My Gleanings

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Positif at Cahiers du Cinema Ado Kyrou 10 best Films 1954-1955

Ado (Adonis) Kyrou is the author of the classic Le Surréalisme en cinéma. He along with Robert Benayoun was a regular contributor in the early 1950s of the revue L'Age du cinema and like Benayoun he became a regular contributor to Positif. In both 1954 and 1955, he contributed a 10 best films list to Cahiers du Cinema. The January 1955 issue of Cahiers inaugurated their first cycle of 10 best films lists (1954 to 1958) printing the lists of 16 lists most not surprisingly from regular Cahiers contributors.


1954
1.....El (Luis Bunuel)
2.....The Wild One (Laszlo Benedek)
3.....I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini)
4.....Beat the Devil (John Huston)
5.....Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa)
6.....The Red and the Black (Claude Autant-Lara)
7.....La Lupa (Alberto Lattauda)
8.....La Nave delle donne maledette (Raffaello Matarazzo)
9.....The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli)
10....Blackbeard the Pirate (Raoul Walsh)

1955
1.....Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich)
2.....The Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman)
3.....Rififi (Jules Dassin)
4.....The Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks)
5.....The Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem)
6.....Raizes (Benito Alazraki)
7.....The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
8.....Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich)
9.....The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold)

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I would like to remind any visitors who are browsing through this blog that there is one post that became too long That post (or as I am wont to say "stand-alone blog") inquires into the sources of François Truffaut's "A Certain Tendency of French Cinema" and the manner in which Truffaut collected the materials for his research and along the way the post challenges some of the charges which have been leveled against Truffaut by the director Bertrand Tavernier in this regard. That blog is called "The Bernanos Letter" and is available simply by following this link "The Bernanos Letter".

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Truffaut on two films

From Cahiers du Cinema, the July 1957 issue, a short note which appears under the Conseil des dix tableau on page 34.

" Senéchal le Magnifique has found a defender in the person of François Truffaut, it is absolutely impossible to cite another."

From François Truffaut : a guide to references and resources by Eugene Walz: Item 972 a review of the film Senéchal le Magnifique published in Arts 12 June 1957. Walz synopsizes the review thusly
An amusing film with a good script and excellent dialogue, but directed mechanically.


Item 973 which follows that entry is a review of the Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher western Seven Men from Now (
Sept hommes à abattre in France). Truffaut reviewed this film for Arts in the 24 July 1957 issue. Walz wrote this squib to summarize Truffaut's review.
"Truffaut disagrees with Bazin who says it is one of the three best Westerns in the last ten years. The script is excellent, but the direction is timid, gauche."


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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Cahiers and the young cinema in 1962 -- two Americans, a vulcanologist and a literary giant.

In December 1962, Cahiers du Cinema dedicated its yearly Christmas special issue to the young cinema, the "New Wave". Included in this issue was a dictionary of 166 new directors with filmography, biography and often thumbnail critique. What follows is my translation of the thumbnails for two Americans (Noel Burch and James Blue), a vulcanologist (Haroun Terzieff), and a ancien literary giant (Jean Giono -- born in 1895) included in that survey.

Haroun Tazieff
biography and this short critique

Where intrepidity is beauty; in this regard, the master of the best of the New Wave. (page 82)


Noel Burch
One of the first articles to examine the phenomenon of the young French cinema in America was written by Noel Burch for the Winter 1959 issue of Film Quarterly and titled "Qu'est-ce que la Nouvelle Vague?". Despite the title, the article is in English and is available on-line if one either subscribes to JSTOR or has borrowing privileges at a library which subscribes to JSTOR. In that article Burch showed a preference for Marcel Hanoun and described Francois Truffaut's work as "enlightened amateurism"
Note; the unfinished film discussed was based on Georges Bataille's novel Le Bleu du ciel.

If he figures here, it is for reasons somewhat unique: American by nationality, he is closely linked with the New Wave thanks to an unfinished, but wickedly overgrown, film; and from Bataille's beautiful book, he made an adaptation which was an equally original screenplay. Its auteur, one judges, had dwelt on the lesson of Pickpocket while alloying it with the lesson of the films of Resnais. The few sequences shot and edited leave us regretting the incomplete status of this enterprise.(page 64)

James Blue
biography
The history of film made us sceptical with regard to films shot in collaboration; Les Oliviers de la justice is the exception which proves the rule. Every scene has an unobtrusive power of things lived (by the scenarist-actor, Jean Peligri), every one of them is filmed with tact and correctness by the director James Blue. But both of the collaborators had these common points; love and knowledge of the Algerian terrain and a clear admiration for Robert Bresson.
What has been sometimes considered as inexperience or awkwardness was most of all a refusal
to heighten the mood, a primacy accorded to the "vie neutre", parallel to great events. When, the father having died, the son and the mother move the bed and change the sheets, it is a one of the great moment of cinema. (page 62)

Jean Giono

Criticism does not like the mystical and Cresus is one of the most mystical of films. A profound knowledge of Giono's writings would, in part, successfully elucidate it. But would it be a gain if one realizes that, alone, the degree of mystery can define the value of an non-realist, in other words non-cineaste, auteur, that, here, the enigma is identical to that which is propounded and epitomized in his best chronicles, "Un Roi sans divertissement" and "Le Moulin de Pologne", and finally that this film possesses a charm unknown in our cinema, Cocteau excepted, which categorically contradicts the hasty reproaches of commerce and folklore.
A comedy a little bit curious, technically flawed, and minus any show of pomp, foreign in all solicitations of its setting, Cresus seems an incarnation of Nothingness, a work without aim -- and, such as that, would still have the worth of an engrossing trompe l'oeil -- at the same time as a co-ordinated melange of an incisive fable and a comprehensive analysis of human behavior and expression.


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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Cahiers du Cinema on "young" cinema -- December 1958

The December 1958 issue of Cahiers du Cinema was partly dedicated to "young" cinema. When that issue hit the news-stands, François Truffaut was finishing up the filming of The Four Hundred Blows as was Alain Resnais with Hiroshima, mon amour; Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge was about to be released. That issue, if you have not checked out the table of contents page included material from these listed films as well as an introduction which I have provided a translation for:

Alexander Astruc -- Une Vie
Louis Malle and Louise Vilmorin -- Les Amants
Chris Marker -- Lettre de Sibérie
Jean Rouch -- Treichville
Claude Chabrol and Paul Gégauff -- Les Cousins
Jacques Rivette and Jean Gruault -- Paris nous appartient
Pierre Kast -- Le Bel âge
Norbert Carbonnaux -- Je vous salue Freddy
François Truffaut and Marcel Moussy -- Les Quatre cents coups


In cinema in France, the fashion is youth. What yesterday was a hindrance is today a favorable circumstance. A redressment is becoming apparent which we have always called our vow; but it is not enough to be twenty-five years old to have talent, and youthfulness is not necessarily a question of age. These filmmakers which we have grouped under the same heading have an average age which turns around the number thirty, but this unifies them less than a certain fashion of making films which distances them from the traditional fashion of doing it. This new manner itself cloaks a great diversity of styles, forms and subjects. You will realize this in reading the texts which follow. Our proposition, here and now, is not to critique. It is rather to give the "it" of this new cinema by publishing a few selections from screenplays, some dialogue exchanges, some adaptation. We have not been able to be exhaustive: Alain Resnais wanted nothing revealed for the time being of Hiroshima, mon amour; Vadim hasn't yet finished the adaptation of his Liasons dangerouses; from the first feature of François Reichenbach and the second of Claude Bernard-Aubert we can only show images of the work; concerning La Tête contre les murs, which Georges Franju has just finished, we can only publish a forward. Let us also indicate that we have deliberately separated out the short films, an unfailing source of promise and talent: we will return there in speaking of the Festival of Tours.
(page 34)

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Monday, June 18, 2007

Truffaut on the auteur 1960

This is a translation of two first two paragraphs of an essay which François Truffaut contributed to a collection entitled Cinema, univers de abscence in 1960. It was republished in Le Plaisir des yeux a collection of pieces by Truffaut in 1987. Truffaut had planned that book as a companion to The Films in My Life, however, he was not able to finish it and Jean Narboni and Serge Toubiana completed it working from a chapter scheme which Truffaut had devised and winnowing down a list of about 150 articles he had selected for possible inclusion. It is my translation.

