Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
One problem, of course, with a great books (or great films) curriculum is that we get students to equate "classic" with dull, uninteresting, or obsolete.
Author: kenmorefield
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Bigger Than Life (Ray, 1956)
The moment that caught my attention in Nicholas Ray's 1956 melodrama Bigger Than Life is when Ed Avery (James Mason) walks in on his son watching television. At first he appears to have a slight, almost sociological interest, then asks the boy, "Doesn't that bore you?" Followed by, almost to himself, "It's always the same story."
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Le petit soldat (Godard, 1963)
The main character in Le petit Soldat is tortured. At one point, in voice-over, he calls torture "sad" and "boring" and it is a small wonder that Godard is able to convey an experience of it that is more sad than thrilling, more banal than pregnant with significance.
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Stephen Frears
What is your favorite Stephen Frears film? And why do you think he doesn't get the love and acclaim of some of his contemporaries?
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The Trial of Joan of Arc (Bresson, 1962)
John Donne once wrote, "I am a little world made cunningly," suggesting that the complexity of the world is contained in microcosm in the human spirit. There is a depth and complexity to Joan that is evoked through her words and transcends the wit or cleverness that might be conveyed were the film to try to show it directly rather than by implication.
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A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1956)
In Notes on the Cinematographer, Bresson appears particularly anxious to remind himself (and us) that film is its own media and does not have as its purpose the reproduction of a theatrical experience or technique: "The truth of cinematography cannot be the truth of theatre, nor the truth of the novel, nor the truth of painting. (What the cinematographer captures with his or her own resources cannot be what the theatre, the novel, the painting capture with theirs)" (20).
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Charlie Chaplin: A King in New York
The nature of a celebrity interview is that it can be hit or miss. Surely it is interesting to hear Chaplin opine in 1957 that this new kid, Marlon Brando, has "something." But that doesn't relate much to the film.
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Persepolis (Paronnaud, 2007)
A lot of films can break your heart--a precious few can enlarge and renovate it.
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Land of the Pharoahs (Hawks, 1955)
Struggle he unquestionably did. He reports both in the audio commentary and in his 1956 interview with Cahiers du Cinema (reprinted in the Andrew Sarris edited anthology Interviews with Film Directors) that he and friend William Faulkner struggled with the story because they had no idea how a pharaoh talked or acted.
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The Tragedy of Hamlet (Brook, 2002)
Peter Brook has forgotten more about Shakespeare than I'll ever know, and Adrian Lester is an underrated and underappreciated actor.