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The AustinCinephile Auteur Lists
Posted by Austin Cinephile
We here at AustinCinephile are unabashed lovers of the auteur. For those of you who have checked out our Top Ten lists, particularly those of 2009, you will notice that auteurs feature prominently on each. That is because for some reason we are drawn to the unique signatures of visionary filmmakers. While we acknowledge the collaborative nature of cinema, we also recognize the unifying themes and aesthetics of certain driving filmmakers. And, like lovers of genre pictures, we return to these filmmakers to revisit those themes and aesthetics to revel in the familiar and ponder the evolution. This post consists of three nonranked Ten lists from each of our contributors featuring auteur filmmakers that speak to our unique film viewing histories.
DANIEL
Alfred Hitchcock
1. Alfred Hithcock’s Vertigo
First of all, I have to say that much like many of my colleagues and friends, Hitchcock’s films were paramount for me in my initial bouts with cinephilia. My grandmother would take me in for the summer and tie me into her reclining lazy boy chair not with ropes but with Rope, not like a psycho but with Psycho, and not with a frenzy but with Frenzy. So Hitch has an important and major place in my heart. It also stands that he is one of the most commanding directors, alongside Fellini, Kubrick, Bergman and Renoir in my pantheon of geniuses. Vertigo is clearly the most personal work by this inspired artist, and its beautiful theme of obsession is matched perfectly with the extraordinary camera work and mise en scene that create a thrilling tale of suspense and deception. I will always love this movie, and I’ll always love the man who made it.
2. John Waters’ Desperate Living
Okay, so I already mucked this up with an example of trash cinema. Well, that’s what you get for asking for markers of taste. John Waters is a role model to me as a person; his confident cool and perverted/deviant embrace of all that is bad is a wonderful lifestyle that always seems to put him in the right, and he always seems to be having a good time. I think the world would be a much better place if we all asked “WWJWD” when we made decisions. That said, Waters’ particular breed of disgusting excess is, to me, peaked in Desperate Living, a fucked up fairy tale that features Edith Massey’s most meaty role and the most unreal sex-change the cinema has ever portrayed. It is a disaster of hilarious and gross moments that is Waters’ best film and my favorite pleasure, guilty or otherwise.
3. Jean Renoir’s La chienne
Oh, you don’t care for genre cinema or cult movies? How about art films? Well, it don’t get any more artsy Jean Renoir, the grand papa of classy cinema. I could put Rules of the Game on here, a movie that is probably the greatest example of Bazinian realism and is a testament to fooling around with the bourgeoisie. Instead, though, I think of Renoir’s first sound film, a mix of amazing cinematography and a story just sexy and illicit enough (basically its about an extra-marital relationship) that it can whet my whistle. Whatever that means, I love the movie, and every frame reminds me of Jean Renoir, who moved the camera and adjusted the focus (and left it there) better than any Frenchman (or American) before or since.
4. The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup
I’ve got to point out that the (writer)/director is not the only possible auteur in a film. No, there are some talents that overwhelm the screen with each appearance, dominating story, cinematography and surroundings to command the action. And no actor or group of actors wraps a film around their fingers better than the Marx Brothers. When they make a movie, whether Room Service, A Night at the Opera, Go West, The Cocoanuts, Horse Feathers or any other, they obliterate the narrative. Duck Soup is the cream of the crop; it is a political satire that is also a metaphor for the Brothers as filmmakers. A nation (film) is in bad shape, so a bunch of oddballs show up and make things crazy, sadistically causing trouble and attacking all authority, and in the end resolution is unnecessary and irrelevant. This choice also demonstrates my love for on-type acting; I prefer when an actor has only one character he does continually, as he can perfect this role and bask in its structural confines. Groucho, Harpo and Chico achieved this like no other comedians.
