1958 poll

[Lencho of the Apes]

There are 8-12 "small" years left, and 20-24 full-scale ones. I don't see any need to change the way they're organized w/r/t each other. Am I overlooking something?

[pabs]

Oh. Sorry. I thought in an earlier post you made in this thread that you were unsure as to what you'd now do with the smaller years in the new, extended polling periods. Not sure exactly when you posted that or how I imagined you were thinking that the small years would be trickier to insert. I obviously misunderstood you.

[ofrene]

Final

Firefly Light (changing for more point...)

A Time to Love and a Time to Die
Ajantrik
Ashes and Diamonds
Bonjour Tristesse
Cairo Station
Elevator to the Gallows
Equinox Flower
Eroica
Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars’ Plot
Man of the West
Mon Oncle
Montparnasse 19
Murder by Contract
Summer Clouds
The Ballad of Narayama
The Magician
The Music Room
Touch of Evil
Vertigo

[...]

Cairo Station
The Music Room
Conflagration
Ashes and Diamonds
The Fly
Vertigo
Big Deal on Madonna Street
Fanfare
Madhumati
A Matter of Dignity
Amelia and the Angel
A Movie
The Quiet American
The Blob
The Left Handed Gun
Bell, Book, and Candle
The Reluctant Debutante
The Colossus of New York
High School Confidential
The H-Man

maybe my final list, but with all the tough choices, there could be changes before the end

[patrick]

Shepardi di Orgosolo (De Seta)
Pescherecci (De Seta)
Un giorno in Barbagia (De Seta)
Buchanan Rides Alone (Boetticher)
Bridges-Go-Round (Shirley Clarke)
Flood of Fear (Charles Crichton)
A Night to Remember (Baker)
Stolen Desire (Imamura)
The Last of the Fast Guns (Sherman)
Corridors of Blood (Day)
Terror in a Texas Town (Lewis)

[pabs]

I just saw A Matter of Dignity (Kakogiannis), a sweet film. Ellie Lambeti as Hloi (Chloe in my subtitles) was marvellous, a moving performance especially in the last 10 minutes, when she finally dishes a few home truths to her mother.



I guess it's too late to recommend for this poll? I want to see more old Greek films like this one now.

Thank you to karl, who mentioned it first.

A Matter of Dignity (Kakogiannis)

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Oh, sure, and where were you when I was trying to get some appreciation for the awesome Garden of Allah in one of our earlier polls? (Also try and watch Capra's '29 movie Flight if you want to have some real fun with early queer cinema where the subtext is only scarcely concealed, if even that.)

Lol, love it ! Moving Garden of Allah and Flight to the top of my queue! Definitely agree with your on-point partial criticisms of Bell, Book, Candle too. It has a wonky tone from scene to scene and a real internal divide, as you say, in terms of narrative commitments. Despite my placing it #1 on my list, it obviously can't possible match a masterpiece like Vertigo in terms of aesthetic and thematic unity. But then, Kim Novak as a sad lonely woman at Christmas with a secret magic part of her self hidden from the world (read: her true gender/sexuality) is enough to make me only remember the good stuff...

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Another fun poll for me! Seen 27 at poll's open. Now seen 42. Huzzah!

My votes:

1. Bell, Book and Candle
— Cairo Station
— I Married a Monster from Outer Space
— Skyhook
— Vertigo
— Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
— Equinox Flower
— The Fly
— The Fountain of Youth
— Portrait of Gina

[...]

After some thought, I did add Bell, Book since the good parts are awfully good and it certainly wasn't worse than most of the others I would have chosen instead. Might as well get it some extra support instead of voting for a movie no one else chose.

[john ryan]

1. The Ballad of Narayama (Kinoshita)

Vertigo (Hitchcock)
The Big Country (Wyler)
Touch of Evil (Welles)
Ivan the Terrible Part II (Eisenstein)
The Music Room (Ray)
The Vikings (Fleischer)
The Tarnished Angels (Sirk)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Brooks)
Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger)
Some Came Running (Minnelli)
Giants and Toys (Masumura)
Elevator to the Gallows (Malle)
Summer Clouds (Naruse)
The Revenge of Frankenstein (Fisher)
Little Peach (Naruse)
The Magician (Bergman)
Firefly Light (Gosho)
Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda)
Party Girl (Ray)

[liquidnature]

I should stop reading these threads otherwise I will surely run out of disc space. But some of these look amazing. Good job @ pabz for knocking out so many big names in such a short time. I can get where you are coming from with the poll suggestions. I don't have any suggestions, I'm just obsessively organized with time/days/seasons and schedules and equilibrium - so a set schedule really appeals to my brain. Again, not saying this to have any influence as I can't promise I can watch anything at all for polls, just sharing a tidbit about my personality.

