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VARIETY - The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time

posted a year ago by jay440 (107)
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https://variety.com/lists/best-movies-of-all-time/psycho-1960-2/

And at #1.....Psycho. Yes, Psycho.

The entry starts like this:

"There’s hardly a frame of Alfred Hitchcock’s cataclysmic slasher masterpiece that isn’t iconic. If you don’t believe us, consider the following: Eyes. Holes. Birds. Drains. Windshield wipers. A shower. A torso. A knife. “Blood, blood!” A Victorian stairway. Mother in her rocking chair. For decades, “Psycho” enjoyed such a cosmic pop-cultural infamy that, in a funny way, its status as a work of art got overshadowed."

Variety put out this mostly unheralded list a few days ago, staying in-house and polling its own critics and writers.

This blog (https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/12/y2u73srw9xbeysvbed9o8onmh6612w) noted some "oddities" - Bridesmaids is in at #94, and "even worse, My Best Friend’s Wedding managing to make the list and not Raging Bull, Schindler’s List, Dr. Strangelove, M, Taxi Driver, Rashomon," while also mentioning the Sight & Sound list:

"Following the controversial Sight & Sound poll of a few weeks ago, Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman” (#78) had to show up here, somewhere, it just had to. I actually do like its placement. However, Variety had to throw some shade at it in their blurb:

'For three minutes, middle-aged single mother Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) sits peeling potatoes. She washes the dishes. She makes the bed. Belgian director Chantal Akerman radically expanded what movies could and should be with this cornerstone entry in the slow-cinema canon — a rigorous style of filmmaking that emphasizes duration over action. Confined largely to the kitchen, dining room and hallways of a nondescript apartment, Akerman’s debut challenges what the experimental auteur called the “hierarchy of images,” concentrating on mundane domestic rituals associated with women, typically overlooked in movies. Over three-plus hours, the film re-creates tasks that Akerman observed her mother practicing for years, though in this case they’re disrupted by Jeanne’s double life as a prostitute — a feminist twist that builds to a shattering climax. Maddening at times yet never less than mesmerizing, it’s the very best film of its kind. But hardly the best film of all time.'"

I only heard about the Variety list once, on an overnight newscast, and the thirtysomething anchors agreed that The Birds is scarier than Psycho.

Rather maddeningly, the list is spread out over several pages, and I'm unable to find the whole list on one single page. EDIT Here's the whole list on one page https://variety.com/2022/film/news/100-greatest-movie-poll-how-many-have-you-seen-1235458815/

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

https://variety.com/lists/best-movies-of-all-time/psycho-1960-2/

And at #1.....Psycho. Yes, Psycho.

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Oh, Baby. I'd say Christmas came early, but i guess it just came late.

They say "lists don't matter." But this one just might.

Psycho nabbed Number One on the American Film Institute's voted list of "100 Greatest Thrillers," and I do put great stock in that list(respect for the voters who put it there -- critics AND industry workers.)

But that was a list of thrillers only.

For Psycho to beat ALL other TYPES of films, just this one time? Satisfying. And Variety does have some legit cred "in the industry."

Of course, I agree about Psycho as Number One -- but I've never felt it could ever be acknowledged like this.

A good feeling.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

The entry starts like this:

"There’s hardly a frame of Alfred Hitchcock’s cataclysmic slasher masterpiece that isn’t iconic. If you don’t believe us, consider the following: Eyes. Holes. Birds. Drains. Windshield wipers. A shower. A torso. A knife. “Blood, blood!” A Victorian stairway. Mother in her rocking chair. For decades, “Psycho” enjoyed such a cosmic pop-cultural infamy that, in a funny way, its status as a work of art got overshadowed."

---

I recall critic Donald Spoto writing of Psycho (in 1977): "It is perhaps the only commercial blockbuster that could also reasonably be classified as an art film." I guess we are back to "candy mint, breath mint," but I'd say the movie "splits" several ways: "event blockbuster"(but that's Grease, too.) "great story with great acting(must be combined)." "great technical filmmaking," and then "great art film."

