You can leave now if ya don't like what's happenin' - Van Morrison's first four (with a few asides)

Outside of the expected radio fragments, the music of Van Morrison never really entered my consciousness until I was well into adulthood, and even then it was initially in less than optimal circumstances – crowded parties or noisy bars or an acquaintance endeavoring to familiarize me with the man’s greatness and then proceeding to talk over the entire first side of whatever record they’d felt was so necessary to impact upon my consciousness at that very instant. I don’t think this hit and miss fragmentation is particularly unusual; Morrison is just one example of a popular musician who is often elusive in the mainstream, known and casually categorized more than they are actually listened to, suffering a friction between a surface notoriety and the lack of deep recognition that also shrouds names like Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits. But Morrison is a curious case, being extremely busy in his first five/six years as a recording musician in a variety of contexts.

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Them

He started out as the front man for Them, a very worthy example of gritty Brit Invasion R&B that scored a few hits, among them one classic that often gets confused as a Rolling Stones tune (“Here Comes the Night”), and one canonical non-hit (“Gloria”) that will eternally serve as a cornerstone for the garage-rock explosion that followed shortly after the band’s demise, an explosion that seems to regenerate momentum every decade or so.

A catastrophe of cover design

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He then broke out solo, managing to get almost immediately screwed over by his label Bang while simultaneously scoring a smash hit, the biggest of his career, with “Brown Eyed Girl”, a song I feel safe in conjecturing every human being over 25 years of age that resides in the US/UK has heard at least a dozen times. Easy. But the other initial examples of Van by his lonesome are considerably more complex than the jukebox euphoria of “Girl”, and it’s a head-scratcher why some of the songs collected on his 1st LP Blowin’ Your Mind (no false modesty from this Irishman, or to be truthful, from the label that apparently released the record without Van’s knowledge) weren’t more ensconced into the “classic” rock mainstream during my formative years. Tunes like “TB Sheets” and “He Ain’t Give You None” are grand examples of exquisite stretching out, the later drifting into some impromptu vocal loopiness that these days is as rare as a tooth on a chicken. And “Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)” (the B-side to “Brown Eyed Girl”) is maybe the tune that should’ve been his follow up hit, with its blue-eyed guitar based funkiness, it’s sweetly idiosyncratic backup singers, and an expert slow build to a manic soul testifying that carries not an ounce of fat on its frame. Jeepers. I guess a big part of the problem is that the album seemed to be scarce for a long time; at least I never saw it anywhere during the long hours of music shopping I chalked up from age 13 to 30. Its available now with bonus tracks, however, and for folks that are generally inclined to look at the cut of Van’s jib with a warm smile and an approving nod, I’d say give it a shot if you haven’t already. It has a clued in sensibility that I imagine pleased the punch out of that era’s burgeoning rock elite (those growing out of garage and in need of something a bit heavier but not necessarily louder) while also ruffling up the feathers of the more Modish Disco-Tek inclined movers and shakers. Or perhaps I’m woofing up the wrong eucalyptus. After all, I wasn’t there.

The debut was followed up with a recording for a new label (Warner Brothers) that is generally considered to be his enduring masterpiece. Astral Weeks continues to be a challenging work that yielded no hit singles and wasn’t initially a strong seller. Plus, reports conflict as to how immediate and fervent was the record’s critical reaction. I’ll state right now that I’m just getting reacquainted with the album after a long period of non-ownership. To elaborate, I first bought Weeks on cassette from a gas station tape rack when I was roughly 23, taking it on a test drive with a friend into the guts of Virginia and being suitably smacked upside the head with its lushness, its slightly stressed emotionalism, and its moments of caustic beauty, an overall thrust that falls somewhere between toughness and melancholy. That cassette lasted a few years before shredding and necessitating a replacement, also a tape (second hand, because I’m a cheap-skate) which lasted until it inexplicably vanished as tapes often do. So here’s the rundown: The very first time I heard the damn thing I simply KNEW it was a classic, particularly by the moment the slow burning aching prettiness of “Cypress Avenue” started bleeding out of the speakers, closing out the recording’s first side in exemplary fashion (the kind of song that potentially makes a listener wait for an unspecified period before flipping or continuing with the rest of the music, an effect that’s mostly lost in this post-compact disc era, though Weeks has recently been reissued on high quality vinyl for those with the sexy chutzpah to own a working turntable), or the scrambling up-tempo shrewdness of Side Two’s opener “The Way Young Lovers Do”, with its onion-like sound layers, horns vibes and acoustic bass too expertly delivered to simply appear as a nod to jazz influenced validation (a.k.a. “my, aren’t we hip?”), instead existing as an injection of adrenalin that gallops along avoiding clichés and gathering strength until abruptly it’s over, and the gears are slyly shifted onto what is for me the record’s centerpiece, the slowly pummeling “Madame George”, an exhibit of gradually building string motion and wounded atmospherics that rise and level off and then lunge out one last time like a maddeningly deliberate baroque fever dream before slowly fading away, making me feel like Nico’s goddamned ghost just took over my body for nine minutes: A draining but ultimately rewarding encounter with a psyche that perhaps loved and lived a little too much. Yeah, it’s like that.

