As always, happy viewing (and wearing)!
Matt Dentler is the producer of the South by Southwest Film Conference & Festival, in Austin, Texas (www.sxsw.com), as well as a curator for American distributor Film Movement and Canadian distributor Films We Like. He also hosts the weekly local PBS series “SXSW Presents.” In its Summer 2006 issue, MovieMaker named him one of the 25 “Coolest People to Know in Indie Film,” an honor with which his girlfriend disagrees.
Looking over my list, I see a theme of cross-generational conflict. A lot of these films are about the young and the old at odds with each other. Or they deal with the young making amends with the fact that time flies and that it’s time to grow up. I guess that’s fitting, since I’m such a young guy working in an industry full of classics.
1. Do the Right Thing (1989)
It’s one of the most important American films of all time and a powerful, wonderful breakthrough for Spike Lee. All the pieces fit, and it feels effortless. The climactic riot scene is already a landmark in cinematic storytelling. Spike Lee essentially crafted a war film, except the battles are set in inner-city America.
2. Grey Gardens (1975)
This film actually frightens me, and that’s saying something for a documentary made some thirty years ago. The Maysles brothers and their team crafted a glimpse into the dark and dysfunctional world of the American family and a failing American dream.
3. High and Low (1963)
This is such a fiery and entertaining crime film. It’s epic yet completely domestic and simple. While it's somewhat of a departure from his canon, Kurosawa’s stamp is everywhere. He manages to expertly adapt American source material and place it in Japan (the irony, of course, being that America would adapt his stories for years to follow).
4. Hoop Dreams (1994)
Passionate, personal, and uplifting documentary filmmaking. This is a true example of the power of the art form, and a terrific movie too. Rarely do you find filmmakers with such an insight to the world of sports, and the ability to examine the personal politics that run underneath it. This should be required viewing for any sports or film fan.
5. Rushmore (1998)
I cannot stop watching this film. I’ve tried. Yet Wes Anderson has created a fairy-tale world that is so timeless and awkwardly comfortable. Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman portray one of the most endearing duos in years, with an ensemble of memorable characters surrounding them. Full of hilarious dialogue, a pristine song score, and Anderson’s imaginative eye—this will restore anyone’s faith in American independent filmmaking.
6. John Cassavetes: Five Films
(1959-1977)
This is the starter kit for anyone who wonders about the roots of the American independent film movement. Seeing Cassavetes’s debut, the politically charged love story Shadows, is like watching the birth of a giant. Meanwhile, Faces and A Woman Under the Influence are searing portraits of the blinding pain true love can bring when a marriage ends up tearing a family apart. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night, on the other hand, are noirish sagas of death and business. Plus, Charles Kiselyak’s moving documentary A Constant Forge offers up the proper historical and cultural perspective on one of American cinema’s true visionaries.
7. Tokyo Story (1953)
Ozu was a master, and this is his masterpiece. This beautiful family drama is a textured poem about changing family ties and misunderstandings between generations. A portrait of postwar Tokyo and the changes that can come to different generations.
8. Wild Strawberries (1957)
There’s a reason this is one of Ingmar Bergman’s most cited works: it’s one of his best. A beautiful and unusually brisk road movie, this may be Bergman’s most accessible film, but what’s wrong with that? This is the kind of film artists spend their entire careers striving for. Bergman achieved it early on, and made many more classics as a result.
9. Slacker (1991)
A society on the brink of defiance and revolution, and a generation that’s sick and tired of being sick and tired. In some years and some countries, they riot. In 1990 America, they talk it out. Easily one of the most influential American films of the last twenty-five years, Richard Linklater’s exploration of bored youth is mesmerizing. This film would help its titular term become a phenomenon, as well as put Austin, Texas, on the cultural map.
10. The Rules of the Game (1939)
Jean Renoir’s almost-lost piece of essential filmmaking is a tour de force of social debate, comedy, violence, and overindulgence. And that’s just how the characters behave. The filmmaking is crisp, smart, and quickly paced. Many films have come close, but, in my opinion, Renoir’s masterpiece is the finest cinematic example of class satire.
