Amph Filmmakers & Critics' Top Ten Movies: Liv Ullmann

Gene Siskel
(Film critic: Chicago Tribune)

Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
The Godfather Part II (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, Stanley Kubrick)
The General (1927, Buster Keaton)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
Singin' in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly)
Pinocchio (1940, Ben Sharpsteen)
Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann)

 

I always like Gene Siskel but that this is an uninspired list. The kind of thing you might expect from someone who has just gotten out of Film Appreciation 101 and fancies themselves a film expert.

I'd like to see the reasoning behind some of those choices. The archives of the television show are pretty intact but I've never seen him articulate his views on all his favorite films. Siskel and Ebert are no doubt a huge deal responsible for why Citizen Kane has become this sacred cow.

 

No, they're not.

 

Ebert sort of is in a roundabout way, but only because he was a big proponent of French Auteur theory, which is the reason it's a sacred cow.

That and the fact that it's an awesome movie.

 

I'm pretty sure CK was named to the critic's top ten movie list as early as the 50's, well before S & E.

 

Sounds about right. I mean, there'd have to be a reason for Truffaut and his peers to want to look into it in the first place.

 

It was Sight & Sound's number 1 film since their 1962 issue amount other lists so I'm not sure Siskel started that.

Yeah it also helps that Citizen Kane is pretty good.

 

That's the one. The other influentic mag was Cahiers du Cinema.

Here's their list from 1958:

Sunrise (F W Murnau)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini)
Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
The Birth of a Nation (D W Griffith)
Mr Arkadin (Orson Welles)
Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
L?Atalante (Jean Vigo)
The Wedding March (Erich Von Stroheim)
Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock)
Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)

This shows the auteurs preferred later, crappy Welles to his undoubted good film. "Mr. Arkadin" is a good example of that. They do the same thing for Hitchcock, Chaplin, Dreyer (ie. chose lesser films v. the real deal). Part of the 'I-am-more-avant-garde-than-thou' syndrome, or perhaps they are just better judges of French films, where their taste is more Catholic.

 

Under Capricorn for Hitchcock? That's proving what George Harrison used to say about the "avant garde a clue."

 

Gavin Smith
(Film critic: Film Comment)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
L'eclisse (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Au hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
Two or Three Things I Know about Her (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
Days of Heaven (1978, Terrence Malick)

 

The Magnificent Ambersons is an interesting case. I'm no fan of Kane, as you all know, but Kane is twice the movie Ambersons is. Easily. Ambersons gets a lot of love and I'm not sure why. Holt is pretty bad (I think we've discussed the possibility that the role of Georgie is really, really difficult and generally sinks the actors who get stuck with it), for one thing. Welles would always claim that the movie would have been great if the studio hadn't hijacked it, but I find this rather difficult to believe because the problems are not that the structure is off necessarily, but that the tone is off. The most dramatic and gorgeous scene in the book is the one where Georgie tells his uncle that he's cut his mother off from her beau; it's a powerful, doom-laden scene of deep import and pathos. In the movie, Welles plays it with one of the characters taking a bath and overacting like Harvey Korman on steroids; he essentially plays the best dramatic scene in the story, and the most significant scene too, for laughs. It's the pivot point of the story and, if one is going to buy Georgie as a tragic figure, it has to happen in that scene, but that's damned near impossible the way Welles plays it and things like that kind of fundamental misunderstanding of the arc of the story have nothing to do with the studio and everything to do with Welles.

Welles might have been a very good Georgie; he has many of the same character traits, including a tendency to ultimately cut his nose off to spite his face. Ambersons is beautifully shot and Agnes Moorehead is extremely good (as always), but the rest of the movie is a dreadful misfire.

 

I think Welles might have intended to play Georgie as he aged--which is why Tim Holt was cast. He's a pocket version of Welles.

Re: the misfire element. There are great scenes in this film--usually involving Moorehead. But undoubtedly there is a problem. The swings in tone have a source in the book, which starts as a nostalgic comedy, and gradually becomes a socio-economic comment upon the Gilded
Age, with George symbolizing a form of American life that was passing, not always feliciously. Tarkington's genius is to make the anti-hero his symbol, while the supposedly good guy, Eugene Morgan represents the new heartless, status quo.

Welles himself was a Georgie as a child--with an overbearing mother, an ineffectual father, and a small-town background. I think this is what attracted him to this material, and perhaps one of the reasons he could not finish the film--he couldn't bring himself to accept its message. Vide also: Billy Wilder and "Ace in the Hole." That's a film about survivor's guilt, of which Wilder had quite a bit.