And yet I must confess that Astral Weeks is an album that I held at arms length for a long time. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was a generational thing, the fact that it wasn’t produced by someone that had a birth date in rough proximity to my own. But I doubt it, since I was then championing music from this record’s era both well-known (Blonde on Blonde, Electric Ladyland, Live/Dead) and obscure, at least at that point (Oar, Pink Moon, Chelsea Girl) to anyone who’d suffer my verbiage (like you’re doing right now). As I peck out these words I’m leaning toward the possibility that I just wasn’t….ready….for the record. Lacking in maturity is maybe a self-deprecating spin on it. But whatever, because I’ve listened to it about a dozen times in the last month and it really truly (finally?) feels, through my ear canals and into my bloodstream, like the heavyweight masterpiece that it’s been described as for the last few decades. It’s not a flawless record; part of its greatness stems from the fact that it’s imperfect and rough in spots—“Slim Slow Slider”, the album’s relatively brief closing song apparently stretched out for a couple years and needed an edit that makes the tune feel a bit anti-climactic, though maybe a dozen more listens will change my mind. Another aspect of the LP is how the intensity of the songs, a quality that at times borders on abstraction is totally matched and elevated by the musicians playing it, which in turn seems to send Morrison almost to the brink of his talent. There are spots where it sounds like his outward-pushing to embrace and match the music forming and building around his songs flirts with oblivion, or to put a finer point on it: this was a higher class of musician than Van was accustomed to interacting with, veterans from the take no prisoners American jazz scene that Morrison has since admitted he knew almost nothing about at the time. But to be clear, these aren’t faults. The details in the last three sentences all clearly work in the album’s favor, heightening its greatness and making it one of the most singular musical experiences ever committed to tape. I really don’t think I’m being hyperbolic.

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So. Those knowledgeable in the specifics of Morrison’s output know what’s next. It’s Moondance, which pales in comparison to the majesty of its predecessor, but still has much to offer, even if I feel it’s a flawed record. It’s flawed foremost because its title-track can’t withstand the repeated play it’s received over the decades (it was finally released as a single seven years after the album). Frankly, it’s just not a very good tune, being a pastiche of phonus jazz-isms that reek of a guy who discovered Dave Brubeck ten years too late. Dude, you’ve been hangin’ with the wrong crowd. The rest of the album is far tighter, and much more polished than anything from Weeks, though this isn’t really a negative. Unlike the previous record, Moondance is primarily a pop album (singer-songwriter division), though it mines R&B/soul territory so successfully that many people might be given pause if asked to place it in a genre. This is partly because Morrison, like John Fogerty, is quite unique and expressive, though always tasteful in his soul music borrowings. “And It Stoned Me” sounds a bit like The Band augmented with a sweet horn section (nothing too tight or clumsy), and “Crazy Love” comes off like some lost early Aaron Neville single that’s gathering value in the back of a New Orleans junk shop. “Into the Mystic” glides along on pretty acoustics, the rhythms subtly building in intensity to a crescendo that culminates with a majestically delivered (so well controlled) horn section vamp that can stick in the memory for freaking days. Maybe the best track on the album, it deserves to be as well known as this record’s “Everyone”, which plays over the credit sequence of Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums and has a cadre of fans who don’t know Van Morrison from Van Gogh or Van Halen. The song following “…Mystic” feels like a misstep to these ears, however. “Come Running” isn’t terrible, but its upbeat motions to a gospel-tinged joyousness never really succeed in their intentions. That’s okay though, for the rest of the record registers as varying degrees of rich bullion. Overall, the tidy professionalism and studio polish of Moondance lacks the power of Astral Weeks’ nude rawness, its feeling of artistic exhaustion, the rich gamble that’s still paying confounding dividends. They are both certainly different animals, one a stunning soul-purge the other a (mostly) savvy piece of construction. I can clearly recall the first time I drunkenly swayed along to the sounds of Moondance at a field party with a plastic cup full of foamy lukewarm keg beer. I’d heard the record maybe twice in it’s entirety previous to that point, and I didn’t consider myself a fan. In those days I was much stronger in my vocal advocacy of the enduringly tough formalism of Them, a band I still love like a brilliant and vivacious sibling. On that night my intoxication helped to loosen the bolts of resistance. And so I danced under the moon, oblivious to the irony at the time. What I remember thinking in the moment concerned how I never felt so “adult”. ‘Twas a bittersweet and paradoxical experience.

