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Post by Viced on Jul 7, 2019 15:41:06 GMT
I'm gonna rip-off pupdurcs here and see what kind of discussion this topic could get for directors. I'll post something later... just wanted to start this thread before I forgot the idea.
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Post by pupdurcs on Jul 7, 2019 15:43:34 GMT
I'm gonna rip-off pupdurcs here and see what kind of discussion this topic could get for directors. I'll post something later... just wanted to start this thread before I forgot the idea. Hope it works out. I'll try and contribute
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 7, 2019 16:10:18 GMT
Spike LeeGenre : Urban DramaEveryone knows (or should) that I'm not a huge fan of Spike Lee but the very things I don't like about him enabled him to connect and resonate with audiences in some ways more than a more overtly "better" director might. What I see as his flaws others see as heroic ways to convey what his films were about and felt like and were about under the surface too. In several movies - "joints" in the urban parlance - Lee, an NYU film school graduate used many techniques that cut right to the heart of the way his audiences saw and felt movies. His use of montage, quick-cut editing, colorfully urban set design and often with complex music sequences (like in School Daze) allowed him to convey information in the most direct and effective and relatable ways. If you think of the very best Spike Lee sequences - audacious ones like the "heat" musical montage in Do The Right Thing or the "Living For The City" sequence in Jungle Fever - you not only saw his intent but saw how his intent played on audiences. These films and Blackkklansman, Clockers, 25th Hour may have not worked for me - or worked somewhat in some ways - but that's the very point in a way. That they worked for some is undeniable and the fact that you can describe scenes and know what they are by the outline alone is how precise and distinctive his vision was too. Spike Lee didn't just know the characters in his films - he knew their music, their streets, the buildings they lived, hung out and died in and made you think about what day to day life in the city actually felt like. Below Adam Driver and John David Washington in Blackkklansman :
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 7, 2019 17:30:46 GMT
Leone, western.
Scorsese, gangster movies.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 7, 2019 17:39:27 GMT
OK, some things are very obvious. I mean, of course Leone had his impact on the spaghetti western as I mentioned. And of course, there is Roger Corman on horror and Hitchcock, "the Master of Suspense". I'd love to read some posts about these guys, by people here who can get more "technical" about their directing work. (I hope you get what I wanna say... )
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Post by jakesully on Jul 7, 2019 20:03:26 GMT
James Cameron - Sci Fi
Cameron is always ahead of the curb and pushing the envelope with what he can do in his sci fi films (Terminator, Terminator 2, Aliens, The Abyss & Avatar) . Say what you want about Avatar but it was definitely a cinematic game changer.
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Post by Viced on Jul 7, 2019 21:02:35 GMT
John DahlGenre: Neo-noirI think "neo-noir" is kind of a goofy term, tbh. The concept of noir to me is so completed linked to the '40s/'50s (and maybe early '60s) that any crime movie post-1970 should really just be called a crime movie instead of getting cutesy with the "neo-noir" label. Buuuuut... there are a decent amount of exceptions for me... and John Dahl's first three films are three of them. Kill Me Again -- clearly the work of a first-time filmmaker... but definitely oozes a strong noir-ish vibe. Lead character PI (Kilmer a bit miscast unfortunately), femme fatale faking her own death... it's all there. Red Rock West - an aimless drifter gets caught up in a small town mess in the middle of nowhere, an insanely crooked sheriff straight out of a Jim Thompson novel who wants his wife knocked off, the femme fatale wife who wants her husband knocked off, and the crazed hitman throwing a wrench into things. The Last Seduction - arguably the GOAT femme fatale... in a film that was released in 1994. I don't know how Fiorentino and Dahl did it. All these movies have an interesting sort of laid back style to them too. And Dahl handles the clichés and more predictable aspects of the genre incredibly well. Now the dude seems to be one of the most prolific TV directors out there... hasn't made a movie since 2007's mostly meh You Kill Me. Not sure if he could still pull off any neo-noir magic in this day and age since the '80s/early '90s aesthetic was somehow perfect for noir-ish stuff ( Body Heat, Blood Simple., After Dark, My Sweet... etc.) but I hope he gets a chance to try. And maybe he could rescue Linda Fiorentino from obscurity while he's at it.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2019 22:29:25 GMT
I think "neo-noir" is kind of a goofy term, tbh. The concept of noir to me is so completed linked to the '40s/'50s (and maybe early '60s) that any crime movie post-1970 should really just be called a crime movie instead of getting cutesy with the "neo-noir" label. I don't know if that makes much sense, as unlike crime, noir is often used as a descriptor of style (sometimes in ways that have almost nothing to do with the narrative content of the film, like lighting) rather than solely genre, and given that noir is often linked with the crime genre and all neo-noir means is obviously just "new noir" (which usually gets slapped on films that are an amalgamation of different genres/sub-genres/influences/ideas that are being read as primarily based off some kind of classic noir structure/form), I don't see why the term's goofy. Unless you're just fucking around lol. Anyway, a few that come to mind for me: - Hitchcock working in metafictional ideas in his thrillers (Rear Window being the most obvious example). - I do prefer the latter by a lot, but what Rossellini tackled with Journey to Italy is what L'Avventura usually gets credit for doing first, which of course influenced tons of reverie/isolation dramas.
