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I watched this too; it's only my third Rivette but probably my favorite so far. I'll admit some bias considering the fact that I am and have always been obsessed with Jane Birkin. Still a wonderful film!

I was taken aback at how much she looked like the Blanchett Dylan when she was dressed like a man! (Though I guess technically I should reverse that statement)

As far as available Rivettes from the '80s go, Wuthering Heights is interesting but not a high priority. I do hope you'll visit Gang of Four for the purposes of this thread. I'll admit, your blog post and zedz's post earlier jumpstarted my inclination to finally sit down and watch it!

It's on Netflix so that shouldn't be a problem. I'm guessing the R1 DVD is okay? The 80s Rivette I'm really looking forward to is Merry-Go-Round, though my copy doesn't have English subtitles.

It's non-anamorphic but of acceptable quality-- and out of print, so I'd bump it up before they pull the disc.

Inspired by the Woody Allen thread, here's my brief annotated thoughts on all of Allen's films from the '80s:

Stardust Memories Personally, a huge disappointment to me. I think it was the last or next to last Allen film I saw while working through his oeuvre and I'd heard so many wonderful things, but it fell completely flat for me.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy Hands-down Allen's worst film.

Zelig Allen's funniest film from the decade and probably the last film he ever made fully in the spirit of his 70s comedies.

Broadway Danny Rose So slight but perhaps that's what makes it so beloved-- it does a small thing so well that it looks easy. Plus Farrow's boyfriend's song has yet to leave my head.

the Purple Rose of Cairo There are days when I'm convinced this is Allen's best film. A love letter to viewers who don't just like going to the movies, but who require / need / can't live without them.

Hannah and Her Sisters Barely watchable yet somehow embraced warmly by nearly everyone. This is probably going to chart the highest of any Allen film, which depresses me.

Radio Days There's a small scene in this film that moved me more than anything else Allen has ever shown in his career. It's a simple moment, a small vignette showing Allen's cousin listening to Carmen Miranda on the radio interrupted by her family popping in and singing along. That it serves no accumulative narrative function only bolsters my esteem at Allen for including it.

September Boy did I go in to this one ready to love it, ready to rediscover it, ready to praise it, and boy did I just have to finally admit that it earned its reputation.

Another Woman Did nothing for me and in fact I barely remember anything about it beyond that.

Crimes and Misdemeanors Put me in the minority who thought Match Point actually improved on this one.


Broadway Danny Rose, the Purple Rose of Cairo, Zelig, and Radio Days have a shot of making my list. I thought Alice, one of my favorites, was an '80s film but it's 1990. Ah well.

sidehacker wrote:The 80s Rivette I'm really looking forward to is Merry-Go-Round

I believe that's actually from 1978. I really want to see this too, it's my most wanted Rivette along with Le Pont du Nord.

It should of been 1978, but it was shelved till 1983.

Domino, can you say more specifically why you don't like Hannah?

My favorite 80s Allen, in order:

1. Hannah and Her Sisters
2. Zelig
3. Broadway Danny Rose
4. Crimes and Misdemeanors

Domino, what did you think of Allen's "Oedipus Wrecks" segement from New York Stories? I think it is one of the funniest things he has ever done, and like Zelig, in the spirit of his '70s stuff. The short film format is perfect: the concept would never have worked in feature-length, but it was too funny to not be filmed in some way. Plus, there is an awesome pre-Seinfeld Larry David role and we get to see Woody ditch Mia for the voice of Marge Simpson.

I am not sure what to do with New York Stories in my list. I enjoy "Oedipus Wrecks," and I positively love Scorsese's "Life Lessons." (Really, it may be one my five favorite things Marty ever did.) But the Coppola film is the most interminable short film in history. Between that script, and her performance in The Godfather, Part III, I understand why Sofia Coppola went into hiding for a decade.

