A Cinema Canon for the Ages

[Johann]

Oscar- which box set do you have?
The one like a book with the book or the masterpiece collection?
If you have the masterpiece collection you have a valuable set...

The Criterion version is stunning.
The 4K transfer would please the Master himself!
I even said out loud: They’re taking good care of your baby Stanley!
The second disc has excellent special features too.
I’ll do a review of this DVD 📀

[oscar jubis]

I have the Masterpiece collection with 10 Blurays made for the European Market.
I added Cronnenberg's amazing EASTERN PROMISES (2007)which mixes the gangster genre with a murder mystery where the "detective" is a nurse played by the great Naomi Watts. It's a film that I continue to grow in admiration for its narrative construction, complex mise-en-scene, and depth of feeling in the resolution that will surprise you.

[Johann]

Nice.

Cronenberg is national Canadian treasure.
I still remember seeing the helmet from Videodrome at the TIFF Bell Lightbox...great memories of seeing his films in theatres too.
My favourite is CRASH.

[oscar jubis]

Nice.

Cronenberg is national Canadian treasure.
I still remember seeing the helmet from Videodrome at the TIFF Bell Lightbox...great memories of seeing his films in theatres too.
My favourite is CRASH.

I think I would put three other movies ahead of CRASH among my faves:
DEAD RINGERS (1988)
NAKED LUNCH (1991)
SPIDER (2002)

[oscar jubis]

One addition to my personal canon of achievements in the art of film is a 13 minute film directed by Alain Resnais: Guernica (1951)
It uses Picasso's "Guernica" and earlier works by the greatest artist of the 20th century in order to tell the story of the town that was bombed by nazi planes in 1937 as an experiment in genocide and aerial power. It has a poetic, incandescent reading by Maria Casares of a text that provides context and a few insert shots of newspaper headlines to provide complementary documentation.

[oscar jubis]

1939 is said to have been the best year in the history of film. I have been sharing my on-going, perrennially revised cannon for decades now, and I have organized it according to year of world release. In my opinion, the most prolific year as far as great cinema is...1959, 20 years later. Here's my

1959 TOP 11 (in alphabetical order)

-------THE 400 BLOWS (Truffaut)
-------ANATOMY OF A MURDER (Preminger)
-------FLOATING WEEDS (Ozu)
-------FRITZ LANG'S INDIAN EPIC (Lang)
-------HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR (Resnais)
-------IMITATION OF LIFE (Sirk)
-------MOI, UN NOIR (Rouch)
-------NORTH BY NORTHWEST (Hitchcock)
-------PICKPOCKET (Bresson)
-------SOME LIKE IT HOT (Wilder)
-------THE WORLD OF APU (Ray)



But today I am adding to the list a film from 1939 and It's not The Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind but Ernst Lubitch's NINOTCHKA.

THE QUOTE BELOW BELONGS TO CHICAGO READER WRITER BEN SACHS. IT SAYS SOMETHING CRUCIAL ABOUT THE FILM'S ACHIEVEMENTS.

Incarnated by Greta Garbo in a performance directed by Ernst Lubitsch, the title character of Ninotchka is one of the great creations of satirical cinema. Garbo’s Soviet commissar at first seems like a caricature of the zealous revolutionary, as the filmmakers generate laughs from her humorlessness and rigid adherence to government protocol. But when Ninotchka falls in love with French count Leon d’Algout (Melvyn Douglas), something shifts in the characterization. One begins to see an erotic charge beneath her political fervor, a sensitivity behind her idealized worldview. And so, what had begun as a skeptical view of Communism on the filmmakers’ part transforms into one of respectful ambivalence.(Ben Sachs)

[cinemabon]

Disappointed you listed so few von Sternberg's works from the 1930's

Morocco (1930) which I liked better than Blue Angel
Dishonored (1931)
Shanghai Express (1932)
Blonde Venus (1932 - Hot Voodoo!)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
The Devil is a Woman (1935)

All of them featured Marlene Dietrich, rumored to be having an affair with von Sternberg that lasted 11 years. I saw them all in 35mm at the Vagabond Theater in LA in the late 1970's. I fell hopelessly in love with Dietrich watching those films. I though Blue Angel ok but not nearly as polished or as enthralling as her Hollywood years.