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Post by Viced on Jul 7, 2019 22:57:02 GMT
I think "neo-noir" is kind of a goofy term, tbh. The concept of noir to me is so completed linked to the '40s/'50s (and maybe early '60s) that any crime movie post-1970 should really just be called a crime movie instead of getting cutesy with the "neo-noir" label. I don't know if that makes much sense, as unlike crime, noir is often used as a descriptor of style (sometimes in ways that have almost nothing to do with the narrative content of the film, like lighting) rather than solely genre, and given that noir is often linked with the crime genre and all neo-noir means is obviously just "new noir" (which usually gets slapped on films that are an amalgamation of different genres/sub-genres/influences/ideas that are being read as primarily based off some kind of classic noir structure/form), I don't see why the term's goofy. Unless you're just fucking around lol. I'm saying that the "neo-noir" label seems to be stamped on pretty much any film from the last 50 years that slightly resembles a crime movie. It's laughable. I think noir is more about the desperate and dark nature of humanity. But yes... it's about the shadows, the lighting, the badass line deliveries, the cigarette smoking... It's clearly a product of the state of the world from the '20s to the '50s... the way noir novels were written from Dashiell Hammett to Jim Thompson is what the definition of noir is to me. The neo-noir label being applied to any post-1970 movie with a private detective or bank robbery or something has made the term mean nothing to me. The three John Dahl films I listed all have the plot hallmarks of noir while more importantly having a deeper understanding of what makes a noir great. Now you've made me type the word "noir" so many times that it doesn't even sound like a real word to me anymore.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2019 23:04:07 GMT
I don't know if that makes much sense, as unlike crime, noir is often used as a descriptor of style (sometimes in ways that have almost nothing to do with the narrative content of the film, like lighting) rather than solely genre, and given that noir is often linked with the crime genre and all neo-noir means is obviously just "new noir" (which usually gets slapped on films that are an amalgamation of different genres/sub-genres/influences/ideas that are being read as primarily based off some kind of classic noir structure/form), I don't see why the term's goofy. Unless you're just fucking around lol. I'm saying that the "neo-noir" label seems to be stamped on pretty much any film from the last 50 years that slightly resembles a crime movie. It's laughable. I think noir is more about the desperate and dark nature of humanity. But yes... it's about the shadows, the lighting, the badass line deliveries, the cigarette smoking... It's clearly a product of the state of the world from the '20s to the '50s... the way noir novels were written from Dashiell Hammett to Jim Thompson is what the definition of noir is to me. The neo-noir label being applied to any post-1970 movie with a private detective or bank robbery or something has made the term mean nothing to me. The three John Dahl films I listed all have the plot hallmarks of noir while more importantly having a deeper understanding of what makes a noir great. Now you've made me type the word "noir" so many times that it doesn't even sound like a real word to me anymore. Gotcha, although for me that just shows further proof that a lot of people who write about movies don't know what the hell they're talking about. Stuff gets mislabeled or misrepresented all the time with art, but I don't think that makes classifications goofy or meaningless, even if they get misused frequently. The word "pretentious" gets thrown around non-stop and it's almost always being used wrong - but I don't think the word itself has anything wrong with it, and it can be used to describe things accurately. Neo-noir is a valid term, and, on the basis of it being used to showcase evolutions or reworkings or even just straight homages to ideas/moods/imagery from older films, one that's valuable. Can make for a lot of interesting thought and discussion.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 8, 2019 0:08:13 GMT
