My Top 10:

the menacing shadow in Nosferatu (1922, US release - 1929)

1. Nosferatu
2. October
3. Steamboat Bill Jr.
4. Napoleon
5. The Fall of the House of Usher
6. The Wind
7. The Wedding March
8. Pandora’s Box
9. Street Angel
10. Spite Marriage

Academy Awards:

• Best Production:  Broadway Melody
• Best Director:  Frank Lloyd (The Divine Lady)
• Best Actor:  Warner Baxter  (In Old Arizona)
• Best Actress:  Mary Pickford  (Coquette)
• Best Writing Achievement:  The Patriot (from the play)

TSPDT Consensus Top 5 Films

• #97 – The Man with a Movie Camera
• #101 - Napoleon
  
• #105 – Nosferatu
• #189 – Pandora’s Box
• #292 – October

Top 5 Awards Points

1. The Patriot – 230
2. In Old Arizona – 230
3. Broadway Melody – 180
4. The Divine Lady – 160
5. Alibi – 105

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture:  Nosferatu
• Best Director:  F.W. Murnau  (Nosferatu)
• Best Actor:  Max Schreck  (Nosferatu)
• Best Actress:  Lilian Gish  (The Wind)
• Best Supporting Actress:  Zasu Pitts  (The Wedding March)
• Best Adapted Screenplay:  Nosferatu (from the novel Dracula)
• Best Original Screenplay:  Steamboat Bill Jr.

Ebert Great Movies (in order that he added them):

• Nosferatu
• Pandora’s Box
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Man with a Movie Camera
  

This is, quite frankly, a terrible year for films, especially American films.  Only two of these films even made the AFI 400 list and one was Broadway Melody, which only made the original list in 98 when all the Best Picture winners except Olivier’s Hamlet (which was clearly British) made the initial list (the other was The Wind).  And what really is the best film?  Man with a Movie Camera is ranked the highest on TSPDT and was recently added to Ebert’s list, but it is a documentary.  Napoleon and Nosferatu are next up, the latter also on Ebert’s list and the top of my own list, but neither is strictly from the calendar year (covering August 1, 1928 – July 31, 1929), only ending up here because of when they were released in the States.  The same goes for Eisenstein’s October.  The film that actually is from this year that has the most acclaim seems to be Pandora’s Box, which is also from Europe.  You would have to go down to #6 on the Top 1000 list for the year to find an American film and that would be The Wind (#308) and even that was directed by a Swede.  Only the top 7 on my list actually get ***.5 or higher and 5 of those films are foreign.

Academy Awards: It was the second ceremony and, technically, there were no nominees.  There are lists that appear in various books as the “nominees” but Academy records clearly state that there were no official nominees at any point, only announced winners.  Which would be good for me, because I’ve only seen 11 of the listed 23 “nominated” films, my worst track record for any year.  The Patriot seems to be what people hope is the best of the Best Picture “nominees” because none of the other four are worth remembering.  It is the single worst year for Best Picture nominees.  Unfortunately, The Patriot is one of the most famous lost films (as is 4 Devils, a lost Murnau film which was “nominated” for Best Cinematography this same year), winning for its screenplay in the first full year of sound when it was a mostly silent film (some sound was added in post-production).  It even has a rating of 8.2 on the IMdB from 29 votes, which is hilarious, since it is possible that everyone who ever actually saw the complete film is now dead.  This year also featured the first posthumous “nomination” for Jeanne Eagles who had overdosed on heroin, the first campaigning for an Oscar by Mary Pickford and the only time when no film won more than 1 Oscar.

Film History: The most significant event was on 18 November, 1928 with the premiere of Steamboat Willie, forever to be known as the film debut of Mickey Mouse (it really was his third film, but it was the first time he talked, so Disney officials list this as his first appearance).  Not only were major foreign films getting domestic distribution (Nosferatu, Napoleon, October), but the Europeans were swarming to Hollywood to begin making films, including Eisenstein, Sjostrom and Maurice Chevalier.  On the other hand, the ruling European, von Stroheim, had his film Queen Kelly, taken away when Joseph Kennedy was too appalled by the content and what he had done with Kennedy’s lover, Gloria Swanson.  Bits of it would be used in Sunset Blvd., but the film itself would not find a release until 1985.  Meanwhile, overseas, Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail was released on 30 June, 1929, making it the first British talkie.

Overlooked film of 1928:

The Wind (dir. Victor Sjostrom)

Lilian Gish on the edge of madness in The Wind (1928)

Is it possible for the highest English language film in a given year to qualify as overlooked?  Well, it didn’t receive a single Oscar nomination, in spite of being better than any other nominated film (at least the 11 I’ve seen).  It contains the best performance Lilian Gish ever gave, but it’s not a Griffith film.  It’s directed by a Swedish director who had come to Hollywood who, these days, is far more known for his performance on-screen in Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, than for the long directing career he had during the early days of film.

What this film teaches us, more than any of Griffith’s films, is that Gish really knew how to act.  Perhaps she owed it to Griffith and their years of partnership, but her waif-like appearances that were the heart of Birth of a Nation and Broken Blossoms seemed to be the young girl learning how to be the woman that she is in The Wind.  Here she plays Letty, a young woman from Virginia, who moves out to the desert of Texas, the wild and distant dreary land full of sand and wind.  She marries a man she doesn’t really love, she is forced to defend herself against a rape with deadly force and in the end, the people and the land have driven her mad.

Here is where the film should end.  This is what Sjostrom and Gish clearly wanted and it was the ending they filmed.  And here is where Hollywood was already getting in the way. (SPOILERS).  A year before Lewis Milestone would be asked to make a happier ending to All Quiet on the Western Front (“Fine.  We’ll have a happy ending,” Milestone told the studio.  “We’ll let the Germans win the war.”), the studio interfered, with the boy wonder Irving Thalberg himself, imposing a happy ending.  If there was ever a film that should have had a tragic ending, this was the one.  We have a downbeat film, a poor downtrodden woman, clearly headed into the thinner reaches of sanity, yet she comes through in the end to a happy ending rather than the death in the desert that was originally filmed.

Perhaps this is the problem.  Even here, with what might be the highest regarded American film of the year, and it clearly has the wrong ending.  It doesn’t diminish Gish’s performance in the slightest, and there is no question that she deserved the Oscar, as much for everything that come before as for this performance, far more than Mary Pickford, whose star may have risen higher, but whose talent was never the reason.

My Top 10:

Fritz Lang's 1926 visionary film: Metropolis

1. Metropolis
2. Sunrise
3. The Last Command
4. The Circus
5. The Cat and the Canary
6. Seventh Heaven
7. The Man Who Laughs
8. Laugh Clown Laugh
9. The Lodger
10. The Cameraman
    

Academy Awards:

• Best Production:  Wings
• Best Artistic Quality of Production:  Sunrise
• Best Director:  Frank Borzage  (Seventh Heaven)
• Best Actor:  Emil Jannings  (The Last Command / The Way of All Flesh)
• Best Actress:  Janet Gaynor  (Sunrise / Seventh Heaven / Street Angel)
• Best Adaptation:  Seventh Heaven (from the play)
• Best Original Story:  Underworld

TSPDT Consensus Top 5 Films:

• #12 – Sunrise
• #17 – The Passion of Joan of Arc
• #70 – Metropolis
• #178 – The Crowd
• #338 – The Cameraman

AFI Top 100 Films:

• The Jazz Singer – #90  (1998 list – not on 2007 list)
• Sunrise – #82  (2007 list – not on 1998 list)

Top 5 Awards Points:

1. Seventh Heaven – 310
2. Sunrise – 240
3. Wings – 140
4. The Last Command – 110
5. The Crowd – 95

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture:  Metropolis
• Best Director:  Fritz Lang  (Metropolis)
• Best Actor:  Emil Jannings  (The Last Command)
• Best Actress:  Janet Gaynor  (Sunrise)
  

  Janet Gaynor in her Oscar (and Nighthawk) winning performance in Murnau's Sunrise

• Best Supporting Actor:  William Powell  (The Last Command)
• Best Supporting Actress:  Brigitte Helm  (Metropolis)
• Best Adapted Screenplay:  Sunrise (from original theme “Die Reise nach Tilsit”)
• Best Original Screenplay:  Metropolis

Ebert Great Movies (in order that he added them):

• The Passion of Joan of Arc
• Metropolis
• The Man Who Laughs
• Sunrise

This was the beginning of the Academy Awards.  It covered films released in the United States from August 1, 1927 until July 31, 1928 and the actual ceremony wasn’t held until May of 1929 even though the winners had been announced in February.  It was a vital year for the film industry as sound was introduced with The Jazz Singer.  That these two seminal events happened in the same year make this the birth of modern film.

