Directed by Anthony Mann. Staring James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, and Ralph Meeker.
This is my first time watching this film.
Anthony Mann! My first taste of Mann was T-Men, a hard edged film noir style docudrama from 1947 (might have to rewatch this one too). I’d seen a few of Mann’s westerns with Jimmy Stewart - Winchester ‘73, The Man From Laramie, Bend of the River - all fucking great movies. I came across The Naked Spur in a collection titled “Noir on the Range”. Yes, please.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Brigitte Mira as Emmi and El Hedi Ben Salem as Ali.
“Viel denken, viel weinen” (much thinking, much crying),
This was my first viewing of this film.
For some reason, the thought of watching a Fassbinder film was not appealing to me at first. I have some fuzzy memory of forming a negative opinion about Fassbinder based solely on the fact that a woman from my youth that I dreaded loved Fassbinder. I’m glad that I got over it.
Oh, it’s a long, long way from May to September. An older German woman and a handsome young Moroccan man find love in this intriguing melodrama. It’s Fassbinder’s shout out to Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (another film worth rewatching). It is a surprising, courageous, and sweet romance that is strained almost to the breaking point by the racism and conventions of a narrow minded society. Thankfully, in the end, love triumphs.
Written and directed by Barbara Loden. Also, starring Barbara Loden as the title character.
“I've been like that myself. I came from a rural region, where people have a hard time. They don't have time for wittily observing the things around them. They're not concerned about anything more than existing from day to day.” -Barbara Loden quoted in the NY Times in 1971
Holy shit! I love it. All the thumbs up.
This was my first viewing of this film. I’m not sure if I would have been ready for this film in my twenties.
The film is set in dreary Pennsylvania coal country. Wanda is a poor, directionless, aging beauty who lets herself be used and abused by men. When her husband seeks a divorce because she has neglected both the marriage and the children, she does not disagree. With no one left to turn to for support, she shacks up with a string of men eventually getting swept up with a bank robber. Wanda is not an exciting character but she is a complex character. For all that we don’t understand about her and her motivations, we are asked to question how it is that she came to be. The film is an intimate portrayal of a woman stranded at the margins - just trying to exist.
Directed by John Ford. Starring Claire Trevor and (a very young) John Wayne (before he became a swollen parody).
This was my first viewing of this landmark film. I decided to start here because I was thinking about the differences between the West that I had just driven through and the West that I had imagined as a kid - imaginings that were largely the result of movies or television that I’d seen it portrayed in. I grew up in a time when children were taught to play cowboys and Indians - meaning we were taught to pick sides and fight. We were spoon-fed the mythology of the American frontier — and we ate it up. In my mind, the cowboys and the Indians were equally mysterious and glorious. I wanted to be both.
John Ford’s Stagecoach is lauded as the movie that defined the western tradition as we know it. It is a motley cast of characters who, like it or not, are confined together in a cramped stagecoach. Who are bound by their fear of the looming threat of an attack by Apache warriors led by Geronimo. There are sweeping vistas, drama, action, and romance. While the film, and the entire genre, may be problematic when viewed through a modern lens, it is certainly worth watching for its significance to American film history. The cinematography is rather fetching too.