The Untouchables
The Untouchables: Fifth Ballot
by Matt Scalici on Jun.23, 2011, under The Untouchables
We’re back with the fifth installment of our monthly feature The Untounchables, the FilmNerds staff’s attempt at creating a Hall of Fame for filmmakers. Each month, a panel of contributors here at Filmnerds including Ben Flanagan, Corey Craft, Graham Flanagan, Benjamin Stark, Craig Hamilton and myself, Matt Scalici, will cast our ballots for who we believe to be the greatest filmmakers to ever live. The top three vote receivers each month will be inducted into our list of Untouchables and enshrined here on this site. You can find a link below to the first three groups of directors admitted to our virtual Hall of Fame but today we present to you the winners of our fourth ballot, the next three members of The Untouchables.
Howard Hawks
Many of the Cahiers du Cinéma writers of the French New Wave held Howard Hawks up as a shining example of the Classical Hollywood auteur. His repeated returns to an archetypal story – a group of strong men in a confined space being infiltrated by an equally strong and singular woman – is exactly the kind of thematic authorship that Truffaut, Godard, and company would point to as the sign of an iconic cinematic voice. However, today’s supposed auteurs could learn a lot from Hawks’ workman-like visual approach. He might be the greatest of Hollywood’s Golden Age directors because of his determination to allow performance and story to reign supreme. The man never cut unless his actor needed to move. He never moved in for a close-up unless something was of the utmost importance and held a consistent significance. The argument against this type of directing in modern cinema is that audiences might get bored of a visually inert camera; this argument is a dead chauffeur, I’m afraid. The real reason we don’t see Hawks’ style of filmmaking anymore is that few performances are compelling enough to hold on, few stories are involving enough to depend on, and few directors are humble enough to stand back. Put on any Hawks movie and feel yourself taken away by its pace and performance. The man knew what was essential for a cinematic narrative to move, and lost everything else. My favorites include Only Angels Have Wings, Rio Bravo, and of course, His Girl Friday.
- Benjamin Stark
Billy Wilder
When listing the filmmakers that left an indelible mark on the world of cinema, one should immediately think of the great Billy Wilder. Over the course of his nearly 50-year career, the German-born auteur won an astounding six Academy Awards for his respective efforts as a writer, director and producer; he also received the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1987. Although he’s most widely known as a director, Wilder toiled for years as a screenwriter. He started out working in the German film industry, but transferred to the Hollywood system in the early 1930s, and eventually made his biggest mark as a screenwriter with the Howard Hawks-classic Ball of Fire. He finally got his shot at the helm on the Hollywood stage with the well-received 1942 comedy The Major and the Minor, starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland. His first breakout hit would emerge two years later with the pitch-black crime thriller Double Indemnity. That 1944 film, which many cite as one of the greatest films ever made, drew Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, but eventually lost both statues to Leo McCarey’s Going My Way. However, Wilder didn’t wait long for his first trip to the podium, as his next film — a groundbreaking examination of the effects of alcoholism called The Lost Weekend — brought him the two Oscars that escaped him the previous year. Subsequently, Wilder entered what many might call his “Golden Age,” during which he created a laundry list of classics such as Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot and The Apartment. That 1960 film starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine scored Wilder an Oscar-trifecta for his work as writer, producer and director. Although Wilder worked steadily in the years that came after The Apartment, he never managed to recreate the success that dominated his “Golden Age;” but this never impacted his already-stellar reputation as one of the greatest figures the medium has ever known.
- Graham Flanagan
Quentin Tarantino
For some reason, I was dreading the inevitable appearance of Quentin Tarantino on this list. The man who was once revered as the savior of modern cinema, the standard-bearer for a new generation of post-modern, pop culture embracing filmmakers has nonetheless been a polarizing figure over the last decade. I don’t think it’s unfair to point out that Tarantino’s filmography is shorter than any other director we’ve featured thus far in The Untouchables, and sometimes it’s easy to forget the energy and optimism his early work inspired. While the freshness is gone from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (easily too of the most oft-referenced and copied films of the 1990s), both movies have not only held up over time but in many ways improved with age. His late ’90s flight of fancy Jackie Brown was less revolutionary but certainly not any less stylish, smart or dripping with cool than its older siblings. Tarantino’s work in the 2000′s has been far more daring and bombastic, making the excesses of Pulp Fiction seem quaint. His blood-splattered two part experiment known as Kill Bill saw him reach both his highest heights as a filmmaker as well as his lowest lows but he has rebounded to show remarkable maturity with his recent World War II epic Inglorious Basterds. Love him or hate him, it’s hard to find a filmmaker from his generation that has had a greater influence on his peers or one that has made a stronger cultural impact than Quentin Tarantino.
