Old Movies

Kurasawa - Great but not that great. Get a grip and stop reading Sight and Sound. Kurasawa was a western art student and the script-writer for Seven Samurai and Rashomon is a self-confessed western fan, with Stagecoach (John Wayne 1939) being a favourite. An overbearing obsession with mythical samurai.For a real pseud feeling, catch any Murnau (esp. Der Letze Mann, Die Zwolfte Stunde (Nosferatau with sound),Sunrise and Faust. Or try Jean Vigo (only 4/5 films and you could be a completist pseud). Or Eisenstein, you can really wow the Sight and Sound crowd with a knowledge of his films. For an 'A' in cinema appreciation mention 'Le Salaire de la Peur' ('Wages of Fear') a superb thriller with a shock round every corner ( aka bump in the road).With regard to other posts,'M' absolutely one of the best. Watch Hitchcock's 'The Lodger' for a similar feel. '39 Steps' the best 81 minutes you will spend but, watch out, for very inferior remakes. 'Cat People' very watchable and very ahead of its time. 'Thief of Baghdad' is stunning (1940 Korda version). But, Sabu great, very debatable.List off the top of my head, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Cabaret, Grapes of Wrath, North By Northwest, Rebecca, Singin' in the Rain, 42nd Street, High Noon, Adventures of Robin Hood. Almost all old fashioned Hollywood-studio films, with more entertainment per minute than pseudo-intellectual, auteur-driven, Cahiers du Cinema-loving entertainment crushing Truffaut, Godard, Herzog et al.I could mention Lean, Hitchcock, Capra, Ford, Curtiz, Sturges(Preston), Walsh, Zinnemann, Lubitsch, Cukor amongst many others who espoused entertainment not self-serving self-agrandisement, and (nearly) all who valued plotting, scripting, storytelling over meaning and 'vision'.

late reply - sorryFilm is not to tell stories !!!! - you are just trying to wind me up?Meaning and vision only matter when the story holds up, or do you watch Warhol films all day?As for entertainment and meaning and vision, completely different concepts. You can have both. But to separate them, then you are in dire straits. My post was to try and emphasise the intellectualisation of film and it's detrimental effect on pure entertainment. Hitchcock thought the audience were dumb, so did Raoul Walsh (he had no problem calling himself dumb), Michael Curtiz directed Casablanca with a very poor command of the english language, Ernst Lubitsh ditto, and yet all delighted their audiences for decades, all accepted the lousiest scripts, plots and scenarios, and yet produced great films.None of these guys had any agenda to pitch, any angle or any hidden message. They turned up 9-5 and directed films, sure in the knowledge that they knew what would interest, excite and overall entertain the audience. To me that is the essence of a great film-going experience.To Holmes, from reading your posts for over a year I know you are not a good bullshitter, but never heard of 'Sight and Sound', it's the NME of film?To anyone else, the list I did was off the top of my head and was biased towards the Hollywood studio era, as an update Scorsese ,the Cohen brothers, Kubrick, Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson amongst others would be on any good list I could produce.