My Uber-Large Holy Grail List
Submitted by SteveR on Thu, 01/20/2005 - 05:32
Tags:
- Note: I'm gonna be adding these by country, and due to sheer volume, not all at once.
- UNITED STATES
- *With good video stores around me, most USA-made movies that I want to see are available, but there are a good handful that should prove to be difficult to get my hands on. There are, however, a whole slew of experimental movies that would fall into this category by the likes of Stan Brakhage, James and Sadie Benning, Lewis Klahr, Jon Jost, Jonas Mekas, Ernie Gehr, Ken Jacobs, and on and on and on.
- Frank Borzage
- I’ve seen just one of Borzage’s celebrated silent melodramas – Street Angel – and it’s absolutely wonderful. He made a whole string of ‘em, and most are pretty hard to see:
- 1. Seventh Heaven (1927)
- 2. Lucky Star (1929)
- 3. The River (1929)
- 4. History is Made at Night (1937)
- Nicholas Ray
- Thankfully, Ray’s long-unavailable full-cut of Bitter Victory was finally made available on DVD a couple weeks ago. The hilarious and violent The Savage Innocents, featuring Anthony Quinn playing an Eskimo (!!), was also released not too long back on Spanish DVD, impeccably restored. So Ray’s great 50s works are slowly coming out, but I’ve yet to get my hands on these ones:
- 1. Bigger than Life (1956)
- 2. Wind Across the Everglades (1958)
- Josef von Sternberg
- Most of Sternberg’s velvety, ornate dramas are readily available on great VHS editions (likely because of Marlene Dietrich’s presence), but there are still a few elusive ones:
- 1. Thunderbolt (1929)
- 2. An American Tragedy (1931)
- 3. Underworld (1927)
- King Vidor
- I’ve only seen a couple of his movies, but The Crowd is a masterpiece and I’ve been eager to see more of his films. A couple of the tougher to find ones:
- 1. The Wedding Night (1935)
- 2. H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)
- Howard Hawks
- And a few tougher to find Hawks ones…:
- 1. The Crowd Roars (1932)
- 2. Tiger Shark (1932)
- 3. The Road to Glory (1936)
- 4. A Girl in Every Port (1928)
- Andre de Toth
- Andre de Toth was always well-regarded by the French as a great American director, but recently he’s been enjoying a resurgence amongst new cinephiles, and for good reason. Day of the Outlaw is a great western. Unfortunately, because of this delayed appreciation, many of his movies are tough to find:
- 1. None Shall Escape (1944)
- 2. Crime Wave (1954)
- 3. Play Dirty (1968)
- Max Ophuls
- Ophuls made only a few films in the USA, and all are pretty well-regarded. A couple are hard to see:
- 1. The Reckless Moment (1949)
- 2. The Exile (1947)
- Budd Boetticher
- All the Boetticher westerns I've seen are really great, so there's no reason not to highly anticipate the others.
- 1. Seven Men from Now (1956)
- 2. Seminole (1953)
- 3. Decision at Sundown (1957)
- Anthony Mann
- Most of Mann's most acclaimed movies are easy to see, but there are some unavailable ones that are considered underappreciated classics:
- 1. The Furies (1950)
- 2. Devil's Doorway (1950)
- 3. Border Incedent (1949)
- 4. The Tall Target (1951)
- Frederick Wiseman
- My favorite American documentary filmmaker, I've only been able to see a few of Wiseman's movies thanks to an overseas friend who taped some when they played on television there. There are plenty more that aren't available to me:
- 1. High School 2 (1994)
- 2. Zoo (1993)
- 3. Basic Training (1971)
- 4. Hospital (1970)
- Stan Brakhage
- The Criterion Collection discs of a handful of his movies was just a taste -- his filmography is massive:
- 1. Everything else!!
