best film: Taxi Driver from Martin Scorsese
Mean Streets marked the announcement of Scorsese a major new talent. It’s not a perfect film but a film with so much bravado on display in it that it’s impossible to deny it’s status. Scorsese’s Taxi Driver IS a perfect film and the full realization of one of cinema’s great auteurs. Scorsese’s direction, De Niro’s performance, Paul Schrader’s script, and Bernard Herrmann’s score are all talked about as amongst the best in their given category and rightly so. It is unquestionably one of the top 50 films of all-time, a hallmark of American cinema and since I don’t have another 1976 film in my top 100 (though we have many other great films)- it is the easy choice for the best film of 1976.
- A portrait of a monster- a meditation on urban alienation and Scorsese’s second masterpiece, one of the seminal films of the era, Scorsese’s body of work, and cinema history in total
- It blows you back with Bernard Herrmann’s score.
- Such detail in the mise-en-scene here with the steam pouring from the sewers
- The film’s roots and influences both prior to Taxi Driver and since are aplenty. Bresson is certainly an influence- the existential crisis and man alone is similar to Pickpocket (Schrader loved Bresson and Pickpocket and in his book, he cites it). The film has a similar copy in later film, directed by Schrader himself, in Hardcore (1979—this film itself has been remade – a film called 8MM (1999 Schumacher). Schrader keeps sort of reclaiming authorship here with another Taxi Driver, this time with First Reformed– a very fine film– in 2017. Clearly, Taxi Driver’s main influence is The Searchers. It could essentially be called sort of an updated remake. Keitel is Scar, Foster is Debbie, the Indians, so on…
- The “stomach cancer” line is also from Bresson- it’s from Diary of a Country Priest which both Schrader and Scorsese love- this reference and symbolic inner angst is also referenced later in Spike Lee’s Clockers (1995)
- Certainly the film is a medication on alienation…urban decay.. men lost post-Vietnam
- Outstanding work by Michael Chapman the DP
- The slow-motion work from Scorsese- and I pilfered a bit of this from Ebert- is not just a way to show people looking cool in a Scorsese film but a way of showing a POV with a heightened sense of awareness from Travis- for example, the first time he sees the stunningly gorgeous Cybill Shepherd
- Other influences can certainly be seen in PT Anderson’s work (I think Punch-Drunk Love has a ton in common with Taxi Driver) along with the Louis Bloom character portrayed so well by Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler (2014, Dan Gilroy). Herrmann’s score reminds me of (it predates it of course) the harmonium character cues used in PT Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love– another immaculate character-driven film. Herrmann’s score has the soft jazz elements (like the harmonium) and then the hard-driving break (like the car crash in PDL or the spurts of violence from Sandler’s character).
- The movie is considered one of the best screenplays of all-time- but it’s also a film of intentional awkwardness (as Travis shows he can’t fit in this world) and purposeful banality (cheesy jokes and attempts at humor like his “organi-ized” joke and the silly card he buys and writes to his parents).
- The pulling away from the scene to show isolation while he’s on the phone is done and updated in Reservoir Dogs (casting Keitel as well) by Tarantino
- Slow-motion in abundance and to great effect. Travis’ fixation on Cybill Sheperd’s Betsy, his racism as he stares down the black characters in the film (hello Searchers), his solitariness again while he walks down the crowded streets on his own.
- Pauline Kael in the New Yorker, “- Taxi Driver is a movie in heat, a raw, tabloid version of “Notes from Underground,” and we stay with the protagonist’s hatreds all the way. But Scorsese is also the most carnal of directors—movement is ecstatic for him—and that side of him didn’t come out in Alice. Taxi Driver one of the few truly modern horror films.”
- Shay Casey from “FilmFocus”- “Is Travis a hero or a monster? The question is never answered to any satisfying degree, and Herrmann’s score makes sure of that by always playing up the counterpoint of a scene”
- “Like Werner Herzog’s Aguirre or Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver is auteurist psychodrama.” Hoberman again in Village Voice
- Its flawless from beginning to end- the bleeding lights on the windshield during the titles until the final ride and rearview double-check with Cybil at the end.
- The use of color saturation- red in the close-up on De Niro – expressionism.
- Schrader’s voice-over grounds us, the Herrmann score driving home the larger macro themes—this leaves Scorsese free to dazzle us in-between with his muscular direction. He is directing the hell out of almost every scene.
- I don’t want to take away from Paul Schrader’s magnificent screenplay —but there is a lot of non-dialogue scenes and that’s almost all Scorsese and in the dialogue sequences—it’s almost all De Niro (this is one of cinema’s greatest single performances by an actor). Even if it’s on the page, the way De Niro makes every social interaction an abject disaster is such an impressive feat of acting – his uncomfortable swearing and “I get headaches this city is so dirty” with the Senator in the cab, how he cluelessly takes Cybil to a porno, the awkward reaction to the advice from Peter Boyle—haha
- More Searchers/John Wayne—I mean Scorsese has this in the text of two of his first four films- and here outside of the story outline—we have Keitel with “you’re a real cowboy” to Travis
Great work here from J. Hoberman in the Village Voice- “Lasting nearly 20 minutes and fueled by Bernard Herrmann’s rhapsodic score, the de facto overture is a densely edited salmagundi of effects—slow motion, fragmenting close-ups, voluptuous camera moves, and trick camera placement—that may be the showiest pure filmmaking in any Hollywood movie since Touch of Evil. Certainly, no American since Welles had so confidently presented himself as a star director. And yet Taxi Driver was essentially collaborative. It was the most cinephilic movie ever made in Hollywood, openly acknowledging Bresson, Hitchcock, Godard, avant-gardists Michael Snow and Kenneth Anger, and the John Ford of The Searchers.”
Seedy mise-en-scene- steam from the streets, dark, neon lighting- it’s almost a precursor to Blade Runner– it looks like a dystopian nightmare
a dogmatic approach to the use of color.—specifically yellow. It’s not quite Kieslowski’s Blue but it’s loud. Travis is constantly wearing yellow shirts, Foster has yellow glasses, the yellow sheets on the bed of the gun salesman scene, that harsh lighting in his tiny apartment makes the wall yellow, the convenience store robber that Travis shoots has a loud yellow shirt – schnapps liquor bottle, yellow aspirin—it’s there—perhaps the best scene in the film is the tracking shot going from De Niro in the phone booth (yellow background) to the empty hall showing his disconnect- brilliant
- The ensemble is genius—Cybil has never been better, Scorsese in the back of the cab… Foster, Keitel is great.
- I also noticed during the climax that Herrmann’s score scales out of control. Incredible work
- A series of dissolves during the God’s eye view ceiling tracking shot. A perfect editing transition after a slow tracking shot
most underrated: Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. Roeg’s background as a cinematographer makes for a singular work that deserves to be closer to #300-400 (I have it right now at #316) of all-time. The TSPDT consensus has no room for it in the top 1000 and that’s a shame. It is an ambitious work, I can see why it’s so divisive- but it’ll haunt you for weeks after seeing it despite the potential flaws (which are overshadowed by that grand design).
if you recognize the set piece and background you may be a music lover as well- this was used for Bowie’s album cover photograph for Station to Station
Bowie is simply perfect casting here, bizarre— and connects Roeg again to rock just like Mick Jagger in Performance
most overrated: I have nothing against John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. I’m a big admirer of Carpenter’s work and I appreciate his dedication to updating and riffing on Howard Hawks (this is an updating of Rio Bravo and in 1982 he’d just flat out remake The Thing (and actually best Hawks in that attempt)). I just think the #826 on the TSPDT consensus ranking may be a couple hundred spots too high and there isn’t a bigger, more glaring, miss by the consensus in 1976—they’ve done a great job here.
gems I want to spotlight: Jacques Rivette’s Duelle is his best work. If you admire The Big Sleep, Mulholland Drive and avant-garde filmmaking this is one to . If you want to movie here outside of the top 10 check out The Omen. The Omen has a splendid Jerry Goldsmith score and it continues the tradition of exceptional horror films in the 1970’s.
