Discoveries '05.

Mmmm... more lists. This time I'm posting my favorite "old" films that I saw for the first time in 2005.

• The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)
  I'm cheating right off the bat. I'd seen The Birds years ago, but my second viewing was such a completely different experience that I might as well've been seeing it for the first time. I was completely unprepared for how truly frightening and complex and smart it really is. The bold narrative loop-de-loops (it begins as a romantic comedy morphs into family drama then into a slowburning thriller and finally an outright horror film) coupled with that saturated Technicolor palette and Tippi Hedren's mutant variation on the Hitchcock blond in the lead... Bliss.
  
  
• The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
  The best film I saw all year and one of the greatest I've ever seen. In a year where critics are fawning over the pop-politics of Syriana and Crash, Bertolucci puts them to shame decimates them.
  
  
• The Devil Thumbs a Ride (Feist, 1947)
  I randomly Tivo'd this nasty bit of noir-bile when it was shown as part of TCM's night of hitchhiking movies. I loved every delicious/evil moment. A word of advice: if you've had one too many to drink and Lawrence Tierney asks for a ride back to Los Ang-el-eese, don't do it.
  
  
• Elevator to the Gallows (Malle, 1958)
  Français refroidissez à une crête tôt.
  
  
• The Fallen Idol (Reed, 1948)
  A criminally overlooked film from Carol Reed (via a Graham Greene short story) that manages to be both an unsentimental look at childhood and an unbearably tense thriller.
  
  
• Fanny & Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
  One word: thunderous. One more: perfect.
  
  
• Pickup on South Street (Fuller, 1953)
  This is what struck me about South Street: it's a hardboiled procedural, but Fuller infuses it with such heart and empathy that you forget how nasty it can be.
  
  
• Le Samourai (Melville, 1967)
  Suddenly the zen-pulp of Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog doesn't seem so special considering Melville perfected it thrity years prior.
  
  
• The Small Back Room (Powell & Pressburger, 1949)
  Alcoholism and post-war paranoia as refracted through the Archers's prism; smaller in scale when compared to P&P's Technicolor masterpieces, but no less epic.
  
  
• Spider (Cronenberg, 2002)
  You know how everyone feels about A History of Violence? That's how I feel about Spider. It's a brainy and ice-cold bit of stunt-filmmaking anchored by the superb Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richards in a shattering performance that's a career highpoint.