Release Year: 1950
Genre: Samurai
Plot
Summary: A terrible crime and its direct aftermath are recalled from
differing points of view.
What
Makes It Special: Rashomon works beautifully thanks to Akira Kurosawa’s
innovation narrative structure. The rape and murder of a couple in the woods is
presented by multiple witnesses, each giving a slightly altered version of the
event (the truth existing somewhere amongst all their stories of what happened).
The film reveals something interesting about humanity – that truth is often
relative, depending on the interpretation of the beholder. One’s own humanity
and experiences shape how they perceive the world; and thus, truth is not a
universal concept. The film also features a brilliant performance from Japan’s
biggest star Toshiro Mifune.
Release Year: 1980
Genre: Sports
Drama/Biography
Plot
Summary: The life and career of boxer Jake LaMotta: a self-destructive,
bad-tempered and violent man – he became a champion boxer, but his personal
life was left in shambles.
What
Makes It Special: Martin Scorsese revolutionized the way sports dramas
are made with Raging Bull. Each fight shot and styled in a different manner to
elicit unique reactions and feelings from the audience. Scorsese also directs
two astounding performances in the film: one from Joe Pesci (making his career)
and one from Robert De Niro (adding to his growing legend, following
sensational work in Taxi
Driver). The film is emotional dense and at times difficult to watch, but
Scorsese and his actors create something that is ultimately highly compelling.
Raging Bull remains one of cinema’s marquee character dramas.
Release Year: 1960
Genre: Romance
Plot
Summary: A young Frenchman and
known car thief, Michel Poiccard, kills a policeman and must go into hiding;
but before he leaves for Italy, he tries to convince a beautiful young girl,
Patricia Franchini, to come with him.
What
Makes It Special: Breathless is maybe the most famous film of the French
New Wave movement, director Jean-Luc Godard teaming with the other creative champion
of the style Francois
Truffaut (whose The
400 Blows is also a staple of French New Wave Cinema). The film is
incredibly fresh, vital and seductive. It exudes the feeling of youth (something
extremely hard to capture). It is also very stylish, cool and cinematically
revolutionary. Really with one film, Godard has influenced generations of
filmmakers (he does have many other films, but Breathless is the one people
continually come back to time and time again).
Release Year: 1954
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Plot
Summary: L.B. Jefferies is a renowned action photographer, but he has
been injured on his latest job. With two broken legs, he is stuck in a
wheelchair in his apartment, growing very bored and turning to spying on his
neighbors for entertainment. It is all in good fun until Jefferies becomes
convinced that one of his neighbors has murdered his wife. Pulling his
girlfriend Lisa into his obsession, he is determined to investigate further.
What
Makes It Special: Rear Window is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest
thrillers, but it is much more. It is a film about voyeurism – something that
is very powerful and seductive. We as a society love films because they
entertain us and take us places we have maybe never been, but there is
something much more intimate about them. They allow us to peer into the lives
of others (fictional or not) and watch them without being seen (the illusion of
voyeurism) – we see into their secret lives. Hitchcock taps into this dark
human truth and fetish. Rear Window is also directed and acted to perfection.
It is the film that first piqued my interest in cinema as something more than a
casual entertaining pastime.
Release Year: 1925
Genre: Montage
Cast: Various Russian
actors
Plot
Summary: When the sailors of the battleship Potemkin are given rotten
meat, they turn mutinous starting a riot to protest their treatment. Their
actions ignite the beginnings of a revolution in Odessa, one that the police
quickly try to put out by massacring many of the demonstrators that join the
protest. The film is based on the historical event.
What
Makes It Special: Montage filmmaking strived to take two images and
create meaning by juxtaposing them against each other. Battleship Potemkin (and
Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie
Camera) epitomizes this style, creating a work that is astonishingly
compelling. It continues to influence filmmaking today (creating many of the
rules of dramatic film editing – like how to properly edit to maximize suspense).
It is not as accessible as many silent films that adhere more to the narrative
language we are more accustomed to (shot reverse shot; long, medium, close),
but that does not diminish its emotional power.
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