The Academy Awards: The history behind that first year of the Academy is rather bizarre.  Official Academy records used to list The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh among the Best Production nominees, at least up until the 70’s and they are included as nominees in Inside Oscar as recently as 1994, but they are no longer officially recognized as nominees.  Also, Inside Oscar lists specific films for the Title Writing nominees Joseph Farnham and George Marion Jr., when Academy records list no specific films attached to the nominations.  There are the same discrepancies in the Best Cinematography and Best Engineering Effects awards.  Charlie Chaplin was originally nominated for Best Actor and Best Comedy Direction, but his nominations were erased and he was given a Special Award for his “versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing The Circus.”  There were four awards given that year that have never been given since: Best Artistic Quality of Production, Best Comedy Direction, Best Title Writing and Best Engineering Effects.  There are also a number of films from that year that seem to be impossible to find, not just lost films like The Way of All Flesh, The Devil Dancer or The Magic Flame, or films like Underworld, The Racket and Two Arabian Knights, which, if you’re lucky, you can catch on TCM (which is how I saw all three of them), but all sorts of films that seem to only exist in archives (whether they be the Academy archives, UCLA or the Library of Congress), including The Noose, The Patent Leather Kid, A Ship Comes In, Sorrell and Son, Glorious Betsy, The Private Life of Helen of Troy and The Dove.  Most of those films have very few votes on the IMDb and usually only one comment, from Arne Anderson, who runs the Lost Film Files and who has managed to see all but 7 of the Oscar nominated films (I am missing 240 films, which accounts for a little over 8% of all the films ever nominated).

Film History: Of course, we have the advent of sound.  We have the introduction of the Oscars.  But it doesn’t end there.  We have the first appearance of Laurel and Hardy.  We have the marriage of boy wonder Irving Thalberg to screen beauty Norma Shearer.  We have the arrival of Clara Bow, the “It” Girl (I finally saw It a couple of months ago and even though the movie at best qualifies as an okay film, Bow had It, more than any star of the day and more than most stars since).  We have the opening of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the first prints outside.  We have Frank Capra being hired by Columbia Pictures, where he would go on to win 3 Oscars in the 30’s.  We have the release of Two Arabian Knights, the beginning of Howard Hughes’ involvement in motion pictures.  There is the U.S. release of Metropolis, at the time, the greatest film ever made, establishing Fritz Lang in the forefront of all the directors.

Overlooked film of 1928:

Laugh Clown Laugh (dir. Herbert Brenon)

Lon Chaney in Laugh Clown Laugh (1928)

Again, it is Chaney that is overlooked.  It didn’t used to be overlooked.  It used to be listed as an Oscar nominee (for Best Title Writing – a category that only existed that first year because it held no significance once the Silent Era was gone).  But then people looked closer at the records and discovered that there was no specific film listed for the writer and that three films were chosen almost at random as the “nominees” (and one for the winner), when we really don’t know what won.  But in a year where Wings is remembered as the first Best Picture winner and The Jazz Singer is immortalized because of the introduction of sound, here is a film, mostly ignored, often forgotten, that is better than either of them.  And given a choice between this and such revered films by critics as The Passion of Joan of Arc and The Crowd, I will take this every time.  It even gets forgotten because of the similarity in titles to The Man Who Laughs, possibly, in some ways, the most influential film upon the world from this year (that the slashing of the lips on the Black Dahlia seemed inspired by this and that Bob Kane acknowledge the influence of that film on the creation of The Joker simply pushs The Man Who Laughs to the top).  But this is one of the last Chaney roles, one in which he pushed his heart and soul, one in which he isn’t forced to grotesquely hide his features, but allowed to put on a pure performance of heartbreak.

Roughly speaking, this is the same story as the famous Ridi Pagliaccio, essentially a joke with a heartbreaking punchline about the person who goes to the doctor because he is so depressed, the doctor mentions the famous clown who is in town and suggests he go to see the clown, only to have the patient admit that he is the clown.  Here we have more of a story, with the clown adopting a small girl, then watching her grow into a lovely woman (I’m so glad here that this is a silent film because I must admit that the appeal of Loretta Young is lost on me, so at least I don’t have to listen to her attempt to speak dialogue) and realizing that he has fallen in love with the young woman at the same time that she is courted by a Count.

This is a story that truly one works in silence.  It depends so much on visual cues and emotions that are present in the eyes rather than on dialogue, which can’t help but be melodramatic and sentimental in such a plot.  But there was never anyone like Chaney for giving facial expressions that explored the depths of his soul.  He even was the heartbroken protective power during the making of the film, realizing that the director was teasing Young constantly whenever Chaney was not on the set, so after that, Chaney pretty much never left the set.

Of course, Laugh Clown Laugh and Hunchback aren’t the only Chaney films which are overlooked.  Chaney was a master actor and an incredibly gifted makeup artist.  There is a decent biopic of his life (Man of a Thousand Faces, starring James Cagney, one of the few actors who could do the kind of physical performances that Chaney could), but if you aren’t familiar with his career on film, you really need to start searching your local library.  There are box sets out there and there are many great performances waiting for you to find.

My Top 10:

1. The Battleship Potemkin
   

   The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

2. Greed
3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
4. The Birth of a Nation
5. The Gold Rush
6. The Phantom of the Opera
7. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
8. Foolish Wives
9. The Last Laugh
10. The General
    

TSPDT Consensus Top 5 Films:

• #8 – The Battleship Potemkin
• #27 – The Gold Rush
• #30 – The General
• #51 – Intolerance
• #64 – Greed

AFI Top 100 Films:

• The Birth of a Nation – #44 (1998) – not on 2007 list
• The Gold Rush – #75 (1998) – #58  (2007)
• The General – #18 (2007) – not on 1998 list
• Intolerance – #49 (2007) – not on 1998 list

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture: The Battleship Potemkin
• Best Director: Sergei Eisenstein (The Battleship Potemkin)
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Greed (from the novel McTeague)
• Best Original Screenplay: The Gold Rush
• Best Actor: Charlie Chaplin (The Gold Rush)
• Best Actress: Lilian Gish (Broken Blossoms)
• Best Supporting Actor: Donald Crisp (Broken Blossoms)
• Best Supporting Actress: Zasu Pitts (Greed)

Ebert Great Movies (in order that he added them):

• The General
• The Battleship Potemkin
• Greed
• Broken Blossoms
• The Last Laugh
• The Birth of a Nation
• The Phantom of the Opera
• Faust
• Safety Last
• Nanook of the North
• Cabiria
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• Souls for Sale

1912 is where I begin this project because it was in 1912 that Richard III, the earliest surviving feature length film was released.  1926 is where this post ends because the Academy Awards began in 1927.  So this pretty much covers the pre-Academy era of feature films.

