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Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

My Dozen Most Valued Movies

12/15/2018

4 Comments

 
Picture
​Like it or not, movies are the art form of our age, incomparably important in shaping our view of the world.  In the 20th century they performed the same role as Homer and Virgil in the classical time, the Scriptures in the Middle Ages, and great novelists and poets in the 19th century.  Whether this will be true for the 21st century, with all its new forms of communication, remains to be seen.  We may be entering the age of the Tweet.

No one can possibly master the immense body of film that has been produced.  The writers of Reckonin.com will provide in this series some guidance by describing the movies that have been most important to them in the course of a lifetime of viewing.
Myself, I am the most moved by what may be called “poetic realism,” films that do not avoid the raw tragic reality of our existence but that also convey a sense of the triumphant human spirit---the eternal verities described in Faulkner’s Nobel Address.  In Southern literature, beautiful examples of “poetic realism” can be found in the works of Elizabeth Madox Roberts and George Garrett.
In my view, the French are the greatest filmmakers, the Germans, who cannot entirely escape the nihilism of their national character, are the worst.  The French make movies for grown-ups, the Germans for disturbed adolescents.  I cannot share in the current hysterical hatred of Russia and Iran when I remember the beautiful films that they have produced.  The Brits were great, at least until recent times.  Little Norway and Korea have produced some gems and Italy, Japan, and China in their best films show they have real cultures.
My dozen best:
1.  A Sunday in the Country (French, Un dimanche a` la champagne, 1984).        This quiet masterpiece recounts the joys and sorrows of everyday life, the most important things in our human experience, and the centrality of family to that experience.  (I cannot find a U.S. playable DVD of this film, only a VHS and an absurdly over-priced Blu-Ray.  It may be downloadable, however.)
2.  Pathfinder (Norwegian, Veiviseren, 1987,  not to be confused with a number of other movies with the same title in English).  The heroic resistance of the Sami people to a brutal Viking invasion.  (As with A Sunday in the Country, I can find no U.S. playable DVD.)
3.  The Winter War (Finnish, Talvisoto, 1989).    As a Southerner I cannot help being sympathetic to the struggle of small countries against foreign conquest.  This portrays soldiers in   little Finland’s heroic stand against the Soviet Union in 1939-1940.
4.  Ballad of a Soldier (Russian, 1959).   The tragic human  experience of war and Communism, softened by young love.
5.  Heartland (U.S., 1979 ).   A calmly realistic portrayal of the hardships of American pioneers in Wyoming in the late 19th century and a “feminist” classic in the true sense of that term.
6.  Zulu (British, 1964).  Dramatisation  of the true story of a company of British (mostly Welsh) soldiers who defeated a massive Zulu attack at Rorke’s Drift in South Africa in 1879.  Zulu Dawn is a prequel.
7.  La Scorta (Italian, 1993).  An honest judge and his bodyguard attempt to fight the Mafia despite the interference of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. (Politicians and bureaucrats seldom avoid corruption in all times and places.)
8.  For Whom the Bell Tolls (U.S., 1943).  Hemingway’s moving story of people caught in the Spanish Civil War.  Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman were never better.
9.  55 Days at Peking (U.S./British, 1963).    Europeans  defend  themselves against the murderous Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900,  a heroic  chapter in the white man’s burden that brought civilisation to half a planet.  Charlton Heston as the U.S. Marine colonel, David Niven as the British ambassador, and Ava Gardner as Russian nobility turned angel of mercy are perfection.
10.  The Way Home (Korean, 2002).  What happens when a surly city-bred boy is left with his   rural grandmother. 
11.  The Cruel Sea (British, 1953).  Perhaps the best of a number of British films which portray the devastating naval warfare in the North Atlantic in WW II. I can hardly decide between The Cruel Sea and other examples:  Sink the Bismarck!, In Which We Serve, and The Sea Shall Not Have Them.  The greatness of these films is that they realistically show serious men at war without the technicolour explosions and wisecracking sailors from Brooklyn that Hollywood requires.
12.  Apocalypto (U.S., 2006).  Among the numerous movies directed and produced by Mel Gibson, this amazing one seems to have been overlooked.   A family of  remote peaceful Indians resist death at the hands of the barbarous Mayan “civilisation.”  Truly stunning and uplifting in regard to those eternal verities.
I have dealt with individual movies.  However, there are Television series that have meant a lot to me:  Danger UXB: British soldiers charged with dismantling unexploded bombs in WW II;  The Flame Trees of Thicka: British settlers in Kenya in the early 20th century;  Tenko:  British and Dutch women in Japanese prison camps;  Sharpe:  Napoleonic War adventures;  and A Year in Provence: an English couple copes with life in Southern France.  I would also  add A French Village:  French lives during the Nazi occupation.  
  
4 Comments
Mark link
12/17/2018 03:12:54 am

I found and enjoyed Pathfinder (native title was given as Olefas, IIRC) in a Blockbuster (!) about 30 years ago.

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Michael Martin
12/17/2018 09:23:10 am

Great to see some foreign films here. One of my favorite foreign films is a French one called "Diabolique," about a man who fakes his own death to be with his mistress. It's one of the most interesting twists I've seen in a movie.


One of my American favorites is "The Shootist." John Wayne has a truly commanding presence despite suffering from cancer while filming. The lines "I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on" always stuck with me growing up...

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Robert Peters
12/18/2018 12:38:38 pm

I can recommend the following Russian films, all with subtitles:

Brest Fortress: Depicts the event which unfolded at the fortress which was the strike point for the Wehrmacht on 22 June 1941.

The White Tiger: A metaphysical film dealing with evil embodied in a Tiger Tank which the Red Army cannot destroy. It is in the category of Moby Dick, Jaws and Spielsberg's made-for-TV drama - The Duel staring Dennis Weaver.

The Road to Berlin: The story of a Soviet officer wrongly accused of treason whose earthen cell was overrun by German forces. He must hid, evade and fight with the man designated to be his executioner.

The Island: The story of a monk with extra-ordinary sin and extra-ordinary metaphysical insight.

Burnt by the Sun: Depicts the fate of a Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge in the thirties.

There are two German films which might be interesting.

Die Brücke (The Bridge) shot in 1959 depicting some school boys defending a bridge over which the rear guard of the retreating German army had fled.

Hitler: A Film from Germany by Hans Syberberg. I attended its German premier in the summer of 1978. Both the German Left and the German Right threatened the showing. The theater was surrounded by over 200 German policemen. As the Germans say, one has to have a lot of "Sitzfleisch (sitting flesh) to view this film, for it is 442 minutes long.

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www.college-paper.org link
1/21/2019 03:19:06 pm

I really like and appreciate your movie recommendations. I have watched the "The way home". If I were not mistaken it was released around April 2002. It was really a touching message and I love all of the actors who had been there. They really make the movie worth the watch. I like the grandmother there, that in spite of her osteoporosis, she manages to work humbly and in simple life. The cast of this movie was all great and this movie is very memorable.

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    Author

    Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews

    Dr. Wilson is also is co-publisher of Shotwell Publishing, a source  for unreconstructed Southern books. 

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