The Favorites - The Virgin Spring (#22)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Virgin Spring (1960/Sweden/dir. Ingmar Bergman) appeared at #22 on my original list.

What it is • Based on a famous folk ballad, The Virgin Spring may be Bergman's least complicated film about faith: without getting too specific, a Christian noble (Max von Sydow) experiences tragedy, repents after a violent reaction, and experiences a miracle. Viewed this way, it may not be surprising that Bergman was dissatisfied with the movie. While impressed by the naturalistic sun-dappled photography of characters moving through forests (this was one of his earliest ventures with cameraman Sven Nykvist, maybe his closest collaborator behind the camera) he felt his own direction of the action was too derivative. But The Virgin Spring is also one of Bergman's most unflinching explorations of depraved humanity. Despite the simplicity of its storytelling, the emotions run deep. Grief, guilt, lust, resentment, all coalesce in the (double - maybe triple) destruction of innocence, centered on one of the most brutal rape scenes of its time. This resulted in frequent censorship (including one court case between Janus Films and the town of Ft. Worth, Texas, which Ft. Worth won) and later inspired Wes Craven's revenge horror film Last House on the Left. The scene is not particularly graphic. It is psychologically rather than physically raw, terrifying because it depicts the utter helplessness of the victim. Whether or not you agree with The Virgin Spring's view of justice, vengeance, atonement, and divine will, whether you see said view as ambiguous (Bergman introduces an element of rival paganism into the mix, which - as I recall - suggests a struggle of forces rather than a world simply dominated by God's authority), the film's stark content will force you to draw your own conclusions.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - My Night at Maud's (#23)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. My Night at Maud's (1969/France/dir. Eric Rohmer) appeared at #23 on my original list.

What it is • In the ancient, quiet town of Clermont-Ferrand, Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintagnent), a Catholic convert, meets up with an old friend, Vidal (Antoine Vitez), a Marxist. Contesting the claims of faith, they are particularly captivated by the dilemma of Pascal's wager: the idea that one should choose the less likely but more rewarding prospect. Shortly afterward, Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to a charming divorcee, Maud (Francoise Fabian). The long conversation which unfolds in her apartment, as she invites Jean-Louis to spend the night - platonically or otherwise - is at once a protracted intellectual version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with the gender roles reversed (as I think CriterionCast pointed out) and a test of the philosophical question Jean-Louis and Vidal debated earlier in the film. Jean-Louis has already committed himself, mentally anyway, to Francoise (Marie-Christine Barrault), a pretty blonde whom he has never met but whom he fell in love with while observing her at Mass. Is she the one he is wagering everything on, sacrificing short-term happiness with Maud for an idealized marriage with her? Or is the other way around; is he going for the safe bet with this quiet, good Catholic girl (or so he believes) and missing out on a riskier but possibly more deeply enriching relationship with Maud? The film holds many ambiguities and conceals several tricks up its sleeve, but despite the cleverness of its overall shape and its fearlessness in articulating every concern (My Night at Maud's has long been synonymous with "talky film") this is also very much an exercise in atmosphere. Like all of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales - this was titled as the third, but released as the fourth - the film is gorgeously shot (in this case and several others by Nestor Almendros) and makes beautiful use of its evocative location. The Moral Tales may be aggressively verbal, but they are also luminously visual.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Young Mr. Lincoln (#24)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Young Mr. Lincoln (1939/USA/dir. John Ford) appeared at #24 on my original list.

