Wednesday, 30 July 2008
My Favourite Year, and Yours...
posted @11:20 p.m. by Richard Kelly
A few years ago after the success of Peter Biskind's book on 1970s cinema and a minor rash of imitators, a reputable film-scholar friend of mine told me she was minded to write a tome called 'F&!k Off With Your F&!king Decades', so as to counter the trend toward boxing movies up in this 10-year allotment. A useful suggestion, since a historian such as Eric Hobsbawn has shown us how "the 19th century" was probably longer than 100 years, the 20th probably shorter. Paul Schrader once wondered quite appositely whether his AMERICAN GIGOLO was the first film of the 1980s or the last of the 1970s. If however one confines oneself to the virtues of a single year's releases, that's maybe a purer criterion. It suits the Academy. In the list that follows RAVI HOLY offers a chronological Ten of what he considers to be the outstanding single years in the history of movie production. Clearly his choices suggest larger preferences of time-period, pre-WW2 and most of the 80s and 90s not getting a look in. But the jury's still out, right? As the Chinaman declared on the question of the worth of the French Revolution, 'Too early to tell...'
Best years in cinema history (in chronological order...)
1: 1946 It's a Wonderful Life; A Matter of Life & Death; The Big Sleep; Great Expectations; The Postman Always Rings Twice; Notorious
2: 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai; Twelve Angry Men; Paths of Glory; Witness for the Prosecution; Throne of Blood; The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries
3: 1960 Spartacus; Psycho; Peeping Tom; The Apartment; The Magnificent Seven; The Virgin Spring [and, for me, British comedy classics School for Scoundrels and Two-ay Stretch; others might prefer La Dolce Vita and L'Avventura]
4: 1964 Dr Strangelove; Goldfinger; A Shot in the Dark; Goldfinger; Zulu; My Fair Lady; The Gospel accirding to St Matthew; A Fistful of Dollars; A Hard Day's Night; Mary Poppins
5: 1973 (overall winner?) The Sting; The Exorcist; The Wicker Man; Don't Look Now; Badlands; Serpico; Mean Streets; The Day of the Jackal; Enter the Dragon; The Last Detail; Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore; Live and Let Die
6: 1975 Jaws; One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest; Barry Lyndon; Monty Python & the Holy Grail; Dog Day Afternoon; Three Days of the Condor; Love & Death; The Rocky Horror Picture Show
7: 1976 Taxi Driver; Network; Carrie; The Omen; All the President's Men;
8: 1979 Apocalypse Now; Life of Brian; Manhattan; Alien; Quadrophenia; Being There; Mad Max
9: 1980 The Shining; Raging Bull; The Empire Strikes Back; The Elephant Man; The Long Good Friday; The Blues Brothers
10: 1999 Fight Club; Magnolia; Eyes Wide Shut; The Matrix; American Beauty; Being John Malkovich; The Green Mile; The Straight Story; Toy Story 2; South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut; The War Zone; The Sixth Sense; Bringing out the Dead; Dogma; The Phantom Menace - not a bad end to the first century of the medium!
Comments
Good point re decades. Other examples, Performance (1970) is surely a 60s film? The Shining and Raging Bull would also appear to belong with Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now not ET and Blade Runner. Similarly, Ghost, Pretty Woman and Total Recall (3 unfashionable films of 1990 that I happen to like) are clearly 80s films in terms of their look/feel/sensibility. Discuss.
Yes indeed, if you date a movie by its year of production rather than by release-year then a lot of these cusp issues get cleared up. Performance was shot in 1968, of all the luminous years... but Warners shelved it for 18 months. The Shining was shot in 1978-79, Raging Bull took nearly as look in the same period owing to the shutdown phase for De Niro's crash weight-gain. And all those 1990 movies were shot in 1989.
Proves my point. However, I tend to go with release year for 2 reasons: 1) In the same way that a falling tree in a deserted forest MAY not make a sound, a film may not actually 'exist' until it's released (Postmodernism lives!) 2)IMDB uses release not production.
Of course, the weakness of this system is that if an unreleased Hitchock or Kubrick film was discovered next week it would seem a bit odd to call it a 2008 film - although my mate Tim Bishop (nothing to with Tim Heaney and definitely not a bishop!) insists it would be...
Another good list Ravi but Richard is right that "Clearly his choices suggest larger preferences of time-period" - i.e. the period 1973-1980 is over included at the expense of some yers which I think have a higher number of excellent films. In particular I would suggest that 1954 (Sansho the Bailiff, Seven Samurai, Rear Window, On the Waterfront, La Strada, The Caine Mutiny, Dial M for Murder, Hobson’s Choice, An Inspector Calls, and Voyage in Italy) and 1959 (Pickpocket, Rio Bravo, North by Northwest, The 400 Blows, Some Like it Hot, Ben Hur, Anatomy of a Murder, Nazarin, Hiroshima mon Amor, Room at the Top, Apur Sensar, and [if you want Britsh Comedy] I'm All right Jack) should not only be on the list but are contenders for best year ever! (I'd go for 1959 but then I'm biased).
Well, you seem to have a preference for the period 1954-59! Both of them were in my Top 20 but of the two, I'd prob go for 54...
But echoing Richard's (friend's) comment about decades, isn't it great that we don't have to choose between years? All cinema is ours...
But lists are fun...
Your thoughts