Because these are the pre-Academy years no group existed to decide what was the best film of each year.  So if you’re looking to try to figure out what films to watch from this era, there are several ways to go about it.  First, you can look at TSPDT and their list of the Top 1000 films of all-time.  It’s a good place to start, though it leaves a lot to sort through.  You could try the AFI list which, between the two versions of 400 films in consideration, included 19 different films from this era (aside from the 4 films on the two versions of the top 100 they also nominated Richard III, The Cheat, The Poor Little Rich Girl, Broken Blossoms, Within Our Gates, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Kid, Safety Last, Sherlock Jr., The Thief of Bagdad, The Big Parade, The Freshman, Greed, The Phantom of the Opera and Ben-Hur).  There are 13 films from this era that have been featured on Roger Ebert’s Great Movies list.  You could also try focusing on one director in particular.  Charlie Chaplin began in this era making short films, eventually starting his feature directing career, though his only true classic during this era is The Gold Rush.  D.W. Griffith was the top director of the era and almost his entire career was done before sound ever made it to the screen.  There is Erich von Stroheim, who made far fewer films than Griffith, but each film is worth seeing.  Then there are the foreign directors, the ones who get missed if you stick to AFI, like all of the great silent work of Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau.  While the #1 film on my list (and TSPDT) is Russian, 5 of my top 20 are German films (1 Lang, 3 Murnau and Cabinet).  But really, it’s hard to go wrong.  I’ve seen over 100 feature length films from this era and none of them are bad and only 2 of them are as low as **.5 (Dream Street and The Idol Dancer – two of Griffith’s weakest films).  Films that have managed to survive from this era usually have survived for a reason – either because of their director, their historical value or their quality.

To me, among the actors there are four main names that stick out: Charlie Chaplin, for his amazing ability, Lon Chaney for the way he would disappear into his characters, Emil Jannings, who in the silent era proved that language was irrelevant and Erich von Stroheim, who maintained a dignified air about him even when he was acting the complete cad.  Among the actresses, there was only one; Lilian Gish rises above everyone else in the profession during this era.

Of course, there are highlights of film history all through this era:

• 1912 – Mack Sennett releases the first Keystone Kops films / Carl Laemmle organizes several independent companies into Universal
• 1913 – Lon Chaney begins working in Horror films / D.W. Griffith leaves Biograph after over 500 shorts / Cecil B. DeMille rents a barn that will later become Paramount
• 1914 – Chaplin first appears on-screen as the Tramp / Louella Parsons becomes the first movie columnist
• 1915 – Film debuts of W.C. Fields and Douglas Fairbanks
• 1918 – Warner Bros. release its first film  (Four Years in Germany) / first Tarzan film
• 1919 – Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith form United Artists / Oscar Micheaux becomes first African-American director
• 1920 – Marriage of Fairbanks and Pickford
• 1921 – Fatty Arbuckle trial
• 1922 – Will Hays appointed head of MPPDA / release of Nanook of the North
• 1923 – Introduction of 16mm film by Eastman Kodak / Hollywoodland sign is erected
• 1924 – Metro, Goldwyn and Mayer form to become MGM
• 1925 – Soviet Union begins to finance national filmmaking
• 1926 – Death of Valentino

My Top Film from each calendar year:

• 1912 - Richard III
• 1913 – Ingeborg Holm
• 1914 – The Avenging Conscience
• 1915 – The Birth of a Nation
• 1916 – Intolerance
• 1917 - A Man There Was
• 1918 – The Spiders Part I: The Golden Lake
• 1919 – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• 1920 – The Golem
• 1921 – The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
• 1922 – Foolish Wives (Nosferatu is my #1, but it’s Oscar eligible in 1929)
• 1923 – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• 1924 – The Last Laugh
• 1925 – Greed
• 1926 – The Battleship Potemkin

Overlooked film of 1923:

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (dir. Wallace Worsley)

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

I had actually planned to write about the 1922 version of Oliver Twist, also starring Lon Chaney.  I had begun with talking about how if you have only seen Chaney in horror films, then your film horizons need to be expanded, how Chaney was one of the greats of the Silent Era, how he was the first great film Fagin but in spite of his acclaim, today it is easier to find a still of Ben Kingsley or Alec Guinness (or even Timothy Spall) when you Google the words “Fagin” and “Chaney.”  But then going through all the lists I came to a realization.  Hunchback is obscenely overlooked.  Ebert hasn’t covered it, it isn’t included in the Top 1000 (or even the doubling the canon extra 1000 films you can find there though the inferior 1939 remake is) and wasn’t among the 400 films by AFI under consideration for either their original list or the 2007 version.  Yet it is an essential Horror film (and made it to #19 on my Top 25 Horror List) and ranks only behind Phantom of the Opera in the Chaney pantheon.  It is an excellent early example of how books could be translated onto film and how the images we see up on the screen stay with us through our voyages in literature.

Have you read the book?  The odds are no.  Victor Hugo is much talked about and much adapted, but seems to be rarely read.  Les Miserables has been memorably translated into many different forms, but at 1463 pages (longer than War and Peace) isn’t read particularly much.  And of course, Hugo didn’t write a novel titled The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  The actual title of the book is Notre-Dame de Paris.  Hugo’s title emphasizes the cathedral’s place as the center of the book.  But films didn’t go for that.  The first film version was titled Esmeralda and this film pretty much set in stone the notion of Quasimodo as the central character and Hunchback as the title (which is what you will usually find on current printings of the book).

The film certainly wanted to focus on Quasimodo and to give Chaney free reign to show his incredible talent (both for acting and for makeup).  The first shot of him, a couple of minutes into the film, captures him high in the frame, up on the balcony of Notre Dame, watching the proceedings of the Festival of Fools.  Then we cut to a somewhat closer shot and get the first hints of his grotesque looks.  Then there is the title card announcing the character and actor.  Then we cut again, this time to a close-up and we get our first real look at the hunchback: curved spine, distorted face, scar for a right eye, wild hair, rough hands covered with thick, dark hair.  It is a brilliant simultaneous slow and quick reveal that prefigures the same kind of theatrical effect we would get from the first look at the Phantom’s face only two years later.

Movie audiences hadn’t really seen anything like this before.  Here was this grotesque monster, leering and mocking the people below him, later stripped to be punished and determined to be grotesque through and through; yet their sympathies were touched.  He is so gifted that he is able to climb down the outside of the cathedral.  He is so devoted that he will go to any lengths to please those whom he feels he serves.  His love is so strong that in the end, death is more pleasurable than the concept of existence without his beloved.  He is so much more preferrable to Phoebus, has so much more honesty, courage and even dignity.  While it was Chaney who had conceived the project, even having say over the cast and director, and thus no question that his monster would be the center, it is his performance rather than any ego that makes him the star.

When Chaney died in 1930, death was already no stranger to Hollywood; yet no death before Chaney had robbed cinema of so much.  Valentino was revered by women everywhere and good films had been made by Ince and Stiller, but it was Chaney who had the most future to offer to film fans.  This film was the beginning of the crowning of Universal Studios as the champion of Horror.  Great Horror films had been made in Germany (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Golem), but nothing like this had been seen in the States.  His Phantom would cement his reputation as the Man of a Thousand Faces and we can only imagine what kind of makeup we would have seen had he been around to perhaps star in Dracula or Frankenstein or The Mummy or The Wolf Man.

But instead he died.  We were denied the chance to see him become a huge Horror star in the sound era.  And he could have done it.  “No dialogue.  We didn’t need dialogue.  We had faces.”  Norma Desmond says that, of course.  And it’s true most of all about Chaney.  He had a great voice as was proved in his one sound film, but he didn’t dialogue.  He had that face, those moves, those natural abilities.  He was always a star, even if people don’t seem to remember the film that truly made him one.