- Matt Scalici
The Untouchables: Fourth Ballot
by Matt Scalici on Apr.30, 2011, under The Untouchables
We’re back with the fourth installment of our monthly feature The Untounchables, the FilmNerds staff’s attempt at creating a Hall of Fame for filmmakers. Each month, a panel of contributors here at Filmnerds including Ben Flanagan, Corey Craft, Graham Flanagan, Benjamin Stark, Craig Hamilton and myself, Matt Scalici, will cast our ballots for who we believe to be the greatest filmmakers to ever live. The top three vote receivers each month will be inducted into our list of Untouchables and enshrined here on this site. You can find a link below to the first three groups of directors admitted to our virtual Hall of Fame but today we present to you the winners of our fourth ballot, the next three members of The Untouchables.
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet played a substantial role in my film education at a very young age, particularly my very early college years starting around 2003 when I read his book “Making Movies,” an essential guide for budding filmmakers or general film lovers. With that, I learned maybe more than I wanted to about the filmmaking process, but I gained enormous respect for a director that never got the credit he deserved, not that he wanted it. In the book, the technical wizard fills you in filmmaking as a mechanical process, as if telling a story was like running a business (which it is). But he also reveals candid moments on the sets of his masterworks like “Network,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “12 Angry Men,” and many of his other lesser known known titles. One that sticks out involves Lumet slapping an actress in the face to get the proper emotion that would work for the scene, a moment he said he regretted immediately even when the actress thanked him for it afterwards. Upon reading that book, I took that opportunity to explore as many of his films I could get my hands on, even buying a couple. Watching one after another, I, like everyone else, still found difficulty pinpointing Lumet’s unique visual style or technique. You might say he’s one of the greatest “invisible” auteurs ever, putting the camera precisely where it belongs to let the story and characters do the work for him. But you can’t watch “Network” or “12 Angry Men” without the sobering realization you’re seeing the work of a master director, even a master of chaos, as we see in the aforementioned titles that couldn’t work without Lumet’s steady hand. He never lost control of a set or a situation on-screen, thus, never losing our attention.
- Ben Flanagan
Charlie Chaplin
Before Preston Sturges, Woody Allen, and the Coen Brothers, there was Charlie Chaplin. Not only was Chaplin one of the first writer-director hyphenates, his Little Tramp character is one of our most resilient Depression era cultural icons, along with Mickey Mouse and Superman. With an unorthodox, organic directing technique and ruthless control, Chaplin cranked out dozens of comedy shorts in the early decades of the 20th century, before hitting us with an incredible melee of feature films. Check out this streak, a figurative evolutionary chart of cinema’s journey into Sound: The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), and Modern Times (1936). All are considered classics, all were box office successes, and all of them tell us something new and interesting about America, from the heartfelt perspective of a British shape shifter. Unfortunately, I’ve only seen a handful of Chaplin’s shorts and features, but his is work that is easily digestible and always an absolute wonder and delight to take in. Do yourself a favor and reacquaint yourself with the Tramp. Check out Graham Flanagan’s Great Scenes entry from The Circus here.
- Benjamin Stark
Francis Ford Coppola
For the most part, our Untouchables series has covered filmmakers who maintained pristine reputations for the majority of their careers after hitting it big but rarely in film history has a director reached such heights and fallen into such insignificance as Francis Ford Coppola. After bursting onto the scene as a respected screenwriter in the early ’70s, Coppola’s reputation instantly rocketed into the stratosphere with the 1972 release of The Godfather, a masterpiece of American filmmaking that in one fell swoop placed Coppola foremost among the new generation of filmmakers revolutionizing the industry and the art form in that decade. Two years later, he proved the exception to every rule when it came to sequels with the release of The Godfather: Part II, marking the only time in history that a Best Picture-winner was out-shone by its own sequel. In the minds of many, Apocalypse Now stands are arguably the most important film of the 1970s. Coppola’s work on those three unquestioned masterpieces places him easily in the pantheon of great American artists and while his post-1990 work made far less of an impact, Coppola’s filmography features a number of other gems ranging from the quiet intensity of The Conversation to the melodramatic emotion of The Outsiders to the delightfully offbeat comedy of Peggy Sue Got Married. And yes, no matter what they say, I’ll always stand behind The Godfather: Part III as a gut-wrenching and tragic conclusion to the story of one of the most iconic characters in film history, Michael Corleone.