What it is • An obscure Illinois lawyer in the 1830s named Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) takes on a court case involving two brothers from a poor family (Richard Cromwell and Eddie Quillan), who have been accused of murder. This will be his first criminal trial, and it will force him to face down a lynch mob and move back and forth across several divides: between the isolated family he's defending and the solid community opposed to them, between the common folk who appreciate his good humor and the local elite who admire his intelligence, and between his own idealistic appeals to higher principles and his shrewd ability to employ emotional manipulation. We meet Lincoln before he's even chosen the law as a vocation, watching as he loses his fiancee Ann Rutledge (Pauline Moore) and meets his future wife Mary Todd (Marjorie Weaver). However, this is not the sort of biopic where we collect the "greatest hits" of a lifetime - it's very much focused on a single period and issue, much like Patton, Selma, or, well, Lincoln. Unlike those films, however, its key incident isn't a momentous turning point in the subject's legend but a much smaller moment, highly fictionalized (the screenplay by Lamar Trotti adapts a key detail from an actual Lincoln case, but it occurred many years later when he was already a national figure, and the circumstances were mostly very different). Perhaps this is what gives the movie its extra edge: the proceedings are allowed to be both laid back and subtly symbolic (Lincoln is encouraged to split the brothers' defense in order to save one, which only now occurs to me as a likely "house divided" nod). Just like Lincoln himself, the film is deceptively low-key in approach while slowly summoning up a deep sense of grandeur and gravity.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Mamma Roma (#25)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Mamma Roma (1962/Italy/dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) appeared at #25 on my original list.

What it is • Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) has paid her dues, sacrificing her son to another family and surviving on her own through prostitution. Now she feels that she has earned the right to a steady, legitimate job in Rome, providing for her adolescent son in the hope that he will achieve a prosperity and happiness. It is not so easy. The past haunts them in various forms, including Carmine (Franco Citti), Mamma Roma's former pimp who claims to have been corrupted by her. Ettore drifts from his mother into the arms of a lively young woman (Silvana Corsini) and a dangerous crowd. We can feel the threats emerging from all directions, as a mother attempts to shield her son from the forces that shaped her own life. This was only the second film by the prolific Pasolini, who would rack up twenty-five credits in his fourteen-year career, cut short by his notorious, shady murder in 1975. It was variously condemned and banned like many of his other movies, although today it seems like one of his most accessible and universal stories (if he was new to directing, he wasn't to writing - this was his twentieth screenplay including the similarly-themed Nights of Cabiria which you'll see covered soon). The film exists at a crossroads (which Pasolini's scripts for Fellini had helped construct) between the grounded, socially-concerned neorealist films of the forties and fifties and the more abrasive, flamboyant features of the sixties by young directors like Marco Bellochio (Fists in the Pocket) and Bernardo Bertolucci, who trained under Pasolini. This context fits the film's narrative, caught between the search for economic security and the temptation of youthful rebellion, and also its style, characterized by sharp cutting and fluid camera movements. There is grace and anxiety in Mamma Roma, released in equal measure by the film's final moments.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - The "Up" Series (#26)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The "Up" Series (UK/dir. Michael Apted, Paul Almond): Seven Up! (1964), 7 Plus Seven (1970), 21 Up (1977), 28 Up (1984), 35 Up (1991), 42 Up (1998), 49 Up (2005), 56 Up (2012) appeared at #26 on my original list.

What it is • In the year 1964 the UK was experiencing a particular moment of energetic expansion and optimism. As the Beatles led a worldwide musical revolution, British cinema was launching its own simultaneous invasion: not only did the top Academy Award go to a British film (Tom Jones) for the second year in a row (if we count the previous year's Lawrence of Arabia as British) but six of the top ten U.S. box office hits had British stars and/or settings. In both music and cinema, many of these new pop culture icons were from working-class backgrounds and that autumn the Labour Party would return to power for the first time in over a decade, with a slim majority in the general election - perhaps signaling a rising class consciousness which would inform at least the initial films in the Up series. Nineteen years after World War II, on the cusp of the sixties cultural revolution, this was the perfect time to launch a hugely ambitious film project which remains active today. Of course, this wasn't originally the intention. When World in Action aired the forty-minute special "Seven Up!" in May, it was just one of a season full of investigative documentary episodes. Paul Almond co-conceived and directed it, choosing (with the help of several young assistants) fourteen children from diverse class backgrounds (ten boys, four girls; mostly white with one exception) to explore how their economic situations affected their lives from the young age of seven. Re-aired at Christmas and then, one might have reasonably assumed, destined to be slowly forgotten, the program was inspired by the Jesuit dictum "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." One of Almond's assistants, Michael Apted, was fascinated by the implications of this idea and essentially decided to put it to the test. He followed up with the children six years later (presumably seven years after the actual production of the TV special), when they were fourteen. Thus began a pattern which will resume again in three years, when 63 Up re-visits these familiar faces on the cusp of old age, interviewing them to discover their thoughts on Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, and more importantly the personal experiences big and small - illnesses, travels, deaths, births, divorces, marriages - that affected them since Apted's last visit. Each film includes copious clips from those that came before, so that we can see the histories of ordinary lives unfold before our eyes both in the moment and, if we follow the series for years, in real time. This is one of the most unique endeavors in the history of cinema (even something as unusual and celebrated as Boyhood stands in its shadow), and it will likely continue until all the subjects have passed away - Apted, who is about fifteen years older than the participants, has said he hopes his own son will continue the project when he himself has died.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - The Searchers (#27)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Searchers (1956/USA/dir. John Ford) appeared at #27 on my original list.

