My BFF Wrap-Up: My Ranking

Starting in June 2016, I watched and reviewed every winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, or in short, Best Foreign Film (BFF), in reverse chronological order from the 2015 entry to the awards inception in 1947 (watching the 2016 winner at the end).  Part of the experiment was to see how many of these I would be able to find.  In most cases, I was able to borrow the DVD of each film from the Cuyahoga County Library system (a consistently top rated system in Northeast Ohio), and as things went further back in time, that meant using the inter-library systems CCL employs, SearchOhio and OhioLINK.  I did have to watch a couple on the dusty old VCR.  On two or three occasions when I couldn’t find the movie through the CCL system, I was able to get DVDs from the Cleveland Public Library.  Once I paid $2 to watch a movie on Amazon, and that was the grand total of money I spent on this project.  I did find a couple rare films online, having exhausted every other possibility.  Only once was I not able to find a film at all, at least with English subtitles, and that was 1950’s The Walls of Malapaga.  I watched it only in French with Portuguese subtitles, and decided to review it anyway.

My reviews were intended for people who don’t normally watch foreign films, a group that included me not all that long ago.  I found a lot of the movies worth watching, not just ones you might see at an art house, but movies I am convinced would have been mainstream American favorites had they been in English.  I also sat through a lot of tedious, self-admiring crap that got awards for having the right political or social view to the voters of the Academy.  But enough about The Sea Inside.  My goal was to make the reviews be entertaining, especially when the movie wasn't, and to give American viewer something they could relate to.

The list here is my amateurish attempt to rank what is perhaps the unrankable.  There are a variety of genres and so many different cultures represented here that it is almost unfair to compare them against each other.  But I did anyway, and the films are listed below from best to worst.  Click any movie title to read the review.  You can follow me on Twitter at @hawley5150.   

Enjoy!

1989, Cinema Paradiso, Italy

2006, The Lives of Others, Germany

1951, Rashomon, Japan

1998, Life Is Beautiful, Italy

1957, La Strada, Italy

1949, The Bicycle Thief, Italy

2011, A Separation, Iran

1975, Dersu Uzala, Soviet Union

1967, Closely Watched Trains, Czechoslovakia

1947, Shoeshine, Italy

1964, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Italy

1963, 8½, Italy

2009, The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentina

1972, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, France

1983, Fanny and Alexander, Sweden

1962, Sundays and Cybele, France

1965, The Shop on Main Street, Czechoslovakia

1986, The Assault, The Netherlands

2000, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Taiwan

1987, Babette's Feast, France

1960, The Virgin Spring, Sweden

2002 Nowhere in Africa, Germany

1958, My Uncle, France

1971, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Italy

1968, War and Peace, Soviet Union

1957, Nights of Cabiria, Italy

2007, The Counterfeiters, Austria

1974, Amarcord, Italy

1952, Forbidden Games, France

 
1961, Through a Glass Darkly, Sweden

2014, Ida, Poland

2016, The Salesman, Iran

1948, Monsieur Vincent, France

2008, Departures, Japan

2015, Son of Saul, Hungary

1970, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Italy

1985, The Official Story, Argentina

1969, Z, Algeria

1966, A Man and a Woman, France

1973, Day for Night, France

1990, Journey of Hope, Switzerland

1980, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, Soviet Union

1982, Begin the Beguine, Spain

1993, Belle Époque, Spain

1959, Black Orpheus, France

1992, Indochine, France

1988, Pelle the Conqueror, Denmark

2005, Tsotsi, South Africa

1977, Madame Rosa, France

1981, Mephisto, Hungary

1954, Gate of Hell, Japan

2010, In a Better World, Denmark

1955, Samurai, The Legend of Musashi, Japan

2001, No Man's Land, Bosnia and Herzegovina

1976, Black and White and in Color, Ivory Coast

1979, The Tin Drum, West Germany

1996, Kolya, Czech Republic

1994,  Burnt by the Sun, Russia

1978, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, France

2012, Amour, France

2013, The Great Beauty, Italy

1997, Character, Netherlands

2014, The Sea Inside, Spain

1995, Antonia's Line, Netherlands

2003, The Barbarian Invasions, Canada

1991, Mediterraneo, Italy

1984, Dangerous Moves, France

1999, All About My Mother, Spain

1950, The Walls of Malapaga, France/Italy (not ranked)

FINE!

1963 Winner, 8½

8½

Directors:      Federico Fellini

Distributed by:  Embassy Pictures (in U.S.)

