In a purge of catalog titles so epic it caught the attention of the likes of Gothamist, et al, Netflix seemed to hollow out their library of “old movies.” Since the day before what was dubbed, variously, as “Streamageddon” and “Netflixocalypse,” I compiled a list of films, limited to directors of some renown, drawn from, approximately, the first century of cinema. I also made a list of essential/well-regarded auteurs not represented on Netflix, with annotations to let you know which of Netflix’s competitors (Hulu or Warner Archive Instant) offered at least one of his or her feature films.

Those two pages have been updated. If you want to save time, here’s a handful of Netflix titles that are either new (actually new or I simply didn’t notice them before), or they were purged on 5/1 and have been put back:

• The Big Knife (Robert Aldrich, 1955) – Think of it as the poison-laced cookie of Sweet Smell of Success, without the cookie. Not so much an anomaly of feel-good ’50s dreamland, this extraordinarily bitter, terrified portrait of Hollywood’s indentured is quite at home with many of the pictures United Artist distributed during the same era: Day of the Outlaw, Attack! (also by Aldrich), and, yes, the Curtis-Lancaster masterpiece. Even if you have a hard time with Clifford Odets – as I often do – Aldrich’s granite and wrought-iron aesthetic is as beautiful as ever. A showcase for Jack Palance if ever there was one.
• Highly Dangerous (Roy Ward Baker, 1950) – Starring Margaret Lockwood (The Lady Vanishes) as she battles the likes of the astonishingly decrepit Marius Goring (the tragi-romantic hero of The Red Shoes just two years earlier), Highly Dangerous was penned by versatile novelist-scriptwriter Eric Ambler (The Mask of Dimitrios, Journey Into Fear, The Cruel Sea). High adventure with some gravity – somewhere between John le Carré and Launders/Gilliat.
• The Killer is Loose (Budd Boetticher, 1956) – Sadly the only Boetticher presently offered on the site isn’t a western, but this thriller, starring noble cop Joseph Cotten in a battle of wits against killer-on-the-lam Wendell Corey, is more than worthwhile.
• the films of Edward L. Cahn – this part of the purge concerns a nearly invisible director of skid-row westerns, thrillers, and sci-fi pictures, of such non-repute that even the most intrepid cinephiles are likely to give him a miss. Sadly his best movie, It! The Terror Beyond Space – a prototype for Alien and Prometheus – has not been restored to the site, but there’s a lot to choose from. Make a day of it, as my friend Robert Sweeney did.
• Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
• Monkey On My Back (André De Toth, 1957) – An addiction melodrama may seem like unlikely material for hard-ass De Toth, who specialized in violent noirs and westerns. (His final “legit” feature, Play Dirty, is one of the greatest, and meanest, films of the 1960s.) I’d like to tell you that De Toth’s two-fisted style is enough to overcome the ham-fisted mechanics of an overtired redemption melodrama, but I can’t. Nevertheless, if you’re on a mission to see everything by the Day of the Outlaw auteur, Monkey On My Back has plenty to offer.
• Brewster’s Millions (Allan Dwan, 1945)
• Gregory’s Girl (Bill Forsyth, 1981)
• The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)
• 99 River Street (Phil Karlson, 1953) – Starring the great John Payne, who made his debut in William Wyler’s Dodsworth before kicking off a career as a B-movie stalwart (Hidden Fear, Kansas City Confidential), 99 River Street is often cited as one of Karlson’s best movies. Payne is an ex-boxer turned cab driver, framed for the murder of his wife, who’d fallen in with some bad people. You know, every film noir rolled up into one.
• Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (Akira Kurosawa, 1980)
• The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949) – Skeptics of Lean’s mega-productions and multiple award winners tend to favor the smaller stuff, like Hobson’s Choice, Brief Encounter, and this, an adaptation of a romance novel by H.G. Wells (!). Despite its relatively smaller scale, The Passionate Friends is meticulously, inventively filmed, with cinematography by Guy Green and sets by John Bryan.
• Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948) – Among the greatest film noirs, an ethereal, bittersweet masterpiece. A high-water mark for Mann, a filmmaker who etched many.
• Allotment Wives (William Nigh, 1945) – It’s not necessary to try and elevate the likes of William Nigh to the lofty status of Joseph H. Lewis, Anthony Mann, or Andre de Toth; it’s enough to take one’s pleasures where they’re found, and in the dusty, skid-row production conditions in which Nigh spent his career (he was one of the main guys assigned to the Mr. Wong series with Karloff), he managed to inject a little verve now and then. After the avant-garde touches that occasionally galvanized a bore like Mystery Liner (close-ups of a noose, the dimming and brightening of a ship’s lightbulbs as two men fight to the death), Allotment Wives is a favorite of mine. A wartime noir with a confusing but understandably then-relevant plot with crooks defrauding the veterans’ affairs department, Wives stars former Lubitsch gal Kay Francis as the criminal kingpin (queenpin?) facing off against do-gooder G-man Paul Kelly. With terrific performances by Francis and creepily avuncular Otto Kruger.
• The Brass Legend (Gerd Oswald, 1956) – German émigré Oswald, who cut his teeth in features before transitioning to a long run in television, is best-known today for his 1960 masterpiece, Brainwashed, a hallucinatory German thriller starring Curd Jürgens at his flop-sweatiest, the original version of A Kiss Before Dying, and a handful of the very best episodes of The Outer Limits. The Brass Legend, which appeared during Oswald’s teeth-cutting phase, is a slightly sappy, slightly moralizing, generally slight oater wherein the issue of whether the arrest of a cruel outlaw (Raymond Burr) is “justified” enough by the court of public opinion… let’s just say it’s High Noon without the piano-wire-tight premise. In spite of the film’s occasional bouts with lumpenness, The Brass Legend is often impressively made, to include a saloon showdown I liked so much I re-ran it twice, a big chase finale, and Burr’s gleeful sadist, who treats the whole thing like a big game.
• The Canterbury Tales (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
• Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (Nicolas Roeg, 1980)  - Roeg’s strongest period began with his debut, Performance, which he co-directed with Donald Cammell, and ended roughly halfway through Insignificance, an ambitious failure. The high point, arguably, is Bad Timing, a moving, repulsive, and transfixing study of sexual obsession. Great lead performances by Art Garfunkel and Theresa Russell – a sentence that would seem to defy so, so many laws of a civilized society.
• In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo, 2012)
• First a Girl (Victor Saville, 1935) – It should be quite enough to say that it’s a pre-make of Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria (well, technically it’s itself a remake of the 1933 Viktor/Viktoria), made effortlessly charming by its very game, very British, cast. Short, tart, fun, and funny.
• Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (Seijun Suzuki, 1963)
• the films of Edgar G. Ulmer: The Amazing Transparent Man, Beyond the Time Barrier, and The Man from Planet X – although best-known for Detour (which is also streaming), Ulmer’s science-fiction movies are (a) sub-shoestring in terms of budgets, and (b) often amazing, with spry camerawork that lend the cardboard sets dense atmosphere of bitterness and desperation.  No one triumphed on the cheap like Ulmer – no one.

