Anyway, here are ten movies I especially hated. A word about my #1 choice: There’s no satisfaction in putting it at the top of the list. That it’s the worst movie of 2011 is both obvious and beside the point. Super is a film that can only be described as the product of a non-functioning personality. At the Iras we do the Dramamine award (for the movie that makes you sick) and the Sominex award (for the movie that puts you to sleep). This one deserves an award all its own: Thorazine. I watched it thinking, “Well, this is incompetent and sadistic storytelling, and thoroughly boring filmmaking, but never mind about any of that stuff — the guy who made this movie needs help.”

1. Super
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
3. Le Havre
4. Bridesmaids
5. Melancholia
6. Beginners
7. The Iron Lady
8. The Help
9. The Human Centipede 2
10. 50-50
11. Albert Nobbs

Aaron: I happen to think Super is really good, so consider me a “non-functioning personality” (whatever the fuck that means… what the fuck does that mean, Alex? I feel like that’s some of that linguistic gymnastics that you like to do that really doesn’t mean anything but sounds really powerful. Congratulations, Alex. You’re good at insults that convey no meaning.).

Also – I enjoy going to movies whether they’re good or not and don’t seek out bad movies knowing I’m not going to like them. That would be sociopathic. You think bad movies are all bad (because of terrible reviewers?) and should be regarded as such without seeing them. I see all movies as having a chance of being good, so I see them.

Here’s my list (with some links to my own review blog):

1) The Help
2) Sarah’s Key
3) Rise of the Planet of the Apes
4) Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D
5) Miral
6) Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
7) Super 8
8) The Roommate
9) Margaret
10) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Alex: Oh come on. You saw Bad Teacher. You saw 30 Minutes or Less. You saw the Arthur remake. You can’t tell me you had any sort of hope for any of these movies. What characterizes your 10-worst list is disappointment — yes, I can see how any of those ten movies might have seemed interesting, or at least worth checking out, from the outside, only to reveal themselves as the disingenuous shit-shows they really are. (Although I liked Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close — which is also my favorite porn title of the year.)

And I take it as a love bite that you accuse me of “linguistic gymnastics.” That you think I’m capable of composing nifty phrases that don’t actually mean anything is sort of flattering — I should get a job as a Republican speechwriter.

But Super is like Psycho if the entire movie was from Norman Bates’s point of view and if it had basically a happy ending. Have a look at the IMDB profile of James Gunn, the writer-director of Super. The profile, complete with its totally boring bits of trivia (“Choreographed the sex scenes for Tromeo and Juliet.” — Oh! Cool! I’ve always wondered who choreographed those sex scenes!), was almost certainly written by the man himself. (He was married to Jenna Fischer??) Truly, this person is a sociopath.

Aaron: Jesus, Alex, it must be really hard to live in a world filled with such liberals and their snarky senses of humor. I’m sorry you didn’t get the joke.

Yes – Gunn comes from Troma Studios – have you ever seen any of their films? The Toxic Avenger? Is that sociopathic? It’s called sarcasm, son, and you should know it when you see it.  (And what’s so bad about Psycho from Bates’ point of view? Maybe it’s a bit banal but it sounds like it could be good.) Super is a send-up of dumb superhero movies. It’s hilarious. I’m sorry it doesn’t have the sensibilities of a great film like Mission Impossible 15, but it didn’t have the budget for such luxury.

I see some movies that I expect will be stinkers, but I certainly don’t avoid movies because some asshole critic tells me it’s bad (knowing that most of those critics wouldn’t see or appreciate half the films I like). Rise of the Planet of the Apes got a bunch of positive reviews and was on a ton of Top Ten lists and I thought it was godawful, so what do you do with that one? Was I seeing it because I thought it would be terrible? Maybe you shouldn’t speak for me, dear.

There were three films I was honestly disappointed with in 2011, McQueen’s Shame, Morris’ Tabloid and James’ The Interrupters. None of them are on my worst list because they’re not really terrible, merely beneath the level they should be based on the talent of their creators. My worst list is filled with terrible and offensive garbage with no redeeming qualities. All middlebrow, fake-smart and sentimental. Sure I was disappointed that I had to sit through them, but that’s about it.

Alex: And while I’m not speaking for you, baby doll, I’ll thank you not to speak for me. I didn’t say the critics help me pre-judge anything. I pre-judge things all on my own, thank you.

If you take the humans out of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, you have a great movie.

And I’m with you on Shame. What a stuuuuuuuuuupid movie.

Although Michael Fassbender is in heated competition with Thomas Dekker (of Kaboom fame) for Best Penis of 2011.

You know what it is, Aaron? You’ve spoiled me. I’ll never see as many movies as you do in a year, honey, and I lean on you to alert me when something that looks like total trash turns out to be worth seeing. (Even though you’re often wrong, as in the case of Super and Hesher, but that’s okay, we’re none of us perfect.)

A LOT would be wrong with Psycho if it were all from Norman’s point of view, and if the movie asked us to feel everything he felt, to desire everything he desired. Hell, The Iron Lady is entirely from dear old Maggie’s point of view, and therein lies its disingenuousness and political irresponsibility.

Yes, poopsie-kins, I’ve seen The Toxic Avenger, I know the Troma aesthetic, and Super ain’t it. Super is solipsistic male misogyny that fetishizes violence and hates the world and all people. (Actually, maybe that’s too much praise; I’m not sure other people register inside this guy’s psychosis.)

1. The Tree of Life
2. Moneyball
3. A Separation
4. Hugo
5. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
6. Meek’s Cutoff
7. In Darkness
8. Certified Copy
9. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
10. Weekend

Mock away, Aaron…

Aaron:

Wow. I don’t really know if this is worth mocking, but I will say that Moneyball is a very strange second-best film of the year… strange because it’s so average (not really bad, but just average… more of a fart in the wind than any storm in its own right) – but hey, whatever.

Here’s my list (with several similarities) (hyperlinks to my own review blog):

1) The Tree of Life
2) The Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D
3) Aurora
4) Meeks Cutoff
5) The Future
6) Mysteries of Lisbon
7) The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu
8) A Separation
9) Certified Copy
10) The Sleeping Beauty and Tomboy

Alex: I love that Moneyball is the one you go after — I can’t believe I escaped your wrath on Mission Impossible! Your list is stubbornly arthouse, and even though our lists have four movies in common, you have at least two movies on your list that will get Sominex points from me (The Sleeping Beauty and Mysteries of Lisbon).

