Greenaway. Greenaway’s strengths are the two films in the top 156 and the dedication to his style even when it doesn’t fully succeed (Baby of Macon, Prospero’s Books). He’s certainly a style-plus director. On the flip side—beyond those top two films his work has many issues (very high highs and very low lows) and the depth isn’t there. Still, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is a boundlessly brilliant film (top 40 overall) and as detailed and meticulous as Greenaway is I can’t let him slip beyond #59 on this list. The images here speak volumes— such beautify and uniformity in his work.

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from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover – Greenaway’s high-water mark

Best film:  The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

  • A giant “M” Masterpiece and prime candidate for the singular poster child of film art expressionism and the greatest mise-en-scene in film history
  • Simply one of the most beautiful movies ever made
  • There is a different color for each room— exteriors in blue, dining in red, bathroom in white, kitchen in green—some characters outfits change colors as does the cigarettes for Mirren
  • The Hals painting, tapestry here is gorgeous and copied by Greenaway- he does this, with painting and art in every film
  • The costume are stunning- Jean-Paul Gautier—pure expressionism
  • The Nyman score is haunting and probably his best (he always works with Greenaway and did the piano as well)
  • It’s political- a meditation on Thatcher and Reagan regime, greed—
  • It’s a colossal triumph for Gambon. His diction in the film is a marvel—he and his Albert are connected to Hopper/Lynch’s Frank Booth in Blue Velvet for sure
  • Ebert calls the film “uncompromising in every single shot”
  • Like all of Greenaway’s work we have an abundance of nudity and sexual curiosity bordering on perversion
  • It’s a wonder of color, tinting, and staging
  • Greenaway uses a series of tracking shots through the building—they’re sublime
  • Mirren (wife) and lover have a silent love affair to begin the film and for the longest time Gambon is the only one talking
  • In the outdoor scene there are two trucks, symmetrically set up, with open backs and detailed staging
  • There is different music in every room—we have the child singing opera, Nyman’s score stronger in the red dining area and lighter in the white bathroom
  • Dogs running around like crazy outside also park of the politics
  • Certainly harkens to the tinting by Hitchcock in vertigo and some of the work by Bava in blood and black lace and later Argento in Suspiria
avant-garde bold lighting, formal rigor in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
  • Gambon has never been better
  • Mirren’s achievement is a tad lower but only slightly, her talking to her lover’s crying corpse is a great scene- wow
  • One of the ritual deaths (another Greenaway trait) has a man (the lover) literally killed with pages of a book
  • It’s intellectual and operatic, stylistically and formally perfect (days of the week on the menu with great detail)
  • A huge masterpiece
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yep– this happens in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

total archiveable films: 8

top 100 films: 1 (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover)

one of the many tableau shots in Greenaway’s oeuvre

top 500 films: 2 (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, A Zed & Two Noughts)

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symmetry in the frame in A Zed & Two Noughts

top 100 films of the decade: 3 (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, A Zed & Two Noughts, The Draughtsman’s Contract)

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frame within the frame- Greenaway’s protagonists are often architects or artists

most overrated:  Not a thing. He may be cinema’s most underrated auteur.

most underrated: They’re all underrated but at least Cook The thief is in top the TSPDT top 1000- Zed & Two Noughts isn’t and that’s a travesty—and my pick here:

  • It’s a major leap forward for Greenaway and a clear precursor to the cook, the thief, hjs wife and her lover
  • Like most of the rest of his films there’s a symbolic death ritual finale
  • Also like most of the rest of his work there is a large amount of cataloging in the film- Greenaway is a pure artist but there’s also a mathematician in there- he’s very numerical and formal in his approach
  • Rhythmic in the editing
  • Personally the cataloging thing fits my brain (hence the website and Excel charts of movie’s I watch, etc)
  • About 20 minutes in there’s a jaw-dropping shot of a row of columns that likes like something from Welles, Dreyer or Tarkovsky
this could be Welles or Tarkovsky– from A Zed & Two Noughts
  • Again, there’s clear self-referential auteurism here- in a newspaper article Greenaway basically lays out the plot of his next two films (including belly of an architect)
  • His fascination with the Zebra is clear with the juxtaposition of color
  • There’s an in-film documentary on evolution and we have photo montages of decay
  • The mise-en-scene is masterpiece worthy- gorgeous, symmetrical, and absolutely packed—a master of set piece arrangement
  • I wonder what Greenaway thought of Cronenberg’s dead ringers which came out after and also perverse doctor twins
  • The Vermeer painting is a character in the film—he’s painting the frame here and copying like he did in draughtsman
  • Nothing in the film or frame is accidental or just shows up once-it’s so formally sound and tight- it all comes back
  • The score is a bit of a jig and reminds me of Aronofsky’s requiem for a dream
  • There’s reoccurring shots of the hospital bed- beautiful work
  • The twins grow more similar and dress more and more the same as the film goes along- they don’t look anything alike to begin with
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incredible mise-en-scene- A Zed & Two Noughts

