alphabetical, going to 11 for 2011:
BEAT THIS! A HIP-HOP HISTORY (1983, Dick Fontaine, video projection): Noted BBC documentarian Fontaine's stylish and vital film documents the nascent hip-hop culture in the Bronx in the early '80s years that were so pivotal to the growth of the genre and subculture, while offering a nuanced, genuinely interested, non-prejudiced viewpoint that could only come from an outsider at that time. We see the expected figures like Afrika Bambaataa and the Cold Crush Brothers and we also get equally necessary, priceless interviews with the likes of Malcolm McLaren, signifying the historical parallels between seemingly disparate genres like punk and hip-hop. For those interested in seeing street level New York of the late '70s and early '80s, not filtered through Hollywood, Fontaine's film offers ample footage of the city as it was then and, with that, evidence of a singularly creative and beautiful cultural moment even, as it were, in the midst of the urban blight typical of the working class unfriendly Reagan era. It's hard to top the image of Bambaataa and a comrade overlooking the Bronx from the top of a tenement building and noting its inherent beauty and their role in it.





THE SOUND OF FURY aka TRY AND GET ME (1950, Cy Endfield, Netflix Instant): Cy Endfield is one of those directors of the moment for me...seems like I've seen a number of gems directed by this Blacklistee recently, or have them in my "to watch" pile. HELL DRIVERS was a major discovery for me when I saw it in a Brit noir series a couple years back at Film Forum; SANDS OF THE KALAHARI, ZULU, and MYSTERIOUS ISLAND remain in my unwatched Blu-ray pile. This brings me to THE SOUND OF FURY, which I caught via Netflix Streaming. Not on DVD (I don't know that it ever appeared on any home video format), it's as dark and disturbing a film noir as one is likely to find. The perpetually underrated Frank Lovejoy is a down on his luck regular joe struggling--big time--to provide for his wife and young son. Catching Lovejoy in a moment of desperation, cocksure, small-time hood Lloyd Bridges manipulates the nice guy into being his wheelman on a number of hold-up jobs. As they usually do in stories like this, things go horribly wrong leading to one of the more shocking, brutal, impassioned, and moving denouements I've seen in an American film, particularly one from the '50s. The events in the film were inspired by the Brooke Hart murder and the lynching that followed, an incident that also gave inspiration to Lang's FURY. At the moment, the estimable Film Noir Foundation is raising funds to restore SOUND OF FURY in order to make it more accessible and widely seen...a great and noble mission, if you ask me. (Netflix Instant Link).
TESS (1979, Roman Polanski, 35mm): I don't know why I hadn't seen Polanski's TESS until now, but I'm glad I was able to experience it via a good 35mm print during MoMA's Polanski retrospective. This is sumptuous, exhilarating, and sensitive filmmaking of the first order. Never mind that Nastassia Kinski is the only one of the film's British characters to speak with a German accent...she is absolutely right and, of course, beautiful in the title role. She is another of the persecuted outsiders that appear so often in Polanski's work. I haven't read Hardy's TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES, nor way too many other literary classics, so I don't know how much or little Polanski diverges from the source. In my eyes, it's one of the benchmark literary adaptations, a lovingly mounted production with great performances all around, sublime score by Philippe Sarde, Oscar-winning photography by the late Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet, and Oscar winning set decoration and design. Another sterling example of Polanski's enormous range as a filmmaker, while also retaining some of his favorite themes and narrative elements.