ShaunHuston filmblog

Under discussion:

Blue Velvet  (1986)

Chinatown  (1974)

Dial M for Murder  (1954)

Laura  (1944)

The Maltese Falcon  (1941)

North by Northwest  (1959)

Rear Window  (1954)

The Third Man  (1949)

Vertigo  (1958)

The Usual Suspects  (1995)

The mystery list is another one that seems poorly conceived. Unlike animation, “mystery” may be a genre, but the way it is defined and applied in the AFI list leads to a muddled selection of films.

The AFI defines mystery as “a genre that revolves around the solution of a crime”. I'm not convinced that that adequately describes the films on the list, or, even if it does, it is absurdly reductive. Most ironically, the definition seems least appropriate when applied to the list's top selection, Vertigo (1958), which does not actually revolve around the solution of a crime at all, but a domestic mystery, and is really about Scottie's (Jimmy Stewart) inner-demons and obsessions in any event. Similar questions can be raised about other movies on this Top 10.

For example, the second film on the list, Chinatown (1974), certainly starts with a mysterious murder, but part of the point of the film is that some “crimes” aren't illegal at all, and may even be facilitated by laws. The plot of The Third Man (1949) involves the unveiling of criminal activity, but the central mystery, on more than one level, proves not to be a crime, or at least is vague enough for questions to be raised about whether it is or isn't. And, as was highlighted on the broadcast, Dial M for Murder (1954) is really more about the commission of a crime than its solution. You get the picture: the AFI definition for this genre is fine as far as it goes, but it misses the nuances in most of the films on the list.

In fact, it can be argued that most of the films on this Top 10 are typically considered to belong to more refined categories than “mystery”. Chinatown, The Third Man, and The Maltese Falcon (1941) are better thought of as Film Noir, as should North by Northwest (1959), though I recognize that that may be a less typical way of understanding that movie than it is for the others. Another segment of the selections – Vertigo, Rear Window (1954), Dial M for Murder – are more precisely “suspense” movies or “thrillers”, wherein mystery, rather than being the point of the narrative, is merely a device for exploring the human psyche. This leaves three movies as the “true” mysteries on the list. From what I know of Laura (1944), I've not seen it, this seems like a fair enough categorization, and I think that “mystery” is reasonable as a way of thinking about The Usual Suspects (1995). Blue Velvet (1986) I'm tempted to say belongs to the genre of “David Lynch,” but it is also clearly the case that a mystery drives much of the film's action.

What's curious about the AFI's choice to use and apply “mystery” to the films that it does is that the alternatives I suggest, “noir”, “suspense”, “thriller”, are also well-used genre categories, and ones that better capture one of my points above: these movies largely use mysteries to explore other themes – power, obsession, fear, evil. There are, however, films where the mystery is the thing. Think The Thin Man series, or the incarnations of Nancy Drew, or adaptations of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple books. I suppose the orchestrators of these lists may have considered this, and decided that there aren't enough such movies to “honor”, but that's not only narrow-minded, especially in the context of genre entertainment, it also begs the question of why “mystery” and not “noir”, “thriller”, etc.

Assessing the individual selections is made complicated by the underlying categorization question. I can see where each of the films on the list can and should be honored on a Top 10 in “x” genre, even if I don't quite see it for this particular accounting. However, Vertigo is, like The Searchers and Shane from the Western list, one of those highly regarded “classics” that I don't quite get. To me it seems dated in its fascination with mid-century popular psychology, and its visualizations of feelings of vertigo don't hold up well at all. That the latter is important to me is probably a function of the former. I vastly prefer Rear Window, and, as to the non-Hitchcock on the list, Chinatown is one of those films I will routinely cite as my absolute favorite when asked. Everything else more or less depends on context and I'm not sure that the AFI has provided the right one here.

Link to introduction.

Under discussion:

AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies  (1998)

Ahh, what would summer be without an AFI list to dish about? Based on last night in our household, these lists continue to be successful as conversation starters, and, secondarily, as pointers or reminders about films that Anne-Marie and I may have yet to see or haven't seen in awhile.

Central to their function as points for discussion is their flaws, and so, in some respects, taking issue with this or that selection is somewhat pointless, at least in the sense that lists of these sort, whether generated via the AFI or not, cannot be “fixed” so as to be indisputable. However, discussing the merits of different films, and whether the selections are biased towards or against certain kinds of films, or what is it, exactly, that makes a film “American” in the first place, is still fun and, I think, productive in terms of refining viewers' own evaluations of and exposure to different films. More than previous shows, last night's “10 Top 10” raises questions not only about film selection, but also list construction.

What follows is a series of commentaries on each of the AFI's Top 10s.