More on Duelle:
- Near the very end of Rivette’s Duelle, his accidental detective character (just like Paris Belongs to Us – his debut in 1961) says, ominously, “Two and two no longer makes four”… Indeed, Rivette’s Duelle is a postmodern labyrinth.
- It is best (at least in first viewing) just to let the individual scenes and imagery wash over you– certainly like The Big Sleep and Mulholland Drive.
- If the indigestibility of the plot is a nephew to Hawks’ The Big Sleep—well then the playful take on genre- the American detective film or noir– a distant cousin to Godard’s post-genre exploration Pierrot le Fou in 1965 or Made In U.S.A. in 1966)— experimental use of color- like Godard’s films—and also the film is playful and diverting like Godard.
- The work with color in the mise-en-scene, both in décor and lighting, is evident in the first scene when both the happenstantial detective and mystery woman (the first of many) are wearing these green (with a tint of blue) outfits.
- These characters are ciphers, doppelgänger work as well—tying the moon to dreams and surrealism has to make you think of Lynch and Mulholland Drive (Rivette says Jean Cocteau is an influence here).
- The driving McGuffin changes- first finding the mysterious man – really it is the detail in the décor, use of color and fascinating settings that make this a special film. The initial proposition is at a hotel, we’re then strolling around a racetrack, a jazz bar next with long tracking shot with two women dancing, then at a baccarat table, floating around another hotel room, the flush greenhouse (again and again a meeting spot), the aquarium set piece at 29 minutes with green water-it is stunning- you have this intriguing but baffling conversation right in front of this clearly green tank. A focus on background/foreground.
- Set up with quote in the prologue- the lunar calendar and shots of the moon make for a remarkable formal achievement. Rivette bounces his narrative off at least six times
- Hard-yellow and green lighting throughout. Literally has green lighting. Green lights on the bridge exteriors at 38 mins
- Running throughout the film is the same bald guy (Jean Wiene) in the background of the scenes (maybe a dozen) playing diegetic piano. You know it is diegetic because you can hear the actors walking around the wooden floors which is certainly a little grating and not something you see outside of student films often (something I’m sure Rivette detractors bring up a lot).
- Green grapes, green trench coats, green light bulbs, green drapes hanging over normal light bulbs
- At 69 minutes bouncing the two blondes of mirrors with an intersecting camera is a nice shot—a dream occurs, the mirror breaks
At 100 minutes the green corridor shot with the shadow in the foreground- a stand-alone great shot—a long stalking scene
- As Rivette’s film comes to its final act, we get an abundance of red in the mise-en-scene—red jacket, red flowers in the lapel, the hypnotic jewel turns red, flames— clearly indicating descent
More on The Omen from Richard Donner:
- Taut direction by Donner—the story sure moves and it is a strong narrative—we’re looking at heavy influences of Rosemary’s Baby (this could almost be a sequel to Rosemary’s Baby) and The Exorcist – kind of picking up the story between the two in terms of the age of the kid, possessed by the devil, etc
- Oscar winning score from Jerry Goldsmith is special— satanic choir—still somehow it beat out the scores for both Taxi Driver and Rocky– I’m not sure about that, but that’s missing the point—it’s a brilliant score
- very good actors, Gregory Peck is perfectly cast- feels very ambassadorial or presidential—David Warner as the beatnik photography with sideburns, Lee Remick is perfect as the presidential wife, the nanny and insane priest are superb in there few scenes— right down to the creepy kid- very good casting
- memorable and elaborate death set pieces, hanging from mansion, decapitation of Warner, Remick’s fall
trends and notables:
- We have another American auteur making the best film of the year. Take a look at this, 1976 makes for six years in a row (1971-1976) and nine of the last ten dating back to The Graduate (again Mike Nichols is born in Germany so that’s a little hazy). If you compare this with the prior decade we had four non-English language films in a row from 1963-1966 and seven of the last eight if you go back to The 400 Blows in 1959 bumping up against Vertigo. Such a shift. When we talk about the greatest stretch of perhaps both American and European cinema next to each other in the 1960’s and 1970’s- this is it.
- Cinephiles and scholars seem to debate what Scorsese’s fourth best film is—but the Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas trio at the top gets its start here in 1976. 1976 is the year you can confirm (this is now two masterpieces with Mean Streets in 1973) Scorsese as one of the best directors on the planet- a perch he has sat on for most of the remainder of his life so it seems.
Rocky is an absolute smash winning a few Oscars (including Best Picture) and making the most money in 1976. The movie is wonderful, and kudos to Sylvester Stallone not only for writing the screenplay and acting in it, but for refusing to sell the film to a studio if it didn’t include him in the lead. Others (including Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) have followed this move here.
- 1976 gives us the birth of the Steadicam. This apparatus/invention means it is no longer necessary to literally lay down tracks for a tracking shot (or remember Godard using a handheld in a wheelchair for Breathless?). You can attach it to a person and walk. It may not fully come alive until 1980’s The Shining with Kubrick but you can see it here in 1976 with Hal Ashby’s Bound For Glory and in Marathon Man from Schlesinger.
from Bound For Glory– another feather in the cap for Hal Ashby and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. These two worked together on In the Heat of the Night (1967) when Ashby was still an editor
Marathon Man is known not only for the Steadicam work– but also the great old school vs. new school acting battle of Dustin Hoffman vs. Laurence Olivier. Hoffman is one of the most well-known method actors and ditto for Olivier as a classically trained thespian. Olivier famously uttered his “Why don’t you just try acting?” when Hoffman was getting into character.
