24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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domino harvey
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#76 Post by domino harvey » Tue Sep 20, 2016 1:50 am

I'll be more concerned if you somehow don't love Night and the City once you see it

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Rayon Vert
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#77 Post by Rayon Vert » Tue Sep 20, 2016 9:44 am

domino harvey wrote:I'll be more concerned if you somehow don't love Night and the City once you see it
OK. I'll check myself in if that's not the case.

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#78 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Tue Sep 20, 2016 11:13 am

Really lazy here and I did use Wikipedia

Dr Strangelove
Do The Right Thing
Odd Man Out
After Hours
Clerks

Dazed and Confused
Elephant
The Warriors
Bunny Lake is Missing (I know Preminger is highly rated here - is it seen as one of his minor films?)
Snake Eyes (probably the last De Palma I really, really like)

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domino harvey
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#79 Post by domino harvey » Tue Sep 20, 2016 12:42 pm

I've seen most but not all of Preminger's final films and I'd certainly rank Bunny Lake as his last very good one from what I've seen. I'm not a big De Palma fan anyways but I mostly agree with you on Snake Eyes, though I do like the Black Dahlia

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DarkImbecile
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#80 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Sep 20, 2016 1:02 pm

domino harvey wrote:I did select it for the header picture in the first post, so obviously I am broadly on its side! I think each Die Hard film is roughly twice as good as the film before it, culminating in Live Free or Die Hard's perfectly absurd celebration of novelty (but it takes place over a couple days, so ineligible here). And then the bottom dropped out with the fifth film, which might still be the worst action film I've ever seen. If you think the original Die Hard is the end-all be-all, I'm going to go ahead and surmise you hate the fourth one, so we may not have much common ground here!
I don't hate the fourth one, but it's the weakest of the four I've seen; I'm strongly biased in favor of practical effects over CGI in action movies, which is part of why I enjoy the first and third entries so much (the second is just such a recycle job that even the screenplay repeatedly comments on the absurdity of the coincidences). If I had to quantify them, as you've done, I'd say that the odd entries are about twice as good as their immediate successors, such that if x is the peak quality of the series, the quality of the first four would be DH(x), DH2:DH(1/2x), DHwaV(3/4x); LFoDH(3/8x). For the purposes of this list, though, its hard to think of many action movies that can top the "One Bad Day for Our Hero" model that the original and third entry provide, despite their many imitators.

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domino harvey
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#81 Post by domino harvey » Wed Nov 16, 2016 2:30 am

Ce soir ou jamais (Michel Deville 1961) Okay world, you have approximately one year til lists are due for the forum’s New Wave list, and this overlooked film belongs on every single ballot. Some label somewhere needs to get off their duff and put this out in an English-friendly release (there aren’t even subs for it up on the Site That Shall Not Be Named)-- I can't imagine it would be that hard to market a masterpiece starring beautiful women!

This is the greatest film I’ve ever seen about a small social get-together as tracked from the beginning to the end in fully-formed observational wit and interpersonal asides and repositioning. Deville’s use of mise-en-scene is one of the cleverest I have seen in some time: the film makes the viewer a member of the party by liberally employing swooping cameras that reject shot-reverse shot for a more natural connective association in single takes. The camera and the viewer become part of the party, and never in a gimmicky fashion. The entire film takes place with a single set, and never once feels claustrophobic or stifling. After seeing this film (Where’re my Film Architecture posters? Get thee to this film!), I know the layout of the apartment completely-- and more than I even know the interchangeable guests, who fill dead spaces with bad jokes and weird asides to past shared histories. And this too taps into Deville’s corporeality— everyone talking at once, blending into each other, and what we’re left with are the definites. Just like a real party with people we’ve never met before. And the lulls and peaks and late-period outbursts of excitement are so lively and correct. From the diagetic music to the way the camera sometimes just hangs back, with everyone's backs to audience, the film immerses the viewer fully in the experience.

Clear evidence of Deville’s cinematic intelligence can be found in the wonderful final sequence, in which the director knows the audience wants to see the location of a certain item, and ingeniously in a single take refuses to reveal it until the literal last moment as “FIN” pops up— this is authorial manipulation and control at its finest and most dynamic (and it of course also serves as playful teasing at what is transparently the worst possible ending-- though one all too common in the Nouvelle Vague). What an incredible film this is!

If you already think Anna Karina or Françoise Dorléac were lovely before, wait til you see ‘em in this film:

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Dorléac (in an early role) steals the show in her brief appearance as an auditioning starlet who runs the gamut of acting approaches before comically exploding at a million miles a minute in advance of her exit in a stunningly electric showstopper. That said, this soon after ends up being Karina’s movie, and for good reason: she takes the kittenish aspects Godard exploited in Le petit soldat and Une femme est une femme and ramps them up to a million. Deville’s immersive approach thus takes us along for the ride as Karina hopelessly tries to La Ronde the entire guestlist for the party, employing all manner of coquetry in her quest. To those who think they already had a crush on Karina: Oh ho, you have no idea.

