Orsons Picks

[Rick Schmidlin]

This was the response Orson Welles gave while participating in the Cinematheque Belgique Survey of 1952 about his favorite films.

1. City Lights (Chaplin)
2. Greed (von Stroheim)
3. Intolerance (Griffith)
4. Nanook of the North (Flaherty)
5. Shoe Shine (De Sica)
6. Potemkin (Eisenstein)
7. La Femme du Boulanger (Pagnol)
8. Grand Illusion (Renoir)
9. Stagecoach (Ford)
10. Our Daily Bread (Vidor)

[jaime marzol]

....................

welles had good taste. he liked eisenstein's POTEMKIN, he did not like IVAN THE TERRIBLE. in fact, in TIOW he says he wrote a bad review of it that caused eisenstein to write him a letter.

i loved POTEMKIN, but thought OKTOBER and IVAN THE TERRIBLE were better films.

i thought NANOOK was great, and i was thankfull there was no technicolor then, or i would not be able to handle the raw walrus and seal eating. it's amaizing how anticeptic the B&W photography made the walrus eating parts!

i have not seen Shoe Shine, La Femme du Boulanger (Pagnol),
Our Daily Bread (Vidor). in fact, i never heard of them.

liked GRAND ILLUSIONS. i rented it because on the box it said orson welles' favorite film. i was surprised by what i found, i expected a more complex filming style but it seems welles didn't like directers who's style was like his, thus sSTAGECOACH. the though of studying STAGECOACH and coming up with CITIZEN KANE is like an achitect studying an apartment building then coming up with a bridge. totally bizare. but welles saw things through different eyes.

i liked, RENOIR'S LITTLE THEATER (don't know the french spelling) , WOMAN ON THE BEACH, and GRAND ILLUSIONS, i liked them a lot but DIDN'T THINK they were spectacular films like KANE, or STAGECOACH.

[jaime marzol]

.........................

my personal favorites: not the rilms that i think are the best films ever made, but the films that i have a tendancy to watch over and over again, in no particular order:

CITIZEN KANE
GODFATHER 1 & 2
KEY LARGO
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
THE TRIAL
TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
STARDUST MEMORIES
DETOUR
THE GREAT DICTATOR
CROSSFIRE (the lighting alone is a film school course)
MURDER MY SWEET
MALTESE FALCON
THE FUGITIVE (ford)
THE SEARCHERS
THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
TOUCH OF EVIL
A PLACE IN THE SUN

as you can see i'm not really up on the directors that made films in europe, but i'm catching up. as of late, i have ventured into melville, visconti, truffaut, antonini, and more.

loooooved OBSSESSIONE. looooooooved DAY FOR NIGHT, like the SPINAL TAP of the movie business.

also loooooved FELINI'S ENTREVISTA, bitching, bitching, film/documentary/biography

loved 2 WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN

can any one suggest more movies like 2 WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN, ENTREVISTA, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFULL, DAY FOR NIGHT?

also loved godard's WEEKEND.

does any ome have a copy of CONTEMPT they would like to trade for any of the films mentioned above? and i have maybe 300 other tittles. rattle off a few.

cinema_vortex@yahoo.com

[Rick Schmidlin]

These are some of my favorites not in order, I would have to make it a more well thought out top twenty-five something list (thisdoes not include Greed or TOE which I really like)

Sullivan’s Travels
Sunset Blvd.
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Rules Of The Game
Le Grande Illusion
Throne Of Blood
Wild Strawberries
Devil and Daniel Webster
Rashamon
Ivan The Terrible
The Maltese Falcon
Blind Husbands
True Heart Susie
Miracle In Milan
Life And Time's Of Col. Blimp
Chimes Of Midnight
The Magnificent Ambersons (what is left of it)


This list could go on but I have not had a second cup of Sunday Coffee.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Didn't Eisenstein interact with Welles after Nevsky?

I think it's funny that OW didn't like the Ivan the Terrible films. I've always thought that Ivan and Nevsky looked like trial runs for Welles's later films, and that Eisenstein was a better theorist than filmmaker.

Here's mine - I'm contemplating which Welles films I want on there. Maybe F for Fake or Ambersons. Or Kane. Hmmm.

L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934)
La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)
Playtime (Tati, 1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
O Lucky Man! (Anderson, 1973)
All That Jazz (Fosse, 1979)
Sans soleil (Marker, 1982)
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1983)
Raising Arizona (Coen, 1987)
Days of Eclipse (Sokurov, 1988)
Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
Metropolitan (Stillman, 1990)
Glengarry Glen Ross (Foley, 1992)
Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993)
Natural Born Killers (Stone, 1994)
Neon Genesis Evangelion (Anno, 1995-97)
Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997)
Eureka (Aoyama, 2001)

[Jaime N. Christley]

Rick, I had a question for you: Are there any other Welles projects on the agenda that might get a Touch of Evil-style rerelease? Also, do you keep in touch with Jonathan Rosenbaum? I was curious about his role in the restoration work.

