Mia Hansen-Løve’s 10 Favorite Films

I would probably still have to give it thumbs up if it was The Green Ray and 9 trash films.

EWS and Fanny and Alexander are also all time favorites.

Arabian Nights is great and all, perhaps Pasolini's most lavish production but personally I would pick another Pasolini (cool to see that she has one though), even in the trilogy of life I would rather pick Decameron.

Heat is ok.

Need to see Napoleon and The Mother and the Whore. Haven't really heard anything about the other 3 (although they seem intruiging, especially the Pialat which is 6 hours long btw).

Great list but seems very french focussed.

I don't know, she got 5/10 french films. I mean I got 0 german films in my top 10 (Wings of Desire on some days). Now you could argue that french cinema is better than german cinema, in that case: point taken... but still 5/10 is a lot. Obviously the same is true for most people and US cinema, it's certainly for me...

Apart from that Rohmer and Pasolini are a very good match. They even underwent a similar development. Compare Pasolini's debut, Accattone, to Rohmer's debut, Sign of Leo, for instance. They're incredibly similar, both films about city slacking and being caught in your own hedonistic personality. And later Pasolini's trilogy of life shows the same naturalist approach to filmmaking as Rohmer's late films. They also both came from litterature (both wrote books themselves aswell) and worked with amateur actors. I don't think I can find a better match for Pasolini than Rohmer (at least among highly respected directors), likewise for Rohmer the only one I would rather comapre him to is Rivette (who stands somewhere between Rohmer and Godard I'd say).

The other films I think also have quite a bit of similarity (Fanny and Alexander & EWS for instance, probably the best Bergman/Kubrick match you could find). It's a mix of grand orchestrated drama, naturalism and minimalist introspectivism. However true top 10 lists I think are rarely very diverse, so in that relation hers is relatively diverse I guess. Mine is much less diverse for instance, even if I go with 1 per director/series (what Hansen-Løve might have done), it would still be boring. You could pick many stretches of 10 movies in my top 100 that would make a more interesting top 10 but it wouldn't be my top 10 anymore

Here's an example:

My actual top 10:
And now 2 random stretches from my top 100:

75-84
90-99

Very strangely it gets even more interesting the further you grind down:

How about this one for instance (139-148):

My 90-99 list does imo apply to your description just as well. 4/10 are french (from directors who are about as famous as the guys she has), 2 Italian movies (one of them a Pasolini) and one german essay film which is basicly sci-fi poetry. Then with the 3 American choices being 1 silent western, 1 animation film and a Kubrick noir which you're much less likely to see as someones Kubrick favorite than EWS (from my experience at least) and thus even more of a statement.

I don't know. It's like I said imo, you're unlikely to find immense variation in a top 10. For that hers is relatively diversve but otherwise I see a pretty clear pattern (even without having to look for similarities). But then again if there is no pattern that would be very odd, perhaps even a bit insane (along the lines of a fractured personality).

I wouldn't say mine is entry level btw (apart from not liking the wording). Vertigo is pretty beloved among cinephiles but it took me years to like it that much, I think Sunrise is also unlikely to be found in any average top 10 even if many people like it a lot. Sunrise was in both Rohmer's and Rivette's top 10. Vertigo was in Rohmer's and Godard's top 10 (all from the 60's but there are no more recent lists). The 3 Kubrick's, Star Wars and Lawrence, sure. But The Green Ray and Mysteries of Lisbon I hope we can agree are very unusual choices.

What's your top 10 then btw?

I posted my list because my point was that a top 10 is often somewhat generic and not as interesting as other parts of a longer list might be. I didn't mean to ask you anything about it, it was only to illustrate my point.

I disliked Vertigo when I first watched it actually and it wasn't excactly beloved when first released. On top of that it's an extremely subversive and challenging film, much more so than any of my other picks (safe for Mysteries maybe but Mysteries is actually easier to get to because Ruiz gives you hints). All of Løve's picks that I've seen are imo way more digestable, even simplistic in comparrison (Both her Rohmer and Pasolini picks are perhaps their most accesible and conciliatory film - and in this case I've actually seen both full filmographies) but that's no criticism, I love simplicity. Wheter people still like Vertigo for the excellent atmosphere and good narration is another matter. Of all the 14 films in mine and her list (excluding the 5 I've not seen from hers), it's the single film I understand the least by far.

I don't think the assumption of "entry level", makes sense at all. It bowes completely down to our cultural perception, if you talk like that you're really cheering mindless mainstream cinema. Because who's to say someone who has never seen a film before would not love the effing hell out of Arabian Nights? I certainly think they would. The assumption of "entry level" films is entirely based on our culture, fully devoid of any regard for human curiosity itself, more sympathetic to the idea that we're all mindless cattle, some less than others. It's entirely complicit to the idea that culture tells us what is acceptable and what not. It's a barbaric and relentless conditiong of the mind. Yet what you fail to understand is that many of her films have little to do with cinema, much more with litterature or theater. That's true for 4/5 films of hers that I've seen at least. Only not for Heat. EWS is presumably the most faithful adaptation Kubrick ever made (all the changes are surface level), Fanny and Alexander is at it's core a film about Bergman's childhood and his relation to theater and Rohmer and Pasolini are entirely indebted to literary tradition in all their work. So why do you gain more understanding or appreciation for the films by watching more films? I don't think you do. A lover of theater is much more likely to dig Fanny and Alexander (and probably Arabian Nights too), someone who is into decadence era litterature is much more likely to enjoy EWS and generally people who are into litterature should enjoy Arabian Nights and The Green Ray more, also for the humor, which I think cinephiles often have a hard time at really getting. In fact I watched the Green Ray with one of my friends who wans't particularly much into cinema and she loved it and she understood it better than me when I watched it for the first time. Rosenberg says that someone he knows a lot of women who say that Celine and Julie is their favority film about friendship. It has nothing to do with how much you're into cinema.

You can even see that in Løve's own films. Does watching tons of cinema make you more likely to get into Things to Come? No. What does? Reading Philosophy.

To understand Vertigo on the other hand you need a comprehensive understanding of classical Hollywood, which is excactly why the folks in the new wave dug it so much because it's a total subversion of every classical Hollywood convention (maybe hyperbole, maybe not).

Similar to Citizen Kane as it builds entirely on cinema. Sartre did not like, in fact if you read his critique, it's fair to assume he did not GET it because he was entirely deaf to the technical aspects and how they enhanced the story. Yet in The Green Ray there aren't even any noteworthy technical aspects (it was shot with a 3 man crew, not like they could do that much). If anything your comprehension of it decreases by watching more cinema, on the flipside it increases by reading books.

The only thing that makes sense is that the films on her list are more obscure because half of them are pretty cheaply done (i.e. not too much money behind distribution either) and the majority is not in english (i.e. they get no cultural hegemony bonus for distribution). But why don't just say obscure then?

If I would go out and scramble together lots of documentary footage with various themes, then get someone from the mental assylum to cut it and if I would then slap a disjointed story somewhere between what he cut, what level would that be?

I was btw genuinly curious about your top 10, I had no intention to judge it and I was also not asking you to judge mine. I wasn't judging hers either, I actually think it's sympathetic that she has so many french films, I was merely pointing out that it isn't as diversve as some "patricians" would have you believe. It's not too long from Pialat to Rohmer to Pasolini to Eustache and I would assume not to Hsiao-Hsien either. Likewise it's not too long from Gance to Kubrick to Bergman, especially not with the 3 specific films she picked.