Wes CravenGenre: HorrorCraven really only did horror and it's offshoots (Craven directed 1 of Meryl Streep's 178 Oscar nods though) and I could pick a lot of guys here in this genre but what a fascinating guy he was and he legit came up with wholly original fresh spins on the genre - in a way that only Argento, De Palma, Polanski did (arguably Chabrol though not horror per se) - but Craven had success in a much more mass audience kind of way. An American horror director that had big hits - big genre changers too in the 70s-90s his big 3 or 4 films were also kind of revelations. The Last House on The Left is a remake - faithful but to great horror effect of The Virgin Spring - you should have known something was different about him then. The Hills Have Eyes a deceptive film about attacks on the family by a family with a clear cultural-political angle to it. Both of those were pivotal movies in the 70s genre but his other 2 big ones blew the doors off this genre entirely: A Nightmare on Elm Street is a really scary picture - genuinely disturbing in the way his previous big 2 could never be because they were distanced by being a remake and having a group of villains etc. If you haven't seen it lately give it a rewatch immediately - the kids are the would be heroes and the parents are all fncked up or drunks or enablers or liars from what they did to Freddy (the horror!), they are weaker now, and now Freddy's stronger. Nightmares and nursery rhymes hold in the balance innocence (it was just a nightmare after all!) - and what Freddy might have used for his victims - because he had victims. Tremendously influential doesn't begin to cover this movie - and no imitator had anywhere near of the level of thought that Craven put into this film - just in terms of color usage/female lead/production design ideas this movie is amazing. He then improbably came up with an entirely equal new film at this level - a new phenomenon - Scream. Wildly funny and gory and full of bad intentions right from the start Scream took our preoccupation with violence to garish new heights - everything was a game after all, or a TV show or an acting out of something you've seen. Again, layering more ideas on to this material than most directors would use in a whole career - it came almost 25 years after Last House On The Left. Don't watch if you've never seen Scream - but if you have marvel at this scene and how many pop culture ideas are sent-up here while still being terrifying and coherent and keeping tone. The deflowered virgin being told "we already played that game and you lost" - is one of the cruelest and most sinister lines in all of horror.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 13, 2019 0:18:48 GMT
Alfred Hitchcock
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Hitchcock to me is a victim of the time he made films - though a hero of it too - there were certain things he couldn't do - dark endings are pretty impossible although in the late 50s/60s he started to outfox that too. I often say his imitators Polanski, Chabrol, Argento, De Palma "topped" him with some individual films that went further than he did.......and some filmmakers who didn't work in the genre much either did it too like George Sluzier's Spoorloos etc.
But the time he made films allowed him to write the rule book and like The Beatles did for pop music his command of the cinematic terms and beats was so deep and relentless that even if you don't think you're ripping him off, you still are. Even today the setup, pacing and camera POV in suspense scenes hasn't outpaced him.
One of the few directors of that time who used his camera in a daring and imaginative way, and who understood the importance of thematic depth and weight in films - not merely themes but subliminal shots and cross-connections. His plots were often preposterous but the things you responded to were not. He wrote the rule book in this genre and rewrote it several times before he was done too.
With Hitchcock there is never a simple transition scene - at his best he uses camera, music, set design, framing to place you just where he wants. I love this scene because directors in his generation would direct this different - they would have Stewart talk to Novak - to Hitchcock that's a bore - Stewart withholds but Hitchcock doesn't, he shares many things here - that is always happening in his films too - things functioning on 2 rails (think of the way you first get introduced to James Mason in The Man Who Knew Too Much and how much is revealed with a probing camera and how much is withheld in the first 20 minutes or so).
It's a device not everyone has figured out after all these years - he shows you things, he doesn't keep you guessing falsely - he wants you in suspense, not in the dark.