Hannah and Her Sisters is one of Woody's finest; its certainly a tossup for me between it and Crimes and Misdemeanors as his best work of the decade. There are countless reasons why I adore that picture, but perhaps the most significant is that it has one of the only genuinely happy endings in a Woody Allen film. Okay, that and the pleasure of seeing Max von Sydow arguing with Daniel Stern.

It's been so long since I've seen New York Stories that I really need to revisit it before I make a judgment call.

As for Hannah and Her Sisters, it's probably the closest I've come to turning off a Woody Allen movie-- for me it seems like a parody of the better films Allen makes in this vein, and he doesn't seem to know what to do with a talent like Sydow. I thought Caine was horribly miscast and Weist's role made no sense within the narrative, and of course both walked away with Oscars. Whatever. I don't really get Weist's appeal in general. She's great in Radio Days but even in Bullets Over Broadway, where she won a second Oscar, it should have gone to the other nominee, the far superior Jennifer Tilly.

I was just looking over the credits for New York Stories, and I was reminded that Néstor Almendros, Vittorio Storaro, and Sven Nykvist shot the respective shorts. That's a true murder's row of cinematographers, each every bit the artistic equal (if not more so) of the three auteurs involved in the project.

The project deserves to be revisited. I cannot say enough good things about "Life Lessons" in particular. Unfortunately, the DVD is horrible, and I believe it is presented in an incorrect aspect ratio.

I'm sure this film was mentioned somewhere in the foregoing discussion, but can't find it for the life of me, so kudos to whoever it was, if it was anybody and not just my own hallucination. . .

My Brother’s Wedding

Given various reports of this film as compromised, including Burnett’s own, I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope for it and thought Burnett might miss my 80s list (with To Sleep with Anger a possible contender for the 90s), but it’s actually terrific. There’s a slight clunkiness in some of the performances (e.g. the bride-to-be), and it doesn’t have the glorious black and white lyricism of Killer of Sheep, but in many respects it’s a more ambitious film, taking in a broader sweep of the black community and working with more complex issues in the context of a more complex narrative. It’s also extremely funny, in a naturalistic, character-based, rather than joke-based, way and, like Killer, is a great LA film, much truer to my limited experience of the city than any number of Hollywood productions.

I saw the ‘director’s cut’ with a very appreciative audience, but now I’m very curious to see the original version to find out how much it differs, and how those ‘misfire’ rumours came about in the first place.

zedz wrote:it doesn’t have the glorious black and white lyricism of Killer of Sheep, but in many respects it’s a more ambitious film, taking in a broader sweep of the black community and working with more complex issues in the context of a more complex narrative. It’s also extremely funny, in a naturalistic, character-based, rather than joke-based, way and, like Killer, is a great LA film, much truer to my limited experience of the city than any number of Hollywood productions.

I actually found My Brother's Wedding to be a more compelling film than Killer of Sheep, and I'm glad to know that my preference isn't totally off-the-wall. (You may still prefer Killer of Sheep, Zedz. I don't know. But this glowing review jibes very much with my own reaction to the film.)

Anyway, I think the character-driven humor is precisely what makes it work so well for me. My Brother's Wedding feels like a very "lived-in" movie.

I too thought My Brother's Wedding was a better film than Killer of Sheep, but I still had the same problem with both films: the acting is so terrible that it becomes distracting. Maybe I'm just spoiled from how utterly brilliant Burnett's masterpiece To Sleep With Anger is in all aspects, that I just see none of the same genius in these early works.


In case anyone is curious/wants suggestions, here are the Cahiers year-end picks from 1981-1989:

For the conventional wisdom stateside during the '80s, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's year-end top ten lists can be found here.