The Director, the One Who Hasn't a Right to Complain

The question of knowing who is the true auteur of a film is not posed peremptorily: there are films of directors, films of screenwriters, films of cinematographers, films of stars. The hard and fast rule is that the director, and he alone, can be regarded as the auteur even though he may not have written a line of the scenario, he may not have directed the actors and he may not have chosen the camera angles. A film always resembles the one who gets the director's credit. And, in the worst case -- the one which I have just cited -- we would be looking straight at the film of a gentleman who had not directed the actors, collaborated on the screenplay or chosen the camera angles. Even were the screenplay good, the actors talented enough to play without direction and the cameraman skilled, this film would be a bad film and precisely, the bad film of a bad director.
In my opinion, the director is the lone member of the cinematic team who has no right to complain or feel mistreated; he must know himself well enough to assess his exact worth and to decide if he is capable of undergoing such-and-such constraint and to turn it to his own advantage -- the advantage of the film. Or, if such-and-such constraint will become a concession and, as such, detrimental in the outcome.
Let us not forget that the greatest director alive, Jean Renoir, has virtually directed only films de commande or adaptations, attracting them to himself until on each occasion he created a completely personal work.

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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Cahiers thumbnails for Agnes Varda, Chris Marker and Jacques Rozier

The December 1962 issue of Cahiers du Cinema was a special issue dedicated to the New Wave. among its features was a dictionary of 166 "new" French directors. Howver, the directors included there were not necessarily new -- Jean-Pierre Melville was included -- or young -- Jean Giono who was born in 1895 and who directed his first and only film in 1960 was also included -- or French -- Noel Burch and James Blue, both Americans who either directed in France (Blue) or were stymied in their effort to direct there (Burch) were included. These are my translations of the thumbnail critiques of Jacques rozier, Chris Marker and Agnes Varda from that feature.

Jacques Rozier
(filmography states "preparing a film 'on terror under the sun'")
His two short films, non-chalant and cheerful, had designated him as an outsider. Adieu Philippine locates him wholly in the first rank. That film is the paragon of the New Wave., that one where the virtues of the new cinema glitter in their purest brilliance, where his method sees the clearest and most convincing demonstration of their legitimacy, that would be a case of shooting on the fly, from the choice of new faces, from borrowing from TV, from the cheekiness of the telling, the theme, or finally of the youth. The other founders of the New Wave quickly turned its spirit to their advantage and their works plead more in favor of their own genius than that of the school. In Rozier's work, it is the opposite which speaks in his behalf for the good as well as the bad. Adieu Philippine puts a final point on the quarrel of the old and the modern; it confirms the downfall of classical realism which Italian neo-realism and its extensions were only respectful off-spring. After this film, all others appear false, and one thinks erroneously that the search for the natural could be pushed further.
The dangers here are the same as always from the realistic perspective. You can skirt them without tumbling over, though, primarily, the picturesque sometimes shows itself off, and that the quest for a morsel of bravura falsifies the modesty of tone; but the end of the film, better handled and darker, offers a refinement of psychology quite beyond the reach of average technicians, beyond the "objectivity" enslaved to their short-sighted scientism. What is more, the second half, reaches, without flourishes, symbols or other stylistic effects - the vestige of a too pious admiration -, a lyricism which makes of a scene of wasps, or of dance, or of goodbyes on the dike - something of the highest summit of the poetic where young French cinema installs itself on this day.