- OTHERS:
- Saint Joan (1957, Otto Preminger)
- Dallas 362 (2003, Scott Caan)
- The Line-Up (1958, Don Siegel)
- Remember My Name (1978, Alan Rudolph)
- My Brother's Wedding (1983, Charles Burnett)
- JAPAN
- Mikio Naruse
- Though he directed nearly 100 movies and is regarded as one of the greatest Japanese directors, there are only three Naruse movies available in the USA, all of which I own. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), Late Chrysanthemums (1954), and Mother (1953). The rest are near-impossible to see with English subs, though an online friend of mine has some old subbed TV broadcasts with very bad quality. With translation help from a friend, I was also able to see Floating Clouds, available on DVD in Spain along with a few others. Not including those, here are the Naruse movies I want to see most:
- 1. Lightning (1952)
- 2. Yearning (1964)
- 3. A Wanderer's Notebook (1962)
- 4. Sudden Rain (1956)
- 5. Flowing (1956)
- 6. Repast (1951)
- Sadao Yamanaka
- Only three of Yamanaka's 20-odd features still exist, but all three are considered major classics of 1930s Japanese cinema. None have ever been available on home video outside of Japan:
- 1. Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937) - God Bless Eureka and MoC -- this one is getting a UK DVD release in April.
- 2. Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (1935)
- Hiroshi Shimizu
- Kenji Mizoguchi said of Shimizu: "People like me and Ozu get films made by hard work, but Shimizu is a genius..." Wow. Needless to say, it's a shame that his films are so difficult to see:
- 1. Mr. Thank You (1936)
- 2. Children in the Wind (1937)
- 3. Four Seasons of Children (1939)
- Heinosuke Gosho
- A director I don't know very much about, and whose films are all notoriously difficult to see. From what I understand, his melodramas from the '50s are among the best Japanese melodramas ever, and that's saying a lot:
- 1. Where Chimneys Are Seen (1953)
- 2. Yellow Crow (1957)
- 3. Half a Loaf... (1958)
- Nagisa Oshima
- Thankfully, a good handful of Oshima's movies are easily available with English subs, unlike some of the other directors on this list. But there are plenty with major reputations that aren't:
- 1. Death by Hanging (1968)
- 2. Boy (1969)
- 3. The Ceremony (1971)
- 4. The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970)
- Shohei Imamura
- Same things I said for Oshima applies here:
- 1. Intentions of Murder (1964)
- 2. A Man Vanishes (1967)
- 3. The Profound Desire of the Gods (1968)
- Yasuzo Masumura
- Fantomas put out four of cult director Masumura's films a couple years ago, and by doing so ignited a strong need for more (and a strong desire for Ayako Wakao -- mmmmmm). Let's hope they deliver some of the following in the future:
- 1. Red Angel (1966)
- 2. A Wife Confesses (1961)
- 3. The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (1967)
- 4. A False Student (1960)
- 5. Kisses (1957)
- Sogo Ishii
- Many of Sogo Ishii's films from 1990 and onward are available, but his anarchic early films still remain unreleased outside of Japan:
- 1. Crazy Thunder Road (1980)
- 2. Tokyo Burst City (1982)
- 3. The Crazy Family (1984)
- 4. August in the Water (1995)
- 5. Labrynth of Dreams (1997)
- Shinji Soomai
- Soomai's 2000 film, Kaza-hana, is the only one readily available with English subtitles, and it's quite good. Knowing that it's usually considered one of his weakest films makes the desire to see his classics all the stronger:
- 1. Typhoon Club (1985)
- 2. Moving (1993)
- 3. Love Hotel (1985)
- 4. Wait and See (1998) - This is also not considered to be amongst Soomai's best, but a friend in France was able to score me a rare English subbed VHS. I eagerly anticipate watching it.
- Naomi Kawase
- I've seen two Kawase movies -- Shara and Moe no suzaku -- and they're both wonderful. But it's her documentaries that I really want to see:
- 1. Embracing (1992)
- 2. Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom (2003)
- 3. Sky, Wind, Fire, and Earth (2001)
- OTHERS:
- A Burning Star (1998, Onishi Kenji)
- Snow Country (1957, Shirô Toyoda)
- Red Peony: The Hanafuda Game (1969, Tai Kato)
- Narita: Heta Village (1973, Shinsuke Ogawa)
- And, of course, harder-to-find titles by heavy-hitters like Ozu (The Only Son, I Graduated, But...) and Kenji Mizoguchi (The Water Magician, A Woman of Rumor).
