The Finish Line

For the last three years I've been trying to track down and watch (without paying a fortune for hard to get DVDs) all 145 films from the IMDB top 250 (at that time) I hadn't seen. Well as of Friday night I have.

In the last week I've taken in "The Best Years of Our Lives", "The Battle of Algiers" and finally on Friday night the film I'd been dreading (and consequently putting off) since day one: "Gone With the Wind".

The Best Years of Our Lives was another Willian Wyler (Ben Hur, Roman Holiday), and like all of his work I've encountered it was a really strong character piece. He wasn't a director with an elaborate visual style (as far as I've seen), but his films shine on the performances of his actors. That said there were a few moments later in the film (particular in the aeroplane graveyard) where the image on screen is particularly effective. The story of the three former military men (a soldier, an airman and a sailor) struggling in different ways after returning from the war was fairly powerful. One of the three; a sailor who lost his hands, stands out particularly. That said at times I felt the story spent too much time on the airman's romantic story at the expense of the other two.

Next up was the last of the non-English language films (and there have been a few). Fortunately it wasn't another Fellini, who I've struggled with. Instead it was by a different Italian; Gillo Pontecorvo. The Battle of Algiers sets out to tell the story of the Algerian War of Independence, and although before watching the film I knew nothing about it I didn't get a sense of a strong bias towards either the Algerian revolutionaries or the French, although its possible there were even worse actions by either side the film doesn't show. The performances were strong and the film was shot in very realistic looking way though not quite documentary style. The thing that really stood out for me though was the score. Given that it was done by one of the all time greats; Ennio Moricone that isn't too surprising. It draws on military music, but also jazz and creates a real sense of terror and confusion that helps to seriously ramp up the tension where needed. This particular clip sums it up rather well. Now if only QT would stop stealing it and using it in entirely the wrong way (see Inglorious Basterds). I would definitely suggest that those of you open to subtitled foreign films check this one out.

Last of all we had the longest film on the list, and with its run time of 238 minutes (that's almost 4 hours) I'm extremely glad there wasn't anything longer. If there was I would never have finished. I know there are longer films (even discounting the art installations that crop up on wikipedia's list) but fortunately I didn't have to deal with them.

Gone With the Wind was alright. I didn't love it, but I enjoyed it enough to not feel like I'd wasted my time in watching it. Parts of it were excellent, its just that it feels like two different films dovetailed together. The first of them being the story of the final days of the South in the American Civil War, and the second being a not really a love story starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. The performances from the leads were really good. Vivien Leigh could definately act, as I'd already seen in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Clark Gable was just that kind of leading man who could play a charming scoundrel as well as anyone. Visually it felt (and this is probably a sign that the film needed to wait a few years until after Citizen Kane had shown how it could be done) I was watching events unfold with one eye closed. The telling of the first half of the film needed more scale to really show the extent of the conflict and devastation. With a few more wide shots and sweeping panoramas (there was a good scene showing all the Confederate wounded) it could have been much better. The other issue with it has to be the supporting cast. Once again a sign of the times it was made it, but the portrayal of the black characters in particular was at best cringeworthy. Racial politics aside it isn't a bad film, but I'd need a very free Sunday afternoon to revisit it.

Anyway that's it done. I've had a look at the current IMDB Top 250 and there are about 30 films I've not seen. I did ask Hollywood to hold off on making new films until I'd finished, but clearly my polite request was ignored. Most of them are new films, released since I started my challenge, and given I wanted to see the classics, I feel no obligation to see them immediately, although I will eventually.

A Belated New Year Update

It's the New Year (or it was when I started writing this) and I didn't finish by the end of 2013. I'm down to the last nine films now though:

• Gone with the Wind (I just keep putting this one off. Might as well make it the last on purpose)
• The Grapes of Wrath
• Les diaboliques
• Judgment at Nuremberg
• The Best Years of Our Lives
• Shadow of a Doubt (Another Hitchcock!)
• Stalag 17
• The Battle of Algiers
• The 400 Blows

Since my last post I've managed to track down and watch

• Roman Holiday – My first exposure to Audrey Hepburn and she is a delight. That along with Gregory Peck's performance made it worth watching despite the film being a bit lightweight otherwise.
• The Seventh Seal – Unsettling, but brilliant. As with many of the best subtitled films I've watched after about twenty minutes I'd forgotten it wasn't in English. It felt like it belonged in the middle ages and definitely deserves its place.
• Wild Strawberries – Quite different to the other Bergman on the list. Still very character based, but a personal rather than supernatural drama. It doesn't suffer for it. I'm really looking forward to more Bergman now.
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – A rare modern film. Slightly off the wall feel to it that gives it a slightly otherworldly feel, but helps accentuate how strange it must have been to go through. Also a lovely film. Great viewing.
• A Streetcar Named Desire – I just don't buy Brando as the great actor. He was good certainly, but he never learned to talk with his mouth open. Vivian Leigh on the other hand was fantastic; brilliantly unhinged.
• 8 ½ – Surrealism from Fellini. It's apparently a comedy, but I didn't get it if it was. Unless it's only a comedy in the sense that it isn't serious. I've struggled with Fellini and this was no different.
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf – A master-class in marital craziness from Taylor and Burton, not much more to say.

Numbers

Numbers and an update.

145 films to watch. That's a fair old number, but what are they? Do I have to watch 145 black and white silent films, or 145 films full of Italians living difficult lives, 145 musicals (please God no!) or even Stanley Kubrick in ever flavour imaginable?

Well less than 10 are silent, and there was only one musical (the actually pretty damn good “Singin' in the Rain”). Interestingly my viewing of “Singin' in the Rain” coincided with the second of the two jumbo thunderstorms that hit Newcastle last year, which somehow managed to partly flood the second floor flat I was living in at the time.