From Vertigo - shots in the foreground, shots in weird connected angles, something happening constantly: Stewart is seen outside the building, then outside the room and inside before he calls over the museum employee (outside again). An average director maybe starts the scene with the museum employee because to them plot is what matters - to Hitchcock it is rather the totality of the effect.
He's got plenty of time and so do you - mysteries are that because they engross you in details not in a presentation of mere facts.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 24, 2019 11:16:35 GMT
Dario ArgentoGenre: Horror
I've talked a lot about Argento here but in other threads and he's good to examine in comparison to my previous Hitchcock/Craven posts here too. Argento didn't make that many great films - he made less than his clearest US competitor - 70s era De Palma and De Palma had far more ambition later on too. Argento was like Craven in that he only liked horror..........which lead to great inventons in the genre and eventually a staleness - but in his 4 or 5 greatest films and parts of several others he was revolutionary. That's why I think he should be ranked with the GOAT Italian directors but of course he never will be - material that's too lurid and trashy but what he imposed on it in scene composition, color, narrative themes will always be felt in his genre. Like his hero Edgar Allan Poe, Argento would introduce and reintroduce the same ideas, slightly twisted and off center so for a time you saw all his work as connected - if you liked one of his films you likely could find something to like in all of them. He consistently used profoundly non-horror ideas too - the fickle nature of memory, the seductive yet dangerous aspect of cinema and High Art, the persistent pull of childhood trauma as an influence - and crucially twisting narrative which made sense only within the form or genre itself - not "real" logic, but movie or dream logic. His classic films - made over a span of 25 years - The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Suspiria and Tenebre and The Stendahl Syndrome are essential to any understanding of horror or modern cinema directorial vision. He shaped this genre in troubling and uncomfortable thematic ways - The Stendahl Syndrome is practically a Freudian nightmare run wild - but also in beautiful and profoundly artistic ways too. No director so flirted with exploitation yet also avoided it......no director so enjoyed mocking his own audiences love of violence and yet also in pandering to it, cleverly, relentlessly. Argento really loved the moment where characters didn't die - where they discovered something at the last second that allowed them to survive - and often to him that was more horrible to know what it was like to "almost" die.......and to live with that knowing. His daughter, Asia Argento in The Stendahl Syndrome:
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 24, 2019 11:31:25 GMT
Dario ArgentoGenre: Horror
Duhh!!!
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 24, 2019 20:26:50 GMT
Werner HerzogGenre: Period DramaI am not so sure this genre covers where Herzog excelled because you can pick a few but I liked this for him because no one's period films had the modern sensibilty that his did - there was nothing "old" about his period work. Aguirre, Wrath of God must be the grandest epic under 100 minutes you'll ever see......the sensibility and modernity in the conception and execution of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser distinctly set it apart from other films you would think would be in its genre. In one of my favorites Heart of Glass he mixed prosaic yet modern actual techniques of control of actors - hypnotizing his entire cast - except one actor (the lead) giving the film an uneasy and distinctly modern pull to it. His two late 70s films Woyzeck and Nosferatu played with our preconceptions of each - the view of the military is quite modern and the madness of the lead overlaps and intertwines with the madness of the military mindset. In Nosferatu he played with the look and symbolic representations of the vampire film - rats, candles, blood in such a way that all those elements form a very current tapestry of mood and atmosphere. No one ever made period films that said more about the right now than he did. He made other films in this style and triumphed there too (Fitzacarraldo etc.) because for Werner Herzog the past was never something to be static or thought of as being behind us - it often was the keeper of our great ignorance and the present merely us re-enacting in a film he hadn't made yet. From The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 26, 2019 15:44:45 GMT
Michael MannGenre: Crimeurbanpatrician TerryMontana Many directors have done signature work in this genre but to me Michael Mann approached it in a singular way and a way that humanized and romanticized it but cruelly. This genre allowed him to explore and double back on male loneliness and missed opportunities and females victimization and their own missed opportunities. A gifted writer, Mann liked the genre not just for it's macho flash - although he greatly depicted that too - but the artifice it placed over male weakness and masked. In his first great film in this genre, Thief - a (relatively) innocent woman (Tuesday Weld) stands by and watches the man she's entrusted herself and future to (James Caan) - blow their chance at legit adoption, cast her aside and behave in a manner unlike what the life of crime had lead her to believe. He appears in control but stripped away from that veneer he's a time bomb teetering on collapse. Mann would revisit those themes in constantly more nuanced ways - in Heat across couples (even assessing it in race for one), in Public Enemies structuring a romantic Art film on the genre foundations of an period gangster film. It certainly didn't look or feel like a period gangster pic or play to those tropes - but it did break your heart and it needed the crime to structure the feelings. So command is he of this style and genre he can play with locale (Miami Vice, Collateral), scope (Heat), psychology (Thief, Manhunter) - even in films he was peripherally involved in - the uncredited writing he did on Straight Time (1978) that delineates the difference between life behind bars and the bars that come up when they are removed he captured a million details of that world - no one seemed to know crimes and crimes of the heart and their connection better. From his masterpiece, Heat - an astonishing scene below where Robert De Niro goes from ignoring Amy Brenneman to almost threatening suspicion of her to putting the moves on her in about 30 seconds. Not merely great acting but great scene construction and all of Mann's elements boiled down to their essence. What other crime film goes deep like this - what other filmmaker thinks to try?
