1970s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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domino harvey
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#201 Post by domino harvey » Sat May 24, 2008 10:02 pm

I'm sure (hopefully not wishful thinking) that Eric Rohmer's Claire's Knee will place comfortably within the list, but I would also recommend La Marquise d'O, a rather interesting Rohmer film from '76. It's a German-language (!) film featuring Ganz and Sander, who both played angels in Wings of Desire. It's quite stylistically similar to Rivette's later adaptations of Bronte and Balzac, I wonder how much of an influence his colleague's film had on him... Plus Rohmer himself pulls a Hitchcock and shows up as a soldier-- my God, he looked near death over thirty years ago when this was made, the man's unstoppable.

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zedz
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#202 Post by zedz » Sun May 25, 2008 12:12 am

You lot have been busy the last few days!

Yep, 50 or nothing in my book. If we were taking top 10s from all and sundry, I bet they'd mostly look the same and we could probably just refer you to Empire's Coolest Films of the 70s! list or whatever. We certainly wouldn't be seeing two films from Chantal Akerman in the top 10 (as is currently the state of play, six lists in).

I don't normally give stuff away like that, but this fluke will almost certainly evaporate with the next submissions, so let's enjoy it while it lasts. This is probably also the one and only guest appearance by Peter Watkins in any top ten, too.

Voting so far is very diverse. 203 films have been nominated, with 70 eligible. Current number 1 by a healthy margin wasn't even in the top 30 last time around; number 4 wasn't even top 50.

Still a week to go. I'll be rather disrupted over that time, so updates might be few and far between.

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chaddoli
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#203 Post by chaddoli » Sun May 25, 2008 2:24 am

I hope people aren't forgetting Killer of Sheep. It has just now been resurrected, but it is an essential film of the 1970s.

For the record, right now my top ten looks like this:

1. Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
2. Claire’s Knee (Eric Rohmer, 1970)
3. Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
4. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
5. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
6. In a Year with 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)
7. F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1974)
8. OUT 1 (Jacques Rivette, 1971)
9. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)
10. The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)

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Michael
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:09 pm

#204 Post by Michael » Sun May 25, 2008 10:43 am

It seems like most of you are voting OUT 1 ahead of Celine and Julie Go Boating. The latter is definitely one of my top 3 but I have not seen OUT 1. Is there a DVD out there? How is that OUT 1 is superior to Celine and Julie?

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chaddoli
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#205 Post by chaddoli » Sun May 25, 2008 11:23 am

Michael wrote:How is that OUT 1 is superior to Celine and Julie?
Because it's longer.

(I haven't actually seen Celine and Julie! I was about to open my BFI dvd but then I saw BAM is screening it in July. OUT 1 is not available on DVD anywhere in the world. I suspect the people who have listed it saw it last year during the Rivette retrospective at AMMI or in London.)

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denti alligator
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#206 Post by denti alligator » Mon May 26, 2008 12:17 am

Sembene's Xala will be on my list. Others'?

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zedz
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#207 Post by zedz » Mon May 26, 2008 8:28 pm

Possible spanner in the works for some contributors: I believe imdb had historically misdated Gates of Heaven as an ineligible 1980 film. They have now corrected this to 1978, so it's eligible. If you'd excluded it in your submitted vote because of this, feel free to resubmit a revised list.

mikeohhh
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#208 Post by mikeohhh » Mon May 26, 2008 9:31 pm

zedz wrote:Possible spanner in the works for some contributors: I believe imdb had historically misdated Gates of Heaven as an ineligible 1980 film. They have now corrected this to 1978, so it's eligible. If you'd excluded it in your submitted vote because of this, feel free to resubmit a revised list.
that reminded me to check on another film that I could have sworn was 1979 but imdb had as 1980: Siberiade.

It's now listed as 1979 and now I need to make room on my list.

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zedz
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#209 Post by zedz » Mon May 26, 2008 11:00 pm

mikeohhh wrote:
zedz wrote:Possible spanner in the works for some contributors: I believe imdb had historically misdated Gates of Heaven as an ineligible 1980 film. They have now corrected this to 1978, so it's eligible. If you'd excluded it in your submitted vote because of this, feel free to resubmit a revised list.
that reminded me to check on another film that I could have sworn was 1979 but imdb had as 1980: Siberiade.