One of the more pertinent questions seems to be “How long is this going to take?” I'm not talking about the almost three years I've spend watching these films, but the actual total runtime, which comes in at:

Total runtime of the 145 films = 305 hours and 46 minutes

That is slightly less than 13 days. Not even two weeks. What have I been doing? I should have finished this ages ago, but then I need to be in the right frame of mind to watch and appreciate some of these films, and distractions persist (Skyrim I'm looking at you!).

I've done a bit more number crunching on those films I've now watched, and those I still have to watch and it's below:

What decades are the films from?

Going with the overall numbers first we get a fairly predictable bias towards the 1990s onwards, no doubt because most of the IMDBs members are younger so have seen more films from their own lifetimes than those produced in earlier decades. Even I had only seen one film in the list from pre-1960: The Wizard of Oz it so happens, but that is a film I saw as as child and can hardly remember (one to eventually re-watch perhaps).

In terms of what I would (and will) have to watch the 1950s seem to be winning with the 2000s in second place (I don't get to the cinema as much as I'd like so have missed a fair bit) and the 1940s and 1960s getting a fair showing too. Overall though it's certainly weighted towards older films. Only 41 of the 145 were released after I was born (mid 80s).

What Language are they in?

I don't have a problem watching a film in its native language with subtitles, but that doesn't mean it isn't sometimes harder to motivate myself to fully focus on the subtitles rather than just sitting back and letting the dialogue wash over me.

Mostly English, well that is/was a relief! It does show the language blinkers of most English speaking folks when it comes to film mind (I was recently baffled to discover that there is even a Troll Hunter remake on the cards)

Where are they from? (or which country is winning)

It goes without saying that the home of Hollywood gave us most of these films (116 were US productions or co-productions). The UK gave us 9, France and Italy each produced 8. Germany and Japan 6.

Do any directors crop up more than once?

23 directors were responsible for more than one film in the list.

Looking at that its hard to argue that Hitchcock was anything other than a master, and having seen 9 of the 10 films he has in the Top 250 I'd go further and say he definitely is.

Nearly every flavour of Kubrick too.

… And that update

16 to go now.

Since my first post I've watched “La Strada”, “Nights of Cabiria”, “All Quiet on the Western Front”, “Amorres Perros”, “Witness for the Prosecution” and “Anatomy of a Murder”.

“La Strada” & “Nights of Cabiria” were my first exposure to Italian cinema from the 50s. I'd already watched and enjoyed "Bicycle Thieves", which was from 1948 but seems to be cut from the same cloth. I'm not sure quite how I feel about Fellini and that particular style. They were both well crafted and gave an interesting look into the lives of poor Italians. That said the lead in each was played by Guilietta Masina and I can't decide whether I loved or hated her quirky performances and massive overacting.

Also “All Quiet on the Western Front”, is a very impressive film when you consider it was made it 1930. Action scenes like that wouldn't be out of place in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers and although some of the acting is very dated, it still works.

“Amorres Perros” is three stories linked together in what is starting to look like standard fashion, sadly the middle one wasn't great, but the other two more than made up for it. Just imagine what it would've been like with a stronger second act.

“Anatomy of a Murder” and “Witness for the Prosecution” are both excellent tense courtroom dramas in one Charles Laughton is brilliant, and in the other James Stewart is even better. One thing I've learned watching these films is that James Stewart is just a brilliant actor.

One last thing

The Top 250 at the time I started; those I had seen and those I hadn't

The IMDB 250 challenge

“How have you never seen...”

In the Summer of 2010 I embarked upon what many would consider to be a pointless task. It was becoming more and more apparent that I couldn't really call myself a film fan when there were so many classics I'd never even attempted to watch. I was also getting fairly sick of having to say “I've actually never seen that”, leading to the above quote. Its fairly likely that anyone reading this will know both what the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) is, and also what the IMDB Top 250 is.

For those who don't. The IMDB is a website with a very fitting title. It is an online database of almost every film ever made. One of its features allows registered users to rate films between 0 and 10 stars. The average of all those ratings (with some special secret mathematics as a garnish) is used to rank them. The top 250 films based on these rankings is the IMDB Top 250.

One day shortly after being told off for not having seen something or other I decided to see how many of the greatest films ever I'd not seen. Magazines such as Empire or Total Film print “100 Films You Need to See” and “50 Best Movies Ever” lists, but at the time my destination of choice was the IMDB. One spreadsheet later (as you will come to learn there are many facets to my geekiness) I discovered I'd seen 105 of them.

A poor level of completion by any measure at 42%, and it prompted me to set myself an open ended challenge. To watch them all!

Omissions at the time included Schindlers List, American History X, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, various Akira Kurosawa, most of Alfred Hitchcock and a boatload of Charlie Chaplin. Not to mention a whole load of other interesting prospects. Of those there were also however also a few daunting obstacles in my path; Gone With the Wind, M and Ben-Hur to name three. I must confess one of them remains unwatched to this day, but for a very good reason.

My version of the IMDB was frozen in time at the point I copied it to the spreadsheet, and a fair few films have moved up or down as average ratings have changed and new films have come out.

I've now seen 228 including the entire top 100. For a comparison I've only seen 216 of the current IMDB 250. Trying to watch every film on an ever changing list would have been a much harder task and since I'm trying to watch the classics, slightly pointless too as most of the new entries are of the flavour of the month style.

With only 22 films to go, and the discovery that I can actually sit through not only silent cinema, but also German Expressionism. I am very much on the home straight. 22 films to go with the intention of closing the whole thing with Gone With the Wind, as I was only going to end up putting it off until the end anyway I decided to make it the final mile. (I told you there was a reason for my still not watching it).

The answer to the question I started this post with by the way is: “I was probably watching Star Wars, but its on the list.”