Aaron: Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Shalit, I didn’t know smart movies or movies that give a damn and don’t talk down to their audiences were bad. I guess that The Sleeping Beauty and Mysteries of Lisbon didn’t play in multiplexes across Mississippi and Arkansas means they’re snobbish and elite (in the bad way that Republicans use the word).

I would criticize Moneyball but I’ve already forgotten it. (Wait, I feel like it’s about a failure of a man pulls a rabbit out of a hat by stealing someone else’s ideas and making them sorta work… until they don’t really work … and he has a family with a daughter who plays guitar? Sounds dull.) Mission Impossible: Ghost Penis is such a banal action movie, again, it’s not really worth much criticism… except to say that exterior-building-scaling scene is way too short. If you’re going to pay supporters of slavery to shoot a movie in their country you might as well get your money’s worth.

And I’m happy Moneyball got well deserved attention (six noms, including best picture and best adapted screenplay), though I know Aaron isn’t with me on this one.

I’m also a huge fan of Hugo, but even though it’s the most nominated film (12), it’s hard to see the Academy rallying around it. It’s almost too smart for them. They’re more likely to champion the movie that makes them feel smart (The Artist).

Aaron doesn’t like Hugo. He also doesn’t like ice cream, puppies, or joy.

Anyway, as ever, these are the bits of plant life sticking up through a sea of middlebrow and reactionary mud. Aaron and I haven’t planned a format for this particular post, but just to keep me from going on ad infinitum, I’m simply going to pull out the three nominations that annoy me most:

• Meryl Streep as best actress for The Iron Lady — or, as our dear friend Damien called it, The Vile Evil Tory Harridan. Meryl’s sure to win her third Oscar, and man is she workin’ hard to bag it, but I actually think it isn’t a great performance. Actually, I’m not even sure it’s a performance. Under a great makeup job, Meryl never gives us access to the soul of dear old Maggie (if there is one), and because so much of the movie is about Alzheimer’s-afflicted Maggie going steadily crazier, Meryl can relish looking befuddled and distant. Meanwhile, in her younger, saner patches we find Meryl’s Maggie stiff almost the point of caricature. I was more impressed with Alexandra Roach, who plays the young Maggie — in a more interesting stretch of the film, it’s worth adding. Roach, and that section of the movie, begin to show us how a personality like Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) could come to exist in  working-class, post-war England. How iconoclasm and fascism could exist in the same character. (It really points up the missed opportunity that is The Iron Lady.) Meryl’s best scene is also, not coincidentally, the best-written and best-directed scene in the film: the scene with her doctor. The movie is otherwise directed without a style or point of view, and I couldn’t escape the sense that we were seeing the film of a screenplay that was only on its third draft. I’ve done enough theatre to know that usually everything goes wrong together, and when things go right they go right together, and here Meryl is exactly as uninteresting as the movie around her.
• Christopher Plummer’s supporting-actor nod for Beginners. Nothing against Plummer, who ought to have won a couple of Oscars already (namely for Inside Daisy Clover and/or The Insider). But he just doesn’t have much to do in this movie. Something feels obligatory about the nomination, and not just because Plummer is old and Oscar-less, but because he’s playing a gay character. It’s the kind of performance (well, casting, really) you often hear described as “brave.” Why is it brave? Because he risks people actually thinking he’s actually gay in actual real life? Did anyone start to think that Anthony Hopkins might actually enjoy eating people? Gimme a break. (Plummer’s cause isn’t helped by the fact that I hated Beginners.)
• But here’s the one that really makes me want to cut a mofo. Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo are nominated for “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” for the odious, nasty, unfunny, unstructured mess that is Bridesmaids. Let’s pretend, though, that it is funny, and that there is a basic humanity in its comedy. Let’s also pretend that its moments of sincerity are earned, are genuine. Even then the movie is a series of schticks. Who sees craft in this screenplay? How can such labored and implausible events be called “best writing”? So the bitch bridesmaid poisoned the lunches of the other bridesmaids so that when they all went dress shopping together, the other women would get the poops ahoy and the bitch would be the only one able to choose the dress? That was her plan? That’s the joke? It’s so fucking labored. The whole movie is like that. The screenplay is also up for a BAFTA and a Writers Guild Award. I’m totally baffled.
• Yes, I said I’d only do three, but in the time since I wrote all the words above, I’ve been infuriated anew. I’ll keep this short. The Ides of March, which I finally saw last night, is also a writing nominee. In a story replete with — indeed, characterized by — hackneyed events and lazy dialogue, one line stuck out as being unconscionable: “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna jump ship when the shit hits the fan.” It’s back-to-back-to-back cliches, and it’s also a mixed metaphor. Lines like that should never get past a first draft.

Aaron: So I fell and badly sprained my hand the other day, making typing at the computer (yeah – typing – totally) difficult, so I’ll keep this short.

Alex, your love for Hugo baffles me totally, especially considering you think The Artist is fake smart. I was so deeply bored by Hugo I fail to see its genius. The story has gigantic problems (like that dumb love story between the flower lady and the station agent… or the hackneyed agent himself) and feels at times wooden and at other times turgid (Oh! One of the first films by the Lumieres was a train coming at the camera and we get that same feeling! It’s like I understand it more now because Marty made it really clear for me to see!). I don’t really want to get into a post here about Hugo, because it’s such a minor movie I will never be interested in it (though I know you’ll have a smart answer for me).

What I really don’t understand is your adoration for Moneyball, a film about a boring gimmick with no sports or emotional charm. I went grocery shopping today and decided to buy a bulk-sized jar of peanut butter. I should make a movie about that and have Brad Pitt play me (obviously) and people will think it’s interesting. This is such an artless procedural it boggles the mind how people like it so much. The Pitt daughter story is absolutely secondary and pointless and gives a veneer or “family film” that really has nothing to do with anything here. On top of this, Pitt’s performance here is fine, but, Alex, as a lover of the superior The Tree of Life, you should be upset that Pitt wasn’t nominated for that – a role with much more variation and interest.

I generally agree with your comments on Meryl, but I’m a bad judge because she’s never done anything for me other than a bunch of accents. I actually think her old Maggie is much better than her middle-aged Maggie, though the subject is disgusting and not very interesting.

I totally agree with you about Bridesmaids, which I also found totally dumb and safe. It’s a preposterous story and fails to be funny at all. I think it’s the best effort of Academy to seem hip (“I LOVED that movie! I saw it with my girlfriends! My wedding was just like that!”), but it comes off as tonedeaf and painful. (And really just has to do with box-office, rather than work… which is exactly what the Oscars always do.)

