At TIFF 2007, I caught Les Bons Debarras (Francis Mankiewicz, 1980), which screened in the Canadian Open Vault program. Regularly included on short lists of the greatest Canadian films, it’s about a precocious adolescent girl and her single mother surviving in a small town in Quebec. Steve Gravestock has written about the film in Cinema Scope, and Girish mentioned it in his post on Quebecois Cinema.
While watching Les Bons Debarras, I was struck by how familiar it felt. I was eight when the film was released — near enough to the age of Manon (Charlotte Laurier) that I was able immediately to recognize that particular era of childhood, even if her experience of it is so much different from my own. Much of the credit for the film goes to its cinematographer, Michel Brault, who is best remembered for being a father of cinema verite and for his collaborations with Jean Rouch. We often associate naturalistic styles of narrative filmmaking with the ’60s and ’70s, and it’s obviously experienced a great revival in the last decade-and-a-half, but in the ’80s a film like Les Bons Debarras was something of an anomaly. I remember thinking at the time that I wanted to find others like it. I was reminded of that again last week while browsing through this “Best Films of the 80s” discussion at The Auteurs.
Thanks to the fine folks at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, I was able to pull out the most critically acclaimed films of the decade and order them by overall rank (download pdf). Not too many surprises near the top. A lot of Scorsese, Kubrick, Lynch, and Spielberg. Among the films I’m eager to revisit or, in most cases, to see for the first time:
- Once Upon a Time in America
- Local Hero
- The King of Comedy
- The Dead
- Love Streams
- Reds
- The Verdict
- American Gigolo
- Bad Timing
Any other gems hidden among the wreckage of so many blockbusters? What are the other great, lost films of the ’80s?
Comments
20 responses to “Films of the ’80s”
Hmm…I don’t see John Sayles on this list. What about MATEWAN? And perhaps I missed it, but Claire Denis’ CHOCOLAT deserves a spot.
some suggestions:
Speaking Parts
Family Viewing
Dust in the Wind
My Summer at Grandpa's
Ballad of Narayama
Das Boot
Ghosts of the Civil Dead
The Horse Thief
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
Clockwise
La belle captive
Drugstore Cowboy
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Matador
To Live and Die in L.A.
Withnail & I
Diva
Suburbia
Since you’ve got Local Hero there, two “related” films:
Same director, set in Scotland
Gregory’s Girl (Bill Forsyth, 1981)
and
Burt Lancaster and arguably Sarandon’s post Rocky Horror breakout role
Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980)
For Sayles you might also consider his Big Chillprecursor
The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980)
Some Interesting British Stuff
The Draughtman’s Contract (Peter Greenaway, 1983)
The Long Good Friday (John Mackenzie, 1980)
Florida flavor with great soundtrack and The Feelies incognito
Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986)
Tallahassee standing in for several states (catch the giveaway Seminole logo outside Mom and Dad’s
If you like Noir and either Steve Martin or Carl Reiner, give Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid a chance (1984)
Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981)
Funny you don’t see _Sans Soleil_ on that list.
Over at this sister blog, I have this list up —
Love Streams (1984)
Sans Soleil (1983)
Manhunter (1986)
The Sacrifice (1986)
The Terrorizer (1986)
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Raising Arizona (1987)
Nostalghia (1983)
L’argent (1983)
White Dog (1982)
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Have to add Housekeeping, which I watched again recently and is Forsyth’s masterpiece.
“Melvin and Howard”, “Stop Making Sense”, “Something Wild”, “Haiti–Dreams of Democracy”, and, if you can find it, the original director’s cut of “Swing Shift”: in America, the ’80s belonged to Jonathan Demme if they belonged to anybody.
Spirit of Eden.
It’s not a movie, but don’t forget it anyway.
Cutter’s Way
Union City
Miracle Mile
I second the nomination of Housekeeping – a great film.
Here’s my comprehensive take on the 80s.
The internet is a wonderful place. Thanks for the recommendations, everyone.
From time to time I begin to think of myself as a die-hard cinephile. And then I see a list of films like Dan’s, only about a third of which I’ve even heard of, and am reminded again of just how deep the film vaults go.
Don’t think I saw these on anyone else’s lists (Dan’s might have had some of them…):
Airplane (1980)
The Changeling (1980)
Blood Wedding (1981)
Coup De Torchon (1981)
Vernon, Florida (1982)
A Christmas Story (1983)
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
Bill Cosby: Himself (1983)
Carmen (1983)
Blood Simple (1984)
The Times Of Harvey Milk (1984)
The Funeral (1984)
Ran (1985)
Tampopo (1985)
Vagabond (1985)
Laputa: Castle In The Sky (1986)
Jean De Florette/Manon Of The Spring (1986)
Shadows In Paradise (1986)
Gothic (1986)
Sherman’s March (1986)
Cobra Verde (1987)
Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)
Grave Of The Fireflies (1988)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
The Vanishing (1988)
Ariel (1988)
For All Mankind (1989)
Violent Cop (1989)
And don’t forget those wonderful neo-cold war movies RED DAWN and WAR GAMES!
Hey Darren,
Off-topic, but do you know any really good movies (not in English) that deal with class issues, even remotely?
For Tpfkazrs
a few extremely obvious contenders
Renoir’s La Règl du Jeu (The Rules of the Game)
Di Sicca Ladri di Bicicletta (The Bicycle Thief or properly Bicycle Thieves)
Eisenstein Potemkin or October
Kurosawa Yojimbo or Throne of Blood for a non-Western persepctive
That’s just hitting famously classic non-English movies that are readily available
If you want a kind of French matewan, you could examine Berri’s 1993 version of Zola’s Germinal, about a coalminer’s strike in Northwestern France.
Those do sound great bulb. Do you know of any more recent films perhaps?
My Access to foreign films currently is curtailed but I guess
Garrone Gomorrah (2008) Italian film about mafia in Naples slums
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/oct/13/gomorrah-mafia-italy-arrests
Mierelles Cidade de Deus (City of God) Life in Rio’s favelas (especially for the contrast between these hilltop interior slums and the edenic beach scenes down at Copa).
I know there’s a recent (last five or six years) French film set at a country house that does the Upstairs Downstairs thing a la Altman’s Gosford Park but the title eludes me. Cast primarily women if memory serves.
tpfkazrs, I guess it all depends on how you define “class issues.”
The first film that came to mind is Peter Watkins’ La Commune (Paris, 1871), which is a really interesting essay-narrative hybrid. Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I is also a fantastic essay on class (in a roundabout way).
If you’re looking for recent narrative films, I’d think nearly anything by Pedro Costa, the Dardenne brothers (especially La Promesse) and Laurent Cantet (especially Time Out and Vers la sud) would fit the bill.
Thanks bulb and Darren for your suggestions.
Repo Man and Straight to Hell.
Darren – not sure if you're still checking comments for this post, but in 2010 I began a list of essential films, and I think I was able to account for almost all of the must-see films of the 1980s. (And, as of this morning, I've catalogued 2009 through 1974.) I've deliberately avoided listing "obvious classics," so if you're looking for great films and you're already aware of the IMDb, the AFI, the Oscar winners, etc., it's a good place to start. Check it out!