Chris Marker
(filmography states "preparing La Jetée")
He wears, sown on the pocket of his jacket, a yellow star on which one can read the word "intellectual". He wears it with style and ostentation, betting that the on-looker is not an ignorant idiot. Thanks to him, extreme preciosity and
gongorism have a cinematic equivalent.
This formalist has the taste for austerity, this paradoxical spirit, an eye for evidence. He should be protestant, he is a catholic, an essayist and he is a filmmaker. This eye for the shortcut, this taste for methodic can be found, thus, in Cuba, in Israel, on the sinuous line of the front where, in a manner today indiscernible, the outline of the revolutionary spirit is becoming apparent.
Brilliant, sarcastic, remarkable typographer , lovers of spectacle reproach him for not being something else. His motto could be drawn precisely from Gongora, "en rocas de cristal, serpeinte brieve" , as you would have it, "in the water of a diamond, the venom of a snake".


Agnes Varda

(by her filmography "preparing La Mélangite whose prologue has been filmed")
Can one like at the same time both Mao Tse-Teung and antiquaries? Agnès Varda proves "yes" prehaps. Her distinction is knowing how to direct, in other words, to accent, an object, a human being, a landscape, uniquely by its opposite: the fishermen of Sète by the intellectuals of the left (bank), the rue Mauffetard by the comic opera, Somewhat oddly, it is thus Agnès' intelligence which will serve to film Cleo's skin, while Cleo's sentimentality serves as quarry for
physical appetite of Agnès. Otherwise spoken, everything happens as if lucidity helps Varda to become impassioned while passion helps her to legislate. In brief, Agnès Varda, or emotion seized by rigor. From whence the impression watching her films of a sort of cantilever. Agnès Varda, if one is mischievous, is a little like Oscar Wilde who ordered a beggar's outfit from the toniest tailor in London. But if one is kind, she is a lot like Baudelaire and his ideas on art and the dandy. What is more, she is the first one to talk of women in terms of pain and freedom, and not of magazines. And if this feminine Zola is sometimes a little lacking in feminine instinct, let us admire her for creating, as Sternberg did, her own light.


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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Truffaut Resnais and the 400 Blows

This is translated from the ending an article by Cahiers editor Jacques Doniol-Valcroze covering the exhibition of Les Quatre cents coups at Cannes in May 1959 as an event.

Bazin dead, Les quatre cents coups, which he is the posthumous producer of, could only be dedicated to him. André alive, -- and the notion of what his joy would have been brings a lump to my throat, -- André in attendance, this heart-rending and buoyant film on the tenderness of this world might naturally have been dedicated to [Alain] Resnais.

Cahiers du Cinema June 1959 page 42 my translation.


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Saturday, June 09, 2007

Jean Douchet's American Director thumbnails Cahiers du Cinema Dec63

The following are translations of the thumbnail critiques written by Jean Douchet for the Dec63/Jan64 special issue of Cahiers du Cinema on American Cinema. They are my translations.


Blake Edwards
Burlesque, ironic, bitter, tragic: all registers are good to him; what is in common? Maybe, this: the dark Edwards drops his heroes into situations for which they are the least prepared-and watches them extricate themselves.This is, one would have it and to be a tad sociological,a depiction of the inadaptibility of the average American in his own society and of his powerlessness to obtain the happiness it has promised him.Tiffany's brooches are only pins, the days of wine and roses are thorny and hung-over: from whence the "farce" which is only the last look on a hopeless universe. Let's return to Tiffany's, a New York film in the style of The New Yorker, it is also the only meeting of matter and manner; for the remainder, it is this one or that one, each forsaken and pitiable.

Rouben Mamoulian
He is intelligent, amusing, lively. He has character, to boot. When a producer bothers him, he sends you packing from a Porgy and Bess or a Cleopatra like nothing. This fantasy, which is a very serious method of considering life is to be discovered in his films. It is the source of visual and audio invention which made the renown of this stage director in the 1930s and which inspired still filmmakers such as Stanley Donen and VincenteMinelli. A specialist in musical comedy, Mamoulian has directed some of the most beautiful ballets on screen. He is today a first-rate absentee at the Hollywood ball.