Their top ten lists for the decade were:

Gene Siskel:
01. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
02. Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
03. The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman)
04. My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle)
05. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis)
06. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
07. Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone)
08. Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski)
09. Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox)
10. Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa)

Roger Ebert:
01. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
02. The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman)
03. E.T. (Steven Spielberg)
04. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
05. My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle)
06. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)
07. Ran (Akira Kurosawa)
08. Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker)
09. Platoon (Oliver Stone)
10. House of Games (David Mamet)

domino harvey wrote:I too thought My Brother's Wedding was a better film than Killer of Sheep

Co-sign. I actually saw My Brother's Wedding a couple months back and loved it in spite of the acting. I think I said something along the lines of "like an Ozu film but with biblical quotes replacing the constant smiles." I watched Killer of Sheep last night and it was pretty disappointing. It's like Burnett had 30 minutes of good ideas and then decided to have the film just crawl along for fifty minutes. Maybe there's just too many good moments in the first half of the film. Nothing in the second half of the film comes close to eclipsing the little girl singing.

I think the "new" cut of My Brother's Wedding is really bizarre and bad. The original cut makes much more sense.

Thanks for the Cahiers list Domino. Surprised to see that Yol is not included given its rapturous reception in France in 82.
It will certainly figure in my own list ,if for nothing else than to see the name of Yilmaz Guney rise from the ashes of Richard Cranium immolation on these pages again.

6. The Woman Next Door (Francois Truffaut)

Any opinions?

I remember some vivid images from the film, which I saw about 25 years ago. Is it worth revaluating?

sidehacker wrote: I think the "new" cut of My Brother's Wedding is really bizarre and bad. The original cut makes much more sense.

Could you explain that a little more? I watched the new cut and, while it may not have been as good, it certainly made sense? Do you mean you just didn't like Burnett's choices regarding scenes to add and where to add them?

Diva - one of the most successful foreign films of the 1980s, I remember it playing for about 2 years in the Village. Same thing with Wings of Desire. I wonder how well they hold up today.

I certainly won't argue against Ebert as an all-around "friend of cinema," but ... my God, his taste is terrible.

You know, when I saw Killer of Sheep years ago I felt the same way as a couple of you: that it's slow, too film-schoolly, too much the neo-realist take on childhood behavior that so many debuting directors seem to need to get out of their system (I just saw another unremarkable one: Pialat's Naked Childhood). But we're certainly in the minority on this. For me, Burnett's masterpiece is To Sleep With Anger, and I'm curious as to how My Brother's Wedding will fit into that arc when I get to it.

Hopscotch wrote:Could you explain that a little more? I watched the new cut and, while it may not have been as good, it certainly made sense? Do you mean you just didn't like Burnett's choices regarding scenes to add and where to add them?

He didn't add scenes to the new cut, he cut some out, right? Whatever the case, I'm talking about the shorter cut, the one that is only 83 minutes long. It just seemed to subtract from much of the original cut's depth, if that makes sense.

Perkins Cobb wrote:(I just saw another unremarkable one: Pialat's Naked Childhood).

Ach! Pistols at dawn! Please do revisit this when you get the chance - 'neorealist' seems way off the mark to me. But that's for another decade's discussion. And - also belongs elsewhere - Killer of Sheep seems far more derived from direct cinema than neorealism to me, and Burnett's use of 'childhood' material as counterpoint to the (fragmentary and, indeed, gloriously slow and narratively sparse) main 'story' is one of the things I find most unusual and rewarding about it. My Brother's Wedding and To Sleep with Anger are great, but much more conventionally structured and presented.

Perkins Cobb wrote:I certainly won't argue against Ebert as an all-around "friend of cinema," but ... my God, his taste is terrible.

Actually, excepting the terrible round-up at the end of the decade, his tastes were surprisingly in-line with this board based on his yearly picks, particularly in the 70s. Somewhere along the way in the late 80s though, his tastes took a turn for the worst and stayed down that road.

For what it's worth. They Shoot Pictures Don't They? List of 1980s films.

1980 Raging Bull (Scorsese, Martin; US)
1980 Shining, The (Kubrick, Stanley; US)
1980 Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder, Rainer Werner; Germany) 1980 Empire Strikes Back, The (Kershner, Irvin; US)
1980 Heaven's Gate (Cimino, Michael; US)
1980 Elephant Man, The (Lynch, David; US)
1980 Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Godard, Jean-Luc; France-Switzerland) 1980 Kagemusha (Kurosawa, Akira; Japan)
1980 Mon oncle d'Amérique (Resnais, Alain; France)
1980 Atlantic City (Malle, Louis; Canada-France)
1980 Gloria (Cassavetes, John; US)
1980 American Gigolo (Schrader, Paul; US)
1980 Bad Timing (Roeg, Nicolas; UK)
1980 Age of the Earth, The (Rocha, Glauber; Brazil)
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, Steven; US)
1981 Mad Max 2 (Miller, George; Australia)
1981 Reds (Beatty, Warren; US)
1981 Gregory's Girl (Forsyth, Bill; UK)
1981 Woman Next Door, The (Truffaut, François; France)
1981 Blow Out (De Palma, Brian; US)
1981 Pixote (Babenco, Hector; Brazil)
1981 Mephisto (Szabó, István; Hungary)
1981 Cutter's Way (Passer, Ivan; US)
1981 Excalibur (Boorman, John; UK)
1981 French Lieutenant's Woman, The (Reisz, Karel; UK)
1981 Too Early, Too Late (Straub, Jean-Marie & Danièle Huillet; Germany)

1982 Blade Runner (Scott, Ridley; US)
1982 Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, Ingmar; Sweden)
1982 E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, Steven; US)
1982 Passion (Godard, Jean-Luc; France-Switzerland)
1982 Fitzcarraldo (Herzog, Werner; West Germany)
1982 Verdict, The (Lumet, Sidney; US)
1982 Gandhi (Attenborough, Richard; UK)
1982 Veronika Voss (Fassbinder, Rainer Werner; Germany)
1982 Missing (Costa-Gavras, Constantin; US)
1982 Draughtsman's Contract, The (Greenaway, Peter; UK)
1982 Night of the Shooting Stars, The (Taviani, Paolo & Vittorio Taviani; Italy)
1982 World According to Garp, The (Hill, George Roy; US)

1983 Sans soleil (Marker, Chris; France)
1983 Argent, L' (Bresson, Robert; France-Switzerland)
1983 King of Comedy, The (Scorsese, Martin; US)
1983 Local Hero (Forsyth, Bill; UK)
1983 Nostalghia (Tarkovsky, Andrei; Italy)
1983 Videodrome (Cronenberg, David; Canada)
1983 Scarface (De Palma, Brian; US)
1983 Right Stuff, The (Kaufman, Philip; US)
1983 Tender Mercies (Beresford, Bruce; US)
1983 Zelig (Allen, Woody; US)
1983 Sugar Cane Alley (Palcy, Euzhan; France)
1983 Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, Godfrey; US)
1983 Ballad of Narayama (Imamura, Shohei; US)
1983 Sur, El (Erice, Victor; Spain-France)

1984 Once Upon a Time in America (Leone, Sergio; US)
1984 Paris, Texas (Wenders, Wim; US)
1984 Terminator, The (Cameron, James; US)
1984 Amadeus (Forman, Milos; US)
1984 This is Spinal Tap (Reiner, Rob; US)
1984 Love Streams (Cassavetes, John; US)
1984 Stranger Than Paradise (Jarmusch, Jim; US)
1984 Blood Simple (Coen, Joel and Ethan Coen; US)
1984 Heimat [TV] (Reitz, Edgar; Germany)
1984 Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige; China)
1984 Taipei Story (Yang, Edward; Taiwan-Japan)
1984 Broadway Danny Rose (Allen, Woody; US)
1984 And the Ship Sails On (Fellini, Federico; Italy-France)
1984 Sunday in the Country, A (Tavernier, Bertrand; France)