Also, not to keep beating a dead cheval, but seeing how these young actors (playing musical theatre participants, no less) collide and interact and exhibit such free yet clearly formed and constructed spontaneity makes me transition fully to the angry stage at you know who’s inflated reputation.

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barryconvex
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#82 Post by barryconvex » Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:41 am

I just watched this the other night and I enthusiastically agree with everything you wrote especially in regard to Karina and Dorleac. Please Dom (or anyone else), point me in the direction of Deville's other major works.

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domino harvey
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#83 Post by domino harvey » Wed Dec 04, 2019 1:23 pm

I’ve written up his filmography through the mid-80s and therewillbeblus has gone through all of them here. If you have access, I think we both agree that L’apprenti salaud and L’ours et la poupee are his best, but have no commercially-subbed releases, and La petite bande doesn’t need subs and is out on DVD in France

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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#84 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:37 pm

One of us, one of us!

barryconvex, my best advice would be to start with the two domino mentioned as his best (I can confirm my agreement) though I would watch L’ours et la poupee first as it's a better entry to see what he's working with before the frenetic chaos of L’apprenti salaud, probably his best film. Then I'd work your way from the beginning of the 60s with whatever you can get your hands on. La petite bande is probably my third favorite, vying with the other two on any given day, but even Deville's lesser works (of which there are so few) are worth watching, and his filmography really takes shape with an understanding of his playful attitude towards complex human social behavior, and to a more subtle degree their psychologies and philosophies that influence this process and reveal vulnerabilities in identity.

Please contribute thoughts to the Deville thread too. He really is one of the best filmmakers out there that I'll never be able to repay domino for turning me on to, and who demands more discussion here and everywhere

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barryconvex
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#85 Post by barryconvex » Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:32 am

Thank you both. I will investigate.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#86 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Mar 20, 2020 12:23 pm

I didn't participate in this list project but the first film that comes to mind is the my and my sister's childhood favorite, Into the Night, which I see was sadly orphaned, and another odd example of a domino harvey taste-alliance, as it's a basically universally-panned film that I've never understood the hate for. I haven't seen the film in at least fifteen years, but it's so definitively positioned as my idea of a wild night, like a North By Northwest in the confines of urban darkness, that it may have even come in at number one had I submitted my own list. I actually do really like After Hours but to me these are so tonally different that all the similarities in the world can't force a fair comparison.

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domino harvey
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#87 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 20, 2020 12:26 pm

Funnily enough, when I rewatched Into the Night on Blu-Ray, I realized it didn’t actually qualify, as it primarily takes place over two nights!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#88 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Mar 20, 2020 1:09 pm

It is funny how sometimes the films that most qualify as the "one wild night" don't make the cut. The other, more recent, viewing that came to mind was L’ours et la poupee, which I believe is also technically two nights despite most of the action taking place on the second

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Re: 24 Hours or Less Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

#89 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:13 pm

So I finally revisited Into the Night for the first time since childhood, and it still holds up, but much differently! Child-me defined the film by a fun engaging 'one crazy night' rhythm, but as a more seasoned person, the actual pacing and mood of this film is further from that needle than I expected. The most sobering aspect, that makes this film very unique among the subgenre, is that its range of tones are far more gradually dispersed than usual, sprinkled into an overwhelming abyss of apathy. The movie lives and dies on a coasting attitude more in line with actual yuppie disillusionment than something like After Hours which is a more relentlessly busy absurdist nightmare. The absurdism here is in how -even in loosely following a formula that combines shocking violence, comedy, action, and film noir flavors- Goldblum's detachment persists, just as as he continues to stew in self-absorption. Nothing is more glaring than the final showdown
SpoilerShow
when in the aftermath of a grizzly shootout, facing a dangerous man threatening Pfeiffer's life, Goldblum asks the armed man rhetorical questions (though quite seriously) about his problems- still in a trance of confusion that stunts his engagement, and his disorientation infects the shooter and causes the man to kill himself!
It's still funny, but the gags come few and far between- though the film hits every part of the spectrum from physical comedy (leaning against the sets) to wordplay, absurdist situational ideas, and very dark comedy (the dogs!)- and the action plays into safe, on-the-run stuff to jarring traumatic bloodbaths. The film doesn't seem to care about the plot though, or even the setpieces so much, and instead serves to dilute its tonal eclecticism over an impenetrable couple who are such lost outsiders without stakes in their milieus for meaning that only physical threats can touch them, and even then the apathy and aimless wanderings contest with self-preservation. This is perhaps the most appropriate film for people grappling with existential crises pertaining to their more permanent life choices, as they've built foundations following the beginnings of self-actualization. And so instead of the 'yuppie's life turned upside down,' it becomes a projection of the stomach's twisted knot within those in their late 20s or 30s who aren't sold on their life choices.

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