Thomas had a costume parade at school on Friday, and on Saturday he and I met Erik after work to trick-or-treat a little bit in Brookline. I think it was a bit too busy and overwhelming for Thomas, but he held up pretty well. The pumpkin pictures are from the previous weekend. Sorry about the family pictures-I’m having trouble turning them.

One of the first great film images: the rocket landing in the eye of the Moon in George Méliès' A Voyage to the Moon (1902)

Back in January, I decided to write a several part series on the history of the Academy Awards which turned out quite nicely for the blog.  The final post, my personal ranking of the Best Picture nominees is far and away the most successful post we’ve ever had on the blog.  But the main reason I wrote it (aside from a plethora of Oscar knowledge and the desire to write about it) was that most places that talk about the Academy Awards do it in terms of years instead of categories.  I felt there was a space to be filled in providing for context in terms of each category.  I feel there’s a kind of gap there as well when it comes to talking about film, year by year.

Sure, there are books that talk about individual film years.  There is the great DK book, Cinema Year by Year, which has gone through several iterations or DK’s equally wonderful (but not as heavy) The American Film Institute Desk Reference.  There are also books like Inside Oscar or Tom O’Neill’s Movie Awards.  But those latter two focus more on the actual award winning films at the time and the former two give you a lot of context (and pictures – the Year by Year is a wonderful coffee table book and the AFI a great reference book), but not a lot of depth.  My hope is to talk a bit about each year and try to capture the kind of details you won’t find in any particular book (the same way I tried to do in my last series – the top 100 directors – namely the fact that I ranked each director and assigned a point structure).

To that end, I’m going to try and include things in each year, some of which I have gathered from other sources, some of which are my own thoughts, and some of which are unique collations – ways in which I have chosen to interpret and define certain data.

So, what exactly does that mean?  Well, here are the things which I try to include in these various entries:

• My Top 10 of the year
• The Academy Award winners (the major awards – Picture / Director / Acting / Writing)
• The “consensus” award winners for the major categories (based on awards from all the major groups) – these won’t start until 1932 because before 1932 there were only the Oscars
• The “consensus” Top 5 of the year (from TSPDT top 1000 list)
• Top 5 of the year based on Awards points (not just the Oscars, but also critics, BAFTA, guilds, Globes, BFCA)
• any AFI Top 100 films or Ebert Great Movies
• a capsulized review of the film year
• one film I feel is particularly overlooked

Because so much of what I write is in comparison with how the Academy Awards viewed things, I keep things aligned with the Academy Awards years.  What this means is that the first post will encompass the years after feature films began (I start with 1912) but before the Oscars began (1927).  Then, there will be several combined years, until the Oscar began aligning with the calendar year in 1934.  I do this for a few reasons, but the most prominent is that the Oscars are the oldest, and still the most distinguished, of all the film awards groups and people talk about things in reference to the Oscars.  Also, that way, I can keep films locked in one calendar year and while I might mention a film like The Third Man in the year it was released (1949), for the purpose of all the lists, it will only appear on those in the year it was Oscar eligible (1950).  For films that were never Oscar eligible due to various Academy rules, I talk about them in the year they were released in the United States.

So what else does that leave to talk about here?  Well, the very early years, before the advent of feature films (I use 1912 as the starting point because Richard III, the oldest surviving feature film was released in 1912), there were a remarkable number of developments.  For all intents and purposes, film began in 1891 with the invention of the Kinetoscope but really, more specifically on January 7, 1894, when Edison Kinetoscope Record of a Sneeze was filmed, the first film to ever be lodged for copyright at the Library of Congress (on January 9, 1894).  But film didn’t remain simply the purvey of Edison for long and the French, specifically Antoine Lumiere and Georges Méliès, were quick to leap on the technology.  By the end of the next year, Lumiere had opened a paying Cinématographe in Paris.  In 1897, Méliès, opened his own studio and the Pathé brothers were not far behind.  Things were the same in America with the start of Biograph and Vitagraph.

But it was in September of 1902, that Méliès released his greatest achievement: A Voyage to the Moon, a film that tested the boundaries of everything about the new film industry.  It was 13 minutes long, had numerous special effects had taken three months to shoot and had cost 10,000 francs.  But it was a major achievement and it is still studied and revered today (just see the Smashing Pumpkins video to “Tonight Tonight”).

The next year came Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery, which is the essential starting point for narrative American film and is also still studied today (I first saw both films in class in college).  Porter, Méliès and Pathé continued to be the major players for the next decade.

The big innovation came in 1906 with the premiere in Australia of the first ever feature film, the 70 minute long The Story of the Kelly Gang, which sadly no longer survives except for a few short clips.  Ned Kelly also made use of real props as the filmmakers borrowed Kelly’s actual armor from a museum to be used in the film.

By 1911 we had the beginnings of the industry that people would recognize today.  D.W. Griffith had gone to Hollywood and begun filming short films for Biograph there and the studios had begun to form.

So I went to Spanish class with Thomas today and it turned out fine. They played a series of games focusing on nine Spanish nouns (why he needs to know worm and snail, I’m not sure, but hey, it’s vocabulary). He was wiggly and not particularly verbal, but with me there he wasn’t any more of a handful than the other kids.

Unfortunately the afterschool daycare isn’t going to work out. The ratio of teachers to kids is just to great for him to be there. They were willing to take him for an hour until they go to recess, but that would only be 3:15. I’d need to leave work an hour early to get him, or Erik would not be able to work full shift (which was the whole goal in trying daycare in the first place).

Another positive however is that Thomas is going to start going to start going to music class tomorrow with one of the other kindergarten classes, and he is going to start going to one of the other classrooms twice a week for one of their sessions. We are hoping to build that up to daily soon.

Most people who read the blog for the family updates have already seen his kindergarten picture, but just in case I thought I’d post it here as well.

I’m taking this opportunity now that Erik has completed his director’s list, but hasn’t started his year in film list to post another family update. My job continues to be good. I’ve been a little unfocused lately, but still able to get some work done. Erik is finishing up his first week at the Brookline Booksmith. He is much happier there than at Borders.

It’s been a very busy week for Thomas. First of all, we are trying out the on-site afterschool daycare program. We visited one a week ago, and he went on Monday and Friday. The director still hasn’t said that they will accept him, but he has been doing better than she expected. We are going to send him next Monday and Friday, and hopefully he will settle into the routine more so that the director feels she doesn’t need to have a teacher shadow him so closely. If he gets accepted, it will really free up Erik’s schedule to take on more hours at work.

We also signed Thomas up for afterschool Spanish lessons on Thursdays. This hasn’t gone so well. The first week he had a potty accident and ended up spending much of the time in his classroom with his regular teacher. This last week was pretty much a fiasco with Thomas running all over and finally being sent to the principal’s office since his regular teacher was out sick. The principal tried calling me at work and on my cell phone to come pick Thomas up immediately, but I was in a meeting (and at the time my phone didn’t ring at the front desk-this has since been rectified). He didn’t try calling the home phone or Erik’s cell phone however, so Thomas ended there until the normal pick-up time. At that point the principal told Erik that Thomas was “not appropriate” for the class and basically that he was kicked out. It was probably good that Erik picked him up, because if the principal had said that to me there is a strong possibility I would now be banned from the school grounds. Anyways, I was able to write the director of the Spanish program and it became VERY clear that she and her teachers had no idea Thomas is autistic, nor how to deal with an autistic child. They are, however, willing to try again if I attend the class with him to keep him focused and settled down. So this upcoming Thursday I will be taking him to the class and hopefully that will work out better. If this works out, the only issue is that I have a standing meeting on the second Thursday of each month, but maybe we’ll be lucky and Erik can take him those days.