- A few very important unofficial trilogies are ending here from Polanski (the apartment trilogy- The Tenant) and Pakula (the paranoia trilogy- All the President’s Men)
from Polanski’s The Tenant– this feels like Polanski’s rawest brain-tap—he’s wondering aloud about self-identity, drifting off from paranoia into madness- painting his fingernails and dressing in drag…with the wig and duel identities you can’t not think about Hitchcock and Psycho again as well
A gigantic achievement, the final chapter of Polanski’s unofficial urban paranoia set of films best known as the apartment trilogy with Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968)—and I’m not sure all three aren’t masterpieces
1976 is a big year for the split diopter shot here- this one used by Pakula in All the President’s Men
Pakula’s paranoia trilogy is a great place to study atmospherics as an artform in cinema- how sound, camera movement (particularly the zoom here), and lighting (this is shot by the great Gordon Willis) impact a film
- Bertolucci has his third top 10 film of the decade (1900), ditto for Roeg (The Man Who Fell to Earth) and we’re at the peak here for Lumet and Cassavetes
from Bertolucci’s 1900— a sort of rural counterpoint to an urban shot that could be from The Conformist
The Fourth Estate — Pellizza’s work,- the painting is shown during the opening credits of Bertolucci’s 1900
Ned Beatty is dynamo in his few moments on screen in Lumet’s Network— one of my favorite film podcasts is The Rewatchables– and they have the Dion Waiters Award for the actor who does the most, in the least amount of minutes– and that’s Beatty here.
a pair of prime cinematic paintings here and below from Cassavetes– not exactly known for his painterly images
very simple, minimal- but elegant
- Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski makes his first entry in the archives in 1976’s The Scar and John Carpenter gets his first with Assault on Precinct 13
- With Bertolucci’s 1900 we’d have the first archiveable film for the great French actor Gérard Depardieu. Bruno Ganz gets his first archiveable film in Rohmer’s The Marquise of O and John Travolta would be one of the biggest stars in the world by the end of the decade (Saturday Night Fever and Grease are coming up in back to back years in 1977 and 1978) but he gets a quieter start in 1976’s Carrie with De Palma (they’d work together again in 1981’s Blow Out).
- With Kings of the Road, Wim Wenders joins fellow countrymen Fassbinder and Herzog in the New German cinema movement as one of the best directors on the planet
Wenders’ Kings of the Road — the final leg of (and crowning achievement of) Wenders’ Road trilogy that includes Alice in the Cities (1974) and Wrong Move (1975)
Beautiful rural black and white photography—said to be inspired by Walker Evans photography—minimalist folk score—reminiscent of Jarmusch in both aspects (this predates Jarmusch of course- and Jarmusch adores Wenders) and its beautiful rural decay not beautiful urban decay like Jarmusch. This is more sprawling than Jarmusch who, though a minimalist as well, is very structured and formally bound
it is a despairing meditation on the death of cinema (who the hell could think cinema was dying in 1976 with the USA new wave and the New German cinema movement with Wenders himself, Fassbinder and Herzog?) with these run down theaters—it’s a film about loss—past greatness (cinema, Germany, the past of these two men)- so many gorgeous set pieces in b/w photography- train stations, abandoned old printing presses, fair rides, it’s a travelogue like The Grapes of Wrath meets Easy Rider (scene in bike it’s impossible not to think of)
- Brian De Palma gave us two archiveable films in 1976—Carrie and Obsession. Carrie is the first of many Stephen King adaptations (and one of the best) and Obsession is basically a remake of Vertigo. De Palma is certainly a Hitchcock acolyte.
another split diopter stunner in 1976– whether it is De Palma or Pakula– it is a variation on deep focus photograph- this one from Carrie
an overhead shot from De Palma in Carrie— a year in which the two biggest Hitchcock acolytes (Polanski and De Palma) have huge years while the great master makes his last archiveable film
- Perhaps it is fitting then that the Hitchcock era has come to an end with his last archiveable film: Family Plot. You could argue it really came to an end with Marnie in 1964 (his last top 10) but Frenzy in 1972 is really good as well.
impressive work behind the camera from Eastwood- this is from The Outlaw Josey Wales– the first of five films for Clint as director that would land in their respective years’ top 10
- They didn’t quite make the cut below but I want to recognize the work of Burt Lancaster and Donald Sutherland here. Lancaster with 1900 and Altman’s Buffalo Bill gives us two archiveable films—just about 30 years after his debut. Altman and Bertolucci didn’t quite succeed but both are trying to make the best film of the year. And Sutherland is in wonderful films from Bertolucci and Fellini. I just admire actors willing to work with great auteurs when I’m sure they had other offers that would offer much more compensation (ditto for De Niro after his Oscar win in 1974—he look at the types of roles he chooses).
not all of Fellini’s Casanova lands– but this sequence here is simply one of 1976’s finest
a strong frame from Fellini– again, it blows my mind that this expressionistic, world-builder (he’d fabricate even water and streets here) got his start writing neorealism in the mid-1940’s with Rossellini
- Lastly, it’s a sad farewell but The Shootist from 1976 would be the last archiveable film for both John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart—two iconic all-time great actors.
best performance male: As much as I like William Holden in Network, it didn’t take long to decide to go with De Niro for his work in Taxi Driver. If he’s the new Brando and Raging Bull is his On the Waterfront, then Taxi Driver is his A Streetcar Named Desire. Behind him is Holden’s aforementioned performance in Network. Peter Finch (who I’m also putting up here as one of my choices from 1976) won the Oscar but Holden’s is the slightly better performance—his scenes with Finch and Dunaway are moving and it ranks amongst the best work of his career. Half of the credit goes to Roeg for casting, but I’m putting David Bowie’s work in The Man Who Fell to Earth in probably the #3 slot. You cannot take your eyes of Bowie in this performance—certainly otherworldly and odd. Ben Gazzara in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie gives the best performance of his career and it’s worthy of a mention here for sure.
De Niro in Taxi Driver-– certainly an acceptable answer to the question “which is the greatest screen acting performance of all-time?”
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best performance female: Two good options for the very best performance here: Faye Dunaway in Network and Sissy Spacek in Carrie. I think ultimately I’ll go with Dunaway for her work and slot Spacek as a close second. Take a look at Dunaway’s decade from 1967 to 1976. She’s basically done at this point, but in ten years she’s in eight archiveable films, with three mentions in this category (Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown and here). She’s an important part of the New Hollywood. Spacek deserves credit for the guts to take on Carrie- the film and the character- such a role which couldn’t have looked like much on the page. She gives the character some humanity. Behind those two great performances that lead 1976, I’d give mention to Piper Laurie as Carrie’s crazy mother. If you’ve seen the film, you know it’s a wild character and Laurie is up to the task. The last mention goes to the young Jodie Foster (age 13 at the time of shooting I believe). She’s trading blows with De Niro in the best film of the year.