I've always felt that the true "art film" moment in the movie is when the camera circles slowly down the drain with the blood and then slowly circles out of Marion's eye. This is not a "story moment" in the plot; it is a visual, cinematic, profound, scary, SAD statement. The brilliant bit is the water from Marion's dead eye that just MIGHT be a tear, but could also just be water. But EVERYTHING about that shot is brilliant. How it could even be DONE with 1960 technology. The sickening stasis of Marion Crane as a corpse -- if one wants to debate about the presence of a soul, start here. The plummet into the dark depths of the drain(the afterlife?) and return to Marion, accusing us.

---

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Variety put out this mostly unheralded list a few days ago, staying in-house and polling its own critics and writers.

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Too small a sampling, perhaps? But Number One is Number One, and I buy those voters as better experts than the Golden Globes people.

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This blog (https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/12/y2u73srw9xbeysvbed9o8onmh6612w) noted some "oddities" - Bridesmaids is in at #94, and "even worse, My Best Friend’s Wedding managing to make the list and not Raging Bull, Schindler’s List, Dr. Strangelove, M, Taxi Driver, Rashomon,"

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My Best Friend's Wedding? Well, I expect Psycho does even better when playing against such "recent"(25 years ago) popcorn hits. I'd say that choice reflects young, female sensibilities in the voting group.

Personally, I can accept a world where Raging Bull and Schindler's List don't make the list because I think there is something a bit TOO arty(Raging Bull) and "important" (Schindler's List) about those movies. Heart is missing from Raging Bull(DeNiro is quite the loutish wife-beater) and rewatchability is missing from Schindler's List(also, Spielberg goes for schmaltz at the end after all the merciless horror of the film.) Versus those two, let's face it: Psycho is more entertaining. (Wife-beating and the Holocaust remove any ability to be entertaining.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

"Following the controversial Sight & Sound poll of a few weeks ago, Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman” (#78) had to show up here, somewhere, it just had to. I actually do like its placement.

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Number 78 sounds about right. Perhaps had there been no Sight and Sound Number One ranking, however -- it might not have made the Variety list at all! Sight and Sound's voters have done their job for Jeanne Dielman.

---

However, Variety had to throw some shade at it in their blurb:

'For three minutes, middle-aged single mother Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) sits peeling potatoes. She washes the dishes. She makes the bed. Belgian director Chantal Akerman radically expanded what movies could and should be with this cornerstone entry in the slow-cinema canon — a rigorous style of filmmaking that emphasizes duration over action.

---

"Duration over action." I'm reminded of one of Hitchcock's quotes: "What is a movie, after all, except life without all the dull parts cut out?"

Sounds like in Jeanne Dielman, all the dull parts were LEFT IN. And that, of course, was the point.

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Confined largely to the kitchen, dining room and hallways of a nondescript apartment, Akerman’s debut challenges what the experimental auteur called the “hierarchy of images,” concentrating on mundane domestic rituals associated with women, typically overlooked in movies.

--

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Over three-plus hours, the film re-creates tasks that Akerman observed her mother practicing for years, though in this case they’re disrupted by Jeanne’s double life as a prostitute — a feminist twist that builds to a shattering climax.

---

It would seem to me that the reveal of the title "housewife" as a prostitute -- also an angle in "Belle de Jour" -- takes the film well out of the "kitchen sink reality" of the drama and adds in something you can sell a movie with: sex. Though am I to take it that Jeanne's prostitution is portrayed as yet another exploitation of woman? I would suppose so. On the other hand, sex remains one of the great, fun, satisfying things in this hard life we all live. Maybe not in THIS movie, but...for real...

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Maddening at times yet never less than mesmerizing, it’s the very best film of its kind. But hardly the best film of all time.'"

---

Ha. Well, it sounds like Variety was inspired by the Sight and Sound list in general, and Jeanne Dieman in particular, to compose their own list. And since Number One is Psycho -- well, THANK YOU, Sight and Sound, and THANK YOU, Jeanne Dieman, for triggering this outcome.

Everybody who does work, or has worked, in Hollywood reads Variety...

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I only heard about the Variety list once, on an overnight newscast, and the thirtysomething anchors agreed that The Birds is scarier than Psycho.
---

I've read that expressed elsewhere -- that The Birds is scarier than Psycho -- and that's always rather astonished me.