Akira Kurosawa

the dividing of lands scene in Akira Kurosawa's final masterpiece: Ran (1985)

• Born:  1910
• Died:  1998
• Rank:  1
• Score:  941.80
• Awards:  BAFTA / 2 NBR
• Nominations:  Oscar / DGA / BAFTA
• Feature Films:  30
• Best:  Rashomon
• Worst:  Sanshiro Sugata Part II

Top 10 Feature Films:

1. Rashomon – 1950
2. Ran – 1985
3. The Seven Samurai – 1954
4. Ikiru – 1952
5. Throne of Blood - 1957
6. Stray Dog – 1949
7. High and Low – 1963
8. The Hidden Fortress – 1958
9. Kagemusha – 1980
10. The Bad Sleep Well – 1960

Top 10 Best Director Finishes  (Nighthawk Awards):

• 1952 – 1st – Rashomon
• 1956 – 1st – The Seven Samurai
• 1959 – 9th – Drunken Angel
• 1960 – 5th – Ikiru
• 1960 – 7th – The Hidden Fortress
• 1961 – 2nd – Throne of Blood
• 1961 – 3rd – Yojimbo
• 1962 – 6th – The Bad Sleep Well
• 1963 – 1st – Stray Dog
• 1963 – 3rd – High and Low
• 1966 – 6th – Red Beard
• 1977 – 6th – Dersu Uzala
• 1980 – 3rd – Kagemusha
• 1985 – 1st – Ran
• 1990 – 7th – Dreams

When people look at his career, they think of the great Samurai films.  They remember films like The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo and they think of the influence they had on other filmmakers.  They think of the American versions (The Magnificent Seven) or the Italian versions (A Fistful of Dollars) and it’s nice to look at the improvements to American Westerns, once the influence of Kurosawa began to travel over the ocean.  They look at Toshiro Mifune as that charismatic forceful presence, they think of him as this all invulnerable Samurai.  And they forget about all the magnificent things that encompass the career of Akira Kurosawa.  Don’t forget.  Look at the entire career.  Next year, Criterion will be releasing a new box set called AK 100.  In it, you get 25 of Kurosawa’s feature films (the missing ones are A Quiet Duel, Dersu Uzala, Ran, Dreams and Rhapsody in August).  It gives you the entire breadth of Kurosawa’s career, one that wasn’t simply defined by Samurai films starring Toshiro Mifune.  While their careers massively overlapped and while they are the best actor / director collaboration of all-time, it is unfair to either to think of their careers as simply those Samurai films.  They made many other great films together, there are other great Kurosawa films (and other actors) and Mifune starred in many other Samurai films (including many available in the Criterion Collection).

For a long time it was hard to see the earlier Kurosawa films, unless you were lucky and lived in a city like Portland with a video store like Movie Madness.  But Criterion has been making it easier to see these films for a while now and the rest will finally be seeing the light of day.  Kurosawa began his career with a the kind of film which would define his career: a Samurai film, Sanshiro Sugata, based on a well known Japanese novel.  But his next film was a contemporary Drama focusing mostly on woman, The Most Beautiful.  After that he went back to Feudal Japan for The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail before being contractually obligated to direct a sequel to Sanshiro Sugata, easily his weakest film (by his own admission) and until the release of the box set, extremely hard to find (it was the last Kurosawa film that I was finally able to track down).  Next up came a series of contemporary films dealing with the problems and relationships in post-war Japan, long ignored, but given new life with the release of the Eclipse box set Post-War Kurosawa by Criterion.  There was No Regrets for Our Youth, a very good romantic drama, followed by One Wonderful Sunday, a charming comedy about a nice young couple trying to make ends meet.  But then came the first of his **** films and the film that strongly established Takashi Shimura as one of his leading actors and the film that first teamed Kurosawa up with Toshiro Mifune: Drunken Angel.  Then came the still hard to find A Quiet Duel before Shimura, Mifune and Kurosawa teamed up for their brilliant police procedural, Stray Dog.

Then there was the fifties.  It began with Scandal, one of Kurosawa’s weakest films, but with a great supporting performance from Shimura.  Then came Rashomon, the film that made him an international star among directors, the film that won the Oscar and the Golden Lion at Venice, one of the greatest films ever made.  Then there was his interesting version of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, again with Mifune.  There was Ikiru, with Shimura giving one of the great performances in film history, a film whose international acclaim continues to grow.  Then came The Seven Samurai, hailed by many people in the film industry as the greatest film ever made, the film that influenced more Westerns than any American film, the film that made an international superstar out of Toshiro Mifune.  Next was Mifune’s brilliant performance as the man afraid of nuclear annihilation in I Live in Fear.  Then came adaptations of Shakespeare (Macbeth made as Throne of Blood) and Gorky.  Then Hidden Fortress, the movie that George Lucas does not hesitate to name as the single greatest influence on Star Wars.  It was all one decade, all of them except Ikiru starring Mifune, most of them also starring Shimura.  An incredible decade, one that found Kurosawa less hailed in Japan than he was in other countries.

With the sixties came more Shakespeare, a loose adaptation of the Hamlet plot in The Bad Sleep Well, with Mifune avenging his father.  Then there were the two Samurai comedies, Yojimbo and Sanjuro, the films that Sergio Leone would pretty much copy verbatim making Clint Eastwood into an international star piggybacking on Mifune.  There was High and Low, a great police procedural that first teamed Kurosawa up with Tatsuya Nakadai.  But funding was harder to find and after sinking a lot into Red Beard, there was little left.  And even though both Kurosawa and Mifune would both live over 30 more years and continue to work in film, the two men would never work together again.

In fact, work was hard to come by for Kurosawa.  His participation in Tora! Tora! Tora! fell apart and he attempted suicide.  His personal project, Dodes ka-Den, though very good, was thoroughly misunderstood and was a commercial failure.  He was forced to seek outside funding and his next film, Dersu Uzala, finally earned a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination (Rashomon had earned an Honorary Award.  After that the only Kurosawa film that was even submitted to the Oscars was Dodes Ka-Den) but as the submission from the USSR.  Kurosawa had found funding in Russia and filmed most of the film there, so in spite of the Japanese director, it actually won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film as the Soviet submission.

Kurosawa again had trouble getting financing, but this time he finally had friends on his side.  Coppola and Lucas had learned to love Kurosawa film and were appalled that their hero was having such difficulty getting a film made.  They managed to secure a financing deal through 20th Century Fox (who was eager to make Lucas happy given the success of Star Wars) so that Kagemusha could get made.  It was a return to the Samurai epic that had been Kurosawa’s main calling card, except on a grand scale, with a solid budget, long length, and finally, in color.  It looked amazing on screen and with Mifune no longer part of the team, Kurosawa turned to Tatsuya Nakadai to play the double roles.  Then came Ran and it took five years, but that was because Kurosawa wanted to make certain to get it right, making use of King Lear this time, it became Kurosawa’s swan song masterpiece, a brilliant take on Feudal Japan.  When Japan refused to submit it, the official submission was denied a nomination and Kurosawa himself actually finally got an Oscar nomination for Best Director.

Three more films would follow.  Dreams was a piecemeal film made up of several differents short segments, but they all seemed to fit together, and he again got help from a hero worshipping great American director (Martin Scorsese starred in one segment) and the finished work is magnificent.  Then came Rhapsody in August, a film that actually dealt with Hiroshima, the aftermath, and how people in the area still felt after 45 years.  His final film was Madadayo, a film about an aging teacher and the students who have been a part of his life, a fitting final film for the director.

Next year we get the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and thus the box set.  It won’t quite be complete, but there are so many films in it that should be cherished, films that have never seen the light of day on DVD and have rarely seen the light of day on video.  People won’t have to hope their town has an amazing video store.  They finally get a chance to simply own them.