only Faye Dunaway in Network matches Spacek’s work in Carrie here
Piper Laurie and Spacek dueling in a great shot from De Palma
top 10
- Taxi Driver
- Kings of the Road
- The Tenant
- Network
- 1900
- The Man Who Fell to Earth
- All the President’s Men
- Carrie
- The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
- The Outlaw Josey Wales
like Fellini’s shot above, you cannot list the greatest images of 1976 without this from In the Realm of the Senses – sublime
Archives, Directors, and Grades
| 1900- Bertolucci | MS |
| All the President’s Men- Pakula | MS |
| Assault on Precinct 13- Carpenter | R |
| Bound For Glory – Ashby | HR |
| Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson – Altman | R/HR |
| Bugsy Malone – Parker | R |
| Carrie – De Palma | MS |
| Duelle – Rivette | HR/MS |
| Face to Face- Bergman | R |
| Family Plot- Hitchcock | R |
| Fellini’s Casanova- Fellini | HR |
| I Only Want You To Love Me- Fassbinder | R |
| In the Realm of the Senses- Oshima | HR |
| Kings of the Road – Wenders | MP |
| L’Innocente – Visconti | R/HR |
| Man of Marble- Wajda | |
| Marathon Man- Schlesinger | R |
| Mikey and Nicky- May | |
| Murder By Death-R. Moore | R |
| Network- Lumet | MS/MP |
| Obsession- De Palma | R |
| Robin and Marion – Lester | R |
| Rocky -Avildsen | R/HR |
| Small Change- Truffaut | |
| Sparkle – O’Steen | R |
| Taxi Driver – Scorsese | MP |
| The Bad News Bears- Ritchie | R/HR |
| The Front- Ritt | R |
| The Killing of a Chinese Bookie- Cassavetes | |
| The Last Tycoon- Kazan | R |
| The Man Who Fell To Earth- Roeg | MS |
| The Marquise of O.- Rohmer | |
| The Missouri Breaks- A. Penn | R |
| The Omen – Donner | R |
| The Other Side of the Wind – Welles | R |
| The Outlaw Josey Wales – Eastwood | MS |
| The Scar – Kieslowski | R |
| The Seven-Per-Cent Solution – H. Ross | R |
| The Shootist- Siegel | R |
| The Tenant – Polanski | MP |
| Welcome To L.A. – Rudolph | 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
Deniro should have won the Oscar that year imo
Piper Laurie in Carrie? Ehhhhh…. I don’t know if it’s just me but I always felt that performance was a bit…. campy don’t get me wrong there were some moments where I was really impressed but some other moments i found it hard to take her seriously. It could just be me though
Peter Finch won the oscar because the academy loves it when an actor/character throws all their energy at the screen in hopes of getting attention. What do Angelina Jolie, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Lawrence and J.K. Simmons have in common? They all won for roles that required a lot of energy and less nuance. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing bad about energy but unless an actor can add depth to their character (think Elizabeth Taylor in Woolf) I don’t think the performance is quite good or worthy of an oscar
HOW is Rocky not in the top 10
“We have another American auteur making the best film of the year. Take a look at this- that makes for six years in a row (1976-1971) and 9 of the last 10. Those films are the graduate, 2001, two peckinpah films (skip year is 1970 with the conformist from Antonioni), a clockwork orange, two godfather films, and Nashville.”
The reason for this is American cinema in the 70s is impossible to beat. Not even the french new wave or italian neorealism is better..
I know Taxi Driver is a better film technically than Rocky(maybe even much, much better). But I can see why so many Americans (and even people from other places) adore this movie so much. Roger Ebert said Stallone reminded him of Brando (the ultimate compliment). Rocky is q great movie about hope, determination and an overall great romantic feel -good story. Obviously Scorsese’s Raging bull is a MUCH better boxing movie but the greatness of one movie should never be used to put down another movie. Rocky’s a brilliant film.
I see why the boy got angry yesterday @Azman, you sound very american here haha
@Drake Which period is stronger in your opinion?
This is just to give me an idea, i do not like to classify by country, this is according to country, not vs Europe (probably win as a continent)
How do I sound American? I know a lot about American culture, the idea of a melting pot etc because I live in Toronto. (So the issues present in Do the Right Thing etc are very relatable to me)
“I know Taxi Driver is a better film technically than Rocky(maybe even much, much better). But I can see why so many Americans (and even people from other places) adore this movie so much.”
It embodies the American spirit is what I said. The idea of the “American Dream” as shown in Death of a salesman also. This can be inspirational for people across the globe. The same way the Battle of Algiers shows the spirit of the Algerians and tho I dont know anything about Algeria, I still found it relatable and inspirational because uprisings have happened in Indian, Canada etc against European colonizers.
I mentioned that America produces the best films out of any country. Was I wrong? What is your choice for the the best film country? What country has individually produced as many masterpieces as the US? Theres a reason why everyone around the globe watches and loves American movies. Obviously you have Italy (Bicycle Thieves, Paradiso etc), France (la Jetee, the passion of Joan of Arc) and more countries too (like Sweden, India, Canada, Australia and the UK),Japan (Ikiru, Tokyo Story) but overall it has to be the US for #1. Agree?
You are probably right, but since i say i do not like to classify by country, i said it because it seems that you have the absolute truth, you say that it is “impossible to beat”, although i also do not like to be inclusive with the films of “x country”, yes it is good it will have its recognition regardless of the country as examples (Bicycle Thieves, Ran, etc.)
Nah drake. I LOVE foreign cinema. For many years, my choice would be a foreign film. (1960 would be an exception).
Even from the 70s (1975, my favorite year for film,) I (as well as many critics) have mirror as the best film of the year over American classic masterpieces like cuckoo, jaws and of course Barry lyndon , dog day afternoon and more).
From 1949 I have late spring as the best movie and the 3rd man (that is kinda foreign I guess).
From 1966 I have battle of algiers and andrei rublev
1985 come and see
2000 in the mood for love over Nolans momento. (By far)
I even have the passion of joan of arc (my favorite foreign film)as my #1 of the silent era over American classics like (sunrise, city lights etc)
But despite all of this I still think American cinema is a bit better than the french new wave and italian neo realism (de sica) and even Russian and Japanese cinema.
What do you think about some of the movies I mentioned?would you agree with my rankings of foreign films?
First off I’m nowhere near as experienced with film as you (Hollywood or foreign). You clearly know way more about film than me. Most of my movie knowledge comes from your website.
As I have mentioned before, i can find every single film i want online with english subtitles except Godard films (it really baffles me). But last week I found a link and saw my 1st godard film and I found a website with Godard films in HD with English subtitles so in a few weeks I will see most of his filmography.
Speaking of foreign films, you have any recommendations? Old or new.
What do you think of the Tenant? This film really baffles me. You don’t mention it much on your Polanski page and here you have it as an R. I personally think it is better than that. I found it to be in fact a very intense film, definitely not on par with Rosemary’s Baby, but a notable addition to his ‘apartment’ trilogy. It is also I reckon his most political – from what I’ve seen. Roger Ebert outright called it an embarrassment and I simply don’t understand all the hate it has received. However, I also need to mention that I do not regard it as highly as the TSPDT consensus (really where did they find all those positive reviews? I found the response to be very negative). They have it somewhere around #300-400, and I distinctly remember it was about 50 slots higher than Network. I mean, I’m definitely with those who admire the Tenant (I maybe even consider a 500 of all time quality film at this point, with my movie going experience, whatever that means), but it is not by any means better than Network. What are your thoughts on it?
@Drake – oh yes you’re right! I missed the fact that you haven’t graded the Tenant, I probably mistook it as an R because of the films above it. Yeah sorry for that. Anyway, I too don’t feel very sure about it, but in my case it is because I cannot really compare with Polanski’s weaker films – I haven’t watched that much of him, except his big masterpieces and perhaps Carnage, which I don’t really consider to be anywhere near masterpiece level filmmaking. And then there’s the Tenant, with which I have all the aforementioned problems, though I think it warrants a place near, I don’t know, Repulsion maybe? Anyway, I guess time and a few more films will make things clearer.
Ya but cuckoo and sunrise are made in Hollywood with American actors. Also Chaplin is an American too(because he lived there so long).
Anyways I stopped thinking about it that way too (since my last comment). But Aldo brought it up again and so did Y saying all your actors on the list are American or something like that.
But I dont really care about where a movie comes from. I dont care if 2001 is British (TSPDT has it as a UK movie), I dont care if Barry Lyndon is British or American, Mad Max Fury Road is Austrailian or American or if The Passion of Joan of Arc is French(as mentioned in TSPDT) or Danish. I enjoy good movies regardless of where they come from?
Isn’t it defined largely by where the money comes from though? Do you really classify Hitchcock’s Hollywood films as British? Are Nolan’s films British? Are Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban and Gravity Mexican? Is Hellboy? Is The Revenant?