- Matt Scalici
The Untouchables: Third Ballot
by Matt Scalici on Apr.06, 2011, under The Untouchables
We’re back again with the third installment of our feature The Untounchables, the FilmNerds staff’s attempt at creating a Hall of Fame for filmmakers. Each month, a panel of contributors here at Filmnerds including Ben Flanagan, Corey Craft, Graham Flanagan, Benjamin Stark and myself, Matt Scalici, will cast our ballots for who we believe to be the greatest filmmakers to ever live. This month we welcome a new voter to the panel, Craig Hamilton who writes a fantastic film blog for The Examiner in Nashville. The top three vote receivers each month will be inducted into our list of Untouchables and enshrined here on this site. You can find a link below to the first two groups of directors admitted to our virtual Hall of Fame but today we present to you the winners of our third ballot, the next three members of The Untouchables.
Akira Kurosawa
It’s easy to see Akira Kurosawa as a filmmaker of grand, full-scale epics. All those flapping banners, wide vistas, volatile relationships, and period settings take his audiences on temporal vacations, visiting themes and stories usually reserved for Shakespeare or Homer. However, for every Ran or Kagemusha, Kurosawa gave us a Stray Dog or Ikiru… stories about the societal pressures and tensions of modern Japanese culture. Even at the heart of his legendary samurai films lay small-scale stories about individuals clashing with social structures. Yojimbo’s Sanjuro disrupts the order of a crime-ridden village. The Seven Samurai remind their patron farmers of their own system’s hypocrisy and rot. Kurosawa is high in the pantheon of the great directors because he was able to combine aching, humanist performances with equally expressive frames that show off exquisite blocking, composition, and decor. A filmmaker could have no better cheat sheet than one that reads “how would Kurosawa do it?”
- Ben Stark
Orson Welles
The life and career of Orson Welles are the stuff Hollywood is made of. Setting aside his career in radio, which alone would put him among the most interesting figures of the 20th Century, Welles will forever hold the distinction of making the most impressive debut of any filmmaker in history when at the age of 24 he made Citizen Kane, a movie that reinvented and challenged conventional filmmaking techniques, attacked one of the most powerful men in the world and over 70 years later is still widely regarded as the greatest motion picture ever made. But you don’t make many friends upsetting the status quo the way Welles did and sadly that revolutionary opening salvo would haunt Welles’ career for the remainder of his life, leaving him a highly respected figure among filmmakers but a reviled one among studio chiefs and power brokers. By the late ’40s, Welles abandoned Hollywood for Europe and while his work was far from regular, he did produce a number of phenomenal pictures in the years following World War II, including the politically-tinged mystery Mr. Arkadin and the brilliant crime noir Touch of Evil. Welles also stands as one of the few truly great actor-directors with his performances in Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil perhaps equalling his work behind the camera and his spectacular turn as Harry Lime in The Third Man holding up today as one of the greatest supporting performances in film history. Some see the Orson Welles story as a tale of unfulfilled potential. I see it as a story of an artist so revolutionary and so fearless that in one single work he did more to change cinema than perhaps any other single filmmaker.
- Matt Scalici
John Ford
I can’t write as much as I probably should be able to about John Ford, but what films of his I’ve seen have left some indelible images, and he’s unquestionably responsible for some of the most iconic scenes and shots in film history — and has reshaped the world’s collective imagery and iconography of the American West. In a long filmography that includes such classics as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers and How The West Was Won, Ford made America look like it has never looked before or since, depicting the sweeping vistas of the West breathtakingly, often with his favorite star, John Wayne, in front of the camera. Not content with building Wayne as a star, he then promptly deconstructed him with The Searchers — Wayne’s best performance — and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” says a character in the latter film, and it seems an apt summary for the legend-building films of John Ford.
- Corey Craft
The Untouchables: Second Ballot
by Matt Scalici on Feb.26, 2011, under The Untouchables
Last month we began our new feature The Untounchables, our attempt at creating a Hall of Fame here at FilmNerds to enshrine the greatest directors of all time. Each month, a panel of contributors here at Filmnerds including Ben Flanagan, Corey Craft, Graham Flanagan, Benjamin Stark and myself, Matt Scalici, will cast our ballots for who we believe to be the greatest filmmakers to ever live. The top three vote receivers each month will be inducted into our list of Untouchables and enshrined here on this site. You can find a link below to the first three directors admitted to our virtual Hall of Fame but today we present to you the winners of our second ballot, the next three members of The Untouchables.