Jump to animation.
Jump to romantic comedy.
Jump to western.
Jump to sports.
Jump to mystery.
Jump to fantasy.
Jump to science fiction.
Jump to gangster (forthcoming).
Jump to courtroom drama (forthcoming).
Jump to epic (forthcoming).

Originally posted on:Short-Circuit Signs

Under discussion:

Cat Ballou  (1965)

High Noon  (1952)

Once Upon a Time in the West  (1968)

Red River  (1948)

Ride the High Country  (1962)

The Searchers  (1956)

Shane  (1953)

Stagecoach  (1939)

The Wild Bunch  (1969)

Lone Star  (1996)

The Claim  (2000)

Open Range  (2003)

Serenity  (2005)

The Western Top 10 is the toughest for me. As some of you may know, while I'm hardly Richard Slotkin or Jane Tompkins, I write, teach, and think about this genre on a regular basis, and, as a result, my views are not only fairly strong, but well-informed. And, where certain well regarded classics are concerned, they are also iconoclastic. This is probably nowhere more obvious than with The Searchers (1956), the film that tops the AFI list.

This film does not resonate with me on any level. I have never found the ending credible. John Wayne does not portray Ethan Edwards with any of the complexity needed for his embrace of Debbie (Natalie Wood) to ring true after his 118 (or so) minutes of hard, racist ranting about Native Americans and his intent to kill her. I also find the photography and production design to be garish without purpose, and for all of its superficial sophistication about Native peoples, the talk of ritual, the use of indigenous language, it only serves to perpetuate the myth of white mastery. After all, it is white men who “know” and understand Native peoples, not the other way around. Native Americans are no less the brutish savages in this film than they are in Stagecoach (1939), but at least that film doesn't pretend to be anything but pulpy fantasy (indeed, it remains my favorite John Ford/John Wayne Western). And the landscape changes in The Searchers drive me crazy. Even though no one seems to actually leave Texas, the weather and land change in absurd ways during the course of the quest. Where are these people supposed to be?

I fully recognize that I am a freak when it comes to this film, and as a result, I'm not going to make a pitch for taking it off of the list, although I do think that it needs to be demoted. The other film worth arguing about is one that I would knock of the AFI list, and that is Shane (1953).

My biggest block with this film is Joey (Brandon de Wilde). The whining, oh the whining. Gah. I can't get past it. At the same time, I don't think that Alan Ladd makes for a convincing hero; he has too much of a “contemporary” presence. Van Heflin's Joe Starrett is virtually the same guy as Dan Evans, Heflin's character in 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and much less interesting. As menacing as Jack Palance's black hatted gunfighter is, he's also more hollow than the norm. And, yes, I understand the subtext about the Frontiersman and his lack of place in civilization, but that theme is punctuated in many a film without Shane's weaknesses.

The selection of Cat Ballou (1965) still seems like some kind of a joke, but it is perhaps typical of an industry that has wanted to bury this genre for the past five decades or so. Red River (1948) made no impression on me when I saw it. Is that a reason to take it off the list? I don't know, but I would have no shortage of replacements if it is.

Part of the difficulty with these lists is how the boundary is drawn around “American” film. I can see where Sergio Leone's movies with Clint Eastwood might be precluded as “American”, but, given some of the other selections on other lists, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) seems perfectly fair game to me (it was, after all, co-produced by Paramount, not to mention featuring a group of notable American actors in all of the lead male roles). Were it up to me, this film would certainly be on the list, and possibly even on top (I might just elevate High Noon, 1952, to the top spot depending on how much of a classisist I want to be).

Undoubtedly, The Wild Bunch (1969) is Sam Peckinpah's magnum opus, but that's hardly a reason to make it his only film on the list. Ride the High Country (1962), for example, is an early elegiac Western that explores Western archetypes in more interesting ways than most of the films on the list from its same general period. The AFI's definition of the Western - “a genre of films set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier” - also seems to leave room for a movie like Lone Star (1996), or, and I know I'm pushing it here, Serenity (2005) (and you can scoff at this if you want, but Joss Whedon's movie re-imagines the Frontier and the supposed line between savagery and civilization in interesting and vital ways; I think that it certainly makes a more original contribution to the genre than does Shane). Two other recent Westerns for which I have a great deal of affection are The Claim (2000) and Open Range (2003).

I'm not sure I'd end up placing all of the films listed above on a reconstructed list, but I do think that there is a tendency to treat the Western as a “dead” genre, killed at some point in the 1960s, with an occasional raising from the dead, and it's not so. It's also a genre with a fairly well-rehearsed canon. Placing The Searchers at the top of a list like this is much like putting Citizen Kane (1941) at the top of the AFI's ur-list: it's almost reflexive.

Link to introduction.

Originally posted on:Short-Circuit Signs