In terms of nominations I don’t like, there’s a long list… though I am surprised by very few of them. (OK – and can we all stop talking about ‘snubs’?! I think Trent Reznor will be fine with not getting another nomination this year for the same score he won for last year. Stop feeling bad for him.) I’m sick that John Williams got TWO nominations for his two (fucking) Spielberg movies. They both were dumb and recycled. I’m annoyed that Jessica Chastain got a nomination for The Help and not The Tree of Life (but, whatever, bigger studio push, I’m sure… and special pie). I’m shocked that Janet McTeer got a nomination for Albert Nobbs, where she plays the least male-looking drag king ever in a sub-average film (again, something about the Academy feeling good about itself for liking the gays). Her performance is a’ight, but nothing wonderful (come to think of it, Chastain singlehandedly had most of the best supporting actress performances in 2011).

Now I’m going to go watch something long and Romanian.

This is the first step in a special event at this year’s Iras. (If you’re wondering what an Ira is, see here.) Each Ira voter was required to submit his own list of 100 favorite movies by midnight, January 1, 2012.

From here, the lists will be combined into an aggregate list, and we’ll all have a few months to catch up on whatever titles we haven’t seen. The Iras this year are happening over the last weekend in March. One night will be devoted to the 2011 awards, but the second night will be devoted to our ranking the 100 greatest. (How this is going to work, exactly, is a matter currently under discussion.)

We’ll keep our readers informed, of course, of the outcome, but until then, Aaron and and I are sharing our individual lists. This is the result of a lot of movie-watching over the last 12 months. I’ve watched 153 movies (not counting 2011 releases) and Aaron has seen at least 100 more than that. Filling in the gaps in our knowledge, you see. Or finally getting around to films we’ve known are important.

I can’t quite get a bead on whether the Ira voters do this once per decade (modeling it on the Sight & Sound critics’ and filmmakers’ poll, which is done each year ending in the digit 2) or whether this is the first time the Iroids have ever done this. Either way, no records seem to exist for a previous all-time best-of vote. So this is a rare and special occasion indeed.

On to our lists…

I don’t know if we’re commenting here or later, but I think it’s remarkable how many films we have in common, Alex. I also think it’s interesting how there seems to be a list of maybe 150-200 films from which most people (in the Ira world) have pulled their lists, with another list of about 200 or so films that are outside choices that a few people have listed and then several hundred that seem to be special to individuals (that are probably wonderful that most people have not seen).

I also want to say how sorry I am that I don’t have a Tashlin or a Nicholas Ray film on my list. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, The Girl’s Gotta Have It, On Dangrous Ground and In a Lonely Place just missed the cut for me. I probably should have looked at that a bit more and taken off a duplicated director picture and replaced it with two of these, but I didn’t. (Sorry, Frank and Nick.) I also regret cutting What Ever Happen to Baby Jane?, because I find myself very drawn to Aldrich’s weird and dark sense of humor (I’m convinced The Scarlet Empress could have been directed by Aldrich if it had been made 20 years later… though then who would he have Svengali’d? I dunno).

Throughout this process I’ve been amazing at how great movies really stand out as great. When a person says, “you should see The Crowd or The General – those are great movies,” it’s easy to dismiss it and forget about them. But when you watch them and you see how amazing they are, it can take your breath away. (I’m not using my words good here, sorry.)

All of this is to say that it’s been a pleasure watching these films and discovering amazing work from actors and filmmakers who have been somehow forgotten. Like John Garfield. I have no idea why he’s not mentioned in the same category as Bogart, Stewart, Grant and Wayne. Because he was blacklisted? Because he died young? Because he wasn’t in Casablanca? And why are Max Ophuls and Josef von Sternberg not as well known to common people as Hawks or Welles? Their movies are just as interesting as any of theirs (better than many).

Here’s the list:

1)  Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975)
2) Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)
3) All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
4) Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966)
5) Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
6) Danton (Wajda, 1983)
7) In a Year with 13 Moons (Fassbinder, 1978)
8) Scarlet Empress (von Sternberg, 1934)
9) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)
10) The Palm Beach Story (Sturgess, 1942)
11) Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955)

2001: A Space Oddysey (Kubrick, 1968)

The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)

Advise & Consent (Preminger, 1962)

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (Fassbinder, 1972)

Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959)

The Asphalt Jungle (Huston, 1950)

The Bad and the Beautiful (Minnelli, 1952)

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966)

La Belle et La Bete (Cocteau, 1946)

Bicycle Thieves (de Sica, 1948)

The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)

Black Girl (Sembene, 1966)

Breathless (Godard, 1960)

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

Contempt (Godard, 1963)

The Cranes are Flying (Kalatozov, 1957)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)

The Crowd (Vidor, 1928)

Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)

Dekalog (Kieslowski, 1989)

Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951)

The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeousie (Bunuel, 1972)

Dodsworth (Wyler, 1936)

Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)

The Earrings of Madame de… (Max Ophuls, 1953)

Fanny & Alexander (Bergman,1982)

Faster Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill! (Meyer, 1966)

Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948)

The General (Keaton, 1926)

Goldfinger (Hamilton, 1964)

High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)

In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)

Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)

Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962)

Koyaanisquatsi (Reggio, 1982)

Laura (Preminger, 1944)

Lola Montes (Max Ophuls, 1955)

Lone Star (Sayles, 1996)

The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, 1942)

A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1956)

The Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati, 1953)

Murder, My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944)

Naked Spur (Mann, 1953)

Night and the City (Dassin, 1950)

Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)

North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)

Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)

Ordet (Dreyer, 1955)

Pandora’s Box (Pabst, 1929)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)

Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)

Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett, 1946)

Rashomon (Kurssawa, 1950)

The Reckless Moment (Ophuls, 1949)

Red River (Hawks, 1948)

The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)

Salo: Or, 120 Days of Sade (Pasolini, 1975)

Le Samourai (Melville, 1967)

Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983)

Secret Honor (Altman, 1984)

Shanghai Express (von Sternberg, 1932)

Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985)

The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)

Singin’ In the Rain (Donen, Kelly, 1952)

The Son (Dardenne, Dardenne, 2002)

The Sorrow and the Pitty (Marcel Ophuls)

Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Riesner, Keaton 1928)

Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)

Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997)

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (Pollack, 1969)

The Thin Blue Line (Morris, 1988)

The Thin Red Line (Malick, 1998)

The Third Man (Reed, 1949)

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)

Winter Light (Bergman, 1963)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar, 1988)

WR: The Mysteries of the Organism (Makavejev, 1971)

Yi Yi (Yang, 2000)

The Young Girls of Rochefort (Demy, Varda, 1967)

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

2. Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 1954)