[rischka]

it shore nuff is a big country. between peck and heston it's hard to know who to root for. think i'll go with the wildass burl ives clan it got better but still won't make my list.

[wba]

Wow, what a year!!!

It seems that I have seen roughly 40+ masterpieces from this year, though Imdb tells me that I've seen a mere 70 movies overall.
That means almost two thirds of all the films I've seen from this year were mindblowingly delicious!




Final List

01. Les seigneurs de la foret "Masters of the Congo Jungle" (Henry Brandt/Heinz Sielmann, Belgium)
02. Shimizu Minato no meibutso otoko: Enshumori no Ishimatsu "The Travelling Ruffian" (Masahiro Makino, Japan)
03. Narayama bushiko "The Ballad of Narayama" (Keisuke Kinoshita, Japan)
04. Kakushi-toride no san-akunin "The Hidden Fortress" (Akira Kurosawa, Japan)
05. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, USA)
06. Dokufu Takahashi Oden "A Wicked Woman" (Nobuo Nakagawa, Japan)
07. Nackt, wie Gott sie schuf "Nudi come Dio li creò" (Hans Schott-Schobinger, West Germany/Italy/Austria)
08. Helden "Arms and the Man" (Franz Peter Wirth, West Germany)
09. Hateshinaki yokubo "Endless Desire" (Shohei Imamura, Japan)
10. Das Dreimaderlhaus "Lilac Time" (Ernst Marischka, Austria/West Germany)

11. Le fatiche di Ercole "Hercules" (Pietro Francisci, Italy/Spain)
12. Eine Reise ins Gluck (Wolfgang Schleif, West Germany)
13. Les amants "The Lovers" (Louis Malle, France)
14. Der Schinderhannes "Duel in the Forest" (Helmut Kautner, West Germany)
15. Auferstehung "Resurrection" (Rolf Hansen, West Germany/Italy/France)
16. I soliti ignoti "Big Deal on Madonna Street" (Mario Monicelli, Italy)
17. Madeleine und der Legionar "Escape from Sahara" (Wolfgang Staudte, West Germany)
18. The Fly (Kurt Neumann, USA)
19. The Last of the Fast Guns (George Sherman, USA)
20. Liebe kann wie Gift sein "Impudeur" (Veit Harlan, West Germany)

[wba]

Mädchen in Uniform (Géza von Radványi) - Adequate though slightly watered down remake. A lesbian educator is the role Lilli Palmer was born to play, she did a mighty fine job as one in this and in The House That Screamed (1970) as well.

Lilli Palmer can play (almost) anything! Terrific, terrific actress!! I love her voice and intonation (especially in German).

You should check out the incredible noir "The Glass Tower" (1957) by master director Harald Braun, where she plays in a menage a trois with two other heavyweight actors (and personal favorites of mine), O.E. Hasse and Peter van Eyck. Later in the film there is even a surprising supporting role by German screen goddess Brigitte Horney! This has recently been restored/digitized by the company I work at and should still be doing the rounds internationally in cinematheques and repertory theaters and some retrospectives.

[wba]

And thanks to Pabs for the "whole month" idea (great one!) and to greg for sharing his (as usual) wonderful and interesting thoughts and insights (even if I sometimes don't agree with them, I always love to read them!).

[karl]

I just saw A Matter of Dignity (Kakogiannis), a sweet film. Ellie Lambeti as Hloi (Chloe in my subtitles) was marvellous, a moving performance especially in the last 10 minutes, when she finally dishes a few home truths to her mother.



I guess it's too late to recommend for this poll? I want to see more old Greek films like this one now.

Thank you to karl, who mentioned it first.