There is no electric sitar on this record

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But, hey! How about one more? Van’s next record, released the same damn year (1970) as Moondance, titled His Band and the Street Choir, still sounds quite worthwhile to these increasingly weathered ears and noticeably scales back the smoothness of the previous release while retaining Van’s concise examination of largely R&B-based songwriting. There’s an urgency here that’s lacking on Moondance, and the hit single “Domino” which opens the album still retains its power through its years of steady rotation on classic rock and oldies stations. Easily Morrison’s most direct homage to the music that helped shape his artistic sensibility, “Domino” is one of that rare breed, a hit single that sits on the album that spawned it and doesn’t feel like a let down. Of course it is the opener, but I’m predicting that if I played the songs in reverse order I’d feel the same way. How about that for bold hypothesis? But the strongest aspect of His Band is the small moments of oddity and warmth that add up to a big whole. The strange soprano sax bleating on “Crazy Face” might’ve made the late great Steve Lacy wince, but to a non-player like me it simply feels like a gutsy beauty move. That it slides into and doesn’t disrupt such an intensely pretty tune shows just how deft these folks were at shaping this stuff on the fly (two albums in a year, remember). Tunes like “Give Me a Kiss” hover on a tightrope between the gulfs of throwbackery and contemporaneousness, chugging along like an extremely highly-regarded local bar band having the greatest, grandest night in their existence, the kind of night that inspires table dancing and marriage proposals. Even that cop in the corner is having a good time. And what’s he doing here, anyway? “Call Me Up in Dreamland” actually succeeds where Moondance’s “Come Running” flounders, managing to pull off a looseness that grows and emits an almost tent-revival feel. When the sax solo starts, any doubts that it would fracture the tune’s fragile grip on a non-polished celebratory gush is laid to rest, for the horn playing is the loving definition of elated amateurism, thick and drenched in pure love. How sweet it is. But I’ll confess that my favorite tune from this record is the fairly well known “Blue Money”, an eccentric little noodle into some gal-guy-greenback nonsense as zonked-out profundity that’s so attractively bent I can listen to it five times consecutively without any lessening of it’s qualities. There are half a dozen more strong tracks (unlike Moondance, no duds), but my personal pick of the bunch is……well. It could be “Gypsy Queen”, the best slow-groove old-school rhythm and buh-lues make-out tune I’ve heard in quite some time. This is to say it really makes me want to make out. Oh-well. Instead I’m sitting in front of this keyboard, which holds its own distinct pleasures and rewards.