• Paul W.S. Anderson
• Jack Arnold
• George Armitage
• Boris Barnet
• Yevgeni Bauer
• Jacques Becker (H)
• John Brahm (WA)
• Robert Bresson (H)
• Clarence Brown (WA)
• Edward L. Cahn
• Alain Cavalier
• Alan Clarke
• George Clooney
• Henri-Georges Clouzot (H)
• Jean Cocteau (H)
• Roger Corman (H)
• Delmer Daves (WA)
• Arnaud Desplechin
• Carl Th. Dreyer (H)
• Rainer Werner Fassbinder (H)
• Bobby and Peter Farrelly
• Georges Franju (H)
• Samuel Fuller (WA)
• James Gray
• Sacha Guitry (H)
• Alfred Hitchcock (WA)
• Hou Hsiao-hsien
• Kon Ichikawa (H)
• Shohei Imamura (H)
• Juzo Itami
• Joris Ivens
• Phil Karlson (H)
• Krzysztof Kieslowski (H)
• Alexander Korda (H)
• Zoltan Korda (H)
• Stanley Kubrick
• Akira Kurosawa (H)
• Gregory La Cava
• David Lean (H)
• Jerry Lewis
• Joseph H. Lewis (WA)
• Chris Marker (H)
• Lucretia Martel
• Elaine May (H)
• Tsai Ming-liang
• Vincente Minnelli (WA) (H)
• Hayao Miyazaki
• Kenji Mizoguchi (H)
• Mikio Naruse (H)
• Joseph M. Newman (WA)
• William Nigh (H)
• Manoel de Oliveira
• Ermanno Olmi (H)
• G.W. Pabst (H)
• Maurice Pialat (H)
• Robert Parrish
• Otto Preminger (WA) (H)
• Hal Roach
• Max Ophüls (H)
• John Paizs
• Pier Paolo Pasolini (H)
• Nicholas Ray (WA)
• Satyajit Ray (H)
• Alain Resnais (H)
• Jacques Rivette (H)
• Nicolas Roeg (H)
• Eric Rohmer (H)
• Roy Del Ruth (WA)
• Claude Sautet
• Douglas Sirk
• Victor Sjöström (H)
• Erich Von Stroheim
• Jacques Tati
• Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
• Hiroshi Teshigahara (H)
• Jacques Tourneur (WA)
• Paul Verhoeven
• Jean Vigo (H)
• Charles Walters (WA)
• Peter Watkins
• Edgar Wright

