Desert Island 100

The challenge: Pick my favorite feature film each year from 1924-2015.  Add 8 more shorts spread out over that period to make an even 100.  Here's what I picked.  Links are to other blog entries on those films.  What would your list look like?

1924 Greed (von Stroheim)
1925 The Gold Rush (Chaplin)
1926 The General (Keaton/Bruckman)

1927 The Italian Straw Hat (Clair)
1928 The Wind (Sjostrom)
1929 Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov)
1930 The Blue Angel (Sternberg)
1931 M (Lang)
1932 I Was Born, But... (Ozu)
1933 Footlight Parade (Bacon)
1934 The Thin Man (Van Dyke)
1935 Bride of Frankenstein (Whale)

1936 The Crime of M. Lange (Renoir)
1937 Shall We Dance (Sandrich)
1938 Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
1939 Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks)
1940 Pinocchio (Sharpsteen)
1941 The Lady Eve (Sturges)
1942 Casablanca (Curtiz)
1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell/Pressburger)
1944 Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli)
1945 Children of Paradise (Carne)

1946 Belle et la Bete (Cocteau)
1947 Black Narcissus (Powell/Pressburger)
1948 Germany, Year Zero (Rossellini)
1949 Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer)
1950 Winchester '73 (A. Mann)

1951 On Dangerous Ground (N. Ray)
1952 Singin' in the Rain (Donen/Kelly)
1953 The Earrings of Madame de... (Ophuls)
1954 The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
1955 Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
1956 Forbidden Planet (Wilcox)
1957 Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick)
1958 Vertigo (Hitchcock)
1959 Some Like It Hot (Wilder)
1960 La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
1961 Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
1962 Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda)
1963 The Leopard (Visconti)
1964 Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick)
1965 Chimes at Midnight (Welles)
1966 The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
1967 Point Blank (Boorman)
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
1969 The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)

1970 Days and Nights in the Forest (S. Ray)
1971 Walkabout (Roeg)
1972 The Bitter Tears of Petra van Kant (Fassbinder)
1973 The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
1974 Chinatown (Polanski)

1975 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam/Jones)
1976 The Marquise of O (Rohmer)
1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)

1978 The Last Waltz (Scorsese)
1979 The Black Stallion (Ballard)
1980 The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner)
1981 Pennies from Heaven (Ross)
1982 Burden of Dreams (Blank)
1983 Zelig (Allen)
1984 The Terminator (Cameron)
1985 Come and See (Klimov)
1986 The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)
1987 Wings of Desire (Wenders)

1988 Bull Durham (Shelton)
1989 Do the Right Thing (Lee)
1990 Miller's Crossing (Coen)
1991 The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski)
1992 The Last of the Mohicans (M. Mann)
1993 Groundhog Day (Ramis)
1994 Ed Wood (Burton)
1995 Underground (Kusturica)
1996 Lone Star (Sayles)
1997 A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)
1998 Out of Sight (Soderbergh)
1999 Topsy-Turvy (Leigh)
2000 In the Mood for Love (Wong)
2001 Mulholland Dr. (Lynch)
2002 Gerry (Van Sant)
2003 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Weir)
2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry)
2005 L'Enfant (Dardenne/Dardenne)
2006 Children of Men (Cuaron)
2007 Once (Carney)
2008 Man on Wire (Marsh)

2009 The White Ribbon (Haneke)
2010 Winter's Bone (Granick)
2011 The Tree of Life (Malick)
2012 Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson)
2013 Upstream Color (Carruth)
2014 Timbuktu (Sissako)
2015 Mustang (Erguven)

Shorts
1929 Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel)
1933 Snow White (Fleischer)
1949 Begone Dull Care (McLaren/Lambert)
1962 Cosmic Ray (Conner)
1968 Windy Day (Hubley/Hubley)
1993 The Wrong Trousers (Park)
2000 The Heart of the World (Maddin)
2013 Just Before Losing Everything (Legrand)

Here are the Scott #s for the stamps pictured:

Devil's Tower - 1084
Water conservation - 1150
Talking Pictures - 1727
Hudson's General - 2843
Frankenstein - 3170
Cinematography - 3772g
Luke Skywalker - 4143e
James Stewart - 4197
Wedding cake - 4398
William S. Hart - 4448
John Huston - 4671
Iron worker - 4801h
Circus clown - 4905
Martin Ramirez train - 4970

Free Falling

It’s been a tough summer for cinematic San Francisco.  Last month, the post-apocalyptic wasteland of SF served as a battleground for Man vs. Monkey in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.  Before that, a trio of horrific monsters laid waste to my City by the Bay in the recent reboot of Godzilla.  Not since Jeanette McDonald warbled her way through the devastation of the 1906 earthquake has the city taken such a pummeling on celluloid in one year.

