365 Films

My personal project for 2017 is to watch and recommend a film each day, inspired by Steven Soderbergh. Click on the pictures for short summaries.

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January 21, The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1967) Max is (Zero Mostel) a Broadway producer. He is a raging maniac without any moral inhibition whatsoever. Leo (Gene Wilder) is an accountant. He is neurotic and coward, less obscene but equally corrupt. When Max realizes that romancing lecherous old ladies doesn’t pay off well enough, Leo comes up with a brilliant plan. He suggests that a Broadway flop can make more money than a hit. Assuring that the production will be a complete disaster, they are on the search for the most repulsive and outrageous play. They pick Springtime for Hitler eventually, written with utterly serious intentions by a German ex-Nazi. Mel Brook’s feature debut has everything to be one of the greatest comedies ever. Besides the wonderful insanity of both Max and Leo, every supporting character is offbeat and eccentric to say the least. Unforgettable lines such as “Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer:” follow each other continuously. It would be inadequate to praise the film only for its humor though. While laughing harshly at Max’s barbarian frenzy, it’s also shocking to face. It is an immensely sharp social satire and a sincere depiction of bad taste and obsession, by a master provocateur, whose humor remains as challenging as it was in 1967.

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January 20, The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993) This was one of the first “parents strongly cautioned” film I saw. Revisiting The Fugitive today, I found it as powerful as I did at the age of 11. The prestigious surgeon, Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) arrives home to find there a one-armed man, who killed his wife. The murderer escapes, the police accuse Kimble and he is sentenced to death. The prisoners are transported by a bus and when some try to attack the guards they cause a huge crash. Kimble, among others, gets to escape. While he is on the run and tries to find the real murderer, U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) orders a manhunt against him. Aside of its great action sequences full with tension, the most memorable element of the film is the unexpected connection between Kimble and Gerard, based on Gerard’s sensual sympathy and respect for the doctor. Ford’s brave, audacious role finds its roots mostly in Indiana Jones, whereas Tommy Lee Jones reaches a new level of complexity and character study here. There are certain scenes referring to Hitchcock or Reed, but stylistically I would rather compare the film to the heydays of American television, as the script itself is based on a TV-series. Although less noted than his inspired colleagues like Martin Ritt, John Frankenheimer or Sidney Lumet, filmmaker Andrew Davis established himself with this well-crafted work in the company of America’s finest thriller directors. 

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January 19, This is England (Shane Meadows, 2006) During the morose days of Thatcherism, unhappy, 12-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) found his first true friends in the group of some local skinheads. Woody, the kindhearted, sympathetic leader invites the boy to join them and seems very concerned about him. Being either provoked or neglected at school, Shaun feels he belongs, for the first time I think since his father died in the Falklands. After getting out of prison, Combo a racist and nationalist friend of them, rejoins the group and splits it up. Woody, rejecting any form of far-right politics leaves the gang accompanied by her girlfriend and other members. Despite his love for Woody, Shaun stays with Combo, because he wants to make his father proud by fighting “Maggie”. The new skinhead leader turns out to be violent and ruthless which leads to terrible consequences. Shane Meadows portrays the whole community with great warmth and humanity. The film is blessed by his empathy for both Shaun and Woody, but what makes it overwhelmingly emotional is how he feels for Combo as well. I personally didn’t know anything about the skinheads’ history and Woody’s anti-racist persona was a delightful surprise. At the end however I cared for Combo probably even more. While Woody was fortunate in many aspects of his life, Combo was a complete loser. The way he admitted that in his better moments was incredibly touching. Life of course isn’t less cruel than fiction, Thomas Turgoose’s mother passed away before the production was completed, and she never saw the film.

