Search

Search only in certain items:

40x40

Martin Scorsese recommended The River (1984) in Movies (curated)

 
The River (1984)
The River (1984)
1984 | Drama
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"The years right after the war were a very special time in cinema, all around the world. Millions were slaughtered, entire cities were leveled, humanity’s faith in itself was shaken. The greatest filmmakers were moved to create meditations on existence, on the miracle of life itself. They didn’t look away from harshness and violence—quite the contrary. Rather, they dealt with them directly and then looked beyond, from a greater and more benign distance. I’m thinking of Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis and Europa ’51, the great neorealist films by Visconti and De Sica, Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff, Kurosawa’s Ikiru and Seven Samurai, Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, Ford’s My Darling Clementine and Wagon Master, and this remarkable picture. This was Jean Renoir’s first picture after his American period, his first in color, and he used Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel to create a film that is, really, about life, a film without a real story that is all about the rhythm of existence, the cycles of birth and death and regeneration, and the transitory beauty of the world."

Source
  
Frankenstein (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
1931 | Horror
Iconic version of the novel by (it says here) 'Mrs Percy Shelley'; might even be definitive if the story was anything like the one in the book. The nature of the piece and its brief running time mean that characterisation and motivation take second place to atmosphere and incident: Henry Frankenstein wants to learn the secrets of life and death, and builds his own creature in the hope of bringing it to life. All does not go well.

Some parts of this film stand up remarkably well 90 years on: the sets, the direction, some of the performances (Karloff is obviously excellent, Colin Clive perhaps doesn't get the props he deserves); it's quite atmospheric. On the other hand, making the Creature mute removes any possibility of discourse between him and Frankenstein (which is really the heart of the novel) - this is a cautionary gothic melodrama without much interest in exploring the ideas that underpin Mary Shelley's work. Still, obviously, a massively influential movie, and well-done for what it is.