In just a smidge over five years, Van Morrison grew from a stern and sharply-suited vessel of the new Caucasian R&B, squeezing off a few spectacular sparks that any true fan of garage punk should recognize and appreciate, and into a young solo artist of raw ambition that was somewhat similar to another Brit Invasion-era figure that had soaked up the sweaty and bottomless influence of the American blues idiom, namely Eric Burdon. From there he kicked out a recording that many consider to be the greatest of the last century, and while I don’t go that far, I do think that it’s not unapt to describe Astral Weeks as being comparable to Gertrude Stein’s novel Three Lives, a book that I’d been thinking about in this context (honest) before oddly stumbling onto a copy in my local used book shop just recently. There exists a concurrent aspiration and approachability in that defining work of modernist literature, a successful commingling of rich language and deep detail that still retains a sincere accessible quality that is very reminiscent of Morrison’s sprawling, demanding yet ultimately inviting masterpiece. In addition Van, like Ms. Stein (at least at the point of her debut) is attracted to conjuring portraits of fictive characters and locales that mark him as similar to Dylan certainly, but also can’t help but bring to my mind the vast expanse of literature’s past. And so, sweet Gertrude, if you will permit me the liberty. But it’s also telling that she and he went in subsequent directions that differed due to their own temperaments and the unique parameters of their chosen art forms. Morrison reigned in the sprawling severity of his vision and developed as a commercial artist in a performance based medium, and Stein did just the opposite, perhaps primarily because literature is a solitary act of creation, where even the appreciation of the finished work is largely on a one-to-one basis (Mr. or Ms. Writer meet Ms. or Mr. Reader), a factor that allows authors to be at least in theory less concerned with the follies and whims of those receiving their work. Again, at least hypothetically. What’s not a theory is their stature as artists. Stein is simply unimpeachable, and if Morrison had stopped after his fourth solo record, he’d still be called a master. But he didn’t, and there is more (much more), but the examination of his later work is for another time, and perhaps for someone other than myself to undertake. But who knows? The more I hear about this Tupelo Honey, the more I’m intrigued, an interest that’s starting to border on the smitten. What can I say; I’m a sucker for a classy lassie…

some filmic favorites (with images)

I'm stumped as to why Cahiers du cinema never called about that staff writer's position.




1- Tokyo Story (Ozu) a small story about generations and family with an emotional impact that's just devastating. It possesses a maturity and assurance of vision that elevate it above any other film I've seen. The quiet beauty of the visuals infuses the narrative without ever being manipulative. Nothing is rushed; the characters are developed gradually, through activity and shading, and their dialogue is elevated by the camera's observational approach. This minimal technique increases the emotional content and, by the picture's end, the level of empathy that I feel is greater than that inspired by any other movie. A perfect film.

2- Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson) an intensely beautiful film by a very complex and unusual director. Bresson's work presents the story (about a donkey and humankind's numerous shortcomings toward the animal and themselves) in a rather striking way: instead of histrionic method-y acting and/or gratuitous visual signifiers, we get performances that gain emotional intensity through their lack of strained dynamics and a mise en scene that is completely devoid of artifice. Much has been written about Balthazar's allegorical significance (Christ, essentially), but this is presented as just one possibility; believers and agnostic alike are invited to feel the profound poignancy of Bresson's film. Couple the transcendent qualities of the visuals with the gracefulness of the storytelling and the non-accusatory tone, and what you get is an amazing work.

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3- Vertigo (Hitchcock) the greatest film by the greatest of English language filmmakers. I can't think of a movie that better details the destructiveness of human desire and the difficulties of communication and understanding. The cumulative effects of Hitchcock's art are simply overwhelming. The use of color, the photography, the casting, how the actors are placed in the scenes, the use of sound and music are all seamlessly integrated with total mastery. Genius.

4- The Mother and the Whore (Eustache) long, sprawling, often bitter, and sometimes borderline reactionary, it's ultimately a kick in the groin to whatever was left of the Nouvelle Vague. Jean-Pierre Leaud's character is the embodiment of the early '70s pendulum swing away from the good-vibe optimism of the previous decade. He's not a character I look up to; rather, I'm in total awe of his anger, nihilist energy and the torrid momentum that carries him and the rest of his whole sick crew (sorry Thomas P.) to a mind-bending anti-conclusion. To me, the movie's greatest achievement is how it successfully depicts the disillusionment of its characters and their era, without ever being condescending or cynical. The supreme '70s film.