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January 18, Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2014) I saw this film for the first time almost exactly two years ago, with my girlfriend in a small cinema in Budapest. It was freezing outside and the screening room was brutally overheated, yet I forgot to take off my coat. I sat there in my wet clothes, it was sultry and airless, the whole atmosphere perfectly suited the slow, suffocating pacing of the film. It was worthwhile, Winter Sleep became my favorite film from the last 25 years. Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), a retired stage actor, owns now a hotel in the isolated mountains of Anatolia. He lives there with his much younger, beautiful wife and his sister. There are many unresolved tensions in their relationships and a local child’s seemingly unimportant mischief puts the nail in the coffin. Despite Aydin’s obvious intellectual values, he consistently fools himself and builds a rather illusory world. The film is full with brilliantly written dialogues. I haven’t seen or read anything this living, authentic, sensitive and understanding. The film has many connections to theater. Haluk Bilginer, a stage actor himself gives a breathtaking performance, and the whole supporting cast lives up to his lead. Nuri Bilge Ceylan cited Chekhov as the biggest stylistic influence, Aydin however reminded me mostly to Ibsen’s Hjalmar. Ceylan, born in 1959 not just younger than many of the most important European auteurs working today, but made his feature debut relatively late, in 1997. Despite the chronological distance, I regard him the closest to be the successor of European modernism.

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January 17, Time Stands Still (Péter Gothár, 1982) Gothár’s beautifully shot, evocative film takes place mostly in 1963, in a year when the world of a Hungarian high school was defined by the spreading rock ‘n roll and the newly given amnesty for political prisoners. The story centers around Dini, a teenage boy whose father left the family in 1956 by escaping to Vienna from the terrible consequences of his participation in the revolution. Dini’s older brother fails to get into the university for political reasons, and Dini doesn’t have better chances either. He seems to love a girl but doesn’t make a move. An older boy, the rebellious and mysterious Pierre vivifies the school life with funny tricks and ambitious plans. It is a great coming of age film, but its greatness lies much more on the mood than the story. Among the adults, everyone knows everything about the others’ past and ideological decisions. It leads to madness and divides relationships. This doesn’t matter to Dini’s generation. The first love, career choices and the impact and novelty of the American culture what they care about. According to the sad ending though, their lives won’t be more liberated. Dini almost crosses the border, but the long-awaited fulfillment of his love remains the freest act, what he ever does. Despite all that, it’s not a depressing experience at all. It is a very funny, very political film about characters without perspectives. 

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January 16, The White Sheik (Federico Fellini, 1952) A film of touching and simple characters, yet it carries the early grounds of Fellini’s circus-like world. A newly married couple arrive in Rome for their honeymoon. The husband has a very precise and cheerless schedule for the trip, which mostly centers around an audience with the pope himself. Trying to leave the petit bourgeoisie boredom behind for a while, Wanda - the wife - escapes from their hotel room. She has an enormous crush on Fernando Rivoli, a photo novel star, who plays the White Sheik. In response to her former fan letters, Rivoli invites Wanda to meet him if she comes to Rome. Both their encounter and the husband’s desperate attempt to explain to his uncle Wanda’s absence deliver some great laughs. The film kindly satirizes the provincial naivety of Wanda, the conformism of the husband and self-deceiving habits of Rivoli. Everyone is good and lovely, even when the White Sheik is doing his mannered show-off, he is so vulnerably human, even the husband at his most narrow-minded moments seems to be warm and heartfelt. These characters don’t know and will never face the problems of Nights of Cabiria. The tainted, yet grandiose lives in La Dolce Vita are even farther from them, and that’s why there is no brutal awakening in this film. The narrative remains in that sense as innocent as the people without any dramatic twist.

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January 14, Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000) This project’s entry to the new millennium is a warm, nostalgic look at the 1970s and one of the most enjoyable comedies coming out in the past decade. Cameron Crowe’s partly autobiographical return to his most suitable subject matter - teenager life - is about the 15-year-old William Miller who gets the opportunity of his dreams after he impresses the famous rock journalist Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and has to write a review about a Black Sabbath concert. Later he will be contacted with the Rolling Stone magazine and experience the backstage atmospheres of some of his admired bands. There are many truly funny moments and memorable performances, from which Philip Seymour Hoffman’s - as always - stands out. Apart from the clever reflections on the faint differences between being a fan and a critic - also a reminder for film reviewers - my favorite thing about the film is William’s unbreakable optimism despite the most heartless things he sees. Most of the supporting characters are also very lovely, it is recommended especially for those who found PTA’s Boogie Nights too depressing and need some healing laughter. 