Ran – #1 film of 1985

I read King Lear in high school and I didn’t take to it.  I didn’t object to it like I did to Romeo and Juliet (I still think Romeo is one of the dumbest characters in all of literature), and I certainly recognized the beauty of the language, which is the real power in any Shakespeare play (most of the plots were taken from other places anyway), but for some reason, I just couldn’t take to King Lear.  Then in college I saw Ran.  Here was King Lear, minus the two characters I had really loved in the play (Edmund and Edgar), with a character that seems a bit less Regan or Goneril, and a bit more of Lady Macbeth, and I loved it.  I knew from the second I saw it that it was brilliant, probably the best Shakespeare ever put on film.

So what is it?  It’s not the story.  After all, I never really took to the original play, but I think this film is brilliant (and Grigori Kozintsev’s film version is as well, which does use the language, albiet, in subtitles translated back from Russian), but A Thousand Acres is the same story and both the novel and film were utter crap.  There is something about this film that moves beyond.  It isn’t the Samurai genre as a whole, because I love all of Kurosawa’s Samurai films, but outside of that, even though I have seen quite a bit, there are only a few Samurai films that I think are really great (Harakiri, Samurai I, Gate of Hell).

Is it the quality of the film?  It was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning Best Costume Design (it lost the other three to Out of Africa).  It was following on two other brilliant Foreign films that Best Director nominations to go with several technical noms, but failed to get a Best Picture nomination (Das Boot and Fanny and Alexander).  And certainly Ran richly deserved all of its nominations (actually, it deserved to win all of those Oscars and Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Makeup as well).  Kurosawa put everything he had into the film and it showed.  He would wait months for certain cloud formations so he could get them on film.  He had all the costumes hand woven.  He built elaborate sets and managed to get them in storms and against sunsets and then filmed them burning to the ground.

But there are also the performances.  Tatsuya Nakadai had been a star in Japan for many years and had done many great films (including Harakiri and Kagemusha), but this was easily the best performance of his entire career, first as the slighted old king, then as the madman out in the wilderness, betrayed by his own pride.  There was Peter, who seemed to embody the very concept of Lear’s Fool.  But perhaps the most amazing was Meiko Harada as a character who combined the horrible evil of Goneril and Regan and seemed to add the naked ambition of Lady Macbeth.  It was Kurosawa’s male stars that were always talked about, but from Ikiru to Throne of Blood to Hidden Fortress to Ran, he always managed to get amazing performances out of the smaller female roles and he knew how to film ambition on screen.

Which brings us to the final aspect of the film: Akira Kurosawa.  Unlike Bergman or Fellini or Truffaut, while Kurosawa has been widely hailed as one of cinema’s great directors, he isn’t nearly as talked about for his writing.  Yet, Kurosawa wrote or co-wrote all of his films.  He could create an epic story like Hidden Fortress or Seven Samurai, but he also turned to classic literature as much any director outside of John Huston.  He filmed Shakespeare straight up twice, very loosely once, and also adapted Dostoevsky and Gorky (as well as more contemporary authors like Ed McBain).  He knew how to take the script and make it into a film.  He took Shakespeare and found a way to make a film that felt like it could have come straight from Japanese history.  He was a creator.  In Ran he created characters, he created scenes, he created shots, and in the end, like he had done so many times before, he created a masterpiece.

4 of the Top 100 in one picture: Martin Scorsese receiving his Oscar from three close friends: Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg

With only one director left to go (and if you haven’t figured out who it is, you’re not paying attention), this is a good time to throw up the complete list.  I’ve gone ahead and provided links to all the directors, as well as listing what particular film I decided to focus on.  It was not always necessarily their best film, but rather the one I wanted to write about.

The first thing is, if there is a director here you were expecting to see and didn’t see them, you can go back to my Introduction, where I mention various directors who didn’t make the list and why.

Second, I will probably do a revision of this list sometime after the Oscars.  Because cumulative awards points are one of the categories I have used to make this list, I will re-calculate everyone after the awards season has concluded.  Also, in December, TSPDT re-does their list (they do it annually) and I will also be changing some point totals based on those re-calculations.

Third, almost certainly at some point, some younger directors will start to make the list.  Sofia Coppola finally has a fourth film in post-production, and unless it’s a complete disaster, she will be making a future version of the list.  Several other directors who were mentioned in the Intro still haven’t made a fourth film and at least three of them have just come out with their third films this year, but they will probably make a future version (those include Joe Wright, Stephen Daldry, Rob Marshall and Spike Jonze).  If I have someone who moves up the list, I will do an individual post for that director, with whatever rank they have acheived, and then will re-list all the ranks in the next February re-calculation.

But that’s it for now.  Here’s the complete initial list: The 100 Greatest Directors of All-Time.

100.  David Cronenberg (A History of Violence)

99.  George Stevens (The Diary of Anne Frank)

98.  Michael Mann (The Last of the Mohicans)

97.  Werner Herzog (Aguirre, the Wrath of God)

96.  Robert Redford (Quiz Show)

Uma Thurman, Robert Redford (#96), Meryl Streep (Actress #1), Mike Nichols (#45) and Amy Adams

95.  Jean Cocteau (La belle et la bette)

94.  Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor)

93.  Gus Van Sant (Milk)

92.  D.W. Griffith (The Birth of a Nation)

91.  James Whale (The Invisible Man)

90.  Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited)

89.  Rob Reiner (The Princess Bride)

88.  Richard Brooks (The Professionals)

87.  Alejandro Amenabar (The Others)

86.  Mike Leigh (Topsy-Turvy)

85.  Krzysztof Kieslowski (Red)

84.  Paul Greengrass (United 93)

83.  John Schlesinger (Cold Comfort Farm)

82.  Andrei Tarkovsky (Solyaris)

81.  Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Cleopatra)

80.  Satyajit Ray (The Chess Players)

79.  Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie)

78.  Michael Powell (A Matter of Life and Death)

77.  Tom Tykwer (Perfume)

76.  Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch)

75.  Louis Malle (May Fools)

74.  Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs)

73.  Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West)

72.  James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment)

71.  Michael Curtiz (Yankee Doodle Dandy)

70.  John Sayles (Lone Star)

69.  Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her)

Warren Beatty being directed by Robert Altman on the set of McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

68.  Danny Boyle (Trainspotting)

67.  Warren Beatty (Bulworth)

66.  Alan J. Pakula (All the President’s Men)

65.  Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban)

64.  Alan Parker (The Commitments)

63.  Tim Burton (Ed Wood)

62.  Anthony Minghella (Truly, Madly, Deeply)

61.  Jim Sheridan (In America)

Laurence Olivier being directed by William Wyler on the set of Carrie (1952)

60.  Laurence Olivier (Hamlet)

59.  George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story)

58.  Ridley Scott (Kingdom of Heaven)

57.  Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!)

