Amph Filmmakers & Critics' Top Ten Movies: Liv Ullmann

Jacques Rivette
(Film critic: Cahiers du Cinema; Filmmaker: Celine & Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse)

The Life of Oharu (1952, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Germany Year Zero (1947, Roberto Rossellini)
True Heart Susie (1919, D.W. Griffith)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
The River (1951, Jean Renoir)
Ivan the Terrible (1943, Sergei Eisenstein)
L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
Day of Wrath (1945, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Charles Chaplin)
Confidential Report (1955, Orson Welles)

This is another list from the 50's, too, I think.

 

Murnau is mentioned again! Nice.

Never heard of the Orson Welle's movie.

 

It's also (and more commonly) known as Mr. Arkadin.

And it's pretty fruity. Fun, though (I'm not sure why, it just is).

 

David Robinson
(Film critic: Chaplin: His Life and Art)

The Kid (1921, Charles Chaplin)
Napoleon (1927, Abel Gance)
L'Age d'Or (1930, Luis Bunuel)
Stagecoach (1939, John Ford)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Children of Paradise (1945, Marcel Carne)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)
Farewell My Concubine (1993, Chen Kaige)

 

Eric Rohmer
(Film critic: Cahiers du Cinema; Filmmaker: Claire's Knee, Autumn Tale)

True Heart Susie (1919, D.W. Griffith)
The General (1927, Buster Keaton)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Ivan the Terrible (1943, Sergei Eisenstein)
Red River (1948, Howard Hawks)
Voyage to Italy (1953, Roberto Rossellini)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
La Pyramide humaine (1959, Jean Rouch)

Second French critic in a row chosing Griffths' "True Heart Susie", which shows you that not understanding the language sometimes helps.

This list is before Rohmer became a director, I'm guessing (60's)

 

George A. Romero
(Filmmaker: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead)

The Brothers Karamazov (1958, Richard Brooks)
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, Stanley Kubrick)
High Noon (1952, Fred Zinnemann)
King Solomon's Mines (1950, Compton Bennett)
North by Northwest (1959, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Quiet Man (1952, John Ford)
Repulsion (1965, Roman Polanski)
Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
The Tales of Hoffmann (1951, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)

 

Jonathan Rosenbaum
(Film Critic: Chicago Reader)

Les Vampires (1915-16, Louis Feuillade)
M (1931, Fritz Lang)
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Ivan the Terrible (1945, Sergei Eisenstein)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953, Howard Hawks)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais)
The House Is Black (1962, Forugh Farrokhzad) [short]
Gertrud (1964, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati)
When It Rains (1995, Charles Burnett) [short]

Shorts are cheating, IMO. And "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "Gertrud" are complete opposites.

 

Alan Rudolph
(Filmmaker: Choose Me, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle)

La Dolce Vita (1959, Federico Fellini)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, Robert Altman)
Ikiru (1952, Akira Kurosawa)
Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, Stanley Kubrick)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Day for Night (1973, Francois Truffaut)
Block-Heads (1938, John G. Blystone) [Laurel & Hardy]

 

Andrew Sarris
(Film critic: Village Voice, New York Observer)

The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophuls)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Ugetsu (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
The Great Dictator (1940, Charles Chaplin)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928, Buster Keaton)
Ordet (1955, Carl Theodor Dreyer)

I like "The Searchers" but I doubt it is top ten material. Ditto "The Great Dictator". "Ordet" isn't as good as "Day of Wrath" from the same director: otherwise, a good list.

 

John Sayles
(Filmmaker: Eight Men Out, City of Hope)

Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953, Ingmar Bergman)
The Magnificent Seven (1960, John Sturges)
Two Women (1960, Vittorio De Sica)
The Organizer (1963, Mario Monicelli)
A Taxing Woman (1987, Juzo Itami)
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, John Huston)
Wages of Fear (1953, Henri-Georges Clouzot)

 

I have to just plump for Farewell My Concubine which is a gripping, powerhouse movie, tracing some four decades of Chinese history through the prism of the lifelong relationship between two Chinese opera singers. It's just astounding and breathtaking and, I know this is going to sound weird, but it actually totally got me into Chinese opera, which I now love. It's dissonant and atonal and somehow completely different from western opera. Seriously, go watch it. But be sure and find the full three hour version. It just gets better every time I watch it . . . I think I've seen it three times now.

 

Richard Schickel
(Film critic: Time Magazine)

Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)
On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan)
Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur)
Sullivan's Travels (1941, Preston Sturges)
They Were Expendable (1945, John Ford)
Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)
White Heat (1949, Raoul Walsh)

Except for the Leone, not a foreign movie in the bunch...

 

I'm a little surprised there's no Hitchcock on there. Schickel has produced a number of documentaries
about major filmmakers, including one on Hitchcock, which was excellent.