It's now listed as 1979 and now I need to make room on my list.
That gave me a bad feeling, which I've now confirmed. They've finally corrected the misdating of Eros Plus Massacre, making it 1969 and thus ineligible. (And I'd just devoted the weekend to taking in the integral version!) So it's actually fallen between the cracks of two lists, like The Colour of Pomegranates did last time around. Several of us will thus have to revise our lists. For those who have already voted for the Yoshida, my default setting will be to remove it from your list and bump everything below it up a notch. If you want to add a new 50th film to the end of your list, or do a more radical reshuffle, PM me.

On the plus side, at least imdb is improving its accuracy!

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Cold Bishop
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#210 Post by Cold Bishop » Mon May 26, 2008 11:29 pm

Or you could just make an exception for Eros, and retain the 70s date for this go around...

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#211 Post by mikeohhh » Tue May 27, 2008 12:05 am

Cold Bishop wrote:Or you could just make an exception for Eros, and retain the 70s date for this go around...
yeah, just let it slide. It's not like the movies on the '70s/'80s divide that we could just wait a few months to add to a new list. What if imdb had finally gotten Breathless right the week before our 60s list had gone to press and that movie had found itself without a place on this board's "canon"?

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zedz
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#212 Post by zedz » Tue May 27, 2008 1:07 am

Excepting Eros will make my life a bit easier. Is everybody happy with that?

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Cold Bishop
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#213 Post by Cold Bishop » Tue May 27, 2008 1:22 am

We all knew it was a sixties film to begin with, so backtracking now just because IMDB "officially" changed the date would be kind of silly.

Now a question/clarification: Terayama's Grass Labyrinth is listed as 1983, however, it was first released (incongruously) in the Private Collection omnibus in 1979. So it is definitely considered seventies, right?

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domino harvey
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#214 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 27, 2008 1:35 am

I didn't, I followed the rules and was shocked when Breathless appeared on the final 60s list.

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miless
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#215 Post by miless » Tue May 27, 2008 2:22 am

I realize I'm probably a bit late on this, but I used this as an excuse to see which films I love were made in the 70's.

most of them are pretty standard... and I couldn't really cut it down smaller than 12

Stalker
Spirit of the Beehive
Eraserhead
Mirror
Edvard Munch
A Woman Under the Influence
Stroszek
Solaris
That Obscure Object of Desire
Barry Lyndon
F For Fake
Days of Heaven

while compiling everything I realized just how little from every decade I've really loved (my whole 'favorite films' list could be boiled down to less than fifty films)

edit: is anyone else seeing an ebay advert for a '4 ton electric log splitter' on this page?

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zedz
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#216 Post by zedz » Wed May 28, 2008 1:45 am

Cold Bishop wrote:We all knew it was a sixties film to begin with, so backtracking now just because IMDB "officially" changed the date would be kind of silly.

Now a question/clarification: Terayama's Grass Labyrinth is listed as 1983, however, it was first released (incongruously) in the Private Collection omnibus in 1979. So it is definitely considered seventies, right?
I'd like to stick with the imdb rule simply because we need some consistent measure, so that would make it an 80s contender, unless you want to vote for the whole Private Collection omnibus.

For rare cases like Eros + we could formulate an exception like so:
"IMDB date determines eligibility, unless a change in that date means that a given film would be excluded from an entire cycle of voting"

Thus Grass Labyrinth is eligible for the 1980s list, even if imdb corrects the date to 1979 between now and its due date.

Does that make sense to anybody else? (And am I the only one feeling an urge to send miless a care package of DVDs?)

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Cold Bishop
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#217 Post by Cold Bishop » Wed May 28, 2008 4:01 am

I'm only asking since I recall a rule where on could vote for a single short from an omnibus film, although that may have just been for the shorts list.

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zedz
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#218 Post by zedz » Wed May 28, 2008 4:21 am

Cold Bishop wrote:I'm only asking since I recall a rule where on could vote for a single short from an omnibus film, although that may have just been for the shorts list.
That's certainly happened before, so if the omnibus is listed as 1979, go ahead. I guess this means you can vote for it in the 1970s and again in the 1980s list, if you want to be perverse.

