The Worst Best Films Ever Made

[Michael]

I came across this essay last night and thought it might spark an interesting discussion here.

I was taken back by his comments regarding to La dolce vita, calling it "a turgid, lazy mess of half-realised conceits" and dismissing Anita Ekberg as being miscast. There is a mention of her being Swedish in the film but that somehow immediately changed into the American Actress by the journalists/papparazzi. I would not be suprised if that was intended, how the truth can get twisted by the media. It is so wrong to think of Anita as being miscast. She may not appeal to every one but she is everything Fellini sees in the Ideal Woman - with enormous breasts and all - his fantasy woman that makes home in most of his cinema.

Upon reading this essay, the urge of defending La dolce vita consumed me and prompted me to vent out on here.

[Peacock]

What a waste of time.
You can feel his glee of dismissing as many of these films as possible.

Von Stroheim's Greed (nothing happens in the desert for 10 hours)

[CSM126]

Well he's right about Schindler's List, anyway.

[Lemmy Caution]

I think he's having some fun ripping on cherished classics.

Have to say that La Dolce Vita partly makes me cringe and then my eyes glaze over. I was a big Fellini fan and thought Marcello was great when I first saw it. Was immensely disappointed**. Had the same reaction upon re-watching a few years later, after having read a little on the film. And I like most Renoirs better than Rules of the Game.

I love Night of the Hunter, but still, this is funny:

"Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter has moments of melodrama that would not shame an episode of Scooby-Doo."

Wrong and ridiculous, but funny.
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** For me, it was akin to getting wrapped up in Saul Bellow and then running smack into Henderson the Rain King. Maybe some satire becomes dated, or my brain processes some satire as tedious.

[Michael]

Lemmy, not sure why La dolce vita made you cringe. Was it personal or just a bad film?
A drama, a comedy, a satire, a psychological portrait, a musical, an international starfest and so on. Great acting, great screenplay, extraordinary visuals. What's wrong with it?

[Alphonse Doinel]

The guy sounds like he's being tutored by Armond, right down to the 'this film is bad because this one is better'.

It's too bad, because as said, this is an interesting topic. Rosenbaum did a good job with his top 100 vs. the AFI's top 100.

[Mr Sausage]

Is this guy's main gripe with The Seachers really that it didn't bother to explain away all of its ambiguities? Really?

[starmanof51]

To call Blair Witch scarier than Psycho!? Blair Witch is one of the dullest movie-going experiences I've ever had, watching 3 idiots lost in the woods for 90-minutes freaking out over sticks. The only genius moment that was even a touch creepy was the final shot.

Technically, I'm forced to agree with him on this. I like Psycho plenty, but it's not scary in the least. And for all the smoke and mirrors fails of Blair Witch, that final bit was more than just a touch creepy - for me, it's top ten all-time creepy moments.

Still, trying to say "x is better/scarier/funnier than y, thererfore poo on y" is a poor way to go about this.

[aox]

I have always hated algebra.

[lubitsch]

On the one hand you need a canon of best films, simply as a common frame of reference and a selection of different film trends in different times. On the other hand there's the risk of embalming films and in fact stopping any critical discussion about it.
This aside you can say bad and good things about any film. The same aspect can be a weakness for one person and a strength for another. That doesn't mean though that there aren't films which have low ambitions and a low input of art and craftsmanship that has gone into them, others may have fallen apart during execution, others were not clearly thought through. And this can happen in a canonical film as well because sometimes only parts of a movie are so overwhelming that it gets recognition as being a masterpiece through the rest can't live up to it.
I think the author exaggerates some points, but he's often on the spot. I love Death in Venice but the film could lose a few minutes here and there especially the flashback discussions with the brother. The Searchers was attacked by Lindsay Anderson and it is uneven, has lots of corny humour (the squaw wife), weak juvenile leads and the moment where Ethan picks up Debbie saying "Let's go home" brought the audience I saw it with down with laughter. Jules and Jim has zero plot development and zero character involvement for me, so I fully agree with the author. And La Dolce Vita is not only rambling about aimlessly, it's a bloody moralistic work showing a godless world, so the church should have embraced it instead of despising it.
So the more snipiers come out and take their shots and established masterpieces all the better though it's even more important to discover forgotten masterpieces.

[myrnaloyisdope]

I just finished reading Jim Card's Seductive Cinema and it is guilty of the x is great/so y is terrible school of criticism.
It is a pretty fascinating read, as Card was the founder of Eastman House and is one of the pioneers of film preservation. But Card is also very opinionated and devotes a great deal of effort to trying to tear down D.W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim, in order to champion whatever film he likes better. So instead of simply writing compelling praise about Cry of the Children or the work of John Collins, he prefaces them by writing dismissive diatribes about how film historians have somehow drank the kool-aid on Griffith and Von Stroheim. It's a surprising attitude given his obvious love of cinema and his devotion to preserving it and presenting it.

