jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Ah, lists! Like all fans, film aficionados are collectors, and every now and then, all collectors enjoy sifting through their stash to trot out their favorite baubles, arranged one way or another, to show them off to the world. Look! I’ve got three of the ultra-rare green kind, and oh, how that marbled one catches the sunlight just so! Toying with the objects of our affection in this way makes us feel happy and safe. In the world of movies, that’s what we call a list.

The movies we’ve seen (and can remember) are our stash and currency, and the best and shiniest of them will have to bear the scrutiny of any passers-by. As members of NYFCO, Marcy and I do this once a year, and recently, I’ve been asked, along with a number of bloggers and critics, to help put together a list of best films made in a language other than English before 2002. The list of nominations is out now at Edward Copeland’s site, and it’s a good one. You can go vote on your favorites, and a final tally will be published soon.

For the goal-oriented, that should be the end of the story, but I always find that democracy and criticism make an uneasy fit, and to me, the final result is somewhat beside the point. Instead, you might be happier taking a look at the individual ballots (or adding your own) here, at Jim Emerson’s site, at the House Next Door, or on your own damn blog. The fun is in the arranging of the marbles, the weighing of their comparative beauty, the debates over which ones have been overlooked or could be traded in for shinier ones. (It’s also a terrific way to fatten up your Netflix queue.) For the avid collector, the list is never an end in itself — it’s just a way to spend a little bit more time with some of our favorite things.

So here’s the snapshot of movies I considered worthy of inclusion according to this particular set of parameters on this particular day–culled from a much longer list of close contenders while LH 182, after three hours delay, finally began its initial descent on Berlin-Tegel, a fact I mention only because it may help explain the heavy Teutonic emphasis: I literally found myself in the Himmel über Berlin. Feel free to add your 25 favorites in the comments, and don’t forget to vote at Edward Copeland’s site. In alphabetical order:

8 1/2 Federico Fellini, 1963
Aguirre, The Wrath of God Werner Herzog, 1972
Akira Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988
Au Hasard Balthazar Robert Bresson, 1966
Band of Outsiders Jean-Luc Godard, 1964
Black Orpheus Marcel Camus, 1959
City of God Fernando Meirelles, 2002
Day for Night Francois Truffaut, 1973
M Fritz Lang, 1931
Nights of Cabiria Federico Fellini, 1957
Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer, 1998
Seven Samurai Akira Kurosawa, 1954
Solaris Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972
Spirited Away Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
Stolen Kisses Francois Truffaut, 1968
The Lovers on the Bridge Leos Carax, 1991
The Man Without a Past Aki Kaurismaki, 2002
The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939
The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman, 1957
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy, 1964
The Wages of Fear Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953
Wings of Desire Wim Wenders, 1987
Y Tu Mama Tambien Alfonso Cuaron, 2001
Yojimbo Akira Kurosawa, 1961
Zur Sache, Schätzchen May Spils, 1968

In 1921, hot off Die Spinnen, Fritz Lang was set to direct an adaptation of Thea von Harbou’s novel The Indian Tomb. But producer Joe May was convinced the two-part melodrama would be huge, so he decided to direct it himself. Almost forty years later, when he had a hard time finding work in Hollywood, Lang returned to Germany to direct a new version of the Indian epic. Both films–Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das Indische Grabmal–are brightly colored and utterly risible. There’s an awful lot of brown makeup. YouTube happens to have the scene from the ‘59 Tiger in which Seetha (Debra Paget), a dancer who has fallen in love with the European engineer, must prove her loyalty to the Maharaja by dancing with a deadly snake. It’s the best scene in the entire 3+ hours epic.

Fascinating life, dull biography. Patrick McGilligan’s book could have used some editing–there are typos everywhere and in the later years, he bogs down into the repetitive format of contentious pre-production, awful shooting anecdotes, mixed critical recepetion, repeat. Lang was quite a character though–from the early Weimar years to the (probably made-up) meeting with Goebbels to his emigration and Hollywood years. There is some evidence that Fritz shot his first wife, his second wife went over to the Nazis, and his third wife had to take calls from prostitutes after his death at 85: “Haven’t you heard? He’s dead.”

Arrgh. All considered, this was about as bad as Elizabethtown, so I’ll have to stop lording that miserable pick over Marcy’s head. It was all me who insisted we watch this sequel to The Tiger of Eschnapur… I remembered a fantastic finale, tragic and grandiose, and we were already two hours invested, so why not finish it?

Because I remembered the wrong movie. Whatever I had in mind, it must have been some Egyptian thing, it certainly wasn’t this. The climax was two men in brownface showing each other their sweaty chests. The one and only highlight is Debra Paget’s snake-charming dance, which she performs practically nude.

Part one of Fritz Lang’s 1924 adaptation of the classic German legend (which is also the basis for Wagner’s Ring cycle.) Glorious cinematography and way oversized drama. This is the kind of epic tragedy Sith ought to be compared to.

864 of Bogdanovich interviews with classic Hollywood directors. Been reading this off and on for months, and today the Queens Public Library reclaimed it from me, half finished. I got through Fritz Lang, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Allan Dwan and most of Alfred Hitchcock. Great stories and lots of practical, no-frills insight once you’re past the me! me! me! Bogdanovich introductions. I’ll have to put this back on the queue immediately to read the rest.