Joseph L Mankiewicz
And the word was made Mankiewicz, who bases his direction entirely on the energy of the word. It is the vehicle of the extreme intelligence which his characters live, ands he motivates them to mark with an indelible imprint, through the construction of a durable body of work, their passage through this world. But it also remains the instrument which allows these mediocrities to warp the wall of plots, counter-plots, and machinations stand in the way of their plans. It is, above all, a tangible sign of the times which promotes the dissolution of a sumptuous construction built on the sands of time. At the same time, the word, which is gesture, acts and it loses itself in the brouhaha of that which is opposed to it before it steals away. It is magical (from whence the fact that all Mankiewicz's films are in flash-backs or reminiscences) and, in that way, illusion. This vehicle without which man can not be, reveals itself to be his worst enemy. Off-shoot of silence, the word is the pathetic and trifling proof of his existence: a murmuring rising up into the universe to signal the presence of a being whose grandeur comes from the avowal of his frailty. Such is Mankiewiecz, the cinematic virtue of the word.

Vincente Minnelli
There is a Minnellian universe, you either love it or you hate it. His obvious mannerism , his refinement and finesse conceal a terrifying world, that of poisonous flowers or carnivores. In this unfriendly clime a nervous, morbid hyper-sensitivity colors meaningfully all that touches or surrounds it and realizes its dreams in a setting (physical and human) expecting through the demarcation of its territory to preserve itself. Vain experience: in this sealed hot-house world, you can blossom and grow only by nourishing yourself on the dreams of others and also be subject to attack from their reality. That is to say that existence is above all threatening in itself that it devours itself.
One can not pose in a fashion more fundamental and anguishing the challenge of the artist - and there are no Minnellian heroes who are not hyper-sensitive and thus artist - facing a work which absorbs him and whose existence he jeopardizes as he creates it. In an ethereal manner in the musical comedies where the impossible dream of the union of all significant longings are marvelously realized; in a bitter, cruel manner in the comedies where the irony of fate provisionally assents to synchronize dream and reality in the work. And, finally, in a acrid, desperate manner in the dramas where dream and reality mutually destroy one another leaving to the work and to the artist only the reflection of themselves, the shadow of their combat.

Raoul Walsh
A force of nature directs the forces of nature and suddenly the world lives, whirlwinds and passions. It is no longer a time to consider Walsh a macho brawler, a libertine who likes to joke around, a boor with unrefined feelings. This passionate Shakespearean is a filmmaker so physical that because of it it depicts a world bustling with the mental. The characters are projected into a universe of their "energy" and steered toward a space which exists only to serve their anger, their fanaticism, their fervor, their cunning, their ambition and their immoderate dreams. Everything here is confrontation and one-on-one fighting. Everything is colors itself, is changes itself, and puts itself in action according to the movement of individuals possessed by grandeur. Meditation is then the necessary companion of decisive and rational action and implies rigorousness, terseness and austerity in the art of the narration: that of the great masters. Walsh, the master of adventure, certainly, but of the authentic adventure, the inner-fantastic.

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Jean Eustache 10 best films Cahiers du Cinema 1965-1968

1965
1.....Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa... (Luchino Visconti)
.......Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
.......educational and moral films of Eric Rohmer for TV
4.....Paris vu par. . . (Jean Rouch sketch)
5.....Lilith (Robert Rossen)
.......L'Amour à la chaine (Claude de Givray)
7.....Metel (Vladimir Basov)
8.....Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
.......Black Peter (Milos Forman)
.......The Enchanted Desna (Julia Solntseva)

