1. The Three Colors Trilogy: Blue: When we see the reflection of a naked man through the eye of Juliette Binoche
2. The Three Colors Trilogy: White:: Karol and Mikolaj share a slide across a frozen pond after Mikolaj has a new outlook on life. He goes to Karol and says "Anything is possible" and gives out a joyous yell.
3. The Three Colors Trilogy: Red: The Judge tells Valentine "You might've been the woman I never met." 4. Tokyo Story: The final scene between Noriko and the Grandfather
5. Only Angels have Wings: When Geoff can't bare to go through The Kid's personal belongings.
6. The Circus: The ending where the circus leaves town and The Tramp decides to go on his own.
7. Ball of Fire: When Professor Oddly who is the one widower of the group of scientists, talks about his love for his former wife, and he becomes touch when the rest of the group begin singing a song that reminds him of her.
8. Wabbit Seasoning : Daffy catches Bugs on some "pronoun trouble"
9. The Third Man: The first appearance of Orson Welles.
10. The Kid: Chaplin races over rooftops and beats down policemen to rescue his adopted son from the orphanage.
I often ask myself where my love of film stems from. At an early age I was already watching classic movies that usually starred my favorite actor Jimmy Stewart. At 13 I saw "Jurassic Park" five times in a movie theatre and at that moment wanted to see everything directed by Steven Spielberg. But even before all that my film education started every Saturday morning with a little program called "The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show". There were other cartoons on every Saturday morning, but Bugs Bunny was not to be missed, I would watch it regularly and even as I grew older, perhaps too old for Saturday morning cartoons, I would still watch Bugs.
The thing people tend to forget, and something I didn't know until later on in life was that all those Looney Tunes: Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd etc... were never made for kids. They were adult cartoons shown for adult audiences before the beginning of a feature film. Showing cartoons in a movie theatre was common practice back in the 30s and 40s just as annoying commercials are shown to us today.
Warner Brothers cartoons had the cream of the crop as far as creative personnel went. I could easily discuss the early cartoons composed by Tex Avery, Bob Clampett or Frank Tashlin who stretched animation to the far reaches of surrealism. Their films I would say became the most influential regarding the Warner Brother's style. It took directors such as Friz Freling, Robert McKimmson, and of course Chuck Jones to refine that style into the more character oriented cartoons of later years. While all these directors did brilliant work, it was always Jones who stuck out the most for me. Even as a kid I knew the name Chuck Jones, he was always the one who's name came at the beginning of every road runner cartoon (this was probably even before I knew what a director was).
Jones was thought of as the intellectual of the group, he was an artist who had ambitions of studying in Paris, and never thought of becoming an animator. Jones' early films were always less crude and slower paced than that of Clampett's and Avery's. Producer Leon Schlesinger told Jones he had to pick up the pace a bit and add more humour, to which Jones eventually did.
After Avery and Clampett left the studio, their innovative style layed the groundwork for the rest of the directors to refine. The cartoons became more character based rather than gag-dependent, and this was something Jones excelled at in his best cartoons. Jones would be mainly responsible for creating the characters and relationships we see today in Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd, no more so than in his famous "Rabbit Seasoning" trilogy which was a series of cartoons where Daffy would always try to trick Elmer into thinking it was Rabbit Season rather than Duck season, but of course Bugs would always get the last laugh. This series of cartoons depended greatly on character reactions and word play, rather than someone being blown up with a stick of dynamite.
In Jones' "Duck Amuck", he plays with animated convention as he puts Daffy Duck through the ringer when a sadistic animator doesn't play by the rules.
For Jones also nothing was sacred to parody including opera which he demonstrated with what many call his masterpiece "What's Opera Doc?" and my personal favorite the underrated "The Rabbit of Seville". In both these cases, Jones uses Opera as a backdrop for the usual Elmer vs. Bugs plots.
When I look at a Chuck Jones cartoon today, there's always something a little more subversive and sophisticated in his work that I think holds up better today than some of the others, which might be why he is probably the best known of the bunch. Jones seemed to be preoccupied the most with character. After watching a documentary recently on Jones, he was giving an animation lesson and showed how he would go about drawing Bugs Bunny. "Here's the fun part" he would say as he got to the eyes and facial expression. Jones was known for subtle eyebrow lifts or little snickers on the mouth to depict the character's mood.
Animation is something that can be taken for granted, we are more apt to go to live action films and praise those people involved with creating such unique stories and actors for giving such sympathetic characters. With animation it's easier to suspend our belief, but wouldn't it be more difficult to be asked to sympathize with a rabbit, or a duck, or a pig? That's just what animators are asked to do even to this day. Chuck Jones created worlds that toyed with the rules of reality and helped create an animated language that people still are using today. He's as innovative with comedy as Buster Keaton, and shows a wit in his films not unlike those in Marx Brothers movies. If it weren't for Chuck Jones and the other genius animators at Warner Brothers, the whole aspect of film might've been lost on me.
I bet you're wondering when will I be getting around to my fantastic Chuck Jones tribute. Fear not, as soon as the Easter weekend is over with, you will get some much needed Chuck from me as well as some other of the usual features. In the mean time let me wish you all a Happy and safe Easter.
Last night the 29th Annual Genie Awards (The Canadian Oscars) were awarded to the best of Canadian cinema. Much as the Oscars sometimes do, the Genies decided to go for spectacle over substance, which might explain why the overblown war epic "Passchendaele" was awarded best picture. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you might recall a few months ago I wrote a piece on my thoughts of the film.
I haven't seen most of the nominated films, however I did see one other nominee "Amal" which was a small fable of an Indian driver who's kindness to a dying millionaire causes him to inherit his entire fortune. The film was well made and stood out as much stronger to me than "Passhendaele". Gone from the list of nominees was Guy Maddin's masterpiece "My Winnipeg" which was instead nominated for Best Documentary but lost perhaps because it can't be clearly thought of as a documentary. In fact "Up the Yangzte" which was one of the most powerful documentaries I saw all year won the award.
Despite my thoughts on "Passchedaele" it was clear by honoring the film, the Genies were trying to honor the importance of Canadian culture in their films. I cannot judge them too harshly as I myself have not seen most of the films nominated. One thing the Genies does is point us Canadians towards films we should be more familiar with.
For those of you who were Alan Smithee fans: APRIL FOOLS!!! My real spotlight this month shines upon that animated genius Chuck Jones. I've been a fan of animation ever since I was a kid, and while I hold those classic Disney films close to my heart, I think I hold those wacky Warner Brothers cartoons even closer. While it's true Jones never did make a full length feature, he along with some other talented filmmakers made some of the most memorable and comedic moments in film history. So won't you join me this month in celebrating the work of this one of a kind filmmaker.
Perhaps the most misunderstood man in Hollywood is Alan Smithee. Along with being misunderstood, he is also the most notorious man ever to work as a filmmaker. His films are often misjudged and are given poor reviews right from the start. No one seems to take his work seriously anymore, he has become a parody unto himself. Not even Ed Wood received such maligned reviews in his lifetime. So join me this month as we dissect, discuss, and pay tribute to this misunderstood genius.
