Diabolique is the "Critic's Pick" today over at the New York Times film reviews. The review itself is short and consists mostly of plot summary, but I thought it still warranted mention here as an old favorite. For the truly committed some of the comments are more substantial than the review itself.
Also, The Casual Optimist has an interview with David Kehr, author of When Movies Mattered. I feel weirdly about the title, and about the premise, that there is something special about movies made from 1974-1986.* The numbers seem so arbitrary to me, like when people claim music really happened in 1969. I suppose Kehr's project is much more autobiographical then actually historic, and I would actually sort of like to see our NTC participants post about their own pivotal movies or movie decades. I have no idea what would be mine, except that it would probably be movie posters and VHS covers rather than the movies themselves.
*I also feel weird about Kehr's claim that he "stumbled into film journalism because [he] didn't want to go to grad school." WAS THAT AN OPTION FOR ME?
3 comments:
I've never been convinced by the claim that the 1970s are obviously the best/most important/whatever decade of American film, although I guess they might be the most important decade in American horror, assuming you can define the seventies broadly as starting in 1968 and extending to 1981.
For my money, the best decade of American film is the 1940s, maybe that's because my taste runs to the popular, not the high-brow. Lots of my most favorite movies were made in the 40s: His Girl Friday, Notorious, The Shop Around the Corner, Sullivan's Travels, The Lady Eve, Meet John Doe, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Double Indemnity. These are movies I have watched again and again.
Most of the movies I have watched at least six times were made in the 1940s. Exceptions: earlier Capra, later Hitchcock, Fred & Ginger, two Coen brothers movies and two Polanski movies. I don't think any of them were made in the 70s.
I have been trying to decide what to write in response to your comment here, but I can't do much of anything except lamely agree with you. If you had asked me to name a decade, I'd have been totally unsure of my favorite. Your list of movies makes me certain that my favorite decade is also the 40s.
I wonder if I could make an argument that my decade is the 50s? After all, to quote the wikipedia entry "The decade of the 1950s in film involved many significant films."
So, my thought that I could make a case for the 50s was based largely on The Ladykillers and Rear Window. Hitchcock complicates things because some of his most high profile films are from the 50s, but they're not necessarily my favorites. The wiki list from the 1940s is so much better. I now think that the 1940s is not only your favorite decade, but it must also be the mandatory favorite decade for all film and/or comedy aficionados.
Post a Comment