Whenever I meet someone new, one of the first things I look forward to discussing with them is what their favourite films are, not only because you can often tell a lot about a person from what films they most enjoy, but also because it is a topic on which most are instantly passionate.
Having presented a film review show on Channel 31 for two years, studied film at university and actively pursued a career as a film maker ever since, it is oft a part of my daily conversation. Recently a friend asked me to write him a list of my ten favourite films, must-sees that would give him not only inspiration the next time he was at the video store, but a chance to see the cinematic world through my eyes: what does one who dedicates his life to film take inspiration from?
In review, my Top 10 would actually make a great ‘sampler’ for anyone without much experience outside the blockbuster box.
So without further ado, and in NO PARTICULAR ORDER, here are is my Top 10 and a reason why I love them.
I don’t expect everyone to agree - but that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
Breathless (À bout de souffle) (1960) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
The film that begun the movement known as the ‘French New Wave’. This is a film-enthusiasts dream: the first film to embrace hand-help cinematography and new editing techniques like ‘jump cutting’ (where the camera framing doesn’t change but the scene jumps forward in time). It is a beautiful depiction of being young and cool in Paris in the 60s wrapped up in a love-story crime-caper.
Godard famously said: “I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.”
Since so many of the filmic conventions ‘Breathless’ created were done out of necessity, to me this film is a testament to the will of the young film maker. There is no other film that makes me want to make film more.
All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre) (1999) dir. Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodovar is a filmmaker who has dedicated his career to the celebration of women, and to that end, this is his opus. The theme of the film (which takes it’s inspiration from the 1950 film ‘All About Eve’ – also in the Top 10) is that part of every woman is a mother, an actress, a saint, a sinner and part of every man is a woman. Through these paradigms he presents us a series of female characters (real and transgender) exemplifying these traits in a beautifully complex and soulfully engaging way, brought to life in the kaleidoscopic primary colour palate he (and thusly, Spanish cinema) has become famous for.
Dancer In the Dark (2000) dir. Lars von Trier
Gut-wrenchingly tear-inducing even after it’s tenth viewing. Bjork gives the sort of performance that most actors dream about as the suffering heroin of yet another film in which Lars von Trier tortures a female protagonist. Yet so much about this feels personal to all parties: for von Trier it is an indictment on America, for Bjork it is about what one will sacrifice for the love of a child and for music. Watch it and be carried away on a heady wave of misery.
There Will Be Blood (2007) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Another film where the protagonist’s performance is reason enough to watch. But it is not just Daniel Day Lewis’ turn as greed incarnate that warrants viewing, but director Paul Thomas Anderson’s ability to wring tension from scenes with harrowing precision, rendering terror in a genre that is not horror. An inspired and unconventional score by Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead and epic cinematography help resonate this fable of the dark side of the American dream.
Death Becomes Her (1992) dir. Robert Zemeckis
The purpose of black comedy as a genre is to take the nucleus of an idea and blow it up to disproportionate extremes thus feeding the audience ideas in a palatable and entertaining way.
At the time of it’s production, no one could have estimated that the ‘fountain-of-youth’ obsession would become as common-place as it did by the beginning of the new century, yet that’s exactly what Death Becomes Her explores, in a twisted and darkly comic way.
It is also a chance for Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn to exercise their brilliant knack for physical comedy as they literally tear each other apart, unable to die due to a potion that promises them eternal youth and life everlasting.
All About Eve (1950) dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Before there was Dynasty, before Melrose Place, before Gossip Girl, people had to go to the moves to watch glamorous women destroy each other. And no one did it better that Bette. Bette Davis plays an aging theatre star who takes her biggest fan on as an assistant, only to see her steal her job, her man and ultimately her Academy Award.
Witty dialogue and scathing remarks are delivered with such break-neck speed and precision, you need to watch it multiple times just to appreciate how genius the writing and performances are.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) dir. Howard Hawks
When gay men die, they go to a place that looks like this movie. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell play showgirls on a boat full of bachelors, one looking to marry for love, the other for money.
A film worth studying on so many levels: the least of which is as a way of exploring how sexual subtext could be inserted in every possible angle of dialogue at a time when Hollywood was a puritanical as ever.
If ever there was a film that celebrated Monroe the actress, this was it: a chance for her to parody what the world thought she was, yet deliver it in a performance cut with the precision of a diamond.
With the witty dialogue of a stage play and musical numbers that play out like blue prints for the music videos of forty years later (the ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ number later became Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes looks and sounds like Hollywood heaven, yet it brilliantly parodies everything the industry stands for in all of it’s sexist and materialistic glory.
Manhattan (1979) dir. Woody Allen
From it’s Gershwin-scored orchestral fire-works-over-the-skyline opening to it’s breathtaking black and white cinematography, this is Woody Allen’s masterpiece poem to a city which he has spent his career trying to put a celluloid frame around. Anyone who has enjoyed Seinfeld, Sex and The City, or any other tale that has celebrated New York, owes much to the man who helped invent the genre while the rest of the world was still looking to Los Angeles as a filmic hub.
The multiple protagonists all paint a beautiful, pathos-ridden picture of modern inner-city life.
Match Point (2005) dir. Woody Allen
A vastly different film to any other he has directed, Match Point is a slow-burning crime drama in which an Irish tennis coach works his way up through the British aristocracy, driven by ambition and sociopathic loathing.
It gives Woody Allen a chance to turn his metropolitan fetishist’s eye on London, celebrating it’s landmarks, society and wealth the the way he has in New York for thirty years.
Many of the two-handed scenes play out like intensifying tennis matches: just when you think someone has won, the ball falls over the net.
Yet the film’s greatest achievement in my mind is its skill in drawing an anti-hero so sympathetic that we will watch him do the unspeakable ultimately root for him.
Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) dir. Woody Allen
Yet another new direction for a director who many regarded as being past his prime in the nineties. This film is a sun-filled ode to the great European directors of the twentieth century: Fellini, Visconti, De Sica.
It is also a meditation on the transforming power of creativity: we either create or destroy ourselves.
It is an enchanting celebration of European love and living as told through the exploits of two American tourists (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) who are both seduced by a brooding Spanish painter (Jarvier Bardem).
The film explores romance’s varying extremes: those who are of the head, those who are of the heart: enter Penelope Cruz as the lusty wild-woman painter Maria-Elena, in one of my favourite screen performances as the physical manifestation of demented love and passion.