As a personal matter, it can't be: I was TAKEN to The Birds, ALLOWED to see The Birds, first run when I was under the age of ten. And with one exception -- the close up on the farmer with the pecked-out eyes(I closed my eyes on my mother's warning) -- the movie didn't scare me any more than Godzilla or The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. I ENJOYED the bird attacks as action sequences.

Meanwhile, I was NOT allowed to see Psycho -- in theatrical re-release or on TV -- and word up and down the block -- and from town to town I visited -- when that movie was on was that it was just the most horrifying thing ever made, don't watch it, you'll never sleep again, etc.

A couple of critics in 1963 opened their reviews by saying "The Birds isn't as scary as Psycho, the birds themselves aren't scary enough," and one wrote "I think Hitchcock is pulling his punches here after some of the outrage over how violent Psycho was." Fair enough.

But, "on the other hand," if The Birds is scarier than Psycho to anybody -- particularly a younger generation -- more power to The Birds. I find a knife-wielding human being to be scarier than a bird, but I suppose if one REALLY looks at Psycho versus The Birds, The Birds IS more disturbing...because in Psycho, the killer only kills a few people and is captured and all is well. The Birds are set to take over the world and kill everybody -- a (nuclear) doomsday scenario with no exit.

So...OK..The Birds is scarier than Psycho. In certain ways.

But Psycho made twice what The Birds made at the box office...

[–] swanstep (2619) a year ago

List inclusions that stand out for snark: Bridesmaids (liked it but, seriously, from 2011, A Separation; We Need To Talk About Kevin; Once Upon A Time In Anatolia; House of Tolerance; Melancholia all jumped out...), Natural Born Killers (I had no idea anyone much liked this film), Pink Flamingos (does extremity itself deserve representation?), Scenes from a Marriage (good but TV-ish to its core, and not one of Bergman's top 5, maybe not top 10), Kramer vs Kramer (just no! formative experience for me was seeing it beat out Apocalypse Now, All That Jazz, Manhattan, The Tin Drum, and Alien at the Oscars - seeing it beat most of those now retraumatizes me), The Dark Knight (has some great highs but whole third act is a muddle including 'What happened to the Joker?'), Waiting for Guffman (no), Goldfinger (give me a break), Tree of Life (ugh, looks like instagram. Badlands and Days of Heaven are both half as long and twice as good), My Best Friend's Wedding (I liked it a lot but it wasn't as good as and isn't as well-loved as the director's previous film, Muriel's Wedding), 12 Years a Slave (so painful and unrewatchable that it's hard to judge), King Kong (1933) (all is forgiven Variety - thank you!), Paris is Burning (the only doc. on the list apart from Shoah is not the second greatest ever documentary), Carrie (really?), Moulin Rouge (horrible with the occasional mad high), Rosemary's Baby (Variety not on the cancelling Polanski bandwagon I see!), Road Warrior (meh), Mean Streets (above Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, King of Comedy? not to mention Fellini's I Vitteloni which it virtually remakes?), Titanic (ha ha - never forget the Picasso that's in the Met going to the bottom of the ocean), Annie Hall (Variety not cancelling Woody either. Bravo.), Stagecoach (important but not one of Ford's best), Chinatown (clap clap clap), Saving Private Ryan (way up at #10, what? I preferred Rushmore, Shakespeare in Love, Happiness, The Big Lebowski, Run Lola Run from 1998).

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Well....lists do their thing....I know that articles about lists always start with "what's the point in making these lists" but...they do provide conversation. And any list with Psycho at the top....well that's a heartening list for me.

It seems pretty clear that Variety went for THIS list to "counter" the more artistic and esoteric Sight and Sound list. They probably had it ready to go BEFORE Sight and Sound announced -- and Jeanne Dielman only made the comparison more "sweet." Does Variety intend to "lock in" this list for 10 years to match up with Sight and Sound?

With any list of this nature, one looks at three categories:

ONE: How many of the "usual suspects" made the list? Answer: plenty. Citizen Kane is on there, and Casablanca, and GWTW(surprisingly high -- 21?) and The Godfather. Psycho is a "usual suspect," too -- but Number One is the kicker(it also made Number One on the AFI 100 great thrillers list.)