What it is • Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns to his brother's homestead in Texas after a stint in the Confederate Army...three years after the Civil War has ended (Wikipedia picks up on clues that he spent that extra time fighting against the French interventionists and Emperor Maximillian in Mexico). In other words, he is established right away as a rootless wanderer, most notably in the infamous opening shot of a woman opening a door out into the wide open plains, shielding her eyes from the light as a figure rides up on a horse. The ending mirrors this shot, with Ethan turning to walk off the porch and back out into the wilderness as everyone else gathers inside, the door framing his exit as a retreat from civilization. The framing device might suggest that he remains at home in the interim, an oasis of domesticity in a life of exile, but the title gives the game away: Ethan is actually wandering for almost the entire film. There is a difference to the time the film covers: Ethan is searching, not just drifting at random. His very clear goal is to track a Comanche chief (Henry Brandon) so he can avenge the rape and murder of his brother's family and find - perhaps "mercy-kill" - his kidnapped niece (played by siblings Lana and Natalie Wood, as a child and adolescent, respectively). Ethan is a mess of conflicting impulses and signifiers: redeemer of virtue and revenge-obsessed madman, tender uncle and bigoted/misogynist hater of race-mixing, stalwart defender of white civilization and outcast from that same civilization. The movie both embodies classical western forms and subtly subverts them, drawing on the genre conventions that Ford and Wayne helped create while pointing toward the revisionist decades to come. Receiving decent reviews and perhaps turning a modest profit, The Searchers proceeded to disappear for a while; it didn't get much distribution and other Ford films were more frequently celebrated. By the seventies, however, most notably in Taxi Driver, the film had become one of the most influential works of American cinema. Its tough-guy antihero not only shaped the lonely, angry protagonists of New Hollywood but - directly or indirectly - the brooding men of cable TV's Golden Age. In terms of psychological impact alone, it has certainly earned its consistent place as the most acclaimed western of all time.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Fists in the Pocket (#28)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Fists in the Pocket (1965/Italy/dir. Marco Bellochio) appeared at #28 on my original list.

What it is • Up in the villa overlooking a vast valley, as in an enchanted castle in a child's fable, a family remains frozen in time. Surrounded by old pictures and heirloom furniture, buried in conservative Catholic publications, a blind mother (Liliana Gerace) "watches" over her brood of malcontents: Augusto (Marino Mase), the normal one with a job and a girlfriend in the town below who chafes at his obligations to the rest of the family; Giulia (Paola Pitagora), a striking but immature young woman; Leone (Pier Luigi Troglio), a mentally and physically disabled young man who needs to be looked after; and finally, Alessandro (Lou Castel), the brooding, combustible rebel who slinks around the grounds like a cat, stirring trouble and cultivating his own sense of bitterness. It will ultimately be Ale who concocts a half-cocked plan to violently break this spell - but will he have the courage to follow through on his brutal convictions? When the film was released in the mid-sixties, it felt shocking even amidst its revolutionary milieu. No less a subversive than Luis Bunuel found it too provocative, condemning it as an exercise in bad taste. Much of the movie plays - to me at least - like a black comedy, yet Fists in the Pocket is deadly serious at heart. And the film perfectly matches its beautiful but abrasive, unsettling style to its troubling story. This is one of the all-time great fucked-up family portraits, and deserves to be more widely known.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Goodfellas (#29)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Goodfellas (1990/USA/dir. Martin Scorsese) appeared at #29 on my original list.