1966
1.....Homme au crâne rasé (André Delvaux)
2.....Non-Reconciliés (Jean-Marie Straub)
3.....Walkover (Jerzy Skolimowski)
4.....Masculin Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
5.....Le Chat dans le sac (Gilles Groulx)
.......La Guerre est finie (Alain Resnais)
.......Marie Soleil (Antoine Bourseiller)
.......Fist in his Pocket (Marco Bellocchio)
9.....Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock)
10...Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)

1967
(alphabetical in French)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy)
Covek nije tica (Dusan Makavejev)
Os Fuzis (Ruy Guerra)
Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
Daisies (Vera Chytilova)
Playtime (Jacques Tati)
Shakespeare-Wallah (James Ivory)

1968
1.....Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini sketch)
2
.....Les Idoles (Marc'o)
3
.....Edipo re (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
4
.....The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Jean-Marie Straub)
.......Il ne faut pas mourir pour ça (Jean Pierre Lefebvre)
.......Bariera (Jerzy Skolomowski)


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Monday, June 04, 2007

Jean-Luc Godard "Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma"

When, in 1977, Henri Langlois died suddenly, he left unfulfilled a commitment to lecture at the University of Montreal in Canada. Jean-Luc Godard was called in to take up the relief. Through seven "voyages" (two lectures to a "voyage"), Godard compared one of his films to other films in the history of cinema. The lectures were published in 1980 as "Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma". Godard left this project feeling that the history of film was best told in images and and he was lead into the "Histoire(s) du Cinema" project. That book appears to have never been translated into English. What follows is the syllabus for that course.

First journey
Fallen Angel -- Otto Preminger
A Bout de souffle -- Jean-Luc Godard

&
M -- Fritz Lang
Le Petit soldat -- Jean-Luc Godard


Second journey
Nana -- Jean Renoir
The Passion of Joan of Arc -- Carl Theodore Dreyer
Greed -- Eric von Stroheim
Vampyr -- Carl Theodore Dreyer
Carmen Jones -- Otto Preminger
Vivre sa vie -- Jean-Luc Godard

&
The Man with a Camera -- Dziga Vertov
The Bad and the Beautiful -- Vincente Minnelli
La Nuit Americaine -- François Truffaut
Le Mépris -- Jean-Luc Godard


Third journey

Faust -- F W Murnau
Rancho Notorious -- Fritz Lang
La Belle et la bête -- Jean Cocteau
L'Année dernière à Marienbad -- Alain Resnais
Alphaville -- Jean-Luc Godard

&
Nanook of the North -- Robert Flaherty
The Flowers of Saint Francis -- Roberto Rossellini
Persona -- Ingmar Bergman
Une Femme mariée -- Jean-Luc Godard


Fourth journey

Sunrise -- F W Murnau
You Only Live Once -- Fritz Lang
Rebel Without a Cause -- Nicholas Ray
Ugetsu Monogatari -- Kenji Mizoguchi
Pierrot le fou -- Jean-Luc Godard

&
Sous les toits de Paris -- René Clair
Pickpocket -- Robert Bresson
La Fille de Prague avec un sac très lourd -- Danielle Jaeggi
Masculin Féminin -- Jean-Luc Godard


Fifth journey
Les Vampires -- Louis Feuillade
Underworld -- Joseph von Sternberg
The Postman Always Rings Twice -- Tay Garnett
Made in U.S.A. -- Jean-Luc Godard

&
Potemkin -- Sergei Eisenstein
L'Age d'or -- Louis Bunuel-Salvador Dali
Mr Deeds Goes to Town -- Frank Capra
Le Chinoise -- Jean-Luc Godard


Sixth journey

Dracula -- Tod Browning
Germany Year Zero -- Roberto Rossellini
The Birds -- Alfred Hitchcock
Week End -- Jean-Luc Godard

&
Arsenal -- Alexander Dovchenko
La Règle du jeu -- Jean Renoir
Europe 51 -- Roberto Rossellini
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle -- Jean-Luc Godard