Hell, The Lord of the Rings films are shot in New Zealand with a New Zealand crew by a New Zealand filmmaker from a script adapted from a British book by three New Zealand screenwriters… and I’m pretty sure it is officially denoted as an American film. Or at least a US/New Zealand co-production (but with US getting top billing).
Yet at the same time, Roma was funded by Netflix… and could not possibly be more Mexican. I think a lot of this is too messy and convoluted to define with any precision.
Alright, I’m convinced. Off to dive into my rich Canadian filmmaking heritage with a Terminator 2, History of Violence, and Sicario marathon!
haha- that made me laugh. Imagine trying to convince someone that Titanic is Canadian and not American because of where Cameroon is from. All the films you mentioned are generally considered American but if someone was to call them Canadian, I wouldn’t mind.
but if you talk about the greatness of a movie, do you only credit the director? What if the production/filming crew is from the country the movie is made in. what if all the actors, the editor and cinematographer are American but the director is Mexican or something. Anyways, I agree with you. It is too messy to decide a country. This is a pointless debate.
This debate doesn’t really make much sense, Bridge on the River Kwai is British, or American, the only thing that shows this is the envy of claiming the film.
Haha sorry if I explain wrong, I mean the people who fight over this.
I know you don’t care which country the movie @Drake is either, and you are 100% correct the credit is from the director, as you explained in the example of the Antarctica haha, I told @Azman yesterday that I shouldn’t claim the country’s superiority for the movie
yes. i agree 100 percent, the director is the most important.
What I disagree with however is not calling Chaplin or Murnau American. Del Toro, Cuaron, innaritu can be considered American. But Murnau and especially Chaplin (city lights) should be considered British and American. I mean Chaplin lived in America for 40 years.
I moved to Canada when I was 4 or 5. If I ever make a movie, will you not consider it Canadian because I wasn’t born in Canada (like Murnau or Chaplin) even-though I lived so many years in Canada?
I don’t really want to debate this. I love movies from all over the world. it doesn’t make a difference to me if city lights is American or not.
It’s definitely all silly. But Dave and Stripes are Canadian classics!
This argument is pointless and stupid. Honestly Wilder lived in the US for so long and considered himself American. He loved the US but he still had a Hungarian german accent. Same with Forman. I admit I am wrong though. My intial argument made little sense. Haha.
As for the best filmmaker born in my country(Canada), who would you say? I think Cameroon, Croenenberg or Villenueve. Who would you choose?
I’m glad you mentioned Stallone in Rocky as one of the year’s best performances. I feel like there is this perception of him as a very bad actor with no range and little nuance. However, if they cared to pay attention, they’d see that Rocky Balboa is a complex character he manages very well, with intensity, introversion, confidence, unsureness, and realism all together.
Yes, thank you. The word ‘range’ to me computes that he can portray multiple different emotions believably, rather than that he can play very different characters, which would more imply to me the word ‘versatility’. He is certainly not Marlon Brando or Daniel Day-Lewis, but I could see Rocky Balboa being a real person, and some better-performed characters such as Daniel Plainview I could not.
@Drake-I couldn’t comment when the page was published because the comments were down I think. But doesn’t Clint deserve a mention for Outlaw Josey Wales? based on two things. The film is in the top 10 and is a top 5 of the year quality film. Second you have Dirty Harry as his 6th best and The Outlaw Josey Wales as his 5th best but you give a mention to Dirty Harry and not one for Outlaw Josey Wales. It’s definitely one my favourites of Clint even more so than Million Dollar Baby.
And the other thing is Sparkle and L’innocente have pages but they do not have hyperlinks.
@Malith- Thanks for the comment. Yep, but Clint is also in The Beguiled in 1971- giving him the edge in 1971 over 1976. Thanks for the comments on Sparkle and L’innocente- I do appreciate you helping me correct errors- but I will not be able to fix existing pages for awhile as I finalize some backend issues on the site.
@Drake- Is Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris an acceptable answer to the question which is the greatest screen acting performance of all time? His scene talking to his dead wife really is something. Screen acting doesn’t get any better than that.
@Malith- I’d say so- yes.
The page for The Tenant needs to be repaired.
@Zane- thanks again- should be fixed
Drake,
Have you seen Mr. Klein? It’s a French film that was directed by an American director, Joseph Losey, after he left Hollywood. It has some obvious thematic similarities to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist and even Welles film The Trial. It is more than just a great narrative, there is some great camera movement and nice compositions throughout the film.
@James Trapp- I have not actually. I have had my eye on it for some time.
An overlong essay on Fellini’s Casanova that I have not edited down nearly sufficiently:
Fellini starts off, in the middle of the opening credits, with the text “A film liberally derived from ‘Storia della mia vita’ by Giacomo Casanova,” and this is as good a place to start on this film really as any. In Fellini’s Casanova, the great Maestro adapts the film from hs subject’s own autobiography and yet seems as utterly hellbent on deconstructing every effort by Casanova to present himself as anything other – as he does upon nearly every opportunity he can afford – than a crude, at times inhuman fiend who is perfectly willing to debase himself in the presence of others if he feels it will result in some advantage in the future, which, as the film so tells us, that advantage never comes, since those others were only using him for the pleasure of the debasement.
I didn’t watch this as part of any overarching Fellini retrospective or anything, so I didn’t really mention it in the above post. It was a film I had been meaning to get back to for a while after experiencing a both surprising and puzzling first viewing last August in 2021, and when I finally got to this in October (and a second time here in December) I knew I wanted to talk about it because there’s an endless list of things to say. I’m still not sure if I’m ready to post this, but here goes.
The legends about the visual transcendence of late period Fellini (often described rather accurately as “Arthouse DeMille”), his power to generate the most inconceivably indefinable imagery whilst simultaneously leaving the most lasting possible impression on the viewer certainly are just about exceeded beyond the limits of expectation by the thing itself, and while this may not be quite the equal of Juliet of the Spirits, of Amarcord, of Satyricon (3 Top 103 films counting Satyricon at #103 right this second), it is not as far behind as previous investigations into this work have allowed to reveal. The film has just as relentless and overwhelming a set piece-to-set piece brilliance as any previous Fellini film, a refreshingly revised take on La Dolce Vita’s narrative including, this time around, a specified fate instead of a more ambiguous resolution like the original work had, and like all Fellini works from the 50s to the 70s, an absolutely spectacular score by Nino Rota that I can’t say I’m not certain isn’t his best, though once again, more investigation will be required to prove whether that is or not the case. Finally, at its heart, stellar acting from one of the greatest actors of all time.
Sutherland, as Casanova, finds his place in the world and in the upper classes of society he so greatly admires through gratuitous, excessive, wanton sex. He sees it, rather nonunderstandably to be honest, as his way up the ladder and to that end he earns invitations to numerous parties throughout the film to show off his extravagant sexual prowess – including a sex competition where the aim is to be the first to bring a woman to orgasm, which he wins – in fact, the film starts with one of these scenes as he’s invited to perform a grotesque sexual act with a prostitute dressed as a nun in front of a French magistrate, who stares at him through this weird painted fish eye used as a peephole perhaps paying homage to Psycho, and he continues pursuing this end throughout the film, participating in a sexual ritual for an old woman sponsoring him to be transformed into a young man (which goes about as well as you’d expect), going to the party with the sex competition (a marvelous inferno of red everywhere here and a great conclusion as Sutherland the titan gets carried on the shoulders of all the witnesses in the audience like a rock star jumping off the stage into a crowd), and in one of the film’s strongest scenes as I see it, a great early shaky-cam sequence as Sutherland engages in a very aggressive tryst with some whores he ran into and the bed chamber where they do it shakes like an earthquake as we cut in and out of it. Fellini, like all great directors, is not one to neglect form and throughout the film he sprinkles no shortage of intriguing cinematic devices in order to build the character of Giacomo Casanova, particularly (as this is really the center of his entire persona) regarding sex. When he asks a female friend he brought along for the sexual transformation ritual for “help” her response is to shake her ass at him which he considers satisfactory. At numerous sections throughout the film our surroundings in the mise en scene are these weird sexual drawings, including one bit with these monstrous ones including a vagina that is a black hole consuming men and another that is just an evil, vile-appearing face. Even the way Sutherland actually has sex is a part of Fellini’s gonzo whatthefuck genius, just this weird sliding motion on top of his sexual partners often shot in a long shot or in a low angle of Sutherland that time and time again comes off as extremely unsexy and unpleasant to look at and hear which as always is the point. Even more remarkable is the sort of mechanization, a deorganicization of the sex, as in each scene Sutherland takes out this weird mechanical bird toy that dances in sync with his own motions always at the same tempo, constantly expanding in length like an erect penis for that matter as well, and it is to this bird that Fellini introduces one of two main music pieces from the great Rota, one more in line with most of his previous work. A strange, oddly mathematical (or should I then say evenly?) piece, it clicks and clicks repetitively and sounds as if it came out of a computer algorithm (in the best possible way); it’s the perfect piece to ridicule Sutherland’s constant sexual ravings and cravings, perfectly filling us with lust and a consuming zeal and then dropping out entirely at the end of these scenes (except for one great moment during the earthquake sex scene where the score and scene slow down to a standstill and then start back up again), forcing us and Sutherland to confront the emptiness of these strange liaisons in insulated party houses and far-offshore islands that are utterly lacking in love or passion.
And that’s a great place to go to next. Sutherland, throughout all this sex and… sex (try to imagine what a third word I could’ve added there would be), constantly does it to get some sort of audience among these high courts, filled with dukes and counts (and duchesses and countesses you best believe he chases after), but not as the culmination of any emotion of love that he feels himself, he never does it for his own enjoyment, always using various tools at his disposal like that bird to demonstrate his Herculean libido mastery that further serve to dissociate himself from his life and since sex is really something that requires a great emotional investment that Sutherland wholly lacks, we see him fall into this continuously spiraling and unraveling despair as he realizes this and is unable to stop it. To make matters worse he is used by everyone he encounters: at the start with the nun sex scene, the French statesman only stays as long as the whole shebang is going on and once Sutherland starts going off about his great scientific and intellectual achievements, we cut back to the official to see he has already left and Sutherland had no idea, later, when hailed as the champion of the sex competition, he is promptly forgotten about the next morning by his celebrators, later again, when arranging a liaison in Dresden with one of two daughters of a Swiss patron, he is the only one to arrive, and from this point on, having gotten far too old to perform his act as a human beast, he is perpetually laughed out of the room by whatever audience of modern young people he can find who have little time for his pretentions about being a great philosophical mind and see him as nothing more than trite entertainment worth some good laughs (I’m actually laughing while writing which is kind of mean because the film is actually so depressingly sad but it’s just so funny seeing him get made fun of at the end and he just looks so crushed). He even has a surprise encounter with his mother after he arrives in Dresden and is utterly ignored and left to the wayside by her as she has no pride in the way he has made her name and he only realizes after she leaves him that she never mentioned where she was living, and so they will not meet again. He constantly believes believes that the impressive intellect he boasts about will set him at his rightful place at the apex of the world, yet over the course of the film, I can’t recall him executing anything that can be called a major achievement in any field.
Throughout the film, Sutherland acquires the company or at least the attention of three women he claims to love: one real and who rejects it, one in his mind and who he therefore cannot approach with it, and one a doll who cannot resist it. The first woman, the lover of a Hungarian officer (slight tangent here, this guy is a great character, massive beard, walks around in a sleeping robe, eats a chicken leg, looks like he hasn’t groomed himself in months, gets arrested for “sexual crimes” yet obviously doesn’t care, again he eats a chicken leg in this scene, babbles in spouts of Italian and French, I didn’t detect any Hungarian or German which were the big noble languages in Hungary at the time but I could be wrong) played by Tina Aumont, and some of the film’s most resonant scenes as he genuinely attempts to pursue someone he sees as a kindred spirit come here. They go to a party in the Duchy of Parma, which is noted as divided into pro-Spanish (the “Blacks”) and pro-French (the “Whites”) factions that happen to have no actual distinguishing factors (which is a part of a Bunuelism here from Fellini showing off the snobbishness and self-absorption of the nobility) and are rather closely associated with eachother attending a party together where Sutherland attends as a Black and Aumont as a White and where they watch this really gay operatic performance that could be a scene from Satyricon. Here, we see Sutherland experience heartbreak; after the bizarre stage performance scene, Sutherland gets up to applaud the performers when all of a sudden everybody turns their heads at the sound of music (no, not the film), and we cut to see Aumont masterfully bowing the cello with the other musicians present, which she receives great praise for from their friends, at which point Sutherland realizes she is not truly like him, as she is appreciated for skills considered legitimate and worthy. They leave the party together and go to a private room, where he vainly attempts to confess his “love” and it is during this scene that the bird once again extends and the music plays, signifying that his love is actually not so, but just more sexual libido, probably driven on by the fact that Aumont (her picture on Wikipedia is of her from this film) looks more like a 15-year old than a 30-year old which she was in real life, and arouses him by at times acting as such to lead him on. This scene is interesting especially for its demonstration of the metaphysical connection Sutherland has with the bird, as he does not need to activate it for it to start working. The two have sex, but the next morning Aumont has left, and has even sent the gendarmes after him, so he must leave too.
The second love, the one who Sutherland spends the least time with, arrives after an altercation with two Englishwomen (a mother and daughter) Sutherland had been staying with who abandon him on a bridge after mocking him relentlessly for failing to get it up. He briefly considers suicide after damning them to be flung “into the foulest prison” thus demonstrating once more the gaping hole that is the life of Giacomo Casanova (there’s this particularly amazing frame here of Sutherland alone on the bridge in a long shot encased in the fog that Fellini holds for a time). Anyway, he is about to commit suicide by dropping a rock on his head while standing in the Thames when he sees of several dwarves and a giant person, and decides not to off himself and follows it. He ends up at this weird carnival seemingly in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and runs into old friends, this weird sort of carousel of whores, and all sorts of whatnot but the one that strikes him most is this gaping mouth that seems to swallow up this endless line of men (one of the best shots in the film is this scene and it probably is my single favorite) and unable to resist, Sutherland finds himself walking up the steps to those jaws. Up there, he finds an arm wrestling competition led by the giant, which he enters, and upon entering, discovering that he is facing no mere giant but a giantess. Declaring himself a “Venetian gentleman” and saying “I have fought against the Turk,” he loses, and soon after finds himself totally under the giantess’s spell, going out to see her fight in a wrestling competition against a number of opponents and utterly dominating them, and then to watch her bathe with her two dwarf companions. It is worth noting that of all the women in the film, she is the only who bothers listening for a second to what he has to say, yet this should come as no surprise, as she is not real, and as soon as Sutherland comes to his senses, he wakes up, and is surrounded by nothing, no carnival, no tents, nothing.