What it is • This is the earliest film on this list that I actually remember being released in theaters. Don't get me wrong - I didn't go anywhere near the theaters showing it (spoilers follow, if that matters at this point). The tale of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a real life Queens hoodlum-turned FBI informant, and his pals Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro), the film is loaded with foul-mouthed tirades and bloody executions, not to mention "adult themes." Seven in the fall of 1990, I was only allowed to see one Joe Pesci movie: Home Alone, in which the hot-tempered little guy's head is merely set on fire rather than shot full of holes. I was very aware of Goodfellas at the time; my father and adult relatives talked about it all the time (my dad explained the plot points, observing that Pesci plays an evil killer yet the film makes you feel sorry for him when he dies). I was old enough to glance through the newspapers and see all the four-star reviews, and to watch the Oscars (well, on videotape the next day, since they were past my bedtime) and see clips of Pesci growling, "You think I'm funny?" Goodfellas' stellar reputation has held for the following quarter-century (it marked that anniversary last year with a tempest-in-a-social-media-teapot about whether or not women liked Goodfellas too - they do). It has remained one of Scorsese's most celebrated films, providing a template, dialogue patter, and cinematic style followed by dozens, if not hundreds, of gangster/drug dealer/con artist films since, including many of Scorsese's own. While he's done a lot of interesting work since 1990, a strong case can be made that none of his subsequent films has been as influential or widely beloved. That's not to knock them; it's just to observe the cinematic juggernaut Goodfellas became in the decades following its debut.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Red Hot Riding Hood (#30)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Red Hot Riding Hood (1943/USA/dir. Tex Avery) appeared at #30 on my original list.

What it is • We all know the story: a little girl goes romping through the woods to visit her grandma, while a sinister wolf lurks behind the trees ready to lead her astray. As Red Hot Riding Hood opens, a goofy narrator dutifully recites these familiar details, until the irritated wolf whirls around and stares straight out at the audience, lambasting the hidden storyteller. The credits roll again, in flashing neon, baring a subtitle "Something new has been added." That "something new" may be modernity - the new tale unfolds not in a rustic forest but amidst the urban jungle of Los Angeles with spotlights shooting from the skyscraper windows and a Hollywood and Vine street sign wrapped around the wolf's head after he takes a tumble. Or the "something new" might be sex, what was implicit in the original story now brought to the forefront - you'll lose count of the phallic symbols within about ten seconds of this new beginning. Little Red is now involved in a nightclub striptease and the wolf is her biggest fan, flipping between sleazy pickup artist, put-on Euro-sophisticate, and gawky goofball, depending on what he thinks will work. None of it does and as in the fairy tale, he races to Grandma's (some have read her as a bordello madam, awaiting the return of one of her employees) to intercept her and try again. Instead, the old woman who greets him is even hornier than he is, and has a stamina that ultimately defeats the exhausted canine, chasing him through rooms, knocking him out windows, reappearing in doorways when he thinks he's gotten rid of her. None of these descriptions convey the lightning energy of the short itself - it must be watched to be digested. Perhaps the "something new" that's been added is cinema: this is a fairly tale completely reconfigured for a new mass medium, a folk legend given new life by celluloid and the animator's brush.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Singin' in the Rain (#31)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Singin' in the Rain (1952/USA/dir. Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly) appeared at #31 on my original list.