5- Weekend (Godard) a cathartic and caustic protest film from my favorite director. It features the greatest tracking shot in the history of cinema, and an unrelenting depiction of a nightmarish world that just totally unravels by the dénouement. One of Godard's most striking successes is how he deals with class issues in a manner that's all but unheard of in commercial films. Couple this with his deep distaste for society's self-destructive tendencies and the shallowness of humankind, and what you get is the filmic equivalent of a Molotov cocktail. But to be clear, a film that's just an excuse to make some political or social points is never much of anything: Godard's biggest strength is that he believes in the art of cinema, not only as a vessel of commentary and as an instigator of prospective change, but also purely from an aesthetical standpoint.

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6- Paris, Texas (Wenders) sometimes it takes people from distant countries to make the most profound films about American culture. But like the movies of many great auteur talents from cinema's classic period, Wenders work doesn't bludgeon the viewer with the significance of its message. And actually, whatever message that's here isn't really all that tangible, except for rather obvious things such as the difficulty of communication and the unintentional emotional damage that people cause each other. Ultimately, Wender's restraint is his best tool. Whereas the vast majority of American filmmakers deal with matters of the heart in numerous inappropriate ways, going for bombastic moments or thick sentimentality (or a cool, hip detachment) that rings false, this director instead allows the characters to carry on with dignity that's quite rare.

7- Limelight (Chaplin) his silent films are excellent, of course, but Chaplin's sound pictures are the most meaningful to me, with this being at the top. It's a truly wonderful film, a work that shows that Chaplin was so much more than just a comedian: he was someone that possessed rich understanding of humankind's struggles, and the ability to tell stories about those struggles with subtlety and grace. He was a true man of the world, a quiet, dignified warrior, a champion of the downtrodden, and a consummate artist.

8- Detour (Ulmer) the greatest low-budget noir of them all, from a director that could create significant, meaningful films from the most unlikely resources. No money, blink-of-an-eye shooting schedules, undistinguished or downright banal scripts, whatever actors were on hand: Ulmer just plowed forward and used all of it, coming up with some against the odds artworks that show just how formidable ingenuity and imagination can be. Detour is a study in weird darkness, failure, rotten luck, and a dense hopelessness that is very much of its era. In spite of the above circumstances, or perhaps because of them, the film retains a strange, otherworldly power. One sure way to evaluate the abilities of an artist is to see if they can come up with something worthwhile from almost nothing. In Ulmer's case, this is probably a bit hyperbolic, but the point still stands. Given the type of circumstances that Ulmer routinely navigated, most filmmakers would flounder or produce something of mediocre quality. Detour is absolutely brimming with the spirit of raw creativity.

9- The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel) simply put, the man was a genius, an oftentimes surreal, always interesting master of visual language that, like Hitchcock, made films through six decades without ever losing his relevance. One of the best things about Bunuel's satires, of which this is one, is how they lack the mean-spiritedness that curdles so many satirical films, especially contemporary ones. Instead, the characters are placed in a narrative of increasing outlandishness, with the effect of expert lampoonery and calm commentary that is sometimes gentle, other times biting. Bunuel's cinematic achievements are so unique and assured that there isn't another filmmaker that's comparable (possibly Jean Vigo, but he made so few films that it's not really an appropriate contrast): he stands alone as an iconoclastic visionary whose films continue to gain significance with the passing of time.

10- Touch of Evil (Welles) Kane is a brilliant film of course, but I find myself in thrall to numerous other works by Welles, this one in particular. Its unique ruminations on the concept of sleazy noir have lost none of their power, the opening long take is possibly the greatest I've ever seen (plus the photography overall is flawless), and the quirky casting is wildly effective and quite contemporary (though many recent films tend to overdue this). Welles in particular plays his role with a sweaty, obese power that's just riveting. The restoration is the essential way to see this film, with the opening returned to Welles' original intentions and the masterful balance of visual and aural artistry on display throughout.