gem I want to spotlight:  Prospero’s Books

  • It’s a visual marvel but its narrative momentum/strength isn’t near what some of his previous films are—as Ebert says, ““it need not make sense, and it is not “too difficult” because it could not have been any less so. It is simply a work of original art, which Greenaway asks us to accept or reject on his own terms”
  • A few angry critics calling it pure arrogance and deriding it for being pompous
  • Heavy nudity- hundreds of people—Greenaway always has nudity and sexuality play a big part of his films and there’s another device here with the attachment to books, like the cook, the thief—an intellectual work—pillow book coming in 1996
  • Apparently the 24 books was based on the famous saying by Jean-Luc Godard that “cinema is truth 24 times a second”.—more cataloguing from Greenaway
  • It’s Gielgud’s show- he’s the narrator and in every scene but we also have a young Mark Rylance show up and the great Erland Josephson
  • Elaborate mise-en-scene and overall film and visual conception
  • NYT “his films are planned from the first frame to the last”- and this is not a glowing review—still admiration there
  • A ridiculously beautiful and elaboration opening credit sequence and tracking shot
  • This is going to sound trite but Greenaway really is a painter with the frame—see pic below- he has characters literally holding a frame like over a moving piece of ark
  • Walks the fine line between heavy expressionism and experimental film (which I don’t touch)
  • It’s a miracle of costume work, architecture (welles, tarkovsky)
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ornate detail in the architecture and setting– foreground work with the books– Prospero’s Books
  • Large cast and extras
  • Mise-en-scene filled with pages falling (opening of Dunkirk)
  • Slow and steady tracking shots
  • It’s a weak narrative
  • Not a fan of the frame within a frame done through video recording—I like it when the characters are holding a frame—there’s a lot of the former and not much of the latter
  • Greenaway is cataloguing books that are, in themselves, catalogues on various subjects
  • It’s very avant-garde and quite mad
  • Kid opera singer from the cook, the thief—we have dogs running around—you could easily play Greenaway-bingo with all of his traits here
  • It becomes a bit much and there’s nothing to pull you into the experiences except for the visuals and rhythms—but some of the images are seared into my memory they’re so stunning
  • Color shading
  • Clearly influenced 1999’s Titus
  • Celebration of knowledge and art- a moving painting
  • It reminds me of Aleksandr Sokurov’s 2002 Russian Ark
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dissolve editing in Prospero’s Books– this editing style — used well here– swallows him whole by The Pillow Book and supplants mise-en-scene (to his detriment) as his main aesthetic weapon

stylistic innovations/traits:   

  • Greenaway is one of the most instantly recognizable auteurs—perverse and postmodern—there’s an abundance of twinning (equilibrium) and detailed mise-en-scene staging
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from The Belly of an Architect – sublime mise-en-scene work here
  • Bird obsession in all of his films
  • Symmetry and formalism—rooms for different colors in The Cook, The Thief, the symmetry of the two identical twins in A Zed & Two Noughts
  • Stories on artists, an architect, a draughtman— order and art
  • Greenaway is an aesthetician- it’s both exhausting and admirable (even when he’s wrong in his choices)
  • Meditations on fetishism on fetish, pro-intellectualism, nudity, exercising, cataloguing, a love of books. Ritual murder/suicide
  • Avant-garde, literary and an absolutely loaded mise-en-scene—certainly aggressively stylized we also have a ritual death and the eating of another person like the cook the thief her wife and her lover
  • tableau shots – specifically characters at a table facing the camera a la da Vinci’s The Last Supper
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another da Vinci The Last Supper tableau shot– from The Belly of An Architect
  • It’s intellectual and operatic, stylistically and formally perfect
  • symbolic death ritual finale
  • Also like most of the rest of his work there is a large amount of cataloging in the film- Greenaway is a pure artist but there’s also a mathematician in there- he’s very numerical and formal in his approach
a stunning use of color and set design in The Baby of Macon

top 10

  1. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
  2. A Zed & Two Noughts
  3. The Draughtsman’s Contract
  4. Prospero’s Books
  5. The Belly of An Architect
  6. The Baby of Macon
  7. The Pillow Book
  8. Drowning by Numbers
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this is from his 8th best film? Drowning by Numbers and this gorgeous shot could be from Welles’ The Trial or Ozu’s A Hen in the Wind

By year and grades

1982- The Draughtsman’s Contract HR
1985- A Zed & Two Noughts MP
1987- The Belly of an Architect R/HR
1988- Drowning By Numbers
1989- The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover MP
1991- Prospero’s Books HR
1993- The Baby of Macon R
1996- The Pillow Book R

*MP is Masterpiece- top 1-3 quality of the year film

MS is Must-see- top 5-6 quality of the year film

HR is Highly Recommend- top 10 quality of the year film

R is Recommend- outside the top 10 of the year quality film but still in the archives