MovieChat Forums > Ugetsu monogatari (1954) Discussion > Forgotten by today's critics???

Forgotten by today's critics???

posted 18 years ago by pascarot
2 replies | jump to latest

Hi guys!

I discovered today on the BFI Sight and Sound poll that Ugetsu was once considered one of the greatest movies ever made.

As you may know, they do a poll every 10 years to determine the greatest movie of all time. The first poll was in 1952... at that time Ugetsu wasn,t even released yet, but, if we take a look at the 1962 and 1972 polls, we can see that Ugetsu was quite a hit by yesterday's critics.

Here are the results:

1962
1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. L'avventura (Antonioni)
3. La Règle du jeu (Renoir)
4. Greed (von Stroheim)
4. Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
6. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
7. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
7. Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein)
9. La terra trema (Visconti)
10. L'Atalante (Vigo)

1972
1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. La Règle du jeu (Renoir)
3. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
4. 8 1/2 (Fellini)
5. L'avventura (Antonioni)
5. Persona (Bergman)
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
8. The General (Keaton)
8. The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)
10. Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
10. Wild Strawberries (Bergman)

In the latest poll (2002), Ugetsu has dropped to the 35th position... which is a shame IMO. This masterpiece deserves his high status and should be praised by today's critics so that more people will see this wonderful movie.
What do you guys think??

My Top 20
www.ymdb.com/pascal-plante/l30738_ukuk.html?movieUp=0089881

[–] Goldmund1710 18 years ago

I think it doesn't matter what it's rank is. It's still one of the very best films ever made. I'm sure most of the critics who voted for Ugetsu are french. He was always considered by them to be the master. I think the reason it's rank has been lowerd throughout the years is because of the new groundbreaking waves of directors in the 1960's(Fellini, Bergman, Godard, Tarkovsky, Antonioni....). The critics started to embrace them and put the their films at the top of the lists. Ugetsu was simply ecliped by other, more recent films. We must not forget that it was released in 1953.

The interesting part of this story is that while Ugetsu slowly goes down another film from the same year rises up, high up. I'm talking of Tokyo Story.

"If you can't afford LSD, try color TV"

[–] mac_alain 17 years ago

It came in at No. 27 in the 2002 poll's "Critics' List" from what I can make out

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/critics-long.html

also

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/