The last love is perhaps the most intriguing, the robot. After being left at the wayside by his mother, Sutherland once again travels through Germany to the Duchy of Württemberg and enters a grand party full of spirited young individuals he has little in common with; they would rather drink until they are poisoned, fence in head-to-toe suits of armor, shoot ballistas, set cluttered fires (under a roof for that matter), drag sea turtles around, scream spurts of German nonsense at the top of their lungs, and have jazz-rock jam sessions with massive organs built into the wall (like 6-8 guys at once just hammering down onto the keys here some guys like 3 stories high into the air on ladders; all of this all happens pretty much simultaneously like it’s Altman’s M*A*S*H or something too). After a few belated efforts to impress those around him with this grandiose exploits that never actually happened, Sutherland is finally introduced by one around him to a stunning masterwork of late 1700s engineering, a female gender designated-doll that is human in appearance and is capable of independent motion. Sutherland, unsurprisingly interested in the idea of a female companion who can be used for sex and has no capacity to resist or leave him, heads back downstairs as soon as the festivities have ended and comes to find her sitting there, the camera tracking closer as he walks, carried by these deafening footsteps that come across like a flurry of raindrops on glass. They dance, and right here begins what is surely the film’s most iconic scene and undoubtedly one of its strongest. The score, the second piece this time, plays, and the remarkable thing about this piece in particular is that unlike a traditional Rota score, which is sort of a sort of satirically upbeat carnival tune that helps to establish the hilarity and comedic aspects of a Fellini film generally whenever we’re in some bizarre visually spectacular situation that barely qualifies as making any sense (and only does because it’s Fellini); that’s the first set of music from way back in the film, during all the sex scenes. This is different; the overall tone of the film is this sort of doom-stricken Hell that barely qualifies as a human existence and the score here matches that, it’s like a music box in the melody, it rocks the viewer to sleep, but at the same time any sort of life, any sort of sanity, any sort of lingering humanity that remains at the end of the previous 2 hours of utter Earthean apocalypse is vacuumed up, vanishing into this black hole of a score and scene. There are really two chord progressions that Rota will slither back and forth between here, one that chimes threateningly – it entices but also warns – and another that is just this sunken repeated disturbance of sound, the first lures us in and the second cuts off our escape, it makes me think of a Venus flytrap to be perfectly honest. They dance together still, separately and together, their movements visual perfection – I must particularly praise the actress playing the robot, her movements feel both spontaneous and predetermined owing to her man-made origin, filled with graceful flourishes of the legs and arms and every tilt of the head hits right through your screen, if anything she leads Sutherland through the dance more even than he leads her – until finally he takes her to his bed in the castle of the Duke to have his way. He gives another one of those creepy, pedophilic speeches he starts upon countless times throughout the film and then impales onto himself – I suppose it is noteworthy that he does not have the bird with him in this scene which could be interpreted a number of ways, it could be called poor form or be used as an indication of how this sex scene differs from the others in the film, whenever the bird is there the normal Rotaesque score plays and this time we get the strange doomsday oblivion score, but still, it will need more study as to why it was not present – we go with a low angle of the doll as she chafes throughout Sutherland’s rough abuse and we see his utterly pathetic and contemptible “I love you” line repeated again and again as he runs out of breath repeatedly during the intercouse, he is so loathsome here for that (for that matter Drake have you seen Chazelle’s Babylon yet? It also has the “I love you” scene from Singin’ in the Rain parodied) until Fellini cuts back to the low angle of the doll as Sutherland arrives at his beloved orgasm and she lowers down onto the camera, and to sleep he goes. The next morning, he gets out of bed, she lays there rattled from the previous night (I may have not emphasized it enough before but the robot is not just a doll; she is alive, she moves of her own volition and empowerment), legs astray in the air as Fellini points out to us, and he leaves. It is the only time in the film that Sutherland leaves a lover and is not left himself, and said lover was not even a human being.
At this, we pretty much reach the ending as Sutherland, now old, decrepit and deprived of his ability to please sexually he grasped onto for so long, has gone into exile again (probably got the gendarmes sent after him again for raping something that didn’t belong to him) in Bohemia. Having an obviously poor relationship with those he finds in his company there, he begs the regent, the mother of the local Count who plays this baffling solo Chess-like game on an oval board, for assurances that he will be allowed to eat macaroni every morning as personally requested, a matter of obvious paramount importance that she says will be granted as soon as her son returns. He then recites poetry in front of a band of young Bohemian German nobles who laugh him out of the room to his great displeasure and harm to his ego, and he returns to his room, one last time. With one last glance at his mechanical bird, which like his sexual ability has fallen apart over time, we return to thoughts of Venice, Sutherland’s beloved city that he has been exiled from for decades of his life by this point (at the beginning when he escapes prison) and Sutherland asks himself whether he ever returned, realizing that the previous night he had experienced a dream of himself there. At the opening of the film, there is a disastrous celebration Sutherland attends where a giant head included as part of the ceremony fell underneath the waters of the canals of the city; at the start of the dream, we see that head, 2 ½ hours after we last did so, underneath the frozen river Sutherland stands upon. He notices spirits of all his past lovers – it is no great surprise, as these women are all he ever seemed to really care about despite his proclamations of his great capabilities as a statesman, poet or astronomer – over the course of the film ahead of him, in low angles so we can’t see their faces, but every time Sutherland attempts to run after them they evade him, they want him to know they are evading him. Alone, Sutherland encounters one, in fact, has remained, and after a brief return back to him in his old age, eyes on the verge of closing for the last, we see that his final companion was the doll, the robot, and with that he opts not to be alone again, and dances with her there for what seems to be the rest of eternity.
It’s odd comparing the film’s portrayal of sexuality with Fellini’s previous stronger work Satyricon, as that film comes across as something of a cross-parody-and-celebration (like post-irony all the way back in 1969) of homosexuality whereas this film feels like it was made by a man who has lost all faith in heterosexual love; it is desolate, reminds me of Tarkovsky or even Pedro Costa in terms of the film’s utter black sadness even if it still has much of Fellini’s comedic touch though this time in order to very meanly, savagely attack more so than ever before. Even visually the film matches this: it is Gothic in the surroundings encircling Sutherland, there is a literal constant night (a 2 ½ hour film and not one scene that takes place in the daytime), fog enclosing the scenery time and time again (in the Württemberg segment there is smoke everywhere from I guess people smoking and also shooting cannons and stuff), impressive use of shadows, low angles, one shot in particular of the massive sex bus (the shaking bed) just inching up rapidly on the camera in a low angle as the enormous shadow of the mechanical sex bird is visible in the background, another low angle as Sutherland gets sentenced to life in prison by these judges, accusing him of crimes he claims he is “entirely innocent” of, later on escaping from prison, in an escape he describes as a “masterpiece” with the Moon in the background, this weird trash bag sea mise en scene (especially bizarre) that he rides a boat on to get to the sex island at the beginning, obviously the lowering of the chandeliers sequence (pretty sure a picture of that is on the 1976 page) is especially iconic and stunning as Sutherland is surrounded by people and within literal seconds (very powerful) is left completely alone in a giant opera hall as the camera distance suggests, again I remind you that it is literally always nighttime in this film, I forgot to mention it but the bridge scene where Sutherland is left alone is another powerful piece of mise en scene (I also believe the scene in the carriage with the mother-and-daughter whores is parodying Barry Lyndon with the outfits and England setting), but the one (or than the chandeliers) that sticks out to me the most is the shot at 124 minutes as Sutherland’s mother, who clearly cared for him so very little, drives off into a stormy night. Fellini goes for the wide long shot, taking in the vast architecture of the opera house they had just left, while also incorporating the wispy winds of the blizzard maneuvering around ahead. The distance we are kept from Sutherland over the entire duration of the film is just a stunning artistic slam dunk.
Some of my favorite quotes:
“Whore? Me? Well, I certainly didn’t get a chance to be one with you!”
“I am sole custodian of my honor… I consider any casual reference to it an outrage.”
“Now tell me the truth: you possess the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone, don’t you?”
[As Sutherland is describing an associate of his at a party] “But in my view, an unscrupulous adventurer and charlatan.”
“An eccentric nobleman noted for the undefined boundaries of his amorous interests.”
“And of course I shall fight! I am a Venetian gentleman; I have fought against the Turk.”
“You travel in lands that don’t exist; I prefer to travel in the real world.” “But your travels take you through the bodies of women… and that gets you nowhere.” Maybe my favorite line from the entire film, it’s actually rather rare that we will get a line that is not written as some sort of dark satirical joke like all of these other ones I have written here.
Another funny line is the way Sutherland says “Giacomo” his first name. He constantly refers to himself as Giacomo throughout the film when talking to himself (since nobody else wants to listen to him ever) and there’s just something about how he says it in his own voice that’s really funny to me, it’s insane how this film, like Salò which this merits substantial comparison to, manages to be both absolutely hilarious and utterly crushing and depressing at the same time.
Can I just say how much I was underrating the film’s costume design the first few times around? I mean in particular that weird red wire outfit worn by the “nun” prostitute that looks like the scaffolding construction workers set up around buildings; a great outfit. The outfits and production design are by Danilo Donati and he and Giuseppe Rotunno (a legend) deserve immense respect for shaping the look of the film – this film started a bit of a Donald Sutherland retrospective for me (I would not have seen M*A*S*H or anything by Altman without it) that included, as I just said, M*A*S*H, 1900, and more recently Klute which is similar in visual darkness and shot by the famed Gordon Willis of course (and I’m a big formalist actually, I have to admit I value or at least reflect on it probably even more than style at this point so the structure with the psychiatrist meetings were just chef’s kiss) – but I feel of Fellini’s big three non-Rota collaborators here, perhaps the greatest respect needs to be given to editor Ruggero Mastroianni, Marcello’s brother. He’s an absolute master of editing who worked with Fellini on everything from Juliet of the Spirits onwards as well as with Visconti often as well and what he did on the ending scene as the lovers disappear is unbelievable. One of the best edited scenes in cinematic history. One of the few scenes in this to really hit me the first time I saw this in August 2021 (I’m not sure I was ready for this film then but who knows) and it just absolutely destroyed me. Rolled over me like a rock.
Oh, and one last tip: watch this in English. Satyricon too. The lead actors for both of these films are from Hollywood and should be watched in their native languages, Hell the actors for both of these films are taken from all across Europe and there’s dialogue in Spanish, German, French, well beyond just Italian. It’s no real point watching these two solely in Italian when you lose so much to that.
So yeah. The film is many contradictions. It is both jarring and poetic, both beautiful and ugly, its subject both laughable and pitiful, and it can hardly be told whether Fellini sympathizes with Casanova some, a little or not at all, but one thing it is for certain… it is a Masterpiece. Fellini called this His masterpiece (or at least somebody on the internet told me he did), and that is not true as that is 8 ½, but it is a Masterpiece.
I guess it’s proper to post a Fellini ranking:
1. 8 ½ – MP
2. La Dolce Vita – MP
3. Juliet of the Spirits – MP
4. Amarcord – MP
5. Fellini Satyricon – MP
6. La Strada – MP
7. I Vitelloni – MP
8. Fellini’s Casanova – MP
9. Nights of Cabiria – MS
10. Fellini’s Roma – R/HR to HR
11. The White Sheik – R (but those 5 minutes of Masina are wayyyyy higher… probably cause she’s playing Cabiria 5 years before that character got her own film)
And I see no reason that further approach of Fellini’s career can’t push Casanova ahead of I Vitelloni. For two films as strong as those two to be dueling for his seventh-best work… remarkable.
@Malith – The Tenant was MS/MP for a while and when this page was published in my opinion. Probably got bumped up but Drake doesn’t yet want to do a re-ranking on this page.
@Malith- thank you for the fix
Hey Drake, just read that you’re a fan of The Rewatchables which is great as I listen to them aswell. Was just wondering if you have any other recommendations for film podcasts as I’m always on the lookout for some. I currently listen to The Big Picture aswell, another Ringer podcast and Pure Cinema Podcast on occasion but would love some recommendations.
@Joel- indeed- big fan of the rewatchables… my time spent listening to podcasts has varied over the years, but filmspotting, the director’s cut, and battleship pretension are all podcasts I’ve listened or even subscribed to in the past
Awesome. Thanks for that
@Drake-Haven’t you thought about giving Giancarlo Giannini a mention either here or in 1975 for his work in Seven Beauties(1975) and L’Innocente(1976)?
@Anderson- Certainly thought about it and considered – but missed the cut
Can you see Dirk Bogarde pulling off the Polanski role in The Tenant? Not going back in time. With the 55 year old Bogarde at the time.
@Malith – well if he can do Despair he could certainly do The Tenant, but one thing against Bogarde I think is he is so used to trampling over and being rude to everyone in his roles, The Tenant needs a more timid performance.
I don’t particularly think this is a problem. What Bogarde does is the hard part. He can easily play the timid part. The 2-3 scenes Polanski struggles here is in the being rude scenes. Bogarde would be perfect.
@Malith@Harry – what about Anthony Perkins? He was 44 at the time and played a similar role in Welles The Trial (1962) Jack Lemmon was a great actor who specialized in playing timid characters, I am not sure if he was in anything as dark as The Tenant but none the less he might be able to play this. If we allowed going back in time than Jesse Eisenberg would be perfect.
Sadly I don’t know much about Lemmon and Perkins. I’m not overly impressed with Eisenberg. Not sure he can land the being rude scenes Polanski’s character does near the end of this film. I like Polanski’s performance but the small problems are in the going madness scenes(or trying to be authoritative) which Bogarde would be perfect for.
@Malith – Eisenberg tried to tackle a similar role in The Double which he was not strong in so I don’t see that either.
I personally really enjoyed Polanski’s acting on a repeat viewing
Yeah. His scenes and chemistry with Adjani are great. He is perfect and likeable but shy which also suits the character. It’s just some scenes later in the film are hard. And need a great actor.
@Drake-Can you see Dirk Bogarde pulling off the Polanski role here in The Tenant?
What do you think?