Seventh Journey

Top Hat -- Mark Sandrich
Brigadoon -- Vincente Minnelli
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones -- Rollin Binzer
New York New York -- Martin Scorcese
One Plus One -- Jean-Luc Godard

&
The Last Patrol -- John Ford
Alexander Nevsky -- Sergei Eisenstein
Open City -- Roberto Rossellini
Les Carbiniers -- Jean-Luc Godard


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Friday, June 01, 2007

Jean Narboni 10 best films Cahiers du Cinema 1963-1968

Jean Narboni is a longtime writer of film criticism for Cahiers du Cinema. In the Cahiers on-line archive, he has some 25 pages of articles. He was a member of the Secrètariat at that magaizine from June 1965 till October 1968 when he bacame co-editor with Jean-Louis Comolli. They shared that post through June of 1972.

1963
1.....Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard)
.......The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
3......Les Carabiniers (Jean-Luc Godard)
4......Donovan's Reef (John Ford)
........Le Petit Soldat (Jean-Luc Godard)
........The Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson)
7......Adieu Phillippine (Jacques Rozier)
........The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis)
9......The Chapman Report (George Cukor)
10.....Muriel (Alain Resnais)


1964
1......Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard)
2......The Damned (Joseph Losey)
3......All These Women (Ingmar Bergman)
4......Il Tempo si è fermato (Ermanno Olmi)
5......America, America (Elia Kazan)
6......La Paasagère (Andrzej Munk)
7......La Bataille du France (Jean Aurel)
8......Le Terroriste (Gianfranco de Bosio)
9......Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock)
10....Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)


1965
1......The Gospel According to St Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
........Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
3......Paris vu par. . . (Jean Rouch sketch)
4......Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
5......King and Country (Joseph Losey)
........L'Amour à la chaine (Claude de Givray)
........Black Peter (Milos Forman)
8......La Vieille dame indigne (René Allio)
9......Journal d'une femme en Blanc (Claude Autant-Lara)
10....Cargo pour la réunion (Paul Mesnier)


1966
1......Seven Women (John Ford)
2......L'Homme au crâne rasé (André Delvaux)
.......Masculin/Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
.......Non-Reconciliés (Jean-Marie Straub)
.......Walkover (Jerzy Skolomowski)
6......La Guerre est finie (Alain Resnais)
7......Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock)
8......
Anything Else(Vera Chytilova)
9......Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
10.....Une femme en blanc se révolte (Claude Autant-Lara)

1967
1......Belle du Jour (Luis Bunuel)
.......Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
.......Bezhin Meadow (Sergei Eisenstein)
4......La Chasse au lion à l'arc (Jean Rouch)
.......Masculin féminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
.......Daisies (Vera Chytilove)
.......Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
8......Playtime (Jacques Tati)
.......La religeuse (Jacques Rivette)
10...Os Fuzis (Ruy Guerra)


1968
1......The Edge (Robert Kramer)
........The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Jean-Marie Straub)
3......Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini sketch)
4......The Bride Wore Black (François Truffaut)
........Before the Revolution (Bernardo Bertolucci)
6......Il ne faut pas mourir pour ça (Jean-Pierre Lefebvre)
7......Diabolik (Mario Bava)
8......Charlie Bubbles (Albert Finney)
9......Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman)


10 Best American films of the sound era (Dec63/Jan64)
1......Diary of a Chambermaid (Jean Renoir)
2......The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
3......To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
4......Bitter Victory (Nicholas Ray)
5......Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang)
6......Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger)
7......The Quiet American (Joseph L Mankiewiecz)
8......To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
9......A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk)
10....The Man Who shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)


10 Best French films since the Liberation (Jan65)
!......Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
2......Le Petit soldat (Jean-Luc Godard)
3......Moi un noir (Jean Rouch)
4......Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (Jean Renoir)
5......Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
6......Hiroshima, mon amour (Alain Resnais)
7......Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol)
8......Orphée (Jean Cocteau)
9......La Vie d'un honnête homme (Sacha Guitry)
10.....Le Plaisir (Max Ophuls)

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