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 26, 2019 16:12:43 GMT
pacinoyes I hit the Like button before I even read your post!!! What I always notice in MM films (even in rewatches) is the depth of his characters and the human aspect he gives to them. His feelings/personal problems/fears... Caan in Thief for instance: his past, his tough time in prison, the loss of his former partner in crime, his efforts to adopt a child. In Heat, Pacino lived through his work, not his family. He didn't have time for that. Just like De Niro's agony: "Having enough time". In Manhunter, Will's fear he's losing his sanity and becoming just like Hannibal: "We're just alike. You want the scent? Smell yourself!" I could go on for ever. For Mann, what really matters is the characters and what they have to face in their personal lives (and themselves). Seems like the action is optional, the plot is extra. And of course this guy has a thing with two characters in the opposite sides of the law but very much alike facing and fighting each other (Heat, Collateral, Manhunter, Public Enemies)... What I didn't like in his earlier films was the music. But that was before. Edelman and Jones fabulous work in the Last of the Mohicans and Moby's in Heat fixed it for me!
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Post by stephen on Jul 26, 2019 19:10:15 GMT
Mad Mel Gibson: Historical fantasia.
So check it. We've all heard about the historical inaccuracies in Mel's movies. Braveheart is positively chockfull of them and any time the movie is mentioned, it's usually in conjunction with how it's not at all true to what historically happened. And you know what?
I don't give a damn.
Gibson's specialty is Hollywood mythologizing on a grand scale. Braveheart doesn't pretend to be historically accurate -- the second line of the film, for God's sakes, is "Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes." Gibson also acknowledged that certain aspects of making the movie played more into the mythical story than what actually occurred. Even the Battle of Sterling Bridge left off the bridge in the actual finished product, because of complications during shooting. But nevertheless, Gibson's talent has always been in leaning towards the myth rather than the reality.
