A Movie You Haven't Seen for a While

Question

I think I'm on record for really, really liking "Atlantic City."

But I just saw it again.
And wow.
What a movie of its time, for its actors, for what happens.

Damn!
Serandan is young and sexy. Lancaster has lines like, "The Atlantic Ocean, you should've seen it then!"
The closing credits are all about tearing away what used to be for what's gonna be.
Helluva a movie.
So what are those forgotten films you think others should see again?

Joe Myers
"'Chinatown' is a given."

Usenet · Accepted Answer

Last night I put in the disk to AMERICAN FRIEND, and it was scratched up so bad I couldn't watch it, so I irdered another from Amazon...

But this is my favorite Wenders film. I'm strange, because I like all of the pre-HAMMETT movies and think the ones afterwards are hit & miss. I am oddly not a fan of PARIS, TEXAS.But AMERICAN FRIEND takes Wenders' slow pace and uses it to build the suspense. And, unlike the novel, there is a real friendship between Tom Ripley and his victim in the film. A warm friendship. I stuck with the skips and scratches and articating until the end of the first murder - a never ending scene in the subway where Bruno Ganz can't bring himself to kill the man; and the longer he waits, the more difficult it becomes logistically. It's a great Hitchcock style scene...

a later scene (I'll have to wait for the new DVD) with the next murder on the train is not only a nail-biter, it's funny - there are ironic and amusing elements in the scene that break the tension... well, for a moment. I think this is the film where I discovered Wenders, and then went back and saw all of his previous movies. I think part of my reason for liking the old ones more is that you can see his progress as a film maker. What seemed to happen post- HAMMETT is that he became Hitchcock after the critics recognized him - and some of the films are indulgent and a little sloppy.

Still, Wenders is one of those guys who make interesting films. Like Hitchcock, the worst Wenders film still has something.
Over the holidays I broke out my early Hitchcock movies on DVD, and I'm still watching them. I did a thing on my blog about 39 STEPS and THE RING, but the movie I watched a couple of days ago - YOUNG AND INNOCENT - is a forgotten Hitchcock film that deserves to be remembered. It's a chase film, about a struggling young screenwriter who is accused of murdering a famous actress - and when he's assigned a public defender, the guy is a moron... so our hero escapes (clever scene) kidnaps a woman in a car outside the courthouse...

and as bad luck has it - she's the daughter of the police chief! Now he must find the edivence that proves he's innocent and/or the real killer, plus keep her from going to the authorities. So he must convince her he is innocent first. There are some great set pieces, and what I always thought was cool was the use of miniatures - there are all kinds of really complex models in this film. A "helicopter shot" zooms over the city, past cars on the street, past a train blasting down the tracks, to a rail road yard where a man and woman and dog are in a car...

and it was all models! Cut to the real man and woman and dog in the car, with the same background. There is also a great mine cave in scene that swallows that car - and almost our heroes. One of the cool things about older Hitchcock movies are the gags - in 39 STEPS there have to be 2 dozen things that deal with the handcuffs - it's as if a writer made up a list of every possible handcuff thing, and put them in the script. Here we get all kinds of gags - from the public defenders thick glasses (good for a handful) to the dog (in one scene it doesn't get in the car during a chase and they must slow down to get the running dog...

as the police catch up!) to a tense game of blind man's bluff at a kid's birthday party where our heroes are trying to escape to a homeless guy who has seen the killer and the issues of getting him into an elegant night club to pick the killer out of the crowd. Oh, and that scene has one of those amazing tracking shots - we start outside, overhead - enter the night club - hundreds of people, which one is teh killer? And as the camera slowly moves over the room with too many suspects for them to weed through before the police arrive, the camera slowly moves down to eye level and creeps up to the killer's eyes - they fill the screen.

Cool shot, that makes us wonder how they will ever get through all of those false suspects to find the real killer - kind of a needle in a haystack. This is a breezy chase film, kind of like 39 STEPS. Probably less known because the cast isn't as attractive nor as famous. But fun to see again.
- Bill
Free Script Tips:
http://www.scriptsecrets.net

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I think I'm on record for really, really liking "Atlantic City." But I just saw it again. And wow. What ... a movie. So what are those forgotten films you think others should see again? Joe Myers "'Chinatown' is a given."[/nq]
(so fixated on the *** and lemons scene he couldn't spell her name)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I think I'm on record for really, really liking "Atlantic City." But I just saw it again. And wow. What ... a movie. So what are those forgotten films you think others should see again? Joe Myers "'Chinatown' is a given."[/nq]
Some of them are here. Alphabetically:
Blow-Up (Antonioni)
Caligula
Citizen Kane
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
La Dolce Vita

8 1/2Fargo
La Femme Nikita
The Godfather (all of them)
GoodFellas
The Graduate
Last Tango in Paris
Lost in Translation
Mulholland Dr.
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Prizzi's Honor
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler's List
Serpico
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shining
The Silence of the Lambs
Taxi Driver
Unforgiven
The Usual Suspects
The Verdict
West Side Story
Y Tu Mama Tambien
And obviously everything by Woody Allen - except for "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" (which totally *** me off) - and Tarantino

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]And obviously everything by Woody Allen - except for "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" (which totally *** me off) - and Tarantino- Hide quoted text -[/nq]
Opposite for me - I would start with WHAT'S UP and skip everything after ANNIE HALL (though, I own some of those films on DVD anyway).

