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I Found It At The Movies
I Found It At the Movies: 1957--Men in War (Anthony Mann)
I'm a fan of Anthony Mann. He had an amazing eye for framing landscapes, and his method of working by removal rather than addition made him one of cinema's ultimate simplifiers. However, Men in War feels different from anything else I've ever seen of his. Normally, Mann keeps you at a distance and his movies move in a very beautiful but leisurely manner. However, Men in War immediately thrusts you into the action. It feels among the most real, and certainly among the most visceral, war movies ever made.
May 4th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1956--Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
After I first watched Written on the Wind, I wrote to my cinephile friends and told them that I felt it, more than anything else I had ever seen, influenced David Lynch's use of color as well as some of his more sentimental tendencies. At the time, I was already a huge Lynch fan, but this was the first Sirk film that completely blew me away.
April 27th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1955--Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
I've only seen this once, but it finds its way on the list for the same reason as my final three picks: L'enfant (2006), 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) and Tulpan (2008). Ordet is an absolute technical marvel with perfectly choreographed (and incredibly long) takes. Dreyer's camera and characters are almost always moving, with the director hardly ever cutting to break up the action. It's one of those films where, as I watch it, almost every five minutes can hear myself say "I can't believe he just did that!"
April 20th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1954--The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph Mankiewicz)
I'm not sure I've met anyone who likes this movie as much as I do. I wish that weren't the case, but what can you do? I mentioned in an earlier post that two of my favorite themes on screen are friendship and loyalty, and those are what really get to me in The Barefoot Contessa. It's the friendship that Humphrey Bogart shows Ava Gardner, and his loyalty towards her, that I find so deep and moving. In fact, it's probably my favorite purely platonic male-female relationship in the history of film.
April 13th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1953--The Big Heat (Fritz Lang)
This is the noir that first hooked me on the genre. I first saw it as part of a Fritz Lang retrospective that was curated by Lang authority Bernard Eisenschitz at the amazing Cinéma Lux in Caen, France. I believe Eisenschitz screened every single Lang film over the course of a month. It was 1994 and my transformation into becoming a true cinephile was still in its early stages, so I didn't realize the magnitude of the opportunity presented by Eisenschitz and Cinéma Lux. I think The Big Heat was the only Lang film I went and saw at the time.
April 5th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1952--Casque d'or (Jacques Becker)
What a treat to find a place on this list for Jacques Becker! For almost the first ten years of his career, Becker worked as an Assistant Director to Jean Renoir, and it's not hard to see Renoir's influence on his work. Like Renoir, Becker was an extraordinary humanist, incredible with actors and had a certain amount of interest in crime films. Casque d'or absolutely swoons with romanticism and tragedy, and it has as much feeling as any film I can think of from this period.
March 29th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1951--A Place in the Sun (George Stevens)
I first saw this one in the same theater in Paris, on Rue Mouffetard, where I saw You Only Live Once and The Blue Angel. It wasn’t even that great a theater, but for some reason almost every time I went there I saw something that became a favorite. I wonder if others experience this phenomenon as well. Even when I was living in Los Angeles, it happened. With some theaters I visited, I almost always disliked the movie I saw, while other theaters were almost batting a 1,000. This theater on Mouffetard still holds one of the best records for me.
March 22nd, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1950--In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
This is one I didn't see for the first time until about five years ago. When I finally got around to it, I wondered what the hell had taken me that long. Like Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, In a Lonely Place is film noir of the highest order, with an incredible script, great acting, plot twists, wonderful direction and social commentary—a movie that fires on all cylinders.
March 15th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1949--Jour de fête (Jacques Tati)
The only time I ever saw this was at its "Color Premiere" in France in 1995. Tati wanted it to be the first French feature shot in color, but technology at the time wouldn't allow him to release it that way. Fortunately, he also shot a black an white version, and that's all that existed from 1949-1995. I've never seen the black and white version so I can't say with certainty, but it is one of these films where I really remember the colors. I can only think this film's impact and power grew after it was re-released. To me, this is definitely a sibling film to Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. Tati always seemed to have a fascination with the negative effects of technology. But of all his work I've seen, this one affects me the most. Like Ambersons, this movie is obsessed with the idea of our world getting faster and faster, and the dehumanization that follows.
March 8th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1948--Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls)
Guess when it comes down to it, I'm still a romantic. An idealist, too. Put those two things together in a film, particularly in that order, and I could be in big trouble. Then add to it by keeping this "idealistic romance" mostly unrealized, and I'm in even deeper. You could call the above my version of a synopsis of this Ophüls film. It also helps explain why this film has as devastating an emotional impact on me as any film ever made.
March 1st, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found it At the Movies: 1947--Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
When I made The Last Lullaby, some people called it film noir, and then others would ask me what exactly that meant. It's a much-debated term, and I try and stay on the side of being simple as much as I can. Noir in French=dark. Dark here usually speaks of both a thematic darkness and a literal, visual darkness. Still not sure what I'm talking about? Take a look at this film. It's a prototypical film noir, and almost everyone agrees it's one of the best.
