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!

1981 Winner, Mephisto

Mephisto

Directed by:  István Szabó

Distributor:  Analysis Film Releasing Corporation

Released:  April 1981

Country:  Hungary

Faustian:  made or done for present gain without regard for future cost or consequences

The Faustian bargain is not much of one.   It’s when you're willing to give anything, ANYTHING, for your obsession.  The oft-told classic tale is of a man named Faust, appropriately enough, who sells his soul to The Devil’s bargainer, Mephistopheles, for 24 years of magical powers.  The story has about a hundred permutations:  In real life, Robert Johnson, blues-man from Mississippi, was said to have sold his soul for mad guitar skills.  The 1936 short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benét is considered a classic.  In 1987’s Angel Heart, a musician named Johnny Favorite is called upon by Louis Cypher (Louis Cyper—Lucifer—get it?) to pay the debt of his soul for becoming a big time heartthrob singer.  Sometimes the deal is in the form of a bet, and the mortal wins in the end, like in Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” (though anyone who had heard that song knows that the Devil and his Band of Demons sound way cooler than fiddlin' Johnny).

Pre-Faustian deal Hendrik

In Mephisto, the 1981 film from Hungary, the Faust character is that of Hendrik Hoefgen, a decent actor in pre-Nazi Hamburg.  When we first meet Hendrik, we find him in a state of angst, almost to the point of panic.  The cause:  An impressive performance, followed by praise of, a fellow thespian, a pretty and noteworthy young actress on the rise.  Hendrik craves the spotlight so much it hurts him to see another person in it.

 

Hendrik is an actor, and his portrayer, Klaus Maria Brandauer, overacts in the role appropriately, every emotion being at a heightened state, as if to tip off the audience that Hendrik himself cannot be just Hendrik.  He is a man without a core, and as such is open to the Faustian bargain he will be presented.

Nazi General Mephisto and Hendrik Mephisto

Hendrik’s sole purpose is to be an important actor, perhaps one day starring in his favorite play, Hamlet.  Early in the film, we see him distance himself from a relationship with his black girlfriend—it seems he does love her, but her race won’t help him in his ambitions as the Nazis gain power.  Hendrik tries to become famous by heading up a Bolshevik theater troupe—that association, not based on any true political principles, will also be jettisoned once it becomes a bad idea in National Socialist Germany.  Hendrik also will ditch a wife he married to better his career once she no longer is a benefit to him.  And instead of playing Hamlet, he takes a role in the play Faustus, and is amazing in his role of Mephisto/Mephistopheles.

Then one day Hitler takes over Germany.  The party wants to have the right people in the right places,

Robert De Niro as Louis Cyphre, Angel Heart

and a Nazi General comes to Hendrik and expresses to him how great an actor he is, and how important he can be to the new government.  We have a man who would do anything to be an important actor, the most important actor, and here is a chance at that greatness.  Whatever will he do?

This movie has interesting performances and is an insightful character study.  There is a lot to like here.  But I have to say I didn’t quite take to it, really.  What was missing, I think, was that the film never gave us a chance to empathize with Hendrik.  I thought of Michael Moriarty’s character in the 1978 miniseries Holocaust, who similarly allows his character to be corrupted by the allure of being an important Nazi.  In that case, we meet him early on, a likable if milquetoast lawyer who seems swept up by circumstances, lacking the moral core to stave off the evil of Nazism.  Hendrik, conversely, embraces whatever will get him

Tenacious D also put their souls at risk versus the Devil

ahead, and so we never root for him, either to make the right choices or to get out of the consequences of his wrong ones.  Perhaps instead of working as an actor for the Nazis, had he challenged the Nazi General  to a rock-off, he would have been better off.  It worked against The Devil when he went down to Georgia.

The Title:  Comes from the title of a 1936 novel by a German exile named Klaus Mann.  The subject of the novel is closely based on a real life German actor named Gustaf Gründgens, who most notably appeared in Fritz Lang’s 1931 masterpiece, M.  But his most famous role was that of Mestipho.

The Culture:  An instructive portrayal of what it must have been like having to be in Germany during the failing Wiemar Republic, and having to learn how to deal with the rise of Nazism.

Agenda danger:  The message of the film is a profound one—when one is willing to accept any principles, or lack of principles, grave consequences are inevitable.  

Best Picture that year:  Chariots of Fire.

Rating:  I do think this movie went on too long and that there was too long a wait to get to what the film was really about, but as a Faust story, it certainly is better than Angel Heart.  And again, Klaus Maria Brandauer’s performance is perfectly over-the-top, and hard to look away from.  Brandauer has been in a handful of American movies, including 1985’s Out of Africa, for which he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor.