19 Comments

Matthew Schmitz
March 21st, 2012 | 11:36 am

Cosign, especially on the Lubitsch selections.

Mike Melendez
March 21st, 2012 | 11:37 am

Thanks very much for your list. There are many here I have yet to see. That said, I disagree with your criterion for greatness. I rarely want to see a movie twice, no matter how good I thought it was. There are too many others and so little time. The clear exception, for me, was Memento. Fortunately I watched it on DVD and replayed it back to front by sections when it was over. Fascinating, well done, worth watching, but not great.

David Nickol
March 21st, 2012 | 11:55 am

67. To Have and Have Note (1944)

Synopsis: A man discovers that if he coats the edges of small yellow pieces of paper with a glue-like substance, they can be attached to documents with brief messages, obviating the need to write on the documents themselves, and easily removed without tearing the documents or leaving any traces at all.

Legion of Decency Rating: 3M

(Not to be confused with The Post-It Always Clings Twice)

Haverman
March 21st, 2012 | 12:06 pm

To each his own, of course, but I think anyone who thinks “Meet Me in St. Louis” is a better movie than “The Godfather” is crazy.

Joe Z
March 21st, 2012 | 12:08 pm

I heartily agree with the main point, but I find the list somewhat overstated. Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House is completely insufferable, for example.

David Nickol
March 21st, 2012 | 12:35 pm

Only one Bette Davis film? No Gone with the Wind?

Matthew
March 21st, 2012 | 12:58 pm

Blandings insufferable? it’s terrific! Reading the comments here is entertaining: like Haverman, I was just about to smack on Meet Me in St Louis, that godawful film.

Here is something that puzzles me about the Godfather aficionados. There is a kind of consensus that II was as good if not better. Now, I watched them both recently for the first time, and found Godfather II to be a much weaker film. It was a Hollywood movie with all the parts tacked on and the seams showing. Godfather I was indeed very good, though not quite worth the recent rhapsodies. There is a sense of a deeper, more beautiful story – and that more than overcomes its weaknesses. But II? shrug.

Judith
March 21st, 2012 | 2:24 pm

“At least Cantirino makes a case for the seriousness of the films as a work of tragedy…”

I agree that the “rhapsodies” for the Godfather overstate the case. But, the thing is, you didn’t make any case at all for the films you’d rather see – other than, you want to see them again and again.

I think it’s quite fair to use the “see again and again” criteria – a great work of art DOES repay repeated experience (whether or not one actually does repeat the experience) – but you’ve got to make the case why the films you selected warrant that repeated attention. Otherwise, “de gustibus non est disputandum,” indeed.

“I don’t want to go on at length about The Godfather‘s defects (the lugubrious score, the ponderous directing, the leaden acting).”

Um, but that’s what making an argument about a film’s greatness or lack of greatness requires.

Don’t complain about someone not making the case for their taste & then offer a long list of your taste with no justification for any of them. Doesn’t move the conversation forward.

Peter Griffin
March 22nd, 2012 | 12:30 am

You’re absolutely right. And you know the worst thing about “The Godfather”? It INSISTS on itself.

(I like “The Money Pit.”)

Douglas Johnson
March 22nd, 2012 | 8:01 am

Matthew Franck,

Is this list in the order of preference? I’d love to know.

Everybody has their own lists, and normally I wouldn’t tell someone they forgot a few films, but since your list of films so closely mirrors the list I would make for myself, I’m wondering if you just forgot a few key films:

High Noon
The Big Country
The Searchers
Winchester 1873
Mrs. Miniver
In the Heat of the Night
The Hustler
Patton

That said, all of your picks I haven’t seen are going on my Netflix queue.

Tavener
March 22nd, 2012 | 8:49 am

I’m with Judith. Just saying “I don’t like The Godfather films; I like these films more” contributes nothing to the conversation and comes off as mere sour grapes. You’re probably right that The Godfather series is somewhat over-rated and you’re certainly right that 30′s and 40′s films in general are under-appreciated today. But you need to tell us *why.*

King
March 22nd, 2012 | 12:40 pm

First Franck criticizes Podhoretz because the reviewer “just seems utterly smitten by a film that caught him by the heart in his youth.” And then he gives just as personal a definition for greatness in the next paragraph: “The real test is whether [Franck] wants to see the picture again and again.” If Podhoretz’s purported subjectivity will not help elucidate the criteria of greatness, then neither will Franck’s idiosyncratic expression of preference.

That I want to see certain films again is not always a sign of a film’s quality, just as a compulsive desire to eat candy and potato chips are not evidence of junk food’s status as great cuisine. I am nostalgic for certain movies from my youth, for example, but I would not attempt to defend them as great (as Podhoretz did in his piece with various keen observations about The Godfather, and Franck did not about his hundred).

