One of Stanley Kubrick’s favourite films was White Men Can’t Jump
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Your support makes all the difference.Stanley Kubrick might be regarded as a visionary, a master, a savant, but he was no elitist.
His favourite films include, yes, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Citizen Cane and Metropolis, but also…1992 basketball comedy White Men Can’t Jump.
The movie forms part of a list compiled by Criterion in 2012 but doing the rounds again this week, and it’s pretty eclectic.
Scraped from interviews with Kubrick’s friends, family and colleagues along with the man himself, it includes (in no particular order): Citizen Kane, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Roxie Hart, Hell's Angels, An American Werewolf in London, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Metropolis, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Abigail's Party, Roger & Me and oddly enough Mary Poppins, White Men Can't Jump, Modern Romance and The Jerk.
These can be added to a similar list made by BFI in 2013. Here’s some interesting tidbits from it.
Kubrick on…
Ingmar Bergman
"Your vision of life has moved me deeply, much more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films. I believe you are the greatest film-maker at work today" (from letter sent to Bergman in February 1960)
David Lynch
He apparently showed The Shining cast Eraserhead to “put them in the mood” that he wanted to achieve with the film
Federico Fellini
“I know only La Strada [of Fellini’s films] but that is amply sufficient to see in him the most interesting poetic personality of the Italian cinema.”
Roman Polanski
According to a biographer, Kubrick decided to make The Shining because he though Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin) were brilliant and felt compelled to make a horror of his own.
BFI’s ‘Master List’:
1. Henry V
Laurence Olivier
2. Alexander Nevsky
Sergei Eisenstein
3. Le plaisir
Max Ophuls
3. (tie)
La ronde
Max Ophuls
3. (tie)
The Earrings of Madame de . . .
Max Ophuls
4.
Smiles of a Summer Night
Ingmar Bergman
4. (tie)
Wild Strawberries
Ingmar Bergman
4. (tie)
Cries and Whispers
Ingmar Bergman
5.
Eraserhead
David Lynch
6.
Beauty and the Beast
Jean Cocteau
7.
La strada
Federico Fellini
8.
Children of Paradise
Marcel Carné
8. (tie)
I vitelloni
Federico Fellini
9.
The Spirit of the Beehive
Víctor Erice
10.
If....
Lindsay Anderson
11.
La notte
Michelangelo Antonioni
12.
Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa
12. (tie)
Seven Samurai
Akira Kurosawa
12. (tie)
Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa
13.
The Silence of the Lambs
Jonathan Demme
14.
The Battle of Algiers
Gillo Pontecorvo
15.
Harold and Maude
Hal Ashby
16.
Solaris
Andrei Tarkovsky
17.
Closely Watched Trains
Jiří Menzel
18.
The Phantom Carriage
Victor Sjöström
19.
Babette’s Feast
Gabriel Axel
20.
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski
21.
The Bank Dick
Edward Cline
22.
City Lights
Charles Chaplin
23.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Peter Weir
24.
Danton
Andrzej Wajda
25.
The Firemen’s Ball
Miloš Forman
26.
The Vanishing
George Sluizer
27.
Blood Wedding
Carlos Saura
28.
Bob le flambeur
Jean-Pierre Melville
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