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January 13, The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962) Based on Franz Kafka’s novel, Welles’ favorite from his own filmography is a fantastic visual achievement, a thrilling portrayal of hysterical paranoia, and his most autobiographical and personal project. I understood the latter only after I’ve read Peter Bogdanovich’s excellent book This is Orson Welles, which I highly recommend. Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) wakes up finding several detectives in his room. Despite his desperate attempts to find out what he is accused of, the detectives don’t tell him anything. It’s getting even more nightmarish and absurd, when he is ordered to appear in court. Although the film’s mood is rather cold, Anthony Perkins’ shy and sickly behaviour reaches an unexpectedly moving level. He also seems to find something very personal in his performance, a role that certainly suits the suppositions and rumors about his private life. It ends in an unsettling way and to me it was a rarely fearful and tragic experience, but among others Orson Welles himself pointed out that the film can be seen as a comedy. 

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January 12, Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) The sun is shining through the trees of a forest, where a samurai was murdered. The witnesses and the suspect testify under a gray, severe sky. Three men are discussing the events, while it’s raining heavily. Akira Kurosawa’s shocking international breakthrough needs no more than three location to create one of the most complex experience in cinematic history. Kurosawa doesn’t only study the nature of truth but presents a whole new level of what is possible in visual storytelling. It is as challenging and thought-provoking as it gets. Four people recollect their memories to tell four different versions of a story about a samurai, his wife and a bandit. While reconsidering their opinion on the actual happenings with each interpretation, the audience also reconsider what they’ve known as narrative. It works in a very instinct way, it doesn’t require any interest in theory. If Hitchcock’s Rear Window is an intellectual, calculated work about voyeurism and the connection between the viewer and the film, than this an entirely sensual one. During the hearing of the witnesses, there is no interrogator, they talk directly to the camera. The film involves the audience without them noticing it. The cinematography and the use of natural lights is mesmerizing and the extravaganza of Mifune’s performance was just the beginning of a legendary career.

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January 10, Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943) My favorite Danish film of all time, an outrageously open look at repressed sexuality and an accurate analysis of the protestant authority. Dreyer is mostly praised for his innovative and almost lost silent masterpiece about Joan of Arc and his tragic swan song, Gertrud. Given their evident greatness, it is quite understandable, yet it is sad that they overshadow this evenly amazing film. Made during the second World War, in occupied Denmark, no wonder that audiences and critics interpreted the cruel witch hunt as a metaphor for the persecution of the Jews. Although Dreyer refused to have such intention, it still became an important and effective inspiration for the resistance. The fact that none of the accused women deny the charges and the unsettling ending will leave you confused. It’s not a film of clear, skeptic perspective and nor a straightforward fantasy. It gives the freedom of interpretation for the viewers and that’s the best thing in case of such theme. The slowly moving camera, the surprising, European, 17th-century version of the femme fatale and a tearjerker performance by an unknown Danish stage actress Anna Svierkier make this film an unforgettable experience. 

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January 9, White Hunter Black Heart (Clint Eastwood, 1990) Knowing that Jonathan Rosenbaum and other great critics wrote so highly of this film, I was really eager to see it for a long time, but somehow I only managed it now, as a part of this project. I truly enjoyed the thrills of Mystic River and the stylish darkness of Million Dollar Baby, but this film is on another level. Eastwood plays a strong-willed, independent filmmaker John Wilson - actually John Huston - who travels to Africa to shoot his new film, but rather concentrates on hunting elephants than anything else. The approaching film’s cast also includes real life inspired characters, most importantly Pete Verrill - based on Peter Viertel the screenwriter of both this film and Huston’s The African Queen. Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and even Lauren Bacall as his spouse have their equivalents. John Wilson’s somewhat philosophical thoughts on machismo, film-making and life show an obvious similarity between Eastwood and John Huston. As Rosenbaum points it out, the greatness of Eastwood’s performance is how he balances between his own star persona and what he thinks of Huston the result of which is just as self-analytical as a commentary on the legendary director. Apart from these auteurist aspects, it is a film of great landscape cinematography, fine supporting cast and an insightful look at classic Hollywood film-making, interfered by untalented producers and blessed by eccentric geniuses. 

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January 8, The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997) Quiet sensitivity, harrowing meditation on loss and the lies of a small, provincial town in British Columbia mark Atom Egoyan’s fascinating film - based on a novel by Russell Banks - about a lawyer’s investigation of a tragic school bus crash. Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) interrogates the families of the victims in order to get to know the case better and make amends. Some of them are unfriendly, others are too broken to refuse him and one of them must tell lies. Meanwhile, there is a subplot about Stephens and her daughter, which gives the audience an emotional closeness to the lawyer, who would be otherwise too calm and professional for that. There are some shocking secrets to discover, but it isn’t the most important thing about it. I watched it for the second time, and I was perfectly aware of all the twists, but given its captivating atmosphere and profound characters it didn’t matter at all. The performance of the 18-year-old Sarah Polley is particularly delightful and moving.

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January 7, The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948) Beautifully shot in magical Technicolor, The Red Shoes is arguably the finest result of the partnership between the great English director Michael Powell and his Hungarian collaborator Emeric Pressburger. An aspiring ballerina Vicky Page played by Moira Shearer gets the chance to dance in the company of a legendary but heartless impresario, Boris Lermontov. When they travel to Monte Carlo to perform a new version of The Red Shoes she meets the new composer of the orchestra and they fall in love. After the successful premiere both of their careers seem to rise at the company, but than Lermontov fires the composer, Vicky leaves the theater with him - she returns later - and they get married. The story ends in a tragic, sort of fated way. The most famous two lines of the film sums up perfectly the radical portrayal of the artistic obsession, the fact that Vicky has no decision over her life: “Why do you want to dance?” asks Lermontov, and Vicky answers: “Why do you want to live?”. Aside of the complexity of the narrative and the psychological aspects of the film, it is the effortless elegance, what makes it so outstanding. The camera floats ethereally, just like Vicky when she glides on the stairs of Lermontov’s luxurious villa in Monte Carlo. 

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January 6, Beware of a Holy Whore (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971) Somehow overshadowed by Fassbinder’s later films, and other films about film-making whose brilliance is more evident and easier to notice (8½, Contempt), it is still one of the most gripping and authentic look at the process. Given its ensemble cast with many different personalities, I also think that younger audiences and aspiring actors or directors could relate better to the struggles and problems of this film’s characters. Fassbinder himself plays an aggressive and harsh production driver, and it couldn’t have been inspired more by his own persona. Back to comparison with Godard’s Contempt, it is really interesting to see how they point to two different directions. Contempt - a very expensive film itself - is - among other things - about the end of a kind of classic, big budget cinema embodied by Fritz Lang, whereas this film made from little money, with a cast full of friends shows the way for a huge amount of similar productions to come. 

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January 5, La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) A film rather about Renoir’s faith in humanity than war and a beautifully detailed look at prison life and escaping. As hotels or long distance train travels for other stories, in this film Renoir uses the POW camp to bring the different classes of French society under a single roof, each represented by a captive soldier. The film however doesn’t reduce its characters to be symbols, the singularity of the individuals isn’t less important for Renoir than the social themes. The whole French cast with Jean Gabin in the lead is of course wonderful, but it is the sadly - at the time even more - forgotten auteur Erich von Stroheim who steals the show with his outstanding performance as the famous Captain von Rauffenstein. 

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January 4, Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996) The third and last film in a row from a certain movement. This is a much more charming pick, a highly entertaining, and an equally important and stylish film. Wes Anderson’s debut is as assured as his later works, yet there is some kind of an amateurish adventurousness and jollity that makes me love it more than his others. Two eccentric lads plan “masterful” robberies later completed by a third one as a getaway driver. The consequences are unpredictable and hilarious. The first scene with the fake rescue from the nuthouse must be the most movingly funny moment of all time. The usual Wes Anderson cast is joined by a totally unexpected James Caan performance. 

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January 3, Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995) Not just another milestone in the richest period of independent American cinema, but simply one of the all-time greats in the history of film. While creating a completely original and current atmosphere, Haynes also masterfully evokes his cinematic references, besides the usual Douglas Sirk the likes of Chantal Akerman or Michelangelo Antonioni. Safe is claimed to be a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, and it is as scary as it sounds. Julianne Moore plays a carefree housewife, the film starts out as a horrifying depiction of the high society in the San Fernando Valley but later turns out to be much more complex than that. It is inadequate to define Safe as a metaphor or a film about a certain thing. Haynes creates a character with a mysterious illness, whose life is determined by her environment, and yet she couldn’t be more distant and alienated from everything that surrounds her. I’ve seen it for the second time and I still have the feeling that the narrative has a whole hidden level, to put it somewhat pretentiously, it is also about something you cannot see.