3. The Reckless Moment (Ophuls, 1949)

4. The Crowd (Vidor, 1928)

5. I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur, 1943)

6. Chimes at Midnight, a.k.a. Falstaff (Welles, 1965)

7. Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

8. Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)

9. L’avventura (Antonioni, 1960)

10. All the President’s Men (Pakula, 1976)

Hearts of the World (Griffith, 1918)

Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924)

The General (Keaton, 1926)

Faust (Murnau, 1926)

Metropolis (Lang, 1927)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)

Shanghai Express (von Sternberg, 1932)

King Kong (Schoedsack & Cooper, 1933)

Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935)

Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Renoir, 1936)

The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1938)

Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)

The Long Voyage Home (Ford, 1940)

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)

Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942)

Passage to Marseille (Curtiz, 1944)

Laura (Preminger, 1944)

The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell & Pressburger, 1946)

Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948)

The Bicycle Thief (de Sica, 1948)

Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948)

Germany Year Zero (Rossellini, 1948)

They Live By Night (N. Ray, 1949)

Late Spring (Ozu, 1949)

The Third Man (Reed, 1949)

The Asphalt Jungle (Huston, 1950)

Orpheus (Cocteau, 1950)

Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)

All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)

Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950)

The River (Renoir, 1951)

Limelight (Chaplin, 1952)

I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953)

Pickup on South Street (Fuller, 1953)

Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953)

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

The Man from Laramie (A. Mann, 1955)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956)

A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1956)

There’s Always Tomorrow (Sirk, 1956)

Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)

Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)

Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! (McCarey, 1958)

The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)

Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)

Floating Weeds (Ozu, 1959)

North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)

The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960)

Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda, 1961)

Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961)

Lonely are the Brave (Miller, 1962)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)

Psycho (Hitchcock, 1962)

High & Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

Mahanagar, a.k.a. The Big City (S. Ray, 1963)

Band of Outsiders (Godard, 1964)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 1965)

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Pollack, 1969)

The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)

The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974)

Night Moves (Penn, 1975)

The Passenger (Antonioni, 1975)

Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975)

The Tenant (Polanski, 1976)

Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)

Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)

Camera Buff (Kieslowski, 1979)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979)

Heaven’s Gate (Cimino, 1980)

Victor Victoria (Edwards, 1982)

Danton (Vajda, 1983)

The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983)

Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985)

Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

Parting Glances (Sherwood, 1986)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)

Bullets over Broadway (Allen, 1994)

Vanya on 42^nd Street (Malle, 1994)

Lone Star (Sayles, 1996)

L.A. Confidential (Hanson, 1997)

The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan, 1997)

Bus 174 (Padilha & Lacerda, 2002)

Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)

At the heart of the drama is Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). The film opens with her, in hysterics, arriving at Jung’s clinic, and it ends with her leaving his clinic after having been his patient, student, mistress, spurned lover, and colleague. The journey this person must have taken boggles the mind — in the end she was killed by the Nazis — and Knightley’s performance is a journey of its own. At the start she’s physically and vocally contorted, having been driven mad by years of abuse. Later in the film, when Sabina has become a formidable therapist in her own right, Knightley gives us hints of the unhinged physicality of her character’s opening scenes whenever Jung (Michael Fassbender) says or does something hurtful. It’s a marvel to watch.

Fassbender and Viggo Mortenson, as Freud, are also terrific. The movie is a smorgasbord of great acting — I also really liked Sarah Gadon as Emma Jung — which I hope (fear?) means it’ll be embraced by the actor-heavy Academy. (Vincent Cassel also pops into the movie for about ten minutes, just long enough to carry the whole thing off with him when he departs.) They might otherwise be put off by the Cronenberg aesthetic. For me this movie is as merciless as any of the sci-fi/horror freakshows for which he’s famous (Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, eXistenZ). That he should make a movie that is overtly about psychotherapy feels right on the money to me; there’s always been an element of psychological curiosity and melancholy to his work. (Especially in my favorite movie of his, The Dead Zone.)

A Dangerous Method seems to find him in a calmer mode, but it’s no less relentless. There is only one act of physical violence in the movie (well…two if you count the sadomasochistic nature of Jung and Spielrein’s sexual relationship), but at all times these people are either deliberately hurting each other or trying to figure out how to hurt each other least.

I had never heard of Christopher Hampton’s play but I can imagine how all this material makes for an especially juicy stage melodrama. That said, the movie doesn’t feel at all “stage-y” (though I’m rarely bothered by movies that do have that quality). Hampton wrote the screenplay and one of the remarkable qualities about his and Cronenberg’s construction is that there is nary a dissolve or a montage. I kept expecting to see a melodically scored series of brief scenes, or shots, of Sabina undergoing therapy before finally being “cured.” But the movie refuses to speak that language. We aren’t told that time passes, we are simply placed in a scene that takes place, say, three months after the previous scene and are left to discover it for ourselves.

In other words, this movie doesn’t deal in visual metaphor, but rather metonym: what we see of Sabina’s therapy doesn’t represent the thing, it is the thing. We see a fully realized scene of a therapy session and that, then, tells us all we need to know about the entire therapy process, however many months it may last.

I saw it several hours before you, Aaron, and thought this quality of the movie would especially appeal to you — it’s highly Bazin-ian. (There are several other elements and images I thought would excite you too, but we’ll leave those to you and your shrink.) I was surprised when you texted me later to tell me you weren’t as enamored of the movie as I was. Would you like to tell our readers why…?

Aaron: Sure – I’d love to tell why I didn’t love it as much as you did. Very simply, you say, and I think Cronenberg asserts, that this is a film about “modes of psychoanalysis,” however I really don’t see it that way. I think it’s about Freud and his method and Jung is struggling to work within those rules (ultimately failing). The problem is that this really isn’t about a Freudian method versus a Jungian method, as Jung didn’t really have a method by the point the film takes place (he would create it later).

It’s presented as an “either/or” equation, but it’s really a “take it or leave it” about Freudian theories. Jung clearly has a rich history with Freud, but in the end, he could be any doctor trying to work within the structure that Freud laid out. I think our understanding of Jung’s later theories help to inform our view of him as a doctor practicing at this point, but the character that’s presented is very different. He clearly struggles with being “Swiss” (rigid, humorless, severe), but his conflict is totally self-created. Freud seems to be shown as a domineering father (particularly in an Oedipal view of the world), but he’s really correct and Jung is really just a brat.

When I break down the film, I come up only with very Freudian ideas of relationships between Jung and Freud (son and father, son’s revenge against the father, the father’s joy in beating his son). This is interesting to me, but really serves to emphasize how right Freud was and how Jung was mistaken. The ideas that Jung begins to develop (suggestions of supernatural stuff) seems underdeveloped (because it was at this point) and sorta silly.

