Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)

This article is part of a year-long feature - watching and blogging about twenty acclaimed, cult, challenging and rare films over the course of 2013. The full list of films (and links to other completed posts) can be found here. This is the end: Erich von Stroheim's epic tale of Greed.

Greed, perhaps more than any other production in cinema history, is almost destined to be always defined by its incompleteness. Barring a miracle (and, in terms of silent film, we can't forget miracles have happened - such as the unexpected recovery of seemingly lost versions of Metropolis and Passion of Joan of Arc), the complete version of von Stroheim's astonishing achievement is almost definitely lost. The 'true' length is open to debate - some of the very few viewers lucky enough to see an early version suggested a running time just shy of ten hours, although that was likely a rough or assembly cut that would surely have been edited down before release. Nonetheless, even with a tough edit, Greed was certainly meant to be many times longer than the 140 minute version released into cinemas in 1924. von Stroheim vocally expressed his disapproval of the final version, his vision undoubtedly cut to shreds by an old rival who unluckily gained last minute control over the film's release by MGM.

Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

This article is part of a year-long feature - watching and blogging about twenty acclaimed, cult, challenging and rare films over the course of 2013. The full list of films (and links to other completed posts) can be found here. A penultimate nineteen: Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary Shoah.

I was going to leave Shoah until last. It's sheer size and reputation initially made it seem like a particularly appropriate punctuation mark to this mini-project, especially since the other 'long' film Satantango served as the opening salvo. But after watching Come & See, the little I knew about Shoah suddenly made it seem like a natural point of contrast and comparison with some of the observations I had there. They both attempt to represent World War II atrocities through the language of cinema - but, my word, the approaches are pretty much the polar opposite of each other.

The Films of the Year - The Entirely Pointless Film Ha Ha Annual Review 2013

Listomania

Upstream Colour

Another year! Wow. Much fast.

I'm just going to let the long list that follows do the heavy lifting here, but just wanted to identify two exciting and promising trends this year:

Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)

This article is part of a year-long feature - watching and blogging about twenty acclaimed, cult, challenging and rare films over the course of 2013. The full list of films (and links to other completed posts) can be found here. Eighteen: Elim Klimov invites us to Come and See hell.

Forget arguments over whether Come and See is a great war film for a moment: it's perhaps most effective as a horror film. This is, in no uncertain terms, a descent straight into hell. The Belarussia portrayed by Klimov is a place of misery, violence and pure terror. Hope? What hope. It's relentless filmmaking that puts the audience through the wringer for almost two-and-a-half hours straight. There's few moments to breathe - a surreal, deluded excursion into a forest is the closest we get - but we're never far away from some act of destruction or death. It's as visceral and disturbing as any slasher movie: in fact, considerably more so because atrocities on the scale of the ones portrayed here did occur, not so long ago.

Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel, 2012)

The Abyss

In a world where there's a constant push towards the next major advance in resolution and clarity, it's easy to forget the artistic potential of low fidelity. Leviathan - documenting life on board North American fishing vessels and the wild waters surrounding them - is a film that is not exactly what we've come to expect from the digital revolution: it offers grainy, muddy cinematography and digitally distorted soundtrack that seems more suited to a laptop's small screen and crappy in-built speakers than a big screen. And yet Leviathan one of the most vital cinematic experiences of the year.