Robert Aldrich

• The Frisco Kid

Robert Altman

• Brewster McCloud
• Countdown
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Michelangelo Antonioni

• Blow Up

Bernardo Bertolucci

• The Sheltering Sky

Frank Borzage

• Strange Cargo

John Brahm

• Hot Rods to Hell

James Bridges

• The Baby Maker

Clarence Brown

• Angels in the Outfield
• A Free Soul

Tod Browning

• The Devil-Doll
• Freaks

John Cromwell

• Caged

George Cukor

• Bhowani Junction
• The Corn is Green

Michael Curtiz

• The Charge of the Light Brigade
• Doctor X
• Flamingo Road
• My Dream Is Yours

Delmer Daves

• Dark Passage

Roy Del Ruth

• About Face
• Blonde Crazy
• Born to Dance
• Lady Killer

Andre de Toth

• Crime Wave

Gordon Douglas

• The Charge at Feather River
• The Sins of Rachel Cade
• Up Periscope
• Viva Knievel!

Terence Fisher

• The Curse of Frankenstein
• Horror of Dracula
• The Mummy

Richard Fleischer

• Armored Car Robbery
• Soylent Green

John Ford

• Wagon Master

Kinji Fukasaku

• The Green Slime

Samuel Fuller

• The Big Red One
• Merrill’s Marauders
• Run of the Arrow

Tay Garnett

• Bataan

Alfred Hitchcock

• Mr. & Mrs. Smith
• Stage Fright

John Huston

• Across the Pacific
• In This Our Life
• The Man Who Would Be King

Phil Karlson

• Hell to Eternity

Elia Kazan

• America, America
• The Arrangement
• Baby Doll
• A Face in the Crowd

Fritz Lang

• Clash by Night
• Fury

Joseph H. Lewis

• Gun Crazy

Edward Ludwig

• The Black Scorpion

Sidney Lumet

• The Hill

Paul Mazursky

• Blume in Love

Vincente Minnelli

• Bells are Ringing
• The Clock
• The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
• Home From the Hill
• Lust for Life
• Madame Bovary
• The Pirate

Robert Mulligan

• Bloodbrothers

Jean Negulesco

• Humoresque

Joseph M. Newman

• The George Raft Story
• King of the Roaring 20′s: The Story of Arnold Rothstein

Alan J. Pakula

• Dream Lover
• Klute
• Orphans

Sam Peckinpah

• The Ballad of Cable Hogue

Roman Polanski

• The Fearless Vampire Killers

Otto Preminger

• Advise & Consent
• The Cardinal

Nicholas Ray

• They Live by Night

Tony Richardson

• The Loved One

Mark Robson

• Isle of the Dead

Edward Sedgwick

• The Cameraman
• West Point

Victor Sjöström

• The Scarlet Letter

Jack Smight

• Kaleidoscope

John Sturges

• Bad Day at Black Rock
• McQ

Frank Tashlin

• The Alphabet Murders

Jacques Tourneur

• Cat People

King Vidor

• Hallelujah

Luchino Visconti

• Death in Venice

Raoul Walsh

• Battle Cry
• Desperate Journey
• A Distant Trumpet
• Objective, Burma!

Charles Walters

• Billy Rose’s Jumbo
• Dangerous When Wet
• Torch Song

Claudia Weill

• Girlfriends

William A. Wellman

• Midnight Mary
• Night Nurse
• Wild Boys of the Road

Wim Wenders

• Until the End of the World

Paul Wendkos

• Angel Baby

Billy Wilder

• Love in the Afternoon

Also:

Laurel & Hardy: Bonnie Scotland, The Devil’s Brother

Busby Berkeley: Dames, Footlight Parade, Lady Be Good

early John Wayne westerns: The Big Stampede, Ride Him Cowboy, Somewhere in Sonora

Withdrawn titles are struck-through. If I noticed a new title, it’s in bold.

Update 5/2: A few titles have been renewed. They’re in bold, as well. So, at this point, bold means it’s new to my attention following the 5/1 wipe. Some bold titles are entirely new, whereas some were wiped and put back in what I can only assume is due to some revolving-door legal compliance.

Robert Aldrich

• Attack!
• The Big Knife
• The Choirboys
• Ulzana’s Raid
• World for Ransom

Woody Allen

• Broadway Danny Rose
• Manhattan

Michael Almereyda

• Hamlet
• Twister

Robert Altman

• The Delinquents
• Gosford Park
• The Long Goodbye
• Popeye
• Ready to Wear
• Thieves Like Us
• Vincent & Theo

Paul Thomas Anderson

• Punch-Drunk Love

Wes Anderson

• Bottle Rocket

Michelangelo Antonioni

• Story of a Love Affair

Dario Argento

• Giallo

Hal Ashby

• 8 Million Ways to Die

Olivier Assayas

• Boarding Gate
• Carlos

Roy Ward Baker

• Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde
• Flame in the Streets
• Highly Dangerous
• The October Man
• The One That Got Away
• The Vampire Lovers

Michael Bay

• Bad Boys
• Bad Boys II
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Marco Bellocchio

• My Mother’s Smile
• Vincere

Budd Boetticher

• The Killer is Loose

Frank Borzage

• A Farewell to Arms
• I’ve Always Loved You
• Moonrise

Howard Bretherton

• Bordertown Gunfighters
• The Girl Who Dared
• The Leathernecks Have Landed
• The Topeka Terrior

Albert Brooks

• The Muse

James L. Brooks

• As Good As It Gets
• Terms of Endearment

Tod Browning

• Dracula

Luis Buñuel

• L’Age d’Or
• Un Chien Andalou

Charles Burnett

• The Glass Shield
• Nightjohn

Edward L. Cahn

• Boy Who Caught a Crook
• Cage of Evil
• The Clown and the Kid
• The Gambler Wore a Gun
• Gunfight
• Gunfighters of Abilene
• Gun Street
• Hong Kong Confidential
• Incident in an Alley
• Inside the Mafia
• Invisible Invaders
• It! The Terror from Beyond Space
• The Music Box Kid
• Noose For a Gunman
• Oklahoma Territory
• Pier 5, Havana
• Vice Raid

Jane Campion

• Holy Smoke!
• In the Cut
• The Piano

Frank Capra

• Lady for a Day

Marcel Carné

• Therese Raquin

John Carpenter

• The Thing
• The Ward

John Cassavetes

• Minnie and Moskowitz

Alberto Cavalcanti

• They Made Me a Fugitive

Claude Chabrol

• The Bridesmaid
• The Eye of the Vichy
• Inspector Bellamy
• Merci Pour Le Chocolat

Park Chan-wook

• I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay
• Lady Vengeance
• Oldboy (English dub)
• Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Charles Chaplin

• Charlie Chaplin Collection
  

Michael Cimino

• Heaven’s Gate

Joel and Ethan Coen

• Barton Fink
• Miller’s Crossing
• Raising Arizona
• True Grit

Larry Cohen

• Full Moon High
• The Stuff

Francis Ford Coppola

• The Conversation
• Tucker: A Man and His Dream

Sophia Coppola

• Lost in Translation
  

Roger Corman

• The Masque of Red Death
• The Secret Invasion
• Tales of Terror

David Cronenberg

• Cosmopolis
• The Dead Zone
• eXistenZ

Cameron Crowe

• Elizabethtown
• Pearl Jam Twenty
• Vanilla Sky

George Cukor

• Let’s Make Love
• Wild Is the Wind

Michael Curtiz

• Vagabond King
• White Christmas
• The Man in the Net

Joe Dante

• Explorers
• The Hole
• Runaway Daughters
• Small Soldiers
• Trapped Ashes (segment director)

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

• The Kid With a Bike

Terence Davies

• The Deep Blue Sea

Jonathan Demme

• Caged Heat
• Citizen’s Band
• Crazy Mama
• Neal Young: Heart of Gold

Claire Denis

• White Material

Brian De Palma

• Carrie
• Mission: Impossible
• The Untouchables

Vittorio De Sica

• Bicycle Thieves
• Boccaccio ’70 (co-director)
• Marriage Italian Style
• Shoeshine
• Sunflower
• Woman Times Seven

Andre de Toth

• Hidden Fear
• Monkey On My Back
• The Other Love
• Play Dirty

Michel Deville

• Almost Peaceful

William Dieterle

• Dark City
• September Affair

Stanley Donen

• Blame it on Rio
• Charade
• Funny Face
• The Grass is Greener
• Kiss Them for Me

Alexander Dovzhenko

• Earth

John Duigan

• The Journey of August King
• Paranoid
• The Parole Officer
• Sirens

Julien Duvivier

• Anna Karenina

Allan Dwan

• Brewster’s Millions
• Driftwood
• Heidi
• The Iron Mask
• The River’s Edge

Clint Eastwood

• Breezy
• The Eiger Sanction

Blake Edwards

• Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Atom Egoyan

• Calendar

Sergei Eisenstein

• Battleship Potemkin
• Strike!

Cy Endfield

• De Sade
• Try and Get Me! (aka The Sound of Fury)
• Zulu

John Farrow

• Submarine Command

Federico Fellini

• 8 1/2
• Boccaccio ’70 (co-director)
• The Clowns
• Fellini’s Casanova

Abel Ferrara

• Bad Lieutenant
• China Girl

Louis Feuillade

• Fantômas

David Fincher

• The Game

Richard Fleischer

• Conan the Destroyer
• These Thousand Hills

John Ford

• The Grapes of Wrath
  
• The Hurricane
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
• Young Mr. Lincoln

Bill Forsyth

• Gregory’s Girl
• Gregory’s Two Girls

John Frankenheimer

• Ronin

Stephen Frears

• Cheri
• The Grifters
• Hi-Lo Country
• Lay the Favorite
• The Snapper

William Friedkin

• Blue Chips
• The Brink’s Job
• Bug
• The Hunted
• Jailbreakers
• Rampage

Jean-Luc Godard

• Film Socialisme
• A Woman Is a Woman

Michel Gondry

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

D.W. Griffith

• Abraham Lincoln
• The Birth of a Nation
• Broken Blossoms
• Intolerance
• Orphans of the Storm
• Sally of the Sawdust
• The Struggle
• Way Down East

Robert Hamer

• To Paris With Love

Michael Haneke

• The Castle
• Code Unknown
• Funny Games
• The Piano Teacher

Tsui Hark

• Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
• Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
• Zu Warriors

Hal Hartley

• Fay Grim
• Flirt
• No Such Thing

Henry Hathaway

• The Desert Fox
• True Grit

Howard Hawks

• His Girl Friday
• I Was a Male War Bride
• Monkey Business
• Red Line 7000
• Scarface

Todd Haynes

• Far From Heaven
• Velvet Goldmine

Monte Hellman

• Trapped Ashes (segment director)

Walter Hill

• 48 Hrs.
• Another 48 Hrs.
• Streets of Fire

Alfred Hitchcock

• The Lady Vanishes
• Young and Innocent

John Huston

• The African Queen
• The Dead

Peter Jackson

• The Frighteners
• Heavenly Creatures

Jim Jarmusch

• Broken Flowers
• Dead Man
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
• The Limits of Control
• Year of the Horse

Rian Johnson

• Brick

Mike Judge

• Beavis and Butt-head (TV series)
• Beavis and Butt-head Do America
• Extract
• King of the Hill (TV series)

Joseph Kane

• Accused of Murder
• Days of Jesse James
• The Gallant Legion
• Ghost Town Gold
• Gunsmoke Ranch
• Heart of the Rockies
• Idaho
• In Old Caliente
• The Lawless Eighties
• Romance on the Range
• The Savage Horde
• Shine on Harvest Moon
• Song of Texas
• Sons of the Pioneers
• Sunset on the Desert
• Thunder Over Arizona
• Wall Street Cowboy
• Wyoming
• Yellow Rose of Texas
• Young Buffalo Bill

Phil Karlson

• 99 River Street
• Behind the Mask
• Kansas City Confidential
• The Missing Lady
• The Shanghai Cobra
  

Wong Kar-wai

• As Tears Go By
• Days of Being Wild
• Fallen Angels
• Happy Together
• In the Mood for Love

Philip Kaufman

• Quills

Elia Kazan

• Gentleman’s Agreement
• The Visitors

Buster Keaton

• Go West
• Three Ages
• The General
• Our Hospitality
• Seven Chances
• Sherlock, Jr.
• Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Abbas Kiarostami