Not only is he needlessly critical, but his criticisms seem to be rooted out of very minor issues. As an example, Card dismisses the realism of Greed because Gibson Gowland's wig is pretty silly, and D.W. Griffith's work is trashed because Henry Walthall overacted a death scene in one of the Biograph shorts.

[black moon]

So the more snipers come out and take their shots at established masterpieces all the better, though it's even more important to discover forgotten masterpieces.

This is today's best proposition by far.

[Michael]

And La Dolce Vita is not only rambling about aimlessly, it's a bloody moralistic work showing a godless world, so the church should have embraced it instead of despising it.

Hmm. I always thought Fellini was an atheist. His visions of the Church are hopeless and bleak as shown in from Nights of Cabiria to 8 1/2. Surely, La dolce vita, like L'avventura, is a parade of aimless souls but that doesn't make the film "moralistic".
Some people look at Paola the girl at the end as a symbol of Angel - possibly in the religious sense but that's not how I look at her. I look at her as the last glitter of hope and innocence that every one of us loses.

It's a very humane epic. All about human nature and Fellini always shows that the Church can't save us as it still leads us to believe for milleniums. Every character of the film makes up who Marcello is - the "frescoes" of Marcello.

What's so incredible about the film is its sense of life. It appears to be unraveling before us, unscripted, and uninhibited. The film is constructed into days/nights like old Italian frescoes, he sprinkles those dreamlike frescoes like glitter in the darkness. The candlelit trek through a haunted villa with Nico playing herself - tell me you don't want to be there.

[black moon]

No filmmaker should get away with taking a real-life tragedy and using it as the basis for audience-manipulating, emotionally dishonest melodramatic crap designed solely to make money.

"I agree with this - the transparent motivation for this film was Spielberg buying himself an Oscar. I loathe the film and feel like it's little more than a shallow, spoiled movie brat taking a dump on millions of dead Jews. I've already vented on the film once (think it was in the 90s Film List discussion thread?) but essentially it's the same argument as CSM's, with Spielberg's cynicism amplified into rank offensiveness by the context."

Amen!

[Mr Sausage]

So the more snipers come out and take their shots at established masterpieces all the better, though it's even more important to discover forgotten masterpieces.

This is today's best proposition by far.

The latter is always nice. The former, tho', is only encouraging what is generally nothing more than the product of personal vanity. A negative critical evaluation of this or that canonical work is lovely. Making an unsolicited tally of sacred cows you personally don't like and then treating each of them as an excuse for flippant jokes and unelaborated condescension is essentially an admission that you cannot find an original perspective without simply taking whatever happens to be the opposite of the consensus view. This is a mechanical, not an intellectual exercize: no thinking required. So the only reason for the whole endeavour was attention, not truth; it's an attempt to provoke people into noticing you, done under the guise of 'genuine thinking.'

I fail totally to see how this is for the better. It's the opposite of what we need. It's totally and completely unengaged.

Anyway, is anyone genuinely interested in using this thread to criticize widely loved movies, or can it be moved to the 'Rediculous' Reviews thread?

[domino harvey]

We already have a thread a lot like this, something like "Hitting the Eject Button: Classic Movies It's Okay to Hate"

[Michael]

Anyway, is anyone genuinely interested in using this thread to criticize widely loved movies, ...

Can't you tell? There is an on-going discussion on Schindler's List that I find very fascinating.

[domino harvey]

That's not all that new either

[Michael]

Well excuse me then. Do whatever you want to do with this thread. This forum is not what it used to be anyway.

[domino harvey]

I don't even think the thread should be closed, I'm just sayin'

[Michael]

zedz has mentioned here that he posted his thoughts elsewhere on this forum and I could search that up myself. But here on the first page, I found it interesting that a bunch of members, not only zedz, pitched in the mutual thoughts of Schindler's List, a film I still have not seen yet. This discussion has sparked my interest in renting the film.

Anyway, the essay that I initially posted may be full of baloney but the comments that come with it are still worth a look. And also on the first page, lubitsch came in with his views of La dolce vita which I completely disagreed with and it was great pleasure to make my argument.

[zedz]

Well, my point is that any interesting discussions on specific films (e.g. Schindler's List) would be much more usefully pursued in a thread dedicated to that film. Finding that discussion in this thread several years hence is going to be much harder (and we've already struck this issue somewhat, since my original slagging of the film was in one of those 'other' threads). And if that thread domino mentions is still around, the rest of this discussion can probably be neatly folded into that one. I've got no issues with the topic(s) at hand, but it would be a shame if they're forever enshrined as a troll tribute.