56.  Jean Renoir (The Grand Illusion)

55.  Neil Jordan (The Crying Game)

54.  Erich von Stroheim (Greed)

53.  Bob Fosse (All That Jazz)

52.  Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

51.  George Lucas (Star Wars)

50.  Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers)

49.  Terrence Malick (Badlands)

48.  Milos Forman (Amadeus)

47.  Preston Sturges (The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek)

46.  Fred Zinnemann (From Here to Eternity)

45.  Mike Nichols (Angels in America)

44.  John Boorman (Excalibur)

43.  Stephen Frears (The Queen)

42.  Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)

41.  F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu)

40.  Federico Fellini (Nights of Cabiria)

39.  Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight)

38.  Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life)

37.  Kenneth Branagh (In the Bleak Midwinter)

36.  Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous)

35. Oliver Stone (JFK)

34.  Robert Altman (M*A*S*H)

33.  Fritz Lang (M)

32.  Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep)

Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut while working on their book

31.  Francois Truffaut (Day for Night)

30.  William Wyler (The Best Years of our Lives)

29.  Luis Bunuel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie)

28.  Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia)

27.  David Lynch (Mulholland Drive)

26.  Sergei Eisenstein (The Battleship Potemkin)

25.  Sam Mendes (American Beauty)

24.  Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather)

23.  Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times)

22.  Christopher Nolan (The Prestige)

21.  Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire)

20.  Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society)

19.  Sidney Lumet (Running on Empty)

18.  Clint Eastwood (A Perfect World)

17.  Quentin Tarantino (Jackie Brown)

16.  Orson Welles (Touch of Evil)

15.  John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath)

14.  John Huston (The Maltese Falcon)

13.  Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)

12.  Roman Polanski (Chinatown)

Jack Nicholson and John Huston being directed by Roman Polanski on the set of Chinatown (1974)

11.  Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings)

10.  Woody Allen (Annie Hall)

9.  Billy Wilder (Sunset Blvd.)

8.  Joel and Ethan Coen (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

7.  David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

6.  Alfred Hitchcock (North by Northwest)

5.  Ingmar Bergman (Smiles of a Summer Night)

4.  Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange)

3.  Steven Spielberg (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg on the "set" of the first Tintin film

2.  Martin Scorsese (GoodFellas)

1.  Akira Kurosawa (Ran)

Martin Scorsese

Ray Liotta, Oscar winner Joe Pesci, Catherine Scorsese (Marty's mother) and Robert De Niro in what is widely considered (including by me) to be the best film of the 90's: Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990)

• Born:  1942
• Rank:  2
• Score:  928.90
• Awards:  Oscar / DGA / BAFTA / 2 Golden Globes / 2 NYFC /  LAFC / 3 NSFC / 2 NBR / 2 BSFC / 2 CFC / 2 BFCA
• Nominations:  6 Oscars / 7 DGA / 7 BAFTA / 7 Golden Globes / 3 CFC / 3 BFCA
• Feature Films:  20
• Best: GoodFellas
• Worst:  Boxcar Bertha

Top 10 Feature Films:

1. GoodFellas – 1990
2. Raging Bull – 1980
3. The Age of Innocence – 1993
4. The Aviator – 2004
5. The Departed – 2006
6. Mean Streets – 1973
7. Gangs of New York – 2002
8. Taxi Driver – 1976
9. After Hours – 1985
10. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – 1974

Top 10 Director Finishes  (Nighthawk Awards):

• 1973 – 2nd – Mean Streets
• 1976 – 1st – Taxi Driver
• 1980 – 1st – Raging Bull
• 1983 – 6th – The King of Comedy
• 1985 – 8th – After Hours
• 1988 – 8th – The Last Temptation of Christ
• 1990 – 1st – GoodFellas
• 1993 – 2nd - The Age of Innocence
• 1997 – 8th – Kundun
• 2002 – 2nd – Gangs of New York
• 2004 – 1st – The Aviator
• 2006 – 1st – The Departed

Here’s what I wrote in February of 2007:

“If Martin Scorsese wins his long deserved Oscar, how will people look back on it?  Will they view it as the best directing of the year?  Will they view it as making up for a perceived snub?  Or will they simply view it as more of a “career” award?  There’s some history all around and an argument for each side.

Will Marty’s be a Career Oscar?

Everyone makes that argument.  A quick look at his non-nominated pedigree (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Age of Innocence) and his nominations (Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, Aviator) make the argument.  People don’t want to see him on the list with Hitchcock and Kubrick.

Will Marty’s be a Makeup Oscar?

He doesn’t really deserve one for The Departed, but he deserved one for The Aviator, the argument goes.  William Goldman tried to argue with The Aviator that Marty shouldn’t win because he had made better films.  Yet, Goldman was arguing for Eastwood.  Eastwood would win for Million Dollar Baby.  Eastwood not only had an Oscar, but the argument can be made that this was a makeup Oscar because he couldn’t win for Mystic River against the juggernaut of Return of the King.  If we continually try to fix things for previous slights, we only make new slights.

Will Marty be winning for doing the best direction of the year?

I say yes.  I already made this argument with The Deer Hunter.  I agree with The Deer Hunter’s Oscars for Best Picture and Director.  Yet, if it had been released a year earlier, I would rank it no higher than fourth (behind Star Wars, Annie Hall and Close Encounters of the Third Kind).  If it had come out a year later, again I would rank it no higher than fourth (behind Apocalypse Now, Manhattan and Alien).  But, I rank it as the Best Picture and Best Director of 1978.

I hold that The Departed is the Best Picture and Best Director of 2006.  Would it have been the best of 2005?  I would place it fourth, behind Munich, Brokeback Mountain and King Kong.  In fact, to find the next most recent year that The Departed would win my Best Picture, you have to go back to 1998.  Does that make 2006 a weak year?  Not necessarily.  I have The Queen as a very close second and United 93 as a not too distant third.  It just means that there was not that single great film that I feel the last number of years have had.

Is it Marty’s best?  Not by my standards.  I rank them in this order: GoodFellas, Raging Bull, The Aviator, The Age of Innocence, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Gangs of New York, The Departed.  Yes, I would give it Best Picture and Best Director in spite of the fact that I feel its his eighth best film.  But, then, I would have given GoodFellas, Raging Bull and The Aviator Best Picture and Director, second place finishes on Picture and Director to Age of Innocence, Mean Streets and Gangs (behind, respectively, Schindler’s List, Cries and Whispers and The Two Towers) and a Best Director win and second place Best Picture finish to Taxi Driver (behind All the President’s Men).  Remember, we’re talking about Martin Scorsese here. He enters the conversation for Greatest Director of All-time.  I would probably rank him third, behind Kubrick and Kurosawa.  Even his eighth best film, albiet in a year with no singularly brilliant film, is good enough to deservedly win Best Picture and Best Director.”

So, here we are two and a half years later and what do I think of what I wrote then?  I mostly agree with what I wrote then.  I have actually moved The Departed up on the list of Scorsese films, I saw Children of Men, The Fountain and Pan’s Labyrinth (which pushed The Queen to fifth and United 93 to sixth), and when I did my final director results, Spielberg and Scorsese both ended up sliding just ahead of Kubrick (by barely more than a point and mainly because Kubrick only made 13 films).  But should they have given the Oscar to Marty?  Did they get it right (I actually wrote all that before he won)?  Hell, yes.  And the Academy made possibly the best move they have ever made, getting Coppola, Spielberg and Lucas up there to give it to him.  Not that it was ever in much doubt (for a little bit, because it had been 29 years since Best Picture had gone to a film with only 5 nominations, but once the ceremony began, no one doubted it), but as soon as those three came out on stage I was leaping up and down in the living room.  They had made it such a beautiful moment (especially when Spielberg and Coppola point out that it is better to win – poor George).  Then The Departed went on to win Best Picture, kicking off a string of wins that I actually agree with.  And Marty finally had that Oscar that he had deserved so much.  And he didn’t get beaten by a damn actor yet again.

That’s what happened in 1980.  And 1990.  And 2004.  But not in 2006.  They finally did him right.

