Best European Movies

Started by Seraphim, October 22, 2003, 08:21:37 AM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Print
Go Down Pages1 2 3
User actions

Seraphim

October 22, 2003, 08:21:37 AM
Hey, I want to know from you what you think are the most beautiful European Movies, whether they are old or young.

I'm from Europe myself, and I know that the general impression from Europeans is that European cinema is a bit underestimated or disliked by the "general American (Hollywood) public" (I'm not talking about the real filmfan, who likes the underground, experimental, alternative, European, etcetera).

I especially like European cinema. It's often a bit more serious, more..real than a lot of stuff out of Hollywood (with only people like Hartley, Egoyan, Cronenberg, Lynch etcetera escaping that "mainstream-like" American cinema).

Favourites include:

-Tarkovsky's works
-Fellini's works
-"Der Himmel uber Berlin" (Wings of Desire) and "In weiter Ferne, so Nah!" (Faraway, so close!) by Wenders
-The "Trois Couleurs-Trilogy" by Kieslowski
-L'appartement
-Tom Tykwer's films: Winterschlafer (Winter Sleepers), Lola rennt, Die Todliche Maria...
-Il ladro di bambini (Amelia- great "new" neo-realistic piece of work from Italy)

Still haven't seen to many films, like work from Bergman, Bunuel, Bresson...
Yeah, unforgivable, but I'm working on that!
Those three are to discovered very soon...

Also have to see much more of Godard, Truffaut, Bertolucci, Visconti...


So, what are your favourite Europeans...?
Seraphim's magic words:
Dutch
Dead Can Dance/ Cocteau Twins
Literature
European/ Art Cinema:
Tarkovsky, Bresson, Fellini, Angelopoulos

Find Your Magali

#1
October 22, 2003, 11:05:18 AM
I'm in no position to call myself a European cinephile. There's soooooooo much I haven't seen. There are many directors whose entire filmography is on my "Movies I'm Ashamed To Admit I Haven't Seen" list.

That said, here's a very small, humble, short-sighted, ridiculously naive and incomplete list of some of the European films I have seen and enjoyed or been impressed by (not including British films on this list, by the way):

Nosferatu (Murnau)
Il Posto (Olmi)
Life is Beautiful (Benigni)
The Saragossa Manuscript (Has)
Wages of Fear (Clouzot)
M (Lang)
Night and Fog (Resnais)
The Decalogue (Kieslowski)
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)

molly

#2
October 22, 2003, 01:31:11 PM
My favourite are (I don't know if the translation is correct)Petersen's "The submarine", and "Karakter" from Netherlands. I havemt seen much of old directors, because videostores don't keep them, so I completely depend on TV

Seraphim

#3
October 23, 2003, 08:00:18 AM
Yeah, Das Boot is GREAT!  :wink:

Karakter is a good film. The best Dutch film is supposed to be Spoorloos (which Hollywood, in it's infinite wisdom, made into a- again crappy- remake, The Vanishing).

Very dark.

More European stuff?
Anyone knows the films of Moodysson, Kaurismaki, Almodovar...Dardenne-brothers, Angelopoulos?

Or older stuff?
I want to define the "ten European Classics", or something like that.  :P

Are Godard's films better than that of Truffaut, De Sica, Wenders, Fellini...?

The first to put on the list has to be Wings of Desire (Wenders)...
The second Otto e Mezzo (Fellini).
And I would also add my personal favourite, Zerkalo (Tarkovsky).

Left open: seven places... :-D
Seraphim's magic words:
Dutch
Dead Can Dance/ Cocteau Twins
Literature
European/ Art Cinema:
Tarkovsky, Bresson, Fellini, Angelopoulos

cine

#4
October 23, 2003, 08:38:45 AM
1. The Decalogue
2. 8 1/2
3. Persona
4. Aguirre
5. Belle de Jour
6. The Third Man
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc

There's some variety there of some of my favs... but I feel thats the best of Kieslowski, Fellini, Bergman, Herzog, Bunuel (debatable for me), Reed, and Dreyer. But like Mags, I'm not a European film encyclopedia by any means.

molly

#5
October 23, 2003, 12:30:26 PM
I love spanish films - they are special, different than the rest of the european films. Wierd, excentric, emotional, ...Almodovar is maybe my favourite European.
This evening starts Claude Chabrol's cycle with "Les bonnes femmes".
"Das Boot" I've seen on TV (videostores here keep marvels like Spiderman, Batman, The Mummy..., they don't even have Taxy Driver anymore, maybe when Scorcese dies and they release all his films, like with Kubrick), and it made me cry like an idiot. Unforgettable.
I've seen that French film, I don't know the exact title, but something about an idiot on a dinner party, and I liked it except the ending - it's stupid, like nothing had happened, so petty bourgeois, disappointment.

rustinglass

#6
October 23, 2003, 12:49:16 PM
1. Underground
2. The Virgin Spring
3. Black cat, White cat
4. Europa
5. Solaris
6. Seventh Seal
7. Bicycle Thief
8. 8 1/2
9. Os Mutantes
10. Ivan's Childhood
"In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don't have experience of the west, they even believe that western shit is pie."
-Emir Kusturica

TheVoiceOfNick

#7
October 23, 2003, 01:28:23 PM
Would many of Kubrick's films qualify?  Many were shot in Europe, after all...

godardian

#8
October 23, 2003, 02:32:41 PM
A really good one that doesn't get mentioned often enough is Theo Angelopolous's Landscape in the Mist. Angelopolous is a Greek master of cinema, and this is probably his best film. It's my favorite, at least. From 1988. Not on DVD yet, unfortunately.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

Gold Trumpet

#9
October 23, 2003, 08:22:08 PM
None of Kubricks would count. The production is american. As with another film already mentioned, The Third Man, is american produced.

~rougerum

mutinyco

#10
October 23, 2003, 08:30:31 PM
However...didn't the BFI name The Third Man as best British film? I think Kubrick had Clockwork in there too. Technically, the money is American, but they're essentially British films.

Same situation can be said of say...several of Kurosawa's films. They're considered Japanese because he directed them and they take place there. But the money came from elsewhere -- Europe, America...
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

Find Your Magali

#11
October 23, 2003, 08:45:46 PM
So does that make "Halloween" a "foreign" film, since it was financed by Syrian native Moustapha Akkad?  :?

Gold Trumpet

#12
October 23, 2003, 08:45:48 PM
Only reason The Third Man is in that place is because Carol Reed is British himself. I'll go half and half on that. Only reason I could see Clockwork of all Kubrick films as one is because the cast and locale is british. I still consider it american.

~rougerum

cine

#13
October 23, 2003, 09:53:50 PM
Selznick CO-produced it, while Cotton and Welles starred in it. Everything else about the film is predominantly British or Austria. I'm still calling it a European film.

SHAFTR

#14
October 23, 2003, 10:02:41 PM
Breathless
Band of Outsiders
Persona
Wild Strawberries
Rocco and His Brothers
Rome, Open City
L'Avventura
Cries and Whispers
"Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that i'll probably regret soon"
Print
Go Up Pages1 2 3
User actions