What it is • First off, it's a joyous parade of classic song-and-dance numbers (from the opening umbrella-and-rainslicker trio to the more immortal fedora-and-topcoat solo, from the cheerfully inventive non sequitur "Calendar Girl" to perhaps the best sequence in the whole film, Donald O'Conner's "Make 'Em Laugh"). But we shouldn't let that distract us from one of the best-scripted musical stories of all time; the plot of the film is no mere clothesline revue, nor a series of preparatory notes and steps to position us for the real narrative heavy-lifting of the showpiece songs. Instead, the film could be stripped of all its musical numbers and you'd still be left with one of Hollywood's most memorable romantic comedies, not to mention one of its most charming films about films. Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are the most popular stars of the silent cinema - emphasis on "silent," since it turns out Lamont's voice could never withstand public scrutiny. The preview of their first talkie, The Dueling Cavalier, is one of the funniest parodies I've ever seen (worthy of being its own standalone short), especially once the dialogue falls out of sync and lapses into slow motion. Meanwhile, Lockwood is falling in love with Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), a dancer willing to prick his pomposity when he's riding high and lift his spirits when he's fallen low. Together, he, Miss Selden, and life-of-the-party songman Cosmo Brown (O'Conner) concoct a brilliant plan to save Lockwood's doomed production (and career). Their joyous feat of creativity, and his romantic chemistry with co-creator Selden, launches Lockwood out into the street where he croons the title number - one of the most blissful moments in movie history.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Easy Rider (#32)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Easy Rider (1969/USA/dir. Dennis Hopper) appeared at #32 on my original list.

What it is • Two all-American coke dealers (dubbed Captain America and Buffalo Bill, natch) score big and head for Florida, loading up their choppers with their illicit profits (Fonda called the shot of his character shoving a pipe full of cash into his star-spangled gas tank "fucking the flag with money," and the whole film - God love it - is pitched at about that level of visual subtlety). Along the way, they stop by communes, farms, roadside diners, motels (who flash a "No" over their "Vacancy" when they glimpse the bikers' hair and costumes) and even the occasional jail cell. Marijuana is smoked around campfires, acid is dropped at Mardi Gras, and George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) pops up to ride the back of one bike, clad in a goofy gold high school football helmet. The Byrds, The Band, Hendrix, and of course Steppenwolf adorn the soundtrack and the result is a picaresque tour through late sixties America, cemented not just by the audiovisual content but the form: sinuous telephoto pans across objects and faces, quiet verite observations, cuts back and forth across space and time, fish-lensed LSD trips - all the tricks and trades of European cinema brought to bear on very American subject matter. Finally, of course, there's the violence, inescapable in the era of riots, assassinations, and the Vietnam War. An instant hit in '69, regarded more ambivalently later on (and by some, even then) as too self-serious a hippie manifesto, the film carries both a simple-but-effective iconographic power and a more sophisticated combination of elements. Most importantly, it's a joyride, relying on the power of its style to sweep up the viewer.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - White Heat (#33)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. White Heat (1949/USA/dir. Raoul Walsh) appeared at #33 on my original list.

What it is • Eighteen years after his breakthrough in The Public Enemy, long after the model of lean, ruthless Warner gangster pictures had been replaced by brooding, psychological noir, James Cagney played perhaps his most iconic hoodlum. Cody Jarrett, a middle-aged holdup man, is bloodthirsty and brutal with only one weakness - a Freudian devotion to his equally hardbitten Ma (Margaret Wycherly), the only person who can soothe his splitting migraines. Taking the rap for a petty robbery to avoid a much more serious sentence, he finds himself bunkmates with undercover Treasury agent Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien), who later escapes with him and tries to prevent the next big heist. In the pre-Code era, gangsters were allowed to carry the films by themselves, but later crime films often shifted the focus toward law enforcement, pre-emptively censoring the antisocial tendencies of the genre. Hank is our "good guy" in this film but it's hard not to fall for Cagney's charismatic psychosis. The scene in which he climbs on top of the commissary table, kicking, screaming, and punching out guards in a grieving (but perhaps calculated) temper tantrum is a tour de force of a certain type of acting, neither Method nor classical technique, physical but rooted in emotion.

Why I like it •