STREET DATE: 8/15
As we enter the lazy days of late summer, we’re proud to introduce to the collection the most seasonal of filmmakers—the famously elusive, hugely influential Eric Rohmer. Whether setting his romances and battles of the sexes against summery beaches or snowy cityscapes, Rohmer has always been a stickler for environmental detail, often delaying shooting on his scripts—for months and even in some cases years—until he could achieve the right effect. In the case of Moral Tale III, My Night at Maud’s, he was so convinced that Jean-Louis Trintignant would be perfect for the lead role, and simultaneously so dead set on filming in wintry Christmastime, that he waited three years for the actor to be available for a December shoot. Thus, the Moral Tales were shot out of sequence, with number IV, the sun-dappled La collectionneuse, produced and released in the in-between time. Similarly, Rohmer cast Jean-Claude Brialy two years prior to filming Claire’s Knee, offering only the rigid yet vague information that it would be made in summer 1970. They didn’t speak to each other again until a month before the June shoot. Check out the interviews with Trintignant, Brialy, and many others on our deluxe, six-disc set of one of cinema’s greatest legacies.
STREET DATE: 8/29
During preproduction on Pietro Germi’s hilarious shocker Seduced and Abandoned, producer Franco Cristaldi was pushing to cast an American star in the role of the harried, violently tempered patriarch Vincenzo Ascalone, who goes on a rampage when he finds his daughter has been “seduced” by her sister’s fiancé. It was a time when many Hollywood actors were headlining Italian films (Burt Lancaster in The Leopard, Rod Steiger in Hands over the City), and Cristaldi was hoping to land Spencer Tracy, or even Ernest Borgnine. Germi refused, insisting that Vincenzo be played by a Sicilian—specifically character actor Saro Urzì. Germi even threatened to quit the film if he didn’t get his way. Authenticity paid off: though less well-known, Urzì went on to win Best Actor at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival for his performance.
STREET DATE: 8/22
Originally, Eric Stoltz was meant to have all of thirty seconds of screen time in Kicking and Screaming, in a cameo as a video-store clerk. In an interview on this new special edition DVD, director Noah Baumbach explains that when he was attempting to secure financing from the now defunct production company Trimark, the studio agreed to put up the money on the condition that they could use the redheaded indie-film darling to market the picture, about a group of wayward postgraduates unable to move on from college life. So Baumbach gave Stoltz a serious upgrade, creating over one weekend the character of Chet, the perpetual college student and bartender, who always seems to be spouting nuggets of wisdom. Trimark’s original poster and ad campaign thus heavily featured Eric Stoltz—even though Chet was ultimately still a supporting role.
With Seduced and Abandoned on DVD for the first time in the United States, it’s a good time to double up on your Pietro Germi. Possibly the greatest unsung Italian filmmaker working during the prolific period of the fifties and sixties, when the country’s cinema was in international vogue, Germi made raucous farces that also served as cutting social commentary. Divorce Italian Style was his biggest box-office success, and an Academy Award–winner for Best Original Screenplay, and as a hilariously withering portrait of male vanity and cruelty (embodied by a delicately swinish Marcello Mastroianni), it makes for the ideal companion piece to Seduced and Abandoned.
Forgotten no more, Stuart Cooper’s 1975 Overlord is enjoying a highly successful theatrical release from Janus Films across the nation. A D-Day depiction like no other, Overlord, writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times, “deserves to join the pantheon of essential World War II combat movies.” Shot by Stanley Kubrick’s famed cinematographer John Alcott, the film follows one young man’s experiences in the war, mixing fiction and documentary footage into one sensory experience. Overlord opened in New York in July and moves to Boston’s Brattle Theatre and San Francisco’s Balboa Theatre in late August, before making its way throughout the United States. Expect a Criterion special edition DVD of Overlord early next year.
Amarcord (Two-disc, remastered special edition)
Brazil (Remastered single-disc release and box set; now anamorphic)
Jigoku
Playtime (Two-disc, remastered special edition)
Seven Samurai (Three-disc, remastered special edition)
The Spirit of the Beehive
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