The technical elements you mention actually didn’t strike me when I watched the film, though your analysis of them is very interesting and probably correct. Cronenberg is a brilliant filmmaker (I think we’ve discussed between us that he’s never made a bad movie and most of his films are good or great) and you point to a great example of his subtle virtuosity. You know how I hate uneven jumps in time as a story goes along, but those didn’t upset me so much here.

Mostly, I found the film sorta uninteresting. I like that it’s a mini-Freudian tale about a father and a son (the mother is psychoanalysis, more than any woman who they both want to sleep with), but that trail doesn’t lead very far. I think it’s a bit cold and easy, which might have a lot to do with the emotionally cold world where Jung lives (which is certainly another compelling motif).

Lastly, I found Knightley’s performance overdone. I know there’s a lot to be said about actors playing crazy people, and Knightley’s performance is more physical than we’ve seen recently. It’s such a physical display (withe her contorting herself and sticking her chin out) that it comes across to me more as affectation than elegant performance. I like the juxtaposition between her and Jung (he’s so stiff he barely moves… and he seems the opposite of a person who would like sadism… which is why it works, in many ways), but I see the performance more as a Cronenbergian gross-out fare than any inspired interpretation.

I should say again, that I like the film – I just didn’t love it. I think it is beautifully made and contains some interesting stuff… I just don’t think it’s more than good. This is when my shrink tells me I’m hard to please. He’s right.

And indeed the directorial career of Clint is characterized by shrewd, often ingenious, casting. (He even has the good sense to know when to cast himself and when not to.) It’s been said that directing is 90% casting, so if that’s true, then okay, I suppose that makes Clint a great American film director.

But here’s the truth: He’s not. And J. Edgar distills the flaws of the Eastwood method and the limits of his imagination.

And let’s start with his casting choices: Leonardo DiCaprio, of whom I’m a great fan, isn’t really right for this role. Even at 37 he remains childlike, and he has a fiery streak of youth — which made him so compelling in, say, The Departed — that just doesn’t want to be molded into J. Edgar Hoover, all bottled and orchestrated energy, the personification of repression.

I do think Leo performs admirably. It isn’t just Oscar-seeking grandstanding. He seems to be finding the soul of Hoover in his clipped speech and practiced posture. This too speaks to the Clint method: Cast great actors and let them go to work. Sometimes that’s good enough. But sometimes it allows those actors to indulge their worst instincts. (I thought Sean Penn was awful, hard to watch, in the massively overrated Mystic River.)

And that’s my issue with Clint: his touch is so light. He chooses fascinating subject matter, populates the show with great talent, and then just kind of sits back and lets the machine build itself. There’s no point of view, no ironic distance, no political urgency. (Clint is one of these disengaged Republicans, kind of like George W. Bush. Never stopping to make a real connection or tell a prescient joke. They just kind of keep moving along without regard to ceremony or affect or affection. Jack Nicklaus is another one. Whenever I see this sort of personality on display, whenever I watch these people talk, I kind of want to knock on their foreheads — “Hello? McFly!!” — and jolt them into awareness and engagement. Anybody home?)

But getting back to the movie…. The final moment, which I won’t describe in too much detail, perfectly encapsulates what’s going wrong throughout J. Edgar: it’s a cruel, ingenious, moment of irony in which the always loyal and loving Clyde Tolson (a great turn from Armie Hammer) reads the loving words he never got to hear from Edgar, and even now those words are written by someone else, to someone else.

But Clint’s camera slowly backs away as his gentle piano score comes up (he always does the music for his own films, and it’s always the same tasteful, sentimental piano, never shifting style with each new project) and the movie fades out. It’s a nice, respectable final shot. It takes a devastatingly ironic event, a real heartbreaker, and wraps it up in restraint and quality filmmaking. It’s as if Clint doesn’t even understand the script he’s working with. Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter, smartly picks out the recurring ironies of J. Edgar’s life, but his dramatization is under-served by Clint’s direction, with its unfailing good taste.

The make-up jobs in this movie are a kind of metaphor for the whole project: someone worked really really hard on them, but you can see through them anyway.

Aaron: Well, you said it all very well, Alex. I know I’m supposed to disagree with you because, like hockey fans, people read this blog to watch us nitpick with one another and call each other names (you idiot).

The film is directed with the care and elegance of a tractor or some big Ninteenth-Century stamping machine. Clank, clank, clank. There is nothing pretty about it and basically no interest in any of the characters or the situations. I’m not sure Clint is particularly interested in the characters… I’m not sure why he made this film. It’s bizarrely nice to Hoover – well, more nice than not nice. It’s bizarrely closeted too. OK – fine. Hoover lived in the closet for a ton of reasons – mostly because men, particularly public men, didn’t live out in that era. But is he really suggesting that Tolson and Hoover never had sex as they were domestic partners for their entire lives? What’s the evidence of that? That’s stupid.

When I watched the film I kept thinking about Altman’s brilliant Secret Honor, and how that’s a totally fantastical Nixon he shows in it. There is no evidence that Nixon ever did or said or felt anything that’s in the film (well, we know Nixon was an anti-Semite, so the part about “the Jew!” is right on). But it’s an exploration of the Liberal view of Nixon – what we all think he must have gone through, or wished he did, as he sat in his office in the early ’80s looking back at his life and work. He’s vulnerable and bitter, unhinged and possibly dangerous. Of course, these are all human emotions and states – that we can see in ourselves (inasmuch as it’s a projection of our view of him, it’s a reflection of ourselves as well). J. Edgar has none of this investigation, introspection or analysis. It’s just an old man in bad makeup going through a list of things he did in his life. It’s a film Wikipedia entry of his life.

Lifeless.

But Aaron, as ever, has managed to see many a 2011 release, while I am only up to 14. (Yikes!)

That 14th movie is Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, The Skin I Live In. The main character in this movie, a plastic surgeon played by Antonio Banderas, is a pretty bad dude, and the story of the film is the exacting of his vengeance against somebody who has (he believes) done a great wrong to a person he loves.

We’ll try not to give anything away, but this vengeance involves a gradual, and total, change of identity — and, yes, skin.