 

Susan Sontag
(Film critic)

Man with the Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
L'Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)
My Night at Maud's (1969, Eric Rohmer)
Hitler: A Film from Germany (1977, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
Contempt (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
Satantango (1994, Bela Tarr)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

 

Michael Sragow
(Film critic: Baltimore Sun)

Children of Paradise (1945, Marcel Carne)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Intolerance (1916, D.W. Griffith)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Sherlock Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)
Strike (1924, Sergei Eisenstein)
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
Umberto D. (1953, Vittorio De Sica)
The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)

 

Sragow's 600+ page opus on Victor Fleming is one of the most thoroughly researched books on a filmmaker I have ever read, made all the more impressive by the fact Fleming died in 1949 and there's not much material of him "on the record." The background and detail Sragow came up with was extraordinary.

Sragow's list is pretty much what I would have expected. But it's weird to see the Wizard of Oz next to the Wild Bunch. Talk about a range of material.

 

Chuck Stephens
(Film critic: San Francisco Bay Guardian)

Fox and His Friends (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, Russ Meyer)
Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966, George Kuchar)
China Gate (1957, Samuel Fuller)
Poor Little Rich Girl (1965, Andy Warhol)
The Pornographers (1966, Shohei Imamura)
High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)
Performance (1970, Nicolas Roeg)

A more-avant-than-thou-ian.

 

David Sterritt
(Film critic: The Christian Science Monitor)

The Crowd (1927, King Vidor)
Vertigo (1958, Akira Kurosawa)
Sirius Remembered (1959, Stan Brakhage)
Imitation of Life (1959, Douglas Sirk)
Contempt (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
Flaming Creatures (1963, Jack Smith)
Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)
Antonio das Mortes (1969, Glauber Rocha)
A Woman Under the Influence (1974, John Cassavetes)
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)

 

Whit Stillman
(Filmmaker: Metropolitan, The Last Days of Disco)

The Gay Divorcee (1934, Mark Sandrich)
Strangers on a Train (1951, Alfred Hitchcock)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949, Robert Hamer)
The 400 Blows, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board (1959/68/70, Francois Truffaut)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940, Ernst Lubitsch)
Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958, Mario Monicelli)
The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)
Howards End (1992, James Ivory)
That Sinking Feeling (1980, Bill Forsyth)

 

Oliver Stone
(Filmmaker: Platoon, JFK)

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Lean)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, Stanley Kubrick)
1900 (1976, Bernardo Bertolucci)
Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, Frank Lloyd)
On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan)
The Godfather Parts I-II (1972-74, Francis Ford Coppola)
Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)

 

Quentin Tarantino
(Filmmaker: Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)
Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)
Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)
Rolling Thunder (1977, John Flynn)
They All Laughed (1981, Bogdanovich)
The Great Escape (1963, John Sturges)
Carrie (1976, Brian De Palma)
Coffy (1973, Jack Hill)
Dazed and Confused (1993, Richard Linklater)
Five Fingers of Death (1973, Chang Ho Cheng)
Hi Diddle Diddle (1943, Andrew L. Stone)

 

Leave it to Tarantino to include HI DIDDLE DIDDLE, probably the most
obscure anti-propaganda film made in the United States during WW II.

 

Andrei Tarkovsky
(Filmmaker: Andrei Rublev, Stalker)

Diary of a Country Priest (1950, Robert Bresson)
Winter Light (1962, Ingmar Bergman)
Nazarin (1958, Luis Bunuel)
Wild Strawberries (1957, Ingmar Bergman)
City Lights (1931, Charles Chaplin)
Ugetsu (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
Mouchette (1967, Robert Bresson)
Woman in the Dunes (1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara)

I would have expected austere movies, and sure enough...

 

Amy Taubin
(Film critic: Village Voice, ArtForum)

The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Au hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)
The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966, Roberto Rossellini)
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann)
Diaries, Notes & Sketches: Walden (19, Mekas)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Chantal Akerman)
Spider (2002, David Cronenberg)

 

Bertrand Tavernier
(Film critic/Filmmaker: Coup de Torchon, 'Round Midnight)

The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Grand Illusion (1937, Jean Renoir)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)
L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophuls)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949, John Ford)
The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
Shansho the Bailiff (1954, Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Crowd (1927, King Vidor)

 

Charles Taylor
(Film critic: Salon.com)

Apu Trilogy (1955-59, Satyajit Ray)
The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)
The Godfahter Parts I & II (1972-74, Francis Ford Coppola)
L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
Last Tango in Paris (1972, Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, Robert Altman)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Umberto D. (1952, Vittorio De Sica)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)