Criterion Film Club: Suggestions and General Discussion

[Mr Sausage]

Here's a selection of the films that didn't quite make it for discussion in their respective votes, giving you a chance to spurn them all over again!

[Drucker]

We've never discussed Hitch, and I have yet to really fall head over heels for any of his films. That gets my vote.

[HerrSchreck]

Not even Vertigo? Some of his later big studio color films suffer from a sort of dilution that I find difficult to articulate, but Vertigo is really Hollywood Studio Golden Age at its very best. All depts working in harmony, with an end product that is miraculously Quiet & Contemplative, with a thick poetic air blowing silently through it that is very nearly Bressonian in character.

A lot of people call it his most personal film, but as the film is so quiet and deliberately indistinct in parts, it's tough to know what to point to as specifically From Deep Within Hitchcock's Inner Self.

I'd say instead it's probably his most curiously atypical film, especially from the high power latterly years of w/s technicolor at MGM, Paramount, etc. I watch it at least once a year and sit there enthralled each time.

[Drucker]

Vertigo and Psycho are absolutely the films I've loved the most. Vertigo was the first of his I saw and I do love it dearly. There are layers to it I still haven't uncovered, regarding it's commentary on film itself (Marker's writings, for example), but I do genuinely love those two.

I've also seen: NXNW, Lady Vanishes, Man Who Knew Too Much UK, Strangers on A Train, Rebecca, Rear Window. There are parts of most of these movies I love, especially Strangers On A Train, which has so many delightfully creepy moments. Perhaps my favorite Hitch moment, which is the shot of our protagonist getting in the taxicab, and watching from his window the antagonist standing on the footsteps of Congress staring back. But I tried watching Rebecca a few months back for the second time, and couldn't get past the helpless woman feeling and the soundtrack of the first 40 minutes of the film.

After watching it, I even read the entire Alfred Hitchcock thread on this very forum, and pretty much everyone here whose opinions I deeply respect (especially as someone who is relatively still very new to film compared to all of y'all!) gushed on and on about his genius.

It's not that I hate Hitch at all, but compared to Dreyer, Murnau, Welles, Lubitsch, Wilder, I just don't find myself either feeling a personal love for his films nor do I watch his films and think constantly: that's brilliant.

[warren oates]

I've said this before in other threads, but I felt the same way as Drucker for a long time. Until just in the past few years, rewatching a number of Hitchcock's films, something clicked and I suddenly understood why everyone revered him so much, why he's a figure who cuts across all divides and gets love from film lovers and filmmakers of every conceivable variety. And for me it's just this ineffable rightness to his choices as a director on the most basic level of craft -- handling the sorts of shot selections, scenes and moments that make up the bulk of the task of any director making any kind of narrative film. In a sense, regardless of whether you share his specific thematic obsessions, you can't not love Hitch for how well he did the sorts of bread and butter things anyone making a film has to do.

The 39 Steps is interesting to me mostly as a promise of things to come (like his brilliant comedy remake North by Northwest), but also, in its own right as pretty much the template for just about every action thriller made after it, right up to the Bourne series.

That said, I'm voting for The River because it's my second favorite Renoir film after The Rules of the Game, and because it's one of the few films I've seen about childhood made from an adult perspective (yet without ever dumbing itself down) that you could still show to a child.

[domino harvey]

Rewatching when it comes to Hitchcock is key. Lots of great directors made great films, but Hitchcock's hold up to rigorous multiple viewings and lend themselves to so many fascinating angles of interpretation and meaning-- it's not even close, no other film director has inspired as much serious critical appreciation as Hitchcock. Plus his films form a common language among film lovers, a body of work nearly every serious film scholar as seen and can draw from. I always tell my students the same thing about Hitchcock that I do about Shakespeare: You know why everyone always says he's the best? Because he is

[Drucker]

Don't worry my ticket is already purchased to the BAM screening of a Vertigo IB Print. This will be my first time seeing a Hitchcock film in theaters, certainly not the last.

The thing about the British films that stands out to me is how fast-paced and frantic they are. Especially The Man Who Knew Too Much, and I imagine 39 Steps will be a similar whirlwind, which is exciting and fun.

[domino harvey]

The 39 Steps is indeed fast paced and fun. It's one of Hitchcock's purest "entertainments"

[zedz]

I love three of those films, but have given my vote to the Ozu, which is one of the most delightful comedies of the thirties, with lots of really interesting angles ripe for discussion.

(By contrast, about the only discussion I can imagine about Gate of Hell would be to do with why it's so boring.)

[ordinaryperson]

I'll ride out on "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" even if I'm the only one voting for it.

[DarkImbecile]

I was the other vote for Fear and Loathing, but in my cowardice and desperate need to be part of the group, I switched to the Hitchcock. My name will forever be associated with this shame.

[Mr Sausage]

39 Steps it is!

[domino harvey]

[Drucker]

Take that, Ozu.

[Mr Sausage]

It's a 90's film vote to coincide with our current List project.

Have at it!

[mfunk9786]

90s kids wouldn't vote for The Rock unless it was a glowing piece of it.

[domino harvey]

If you like me were temporarily confused, Madadayo is only available physically in the giant Akira Kurosawa giftset thing they released years back, though it is also on Hulu. I'm voting for Breaking the Waves because I already own it and haven't seen it yet, so, like all true 90s Kids, I will be exposed to something due to lack of other options and then romanticize the experience later (Already seen Haine and Veronique and could be tempted to pick up the Rock, though not via Criterion)

[swo17]

Breaking the Waves of course also does double duty for the faith list.

[Drucker]

It's also physically available on blu-ray from Netflix.

[cdnchris]

I like The Rock (one of the few here I think) but I have no idea what would be discussed other than a hate for Michael Bay and MAYBE Nicolas Cage. But I'm going to vote for it simply because I'm all about the under dog.

[colinr0380]

I'm voting for Breaking the Waves because I already own it and haven't seen it yet, so, like all true 90s Kids, I will be exposed to something due to lack of other options and then romanticize the experience later.

Like the main character herself!

[bearcuborg]

I like The Rock (one of the few here I think) but I have no idea what would be discussed other than a hate for Michael Bay and MAYBE Nicolas Cage. But I'm going to vote for it simply because I'm all about the under dog.

Funny, I like some Bay and Cage films a lot. How The Rock ever got a green light is beyond me. It's so dull. What a waste of great cast. Of all the films mentioned, I voted for Kurosawa's Madadayo because it remains the most mysterious to me.

[John Cope]

I voted for Veronique because I want to like it and I don't and I want someone to explain why I should.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm a bit tickled that The Rock is doing so well. I've exhausted everything I wanted to say about it in the 90's List thread, but I think the movie could sustain a good discussion.

[Mr Sausage]

All you La Haine and Madadayo fans ought to think about changing your votes. There is next to no chance those are winning; you may as well vote for your favourite among the competitors.