Author Comments:
Some people use the term "Holy Grail" to refer to movies that are thought to be lost forever. There are tons of these lists and I could easily make a another that would include all the same movies (stuff like the extended edition of "The Magnificent Ambersons" and Jerry Lewis' "The Day the Clown Cried"). Instead, I'm listing movies that I know exist but have had difficulty seeing.
Thankfully, there are probably 5000 movies I want to see that are available. I don't really envoy your position where everything left to see that's worth seeing is almost impossible to find.
Actually, I'd say there are probably TEN thousand movies I personally want to see that are readily available! These are just the uber-rare ones that, if I ever find, will give me a minor heart attack. :)
I'm not even close to the point where everything left to see is hard to find. I've only been watching movies as a major passion for about four years, and that's really almost nothing. So fear not, I'm still a cinephile infant, but one who looks forward to seeing many rare movies.
Oh, good! I was worried that you were beginning to face stooky's dillemna.
I hope it's still your plan to keep adding to this list!
Yeah, I still plan to. I'll try to put some more up very soon. :)
The bad news: TCM played The Tall Target about a year and a half ago.
The good news: It's lesser Mann, fo sho. It was hard for me to believe that Winchester '73 was made before it.
Anthony Mann is just so damn good that I pretty much want to see anything and everything he's done. Now that I finally have a friend who lives near me with TCM and can tape stuff, I hope it's replayed sometime.
Just remembered that I have Anthony Mann programmed into the TiVo, so I'll give you a heads-up if it comes back on, and I can be backup if your friend can't come through.
Which reminds me: Bigger Than Life is going to be on Fox Movie Channel in a few days as well. Tape it?
Oh wow, that would be GREAT. I don't believe my friend has Fox Movie Channel. I'll have to ask him later.
Okee doke -- I'll definitely get it on the TiVo, since I haven't seen it yet either (although Cosgrove and Dayfornight don't think highly of it (!) ) and I'll hold onto it until I hear the word.
So yeah, I guess my friend doesn't have Fox Movie Channel. If we could work somethin' out, that'd be great. :)
"Decision at Sundown" plays occasionally on the Westerns Channel, and "The Line-Up" shows up every now and then on one of the HBO channels. I'll keep an eye out.
And contrary to popular belief, I've never seen "Bigger Than Life". I do get the Fox Movie Network, though, so that may change in a couple days. :-)
Oops! Sorry, Steve. Admittedly, I'm too lazy to go look it up, but if it wasn't you, must've been Matt. Or I'm just going crazy, which is always a possibility.
I just saw "The Man Who Left His Will On Film", rented a DVD bootleg from a VHS copy. It's pretty amazing, a bit more low budget than I was expecting but completely original. One thing about this film -- don't believe anything you read about it. After watching it, I searched on the net for background on it and just about every review of it gives a different account of the plot, and gets it completely WRONG. You won't get the real idea about this movie until you see it for yourself.
Just curious, but since you have a lot of knowledge of Japanese films, I have been looking for one I heard of for forever. It's from around 1945 and it's called "The Day Our Lives Shine". Never heard of it outside of a 5 second clip and passing reference in a documentary, so if you know of it post something and let me know.
Hmmm, haven't heard of that one. The quantity of obscure Japanese movies from the 30s-60s that are basically impossible to see is mindboggling. If there's any cinema that I want to explore so much more than is currently possible, it's definitely Japanese cinema.
Ditto on that. Thankfully there are labels like Criterion and American Cinemateque who seem to be pretty fanatical about Japanese film and have made some pretty great stuff available, though I know it's only a drop in the bucket. Still, two Suzuki films - 'Gate of Flesh' and 'Story of a Prostitute' - coming out next month on Criterion. Hopefully other great stuff coming too... can't wait!
Don't know if it's of interest, but Eureka have three Mikio Naruse films scheduled for UK DVD release shortly: Repast, Sound of the Mountain and Flowing.
It's astonishing to look back at this list almost exactly three years after I posted it. Really goes to show how blessed we are in this age of DVD. I can check off roughly 75% of the films in this list. :O
Thought it was going to take decades...
Of course, it may take decades to see them all on film, which is the ideal.