11- Rear Window (Hitchcock) what most filmmakers would see as limitations Hitch uses as strengths. A room and the view of a courtyard from a window. Add a small group of expert actors and a story that's full of tension, ambiguity, and questionable ethics, and what you get is a film that proves the old adage of addition by subtraction. Frame after frame, Hitchcock infuses the proceedings with subtlety and sophistication, integrating all his elements within the film with meaning: there are no empty gestures here, as well as no blunt, clumsy visual metaphors. One of Hitchcock's strongest qualities is his assurance of vision. He was able to articulate in visual terms through the medium of the entertainment film recurring motifs that, once those movies shed their contemporaneousness, revealed their true nature as art films par excellence.

12- Faces (Cassavetes) a film that's positively infused with the raw energy of human emotions. It is also thoroughly tied to the changing mores of the 1960s, and is populated with characters that are fighting to overcome a profound unhappiness. A broken marriage is at the center of this narrative, and the two participants drift through a series of events in an attempt to escape disillusionment and fear. Yet at every turn they encounter and interact with other people who are similarly at sea. One of the most heart wrenching aspects of this movie is how deeply it illustrates one of the hardest realities of growing old: coming to terms with who we really are and the lives we've made for ourselves. But there is more, of course. Faces is also one of the nails in the coffin that is one-dimensional, superficial, or downright false female characterization. The middle-aged women who appear in the film's second half are presented warts-and-all, but are also shown as complex and beautiful. The honesty in the content of the film is superlative, but only because its form is just as truthful. It is the antithesis of shallow Hollywood glamour, and strives to depict a reality without falling prey to the often stultifying effects of capital R realism. Its camera is rugged and blunt, a window into consciousness that most films could never manage.

13- Bringing Up Baby (Hawks) Howard Hawks made so many great movies in so many different genres that to examine his work in total is to be awestruck by a master craftsman who constantly elevated his work to the upper echelon of commercial filmmaking. I could easily replace this film on the list with at least a dozen others from his filmography: this one, however, seems a good choice not only because it's given me great pleasure over multiple viewings, but also due to how it seems to stand as representative of a certain type of studio-era filmmaking. That is to say, it relies on economy, momentum, and a certain understated approach to how it transmits its artistic essence. Hawks was so understated, in fact, that until the 1960s, many people (particularly in the USA) felt his films lacked any artistic merit. This is nonsense, of course. But what is not nonsense are the man's movies: they are perfect examples of a direct, intuitive style that is all but vanished from the medium.

14- Night of the Hunter (Laughton) one of the strangest American movies ever made. It is a surreal, noir-like excursion through backwoods USA. Robert Mitchum's murderous phony preacher is like something from a horror film, Shelly Winters' character embodies an emptiness and hurt (that is, before she's killed and dumped in the Potomac river by bad Bob) that seems meant to represent the state of mind which plagued countless women from the pre-feminist era, and Lillian Gish's protagonist radiates with a peculiar energy and pragmatic intelligence that serves as the film's emotional core. And the narrative is heightened by the aforementioned surreal atmosphere, a visual tour de force that is so much more effective at conveying the urgency of the story than the more conventional methods used by most narrative filmmakers. If it sounds a bit like Flannery O'Conner writing a screenplay for Luis Bunuel during his '50s period, well it is a bit like that, but it's mostly its own thing: a strikingly creative film from a one shot director who brought all of the talent manifest in his acting to the helming of this sui generis work.

15- M (Lang) his American films are what I hold in highest esteem, for they are in many cases little movies (at least on the surface) that add up to a formidable sum. But M is a dark, pessimistic, frightening work that is saturated with modernity from beginning to end. Lang was looking at the times in which he lived, and simply didn't like what he saw. But rather than propose a solution or even deliver an upbraiding message, he just lays the story out there to fester in the viewer's consciousness. Here's the world, now deal with it. Part of the attraction for me of Lang's Hollywood period is how he had to navigate the constraints of the studio system and still produce distinctive, original films. With M, he was obviously far less encumbered by meddlesome producers (and also had the uncertainty of a still growing film business at his advantage), so he was able to transmit his vision to celluloid with far less restraint (though this unrestrained manner regarding content never spilled over to the film's form: apropos that, he always possessed a deliberate, masterful sensibility). Lang is in many ways the consummate auteur: taking whatever hand he was dealt and coming up with something worthwhile. In M's case, he dealt the world a flush and signed one of cinema's most enduring and influential masterpieces.