The Passion of the Christ, while touting an adherence to the brutality of Christ's suffering, still plays into fantasia in a way (even if Mel actually believes it). Apocalypto has a fable-like quality to it, and while the downfall of the Maya came centuries before the arrival of the Spanish, one could view the final image of the galleon as being something of a precognition that the protagonist envisions, rather than an actual occurrence within the film itself (especially as no one interacts with the advancing Spanish anyway). Hacksaw Ridge is probably the most historically-hewn film he's made, but even so, the over-the-top nature of the battle sequences work because of how bucolic and peaceful the film's first half is, and juxtaposed together it underlines how savage war is.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 26, 2019 21:00:22 GMT
Ingmar BergmanGenre : Religious/Faith Based DramaTaking some inspiration from @redhawk10 and his thread I thought this would be a good one to do too and shouting out to some of his fans Mattsby Tommen_Saperstein themoviesinner Longtallsally from redhawk's thread. Of the several great directors who worked this genre and material - Kieslowski, Bresson and Dreyer no one quite couched religious issues and despair with their ethical consequences as much in the every day as Bergman. Everything in a Bergman film is in some ways a discussion sometimes sad, sometimes seething with one or more characters and God - and often the response of silence "God's silence" as it's known almost became a Bergman cliche. The religious aspect of his work is obvious in films that deal with it overtly such as (the brilliant) Winter Light but when he has to write it a different way his work to me becomes even more transcendent. The spider web and its incestuous shadow in Through A Glass Darkly is particularly inspired - a manifestation of fear, mystery and symbolically entrapment - this is how Bergman constantly saw matters of ethics and their broader religious relevance. In Shame where the cultured, intellectual male lead (Max Von Sydow) kills for a pair of boots or in Cries and Whispers where a God can even conceive of much less allow such suffering (those unforgettable piercing shrieks of pain) it is distinctly a matter between character and God and the space between. In constructing so many different ways to play out these personal dialogues Bergman constructed a way to see the mundane and grand, side by side. Hour of the Wolf becomes not merely a story of madness but a madness in isolation from God by removing yourself from God too (it's great fun to compare the horror film The Witch with Hour of The Wolf and see some amazing similarities in man's isolation and pride). This approach carefully written and refined resulted in many very great films because he knew that in some way - all his drama started with these questions. For Bergman he told original sin stories - but that you could not necessarily always see - man or woman separated from lovers, siblings, parents, themselves and always before all separated and removed from a higher purpose. It was all some variation of the Garden of Eden - and sometimes the snake could be war or ravages of disease or loss of your mind but the consequences, the Fall always imminent. From Shame - all adrift - metaphorically, literally - a Hell on Earth and no God to be seen:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 27, 2019 10:19:58 GMT
For JangoB our resident Rohmer fan Eric RohmerGenre: European Art-houseWhen I was a little pacinoyes (adorably photogenic, mischievous) I saw an interview with Eric Rohmer and the things he said in that interview made me think about what I could like - not just in movies but in stories. Rohmer spoke about how he "only" made comedy-drama because that resembled life. When I got older and saw his movies - well I was amazed at how much, like Woody Allen, he could encompass with that simple philosophy. The Rohmer aesthetic style and style of film - intellectual, never pandering to an audience came for a time at least to differentiate and separate movie audiences from each other. In the US you may have wanted to see the new Truffaut or Bergman but Rohmer and his films summed up a whole aesthetic worldview - the Art film as a genre by its "difference" from simple genres. Notable at first for Claire's Knee and My Night at Maud's and early on those films alone would have defined him as the opposite of US or Western in general genre motifs alone. Expressly about things we do but never say and directed in a loose but defined aesthetic - never any outside music in a Rohmer film for one thing - his movies spoke to extremists - people who loved movies and hated movies for never providing the connection they felt for other art forms. As early as the mid-70s he could be famously derided on film (1975's Night Moves) by a character who defined himself to us by what the character didn't like. But Rohmer had already transcended that in a way and he was making some of his very best (The Marquise of O) and his biggest (Pauline At The Beach) after that Claire's Knee/Maud's peak. He'd go on to make another unified series on the seasons (as he had with "Comedies and a Proverbs" and "Moral Choices" series) and up until his death remained one of the few major directing artists where his whole filmography suggested a coherent vision. From Pauline At The Beach, one of his most buoyant and sparkling films:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 27, 2019 13:08:11 GMT
Brian De PalmaGenre: SuspenseViced Mattsby @peoplewhobloodygetit My love for Brian De Palma - especially in his great period is well known on here to the extent that I link that work not only with other greats but other greats of world cinema even - Argento, Polanski, Chabrol. In American cinema there is no one quite like him even when you think there is. Brian De Palma did suspense that on the surface also looked like someone else - Hitchcock - but underneath subverted every expectation of it with movie geeks maniacal glee. No longer would heroes triumph, blood be spared or sexuality be "hinted" at - with De Palma like (the less ambitious) Argento in this style at least his main rival - it was open season on your common sense and on your sensibilities. In this genre he created 3 films at least of true greatness, of precarious and uncomfortable situations inverted and exploded - teen coming of age in Carrie, confused gender and sexuality in Dressed To Kill and your wildest conspiracy theories come true in his masterwork Blow Out. Twice earlier he had hinted at this in 2 fascinating, partially