Top 50 French films - 1913-2013

 

Short films not included.

1913 Fantomas - In the Shadow of the Guillotine
1913 Fantomas - The Murderous Corpse
1916 Les Vampires - The Bloody Wedding
1919 J'accuse
1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc
1928 L'argent
1930 The Golden Age
1932 Blood of a Poet
1935 Toni
1937 Grand Illusion
1939 The Rules of the Game
1946 Beauty and the Beast
1949 At the Grand Balcony
1949 Manon
1950 Orpheus
1953 Mr Hulot's Vacation
1953 The Wages of Fear
1955 Les diaboliques
1956 The Mystery of Picasso
1958 My Uncle
1958 Elevator to the Gallows
1959 400 Blows
1959 Hiroshima mon amour
1960 Purple Noon
1960 Breathless
1960 Shoot the Pianist
1960 Eyes without a Face
1967 Belle de jour
1967 Playtime
1968 Spirits of the Dead
1968 Je t'aime, je t'aime
1971 Devil's Nightmare
1972 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
1973 Fantastic Planet
1974 The Phantom of Liberty
1976 The Tenant
1978 Grapes of Death
1981 The Professional
1981 Quest for Fire
1981 Possession
1982 The Living Dead Girl
1986 The Name of the Rose
1988 Frantic
1988 The Bear
1995 City of Lost Children
1999 The Ninth Gate
2003 Swimming Pool
2003 High Tension
2005 Cache
2013 Venus in Fur

The Divine Punishment 40th Anniversary

Diamanda Galas is the greatest experimental vocalist, an artist and a composer who has always defied convenient categories.

In 1986 The Divine Punishment subverted all the commercial formulas in the music world and ensured its place in the dark music hall of fame. This is the real stuff.

2022 Remaster playlist

The House with Laughing Windows - 50th Anniversary Theme Cover

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F3YGcFIsUc
Music by Amedeo Tommasi.

Two themes that epitomise obsession and death.

The House with Laughing Windows (La casa dalle finestre che ridono, 1976) is an Italian horror classic directed by Pupi Avati.

My audio commentary for the entire film, recorded in 2023:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKjzgnbBJZg

Italian films top 50

Night and Fog 70th anniversary

 

"The prisoners will vanish without a trace. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate."
Chief of the Wehrmacht Wilhelm Keitel, 1942.

Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard / Nacht und Nebel) is a documentary by Alain Resnais. The filmmaker and his crew visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek concentration camps in 1955. The finished film was shown in various French theaters in 1956.

Some of the archive footage shown in this documentary was used to convince people that the Holocaust happened. In just 31 minutes it shows more than I ever wanted to see. Photos of mass graves are nothing like moving images of dead bodies being bulldozed. Their personalities become more visible.

This is one of the best documentaries of all time. The decision not to include any interviews makes it even more powerful.

Night and fog is an old figure of speech that in this case describes the secrecy of extermination operations. The false idea that none of the obsessively recorded details of the Holocaust would ever be publicly available was a characteristic feature of the Nazi regime's delusion.

Written in Waters 30 years

 

Ved Buens Ende was active in the mid-90s, just at the right time when black metal '93 was becoming boring. Written in Waters is an imaginative effort and it reminds me of memorable art music. The dissonance is not too obvious.

One of the compilations I listened to in 1997 had Carrier of Wounds on it, but unfortunately I usually skipped it. I wasn't ready for it at the age of 12. Fleurety had recorded a song called Absence and I remember listening to that a lot. Arcturus interested me even more.

The next step a few years later was listening to the Thorns discography, the 1994 demo from Ved Buens Ende and of course, Written in Waters.

I'm so glad they can still tour and bring in some sort of crowd.

Top 20 tinted films

 

These weren't included in the top 50 black-and-white films.

1916 Intolerance
1919 Madame Dubarry
1919 The Doll
1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1920 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
1920 The Golem
1920 Leaves from Satan's Book
1921 The Haunted Castle
1921 The Phantom Carriage
1921 Destiny
1922 Häxan
1922 Nosferatu
1922 Phantom
1922 Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame
1924 Waxworks
1925 The Pleasure Garden
1925/1929 The Phantom of the Opera
1927 The Cat and the Canary
1927 The Lodger

David Lynch 1946-2025

 

Secret Music by Siegfried Sassoon

 

Lover

"The sensible is always worried

and looking for prominence;

the lover is always lost

and without a prominent sense."