- Bill

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]So what are those forgotten films you think others should see again? Joe Myers "'Chinatown' is a given."[/nq]
Night and the City (is this forgotten?)
Cutter and Bone (Cutter's Way? I can never remember which title stuck)
1000 Pieces of Gold

this is tough, cuz I never forgot Atlantic City

Mysti

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I think I'm on record for really, really liking "Atlantic ... others should see again? Joe Myers "'Chinatown' is a given."[/nq]
[nq:1]Some of them are here. Alphabetically: Blow-Up (Antonioni) Caligula Citizen Kane The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie La Dolce Vita ... obviously everything by Woody Allen - except for "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" (which totally *** me off) - and Tarantino[/nq]
are any of these forgotten?
Mysti

Usenet · Answer

CUTTER'S WAY is what stuck - and that's a really good one.

Also, similar, is WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN - which I haven't seen since it came out, and maybe I should order it. (I have CUTTER'S WAY).

Over the holidays I also watched BOUND FOR GLORY again, after someone on another board started a thread on tracking shots.

BOUND seems particularly relevant these days, with home foreclosures and unemployment breaking records. A beautiful movie about a real American patriot, Woody Guthrie. Story starts with the dustbowl and depression, and Woody as a sign painter trying to feed his family. Some great shots of giant dust clouds enveloping the town. People are being evicted. Businesses are shutting down. Guthrie sets out in search of work - hitchhiking, riding the rails. All of his money is taken by corrupt authority figures (rail road security and small town cops).
Along the way he meets others in the same boat - including Randy Quaid, a poor farmer looking for work in California. Some key little scenes include one where M. Emmet Walsh is a wealthy guy who gives him a ride... until Guthrie purposely mouths off and gets thrown out of the car. Another where Guthrie asks a Priest if he can paint him a new sign for a meal, and the priest tells him he doesn't need a sign and he's not giving anyone a free meal.When they get to California the promised jobs don't exist. They have thousands of people and 30 jobs... and that means they can pay next to nothing and someone will work. Guthrie borrows Quaid's guitar, goes into town, and sings for his supper. Songs he makes up about his travels. Eventually he is heard by radio star Ronny ***, who gets him a job singing on his radio show. *** is a union organizer in his spare time - he sees how the farm workers are being mistreated and thinks they deserve a fair wage.

Guthrie becomes part of this... but where as *** can use his earnings from singing mainstream songs on the radio to fund his politcal causes, Guthrie is unable to sing what the radio station manager wants him to sing, and sings about the farm workers and poor Americans. This makes him a hit with people who don't buy sponsor's products... which leads to the radio station giving him a choice: stay employed (we don't care what you do in your spare time) or quit.

Guthrie quits, and goes back to riding the rails.

The great thing about this film is that it's about the people of America, not the institutions, which frequently are at odds with those people. The film is an epic, but personal at the same time. And Guthrie is a fascinating character - talented and self destructive. When he has a chance to have his music heard by a national audience, he screws it up. When he has a patron who is willing to fund his music, he scews it up. Whenever anyone gives him a break, he screws it up... but his music has endured. Every grade school kid knows the lyrics to one of his songs.
Oh, and music choice in the film is also interesting - they never have him play one of his famous songs, favoring more obscure songs. This is cool, because you may not be familiar with these songs.

Oh, and there's that killer tracking shot, too.
- Bill
PS: Because this is Black History Month, and they've added a day! I think I may buy and watch SOUNDER again - I own it on VHS, but not DVD. It's a great film.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]So what are those forgotten films you think others should see again?[/nq]
The Marriage of Maria Braun - One German woman's journey through WW2 and beyond. I remember an IMDb user review that summed it up as "Frau Mildred Pierce", but that's kind of unfair... number one, because they don't have all that much in common, and number two because this is the much better film. This movie, even today, raises the bar for what ought to be considered an "art film". It seems like, in every scene, Fassbinder is always coming up with one more camera angle that puts a whole new light on the scene, or one more line of dialogue that's... just... right, or one more idea of some kind. This motion picture is a frigging astonishing achievement. I wasn't that big a Fassbinder fan before I saw it. Now I want to order one of these T- shirts:
http://www.cinefilevideo.com/
More in a bit, when I have a spare moment...

alt.flame Special Forces
"I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect... to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains... What I tell I tell for precisely what it is." Walt Whitman, in the preface to Leaves of Grass

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Over the holidays I also watched BOUND FOR GLORY again[/nq]
( nifty summation deleted )
While we're mentioning early-20th-century American period dramas, please allow me to put in a good word for Matewan . Surely I'm not the only John Sayles fan here. He was a novelist before he came into movies, and the richness of detail and sociological bent of his work are virtues usually associated more with books than movies.
It should also be mentioned here that Mr. Sayles is an independent filmmaker who wants to stay that way, and he may be the only one. It seems that every other dude with a camcorder and a couple of flats wants to Hit The Big Time so they have LUNCH with JULIA ROBERTS!!11!1 More power to him for wanting to be an actual artist.

alt.flame Special Forces
"I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect... to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains... What I tell I tell for precisely what it is." Walt Whitman, in the preface to Leaves of Grass

Usenet · Answer

I'm pretty proud of this thread I started.
You've given me a bunch of films for my Netflix queue; stuff I'd forgotten or missed and other films I haven't seen for a while and should see again.

Keep 'em coming!
Btw, "Edge of Darkness" is coming available on Netflix this month. It's a pretty special mini-series for me and I haven't seen it in years. For a long time it wasn't available on DVD in the States but it's coming back.

Life is good.
Joe Myers
"Considering the alternative, anyway."

A Movie You Haven't Seen for a While

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