Best Foreign Films?

[Bernadette]

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manon_des_Sources_(1986_film)

I need to watch these again. Haven't watched them since highschool French class.

I also like Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise, by Majid Majidi.

[Larry]

La Dolce Vita is fantastic, with amazing shots of early 1960's Rome. It really exposes the nihilism of modern life.

The 400 Blows



The Bicycle Thief

Breathless(the original Godard film, not the Paul Schrader remake)

The Gospel According to Matthew

The Blue Angel

Black Sunday

Suspiria

Murnau's Faust

Grand Illusion

La Poison

Purple Noon

And I'm sure I've forgotten some.

[Pon de Replay]

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

Diary of a Chambermaid (2015)

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Into Great Silence (2005)

Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Shadow Magic (2000)

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964)

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring (2003)

The Turin Horse (2011)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Vampyr (1932)

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (1989)

[Pon de Replay]

Those are some non-Bergman favorites that come to mind.  I didn't include films already mentioned on this thread.  Three that Matto mentioned would be on the list: Andrei Rublev, Ordet, and The Leopard.  The Leopard is my favorite Italian film by far.  It's possibly my second favorite period movie after Barry Lyndon; it's a masterpiece with a single flaw: the casting of Burt Lancaster.  Nothing against the great man, but the presence of a recognizable American actor with dubbed Italian dialogue just sets the whole thing off-kilter.  Lancaster's smirking face was perfect for something like Elmer Gantry, but it's all wrong for the Prince.  I don't know if Visconti did it to appeal to a US audience, or if he genuinely liked Burt Lancaster for the role.  An Italian actor would've really made it.  It's a marvel to look at, though.  "Sicilian rococo decadence."  The young Claudia Cardinale was beautiful to say the least.  Larry included Black Sunday, which even though it wouldn't make my list still has probably some of the best black-&-white horror photography ever shot.  "Coffins in cobwebbed catacombs."  There are some early Roger Corman  films, from when he was mining the Lovecraft and Poe canons, that are equally as good color movies.  But all of them suffer from melodrama and excess.

[Matto]

I really liked Ugetsu

and Sansho the Bailiff

by Mizoguchi. I thought they were both excellent. I particularly liked Sansho and want to see it again. I thought it was great. I like Japanese films over any other foreign country, including Anime.

[Christe Eleison]

I really liked Ugetsu

and Sansho the Bailiff

by Mizoguchi. I thought they were both excellent. I particularly liked Sansho and want to see it again. I thought it was great. I like Japanese films over any other foreign country, including Anime.

Happy Belated Birthday, Matto!  

Many Blessings for the coming year!

[Pon de Replay]

Happy belated birthday, Matto.  You mentioned it on another thread a few days back and I didn't acknowledge it.  I don't think I have a favorite country for foreign films.  Many of my favorites would probably be Swedish, but that's strictly on account of Bergman.  I haven't seen as many Japanese movies as most other cinephiles, owing to my dislike of samurai movies.  Like their American counterpart, the Western, I just don't get it.  But there is always an exception to the rule, and Harakiri is precisely that.  It's a mannered and disciplined samurai movie.  I don't know if you've seen it, but it's one of my favorite Japanese movies after Kwaidan.  Kurosawa directed a lot of samurai movies, but I like his Ikiru.  Anime is another Japanese export that baffles me.  But I also like a surrealist picture called The Woman in the Dunes, as well as a lurid ghost story called Kuroneko.


Harakiri (1962)


Kuroneko (1968)

[Pon de Replay]

I also want to retract my dismissal of Black Sunday as "not being on my list."  I haven't seen it in many years, but I looked at some images to refresh my memory and the photography is even better than I remembered.  It's a seminal movie in the horror genre, so maybe its moments of going over the top ought to be excused.  I currently have a DVD on loan from Netflix called The Butterfly Room, which has Barbara Steele in it, and the director deliberately chose her due to her iconic status.

[Jacob]

PdR, what baffles you able the Western?

[Pon de Replay]

PdR, what baffles you about the Western?

One thing that doesn't baffle me is the landscape.  I love deserts and prairies.  Two of my favorite films, Days of Heaven and The Reflecting Skin, have western backdrops.  But they couldn't be called Westerns.  I don't even think Badlands could really be called a Western.  It's probably the characterizations.  They're usually simplistic.  I have nothing against stoicism, but the stoicism of Western characters is usually a kind of grizzled, show-offy, cocksure stoicism.  It tends to be a caricature.  There just seems to be this primitivist, anti-intellectual vein coursing through Westerns.  The "action movie" is probably the proper descendant of the Western.  And maybe it's all correct, as the Old West was a lawless and chaotic place where things got necessarily reduced to the basics.  Maybe that's why my favorite Western, if I have one (and if it could even be called a Western) is the current TV series Westworld, because it recognizes that the Old West of the Western is a macho fantasy-land.

The characterizations are similar in samurai movies.  As soon as you see some taciturn, curmudgeonly, sake-swilling old goat, you immediately know he's going to turn out to have a heart, or a soft spot, or do the right thing against everyone's expectations.  It's usually just too easy.

[Padraig]

Italian -- Tree of Wooden Clogs (Honorable mention: 8 1/2)
Swedish -- The Seventh Seal
Greek -- Electra
Russian -- Ostrov
Korean -- Deongjang
Chinese -- To Live (Honorable mention: Farewell My Concubine)
Japanese  -- Rashomon

Animated  -- 5cm per Second

[Josephine87]

Come and See (1985).  Crazy war movie about the SS ruining poor Slavs in Byelorussia, told from the POV of a young boy.  To me, this is a real horror movie.

[Jacob]

PdR, what baffles you about the Western?

[...]

Now that I think about it, I seem to recall us having exchanged a few words on Westerns before.  I don't know what all you've seen, but the Man with No Name is not the end all be all of Westerns.  The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance for instance is a movie I think you might enjoy based on what you're looking for.

[Maximilian]

Italian -- Tree of Wooden Clogs (Honorable mention: 8 1/2)
Swedish -- The Seventh Seal
Greek -- Electra
Russian -- Ostrov
Korean -- Deongjang
Chinese -- To Live (Honorable mention: Farewell My Concubine)
Japanese  -- Rashomon

Animated  -- 5cm per Second

It's surprising to see "Doengjang" and "5 cm per Second" on this list, since the others are routinely considered for lists of the greatest movies of all time. But then when I give the matter more consideration, I have to admit that they belong there.

Korean cinema has become a major player. It now has an enormous footprint in world popular culture, which was not true even a few years ago when we started watching it. Of all the movies made in that time-span, are there any better than "Doenjang"? Not that I have seen. I hear rumors that this movie or that movie are classics. But of the ones that I have viewed, "Doengjang" is the best. It also deserves its special status by virtue of its stated goal to seek for the heart and soul of Korea.

It's search for the soul of Korea reminds me of the conclusion of "Portrait of the Artist as  a Young Man" when James Joyce says " I go to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

[Bernadette]

I saw To Live years ago, and it was excellent. I'd love to see it again, but it seems difficult to find to rent.