ROTK name Ultimate Best Picture in Poll

[Alatar]

Well yes, Chicago probably didn't deserve its win, despite being a fine movie. However, Beautiful Mind beating out Fellowship? That was just wrong. It was a nice movie, but nothing special.

[Pearly Di]

However, Beautiful Mind beating out Fellowship? That was just wrong. It was a nice movie, but nothing special.

Totally agree!

And I remember some purists crowing about that.

If any film deserved to beat FotR that year, it was Gosford Park.

Al, I like Chicago too.

I just don't think it should have beaten The Pianist.

[Alatar]

Ooh Gosford Park. Now thats a much harder call. In fact I think I'd probably give it to them over Fellowship.

[Pearly Di]

Ooh Gosford Park. Now thats a much harder call. In fact I think I'd probably give it to them over Fellowship.

I think for me it would be neck and neck.

Apples and oranges, isn't it?

FotR was the most groundbreaking fantasy film of all time (until RotK ) and for that reason alone it should have won!

But Gosford Park was a class act. I've never seen it since, actually, but I loved it at the time and I can remember it really well, it's a very memorable film.

If I remember correctly, the Gosford costume designer beat Ngila for the Oscar ...! The costumes were wonderful, of course, but Ngila invented styles not just for one imaginary race but several ... Just astounding.

[solicitr]

For me possibly A Clockwork Orange.

[N.E. Brigand]

N.E.B., I'm sure you've posted this... but I'd love to see your top ten list. I'd be willing to wager that a good number of them I haven't even heard of, but I'm pretty sure they would be worth checking out.

I think this is the list you're remembering:

1. Pather Panchali (India 1955, d. Satyajit Ray)
2. A Man Escaped (France 1956, d. Robert Bresson)
3. Yojimbo (Japan 1961, d. Akira Kurosawa)
4. The Four Hundred Blows (France 1959, d. Francois Truffaut)
5. The Third Man (UK 1949, d. Carol Reed)
6. Notorious (US 1946, d. Alfred Hitchcock)
7. Potemkin (USSR 1925, d. Sergei Eisenstein)
8. And Life Goes On (Iran 1991, d. Abbas Kiarostami)
9. City Lights (US 1931, d. Charles Chaplin)
10. The Son's Room (Italy 2001, d. Nanni Moretti)

That's the list for now. It's a pretty safe list: nothing too obscure or daring. All these films, or at least their directors, are well known and much praised. This list certainly isn't exhaustive of my tastes: right away I see that films I love by de Sica, Lang, Mizoguchi and Ozu are missing. And there are some major gaps in my filmgoing: none of the few films I've seen by, say, Antonioni, Bergman, Godard, Naruse, Schepisi, Yang or Zhang are good enough to earn a place here, but often I've missed the films considered to be their best work.

I once claimed that A Man Escaped captures more of the spirit of LOTR than any film actually made from Tolkien's work (and I'm told that a similiar argument was made in the Walking Tree Press book on Tolkien in translation) but at least one major Tolkien scholar says they're nothing alike.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks, N.E.B. Sometime I'll try to see some of them. At least A Man Escaped, so that I can see whether I agree that it captures the spirit of LOTR. Am I correct in remembering that it is not in any way meant to be an adaptation of LOTR?

[solicitr]

5. The Third Man (UK 1949, d. Carol Reed)

One of my favorites- even though Welles' famous ad lib was wrong; the cuckoo clock is German, not Swiss.

[N.E. Brigand]

Am I correct in remembering that [A Man Escaped] it is not in any way meant to be an adaptation of LOTR?

Yes. For all I know, Bresson had never heard of Tolkien or LOTR -- at least in 1956; he died in 1999 and was making films into the early 1980s. But A Man Escaped (French title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé, ou Le vent souffle où il veut) is the story of the imprisonment in Lyons of a condemned French Resistance fighter. The similarities I see to LOTR are entirely a matter of tone and theme.

[The Third Man...] One of my favorites -- even though Welles' famous ad lib was wrong; the cuckoo clock is German, not Swiss.

We could pin the mistake on the character, I suppose.
I've heard that Noel Coward was the first choice for Welles' role, and some critics feel that he would have been more in keeping with the bleak mood of post-war Vienna.

[solicitr]

Oh, but Welles was so *perfect* as Lime.

Besides, I have a suspicion that Carol Reed's amazing direction was motivated by Welles' presence on set (notwithstanding the falsity of the legend crediting Welles with actual involvement).

[vison]

The Third Man wasn't like a movie, it was like a filmed stage play. I didn't like it at all.

It may be that I feel that way because I saw it for the first time only weeks ago. For me, it was just too much a product of its time - it seemed, as I said, stagey and false. Some old movies wear well, for me, and some don't. It didn't.

I cannot abide Orson Welles. Never could. A failing in me, no doubt. I have been hearing all my life about how brilliant he was, and I have never been able to discern that brilliance. I don't know enough about movies to see it, I guess.

Did people really talk and move as quickly in those days as the films from that era suggest? I think I mentioned this once before - and it has always intrigued me since I read somewhere that people and their speech have actually slowed down over the last decades.

[Inanna]

Did people really talk and move as quickly in those days as the films from that era suggest? I think I mentioned this once before - and it has always intrigued me since I read somewhere that people and their speech have actually slowed down over the last decades.

Really? Have you hung out with any Indians or Armenians lately?

[vison]

Did people really talk and move as quickly in those days as the films from that era suggest? I think I mentioned this once before - and it has always intrigued me since I read somewhere that people and their speech have actually slowed down over the last decades.

Really? Have you hung out with any Indians or Armenians lately?

Well, I hang around with Indians a lot, but I can't say whether or not they speak slower than they used to! But no Armenians.

Seriously, I did read this somewhere. I mean, who talks like Jimmy Cagney nowadays? Watch movies from the 30's and 40's and it's weird.

[Primula Baggins]

And there's that weird "mid-Atlantic" accent as well as the machine-gun delivery. I wonder if either reflected how people actually spoke, or if it was the product of years of diction lessons to erase actors' true regional accents?

Plus they all smoked like chimneys, something my kids could not believe the first time we watched a few pre-1960 movies together. "Really? The first thing you would do when you met someone is offer them a cigarette?"

[yovargas]

That's the list for now. It's a pretty safe list: nothing too obscure or daring.

While I am not by any means a serious film aficionado, I am at least moderately literate and I can honestly say I don't recognize a single film on your list.

[vison]

I've seen The The Third Man and Notorious. I like Notorious a great deal. Anything with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, especially Cary Grant . . . .

I tried to watch City Lights. Chaplin is another one I just don't get.

My late father-in-law was an actual Chaplin fan from the olden days. He adored Chaplin. But I guess if you grew up on a rock farm in Norway and got to go to Oslo one day and saw a Moving Picture, it would have made a big impression.

[Pearly Di]

That's the list for now. It's a pretty safe list: nothing too obscure or daring.

While I am not by any means a serious film aficionado, I am at least moderately literate and I can honestly say I don't recognize a single film on your list.

Yov, I recognise (and have seen) just two: The Third Man and Notorious.

Don't know any of the others, but A Man Escaped has me intrigued. A film about a French Resistance fighter is similar to the tone and theme of LotR? Wow.