16- The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy) some will say that it's sacrilege to rate this higher than any American musical, but I will only reply that I love this film's unabashed experimentalism, while at the same time being thoroughly caught up in its complete accessibility. It is a celebration of life, ultimately heartbreaking in its honesty, yet it is that honesty which provides hope and acceptance at the movie's end. Demy's use of color is flawless, and the score by Michel Legrand is an essential part of the film's richness. It is a picture made by a believer in the profound artfulness of cinema, populated by performers who believe in the vision of Demy, who in turn help raise its frames to the level of the sublime.

17- Shock Corridor (Fuller) the first time I watched this, I found it hard to believe the strange reality of the movie twisted existence. It's a B-film (by a legendary director, yes, but a B-film none the less) that walks a stressed tightrope between exploitation and human interest, while consistently moving away from the normal operating procedures for low-budget pictures: Shock Corridor is almost overloaded with content, its form assured and brutally direct. Unlike other B-pictures, it is never thin, lacking in continuity, or laughable. Instead, it is often bizarre, uncompromising, and darkly humorous. Sometimes tawdry, while never not being earnest, it's ultimately a tour through and indictment of stereotypes, injustice, and fear that's feverish in intensity and all the more effective for its low-brow quirks and lack of sheen.

18- Band of Outsiders (Godard) I could watch this movie 500 times, and it would never lose its appeal. The direction possesses such swaggering joie de vivre, the actors are perfectly cast and their dialogue is exceptional at capturing the nuances of youth and gender, the story is a perfect execution of the Nouvelle Vague tactic of bending genre conventions (in this case the crime film) into significant new directions, and the cinematography (by Raoul Coutard) is simply expert. For its duration, it exemplifies the qualities that make Godard such an amazing filmmaker: the blending of experimentation and classicism, the knowledge and references to assorted films, the integration of high culture and low, the singular characters and the actors chosen to animate them, the emphasis placed on aesthetic sensibilities. He can move from whimsical to erudite to foreboding in a matter of frames, and knows exactly which and how many conventions to push against or to break for the film's benefit. Some have described Godard's oeuvre as impenetrable, and for some of the films this is fair (yet only from a cursory perspective), but Band of Outsiders is far from difficult viewing.

19- Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich) one of the defining films of the 1950s. Noir in style, vicious in its tone, populated by characters whose moral compasses are all pointing south to varying degrees, it's a masterpiece of kinetic subversion. It turns Spillaine's Mike Hammer, a cornerstone of the tough-guy private eye novel, into a low-rent jerk who's devoid of any hero qualities. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the world we see is overrun by self-interest, distrust, and cruelty. All the while, Aldrich's visual scheme is simply flawless: it appears at times almost instinctive how camera movements, lighting, angles, close ups, cuts, and edits enhance the narrative. Aldrich was one of the prime auteur directors to emerge after World War II, along with such disparate talents as Otto P, Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray, Budd B, and Don Siegel, and what these men shared (at least in the earlier portions of their careers) was the ability to infuse their pictures with a subtle artistic presence that was implicitly absorbed by the audiences rather than overtly noted. In the case of Kiss Me Deadly this is a real feat, since nearly everything in the film in storyline terms is delivered with an aggressive bluntness that feels at times almost like blows to the head. It's non-self-conscious brilliance at its best.

20- Le Samourai (Melville) a film of calm assuredness and rich detail. Jean-Pierre Melville is often associated with the French New Wave, but more as an influence than as an active member of the movement. Here he is depicting the milieu of French gangsters, women who are drawn to them, and the police who are out to put them in jail. Since it stars Alain Delon, it's obvious that a certain level of cool stylization will be in evidence, but it is always kept in check; never is this film an example of style over substance. And unlike many (so-called) hip crime films that have come since, films that seem determined to throttle the viewer with loudness, hamminess, and empty quirkiness, Le Samourai represents the essence of restraint. Ten minutes of the film go by before a single word is spoken. The story progresses with the confidence and patience of classical cinema. Scenes develop and information is given with a graceful visual presence. Nothing seems at all out of place. Melville's film takes on an elevated reverence in relation to its subject matter and formal approach that rises to the level of sheer profundity.