The history of the Muriel Awards stretches aaaalllll the way
back to 2006, which means that this coming season will be a special
anniversary, marking 10 years of observing the annual quality and achievement
of the year in film. (If you don’t know about the Muriels, you can check up on that history here.) The voting group, of which I am a proud member, having
participated since Year One, has also made its personal nod to film history by
always having incorporated 10, 25 and 50-year anniversary awards, saluting what
is agreed upon by ballot to be the best films from those anniversaries during
each annual voting process.
But more recently, in 2013, Muriels founders Paul Clark and
Steven Carlson decided to expand the Muriels purview and further acknowledge
the great achievements in international film by instituting The Muriels Hall of Fame. Each year a
new group of films of varying number would be voted upon and, based on the
support each title received, chosen for admittance into the hall. In 2013, the
inaugural group of Muriel Hall of Fame films were Casablanca, Citizen Kane, La Jetee, Lawrence of Arabia, M, Man With a
Movie Camera, North by Northwest, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Psycho, Rear
Window, The Rules of the Game, Sansho the Bailiff, The Seventh Seal, Sunrise,
The Third Man, Vertigo and Yojimbo. (Alfred
Hitchcock did very well for himself that first year.)
There have been three other voting years since, and in that
period 37 other great films have been inducted. And now the 2017 group is ready
for their close-up. There was a slight change in the voting this year, aimed at
expanding the focus of the HoF a bit further beyond the realm of American,
British and French films, which have been the countries most represented in the
voters’ choices up till now. In years past, Muriels voters have nominated their
favorite eligible movies (ones that haven’t already made it in) and then
everyone simply picked from those nominees. “But this year, in the interest of
diversity,” says Clark, “I decided to split up the ballot by region—the US,
Western Europe, and the rest of the world.”
The 2017 inductees have been being
revealed two a day now for about a week, so by now we’ll have a stronger idea
of whether Clark’s strategy of expanding the focus has worked.
But in any case, the Muriels Hall of Fame provides a strong
opportunity not only to examine film history but to showcase some excellent,
impassioned writing on that history, essays written about movies which might be
thought to have been somewhat exhausted by the attention paid to them by
critics and fans. Given the nature of the Hall of Fame, the choices aren’t
always necessarily surprising, but the writing about them that Clark and
Carlson gather together frequently is, which is what makes participating in the
Muriels as a voter and critic consistent and challenging fun.
So, let’s see what made it in this year. Beginning on August
12, and leading up to today, August 19, here are your Muriels Hall of Fame
inductees so far, along with the names of the writers and a taste of what they
had to say (including my own contribution, which dropped yesterday).
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966; Sergio Leone) “How many hundreds of times have we heard Morricone's iconic
coyote-howl theme used to signify ‘this is a western’? It's ironic that Leone's
deconstruction of the genre has become one of its benchmarks, its imagery and
sounds as famous as anything it was meant to satirize. But then again, it makes
perfect sense. Even severed of its original meaning by the passage of time, its
power as a piece of filmmaking is undeniable. Few movies are as entertaining,
as beautiful, as unabashedly cinematic.” (Vern)
Rashomon (1950; Akira Kurosawa) “Most modern works in which unreliable narrators reveal their
motives and deceptive self-images by constructing competing narratives around
the same event end up playing the discrepancies for laughs, or, worse, use it
as a set-up before triumphantly revealing what ‘really’ happened. Rashomon
leaves you uncertain about everything that happened... Now that the film is
canonical, many people may overlook the fact that using a visual meeting that
capitalizes on people's inclination to believe whatever their eyes are telling
them to convey this message is highly subversive.” (Phillip Dyess-Nugent)
Persona (1966; Ingmar
Bergman) “Any
number of established classics are good, even great, films to watch and
re-watch, but how many of them possess this ability to turn themselves and the
viewer inside out every time? How many can show you something new, no matter
how many times you come back to them?” (Cole Roulain)
Andrei Rublev (1966; Andrei Tartovsky) “No other filmmaker has ever rivaled
Tarkovsky’s ability to make the dreariest of settings feel sublimely beautiful.
Andrei Rublev is a testament to the power of the artist to transcend—and
transform—the world around him.” (Ian Scott Todd)
Viridiana (1961; Luis Bunuel) “Viridiana marked Luis Buñuel’s return
to shooting films in his home country of Spain. His decision raised as many
eyebrows as his Palme D’Or-winning film ultimately did. For biting the hand
that thought it was feeding him, Buñuel had his most delicious provocation
banned by the Catholic Church and Franco’s government of Spain." (Odie
Henderson)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961;
Alain Resnais) “Representative of cinema as modern art, Last Year at
Marienbad moved away from narrative and resists precise elucidation. The
viewer must work to assign meaning in the film only to find the film evades any
single interpretation... Marienbad points the way toward the
postmodern.” (George Wu)
Blow-Up (1966;
Michelangelo Antonioni) “Like its cinematic cousins... Blow-Up uses the ‘sculpting
in time’ element of film to shatter time itself. It’s at once a capsule of a
place/culture/era and a living, breathing item that may or may not be
completely different the next time we view it. Like those images the
photographer pulls out of his negatives, the film reveals stranger and stranger
layers the more we obsess over it." (Philip Tatler IV)
Notorious (1946; Alfred
Hitchcock) "It may be an espionage-fueled film noir, with Grant’s cynical
G-man recruiting Bergman’s tormented daughter-of-a-Nazi-spy to infiltrate a
Brazil-based crew of Nazis by getting close to one (Claude Rains), who just
happens to be an old flame of hers. But no matter how suspenseful and
intrigue-infested this movie gets, you’re always reminded that Notorious is
about two people whose desire for each other is so palpable, so intense, so
friggin’ sexy, they can’t hide it...!" (Craig D. Lindsey)
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953; Max Ophuls) “Someone once said of
Max Ophüls that the mere mention of his name makes all cameras stand rigidly to
attention. Never was it more evident than here in this wonderfully cynical yet
romantic eulogy to the very idea of romance and, indeed, truth."
High and Low (1963; Akira Kurosawa) “What follows is an
exciting thriller-slash-police procedural, a real nail-biter of a yarn that's
all the more remarkable in light of Kurosawa's meticulous planning, framing and
choreography. High and Low is so heavily micromanaged that by all rights
it should be dull and plodding, but Kurosawa is a master of cinematic
control." (Stacia Jones)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939; Howard Hawks) “"Only Angels
Have Wings seems to me, each time I see it, to rank as the greatest movie
Hollywood ever produced. It’s Hawks’ perfect, profound, entirely unfussy fusion
of his love of adventure, his admiration of professional aptitude and passion,
for simple (but not simplistic) skill, and even his own deftness with strains
of melodrama and comic energy, the template for the sort of action experience
that seems more and more out of the reach of modern filmmakers with each
passing, terminally bloated and self-important season." (Dennis Cozzalio)
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Keep your eyes peeled
and pointed toward the official Muriels website, Our Science is Too Tight, for additional Hall of Fame inductees which will announced during
the coming week, and feel free to start making a list. The Muriels Hall of Fame
is a great place to start filling in those gaps in your own movie-watching
history.
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