[Rick Schmidlin]

Yes J.R. and I are involved in a project, but it is not Welles.It would be a documentary on Jazz great McCoy Tyner. In regard to Welles projects, none at present but I do have my thinking cap on, it is more easy to resolve the Middle East then Welles camps I am sorry to say. As for another interesting film reconstruction I will announce soon.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Rick, that sounds great, thanks for the info!

[Jeff Wilson]

Favorites always make interesting lists...here's the first bunch that came to mind for me, Welles titles aside:

The General (Keaton, 1927)
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1945)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958)
Horror of Dracula (Fisher, 1958)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964)
Tokyo Drifter (Suzuki, 1966)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (Demy, 1968)
if... (Anderson, 1968)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (Jones, 1979)
Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
Police Story (Chan, 1985)
Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (Greenaway, 1989)
Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
The Baby of Macon (Greenaway, 1993)
Pon Poko (Takahata, 1994)
Gamera Heisei series (Kaneko, 1995-99)
Jude (Winterbottom, 1996)
Hana-Bi (Kitano, 1997)
Boogie Nights (Anderson, 1997)
In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)
Battle Royale (Fukusaku, 2000)

Looks like we have overlapping directors if not movies in some cases.

[jaime marzol]

jaime c:
glenngary glenn ross is such a great film, glad to see it's held in high esteem elsewhere. it's remarkable how good it is. like orson said, a great film is one you can sit through many times and find new stuff in it. glenn ross is right there. everything that is even marginally setup is paid off. even a guy stuttering is paid off. i love that kind of shit. that is why kane and godfathers 1 and 2 are at the top of my list.

and what eisenstein movies do you think are like welles'?

jeff:
goodfellas is also on my list of most watched films. i have it on laser. is there a dvd with supplement of it available yet? there wasn't last time i looked, just the standard release. i even like casino and meanstreets more so because i like goodfellas so much. have you seen 'who's that knocking at my door?' it's like the great grandfather, making meanstreets the grandfather, goodfellas the father, casino the son.

rick:
devil and daniel webster i saw a few years ago and it knocked me out. very well made, very stylized, w. huston was tremendous as the devil. and it has such great framing.

coming from photography, framing and chiaroscuro lighting are the first things that attracts me to a film. i can forgive all sorts of problems if i get great framing, and great lightring. bad acting? bad synch? no story? no problem if the director made the film look challanging.

glenngarry has great subtle framing, a lot of full shots with wide lens, i like that look.

[Jeff Wilson]

There is apparently a special edition of GoodFellas coming sometime this year, although nothing definitive has been announced. The current DVD is more or less a tiny laserdisc, as you have to flip it halfway through.

[Welles Fan]

I remember when GOODFELLAS was released. A friend called and left a message on my answering machine that this was a must-see film. Well, I did go to see it, and found it so repellantly violent that I did not care for it over-all, even though there were things I liked in it.

Later, the LaserDisc came out and I checked it out again. The second viewing was when it all clicked for me. I could tell from the very first scene that I was in the presence of a classic. I have seen it many times since (on laser), and feel it is maybe Scorsese's best film. Like the music of Gustav Mahler, some things take time before you appreciate them.

[Rick Schmidlin]

Goodfellas was a great big screen exsperance. In regard to the laser and DVD editions like so many big films are shrunk in picture and sound size. Not that it is bad just different and the first in you face impact really took a big screen to tranlate it's emotion. I find most films I see a small screen I need to view more that once if I want to understand it completely.

$0.02

[jaime marzol]

....................

GOODFELLAS was a tremendous experience on the big screen. i saw it first run and still remember the exciting close-up of the young jimmy conway putting those bills in people's pockets. that camera tracking everywhere. it's a very exciting film to watch and a big screen. i remember following GOODFELLAS around town to different theaters, taking different people to see it.

i was very excited about going to seeing CASINO, and it was dissapointing. i belonged to a laser disc club then and CASINO was one of those forced purchases that i didn't return the card in time to tell them not to send it. i kept the disc, and now i catually like it. i like the lighting a lot, the acting is good, the saul bass credits are a work of art, the whole thing is fine, at home. it was too long for movie theater. all films unless they are of GODFATHER, or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA quality should be less than 2 hrs long. i can't sit still that long.

[Dave]

Jaime, your... um, feelings remind me of that story about Columbia Head, Harry Cohn, and how nervous directors would judge his reaction to their films by the number of times he'd adjust during the screening. Herman Mankiewicz had some great quote about the world being wired to Cohn's ass. I guess Lady From Shanghai must of left him feeling like he'd been to a Turkish Prison.