Antonio’s character, Dr. Robert Ledgard, is some combination of the Jimmy Stewart character in Vertigo and Buffalo Bill. (Not the guy with the traveling wild west show, but the dude who strongly suggests you place the lotion in the basket.) Both movies are overtly referenced. In fact, I think this is a movie that explores the etiology of the bad guy. And I don’t mean that it’s on a quest to find or define genuine evil, but rather it endeavors to construct a villain who could only exist in movies. He’s the quintessential Bad Guy, complete with unlimited financial resources, a highly specialized talent, and a mother who is both controlling and conspiring in his crimes.

Almodóvar always composes his shots with great care and precision, but I thought The Skin I Live In was exquisitely blocked, to use the stage term, even by Pedro’s standards. Much of the time the frame is framing another frame, i.e. we have a lot of scenes of Ledgard observing his captive, who’s locked in a room where cameras watch her every moment, on a monitor. Sometimes she looks back at him — which is to say, straight into the camera lens — and even though he knows she can’t see him, the effect is unsettling (for both him and us).

And in a moment that took my breath away, we watch a TV screen on which a yoga teacher speaks, mesmerizingly, about the benefits of yoga, and as she speaks the camera (i.e. the TV’s perspective) slowly zooms in on her while our camera (i.e. the movie we’re watching) slowly zooms out. Beautiful.

I do feel a little discomfort at all the traumas this movie puts its central female character (and actress) through. I’m not familiar with this Elena Anaya, but her performance is terrific, and clearly she was game for anything. But all the sex in this movie — even the sex involving characters other than her — is a version of violence, and something feels cruel about it. Beyond the characters’ cruelness, it’s the movie’s cruelness.

But, in the movie’s defense, maybe it comes out the other side of misogyny. The heroine’s breasts, which get a lot of camera time, are actually a really important prop in the storytelling. It isn’t prurience that keeps Almodóvar’s gaze on them (heck, the dude’s gay anyway). But still…I’m kinda uncomfortable.

Aaron: Right – so welcome back, Alex. (I love how you blame “us” for not blogging, while you’re the one who was “working” this summer. Nice. (Is this what marriage to you is like? I want a divorce… or at least to stop doing the dishes all the time.))

Your appraisal of Skin is right on the money. I think it’s actually a really well made film (beyond everything else, Pedro has always been an excellent technician) and a beautiful one. He has a strange ability to make things more beautiful than they normally are. A clarity of image that is strange and super-real. You’re exactly right about the blocking here (it’s a film term too, dude, so you don’t have to be so theater-snobby about it, Jesus!). The composition of his shots is magnificent and the use of “parallel structure” between shots is really beautiful. He’s always done wonderful stuff with closeups and continues that stuff here.

I would add to your summary that it’s like Vertigo and Buffalo Bill and also Frankenstein (gosh, I hope that doesn’t give away too much… sorry, people). But it’s also about creating art (Alex, you told me that on text and you were right, so I’ll say it here, but I’ll give you credit for the idea) and about movie-watching… which is Pedro’s art.

I can’t help but think about Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge (by the way, you’re such a fucking elitist to use the fucking accent on the o, Alex. Fucking snob.). That was a film about the post-modernism and the visible camp in queer/feminist narration, while this is much more theoretical, albeit through the lens of an actual lens. Most of what we see of Vera is through a surveillance video screen, though I think the act of thematic allusion is much more subtextual, no? (There is a direct allusion to a line from Women on the Verge, where Robert compliments Vera on her perfect skin, the same line is used in Women on the Verge, when Pepa compliments Marisa on her perfect skin.) This film is about the act of observing people and creating art by creating superficial environments for them… otherwise known as “filmmaking”.

It’s here that I think I don’t totally agree with you, Alex dear. I think the world that Robert creates for Vera is totally violent, but mostly subtley so. She is a captive in his castle (the joke being that it’s the nicest prison cell ever imagined lacking any ugly, sharp corners) and not a Stockholmy happy one (which, of course, is his big mistake). In fact it’s almost an inverted Stockholm complex, where she’s his prisoner for so long he forgets he’s her keeper. She has no free will – or her ability to act on it is totally limited to what she can do inside her cell… which is mostly just cutting up old dresses and making mannequins made of composed parts (mannequins of montage, one could say). This is all a very male way of interacting with the world for Robert,  an ubermensch if there ever was one.

I think the violent, degrading sex she’s forced into through the course of the film goes part and parcel with her existence in Robert’s narrative for her. She’s a creature manufactured in darkness, so everything she does and everything that happens to her also exists there too. That Almodóvar suggests a lustful, violent gaze on his heroine’s breasts is exactly the point of the story, I think. (Also, they’re, like, perfect.) Almodóvar is nothing if not a feminist.

My real problem with the film, which, on the whole, I think is mostly really good, is that it really doesn’t add up to all that much. It’s a really fun, gonzo psychodrama that ties up really nicely, but doesn’t really mean all that much. (I know you’re going to crucify me for suggesting that art should mean something, but I really believe it should.) I think what’s great about, say, Women on the Verge, and less so about some later films like Talk to Her or Volver is that there’s a lot of interesting stuff in the first and less interesting stuff in the latter ones. Or rather, the latter ones are trying really hard to make a point, while the former just does it. I also think Almodóvar gets tied up in knots a bit in the middle of the story with the backstory about Robert and his family lineage, etc. (if you see the film, you’ll know what I’m talking about), that doesn’t really lead anywhere and merely seems to be decoration for the sake of decoration.

What I think I like best about the film is how much it feels like a great exploitation film, that I feel a film like Women on the Verge alludes to directly. They’re fun and have lots of sex and intrigue and tie up neatly in 80-some minutes. I guess I’m praising it for the same thing I’m criticizing it for. It’s too simple and perfectly simple at the same time. Maybe it’s that I feel that he’s trying to say more than should be here, but I would be happy if he just said it simply and moved on.

Eh. I lost myself. I’ll stop.

It’s certainly one of Hitch’s best, most elegant and maybe the best example of his “simple complexity” (a term I just coined here now!), where a story moves in sometimes unexpected directions, but there are not too many twists, keeping our interest while not confusing us and diminishing our experience. (Mystery screenwriters should take note: most Hitch movies have only one or two twists or double-crosses. That’s it.)

One thing I was struck by on this most recent viewing was how very misogynistic and cruel the story is. This is a film about obsession, mania and depression (a pretty impressive topic for 1958, by the way). There are four main female characters (though only two actresses), all of whom suffer from some sort of mental breakdown or devastating humiliation.