5. David Cronenberg’s Videodrome
A videotape/gun being forced into a stomach/vagina. Yeah, I’m pretty into this movie, which is equal parts hilarious and frightening. The great thing about this movie, although there are many things that are great, is how much it is clearly the work of a brilliant creator. Cronenberg, whose career was working up to this point with films like Shivers, Scanners, and The Brood, was exploring themes and images he had been dealing with throughout his career. It is exciting cinema when you are able to see an artist go back to his old movies and admit that he still has more to say on the subject. There is also something very special about Cronenberg’s films, a tactile and practical element to his unusual visuals that make him an artisan as well as an auteur.
6. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange
7. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall
8. Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It
9. David Lynch’s Blue Velvet
10. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona
MICHAEL
Quentin Tarantino1. Quentin Tarantino ‘s Pulp Fiction
Like many of you, I’m sure, Pulp Fiction was the first Tarantino picture I ever saw. And, at the tender age of ten or eleven, none of my film viewing to that point had prepared me for the ultraviolent, hip swaggering, too cool for film school, jive fest that QT whips at you in this anachronistic neogangster film. (Yes, I admit that’s a wordy description, but we are talking Tarantino here.) Man was it cool. My brother got his hands on a VHS tape shortly after its home video release, and we reveled in it from diner scene to diner scene, and back again. The film’s circular narrative kept spinning through the weekend as we rewound the tape spools and watched the film half a dozen times over two days and three nights. It was truly one of the greatest viewing experiences I ever had. And, as the weekend came to a close, and the tape returned to whence it came, I was hit with a kind of sadness. I had come to the conclusion that nothing would ever match up to what I saw that weekend. And, to some extent, nothing ever has. But, any sorrow was quickly supplanted by intoxicating anticipation when that Monday I discovered that Tarantino had directed previous picture. Something called Reservoir Dogs, whatever that means?
2. Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands equals Tim Burton at his best. Looking back on my anticipation for what would be Burton’s worst film, this year’s Alice in Wonderland, I realize that all my hopes for that film were predicated on the desire that Burton would somehow recapture the magic that permeates Edward Scissorhands. Along with his 1989 Batman, Edward Scissorhands is the Burton film that I return to the most. It wasn’t the first Burton film I ever saw—I grew up watching Peewee’s Big Adventure at a very young age, and I nearly wore out my Batman tape. Yet, I have always considered Edward Scissorhands to be the most Burtonesque of his pictures, and his most personal one as well. The story of a wild-haired, gothic artist out of his element always played like an autobiographical narrative. First, Edward shares a striking resemblance with Burton himself. And, the casting of Vincent Price, childhood hero to Burton and the inspiration for his early short Vincent, in the role of the Inventor added to this reading of the film as a personal project. And, finally, I think his love for the narrative speaks through the emotionality he is able to infuse in this picture. In every Burton film, be it directed or produced, he always seeks that fairytale feel of magic mixed with nostalgia and altered by the Sublime. It is in essence his auteuristic style. I don’t think any film he has done since has been able to capture as perfect a mixture of these elements as he did in Edward Scissorhands.
3. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” Cue Tony Bennett’s Rags to Riches. Freeze for a close-up of Ray Liotta bathed in red light. Cut to titles. I must have seen this sequence a hundred times. Literally. Without a doubt my favorite Scorsese picture, Goodfellas has been a part of my life for nearly two decades. I used to watch it with my brother in Junior and High School. When I entered college I had the famed line as my voice mail message. Through my undergrad my buddy Nick and I rotated the film into an Italian food and gangster film pairing along with the first two Godfather films. And, while it’s been a while since I last resurrected this tradition, Goodfellas is a regular in my bedtime routine where I use films as lullabies when falling asleep at night. Scorsese is an undeniable master of his craft and one need look no further than this 1990 picture to determine the Scorsese touch. The gangster theme is a thread that sutures together all eras of Scorsese’s filmmaking. The graphic violence, the phenomenal soundtrack, quick editing style, this one has it all. And, is there a more memorable shot than the LONGGGGG take that follows Henry and Karen through the kitchen and onto the floor of the Copacabana? If Joseph Breen was worried about glamorizing the gangster lifestyle in the 1930s, he can count his lucky stars he wasn’t around to see this film. Because, despite the depressing ending and the undeniably hefty baggage that comes with being a gangster, any young boy that saw this picture in the early 1990s, like it’s narrator, wanted to be a gangster.
4. Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Hudsucker Proxy
I’m almost positive that the Joel and Ethan Coen will grace the lists of both my fellow AC colleagues. And why not? The Coen Bros. are two of the most interesting and skilled filmmakers working today. But, from their long rap sheet of nearly seventeen films, why would I land on The Hudsucker Proxy as my pick for the Coens’ auteuristic representative? Besides being my favorite of their films (it is, after all, exceedingly entertaining, and not just for kids), it additionally highlights all the elements that make a Coen Bros. film recognizable and great: the quirky characters, the brilliant black comedy approach to life, and more importantly to death. And, of course, you can’t talk about a Coen Bros. film without at least mentioning their long-time cinematographer Roger Deakins, my favorite DP of all time.
The visual pallet of this film is particularly wonderful. While obviously influenced by the Coens, the intricately composed montages and frenetic camera feel as if the Bros. took the reins off Deakins, giving him carte blanche to shoot whatever he wanted in whichever way he chose. The payoff is a masters class in cinematographic ingenuity.
In addition to the cinematography, the story and characters are quintessential Coen, with each role brilliantly cast. For those of you that have not seen it, the Hudsucker Proxy it is a whirlwind screwball comedy, about a dimwitted small town boy from Muncie with big ideas. After Waring Hudsucker, founder and President of the immensely successful Hudsucker Industries swan dives 44 floors (45 counting the mezzanine), the remaining board members must find a puppet, a pawn, a proxy to take over the Presidency and incite panic in the company. Then, as the stock plummets, the board can buy up a controlling interest for pennies on the dollar. Its fast talking, montage heavy style is a throwback to the classical Hollywood aesthetic highlighting the Coens’ astute comic aptitude and infatuation with genre pictures. The early demise of Hudsucker inserts the inescapable hand of death into the film’s study of the rat race of life, a trope that has come to be a Coen Bros. staple. Tim Robins is beautifully cast as the title proxy. And, Jennifer Jason Leigh is an inspired choice as the cute as a button, but tough as nails quick talkin’ newspaper reporter Amy Archer. In regards to the latter, this film sparked an infatuation with Leigh that still lingers with me even today. And if only for that, Coens, I am eternally grateful.
5. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window
HELLLOOOO Grace Kelly! Rear Window is a film so vibrant that even in my mind it’s printed in Technicolor. And the brightest element in all of those synaptic frames: the cherry red lips of the lovely, the alluring, the graceful Ms. Kelly. There are a million and one things to love about this film. It is immaculately shot, skillfully paced, and the set design…forget about it. But for me Rear Window is, was, and always will be my introduction to Grace Kelly. That POV that introduces Kelly into the picture and upon first viewing into my life, is (with maybe the exception of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina) the most breathtaking feminine sight I have ever seen on celluloid. Without a doubt Kelly is the most stunning woman I have ever seen. And, I would be lying if I were to say that that it is not a SIGNIFICANT reason for my continual return to this film. Oh, did I also mention it’s a Hitchcock film?
6. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall
7. John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China
8. Billy Wilder’s Sabrina
9. Sergio Leone’s A Fist Full of Dollars / Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo
10. Pédro Almadóvar’s Talk to Her
STEPHEN
Woody Allen
1. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall
This film is deservedly recognized as an outstanding representation of Woody Allen’s willingness to take risks and do interesting things cinematically, such as giving voice to characters’ inner concerns through subtitles and using the occasional cheeky bit of animation or special effects work in a romantic comedy. But more importantly, I believe that Annie Hall, as Chaplin’s City Lights had decades before, proved that a comedy could be capable of great depths of emotion, which continues to make laff fests lacking similar ambitions seem like only half-movies. More than merely setting a benchmark not just for romantic comedy but comedy in general, Annie Hall changed my conception of what a comedic masterpiece should be; I feel like I’ve seen very few of them since. Most of them are also Woody Allen films; does this mean that, in my mind, there is a Woody Allen comedy and then there’s everything else? Perhaps that’s why he’s my number one auteur of choice; for me, like Hitchcock is for some, Woody Allen must be his own genre, for the sake of the other filmmakers.
2. Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God
In 1972, when Eraserhead was still a figment of imagination in David Lynch’s mind, Werner Herzog was busy working on his first of five crazed cinematic endeavors with Klaus Kinski. Herzog proved himself in this film to be one of the great cinematic observers of nature, its physical beauty and its relentless difficulties. With an opening shot of a troop of conquistadores and native guides winding their way down a misty mountain trail that established not only the scene but also Herzog as a talented sculptor of frame compositions, Aguirre, the Wrath of God proceeds to take the viewer on an unimaginable journey, putting its actors and extras through torments not far removed from the obstacles faced by the original explorers themselves. Not many lead actors would have accepted this kind of mad direction, but then Kinski was no normal actor. Many directors are often praised for their ability to work with actors, but how many of them can say they tamed the beast that was Klaus Kinski? Even after Kinski’s demise, Herzog has continued to prove himself a master of the absurd; whether it’s Nicolas Cage or animal activist Timothy Treadwell or an Arctic penguin, Herzog will always have a subject to follow into madness.
3. Terrence Malick’s The New World
Malick’s films, with their sparse dialogue and majestic combinations of image and sound, optimize the full potential of the cinema as a uniting force. His are films that are easily acceptable to all people, all ages, all languages, all religions, and to accept Malick’s style is to marvel at the sheer beauty of it all. Emerging from a Malick screening, you feel as though you’ve not just gone to the cinema, but also attended the Philharmonic, listened in on a poetry reading, perused an art gallery, enjoyed a novel. Film as the ultimate collaboration of all the arts that preceded it is never on finer display than in Malick’s work.
4. Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights
Probably the greatest surprise twist in the history of filmmaking is the final scene of City Lights when the flower girl looks upon the tramp for the first time, and you suddenly realize that you are crying. This is the consummate craftsmanship of Charlie Chaplin. After an hour or so of consistent laughter, Chaplin pulling out all the old tricks and making them fresh yet again, you realize once again in the climactic moments just how much Chaplin managed to evolve as a director from film to film. Recognizing that he was capable of doing more than just gag-filled shorts for the rest of his career, Chaplin would ultimately create some of the great statement films with Modern Times and The Great Dictator, and he would deliver the total package of emotions in City Lights. With his silent films, Chaplin could not really rely on words or music to carry the pictures, so he leaned on his instincts, biting nervously on his fingernail as he waits to see if the flower girl will accept him. Having seen that image, who can forget it?
5. Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The masculine bravado. The hesitant camaraderie. The hazy delineations between what is good, what is bad, and what is just plain ugly. Whereas you could always count on John Wayne to do the right thing, nothing and no one was sacred in Leone’s films. Though many Westerns played it safe with righteous heroics or forged ahead with risky new ideas, Leone’s objectives were always simple and clear: make the Western into the grand mythology of our time. The primal howls of Morricone’s score, the intense staredowns fixed close on darting eyes, these were gods with guns, the frontier their Olympic battlefield. Not only important and intriguing in his own right, Leone’s ideals and filmmaking style influenced Eastwood’s own future career, which has wrought some great films of its own.
6. Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums
7. David Lynch’s Inland Empire
8. John Ford’s Stagecoach
9. Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs
10. The Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou
