Digested Watch: The Film School Favourites

So you’ve arrived at Uni and realised you’ve wasted your life watching Adam Sandler movies and episodes of Hollyoaks. Never fear, for a) you will continue to do so, and b) here's our blagger's guide to those film-school staples

Feature by Jamie Dunn | 09 Sep 2013

Battleship Potemkin

What you need to know: If you’re under the impression that Sylvester Stallone invented the montage with Rocky, then think again. That honour goes to wild-haired genius Sergei Eisenstein, who turned the until-then stagey medium of cinema into a dynamic collage of rhythms, textures and symbols. Battleship Potemkin, a wild piece of propaganda showing the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the eponymous vessel rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime, is the film in which Eisenstein developed his influential theories of montage.

The deeper cut: Montage is all well and good, but Russia’s filmmaker de rigueur, Aleksandr Sokurov, rejects editing altogether in his audacious Russian Ark, which condenses the whole of Russian history into a single take tracking shot.

Citizen Kane

What you need to know: This cautionary tale, which looks back on the life of a media tycoon who realises too late his great love for tobogganing, is where cinema as we know it was invented. Every shot is an innovation; every scene a revelation. Orson Welles starred in, directed, wrote and produced Kane when he was just 26 years old, meaning the freshers reading this have around eight years to get their shit together and make a masterpiece. No pressure, then.

The deeper cut: Never trust the consensus. Film historians will try to tell you that Welles spent the rest of his career in ignominy flogging frozen peas and lending his dulcet tones to Transformers: The Movie, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Although they were always a struggle to get made, almost all of his subsequent films are of interest, from his elegant period drama The Magnificent Ambersons, to the giddy film noirs The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil, through to his deliciously meta swansong F for Fake.

Psycho

What you need to know: Hitchcock loved to manipulate his audience, and Psycho finds him at the height of his powers. This macabre tale, about a young woman (Janet Leigh) on the lam who checks into a budget hotel that even Lenny Henry would balk at endorsing, is where the modern horror film was born and when audiences could no longer rely on their favourite movie stars making it to the final reel.

The deeper cut: Psycho, along with the film noirs of the 40s and 50s, set cinema’s template for women being brutally punished for their moral digressions. (Actually, that’s been the narrative since Eve munched on that Red Delicious.) That’s why a film like The Last Seduction is so bracing and brilliant. Like Psycho, John Dahl’s film begins with Linda Fiorentino’s Bridget skipping town with some stolen loot and hiding out in the sticks. Both films also share a blackly comic veneer – but that’s where the similarities end. Neither Norman Bates nor ‘Mother’ would have stood a chance against Bridget’s unbridled ruthlessness.

The 400 Blows

What you need to know: The coolest of the new waves is the French one, but it was kicked off by the Nouvelle Vague’s resident square. Godard’s films were funkier, Chabrol’s more mysterious, Rivette’s more daring, but those critics were all able to fly the Cahiers du Cinéma coop thanks to the success of Francois Truffaut’s deeply felt freewheeling tale of a wide-eyed lad growing up quick in Paris.

The deeper cut: Looking at the history books, you might think the Nouvelle Vague was an all-male affair. Not so. Agnes Varda, while not directly aligned with Truffaut and co, was also in Paris at the same time as the Cahiers du Cinéma boys’ club making cinema that was equally as experimental and lyrical. The best of these is Cléo from 5 to 7, which recounts two hours in the life of a pop singer while she waits to learn from her doctor whether she's terminally ill.

The Godfather

What you need to know: Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster epic is 70s New Hollywood, a pulp gangster yarn elevated to art by a movie brat schooled on the history of cinema and who earned his stripes making exploitation movies for Roger Corman. Its shine has faded, somewhat, after decades of knockoffs and parodies.

The deeper cut: It wasn't just American cinema that was having a renaissance in the 1970s. As well as New Hollywood, there were influential new waves happening in Germany, Japan and Australia. Less discussed, however, is the brilliant cinema that was beginning to emerge from Africa, and in particular Senegal. The best of these films, and certainly the most experimental, is Djibril Diop Mambety’s first feature Touki Bouki, which follows a young hothead who takes to the road on his motorcycle with his girlfriend to escape his humdrum life as a herdsman.

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/film