The first women we meet, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), is a good friend of Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) who clearly wants to have a relationship with him, but who he doesn’t seem to care about sexually. In fact their relationship is never totally described clearly and we never really know why are they friends or why he doesn’t like her (which is rather cruel to begin with). Then there’s Madeleine (Kim Novak), the rich wife of one of Scottie’s old buddies who is obsessed with a portrait of (woman #3) a 19th Century woman named Carlotta and might be somehow possessed by her. We’re told that Carlotta killed herself when she was 23, the same age Madeleine is now. Finally, there’s Judy (Kim Novak), a woman who looks like Scottie’s buddy’s wife, who was posing as her (as Madeleine) so the buddy could kill the wife and get away with it.

So the story has Madeleine (well, Judy acting as Madeleine) totally out of her mind and walking around San Francisco as a near-zombie. She’s overcome with her obsession with Carlotta, sometimes not remembering where she is or realizing what she’s doing. To Scottie, this is strange, but totally acceptable. We see her trying to kill herself by jumping into the Bay at Golden Gate Park (and being rescued by Scottie). Then there’s an uncomfortable scene where Midge, desperate for attention from Scottie, paints a picture of herself as Carlotta, poking fun at Madeleine’s obsession with her and showing Scottie that he should love her and not Madeleine.

Next, overcome by whatever emotion women feel when they’re in love, Madeline runs up a bell tower and jumps to her death (at least that’s what Scottie thinks). This event, along with the previous loss of a cop buddy of his, sends Scottie into a state of vertigo-related catatonia. He goes to a mental hospital for his cures where Midge takes care of him, but he doesn’t seem to care… because he’s catatonic (a near-zombie).

In the next section, however, Scottie is totally healed. Boom. He is sad that Madeleine is dead (well, very sad), but he’s doing things and participating in the world again. He goes to some of their old haunts and ultimately discovers Judy (now a brunette). They begin a relationship based on the fact that Judy looks like the woman he knew as Madeleine (who was just Judy with blond hair) (dating someone because they look like your ex is always a good idea). He asks her to dye her hair blond so she would look more like Madeleine, which she reluctantly does (even though this works against her idea of not telling Scottie the whole story… but she’s so in love with him, she loses track of her goal).

Once she dyes her hair, Scottie figures out that she looks a lot like Madeleine and the story starts to unfold. They go to the bell tower where Madeleine jumped, they kiss and then, when a nun (an asexual woman) surprises them, Judy loses her balance and falls out the window to her death … by accident.

What we see throughout the story is that women are very unstable, unset in their ways, absolute cyphers of material who are silly and easily swayed. They get obsessed, do rash things, are prone to violent self-destructive acts and are literally unbalanced on two feet.

Why is it that Scottie goes crazy and into a near-zombie state, but he heals, while Madeleine never heals (to say nothing of Carlotta who was crazy and killed herself a long time ago)?Why is Scottie’s obsession with Madeleine (before or after her death) acceptable (nobody comments on it other than the sidelined Midge, who is really just shown as a silly girl), while Madeleine’s obsession with Carlotta not OK? What about the treatment of Midge, who is absolutely lovable, good-looking, smart, funny and has some emotional connection to Scottie, but totally humiliated when she makes a bad joke with the gonzo mashup portrait? (She mostly disappears from the film after Scottie gets out of the hospital. Thanks for the bedside attention, Midge.)

What about the strange thing that Scottie basically demands that Judy change the color of her hair to look like someone he knew and loved, but she never knew? She tells him she doesn’t want to (and it really exposes her and undermines her greater goals of getting away with the murder of Scottie’s friend’s wife), but he insists as if she doesn’t have a choice. There’s some line there about, “it couldn’t mean that much to you.” Uh, yeah, Scottie, it could.  Finally, what about how Jane is shown as so unstable that she falls to her death. Sure it’s symbolism, but it’s pretty blunt.

Scottie’s buddy, who kills his wife, basically gets away with it and there is no outrage that he did what he did, because women are disposable… as Scottie shows clearly. I would accept that the story is told from his point of view, but then why does Hitch show us Scottie’s recovery in a hospital, while all the women die or are forgotten about? It’s not really Scottie’s point of view, it’s Hitch’s point of view. (And I’m not saying Hitch hates women; I don’t think he does. He does doesn’t like them in this movie.)

Alex, you know a lot about women. Am I crazy here? Am I reading too much into these things, coming at the film with a too-modern view of things? Why do I still love the movie even though it is rather offensive in its sexual politics?

Alex: Aaron, I love the title you came up with for this post because it could easily be read to mean that the ‘bitches’ in question are Aaron and Alex. (Oh, and we are nothing if not bitchy, honey.)

I too revisited Vertigo this week. We’re looking again at this movie in order to figure out where it places on our in-progress lists of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, and also because next spring’s Ira round-up of the all time greats will coincide with Sight & Sound magazine’s round-up, which both institutions do every ten years. (They do it in the year ending in the digit 2. Don’t ask me why.) Here are the results of the S&S 2002 poll — in which Vertigo placed as the #2 greatest movie of all time in the critics’ poll and #6 in the filmmakers’ poll.

I hasten to say that Vertigo is not on my working list of top 100 movies (which currently stands at 122 titles — December 1 is our deadline for submitting our lists). My favorite Hitchcock is Notorious, followed by Psycho and I Confess. I risk Ira heresy by making the following statement:

I don’t like Vertigo.

There. I said it. May the wrath of Andrew Sarris be visited upon me.

Of course there is much about the movie that impresses, and for Hitchcock lovers like us it adds to, and elaborates on, the rich body of his obsessions. This was the third or fourth time I’d seen the movie, and this time around I was especially struck by Kim Novak’s performance as Madeleine/Judy. She’s really great, especially in the second half of the movie, when, as Judy, she knows the whole truth but at every moment has to calculate what to let Scottie know and what to conceal. We watch her simultaneously thinking and suffering the pain of having to withhold the truth from the man she loves.

For me, it’s that very love that is at the heart of the problem you’re describing, Aaron. Is Madeleine really in love with Scottie? I mean, really? I have no trouble buying his feelings for her — especially because the more deeply he becomes involved in her world, the more his “love” for her becomes something perverse, a symptom of some fucked-up psychology — but I found myself asking of the movie, “Wait. Hang on. When did she fall for him?”

Both Madeleine and Midge have a hankering for Scottie, and there’s something maternal/healing about their relationships to him; his pain draws them in. This betrays the movie’s hetero-male point of view — as you say, Aaron, more Hitch’s than Scottie’s. Or at least we can say more the movie’s point of view than the protagonist’s.