Mawlana Rumi, To Be a Child Again

Italian films top 50 - 1911-1988 - From Inferno to Paradise

 

1911 Inferno
1946 Rome, Open City
1948 Bicycle Thieves
1954 La strada
1960 Black Sunday
1962 Boccaccio 70
1963 Il demonio
1963 8½
1963 The Girl Who Knew Too Much
1963 Black Sabbath
1964 The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
1964 Castle of Blood
1964 Blood and Black Lace
1964 Red Desert
1964 A Fistful of Dollars
1965 Fists in the Pocket
1965 The 10th Victim
1966 The Battle of Algiers
1966 Kill, Baby, Kill
1966 Blow-Up
1967 The Harem
1968 Once Upon a Time in the West
1968 The Great Silence
1968 Death Laid an Egg
1968 Diabolik
1969 Satyricon
1970 The Conformist
1970 Violent City
1970 The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
1970 Clowns
1970 Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
1971 Sacco and Vanzetti
1971 A Fistful of Dynamite
1971 A Lizard in a Woman's Skin
1972 Black Belly of the Tarantula
1972 Don't Torture a Duckling
1972 Four Flies on Grey Velvet
1973 Amarcord
1974 Arabian Nights
1974 The Perfume of the Lady in Black
1975 Autopsy
1975 Deep Red
1976 The House with Laughing Windows
1977 Suspiria
1977 Anima Persa
1979 Zombie Flesheaters
1980 Cannibal Holocaust
1982 Tenebre
1983 Zeder
1988 Cinema Paradiso

Robert E. Howard wrote a story about screen time almost a 100 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirrors_of_Tuzun_Thune

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0603481h.html

"A wild, weird clime that lieth sublime
Out of Space, out of Time."
— Edgar Allan Poe

Metal albums top 10 - 30 years of metal

Ten inventive metal albums spanning 30 years, chosen by me after listening to metal for 30 years.

1971 Black Sabbath: Master of Reality

1984 Celtic Frost: Morbid Tales

1986 Slayer: Reign in Blood

1986/1989 Repulsion: Horrified

1989 Morbid Angel: Altars of Madness

1989 Godflesh: Streetcleaner

1995 Ved Buens Ende: Written in Waters

1997 Ulver: Nattens Madrigal

1997 Arcturus: La Masquerade Infernale

2001 Thorns: Thorns

Carheart by Virus - 20 weird years

 

It took me too long to discover Ved Buens Ende and discovering Virus took even longer.

Like Snorre Ruch from Thorns, Carl-Michael Eide is one of the best guitarists in the world. Carheart is still my favourite from Virus.

May 2023 be filled with genuine marvel

Angelo Badalamenti 1937-2022

 

Listen to others...

 

Fascism shall perish

 

"Now I'm expecting all of you to volunteer for Waffen-SS. Or is there someone among you who doesn't want to volunteer?"
- Unknown SS officer (from Guido Knopp's Hitlers Kinder)

"The meanings of words are not in the words; they are in us."
- S. I. Hayakawa: Language in Thought and Action

It's a pandemic

Carnival of Souls on Halloween 2021

Spirits are wandering.

My first ever Halloween costume comes from Herk Harvey's 1962 film Carnival of Souls. The Finnish title was Helvetilliset (The Hellish Ones).

The abandoned amusement park in the background is in Vaasa, Finland.

"It was more than just not being able to hear anything or make contact with anyone. It was as though for a time I didn't exist. As though I had no place in the world. No part of the life around me."

My 20-year relationship with Suspiria (1977)

I first saw Dario Argento's Suspiria in 2000, when I was 15. Before that I loved horror films, reading about them and listening to the soundtracks. Suspiria was one of those creative experiences I was truly looking for. It was closer to what I had imagined in my fantasies.

You have to feel films like Suspiria. That is the most important thing.

Powerful images, amazing soundtrack, incredible atmosphere. You can't just write it down. There is something in the air.

Talking about the Berlin Wall sounds important, but it doesn't necessarily feel interesting. It doesn't make the film deeper or more important.

Let's say you're looking at a painting, and it's German expressionism with things from the First World War. The painting's full effect exists because of the way it feels, not just because of those references.

Films like Suspiria will always piss people off. The best 70s filmmakers were truly taking risks. They didn't have the safety net of expectations we have now. What they had was a playground for imagination.