I have just modified the hatnote of the 50 films I recommended not to be bored at home when the COVID-19 epidemic started because I will no longer review those films individually.
While it is true that those films made a big impression on me as a child and young man, once I woke up to the real world, in the sense of stepping out of the System’s matrix that controls us, most of those films lost their original meaning. I prefer to continue reviewing Brendan Simms’ book about Uncle Adolf insofar as, now free from the matrix that controls the white man, I feel a moral responsibility to convey who he was under a completely different narrative from that of the ubiquitous System (a narrative that includes Simms’ POV). Nevertheless, I would like, in a single entry, to say what I think roughly about the remaining 42 films that I won’t review individually, as I did with the first eight on the list.
First of all, I have already said something about Shane, #9 on the list. (Incidentally, when the month before my dad died, I showed him the DVDs of the films we had at home to see which one my ailing father wanted to see, he chose Shane.)
About other films on my list from the 1950s, ten years ago I already said something about Ben-Hur and I don’t have much to add. The two movies that the Swede Ingmar Bergman filmed in his country the year before I was born are watchable, especially The Seventh Seal. Although Wild Strawberries is the only one, along with A.I., that made me cry, I would have to explain why I projected myself into it, and that would be getting deep into my biography, which I won’t do in this entry. (By the way, when I saw Wild Strawberries on the big screen I met, on the way out, my first cousin Octavio Augusto whom I said a few years ago he had just killed his daughter and then hanged himself.)
I already said something about Forbidden Planet in 2012 in the context of some paragraphs by the Canadian Sebastian Ronin that are worth re-reading. Of Journey to the Center of the Earth, I had already said something in 2011 (incidentally, it’s worth watching the clip of the film that I uploaded on YouTube, embedded in that post).
The other film from the 1950s, Lust for Life, I haven’t written anything about: the life of Vincent Van Gogh. Given that I have several books—huge books, by the way: those deluxe ones that seem to take up an entire table—on Vincent’s paintings, and that as a small child I tried, modestly, to copy his paintings with my watercolours, his life has a special significance.
This film was shot when the Aryans weren’t yet betraying themselves as nefariously as they do today. For those who still appreciate 19th-century Europe, it is worth seeing this novel-based interpretation of Vincent’s life. And the same can be said of Sleeping Beauty and The Time Machine: once upon a time there was an optimistic ethos about the Aryan race, with very blonde and extremely beautiful women indeed: films that one could even play to children being educated in NS.
So much for the films of the 1950s. As far as the films on my list from the 1960s are concerned, I have to say that 2001: A Space Odyssey is my favourite film, and I can conceivably write a review in the future about the film that has influenced my life the most. As for the others from that decade, I’ve already commented here and there but unlike the previous ones, I won’t link to my posts. And I can say the same about the films on my list from the seventies, except Death in Venice of which I’ll say something.
As for the only film on my list from the 1980s, Fanny & Alexander, I already said what I had to say in my entry on the 50 films; and as for my recommendations of films from the 1990s, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride & Prejudice—an English TV series, although here we could also include the 2005 film—, I already said what I had to say in Daybreak (page 42) and On Beth’s Cute Tits (pages 134-135). It’s precisely in this context that Death in Venice could be understood, albeit in the sense of purely platonic admiration that is in line with what I wrote in Daybreak (pages 163-164).
As far as the films of our century from my list of 50, why A.I. caught my attention so much can be guessed from what I say in Day of Wrath (pages 32ff) in the context of the bonding or imprint we all have with our abusive parents; and about LOTR I already said something here.
If a visitor is curious about the details of how any film on my list affected me (or another film that doesn’t appear on my list, as long as I have seen it) I’m willing to answer any questions.
13 replies on “The remaining 42”
Have you ever seen The Elephant Man? John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins. It’s the first time I remember crying at a film that wasn’t animated. A heartbreaking story, infused with a fair bit of Christian sentiment, but I have a soft spot for these Victorian era tragedies, whether they be real or from the pages of Dickens.
I saw it many years ago on the big screen: another abomination of the Christian Era (as I said in my review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo wouldn’t have been allowed to live in pre-Christian Europe).
It certainly would have been a kindness to him if he had died at birth. How about Watership Down? I think it must surely be the bloodiest, most disturbing animated film to be aimed at a child audience. It’s quite obviously an allegory of Moses leading his people to freedom, so the Christian symbolism is very prominent, yet again. We even have a resurrection scene, as Hazel miraculously survives being shot and returns to his comrades.
