly), his nurse, and his police detective friend to do something before it's too late. For this programmer's money, this is THE best Alfred Hitchcock movie and probably the best suspense-thriller EVER made. The mechanics of it are just the beginning: the entire movie takes place on a single set and is mostly shot in a single room. But then you get Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, and Thelma Ritter all delivering CAREER BEST performances. The writing sparkles. The creative team all hit home runs. And Hitchcock. . .You put this movie up against 99.9% of everything ever directed (not a fair thing to do) and that 99.9% pales. But as with all great movies the form is at the service of the story. Hitchcock cleverly makes us voyeurs into a number of different stories on relationships while his main character struggles to make up his mind whether to commit to his own girlfriend. Thus the murder, the neighbors all become reflections of Jeff's own unsettled psychology about his attitude towards the viability of long-term love. Just a brilliant entertainment (maybe the best) in every aspect. Oh yeah. . .and the shock moment towards the end still causes entire theater-fulls of audiences to jump.
#4 8 1/2 (1963, dir by Federico Fellini, Italy)
Guido, a famous Italian film director, gets creative block on his most recent movie and tries to work out the mess of his life from childhood through his current marriage, affairs, and spiritual beliefs. Fellini's run of movies from I VITELLONI through his episode TOBY DAMMIT for SPIRITS OF THE DEAD is one of the most consistently brilliant runs in all world cinema. It's probably hard now to find an exact analogue for a director who kept having to top himself as each new movie opened up to even bigger praise than the one before. But it's important to remember that Fellini made this movie just after LA DOLCE VITA. In other words, from all outside appearances, it would have been impossible to top the previous movie (which had been a worldwide sensation). But Fellini did it. This is a movie that shouldn't work. It's a movie about making movies where the main character is clearly a stand in for the director. And yet, unlike anyone else before or since (except maybe Bob Fosse in ALL THAT JAZZ, clearly inspired by 8 1/2), Fellini decides to be super creative and super honest. This rigor produces a series of dream and fantasy sequences, scene transitions, and startlingly psychologically vulnerable set pieces that most other creative people simply don't have the courage (or masochism) to achieve. Fellini bares his soul in this movie and opens up his brain and heart for all to come inside. A portrait of the artist in middle age that ends up becoming a portrait for everyone who realizes they have to find a productive outlet for their demons, hang ups, upbringing, culture or be consumed by them.
#3 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968, dir by Stanley Kubrick, USA)
A strange featureless black monolith appears to primates in prehistoric times; suddenly they discover the ability to use objects as weapons. Cut 100,000 years to the future (2001), Astronauts discover a similar monolith buried on the moon. It shoots a radio signal to Jupiter. A mission controlled by HAL, a spaceship computer system with advanced AI, heads to the planet. Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece is almost certainly one of the highest water marks in all of cinema for what it takes to make a work of true genius (basically genius + a mind-numbing amount of hard work). A movie that took over 4 years to produce with special effects so demanding they had to be invented. On its release, half the audience loved this movie, the other half thought it was pretentious confusing nonsense. A lesson to any moviemaker that really ambitious movies may be as polarizing and unsettling as they are embraced. 2001 still stands (to this programmer) as the conceptual sci-fi movie that has still not been bested. And for all the talk about Kubrick's supposed cynicism or dark view of humanity, there has been no movie more positive about the potential and future of mankind EVER MADE. Countless moviemakers have wrecked themselves on the shoals of trying to cinematically represent God, the transcendent, the ineffable layers of the universe, other intelligences. Somehow, despite the odds, 2001 succeeds.
#2 GRAND ILLUSION (1937, dir by Jean Renoir, France)
The story of a series of prison escapes attempted by French POWs during WWI and how society is actually separated by class not nationality. Jean Renoir's masterpiece is so warm, giving, expansive a movie, its brilliance is cleverly disguised by its captivating storytelling. For the longest time, this programmer cited Renoir's other great masterpiece THE RULES OF THE GAME as his favorite. I still love RULES with all my heart. But as I get older, it's GRAND ILLUSION I keep re-watching repeatedly every year. One of the great realizations of this movie is that despite the fact that it takes place during World War One, THERE ARE NO BAD GUYS. Except maybe elitism and social prejudice themselves. Everyone is human. As Renoir would say "Everyone has their reasons". The final 30 minutes of the movie which detail the final prison escape and its aftermath blossom into something entirely more mysterious and profound. But Renoir, ever the consummate filmmaker, doesn't put too fine a point on it. But it's there all the same. Like all great art, it moves to a place beyond words. As I get older, I realize that Renoir was more comfortable with that place beyond words than any other director.
And #1 is…
#1 SEVEN SAMURAI (1954, dir by Akira Kurosawa, Japan)
A 16th century Japanese farming village hires 7 samurai to protect them from an impending attack of 40 bandits; almost every type of human behavior is seen during the crisis. As anyone who attended our 12 MONTHS OF KUROSAWA series last year knows, this is the movie I'd show the aliens. It's all here. A simple story told in a genius, gripping masterful way. Firecracker performances (especially by Toshiro Mifune as the impetuous vagabond who joins the samurai group). Brilliant set piece after brilliant set piece. Editorial choices that less talented and assured moviemakers would never dare to make. And, by choosing such a suspenseful easy to follow story, Kurosawa allows himself three hours of some of the most complex observation and development of human nature ever put to film before delivering a third act we always knew was coming that still shocks and surprises us with its outcome. Kurosawa is the filmmaker's filmmaker. He believed in cinema until the very end (he was even storyboarding his next screenplay THE SEA IS WATCHING when he died at 88 years old). Kurosawa and Mifune often joked had they been even 5 years older than they were in 1954, they probably would have never been able to have made SEVEN SAMURAI. This movie is so clearly grueling that only 2001 really feels commensurate when it comes to effort. But it's all there on the screen. And something more. Seven Samurai somehow gets at the importance of doing the right thing for the thing itself and no other reward. The north star of all cinema.
Written by Craig Hammill. Founder and Programmer of Secret Movie Club.