A Matter of Dignity (Kakogiannis)

Glad somebody saw this. What a great film! Especially the completely unexpected direction it takes in the last quarter. You think it's a movie about a down-on-her-luck rich girl who's being forced by her parents to marry a guy she hates for his money rather than the handsome stranger who appears her life just as she's resigned herself to fate and then... whoa! Becomes a much more interesting thing in those last scenes. "Sweet," however, is not the first word that comes to mind to describe this picture.

[pabs]

Well, her character was sweet, is what I meant, I guess. The film itself takes a surprising dramatic and emotional turn in the last 25 minutes. I also think I fell in love with her.

I'm glad others are happy with the change to a calendar month for year polls. It makes good sense, I think.

I managed to add the Cottafavi peplum very late last night (though towards the end it was a bit of a struggle to stay awake). It was fun, though. So I managed to break my record for the number of films watched for a year-poll: 13. But doing that meant i had very little time to watch other stuff, so I won't be dedicating as much time to the next year poll (outside of 1958 films, I only managed to see four others, including the very lousy A Star is Born [Cooper, 2018], and two documentaries - and that's it! ), though the month-long duration should now make it a bit easier to watch more of them than I could before.

[karl]

Well, her character was sweet, is what I meant, I guess. The film itself takes a surprising dramatic and emotional turn in the last 25 minutes. I also think I fell in love with her.

Yes, but that's just it: Is she sweet? What makes the movie most interesting is that the turn of events at the end reveal the character - to the audience as well as to herself - as just a shallow little narcissist like her mother. After all, it's her crucial totally forgetting about the maid's real troubles because of her comparatively petty ones that precipitates what comes. There are also hints of the girl's true nature along the way, like the disgust she feels riding on the bus with the peasantry. When the maid tears into her at the end she has an illumination: I thought I was a terribly wronged victim all this time, but really I'm just a shallow little narcissist whose only concern is her public image and her love problems. Hence the final atonement. Is how I see it.

And I agree with you about Ellie Lambeti. You should also see Cacoyannis's A Woman in Black, which is almost as good as this one.

[patrick]

I might try and watch this Kakogiannis before the end of the poll. Demy and I are big fans !

[pabs]

I might try and watch this Kakogiannis before the end of the poll. Demy and I are big fans !

This poll should have closed already. What's up with Lencho? Should we call an ambulance?

[pabs]

I also think I fell in love with her.

she has an illumination: I thought I was a terribly wronged victim all this time, but really I'm just a shallow little narcissist whose only concern is her public image and her love problems. Hence the final atonement.

That's the exact moment when I fell in love with her.

[Lencho of the Apes]

My final choices are these:

Giants And Toys
Ajantrik - Ghatak
Anzukko/Little Peach (Naruse)
Ashes And Diamonds
Bari Thekey Paliye - Ghatak
le beau serge (claude chabrol)
Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958)
Elevator To The Gallows - Malle
Endless Desire - Imamura
Ivan The Terrible P. 2 - Eisenstein
Jonggak/The Bell Tower - Ju-Nam Yang
Lake Of The Dead -
The Lovers - Malle
Moi, un noir (Jean Rouch)
The Music Room - Ray
Nishi Ginza Station - Imamura
Party Girl - Ray
A Time To Love And A Time To Die - Sirk
Touch Of Evil - Welles
Wind Across The Everglades - ray

Watched 38 for game purposes this time...

[Lencho of the Apes]

Would anybody like to extend 1958 for another month? I could watch the Kakoyannis and the Ichikawa and the Tourneur and the Gosho and the Tashlins and the other Naruse…

If not, then voting closes in about five hours. Final tally may be delayed some if it interferes with my naptime.

[pabs]

I'm ok with it. I'd like to see The Hidden Fortress, Madonna street and Moi, un noir, though nothing more from '58.

[flip]

i don't care one way or the other, but i hope new polls will start today regardless! i was hoping to use the new poll to choose a film to watch

[pabs]

i don't care one way or the other, but i hope new polls will start today regardless!

I'm ok with that too. Start another year today and extend '58 for as long as you want.

[kanafani]

Extend '58 till 2058

[Pretentious Hipster]

If this is extended I'll submit a list.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Um... y'all know I was kidding, right?

[Lencho of the Apes]

It's all over but the counting. If I have to squeeze some last-minute thing, I will. Post it here...