Despite Barbara Bel Geddes’s wonderful performance as Midge, I find the construction of that character utterly dishonest. My big complaint about Vertigo is that throughout the movie we can see the narrative gears at work, and never more so than in Midge. She’s a character who is there only for exposition, and, as you note, when she’s served her purpose she disappears from the movie. You can almost hear the screenwriters’ conversation in which they decide they have to conceal that device with some character dimension — suffering, of course — that will hide the fact that she is just that: a device. So Midge and Scottie have a prior relationship and she holds a candle for him. But there’s a very revealing moment when Scottie makes mention of the fact that back in their college days they’d been engaged and it was Midge who broke it off. Hitch dutifully gives her one of his signature close-ups — with camera about 18 inches over her head, looking down and from a semi-profile angle — to let us know she has more history and thought about what Scottie just said but is holding it in.

But that’s the last we hear of it. Yes, we could fill in the gaps, we could draw a picture of Midge and why she both needs Scottie and keeps him at a distance, but I believe it would be a sort of arbitrary picture. The movie doesn’t really give us enough to fill in the gaps. And so the device is unmasked as the device that it is.

I feel similarly about Madeleine’s “love” for Scottie. When/why/how did it happen? I can’t really answer that question, but what I know for sure is that if she doesn’t love Scottie, then we have no movie! Maybe it says more about me than it does about the movie, but I’ve never been able to watch Vertigo without seeing through it.

I’m not sure her death in the end betrays an essential misogyny about this movie — I’m not so sure the movie isn’t harder on him than it is on her — but what it does reveal is Vertigo’s weird death obsession. I find the whole enterprise very maudlin and sadistic.

Most cinema buffs point to Vertigo as a great achievement in point-of-view and psychology, perhaps the pinnacle of Hitch’s experiments with both of those cinematic qualities. Obsessions of Hitchcock’s that are also endemic qualities of film as a medium. My answer to that particular praise of Vertigo is: well…yeah…I guess. I can’t argue with that praise, but it seems a little bit like admiring the cookware without enjoying the meal.

Vertigo, with its formal/stylistic ingenuity coupled with its clunky exposition and cold character equations, feels to me like an experiment. As opposed to Notorious and I Confess and Psycho: those movies doesn’t feel like experiments. They feel like operas.

Aaron: Alex, you make a very compelling case. I should admit that you’ve swayed my opinion with what you wrote. I guess what I responded to so dramatically was the technical merits of the film (that Hitchcock guy knew what he was doing) and the presentation. I think you show very well that there are some big holes in the script (I particularly like what you say about Midge). (You should try to use your powers of argument to sway more men in their opinions and tastes.)

In many ways I feel like Midge is the most interesting character and the most pathetic (meaning that we identify with her the most). Compared to Madeleine/Judy, she seems to have much more personality and shows interesting emotions like jealousy and pain. I never really identify with Madeleine/Judy because she’s so weak, so much of a zombie and such a pushover in her relationship with Scottie. The look on Midge’s face you describe when she’s talking to him about their college days is great, as is the look on face when he gets angry with her about the painting she makes. Maybe this is where my feelings that the film is misogynistic come from.

Madeleine/Judy is such a cypher that I don’t really connect to her pain (and as much as Hitch and Scottie treat her badly, she does herself no favors by dying her hair so easily against her will). I think your point about not knowing why Madeleine is in love with him is also important. Again, because she is seen as such a binary character here, we just accept that she does fall in love with him, but can’t really connect to their relationship or his appeal to her. We never really see why she likes him. Well, really it’s that we never see why Judy likes him so much; it’s understandable that Madeleine “likes” Scottie because she’s really Judy playing the role of Madeleine falling for Scottie to lure him in deeper.

All of this is to say that I might move this film down my Best of All Time list. I think you’re right that as a script, there are some bad aspects… regardless of the fact that end result looks amazing.

Alex: Oh, Aaron, my powers of argument have swayed so many men…. But I’d better stop there. My mom might be reading.

I’m glad you said you identify with Midge because I do too, and I might have sounded as if I’d prefer to see her jettisoned from the movie. Quite the opposite: I’d rather see her more fully incorporated into the proceedings. The scene where she defaces her painting and starts calling herself “Stupid” and tearing her hair out is, to use one of my favorite five-dollar words, horripilating. (Thank you, Joy Williams.)

And I agree that the movie looks amazing. All the color schemes — Scottie is usually associated with brown, Madeleine with gray (or, one might say, a self-conscious black-and-white), Judy with green — are rich and fascinating. The movie is enjoyable for the abundant creativity that is endemic to the project. Bernard Herrmann’s score has got to be one of the most beautiful and intense ever put to film. (That Herrmann was never Oscar nominated for any of his Hitchcock scores is an embarrassment to the Academy.)

Reading your thoughts on Madeleine/Judy’s falling in love with Scottie, it occurred to me that there might be something in the first two-thirds of Vertigo about the idea of performance. She performs being in love with him and is surprised to find, after the curtain has come down on her show, that the performed emotion remains with her.

And yet…I’m not sure there’s really a there there. That feels like something we might graft on to the movie in order to help explain away its essential lack of believability. Just as champions of the film use the Scottie’s-point-of-view approach to justify the inconsistent/implausible actions and feelings of Judy: “Of course we can’t see what’s really motivating her. Because we’re seeing her as Scottie sees her, and he’s turning her into what he wants her to be. It’s not about the nature of their relationship, it’s about Scottie’s obsessiveness and his point of view.”

But if that were true, the movie wouldn’t need the scene in which Judy reveals to us (but not to Scottie) the truth of what really happened when she was masquerading as Madeleine. If the movie were all about Scottie’s P.O.V., it would never need to show us Judy’s P.O.V. No, this movie is trying to be a tragic romance. It wants to persuade us.

You know, every time I’ve seen Vertigo, something about it has made me feel embarrassed. Hitch would surely see in praise in that sentiment — maybe the movie is so intimate that it gives me a sense of being violated.

But when Judy says things like, “If I dye my hair, will that be enough? Will that let you give me your love?!” I always feel kind of icky.

And qualities of the visual scheme don’t sit easily with me; the gauzy quality of some of Scottie’s P.O.V. shots of Madeleine is really hokey. Deliberately so, perhaps, but that actually makes it more hokey. (We get it, Hitch.) And the obviousness of the process shots always makes me go, “Well, it was the olden days.” But I think Hitch liked us to know when he was using a process shot, I think he liked them looking clearly different from everything else. Maybe there’s an expressiveness there, or an absurdist quality, that he loved that just plain doesn’t compute for me. (Or maybe it does and I don’t realize it. That is to say, Hitch might know exactly what he’s doing in poking at my unconscious. But then you could use that argument to justify every artistic choice behind every film.)