And an update:

9 lists in, which gives us the magic number of exactly 100 eligible films (out of 261 nominated), so we have a list, even if everybody clams up now. American films figure heavily, but a different kind of American cinema for each voter (big Hollywood, little Hollywood, indie, underground) so there's still a huge amount of diversity. Our current top film is well ahead of number 2 and it's only appeared on 6 of the lists submitted (but top 20 in all of them). I don't think any other film has appeared on more than four. It's definitely not Hollywood, but it references Hollywood.

As for the rest of the top 10, it's half American with the remaining four from four different European countries (number one comes from a fifth, and a sixth accounts for number 11). Asia and the rest of the world are faring pretty badly! There are five first names featured in the titles of the current top ten films, and three placenames.

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GringoTex
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#219 Post by GringoTex » Wed May 28, 2008 8:12 am

zedz wrote: It's definitely not Hollywood, but it references Hollywood.
Assisted by a Criterion release since the last 70s list?

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souvenir
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#220 Post by souvenir » Wed May 28, 2008 9:59 am

GringoTex wrote:
zedz wrote: It's definitely not Hollywood, but it references Hollywood.
Assisted by a Criterion release since the last 70s list?
I'm guessing the film you're thinking of Spanish, but the one that came to my mind is German. We might both be wrong.

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sidehacker
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#221 Post by sidehacker » Wed May 28, 2008 3:04 pm

Oooh...is it too late to add a film to my list?

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Awesome Welles
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#222 Post by Awesome Welles » Wed May 28, 2008 3:07 pm

sidehacker wrote:Oooh...is it too late to add a film to my list?
Ditto, I stupidly missed something off my list. The question is can I go through the pain of letting my number 50 fall off?

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domino harvey
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#223 Post by domino harvey » Wed May 28, 2008 3:09 pm

I understand why zedz isn't using names, but why are the rest of you pussyfooting around your guesses?

Spanish: the Spirit of Beehive
German: Some Herzog movie
Proper Names: Jeanne Dielman, Wanda, Claire's Knee, Celine and Julie Go Boating, the Marriage of Maria Braun, several Herzog films
Last edited by domino harvey on Wed May 28, 2008 3:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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sidehacker
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#224 Post by sidehacker » Wed May 28, 2008 3:11 pm

Instead of having me redo a list, zedz can just add a bunch of points for Alexander Kluge's Part-time Work of a Female Slave.

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Scharphedin2
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#225 Post by Scharphedin2 » Wed May 28, 2008 3:18 pm

A quick run through of the most impressive and highly recommended films that I managed to view in the last couple of months would include:

Jeanne Dielman by Chantal Akerman. I woke at 1.30 in the morning on Monday night, and could not get back to sleep, and then sat down to view this film without any real background knowledge. And, I guess the great test for me was that at that early hour I managed to be absolutely glued to the screen for 190 minutes, as Jeanne went about her daily routines in her small apartment, including amongst other things the peeling of potatoes, the seemingly interminable waiting for a package from America, the habitual visits from her clients, and the walking through grey Bruxelles city streets in search of a particular type of button. As I came to the end of Jeanne’s voyage into the night, the first pale light of day filtered into my flat, and I felt that I had really seen an extraordinary film that was so specific in its depiction of one woman at a certain time in a certain place, but at the same time it was a powerful image of a life so like my own, and most other people's I know. Naturally I then lifted myself out of my chair, boiled water for coffee, ironed a shirt, checked emails, took my shower, and so on.

I have adored every film that I have seen by Masaki Kobayashi, and We Give Our Lives For Nothing/Inn of Evil was no exception. Telling the story of a nest of smugglers and thieves, who, after many years of successful operations feel the noose tightening around their necks, and decide to go all out in a final act of honor, the film bears resemblance to Harakiri, and is generally almost as captivating. Shinoda’s Silence – truly amplified by the beauty of MoC’s transfer – was another Japanese film that impressed me a lot. My reading experience of Shusaku Endo’s literature is limited to a few books, but I felt that this film translated the author’s world and sentiments to the screen with rare accuracy and sincerity. And, probably somewhat less impressive than the other two films, Kinji Fukasaku’s Under the Flag of the Rising Sun nonetheless came across as a strong film on an important Japanese topic, with its exposé of the collective Japanese suppression of World War II atrocities, elegantly and entertainingly told through the investigation by the wife of a dishonored soldier into the fate of her husband, in an attempt to have his name cleared of charges of cowardice.