TWO: How many of the "usual suspects" did NOT make the list? Of Hitchcocks, it looks like neither Rear Window nor North by Northwest made the cut. (Only Psycho, Vertigo, and Notorious made it.) I don't believe that Raging Bull or Taxi Driver made the cut. (I may be wrong, I'm working from memory.)

THREE: "Where the real fun is" The selection of NON-Usual Suspects which often have NEVER been on ANY of these lists and the debate begins. Bridesmaids? My Best Friend's Wedding? (with both, you can see a feminist strain to match up with Jeanne Dielman, and Bridesmaids introduced Melissa McCarthy to the world as a "female Belushi in Bluto mode.")

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I'm gonna defend two of the "new choices." They are two movies that I love, and I simply could not BELIEVE that somebody out there liked them enough for a 100 list. Here they are:

Waiting for Guffman. The first of Christopher Guest's "fake documentary comedies" -- with largely improvised dialogue from skilled comic actors. Guest had been part of a similar TYPE film in the more famous "This is Spinal Tap" and Rob Reiner directed that one, and Guest didn't have full control over it. I'll say it: I like Waiting For Guffman a LOT more than Spinal Tap, its just a much funnier movie to me with a much more incisive "focus": the dwellers of a small American town in the middle of America and how they escape the drudgery of their lives by putting on a "community play"(not a Christmas play, not a children's play) about the history of their town.

You literally have to SEE the film to get the humor. The way there are sudden non sequitur close-ups on things -- or for that matter RELEVANT close ups at the correct moment (like "My Dinner With Andre" action figures and a "Remains of the Day" school lunch box for kids.) You've got locals lining up in an empty school classroom to get "coveted" roles in the play and the sight of a plain looking middle aged male farmer doing DeNiro in Raging Bull: "You? You f-k my wife? You f'k my wife?"

You've got Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara(greats, both, at improv) as a married couple who run a travel agency -- but have never left their small town of Blaine, Iowa. Plus HE had "penis reduction" surgery and keeps trying to show off the results to people.

You've got local music teacher Bob Balaban launching a coup to take over the production from the beloved director(Guest himself) "Corky Saint Clare." This is given great weight, a reminder that political battles take place at all levels.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

And then you've got Corky himself. Guest perhaps daringly elects to play Corky as "gay but refusing to admit it." He keeps talking about "my wife, Bonnie" who we never see. Corky THINKS he's a great director just waiting to be discovered (he is waiting for a New York critic named Guffman to come see his show's debut) but he isn't. Still, he's got a lot of heart.

Highlight: Corky goes to the Blaine city council for funding for his show. $150,000. The council laughs. The mayor says "That's more than our whole budget, and that includes maintaining the community swimming pool." Corky angrily responds "There's no SWIMMIN' in my show!" (Clueless) and then calls the council members "bastard people."

Oh, well. You have to see it to experience it. Variety commissioned some essays for these movies on their list, and Judd Apatow ("Knocked Up") wrote his praise of Guffman, which he thinks "will eventually knock Citizen Kane right off the list." Ha.

But this: Waiting for Guffman was great. The next Guest docu-comedy(Best in Show, about a dog competition) was a little less funny (Guest traded in the gay Corky for a good old Southern boy fly fisherman type), the next one, A Mighty Wind, (about a folk rocker reunion TV special) was LESS funny, and the next one -- "For Your Consideration" sort of about the Oscars, wasn't very funny at all. So Guest stopped making those movies, and Waiting for Guffman stands as the masterpiece it is.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

NEXT:

Moulin Rouge. Its a very flamboyant "muscial" from Baz Luhrmann of 2001 and I have a simple take on it: I LOVED it and have watched it often and the problem with every Baz Luhrmann movie I've seen since that one is that they NEVER match it for powerful, emotion, and entertainment value. Those would include (evidently only?) Australia, The Great Gatsy(with Leo) and recently, Elvis -- THAT one reallly disappointed me because I thought with Elvis' music, it had chance to be like Moulin Rouge. But hey -- I've never seen the Leo Gatsby so -- only Austraila and Elvis? This guy Luhrmann doesn't work much , does he?

