So Many Films, SO MUCH TIME

Working to find the Covid silver lining I have watched a ton of the TCM Women Make Film movies in addition to the aforementioned documentary.  As mentioned in the previous post they hit nearly every genre, every style of filmmaking, every continent, every decade from the last 100+ years.  There were experienced women directors with tons of film credits and others who were "one and done".  There were women who worked their way up through the business and artists with no film background who simply created.  And there were superstars -- women who directed, produced, wrote and acted.  People ask which films I liked the most ... well, a bunch.  

It's truly impossible to name just a few favorites among this huge variety of creative works.  The ones I didn't like were not necessarily bad, just not my thing.  Some were more memorable than others.  I would argue that memorable is not always equated with brilliant.  In the case of "The Virgin Suicides" and "We Need to Talk About Kevin" they were each haunting because of subject matter yet I found one much better from a filmmaking standpoint than the other.  

The documentaries left the strongest impressions and interestingly enough most were about the same core subject, losing one's industry and/or culture in a changing world, even though they were set in wildly different times and places.  "Angry Inuk" completely changed this vegetarian liberal's view of seal hunting (going from "against" to "for" in the course of an hour and a half.)  My dislike of Westerns wasn't changed nor was my concern about films from the 1970s.  It won't go down as a great decade of filmmaking.  After the strictness of the first half of the 20th century and the liberation of the 1960s film styles the 1970s seemed to hit a roadblock.  The vision was still present but the voice was lost.  Scripts were often hackneyed, as if there was no "there there".  In the 1970s grounded voices were mostly found in documentaries or films which evoked another era.  

A good number of the films took place during wars and many of those provided the biggest emotional hits.  Many were very well made but extremely hard to take.  The problem with war films (or mobster films for that matter) is that there is a certain predictability, however well-made it is.  In both war and mob films people die, often in the midst of extreme violence, and often without any purpose.  One knows, going in, that there will be incalculable losses and maybe, just maybe, a victory but that victory is transient.  The violence permeates everything and continues on long past the temporary win.

There were tons of historical films and a notable lack of Science Fiction/Fantasy, which wasn't a surprise.  Rom Coms were entirely absent, which was interesting given that these were, well, women's films.  If the point was to break the stereotype they succeeded.  The romances here were few and far between with a good deal of complications.  I wonder what that says about women and love.  Very very few couples made it to the finish line and a good number of movies didn't shy away from exploitation, which flies in the face of the "women don't do that" idea.  One interesting element was that a great number of the female protagonists were essentially unlikeable.  That's something you rarely see in male-created films.  I will say that there were very few instances of me snickering and saying to myself "That would never happen" (i.e. gorgeous young woman falls in love with dumpy older guy).  Thank you, women directors, writers, cinematographers, producers for bringing some "real" to the work.  It was nothing if not a fascinating few months of viewing.

The list of everything I saw is below (missed about 30 of the 100).  In the end, over three months of viewing all these films, some have made an indelible mark while others have already drifted away into the mist.

Documentary:  "Harlan County, USA" (USA, 1976), "Cave of the Yellow Dog" (Mongolia, 2005), "Angry Inuk" (Canada, 2016), "Cameraperson" (USA, 2016), "The House is Black" (Iran, 1963), "Araya" (Venezuela/France, 1959), "The Day I Will Never Forget" (Kenya/England, 2002), "Heart of a Dog" (USA, 2015) and "The Decline of Western Civilization" (USA, 1981).

Fictional/Narrative:  "Wanda" (USA, 1970), "Olivia" (French, 1951), "Lovely and Amazing" (USA, 2001), "Merrily We Go to Hell" (USA, 1932), "The Virgin Suicides" (USA, 1999), "El Camino" (Spain, 1963), "Loving Couples" (Sweden, 1964), "Zero Motivation" (Israel, 2014), "Salaam Bombay!" (India, 1988), "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (USA/England, 2011), "Daughters of the Dust" (USA, 1991), "Orokbefogadas (Adoption)" (USSR/Hungary, 1975), "Middle of Nowhere" (USA, 2012), "Beau Travail" (France, 1999), "The Ascent" (USSR/Belarus, 1977), "The Erl King" (France, 1931), "Daisies" (USSR/Czechia, 1966), "Meshes of the Afternoon" (USA, 1943), "The Birth, Life and Death of Jesus Christ" (France, 1906), "Children of a Lesser God" (USA, 1986), "Meek's Cutoff" (USA, 2010), "Dogfight" (USA, 1991), "Rafiki" (Kenya, 2018), "First Love" (USA, 1977), "The Night Porter" (Italy, 1974), "Danzon" (Mexico, 1991), "Le Bonheur" (France, 1965), "Tomka and His Friends" (USSR/Albania, 1977), "Stop-Loss" (USA, 2008), "Madeinusa" (Peru, 2006), "Corpo Celeste" (Italy, 2011), "Fools in the Mountains" (Norway, 1957), "Shen Si Jie" (China, 2005), "Rachida" (Algeria/France), "Girlfriends" (USA, 1978), "Shoes" (USA, 1916), "Boat People" (China/Vietnam, 1982), "Outrage" (USA, 1950), "Foreign Letters" (USA, 2012), "Mable's Strange Predicament" (USA, 1914), "The Photograph" (Indonesia, 2007), "Silent Waters" (Pakistan, 2003), "Party Girl" (USA, 1995), "La Nuit de la Verite" (Burkina Faso/France, 2004), "Hurt Locker" (USA, 2008), "Gas Food Lodging" (USA, 1992), "Born in Flames" (USA, 1983), "Le Voleur de Crimes" (France, 1969), "The Teckman Mystery" (England, 1954), "Hannah Arendt" (Germany, 2012), "Very Annie Mary" (UK, 2001), "The Connection" (USA, 1961), "Lost in Yonkers" (USA, 1993), "An Angel at My Table" (New Zealand, 1990), "Sweet Bean" (Japan, 2015), "27 Missing Kisses" (Georgia, 2000), "The Kite" (Lebanon, 2003), "My Brilliant Career" (Australia, 1979), "This is the Sea" (Ireland, 1997), "Crossing Delancey" (USA, 1988), "La Cigarette" (France, 1919), "O Ebrio" (Brazil, 1946), "Smithereens" (USA, 1982) and "The Lure" (Poland, 2015).