successful films - Sisters and Obsession. In all these films he used his camera (and his lush scores!) not just as a voyeur but as a provocateur and when he took control of his own pictures it was inspired. There is no greater shot in American suspense than the scene in Dressed To Kill where a "blonde" woman (police officer) shoots a blond "woman" (killer) while a blonde woman (the lead) witnesses it - the gun shot (and directorial shot) is through glass acting like a screen, like in a film. That's how many layers he managed to balance and conceptualized in this genre - and his sense of humor, nasty and relentless and wicked could be played into it. In his day and even now it is not uncommon to see his films get 1 star or 4 stars - he was that confounding - you often didn't catch up to his work on 1 viewing and when you did you were wrong - sometimes entirely so. There will always be a Spielberg to make the big hit .........there will always be the Coppola striving for Art and there will always be the hacks to merely provoke us but De Palma wanted you to love him and hate him simultaneously - and he was for a time an absolute genius at it. From Sisters - where he had these brilliant ideas already forming - it's her birthday party and she'll kill if she wants to:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 27, 2019 19:07:15 GMT
Martin McDonagh
Genre: Modern Crime3 films. That's all he's made and many would call him hardly a great director - but I'd argue that 2 of those 3 films were the very best films - in English at least - of their years in a played out genre too. A playwright on the level of peak Mamet and keen cultural observer he in some ways evokes that DePalma thing where if you don't get it, you don't get it. Not only does he have his own comparison point the way De Palma had Hitchcock I'd actually argue McDonagh is in many ways better than his comparison point - the esteemed Quentin Tarantino. In his debut he presented a modern spin on Waiting For Godot in a screenplay so dense that people thought it had tonal shifts when the very point was tonal shifts. Has any recent film been more "missed" by highbrow critics? Has any film so played and mocked genre while at the same time being genuinely affecting? His 2nd film "Seven Psychopaths" a quite funny but lesser work set the stage for his very own Pulp Fiction with more gravitas imo - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri - a cascading, riotous and complex film that brought the critics around (finally) and that many they STILL got wrong. Similar to Pulp Fiction in that this film has an array of memorable characters but far less indebted to the movies and in-jokes - instead McDonagh created an utterly contemporary work on how we live now - on race, on bitterness and eventually on forgiveness. Movies never do that they never reflect the now - he did it achingly on point and up to the moment. A great film - and not in a narrow way like In Bruges but in a panoramic and large canvas way - and one that needed this genre to work like his other films did. McDonagh sees the humor and horror and in crime as metaphorical for life and he has more respect for its genre history without being slavishly beholden to it than anybody else going - by far and for some time. From 3 Billboards : Sam Rockwell and Frances McDormand - now you see them........later well you see them differently:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 28, 2019 8:52:49 GMT
Roman PolanskiGenre: Psychological DramaMattsby themoviesinner Longtallsally The_Cake_of_Roth TerryMontana @raygittes07 RiverleavesElmius This one is tricky because Polanski could fit very obviously into broader forms but he in English films especially imposed this psychological component across multiple genres in such a complete way it's his defining characteristic and sometimes completely shapes the work. Prior to him Repulsion would be a rote thriller but in his hands it's like a text in why a character acts the way she does - right down to its astonishing last shot - penetrating a photograph of her eye as a child. Very few shots ever in film history have been that show off without seeming it because it ties to a higher purpose - and yet it's clear and enigmatic at the same time. This was a great hallmark of Polanski - the unknown must be examined and yet always remains outside our full grasp. The incest in Chinatown is explained by Evelyn Mulwray in some ways implicating herself in the horrific act that happened to her - we know nothing about it - when it started and how long it went on for - it's too awful for us to consider even and yet it informs every aspect of the film's arc. In most films characters act the way they do randomly but in Polanski it's always at the forefront logically and then thematically - the way your life is. So Rosemary acts as a young mother would which spins to horror ......Tess is acted upon until she can bear no more which spins to tragedy.......the parents in Carnage are seen in context with how their children act which spins to the blackest of comedy. He had a great collaborator - Gerard Brach - one of the great screenwriters who he often worked in tandem with and who approached material the same way. But what is astonishing about Polanski is how he has this even without Brach - Knife In The Water, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist are all done without Brach and are some of the most psychologically defined and assured of his work. The more you see Polanski from this conceptual psychological POV the more fascinating he becomes as a filmmaker and causes you to question everything - why does Trelkovsky go mad in The Tenant - was he mad before events started anyway? If not would he have gone mad regardless? It poses many exciting questions - often of course unknowable and that of course makes it the exact opposite of mundane mere film and much more like fascinating, mysterious life. Below from Knife In The Water - why does this happen anyway? Well it's not random and.......it's not to further the plot:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 28, 2019 16:59:01 GMT
Woody Allen
Genre: Romance
I very carefully chose the genre Romance and not Romantic Comedy because everything about Woody Allen is misunderstood or wrongly simplified. People think he's always involved with a younger leading lady - in fact, he rarely is on film. There are those that think his movies "aren't for them" yet they belong to a clear identifiable world when those same people would flock to something in material far more genre convoluted - ie I don't get Woody Allen but I love The Matrix (?!?)