• Certified Copy

Takeshi Kitano

• Outrage
• Sonatine

Stanley Kubrick

• Killer’s Kiss

Akira Kurosawa

• Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior

Kiyoshi Kurosawa

• Pulse

Fritz Lang

• Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
• Harakiri
• Scarlet Street
• Metropolis
• Die Nibelungen: Siegfried
• Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge
• Woman in the Moon

Alberto Lattuada

• Mafioso

David Lean

• Blithe Spirit
• In Which We Serve (co-director with Noel Coward)
• The Passionate Friends
• This Happy Breed

Spike Lee

• The Original Kings of Comedy
• Passing Strange
• Red Hook Summer

Mike Leigh

• All or Nothing
• Happy-Go-Lucky
• Naked
• Topsy-Turvy

Mitchell Leisen

• The Mating Season

Sergio Leone

• Once Upon a Time in the West

Richard Lester

• The Return of the Musketeers
• The Three Musketeers

Albert Lewin

• The Private Affairs of Bel Ami

Joseph H. Lewis

• Terror in a Texas Town

Richard Linklater

• Bad News Bears
• Bernie
• Slacker
• Tape

Joseph Losey

• The Big Night
• The Lawless

Ernst Lubitsch

• Anna Boleyn
• The Doll
• I Don’t Want to Be a Man
• One Arabian Night (Sumurum)
• The Wildcat

Edward Ludwig

• Flame of the Islands
• Jivaro
• Sangaree
• The Vanquished
• Wake of the Red Witch

Baz Luhrmann

• Strictly Ballroom

Sidney Lumet

• Serpico
• The Wiz

Ida Lupino

• Hard, Fast, and Beautiful

David Lynch

• Twin Peaks

Guy Maddin

• Keyhole

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

• Cleopatra
• The Honey Pot
• People Will Talk
• The Quiet American

Anthony Mann

• Raw Deal
• Strategic Air Command

Michael Mann

• The Last of the Mohicans
• Thief

Paul Mazursky

• Down and Out in Beverly Hills
• Harry & Tonto

Leo McCarey

• The Bells of St. Mary’s
• Duck Soup

Bruce McDonald

• Picture Claire
• Pontypool
• Trigger

Ross McElwee

• Bright Leaves
• Photographic Memory
• Sherman’s March
• Six O’Clock News
• Time Indefinite

John McTiernan

• Basic
• The Hunt for Red October
• Nomads
• Rollerball

Aleksandr Medvedkin

• Happiness

Jean-Pierre Melville

• Un Flic

William Cameron Menzies

• The Maze

Terrence Malick

• Days of Heaven

Jim McBride

• David Holzman’s Diary

Lewis Milestone

• The Front Page [public domain print; extremely poor]

Errol Morris

• The Thin Blue Line
• Vernon, Florida

Robert Mulligan

• The Man in the Moon

F.W. Murnau

• Faust
• Nosferatu

Jean Negulesco

• Daddy Long Legs
• Jessica (co-director)
• How to Marry a Millionaire

Joseph M. Newman

• Fort Massacre
• Flight to Hong Kong

Mike Nichols

• Biloxi Blues
• Heartburn
• Primary Colors
• Regarding Henry

William Nigh

• Allotment Wives
• The Ape
• Boys of the Streets
• Divorce
• Doomed to Die
• The Fatal Hour
• Mr. Wong, Detective
• Mr. Wong in Chinatown
• Mysterious Mr. Wong
• The Mystery Liner
• The Mystery of Mr. Wong

Nagisa Oshima

• Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Gerd Oswald

• The Brass Legend
• Bunny O’Hare
• Crime of Passion
• A Kiss Before Dying

Alan J. Pakula

• The Devil’s Own

Pier Paolo Pasolini

• The Canterbury Tales

Sam Peckinpah

• Convoy

Roman Polanski

• Chinatown
• The Pianist
• Rosemary’s Baby

Michael Powell

• A Canterbury Tale

Carol Reed

• The Agony and the Ecstasy
• Night Train to Munich

Nicolas Winding Refn

• Drive
• Pusher III
• Valhalla Rising

Jean Renoir

• Diary of a Chambermaid

Nicolas Roeg

• Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession

George A. Romero

• Bruiser
• Land of the Dead
• Survival of the Dead

Roberto Rossellini

• Escape By Night

Alan Rudolph

• Intimate Affairs (aka Investigating Sex)

Raoul Ruiz

• Klimt
• Mysteries of Lisbon

David O. Russell

• Flirting with Disaster

Hong Sang-soo

• In Another Country
• Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors
• Woman is the Future of Man

Victor Saville

• First a Girl

Martin Scorsese

• Bringing Out the Dead
• Hugo
• The Last Temptation of Christ

Ridley Scott

• Black Hawk Down

Tony Scott

• Beverly Hills Cop II
• Top Gun

William A. Seiter

• Belle of the Yukon
• It’s a Pleasure!