I’ll admit I had fun in both films—neither was superb but the production values were high, the casts were game, and the silliness was within acceptable limits for these genre tentpole endeavors.  But between both, there was only one moment that really struck me as arresting and even, perhaps, magical.

To provide a little context: I am not an adrenaline junkie.  I don’t really participate in extreme sports, ride wild rollercoasters, or do high-octane adventure travels.  I love taking my time, enjoying the scenery.  I’m a walker, not a runner.  Heck, I don’t even know how to ride a bike.  But one thing I have done is jumped out of a plane.

It was my bachelor party, 15 years ago.  Instead of the typical bar crawl/strip joint routine, I wanted to go skydiving.  Not a tandem jump.  Not a static line.  A full free fall, where I pull the chute myself, land myself.  So that’s what we did.  We had to train for hours on what were essentially three procedures: (1) Jumping, (2) Pulling the chute, (3) Pulling the emergency chute if #2 didn’t go so well.  In fact, by the time our training was done, the winds were too high and we (the two groomsmen and myself) had to come back the next morning to jump.

And that’s what we did.  We each went one at a time, so the other two could be waiting on the ground when one landed.  I jumped first.  The hours of learning the same routine over and over was smart, because by the time you were standing at the plane's doorway, you were thinking about the steps you had to do and not about being thousands of feet above the ground.  The rule was that you jumped with two experienced skydivers, so while you weren’t attached in any way, they could keep an eye on you in your descent.

Similarly, there was a routine as you were falling to earth: Check your altimeter (to track your fall), check the horizon (for orientation), check in with each of your spotters (thumbs up sign).  Rinse, repeat.  Over and over.  The thing you discover very quickly is that it is very, very windy and very loud from the wind as you fall.  And the Earth is so far removed so far below, it almost seems abstract.  It’s unreal.  So while you’re conscious that it’s gradually getting closer, it doesn’t really feel like you’re falling.  You feel suspended in a way.  But you have your routine (rinse, repeat) so you don’t have much time to wrap your head around the unnatural particulars of your situation.  You just have one job: Land.

And then, at the right altitude, you pull the chute and you get this massive jerk and then you’re not suspended anymore, but you are floating.  You feel gravity more because of the harness you’re in, and you start adjusting to the handles that control your directions.  Your spotters kept falling so you are by yourself in the sky.  That’s when you can start enjoying the view and getting your bearings.  Those first moments are the most tranquil and beautiful.

Eventually, the spotter (who has now landed) checks in with you on the one-way radio in your helmet to start spotting you again, giving suggestions so you can best hit the landing zone.  Each descent is different, but mine consisted of a large circle that spiraled into tighter and tighter rotations until I was heading straight for the target.  Then, right before you touchdown, you pull the handles down hard, giving you one final gentle little air bubble in the chute, so you don’t land quite so hard.  Then, when you’re on the ground, you run to gather your chute so the wind doesn’t blow it (and you) farther afield.

It was awesome.  Not just the sensation of it, but knowing that I did it all myself.  I've focused on the mechanics of the jump because the truly amazing aspects really are impossible for me to describe.  I’ve never experienced anything like it, and though I haven’t done it again since (mostly because of cost), I would again in a heartbeat.

So there’s this scene towards the end of Godzilla where a dozen paratroopers (each holding a red smoke flare) jump over San Francisco, enshrouded with fog and smoke from the monster battle below.  And the camera follows Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s descent, with the only sound his breathing and the only music Ligeti’s haunting Requiem (made famous by Kubrick’s 2001).  In a movie full of noise and bombast, it’s a moment that borders on the spiritual as these falling angels dive straight into hell.  Remarkable.