 

Lot of bleak noirs: Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, Out of the Past & White Heat. On the Waterfront and Citizen Kane are more easily classed as dramas, but they too both have a significant noir sensibility and are pretty bleak and brutal. That makes for six out of then ten. Plus, one of the two comedies, Sullivan's Travels, has an extended dark section in a nightmarish prison. I think it's also worth noting that the Leone isn't just the only foreign movie on the list, like Nevermind said, but also, from 1966, the newest movie. I knew I liked Schickel for some reason.

 

John Schlesinger
(Filmmaker: Midnight Cowboy, The Falcon and the Snowman)

Umberto D (1952, Vittorio De Sica)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Bunuel)
Grand Illusion (1937, Jean Renoir)
Ikiru (1952, Akira Kurosawa)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Fanny and Alexander (1983, Ingmar Bergman)
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
Singin' in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly)
The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut)

 

Paul Schrader
(Film writer: Trancsendental Styles in Film; filmmaker: American Gigolo, Auto Focus)

The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
La Belle et la Bete (1946, Jean Cocteau)
The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah)

"The Lady Eve"! Great movie.

 

Vertigo is ostensibly a mystery, The Searchers and The Wild Bunch are westerns, Pickpocket is a thriller, etc. But they all share some things in common, namely that they subvert their genres in very existential ways. That's not surprising for Schrader; that's often what he tries to do in his own screenplays.

 

Joel Schumacher
(Filmmaker: Falling Down, Phone Booth)

Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Lean)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1990, Peter Greenaway)
The Bicycle Thief (1949, Vittorio De Sica)
Breaking the Waves (1996, Lars von Trier)
A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)
The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)
The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)

 

Martin Scorsese
(Filmmaker: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull)

8 1/2 (1963, Federico Fellini)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Leopard (1963, Luchino Visconti)
The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)
The Searchers (1956, John Ford)

Rather short, and notably missing "The Godfather"...

 

Why would it have The Godfather? The film have much to do with Scorsese's style (despite Coppola wanting him to do the sequel) and he was already working when it came out. Marty rarely ever talks about films that were made after he made his debut, he's always banging on about the stuff he saw as a kid.

 

I would say the Bicycle Thief is rather notably missing. I dont think he was influenced by The Godfather at all. If anything his gangster films are the anti-Godfather in their tone. Scorsese grew up on the real lower east side and Vito Corleone lived in a romanticized, albeit filmed on location, les. He and Coppola are great friends, came up together under Corman, and are both part of the New Hollywood cliq, so they must have talked about it alot. Coppolas Godfather films are beautiful works of art , with amazing on location depictions of New York City, but couldnt be further from Mean Streets or Goodfellas in look or theme.

 

I think 8 1/2 and the Red Shoes are both interesting because they both reveal that Scorsese is interested in a kinetic energy and a lushness of a kind, which we don't necessarily always think of because his films are so gritty. But, in its own way, GoodFellas is a very lush movie, like The Red Shoes, and Taxi Driver is not so gritty that it isn't also kinetic and vibrant like 8 1/2.

On First Works, an old documentary show, Scorsese talked about a film teacher he had that believed in Neo-Realism to almost the exclusion of everything else. Scorsese tells a story about how he hated old Hollywood stuff because it wasn't as real as The Bicycle Thieves and Scorsese says something to the effect of, "I would say to him, the Bicycle Thieves is great, but not everything can be The Bicycle Thieves." And he then went on to talk about loving Singin' in the Rain. I think part of what makes Scorsese so good is that he does kind of meld those two traditions. He's not afraid to be flashy and kinetic and showy, but he doesn't let that stuff get in the way of also having a very gritty, realist streak in his films too. Interesting to think about anyway.

 

Jay Scott
(Film critic: Time Magazine; screenwriter: Gangs of New York)

The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)
Napoleon (1927, Abel Gance)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
The Magic Flute (1974, Ingmar Bergman)
Ikiru (1952, Akira Kurosawa)
The Godfather I-II (1972-74, Francis Ford Coppola)
The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982, Paolo Taviani/Vittorio Taviani)
The Black Stallion (1979, Carroll Ballard)
Full Metal Jacket (1987, Stanley Kubrick)
All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)

Oh, Rogue will *love* this list!

 

First mention of the Black Stallion. That's a very interesting choice.

 

Tom Shales
(TV critic: Washington Post)

The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)
Cover Girl (1944, Charles Vidor)
King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack)
The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
Summertime (1955, David Lean)
How Green Was My Valley (1941, John Ford)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Amarcord (1974, Federico Fellini)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948, Charles Barton)
The Road to Morocco (1942, David Butler)


"Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" is not only unwatchable, it's a stupid choice. This guy is congratulating himself on his lack of pretension, just as silly a form of one-upmanship as the people who choose very obscure films.