Heartbreak Ridge-1986, Clint Eastwood
“…Highway’s whole life is a tragedy… he’s the result of many years of despair.” -Eastwood
Frame courtesy of Journey By Frame (http://www.journeybyframe.com/2011/04/29/heartbreak-ridge-clint-eastwood-1986/)
The greatest of early T. Scott.
#1: Berlin Alexanderplatz-1980, Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Again I find myself at a loss for words. I’m tempted to speak only in hyperbole about this work. The Greatest Work of Art of the 20th Century? Certainly right next to the other contenders, Pet Sounds, In Search of Lost Time and the previous films in this top ten. Fassbinder’s camera is political, philosophical and deeply human. There has been no greater immersion into man, into individual experience, that I’ve seen yet from cinema. Like another film on this list (Heaven’s Gate), this is a tremendous work of stylistic hubris, a mad drive towards ultimate expression.
#2: Pierrot le fou-1965, Jean-Luc Godard
How do I write about Pierrot le fou, or my debt to it? Color, mise-en-scene, the camera, editing, cinema, this film changed my conceptions of all. I relearned everything. Every other film on this list wouldn’t have been here if I hadn’t seen this first. The sea, the blue sky and sun, Karina’s face and Belmondo’s cigarettes. The brutal end of a relationship, en expression of torture and ideas unlike any other.
#3: Young Mr. Lincoln-1939, John Ford
The seeds of idealism. Yet another sterling display of Ford’s poetry. Ford’s greatest film’s are never easy. A shallow interpretation would tell you that it’s jingoistic patriotism, when really the depths of melancholy paint a far greater picture. No director had a better sense of what America was and is. If not the history as it happens, then it is the history how it’s felt. This is the American soul.
#4: An American in Paris-1951, Vincente Minnelli
Nobody filmed love like Minnelli. Colors, dance, the floating camera, maybe the most expressive form in 50s American cinema. Pure expression at points. The final sequence is a gift, one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever crafted. The camera’s drunken tilt as it rushes in on Kelly, the sudden shift to silhouettes and amber light, the burning red of Kelly’s coat, the beauty of the fountain sequence. Love as an act of creation, love as color, love as mise-en-scene.