This is another one where trying to explain it here doesn't get the effect across. Its a CGI overload movie that WORKS because Luhrmann creates a fantasy world(Paris) in which poor writer Ewan MacGregor can woo sexpot entertainer Nicole Kidman(gorgeous, doing Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend) even as she turns out to have one of those Camille-like fatal diseases.

There's an Elton John song called "Your Song"(we all know it) which I found so-so at the time on the radio, but which gets an arrangement here(with Ewan singing it) that converted it into a much more emotional, much more involving song to me. THAT's an acheivement. There's an original composition called "Come What May" that is equal parts anthem, love song, and tearjerker(and figures in the film's wild "Stop the Assassination!" climax on a musical stage. Madonna's Like a Virgin, Nirvana's Smells Like Team Spirit and that old seventies fake French rocker Lady Marmalade get incorporated into the musical tapestry, as well as the exotic old Nature Boy. And did I mention that Nicole Kidman is gorgeous?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Unlike years like 1997 with a clear favorite for my favorite of the year(LA Confidential), my 2001 pick kept vacillating -- from Ocean's Eleven(Clooney and Pitt cool) to Memento(Chris Nolan clever) to The Royal Tennebaums(Wes Anderson and Gene Hackman's ALMOST last film in a great performance) to Moulin Rouge.

But over the years (two decades plus now), its Moulin Rouge that gets the most DVD play , that I stop to watch when it comes on. The sheer audacity of it, the music, the climax, the emotion. And the fact that poor old Baz just can't beat it. So Moulin Rouge is my favorite of 2001.

So...a list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time" sure does beg the question when it includes Psycho and Casablanca AND picks up Waiting for Guffman and Moulin Rouge, but....I love all four of them, so its OK by me.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

TWO: How many of the "usual suspects" did NOT make the list? Of Hitchcocks, it looks like neither Rear Window nor North by Northwest made the cut. (Only Psycho, Vertigo, and Notorious made it.) I don't believe that Raging Bull or Taxi Driver made the cut. (I may be wrong, I'm working from memory.)

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In follow up: one thing I noticed (and I may be wrong; from memory) was that of the movies I call "The Three Superthrillers" -- Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws -- only Psycho made it onto the top 100 list. I've seen The Exorcist and Jaws actually rank higher than Psycho on some lists, but here -- they don't even make it. I find Jaws to be a real snub, but -- The Exorcist not making it is not a problem for me.

Still, what a list -- The Three Superthrillers only get one on the board!

[–] swanstep (2619) a year ago

Good defense of Waiting for Guffman ecarle. None of the Guest comedies really grabbed me but I understood at the time that that was my problem. I had lots of friends who dug them. Comedy's *so* personal. For example, I really adore both the South Park movie from 1999 and the follow-up puppet-movie Team America: World Police (2004?). In their way they're both works of mad genius that revel in their occasional junkiness, but I'm not sure I could ever in good conscience place either of them on any list of greatest films I might make. I also loved Wes Anderson's comedies from the beginning and I do put his stuff on lists I make (Rushmore and Grand Budapest Hotel were top of their respective years for me). I'm not sure why I distinguish between these two sort of comedies, respectable vs unrespectable perhaps, but I do. Maybe Pink Flamingos on Variety's list stands in for all manner of unrespectable cinema? Maybe the world values Guest more (or Guest has much wider appeal) than Wes Anderson?

Sometimes too, the exact right comedy for me is a film that really isn't up to too much at all - so doesn't have a chance to be on any list of greats - rather the relaxedness of the show is part of what makes it work for me and for its stars. Parker Posey was quite the charmer throughout the '90s, but she's never better than in the froth that is Party Girl (1995) (see Posey also in the slightly more serious Clockwatchers (1997)), a movie about being a librarian and about wanting to be the sort of person who throws great parties in Manhattan, and about always being in danger of losing your apartment. I like her in that more than in Guest's films. But that makes me eccentric I guess, But it also makes comedy in general the very subjective (even mood-dependent), slightly evanescent thing it is. Comedy *is* at its core about lightness and lightening our loads, and whimsy is the air it breathes.