LINK- The Untouchables: First Ballot Inductees
Alfred Hitchock
It’s fitting that Sir Alfred Hitchcock came in on our ballot just ahead of Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick, two other great directors who probably owe a great deal to the man they call “The Master of Suspense”. That’s also probably somewhat true for nearly every filmmaker, mainstream or otherwise, that came after him. Few filmmakers have ever done more to shape the face of modern film and that’s because few filmmakers have ever understood the art and science of filmmaking like Hitchcock did. Creating suspense is all about using the language of film to manipulate the audience and it takes someone with a complete understanding of the medium and how it works on the human mind in order to precisely manipulate an audience in that way.
It’s easy to see (and experience) his masterful manipulative techniques in his darker, more disturbing films like Rebecca, Pyscho and Vertigo but even his “lighter” films like Strangers on a Train or Rear Window are built around deep, psychological fears that Hitchcock knew affected every member of his audience. It’s that combination of loyalty to his own story on-screen and constant awareness of the audience that would be watching that story that made Hitchock such a visionary. While there are dozens of new entries in the genre known as “Psychological Thriller” each year, the vast majority pale in comparison to the work of the man that invented the genre, Alfred Hitchcock.
- Matt Scalici
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese is the king of cinematic anxiety. He seems to have mixed the existential mire of Bergman with the visual agitation of Lang, Murnau, and the German Expressionists to discover a new brand of vibrant nervousness.
His characters are paranoid, angry, ecstatic, sensual, and most of all, guilty. You’ll pardon my tendency to point out his Catholic roots, but there isn’t a filmmaker alive that doesn’t deal with guilt in a more tangible and evocative way. The scripts Scorsese picks are perfect for his cinema-riddled imagination, always full of an internal struggle that he challenges himself to visually convey. I paraphrase, but Scorsese once called cinema an array of images that you thought you saw, and this mentality is clear in all of his films. His movies don’t depict violence, but rather the impression of violence, boiling to the surface from a cauldron of nerves.
Scorsese has entered a sort of career renaissance in the past decade or so, creating works that, as a Scorsese contrarian, I rank right up there with his early- and mid-career masterpieces. Personal favorites of mine include The Departed, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Aviator, and Taxi Driver.
- Benjamin Stark
Stanley Kubrick
Whenever I try to compose a list of my favorite films of all time, I usually encounter a recurring dilemma; specifically my guilt over allowing the films of Stanley Kubrick to take up nearly half of the spots on the list. Barry Lyndon usually takes the top spot… but then I’m also compelled to include elsewhere on the list the movies 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and even Eyes Wide Shut. I firmly believe that those movies, along with some of the other Kubrick movies I didn’t mention, exist as some of the greatest films ever made. When his résumé contains so many contenders for the label of “greatest of all time,” can anyone argue against the notion that Kubrick should be considered as history’s greatest filmmaker? Some will argue that – compared to the length of his career – his body of work itself is conspicuously small. Over the course of 45 years as a feature-director, Kubrick made only 13 films. However, most filmmakers have spent and will continue to spend their entire careers attempting to create a entire body of work that can compare to the greatness possessed by even one of Kubrick’s films. Kubrick, the man, will forever remain a mystery. The work he left behind confirms one thing: he was the Master.
I have to admit that it’s somewhat confusing to me that Kubrick didn’t make the “first pass” in this series. I assume it has something to do with Matt’s BCS-esque rankings-system, along with a possible technical-anomaly that occurred due to Corey Craft voting for the Coens three times at once.
- Graham Flanagan
FilmNerds presents: The Untouchables
by Matt Scalici on Jan.25, 2011, under The Untouchables
It’s time to introduce yet another new feature for 2011 here at FilmNerds, this time with a bit of a democratic twist. Nearly every form of human achievement has its own Hall of Fame somewhere in the world, a pantheon committed to honoring the greatest in their particular field. While there are a number of institutions that recognize greatness in filmmaking, we here at FilmNerds lament that there’s no official body that recognizes a director’s body of work in total and declares him or her a true titan of their craft. This feature, which we’re calling The Untouchables, aims to create a list of the filmmakers that we here at FilmNerds believe to be unquestionable masters in the history of filmmaking. Each month, a panel of contributors here at Filmnerds including Ben Flanagan, Corey Craft, Graham Flanagan, Benjamin Stark and myself, Matt Scalici, will cast our ballots for who we believe to be the greatest filmmakers to ever live. The top three vote receivers each month will be inducted into our list of Untouchables and enshrined somewhere here on this site.
