One of the greatest cinematic collaborations ever between Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg (as well as their biggest financial success and the highest-grossing film of 1932), Shanghai Express is memorable for so many reasons, but primarily for its chic and stylistic black-and-white chiaroscuro cinematography (DP Lee Garmes won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his efforts). Rarely do depraved images of shocking sexual suggestion and hyperbolic human cruelty leave such a lasting impression on the psyche. Actress Barbara Steele, in the dual role of Katia Vajda and Princess Asa Vajda would become a genre icon and an archetypal image of evil still paid homage to today, particularly in the films of Tim Burton.ĭecadent in texture, gruesomely beautiful, and uncommonly atmospheric, Black Sunday is a masterclass in monochrome magnificence and timeless horror tradition. Inspired by Nikolaj Gogol’s short story “Vij,” Black Sunday was controversial for all the violence and bloodshed it depicted in its sordid tale of vampiric revenge. A visual innovator with incredible instincts for atmosphere and environment, Bava, with this his breakthrough, ushered in the Golden Age of Italian horror. The oft imitated Italian master Mario Bava made his directorial debut with the gothic horror Black Sunday. The darkest, most shocking film in Jarmusch’s oeuvre, it’s also his most far-reaching. Dead Man offers an inspired list of crazy cameos (including Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Mitchum, and Iggy Pop), a riveting score by Neil Young, and more perversely, an unconventionally damnable treatment of capitalism, racism, and cinematic violence. Reluctantly partnered up with a Native American named Nobody (Gary Farmer), a Virgil to Depp’s Dante, they embark on a funerary dirge that won’t end in their favor. It’s as if the film couldn’t exist in a post-Blood Meridian, post-Place of Dead Roads universe (Revisionist Western novels of great weight, by Cormac McCarthy and William S.
Depp’s Blake is a deliberate literary allusion to the 18th century poet - a repeated reference is that Blake’s poetry exists in the bullets of his gun - and Dead Man cascades such suggestion. Using his signature minimalist and informed style, Jarmusch cast Johnny Depp in the title role as William Blake, a visitor to the Western frontier, who also, cruelly, isn’t long for this earth. Hoberman, “ is the Western Andrei Tarkovsky always wanted to make”, and considering the existential, post-modernist, and apocalyptic statements issued in Jim Jarmusch’s film, Hoberman speaks unadulterated truth. This isn’t just cinema, it’s a feat of luminous and everlasting strength.Īccording to author and film critic J. The Colombian landscapes are as majestic as they are menacing, making the forests a crazy-quilt of textures and ancient radiance. This is one of those great and tragic epic jungle films, like Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) or Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), and like those films it was also made under extremely difficult conditions made palpable by David Gallego’s immersive cinematography. The winner of the Art Cinema Award in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, this Amazon-set saga of spirituality and enveloping atmosphere is an opulent black-and-white affair that is fittingly plush in 35mm. Man’s connection to nature, the tragic loss of a conquered people, and the mean mysticism that’s carried along with it are at the heart-stirring center of Ciro Guerra’s Heart of Darkness-like adventure odyssey, Embrace the Serpent.
The assembled list presented here is very close to definitive, but it is also deliberately varied to include modern films, and films far outside the innovation of noirs (so many of the finest black-and-white films exist in this genre, we wanted to include only the essentials and cast a wider net beyond just them), offering up in ascending order films of dazzling depth, stirring symmetry, impeccable production design, gorgeous framing, and assured grace. While the beauty of black-and-white film photography has been out of fashion for some time, at least amongst popular tastes, there is still a lot of beauty and breadth to be found and fawned over for casual viewers, cinéastes, and filmmakers.Ĭontinuing Taste of Cinema’s tireless and exciting search for the most visually exquisite black and white films “of all time” has been no easy charge, though several films stood out straight away.
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