February 23rd, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1946--The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
This might have to go down as the most stellar year in the history of cinema. So how offensive of me to put William Wyler, the somewhat unrecognized auteur, at the top of the list. Wyler made a slew of films in his career, and I've probably seen less than 20% of them, certainly not yet enough to determine whether he's been undervalued by film history. I feel comfortable saying this, though: Wyler sat in the backseat of most of his films. He preferred an invisible style rather than something more evident for the auteurists to latch onto and recognize.
February 15th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1945—Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
You will all have to excuse me a little with this one. I'm completely writing from memory. I've only seen this once, and it was probably ten years ago as part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bresson retrospective. Here's what I remember though. I have never seen a film from a director whom I consider a master that felt so unlike the rest of their work. In fact, the film felt more like a long-lost Renoir film or something Cukor would have done. It is verbose, moving, funny (did I really use that adjective with Bresson?) and romantic. I absolutely loved it.
February 8th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1944—Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
What don't I like about this film? It's one where everything seems to be in exactly the right place for me. If I were making a film noir and putting together a checklist of some of the elements usually associated with this type of film, here's how I would break down Double Indemnity:
February 1st, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1943—Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock)
For awhile, it was hard for critics to think of Hitchcock as an artist. He was the "Master of Suspense" and a wonderful entertainer, but it wasn't clear that his movies aimed for anything higher or more profound than that. I'm not sure they always did but for some reason, in Hitchcock's case, I have no problem with it. What was it? Was it Hitchcock's sense of humor? Was it the way he would keep us guessing, depriving us of knowing for sure how the story would turn out? Or was it simply the pure visceral thrills that he seemed to so easily provide? Really, I'm not sure of the exact answer. But whatever it was, at times Hitchcock could entertain in a way that would completely satisfy me, without ever seeming to directly address my more intellectual side.
January 25th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1942—The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
I'll never forget the first time I heard the opening narration of The Magnificent Ambersons. It was 1995. I was a student at the University of Caen, in France, and I was watching a double feature on campus of The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil.
January 19th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1941—Sergeant York (Howard Hawks)
I love almost all of the Howard Hawks films I've seen. He manages to be insightful and human and entertaining and fun all at the same time (in many ways, this is what I see as the very definition of Classic Hollywood).
January 11th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1940—The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
The themes that probably affect me the most in film are loyalty, friendship, and unrequited love. Of all the films about unrequited love, Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner is at the very top of my list. It pains me and moves me at the same time. It's not during horror movies that I want to talk to the characters on screen. It's during this type of film. I just want to save them from any more heartbreak.
January 4th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1939—The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
The Rules of the Game is a film that will probably forever be mentioned among the greats. It always seems to find its way to the top of those "best ever" lists, and I don't really ever see that changing. It's a film that I greatly admire. I'm even in awe of it, but it's also the kind of film that makes me want to put together a "favorites" list. What I mean by this is that if all I ever saw were "the greats", films with as much universal support as this one, I'm not sure I'd have the same passion about film.
December 21st, 2010 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1938—Holiday (George Cukor)
Ah, how Cukor pulls this one off for me! There's as much suspense in this romantic comedy as there is in any mystery or drama I can think of from this period. I don't want to ruin it for those who haven't seen it, but suffice it to say, you're not sure where Cukor's taking the story until almost the very last second. This is one of those years where it's absolutely no contest for me. Holiday is my desert island film.
December 15th, 2010 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1937—You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang)
Why don't we ever hear the term "homme fatale"? Surely there's a whole group of films where the term would apply--where it's the man that's destructive, that brings the woman down, rather than the other way around. I can think of at least a few of these films: Scarface (either version), White Heat, Bonnie and Clyde, and this early Lang noir, You Only Live Once.
December 7th, 2010 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1936—Les bas-fonds (Jean Renoir)
Yet another one of these gritty and very moody early works from Renoir. I also remember it having at its core one of the most wonderful stories of friendship I've ever seen (this time it's between Jean Gabin and Louis Jouvet). If there's anything I'm a sucker for onscreen (maybe even more than a great love affair), it's a great friendship.
December 3rd, 2010 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1935—The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
1935: The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
This next pick probably illustrates, as much as any year, my distinction on this list of "favorites" versus "best." I personally like the distinction, as some of the "best films" haven't always moved me, and some of my favorite films aren't necessarily considered the best. This Hitchcock film is considered by no one I've ever read as his best. And I'll admit that it's not near as deep or artful as some of his later work. However, it is, along with Rear Window, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt and Marnie, one of my favorites by the director.
November 23rd, 2010 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At The Movies: 1934—L'atalante (Jean Vigo)
I first saw this at one of my favorite theaters in the world, Cafe des Images in Herouville-Saint-Clair, just outside Caen, France. When it was over, I knew I'd seen something very special. Vigo died when he was only 29 years-old, but he forever left his mark on the medium. This film ranks up there for me as one of the two or three most poetic films in the history of cinema.
November 19th, 2010 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At The Movies: 1933: Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
I'll start by saying that of all my top picks, this is absolutely one of the most tenuous. I like this Lang film, but there are probably another seven or eight by him that I like even better (The Big Heat, Metropolis, M, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Moonfleet, The Woman in the Window, You Only Live Once). Anyway, as I remember it, the thing that most impressed me with this film was Lang's extraordinary inventiveness.
May 28th, 2010 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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