Of European films, Wim Wenders’s Im Lauf der Zeit and Alice in den Städten are films that I have looked forward to seeing ever since I began to really view films seriously. The American Friend, Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire were early discoveries for me while still a teenager, and at that time there was no way that I could find of seeing the director’s earlier work. Both of these early Wenders films are road movies, and very different from each other in pace and structure, although there are also many similarities – both are beautifully filmed in black and white, and both films carry the same sense of world-weariness, infatuation with places, and understanding of the frailty of human bonds. Francesco Rosi on the other hand is a very recent discovery for me, and from the seventies I had the opportunity to see Lucky Luciano and Illustrious Corpses. Like Salvatore Giuliano and Hands Over the City, both of these films are told in the “investigative” manner that is Rosi’s trademark, leaving the viewer with the sensation that the director has briefly offered a glimpse behind the historical socio-political machinery of Italy.

I saw the astonishingly lovely Spirit of the Beehive, and I loved its depiction of childhood, of course! I saw Antonioni’s The Passenger, which I merely thought was “good” Antonioni; that is, up until the final ten minutes, which transformed the film into another “great” Antonioni film for me. I saw three marvelous Hungarian films: Szinbad, Love and Red Psalm, and the superb Russian animated film Tale of Tales. All of these will almost surely end up on my final list.

There were a number of good American films, but somehow not many that I completely fell for. I saw The Hired Hand, as recommended by zedz many months ago in this very thread, and it is a wonderful downbeat and downplayed western just as promised. Two Lane Blacktop was also a real joy. The Long Goodbye and Night Moves may inch in at the very bottom of my 50 – Gene Hackman’s performance in the latter, and particularly his meeting with the dolphin-girl out in Florida, was very moving to me.

And, finally, I saw several excellent documentaries: Kazuo Hara’s Goodbye CP and Extreme Private Eros 1974 shocked my socks off with their blunt and uncompromising frankness (do not be scared off, Facets’ releases are fine in this case, really); Gates of Heaven is unbelievable (but I guess no longer eligible for the ‘70s); and Winter Soldier and Hearts and Minds were, well, heartbreaking; Kieslowski’s First Love was pretty near my favorite film that I have seen by this particular director; and, the pseudo-documentaries Punishment Park and WR: Mysteries of the Organism were very good, although for me they suffered slightly from the “high expectations” syndrome.

In total, I have seen about a hundred films from the seventies since January, and I have been constantly frustrated with not being able to find the time to see more. It is a constant source of joy to me these days, how there are almost no limits to the access to films (aside from funds and personal quality considerations). As usual, my time and ability to view films was quite outweighed by my ambition to see films, and thus I have not even made it through half the films that I had initially lined up for myself (literally, on the floor of my living room) to see before submitting a list. This unfortunate imbalance leaves at least a dozen Fassbinder films sitting abandoned on my Persian rug, unwatched, and kept company by Visconti’s Ludwig, Scenes from a Marriage and several other Bergmans, a number of Pasolinis and Altmans, a couple of Bunuels, a load of Chabrols, Truffauts, Rohmers and Godards, the early Greenaway films, Watkin’s Edvard Munch, Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating, Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli and Klimov’s Agony, The Travelling Players, a number of Fukasaku pictures including the Yakuza Papers, and many Bavas, Argentos, Japanese pinky violence flicks, as well as Borowzcyk, Ruiz, Arabal, etc., etc. Those are just some of the ones that I have at hand (Mr. keyhip would have a field day with me and my unwatched piles of DVDs), and there are of course an ocean of worthy films that are out there and not in my little library. What a very different list mine will likely be, if and when we make another round of lists in a few years time.

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