To begin with, the films of the 30s and 40s are technologically inferior. The stories may have been better and the achievement more impressive relative to their time, but America’s Art Form has improved in every way since, from acting, to directing, to photography, to editing, to sound. Yes, the progressive obsession with the new has stunted the storytelling art in our era, and our filmmakers’ trendy flirtations with nihilism has rendered much of today’s product unwatchable. But blanket criticism of recent movies discounts the excellent modern films that have bucked the trend, paving the way for Franck’s precious puffery based on nostalgia — i.e., if it’s older, it must be better. And the reflexive dismissal of the new also overestimates the two superior facets of the oldies (their moral tone and classic storytelling structure) to the exclusion of the many other factors that contribute to producing a work of audio-visual greatness: photographic grandeur, enveloping music, Stanislavskian acting, epic art and set design, and restrained dialogue to let pictures tell the tale. All that and surround-sound, a palette of CGI to conjure whatever the mind can imagine, and, of course, color.

The technological difference is not insignificant. It gives more artists more avenues of expression. It’s the difference between Dürer’s (albeit great) monochromatic woodcuts and Michelangelo’s all-encompassing, vivid Sistine Chapel experience. The limits of the medium matter. Perhaps Citizen Kane is impressive given the tools Welles had at his disposal, but the same effect is achieved by lesser lights today with much better equipment. Oldies must be compared to each other to understand their greatness, a greatness that has since become technologically commonplace, seen on every potboiled, fourth-rate TV show these days. Those tools are used to interpret schlocky screenwriting, yes, but their ubiquitous misuse says nothing about the tools’ obvious superiority. And it is such an obvious superiority that we dismiss it and pretend flat, scratchy, and poorly edited B-story movie pulp with muddled soundtracks and wooden/over-the-top acting are somehow comparable to the immersive experience of even the smallest films of today. When modern storytelling instruments are placed in the hands of a storyteller comparable to Ford or Welles or Hitchcock or Wilder, the film is better than anything those directors with inferior instruments could produce.

Further, as Podhoretz himself noted in another piece (I can’t find), perhaps 1,000 movies are made every year, and of those maybe a dozen have the quality to survive. Selecting the cream of two decades is a rigged game, particularly when placed against a single film with flaws, even one as relatively flawless as The Godfather. But the technological advantages alone that 1970s films enjoy over the 1930s and 40s product gives them a head start in any comparison between eras. Yes, yes, the nihilistic disaster that coincided with 1970s filmmaking is unfortunate indeed and largely obviates its advantage, but in a film like The Godfather — which, like all great films of the last 40 years, eschewed the temptations of its time — we see the combination of great storytelling and a more perfected craftmanship. That alone speaks favorably for Copolla’s masterpiece in any comparison between it and, say, the overrated Freudian kitsch of Spellbound, or half of the rest of Franck’s list.

I now close the door on you, Kay.

Matthew J. Franck
March 22nd, 2012 | 1:47 pm

Thanks to all for the comments. I thought I would stir up even more than I did.

To David Nickol: Check again. Bette Davis is in three of the films I listed. Would I add more to “see before Godfather” list? Yes. Would Gone with the Wind be among them? Maybe. Oh, and thanks for spotting my (now corrected) typo.

To Haverman: Anyone who thinks Coppola holds a candle to Vincente Minnelli . . . well, fill in the rest.

To Judith and Tavener: My post was not an argument at all. It was more by way of a protest against overhyped superlatives. The movies are chiefly about entertainment (which is not to say they are not art), and it just won’t do for critics to plump for “greatest ever” for any single movie, period. It indicates a surrender of judgment, not its exercise. But the films I listed, I prefer because they all have better writing, better acting, better directing. These are judgments too, which can’t be defended (for 100 movies!!) in a blog post. When anyone says “what’s the best film ever?” I reply, “silly question.”

To Douglas Johnson: No, my list was chronological, and alphabetical within each year. But these were just the first hundred movies I’d watch before seeing Godfather again.

To King: Movies are a storytelling medium. The technology of moviemaking has greatly improved. The storytelling has not.

claudio
March 22nd, 2012 | 2:10 pm

But people, or at least many of us, prefer movies following the story they tell, as happens with art in general. And The Godfather I & II relates to today’s myths much more than many on your list.
It’s is easy to see. You list Casablanca, wich is a quite bad movie, probably because of what it tells you and how it makes you feel.

King
March 22nd, 2012 | 3:03 pm

Matthew J. Franck wrote: “Movies are a storytelling medium. The technology of moviemaking has greatly improved. The storytelling has not.”

1) Films are far more than just a storytelling medium. They are a fusion of many media and many art forms: story, acting, visuals, sound, sculpture, architecture, music, photography. Perhaps films are even the ultimate fusion of those art forms, which explains its universal popularity.

2) If movies are a storytelling medium, then the improvement in technology of moviemaking is necessarily an improvement in the technology of storytelling. Insofar as the technology has improved, the storytelling has improved, after controlling for the unique deficiencies of our age, such as mistaking nihilism for profundity and the intellectual lassitude generated by the very tools that make storytelling easier.

Of course the instruments can be mishandled by artists of lesser talent, just as a jet on autopilot can still be crashed and a WWI ace on a biplane can outperform a Boeing 777. But the jet’s technology is faster and surer to get us to our destination more safely, even when piloted by a mediocrity. The modern film (or TV show), a collaborative project, is likelier to produce a better product even when helmed by a mediocrity.