Woody Allen made Romance - sometimes funny - well ok, almost always funny, scathingly so. But often that humor is not what you took from it - often it's a life lesson - even the greatest of those films - Annie Hall doesn't work out. Right from the start he was clear eyed and foolishly optimistic until he just could not be any more and until he could again.
When he turned to that dark side of romance he often did it with such precision clarity that only Bergman could compare. Think of that - not Lynch or whatever edgy director you like......not Tarkovsky or Kubrick for all their great intellectualism ......no one could write and direct films about people and how they connect and not connect better than Woody Allen. He may have made it about a class different than yours or people who didn't look like you but are far more recognizable than you'd first think.
He summed romance up in many great lines - and he summed it up best in 2 words - "Love fades" .........he could have added the word "sometimes" and encapsulated his astonishing 50 year film career too - completely singular in his artistic control and lack of indebtedness to any money machine.
There's a romance at play beyond just the material involved in that too - a love of New York (mostly), a love of laughter, a love of life and of Art and writing too. A great romantic spirit always in effect over a whole career.
He explains his worldview - it's funny because its true from Love & Death:
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 28, 2019 17:32:07 GMT
Woody AllenGenre: RomanceI very carefully chose the genre Romance and not Romantic Comedy because everything about Woody Allen is misunderstood or wrongly simplified. People think he's always involved with a younger leading lady - in fact, he rarely is on film. There are those that think his movies "aren't for them" yet they belong to a clear identifiable world when those same people would flock to something in material far more genre convoluted - ie I don't get Woody Allen but I love The Matrix (?!?) Woody Allen made Romance - sometimes funny - well ok, almost always funny, scathingly so. But often that humor is not what you took from it - often it's a life lesson - even the greatest of those films - Annie Hall doesn't work out. Right from the start he was clear eyed and foolishly optimistic until he just could not be any more and until he could again. When he turned to that dark side of romance he often did it with such precision clarity that only Bergman could compare. Think of that - not Lynch or whatever edgy director you like......not Tarkovsky or Kubrick for all their great intellectualism ......no one could write and direct films about people and how they connect and not connect better than Woody Allen. He may have made it about a class different than yours or people who didn't look like you but are far more recognizable than you'd first think. He summed romance up in many great lines - and he summed it up best in 2 words - "Love fades" .........he could have added the word "sometimes" and encapsulated his astonishing 50 year film career too - completely singular in his artistic control and lack of indebtedness to any money machine. There's a romance at play beyond just the material involved in that too - a love of New York (mostly), a love of laughter, a love of life and of Art and writing too. A great romantic spirit always in effect over a whole career. He explains his worldview - it's funny because its true from Love & Death: One of my favorite directors and one of my favorite movies of his!!! I agree 100% with your post but I think you can't talk about Allen's genre without describing it as a comedy. Romantic comedy, dark comedy, dramedy, whatever. But a comedy nevertheless. He talks about personal relationships, about love, about life or New York... but he always intends to laughs. Even bitter laughs. And sometimes, his gags are hysterical!!!! (Taking about Polanski and Allen back to back?? )
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