Released:  February 1963

Country:  Italy

Anyone who has ever had to write anything of any length, be it an assignment or something done voluntarily, knows what “writer’s block” is.  Staring at a blank page, trying to come up with an idea to start things off, is the worst.  And I can tell you, reviewing a Fellini movie like 8½, 1963’s Best Foreign Film, is a good way to come up with writer’s block.  Not only is this movie is a tough nut to crack, but it is considered a masterpiece.  What can I possibly add?

Well, the honest answer is nothing.  However, I’m not alone in my writer’s block.  The film is about a director, Guido, who essentially has writer’s block, only it’s in relation to his being a director.  Presumably, Guido is really a stand-in for Fellini himself, trying to figure out what he wanted to say in this big budget science fiction he is doing.  Guido is unsure of himself and his relationship with the women in his life. In other words, he’s just like every other guy, except he needs to figure out a way to translate his feelings into film.

Mastroianni and Aimee

The movie starts with a traffic jam.  But unlike the singing, dancing kind in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, this one is stifling and claustrophobic to the point of suffocating Guido in his car.  He cannot breathe, but finally escapes the death trap automobile and floats to the clouds.  Next, he’s a human kite with a rope around his leg, and when he returns to earth, he does so violently and at the hand of his critics.  This is what “director’s block” is for Guido, and this is the movie where Fellini abandoned neo-realism for imagery and symbolism.

Essentially, Guido is trying to figure out what to put in his film.  He is played sympathetically, and often comically, by Marcello Mastroianni, one of Italy’s biggest stars.  Intertwined with this “director’s block” of Guido’s is his relationship to all the women of his life.  First, there’s his mistress, the curvaceous and uncouth Carla, whom he keeps around for one obvious reason.  His wife Luisa, played by A Man and a Woman’s Anouk Aimée, comes to visit him on the set, and his hopes that the two can reconcile don’t seem too promising.  Then there’s his “Ideal Woman,” who is at first just a fantasy, but materializes late in the film as the actress he’s been waiting for.  She’s played by Claudia Cardinale, perhaps best known to American audiences for her role in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.  Guido’s views on women are best shown in his extended fantasy that begins with a harem of women existing only to serve him, ending a whole lot less enjoyably.  As confused as Guido is, it’s hard not to envy him just a little for having all these women revolve around him.

Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon a Time in the West

No doubt this is an odd film, from its strange start to its bizarre finish.  Martin Scorsese said in an interview once that in introducing his daughter to this movie, he knew he first had to show her some of Fellini’s earlier, more accessible works, like 1960’s La Dolce Vita, because 8½ is such a tough one to get your head around.  Well, I don’t know about that.  What I can tell you is you cannot expect to pick up on everything when you first watch it; but significantly, you can get the point of the movie without necessarily understanding every scene.  This is film as art: a well-shot, black-and-white masterpiece about relationships and directing and yes, writer’s block.  If you just type away, or in Guido’s case, direct away, you’ll get through it, even if in the end it isn’t as good as you would have liked it to be.  Like this review.

Opening scene in La La Land

The Title:  Otto e mezzo.  Previous to this movie, Fellini did six feature films, two short films, and co-directed a film; by his math, that’s 7½ pictures.  This one would be his 8½th.  I guess he had writer’s block when coming up with the title.

The culture:  There is some Italian culture from the early ‘60’s in here, but more to the point, this is a movie about the culture of filmmaking.  Roger Ebert called it “the best film ever made about filmmaking.”  Certainly it surpasses Truffaut’s film Day for Night, Best Foreign Film from 1973, a pleasant enough movie also about a director dealing with the difficulties of directing a film.  But what I kept thinking about was the terrific documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, made by Eleanor Coppola.  That movie is about how her famed director-husband, Francis Ford Coppola, just about went off his rocker making his epic Vietnam War drama Apocalypse Now.  In that movie, Coppola also has director’s block, not knowing how to finish the movie, and plowing through anyhow.

8½ opening scene

Agenda danger:  Fellini is basically criticizing his own failings in this film, and really there is no political persuasion to this story.

Best Picture that year:  Tom Jones.  It’s not unusual for the Best Foreign Film to be much more noteworthy and acclaimed than the Best Picture of the same year.  This is one instance.

Rating:  Take Martin Scorsese’s advice—this is a great one to watch after having seen La Strada (review coming) or even Amarcord (which is reviewed here).  But you can’t watch 8½ without realizing you are watching a great film.  Mastroianni is a pleasure to watch, and the fantasy scenes, though sometimes difficult to interpret, are interesting and often humorous, like a good dream.  My feeling is that anyone seriously studying film needs to see this, but it isn’t so bad for the average movie-watcher either.