1985 Ran (Kurosawa, Akira; France-Japan)
1985 Shoah (Lanzmann, Claude; France)
1985 Brazil (Gilliam, Terry; UK)
1985 Time to Live and the Time to Die, The (Hou Hsiao-Hsien; Taiwan)
1985 Come and See (Klimov, Elem; Russia)
1985 My Life as a Dog (Hallström, Lasse; Sweden)
1985 Back to the Future (Zemeckis, Robert; US)
1985 Vagabond (Varda, Agnès; France)
1985 Witness (Weir, Peter; US)
1985 Purple Rose of Cairo, The (Allen, Woody; US)
1985 Day of the Dead (Romero, George A.; US)
1985 Hour of the Star (Amaral, Suzana; Brazil)
1985 Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader, Paul; US)
1985 Out of Africa (Pollack, Sydney; US)

1986 Blue Velvet (Lynch, David; US)
1986 Aliens (Cameron, James; US)
1986 Sacrifice, The (Tarkovsky, Andrei; France-Sweden)
1986 Down by Law (Jarmusch, Jim; US)
1986 Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen, Woody; US)
1986 Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Hughes, John; US)
1986 Green Ray, The (Rohmer, Eric; France)
1986 Sherman's March (McElwee, Ross; US)
1986 My Friend Ivan Lapshin (Gherman, Alexei; USSR)

1987 Wings of Desire (Wenders, Wim; France-West Germany)
1987 Dead, The (Huston, John; US)
1987 Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, Stanley; US)
1987 Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, The (Hara, Kazuo; Japan) 1987 Where is the Friend's Home? (Kiarostami, Abbas; Iran)
1987 Hôtel Terminus (Ophüls, Marcel; US)
1987 Short Film About Killing, A (Kieslowski, Krszystof; Poland)
1987 Princess Bride, The (Reiner, Rob; US)
1987 Yeelen (Cissé, Souleymane; Mali)
1987 Raising Arizona (Coen, Joel and Ethan Coen; US)
1987 Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou; China)
1987 Law of Desire (Almodóvar, Pedro; Spain)
1987 King of the Children (Chen Kaige; China)
1987 Last Emperor, The (Bertolucci, Bernardo; China-Italy-UK)

1988 Dekalog (Kieslowski, Krszystof; Poland)
1988 Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore, Giuseppe; Italy-France)
1988 My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki, Hayao; Japan)
1988 Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, Terence; UK)
1988 Dead Ringers (Cronenberg, David; Canada)
1988 Thin Blue Line, The (Morris, Errol; US)
1988 Die Hard (McTiernan, John; US)
1988 Midnight Run (Brest, Martin; US)
1988 Last Temptation of Christ, The (Scorsese, Martin; US)
1988 Fish Called Wanda, A (Crichton, Charles; UK)
1988 Landscape in the Mist (Angelopoulos, Theo; Greece-France-Italy) 1988 Tale of the Wind, A (Ivens, Joris; France)
1988 Dangerous Liaisons (Frears, Stephen; US)
1988 Short Film About Love, A (Kieslowski, Krszystof; Poland)
1988 Unbearable Lightness of Being, The (Kaufman, Philip; US)

1989 Close-Up (Kiarostami, Abbas; Iran)
1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, Woody; US)
1989 Do the Right Thing (Lee, Spike; US)
1989 City of Sadness, A (Hou Hsiao-Hsien; Taiwan)
1989 Time of the Gypsies (Kusturica, Emir; Yugoslavia)
1989 Killer, The (Woo, John; Hong Kong)
1989 Dead Poets Society (Weir, Peter; US)
1989 When Harry Met Sally... (Reiner, Rob; US)
1989 Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, The (Greenaway, Peter; France-Netherlands)
1989 Homework (Kiarostami, Abbas; Iran)

[I deleted the original post because, as cold bishop notes right under this, I was totally wrong. The impression I was running with was really strong somehow, but a quick search reveals that, yes, the director's cut of My Brother's Wedding is the shorter version.]