Name a Movie That Inspired You......

[penshuffler]

The French films Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (Parts 1 and 2 of the same story), inspired me because they're just about perfectly scripted, and truly wonderful films in every way you can think of. Forget Hollywood blockbusters, these are the kinds of films I go to the cinema to see.

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[Alex]

Sigh, I saw both of those films in the late 80's. I loved them both.

I don't think there was one explosion or gunshot in either movie.

Has there ever been a "blockbuster" that did not have a gun or explosion in it?

Also "My life as a Dog" was a neat movie.

Cinema Paradisio is one of my all time favorites. The music is so gut wrenchingly nostaligic.



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Alex

[Dominic3]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chas_ucla:
[B]"The Fountainhead"???Yecch. Great book...but I felt the movie suffered from bad casting... like your other choices..."

Chas, I agree with you about
"The Fountainhead" - Gary Cooper was a bit wooden, and the guy who played Ellsworth Toohey was too "slick".

However, although the film is not as good as the book, you still are engrossed and inspired by the strong philosophical message.

Incidentallly, a remake of
"The Fountainhead" as a block buster film is currently on the cards and I was also told recently that Ted Turner has bought the rights to make Ayn Rand's other novel "Atlas shrugged" .



[This message has been edited by Dominic3 (edited September 30, 2001).]

[Jambu]

Powerful Messages from Movies that you remember...


?LITTLE BIG MAN? by Arthur Penn...

and a book:

?SHOCK VALUE? by John Waters, 1981 !!!

!... every low-budget movie director should read it!!!

JAMBU


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[Alex]

Ballad of Cable Hogue.....

What a neat story. People came and Went...but Jason Robards held his ground. (he found water in the desert)

The method for cleaning the dishes before a meal was just classic.

The story has deception, revenge, love, passing of love, return of love, and a very symbolic end that no one would ever guess.


Cool Hand Luke....I saw that movie when I was very young...I remember Paul Newman being the toughest and coolest guy ever for eating all those eggs.

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Alex

[skubrick]

inspiration from a movie?

i'm insperated by pretty much any movie steven speilberg makes. His movies are pure pleasure to watch and oose with emotion.

one movie to inspire is saving private ryan. pure elegance and beauty. i can not do this film any justice by writing how brilliant it is

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[miguelito]

For me, my most inspirational film has got
to be Stephen Spielberg's "Duel". I love
that film. Man against machine, against the
unknown; it's like a universal feeling we
all experience at some time or other in our
lives.


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[Alex]

Yeah, never seeing the truck driver...cool touch.

Discovering at a young age that a truck can go fast on straight aways, it was like jaws all over again....only Spielberg had not made Jaws yet!

Near the end of the movie they show a shot of the trucker's hands and arms struggling to maintain control of his vehicle.

By then, I didn't want to ever see the trucker, the movie was almos over.

That one shot almost took me out of my suspension of disbelief that Speilberg had masterfully created.

It's a real fast shot.

I wonder why he put that shot in?



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Alex

[redrice]

nanni moretti's 'aprile' made me look at glasses of water differently.

the straubs' 'operai, contadini' (just released in france) contains a really interesting section on how to make ricotta, as well as some good advice on using laurel bushes for land reclamation.

claude lanzmann's 'shoah' changed my attitude to history and, in particular, to the traces it leaves behind (or not).

amos gitai's 'wadi' changed the way i think about palestine and israel at a level far more profound than ideology.

rivette's 'celine et julie' made me want to go and live in france. i did, and though it wasn't like the movie, i don't regret it.

ozu changed my attitude to interior design.

olmi's 'tree of wooden clogs' made me think that growing tomatoes could be a fulfilling activity, not just a chore.

satyajit ray's early films made me want to travel outside europe.

abbas kirostami's 'where is my friend's house' made me want to live outside europe and never come back again. (i may still do that).

but in general, the thing that most inspires me in films, in relation to the rest of my life, is not the content of the movie, but the seriousness and commitment which goes into its making.

jean rouch tells a story about how when he was editing his first film, he used the suite where tati had just finished 'mr hulot's holiday'. he noticed that tati would still come in every evening and work for a couple of hours. after a while, he plucked up the courage to ask him what he was doing, and tati explained that although the film had been on release for several weeks, he and his editor would still go and see it playing in cinemas, and watch how the audience reacted. then they would come back to the editing room, and take out one or two frames here, or add one or two frames there.

"mr rouch", said tati, "making films is like working with ivory".

["monsieur rouch, le metier de cineaste, c'est un metier d'ebeniste." 'ebeniste' derives from ebony, and means 'cabinet maker'; it is synonymous in French with the idea of infinitely patient and infinitely intricate work]

rouch never forgot this. (though when you see some of his later films, you might think he had...).

so what i got from the movies is, above all, the idea that if the work you do doesn't inspire you to take infinite pains, then you are probably wasting the best part of your life.

of living film makers, those who seem to me most emblematic of this kind of intensity of attention are jean-marie straub and daniele huillet.

shortly after the fall of france during the second world war, braque was interviewed by a French journalist about his attitude to the recent tragedy. his reply was:
"if everyone took their work as seriously as picasso and i take ours, none of this would ever have happened."

peter

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[Alex]

Somebody should follow peter around and make a movie of his life!

Don't forget the scene where the missing screw falls from Peter's hair, fanning the mystery if Peter might be part human and part A.I.
(just teasing about the second, serious about the first)

Ratings and Box Office fly in the face of the auteur theory and the dedication of the director that you have noted.

I say it's better to have made a film with legs rather than one that was "hot" for a week or two than goes "cold" forever.

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Alex