I haven’t watched it. Incidentally, I have just bolded Spotlight in my list of 50 recommended films.
Thank you, C.T. I was already wondering why you had not done so before, especially since you claimed it a most important film.
It is not so important as a film, but as a historical event: for the first time the Catholic Church received a low blow from which it hasn’t been able to recover. (It is worth saying that using altar boys sexually existed for centuries before that Boston newspaper investigated the matter in a big way.)
..a nice film from that I saw cathechism class (although I am no longer a practicing Catholic!), was called, “The Clown” (1968). It’s about a boy and his dog, the dog is lost and his owner keeps looking for it..! A very ironic ending…..but even thought the dog is lost to its owner, it has a new “leash” on life!
I was going to ask why The Prisoner of Azkaban is on your list, rather than the first two movies directed by Columbus, which are the only ones I enjoy. Is it because the director is Spanish? Although the films, like the books, are heavily Christian in their messages, those of us who are fully awake can watch such films without being adversely affected by them. I feel that everything about the series took a nosedive once they decided to give each new installment to a different European director, all of whom I found inferior to Columbus, an American. His departure, and that of composer John Williams, was the fatal blow for the series. It’s quite ironic that two Americans brought a British literary phenomenon to life in a way the Brits themselves could not.
One more thing about Harry Potter. Do you consider the values of Slytherin House to be Aryan and the values of Gryffindor House to be Christian? Also, I have always been intrigued by Voldemort’s words to Harry. “There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those who are too weak to seek it.” What is your interpretation of this quote?
I’m not going to answer everything except to say that the third film in the series is the only one I consider artistic. And it has nothing to do with the fact that the director is Mexican (and that he also studied at Madrid High School, where I was). It only has to do with the fact that Alfonso Cuarón, although he is my ideological enemy, has shown great cinematographic virtuosity in films with terrible messages for the Aryan, such as Children of Men. In The Prisoner of Azkaban the bad messages aren’t so obvious, but Cuarón’s cinematographic virtuosity is. It’s the only movie in the entire Harry Potter series that, in the past, I really liked.
I see. I couldn’t stomach the colour grading, so I was blind to what merits the film had.
Did you ever see The Others with Nicole Kidman? The director was Spanish, and he scored the film as well. Very impressive, considering that he was only 28 at the time. It’s an adaptation of the late Victorian novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, it stays true to its 19th century source material while bringing the setting forward to WW2. Kidman plays a devout Catholic mother of two young children living in isolation in a large mansion on the island of Jersey. Her reading from Genesis as the camera pans over candle-lit illustrations is among the best introductory sequences ever put to film. I have always been impressed by how the film does so much with so little. In my opinion, it is the last genuinely suspenseful ghost story ever made.
I don’t recall any color degradation in the Potter series until the sixth film; and I haven’t seen, nor will I see, The Others.
Oh yes, it is desatured and drowning in teal. It’s very obvious. There’s a video on youtube titled “How Azkaban and Colours Ruined Harry Potter” which explains it. You can also watch the deleted scenes from the movie, which are not colour graded, to get an idea of what it would have looked if they had left it alone. You already know that I have an eye for things which you and millions of others do not see. That is not a brag, merely a statement of fact. Autism does have its advantages.
Well that’s a pity, but I think it does highlight a big difference between us. Your devotion to ideal archetypes, and your rigid criteria for what you deem acceptable behaviour, restricts you immensely. It would be no understatement to say that you have your own brand of puritanism. Due to your strict adherence to abstract principles regarding how people should conduct themselves, you deprive yourself of a great deal of the human experience as portrayed on screen. I focus on how a film makes me feel, and because I am open to exploring many different moods, my repertoire has a lot more variety. Although we often lament that humans are not perfect, it is also true that, when it comes to storytelling, perfect people make for lousy drama. They are not relatable, because there is no character to develop.
The video you mention isn’t bad, but the author has different tastes than mine (he liked the style of the first director of the Potter series).
It is true that Cuarón already used colour grading compared to the first director, who didn’t use this new technique, but Cuarón did not abuse it. The one who horribly abused that technique was David Yates from the sixth instalment of the Potter series.
I suppose you mean that after becoming aware of the dark hour I can no longer enjoy the movies I previously enjoyed. But that’s not ‘rigid criteria’. Rather, I identify with the Russian who was a fan of Battleship Potemkin, the 1925 propaganda film directed magnificently by the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, but that, after reading Solzhenitsyn’s Archipelago he stopped liking it.
One of the problems with autistic individuals is that they are incapable of achieving the minimum empathy to understand something so obvious.