Now, put the WWI ace in command of a jet, and you get the best of all worlds. Give David Lean the technology of Avatar and watch the multimedia artist soar beyond Birth of a Nation, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, and Titanic and create something no one has ever seen. Give Ray Harryhausen the photo-realistic computer palette of today and you’d remember the importance of the supporting elements beyond mere story.

We only bemoan the sorry state of storytelling (and thereby overstate its importance) because it is the single dimension of moviemaking that has not been perfected. Storytelling is of the highest importance indeed, but not higher than all of the other elements put together. Like any great multimedia art form, such as opera or theater, story is but one part of the entire experience. Or is the “story” of Wagner’s convoluted Ring Cycle more important than the music and its performance? Is the story of Showboat more important than Paul Robeson’s live rendition of “Old Man River”?

Yes, all of the elements must harmonize together in the service of the story. The story does bind disparate media into a coherent unity. Indeed, a weakness in that binding factor has an outsized influence on the quality of the final product. But the multidimensional experience of film allows for middling, even pulpy stories, to be elevated to high art, as The Godfather itself demonstrates, which was Podhoretz’s thesis.

Matthew M.
March 22nd, 2012 | 3:46 pm

King, it’s nice to have new technology for creating a film, but in essence, the 30s and 40s had all the technology you need: multiple cameras, mic, and editing. The rest (CGI, etc) is derivative.

Your comparison of Durer and Michelangelo is useful. In both cases, an older, traditional technology was used instead of the newest, latest, and sharpest. It was the artist, not the medium, that mattered.

jocon307
March 22nd, 2012 | 11:10 pm

Gone with the Wind is really a great movie, so I agree with the commentator who missed it here.

As to the Godfather movies, I must say this: I am completely in love with James Caan in the first movie. Not in anything else, but in that movie, ohmygoodness I am madly in love with him. OK, and he’s good in that Las Vegas TV show, it’s like Sonny lived to get old.

Spoiler alert (probably not needed, but I’ve messed up with things like this before, so fair warning!)

After he dies, I just lose interest. I could watch the movie a million times, and it would be the same.

As for the “lugubrious score”, well, you haven’t had the full cultural experience unless you’ve lived in the Bay Ridge/Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn where the fellows had car horns that played the opening bars of “Love Theme from the Godfather”!

King
March 24th, 2012 | 12:15 pm

Matthew M. wrote: “It was the artist, not the medium, that mattered.”

Agreed! But it is not all that matters to the total artistic merit of the final product that results from a collaborative project.

While the core of an artist’s work might be perceived despite the medium, are not the media which clarify that work important to the full artistic experience? Is a blurry, choppy print of Casablanca on a 9″ TV with muddled sound the artistic equivalent of a remastered edition on a big screen? We don’t have to go so far as to say “the medium is the message,” but we can say the medium significantly contributes to the message. Our disagreement is about how much the medium contributes.

Further, we disagree whether the burden of a work’s technical deficiencies lies with the spectator/critic’s eye or with the artist’s hand. Isn’t accessibility one mark of great art? Doesn’t great art contain virtue everyone can immediately understand, unaided? What distinguishes art from great art, I would argue, is precisely that accessibility! Art may require knowledge and exploration to understand its meaning, but great art has a visceral effect apart from specialized knowledge and also rewards repeated, deeper explorations.

It boils down to this. Nostalgia and prejudice for the venerable things aside, and all else being equal, Michael Curtiz would have produced a better Casablanca if he had 21st century media at his disposal. Nothing of the film’s essential value would have been altered but only improved upon. The choice to, say, go with black and white rather than color, is an aesthetic choice he could not have made because of the limitations of the era. But to have a choice is an improvement. And it is that improvement you are unfairly discounting.

We cannot extract the artistic essence out of an artistic product, as if we could both equally perceive the Platonic form and make our judgments thereby. The experience between artist and spectator is necessarily mediated. We must judge the essence and product as a composite whole. Therefore we must judge the artistry together with the inextricable media which deliver that artistry to our senses.

We judge the film as a stand-alone product, including the efficiencies with which the product conveys what “matter[s].” Otherwise, we are judging the tree-growth potential of a peach pit without remarking on the peach flesh which surrounds it, whose relative sweetness or sourness (or rottenness) help convey it, via consumer, to greater pastures, and to treehood. Art manifests itself through media. We must consider the artist’s choice of and facility with his media because that is how we connect to the art. Better media doesn’t necessarily create better artistry, but they do help manifest a better artistry and ultimately produce better art.

MoJo
March 28th, 2012 | 9:22 pm

I absolutely agree.
And I’ve seen almost all of your list.
Godfather is not a terrible movie – it’s just mediocre.
I recall the hype over it 40 years ago; perhaps it should be considered the “1st” manufactured blockbuster.

40 years later, as a search of the internet will reveal, none dare call it over rated.
It surely is.