We proudly present to you our first three inductees and hope you’ll join us as we add new members to The Untouchables list each month.
Steven Spielberg
Many cite Steven Spielberg as the inventor of the cinematic “blockbuster.” That’s not exactly accurate, since hugely successful efforts by Walt Disney, David O. Selznick and other pioneers from the Golden Age of Hollywood certainly predate Spielberg’s first appearance on the scene. What Spielberg did do, however, was bring the blockbuster back to life. This happened in the summer of 1975 when Jaws simultaneously horrified and captivated the worldwide movie-going public. While many lesser filmmakers might have capitalized on the success the level of which Jaws experienced by attempting to repeat the formula found in that picture, Spielberg dedicated himself to his own creative evolution. In the years that followed, he gave us a list of classic blockbusters that’s too long to include here. Even this year he continues to create cinematic magic intended for mass consumption. In December we’ll get two new works from Spielberg the director. The first: a highly stylized, technologically groundbreaking interpretation of the classic comic Tintin. The second: a work that speaks more to the Spielberg of old; his adaptation of the children’s novel War Horse, which promises to combine elements from previous Spielberg classics like E.T. and Empire of the Sun. Very few filmmakers not only exist within the pantheon of the greatest filmmakers of all time… they continue to prove exactly why they belong there. Spielberg is one of these artists.
- Graham Flanagan
Woody Allen
While many of the filmmakers you’ll eventually see appearing in this list have perhaps sold more tickets, won more awards, or even been more influential on mainstream blockbusters, no filmmaker you’re likely to see in this list was anywhere near as prolific or consistent as Woody Allen. With a career now entering its sixth decade and including over 40 feature films, no director in history has worked at being great for as long as Allen. You’ll hear some critics say Allen’s films are all alike. Once glance at his filmography shows screwball comedies, dark melodramas, film noir and romantic comedies all represented, and that’s just to name a few. Some other critics will tell you that while, sure, he’s made a lot of films, those films are varying in quality at best. True, not every Allen film is Annie Hall, but consider this: Allen has earned 21 Academy Award nominations for 14 different films. Annie Hall may have been his sole Best Picture winner but ask Alan fans what they believe to be his best film and you’ll get answers in the double digits. Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah and Her Sisters would all get votes. Meanwhile, Woody himself says The Purple Rose of Cairo is his best film. Allen is a filmmaker who was willing to try just about anything but the one consistent element of nearly every film he made, whether it be comedy or drama, is a deep, penetrating understanding of what drives us as human beings, what it is that people want. No one captures the exquisite pain that comes with romantic relationships, along with the occasional elation that makes it all worthwhile, quite like Woody Allen.
- Matt Scalici
The Coen Brothers
Joel and Ethan Coen set a potentially grim standard for original storytelling. You rarely see anyone plagiarize or even pay homage to their work because they wouldn’t really know where to begin. Nobody has a handle on language like the Coens, whether it previously existed in another time or is totally made up in the brothers’ heads. Nobody sets or builds on painfully tangible tone like the Brothers, and hardly any other filmmaker makes the viewer think about what they’ve just watched quite like them either. You find yourself asking plenty of questions after watching Barton Fink, A Serious Man or No Country for Old Men, but the strangest thing is your totally satisfied with the unsatisfactory answers you or others come up with. Joel and Ethan Coen never come across as violent men, but their characters do. Their films depict seedy, misguided and often evil people whose immoral behavior rarely goes unpunished by either coincidence or some higher power. Many would suggest the latter, but the Coens wouldn’t. They don’t suggest anything apart from their characters and whatever else you see on screen. We decide. That’s our chore. Good luck picking your favorite Coen Brothers movie. Scaling their catalog, it becomes a moot point, far greater than a “tough call.” What’s more daunting is landing on a favorite character. The films are populated with a universe of individuals who look funny without chinks in their armor. They’re defined by their rugged edges. Joel and Ethan Coen did and do it their way. Studios bend over for them (see The Hudsucker Proxy), and they wouldn’t have it any other way. Try, if you dare, to find any storyteller with as stellar a track record as the Coens from 1987-1998. Yes, they’re weird dudes. But they’re untouchable.
- Ben Flanagan
