Victor Morton saw "The Sorrow and the Pity," and just doesn't get why the film has the great reputation that it does:
In other words, the film just seemed to be a collection of footage more than a film and thus became a bit tiring to watch, and would have been even at two hours. I always felt like I was trying to make sense of “what next” and “why this, now.” We hear at about the 180- or 200-minute mark that Clermont-Ferrand was liberated and go into some of the reprisals, against the Germans and collaborators, and I was asking myself — “how? by whom? with or without a fight? when during the broader war? … actually where the heck IS Clermont-Ferrand??” And the Maurice Chevalier bit at the end struck me as just … bizarre, both in its point (Ophuls’s point, that is, if any) and its pictorial quality. I realize that Ophuls was making the film for a French audience for whom the broadest outlines of history was universal knowledge, but … well … I’m me.
I think it's a fair point. I had some of the same questions myself, but kept telling myself while watching the film that it was made for a French television audience, and one much closer to the time period it concerns (ergo, they probably knew many of these faces). Still, the power of the film lies in the testimony of the witnesses, not in its rather higgledy-piggledy organization. In fact, one could argue it's so powerful in spite of its messy structure.
Victor's point, though, raises a question we might ponder: Of the films generally recognized as great, and part of the canon, which ones do you simply not get? That is, which ones leave you cold and/or confused, even though they are generally regarded as classic? Why?
I'll start: Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game," which I've tried three times to get through, and never succeeded. I have with that film some of the same problems that Victor has with "The Sorrow and the Pity": I feel that I lack the historical and social context -- it's about France on the eve of World War II -- with which to interpret the dramatic narrative.
(I'm sure I can think of others, but I'm about to walk out and go to a Barack Obama rally across the street from my office. I hope to touch the hem of his garment, and thereby lose 20 pounds and get rid of this awful chest cold. More on this later.)
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I don't know if knowing Clarke helps that much with 2001. My dead had a whole collection of SF paperbacks, including Clarke, when the movie came out. He didn't get it or like it.
I saw it as a kid and was confused by it. After reading "Childhood's End", "City and the Stars", "Fountains of Paradise", and some of his stories I did get a bit of a feel for it. However I still didn't really get it or like it. Clarke is an old-school science fiction writer so even when he gets mystical there's some element of explanation or at least some attempt at understanding. 2001 to Clarke is maybe like if you did an adaptation of a Flannery O'Connor story, but replaced all the dialogue with trombone sounds. (So in the parts where characters should talk you hear "wonk wonk waah waah" instead, like how the adults sounded in Peanuts cartoons.) That might be technically interesting on some level, might even give you a slight O'Connor feel, but it wouldn't exactly be involving.
Also I liked Citizen Kane very much. It might be overrated, but it's a pretty good story with interesting characters. I also liked what I saw of "The Sorrow and the Pity", which is odd as I usually don't like French films. I'm not sure what a person needs to "get" about it. It's a bunch of French people telling their stories of WWII. If there was some overarching metaphor or complicated point that you were supposed to get, well I kind of doubt I did. I liked it anyway.
Today I watched "The Sweet Hereafter" because I'd heard so much about it. I think I would've been better off taking a nap. There wasn't exactly anything wrong with it though. Sarah Polley (Socialist activist who played a spirited rich girl on "Road to Avonlea) was pretty good I suppose. It just didn't seem to be saying anything I found too compelling and said it rather slow at that.
It seems like there were movies I didn't really get, but kind of enjoyed for some reason. I'm blanking on a good example though. Maybe Wenders "Until the End of the World", but I'm not sure if I really liked it.
Way, way, WAAAY over-rated:
E.T.
Anything by David Mamet, 'specially that 'set-of-knives-as-a-sales-incentive' piece o' crap.
"Citizen Kane" doesn't seem all that remarkable today because most of its innovations became widely-imitated cinematic conventions and subsequently, visual cliches to later audiences. Deconstructing cinematic conventions, meanwhile, is the source of much of the mirth in great film comedies. At the time of its original release "Blazing Saddles" probably was the funniest movie ever made for this very reason. Mel Brooks' use of vulgarity in "Blazing Saddles" has subsequently lost much of its edge because straightforward vulgarity became a comedic convention. One can't imagine an adult audience nowadays being reduced to hysterics when a prim schoomarm simply refers to the governor as an "a--hole." (I remember, back in the early 1970s, it had just that effect). One suspects that the hilariously profane wordplay of "Superbad" (which brilliantly subverts stock cinematic conventions of vulgarity itself) will be entirely lost on some future audience. They'll either be offended, or they won't see what the fuss was about.
The "great movie" I don't get: Monster's Ball. Maybe it was just too unrelentingly grim for my sensibilities. Or maybe it just didn't strike me. But I don't get why it was an Oscar-winner or even a nominee, because I didn't feel like it had much of a point.
I agree about Monster's Ball. I sincerely wish I could have the minutes of my life back that I wasted on that movie. The main characters were selfish and mistreated the people that they should have been protecting most. I could not possibly make myself care about them, what happened to them, or them finding happiness or peace together.
By the way, worst book: Ethan Frome. Who on earth tries to commit suicide via sled?
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