Dziga Vertov
1929

When you type "Man with a Movie Camera" into imdb, you automatically get some thing that's still in production. I had to search for Vertov to find the production year.
This is sad.
I've had trouble really liking the poetic documentaries so far. They're pretty and stuff, but I need some kind of content or something.
But this was rather extraordinary.
I didn't even fall asleep.
And I was really tired.
And it's silent.

David Gordon Green
2000

I feel really guilty for oversleeping and missing the beginning of this.
I was really impressed. It had that same, deceptively simple, from-a-child's-eye feel as To Kill a Mockingbird, only the tone is totally different and it has less of a morality-play feel. And doesn't construct black people as other, etc etc.
But it has that same touching childhood losing innocence thing going for it.
I love the scene where the little girl's all "I have a confession. I'm not a very good person." She's so matter-of-fact and it's so powerful.

(That said, I loves me some Harper Lee. I've read that book so many times.)

Sergei Eisenstein
1927

The most bearable ever of Eisenstein, except maybe Battleship Potemkin.
I understand he's a genius, but I just don't feel it.
Sorry, film curricula.

Jorgen Leff
1982

The whole thing is really really short scenes (like 20-30 seconds) of iconic American things.
Except for this endless shot of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger somewhere right in the middle.

Leff came and talked to our class because he's in town right now (the Cinematheque is showing some of his work). It was cool.

Howard Hawks
1948

Hawks' homosociality coupled with the Western's fetishizing of guns turns to outright homoeroticism.
"Nice gun. Can I see it?"
[hands him the gun]
"Can I see yours?"
I'm not even joking.

It was actually pretty good, tense, epic. Until the end, in which things that shouldn't have been forgiven are all solved with a good tussle. (Not like that.) It sort really destroys the integrity of the characters. I think it's just Hawks' impulse to end the film with a united male group/couple.

On another note, was Montgomery Clift always that pretty?

Samuel Fuller
1957

"Can I touch it?" (She means his gun.)
"Careful, it might go off in your face."
Wait, so you mean guns are phallic?

It's a Western. Featuring Barbara Stanwyck as a cattle baronness who runs the county and is a "high ridin' lady with a whip."
The opening is just wide open prairie, in silence, then this great sequence where Jessica Drummond leads her forty gunmen past the heroes' little carriage. Then the music kicks in. AWESOME.

I've seen four of his movies; officially my new favourite director.

Jean Vigo
1931

You can tell he's trying to shoehorn bits of experimentation into a film about something he didn't actually care about. Which is cool.
I think it's kind of a predecessor for the diving sequence in Olympia.

Jean Vigo
1930

Pretty cool. Showing the grotesquery of the extremely wealthy is always okay by me.

Joris Ivens
1929

It's a cine-poem!
It was lovely, it probably would have been better if an actual good print was available to us.
Bah.

Walter Ruttman
1927

It's a "city symphony" film. There's a lot here, in terms of technique and prettiness and such.
The moving shots made me dizzy.