The best part of Iron Man 3 was the harrowing barrel-of-monkeys rescue scene as a dozen Air Force One passengers plummet to earth.  My favorite part of the J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek reboot was the space jump.  In short, I’m a sucker for skydiving in the movies, even when the movie (Terminal Velocity, Moonraker, Point Break) isn’t very good.  Because it always makes me remember that day.

Raymond Burr was featured in the US release of the original Godzilla (1956, Honda/Morse).  Perry Mason premiered a year later.  The USPS Scott # for the stamp of that TV show is 4414n.  The Iron Man stamp is Scott #4159h

Stranger in a Strange Land

I’ve ridden on the Ferris Wheel in Vienna featured in Carol Reed’s The Third Man.  I’ve visited the Trevi fountain in Rome that is so memorably eroticized in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.  But despite being to New York City several times, I’ve still never been to the top of the Empire State Building.

I don’t know what the lines were like to reach the landmark’s scenic heights 75 years ago, but poor Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) took the express route when King Kong (Schoedsack/Cooper, 1933) saw fit to use the world’s tallest building (at the time) as the site of his last stand.  It’s a tremendous climax to a film that may show its age around the edges, but has not dated a bit in its rich, creative vision and sense of dread and fantastic awe.

There have been, of course, remakes since then, but for some reason, the subsequent versions have meddled with what I’ve always felt was the horrific center of the story.  They’ve tried to make Kong more “human”, assigning more external emotion to his story when the point has never been, to these eyes, his unrequited “love”, but his own primal sense of mystery and, by extension, his larger alienation in a world hostile to him.

Both Jessica Lange’s vapid heroine and Naomi Watt’s spirited one attempt to draw a real connection with Kong, one that’s trusting and protective.  But in seeing it as a relationship to nurture, the subsequent versions reduce his frightening grandeur, making him less mythic and more mere monkey.  But Fay Wray can’t get free of him fast enough, and there’s never a sign of remorse or loss at his death in her eyes.  Because the world, including her, sees him simply as a monster, in all its imposing ferociousness.  There is nothing sentimental in how Schoedsack & Cooper portray his plight or his demise.

But that doesn’t mean his final fall isn’t any less poignant, because through the incredible craftsmanship of visual effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, we the audience are able to see what Carl Denham & co. can’t—that Kong is a tragic figure as well as an epic one.  Denham’s last line “It was Beauty killed the Beast” frames the story in cultural parameters he can’t resist, as huckster and showman.  But it’s also laced with contempt and pity, not reverence, for while Kong was ruler of his world, he was only of value in ours as a captive for the curious.  Kong is Denham's meal ticket, but nothing more than a dumb animal, easily conquered and reduced to a sound bite or facile metaphor.  A freakish anecdote laying dead on the NYC boulevard.

But we know differently.  And it is this insight, this privilege at a larger view of Kong and his story, which makes the film so sad, and so glorious.  Because Kong's level of expressiveness was only possible through a triumph of technology, and all the behavioral quirks that he shows, all the attention to detail that the stop-motion photography brings to remarkable life, are testament to cinema’s power to terrify, transfix, and enchant.  And in that world of the imagination, Kong does remain king.

Kong has yet to get his own US stamp, but the Empire State Building one was part of the Celebrate the Century issue for the 1930's (Scott # 3185b).  The wonderful score for Kong was written by Max Steiner (Scott # 3339), while the Special Effects stamp and Disney's Beauty and the Beast stamp are Scott #s 3772i and 4027 respectively.  The Chinese Year of the Monkey stamp was Scott # 3895l while Canada's Fay Wray stamp came out in 2005.

My Top 10 films from 1933

1. Man's Castle (Borzage)

2. Footlight Parade (Bacon)

3. King Kong (Cooper/Schoedsack)

4. Snow White (Fleischer; Betty Boop short)

5. Las Hurdes (Bunuel)

6. Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy)

7. Zero de Conduite (Vigo)

8. Duck Soup (McCarey)

9. Queen Christina (Mamoulian)

10.  Dinner at Eight (Cukor)

1