EDIT: Couldn't actually find a Schindler's List thread, so I started one up and posted my old diss there.

[Mr Sausage]

zedz has mentioned here that he posted his thoughts elsewhere on this forum and I could search that up myself. But here on the first page, I found it interesting that a bunch of members, not only zedz, pitched in the mutual thoughts of Schindler's List, a film I still have not seen yet. This discussion has sparked my interest in renting the film.

Anyway, the essay that I initially posted may be full of baloney but the comments that come with it are still worth a look. And also on the first page, lubitsch came in with his views of La dolce vita which I completely disagreed with and it was great pleasure to make my argument.

Sorry, Michael, I didn't mean to imply this thread had no value or that the essay you posted wasn't worth a look. I just meant that, if members weren't really interested in discussing the issue more broadly (as your thread title suggests) then this can be moved to the 'Rediculous' Customer and Critic Reviews thread and the Schindler's List discussion can get a thread of its own (which zedz has already started and to which I'll move the relevant posts from here, if no one minds).

[Lemmy Caution]

I found it interesting that a bunch of members, not only zedz, pitched in the mutual thoughts of Schindler's List, a film I still have not seen yet. This discussion has sparked my interest in renting the film.

I was wondering if I'm the only one here who hasn't seen Schindler and Shawshank. I've always vaguely intended to see them at some point, but that point has never actually occurred.

[lubitsch]

So the more snipers come out and take their shots at established masterpieces all the better, though it's even more important to discover forgotten masterpieces.

The latter is always nice. The former, tho', is only encouraging what is generally nothing more than the product of personal vanity. A negative critical evaluation of this or that canonical work is lovely. Making an unsolicited tally of sacred cows you personally don't like and then treating each of them as an excuse for flippant jokes and unelaborated condescension is essentially an admission that you cannot find an original perspective without simply taking whatever happens to be the opposite of the consensus view. This is a mechanical, not an intellectual exercize: no thinking required. So the only reason for the whole endeavour was attention, not truth; it's an attempt to provoke people into noticing you, done under the guise of 'genuine thinking.'
I fail totally to see how this is for the better. It's the opposite of what we need. It's totally and completely unengaged.

I rather disagree with you on this point. Yes, it is easy and cheap to take a megaphone and cry out Citizen Kane is s***. And as I said it is more productive to bring back more forgotten movies into circulation.
But there is one point that should be made and that's the influence of TV, video tape, DVD and now Blu-Ray. Each time one of these new mediums is introduced it starts with a selection of the titles most in demand. Obviously mostly the current films, but also older films which are culled together from the classic film pantheon. The first big DVDs were things like The Third Man, Seven Samurai, Frank Capra and so on and on. So each new media tends to reinforce this canon of established masterpieces which are studied more closely in the literature and among film makers.
My point is that the film canon freezes into a solid pantheon with very little movement up and down by now. And this has undoubtedly some effects on e.g. film schools, universities, TV programmers, writers of film literature and so on, it's a spiral pushing the strong more and more to the fore and the weak back, so that you begin to sound like somebody who's merely craving for attention if you take a few pot shots at established masterpieces. This may very well be the case and the writer of the blog post referenced here may have been ill adivised to fire off such a broad attack, but I think the problems behind film canons are far too less discussed.

And La Dolce Vita is not only rambling about aimlessly, it's a bloody moralistic work showing a godless world, so the church should have embraced it instead of despising it.

Hmm. I always thought Fellini was an atheist. His visions of the Church are hopeless and bleak as shown in from Nights of Cabiria to 8 1/2. Surely, La dolce vita, like L'avventura, is a parade of aimless souls but that doesn't make the film "moralistic".
Some people look at Paola the girl at the end as a symbol of Angel - possibly in the religious sense but that's not how I look at her. I look at her as the last glitter of hope and innocence that every one of us loses.

We indeed shouldn't dig to deep in this thread for individual films, otherwise it gets a collection of random snippets, but I'd like nevertheless to put Fellini at least in a rather agnostic position. La Dolce Vita shows a decaying world with aimless characters and searching for meaning. It may in itself not be doing any religious propaganda and being fairly ambiguous, but it certainly doesn't attack religion in any way or argues against it. Starting with the flying Jesus statue as an ironic sign, showing the hunger for a miracle of the crowd and ending with a angelic girl and a dead fish (!) on the beach which begs to be interpreted as a sign for chritianity ... all this adds up to the sceptic portrayal of a world lacking a god. It may be unhappiness about the fact that there is no god or about the fact that the humans have lost contact with him. But the film at least opens up many possibilities for a reading sympathetic to religious values.