So, a quick recap.  He started with a great short (The Big Shave) then quickly made his first feature (Who’s That Knocking at My Door).  He made a solid film for Roger Corman (Boxcar Bertha).  Then he made his first gangster film and his first classic, Mean Streets.  He then made a completely different kind of film with Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (for anyone who thinks of Scorsese as a very male oriented director, bear in mind that Ellen Burstyn and Cate Blanchett both won Oscars under Marty’s direction and Diane Ladd, Jodie Foster, Cathy Moriarty, Lorraine Bracco, Juliette Lewis, Winona Ryder and Sharon Stone all earned nominations with career best performances — and only nomination — for many on that list).  Then came Taxi Driver, and like Spielberg the year before, the ultimate directorial vision got nominated for Best Picture but the director didn’t get a nomination.  Then came New York, New York (already his third film with De Niro).  After that came Raging Bull and the first loss to an actor.  It was actually expected for Redford to win that year because he had won the Golden Globe, the DGA and the NBR (people forget this because at the end of the decade when critics were polled, Raging Bull was named the best film of the decade – a view that is still widely held as it is the highest ranked film of the decade in both AFI lists and on the Top 1000).  Still, he was losing to an actor who was directing for the first time.

In the eighties, we had a change of pace.  We had his first comedy (sort of), then a real comedy (a very black one), then a sequel (which won Paul Newman his long awaited for Oscar), then perhaps the most controversial film of the decade.  But the nineties brought one of the most critically acclaimed films of all-time.  GoodFellas won Best Picture and Best Director from 5 of the 6 major critics groups and is even now, 19 years later, the third most successful film among the critics awards of all-time (not far behind L.A. Confidential and Sideways).  Marty was the first person to win 6 Best Director awards in one year.  Yet, it was the year of Dances with Wolves, and critics be damned, Marty lost the Oscar, DGA and Golden Globe to a first time actor turned director yet again.  And again, if you look on TSPDT, GoodFellas is the highest ranked film of the nineties (and Taxi Driver is third in the seventies behind the two Godfather films).

Marty took another strange turn, following up with a remake, but it earned De Niro yet another Oscar nomination (his third from his collaboration with Marty – it’s not a coincidence that that the top three actor / director collaborators on my list here were from directors at the very top of the list).  Then came Oscar nomination morning in 1993.  Marty had won Best Director from the NBR.  The Age of Innocence had gotten 4 Golden Globe nominations, including Picture and Director.  Marty had a DGA nomination.  But then they actually started announcing and there was no Marty and no film.  Instead they went with The Fugitive and Robert Altman.

Then came some strange years.  There was Casino, which re-teamed Marty yet again with De Niro and Joe Pesci, but felt kind of like a warmed over version of GoodFellas.  Then came Kundun, which was vastly under-rated, but was such a departure for Scorsese that people didn’t know what to make of it.  Then came Bringing Out the Dead, which had some fervent supporters, but I never really took to it.  Then Gangs was supposed to be coming for Christmas of 2001 and then suddenly it was pushed back for an an entire year.  There were rumors of editing problems, of arguments with Harvey Weinstein.  What the hell was happening with Marty’s career?

A reinvigorating rebirth, as it turns out.  There are critics of Gangs of New York, but you can not count me as one of them.  I give it Best Actor and Best Original Song and close second place finishes (behind The Two Towers) for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.  It was nominated for 10 Oscars and somehow came away empty handed.  But it gave Marty his perfect new partner on-screen: Leonardo DiCaprio.

The next film up was an even better film: The Aviator, the film that should have won Best Picture and Best Director in 2004.  But instead, Marty lost yet again and again it was to a actor turned director.  Was it less painful this time because the director in question was Clint Eastwood, who had been directing for over 30 years?  Or was it more painful because The Aviator won 5 Oscars and looked strong going into those final 2 awards and Eastwood already had an Oscar?  Either way, The Aviator was a magnificent film, anchored by a truly magnificent Leo performance.

But then finally came The Departed.  It was another re-make.  It again starred Leo.  But instead of New York, Marty had turned to Boston.  And instead of De Niro, he had Nicholson.  And instead of going home empty handed, his three friends walked up there and welcomed him to the land of Oscar.

So we have a fourth Marty / Leo film coming out in the Spring.  All the talk is that Shutter Island was pushed back to the spring because of financial reasons, and I believe it, because Gangs was delayed for a year and it was fantastic.  And this film simply looks great.  And I’ve read the novel and I can completely envision all these great actors in these roles.  And I am so ready for it to be my #1 film of 2010.

GoodFellas – #1 film of 1990

Oh, those great Scorsese moments.  You know those moments, those brilliant moments that fuse rock and roll with film.  He’s been doing it for a long time (you can read about that here).  Think of that opening scene of Mean Streets and the great way the beat of “Be My Baby” leads right into that film.  Martin Scorsese does this better than anyone else and he shows it off in GoodFellas.  Actually, that’s a bad phrase.  Because Marty doesn’t show off at all in GoodFellas, he finds a natural beat to the film and he runs with it.  Every shot, every movement of the camera, every song, seems to be an extension of Henry Hill and the life that he lead.

And of course, while the montage close to the end, with the use of the amazing Layla Piano Exit to show the cost of the kind of life that Henry has lead is an amazing scene, the real kicker comes in the middle of the film.  It’s widely talked about because it is so amazing.  Unlike something like the shower scene in Psycho, it is not something that loses any luster simply because you have heard about it already.  It is the Copacabana scene and it is one of the greatest scenes in all of film history.  Everything about it is perfect.  It looks like a spur of the moment shot, like someone would just follow Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco inside, but it is so perfectly set up, the movements are timed so gracefully, the way everyone interacts, the great fluidity of movement, the way the camera so gracefully moves behind, yet doesn’t feel like it’s really there (not only did GoodFellas not win the Oscar for Best Cinematography, it somehow didn’t even get nominated).  It is one of the great unbroken camera movements of all-time, maybe the greatest, but there’s more.  There is the song.  Because Scorsese had already proven with Mean Streets that he knew how to make use of a great Wall of Sound song, where the rhythm comes to life with all the instruments, and he found maybe the best one, certainly my favorite one.  So as Ray Liotta hands the man the keys, on comes “Then He Kissed Me” and the two of them set off across the street and into cinematic history.

But the film is so much more than the scene.  The critics loved it (Best Picture from NYFC / LAFC / NSFC / BSFC / CFC).  Film fans love it (top rated film of the nineties on TSPDT, third highest film of the nineties on the IMDb and #15 all-time, Total Film ranked it the best film ever made).  Only AFI (it only ranked #92 all-time) and the Academy (who didn’t give it Best Picture) seemed to disagree.

So what is it about this film?  There have been other great gangster films.  There is of course Scarface, the original brilliant gangster film, from 1932, the film that seemed to bring on the Hays Code, but in the end, it made organized crime seem distant and cold, the kind of thing that drives a man insane and to death.  There are The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, great films that give you an insight into great heists and why organized crime doesn’t stay organized and why so many people end up dead or in jail.  There is of course, The Godfather, the granddaddy of them all, the film that really gave some insights into organized crime.  But The Godfather shows a family that has built itself up with crime and is more about the family relationships than the crime.  What GoodFellas does is take one person, Henry Hill, and show the world he lived in, Brooklyn in the fifties, and how organized crime existed all around his life and how much that him wish that this was his life.  He skips school to hang out with gangsters because they’re the ones who threaten to shove the mailman in the pizza oven if he brings home any truancy notes.  They look after him and they care for him and they cultivate him and they find a future for him.

Of course, that romanticism is tinged by the cynical departures later in the film.  We see what Henry becomes and the life he lives and what happens to so many of the people that he knows.  So he makes a cynical deal and he ends up on that stoop looking at the camera, talking about his life, about all the amazing things in his life and how much he misses it all.  It’s such a brilliant film because aside from the Cinematography, the Editing, the brilliant use of music, aside from the feel of the fifties and the Oscar winning performance of Joe Pesci, and the performances by Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco that deserved Oscars, and aside from the amazing script with such a great voiceover that takes you right into Henry Hill’s life, because it makes you understand exactly why that kid at that place would want to become part of that life and why even with all the horrible things he’s seen, he would still want to have it all back.  He’d still rather be out in the dark digging up the remains of a corpse than living like a schnook.