Ousmane Sembene

• Black Girl
• Mandabi
• Xala

George Sherman

• Cowboys From Texas
• Frontier Vengeance
• One Man’s Law
• Outlaws of Sonora
• Riders of the Black Hills
• Rocky Mountain Rangers
• Santa Fe Stampede
• Texas Terror

Lowell Sherman

• She Done Him Wrong 

Don Siegel

• The Beguiled
• Charley Varrick (wrong AR?)
• Escape from Alcatraz
• Jinxed
• Spanish Affair

Robert Siodmak

• The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry

Alexander Sokurov

• The Sun

Steven Spielberg

• The Adventures of Tintin

Josef Von Sternberg

• The Blue Angel 

Whit Stillman

• Metropolitan

Preston Sturges

• The Lady Eve

Seijun Suzuki

• Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!
• Pistol Opera

Quentin Tarantino

• Four Rooms (segment director)
• Jackie Brown
• Pulp Fiction
• Reservoir Dogs

Andrei Tarkovsky

• The Sacrifice

Béla Tarr

• The Turin Horse

Frank Tashlin

• Who’s Minding the Store?

Johnnie To

• Election
• Exiled
• The Heroic Trio
• Life Without Principle
• Vengeance

Jacques Tourneur

•  The Fearmakers

Lars von Trier

• Melancholia

François Truffaut

• The Man Who Loved Women

Edgar G. Ulmer

• The Amazing Transparent Man
• Beyond the Time Barrier
• Detour
• The Man from Planet X

Gus Van Sant

• Good Will Hunting
• Paranoid Park
• Psycho

King Vidor

• Solomon and Sheba
• War and Peace

Luchino Visconti

• Boccaccio ’70 (co-director)

Raoul Walsh

• The King and Four Queens
• The Thief of Bagdad

Charles Marquis Warren

• The Black Whip

Jack Webb

• Dragnet (TV series)
• Dragnet 1967 (TV series)

Peter Weir

• The Way Back
• Witness

Orson Welles

• The Stranger
• The Trial

William A. Wellman

• Nothing Sacred
• A Star is Born

Wim Wenders

• Pina

James Whale

• The Bride of Frankenstein
• The Invisible Man

Joss Whedon

• Angel (TV series)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series)
• Dollhouse (TV series)
• Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
• Firefly (TV series)
• Serenity

Billy Wilder

• Double Indemnity
• One, Two, Three
• The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
• Sabrina
• Witness for the Prosecution

William Witney

• Bells of Coronado
• The Bells of San Angelo
• The Cat Burglar
• The Far Frontier
• I Escaped from Devil’s Island
• Master of the World
• Old Overland Trail
• Spoilers of the Plains
• Springtime in the Sierras
• Trail of Robin Hood
• Under California Stars
• Twilight of the Sierras
• Young and Wild

John Woo

• Face/Off
• Hard Target
• Red Cliff
• Mission: Impossible 2
• Windtalkers

William Wyler

• Roman Holiday

Robert Zemeckis

• Beowulf

As his one-time collaborator Sergio Leone had already done with the western, giallo icon Dario Argento rehabilitated a depressed genre (horror) using new and improved tools available to European filmmakers in what was, at the time, a fairly new set of industry conditions created by international co-production fever. With continuing advances in production technology (camera, grip, electrical, film stock, lighting, lenses), and their particular specialty, post-production sound, a handful of Italians grew to prominence by taking the long way around the Bergman and Antonioni-dominated arthouse.

Both heir to, and progenitor of, the horror-slasher-splatter mode, Argento’s work is chock-a-block with extravagant set pieces of graphic violence committed against defenseless (usually female) characters, by a perpetrator who remains unknown to the audience, as well as the journalist/detective/busybody protagonist, until the final moments. He would feed inspiration into major American genre films like Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, for which he served as a kind of uncle and midwife, and (indirectly) De Palma’s Dressed to Kill. It was the peculiar qualities of Argento’s style that set him apart: with 2nd-rate scripts that were made even stranger through the disharmony of wall-to-wall dubbing (however meticulous), his movies integrated baroque color filters and production design with soundtracks that relied on rock and creepy synth arrangements in equal measure.

Instead of trying to improve on or mitigate the absurdities of a given premise, Argento would double down: in Phenomena, after Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) witnesses a gruesome (and typically ornate, glass-involved) murder, she falls through a crumbling stone balcony, dangling by her torn nightgown from an exposed nail. She’s then hit by a car; rescued and/or possibly manhandled by the car’s German occupants; thrown from it into the woods; rescued by a monkey. This early sequence only hints at the strangeness still to come. Hand Argento a conventional movie, he would be lost at sea. Somehow, the perfect storm of his predilections (nubile maidens put to the tricked-up sword, or the straight razor; an irrelevant limpness of narrative; shock colors and gothic design schemes) gives him sustenance. 

What to see?

Top Tier:

• Tenebre (1982) [Blu-ray]
  
• Suspiria (1977) [Blu-ray]
• Profondo rosso (1975) [Blu-ray] [aka Deep Red]

Also Essential:

• Phenomena (1985) [Blu-ray]
• Inferno (1980) [Blu-ray]
• Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) [DVD]
• The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) [Blu-ray]
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) [Blu-ray]

Of Interest / Possibly of Interest:

• Two Evil Eyes: “The Black Cat” (1990) [Blu-ray]
• Opera (1987) [DVD]
  

What to see?

Essential Viewing:

• Lookin’ to Get Out (1982) [DVD]
• Being There (1979) [DVD]
• Shampoo (1975) [DVD] [Amazon Instant Video]
• The Last Detail (1973) [DVD]
• The Landlord (1970) [Netflix Instant]

Of Interest / Possibly of Interest:

• Eight Million Ways to Die (1986) [YouTube HD]

]]> http://thefilmsaurus.com/2013/02/27/hal-ashby/feed/ 0 perfumednightmare ashby http://thefilmsaurus.com/2013/02/27/george-armitage/ http://thefilmsaurus.com/2013/02/27/george-armitage/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:35:24 +0000 Jaime N. Christley http://thefilmsaurus.com/?p=764 Continue reading →]]> A more inscrutable major figure in  contemporary American cinema is hard to imagine. One of the less-heralded, but more vital, beneficiaries of Roger Corman’s tutelage at New World Pictures, George Armitage has only directed seven pictures to date, from Private Duty Nurses (1971) to The Big Bounce (2004), and only three since 1980. In broad strokes, Armitage’s direction sometimes resembles the madcap, freewheeling style of the early work of another Corman disciple, Jonathan Demme, except that the controls are tweaked to produce a giddy, anarchy-loving state in the viewer, of a manner that makes Demme’s Citizen’s Band and Crazy Mama seem comparatively sedate. A closer spiritual relative might be John Landis – at least, the John Landis who made Into the Night; we’ve tumbled into some warped part of the moral superstructure, everything is slightly corrupted, beginning with the geometry. That Armitage’s heroes are often misfits and outlaws seems only appropriate – it’s all they can do to keep up with the dissolution and entropy around them.

What to see?

Top Tier:

• Miami Blues (1990) [DVD]

Also Essential:

• The Big Bounce (2004) [DVD]
• Grosse Point Blank (1997) [Blu-ray]
• Hot Rod (1979)
• Vigilante Force (1976) [DVD]
• Hit Man (1972) [DVD]

Of Interest / Possibly of Interest:

• Private Duty Nurses (1971) [DVD]

Let it be acknowledged that Antonioni foretold many contours of our modern and post-modern condition, our obsession with tech and gadgets, the dominance of superficiality in fashion and architecture, and our general malaise, brought on by a tech-mediated disconnect, overcome only fleetingly in moments of fragile, often unsatisfying intimacy.

That’s the official version, which holds true, more or less, and if any other director were to build a film directly from those tenets, you’d probably end up with some cumbersome and edifying and unpleasant – something in the neighborhood of the infamous “Europudding.” What the official version omits, however, is Antonioni’s dry-martini humor, and his affection for the foolish things and superficial pleasures he was supposed to have exposed as decadent and corrosive. A fresh look at the then-critically-dismissed Zabriskie Point (the middle part of his three-picture deal with Carlo Ponti) reveals pleasures that roundly contradict its received status as a kind of ascetic tut-tut aimed at decrying American spiritual-cultural-political decay.

Even his famous “alienated” landscapes, images of mystification (and mists) that stand as totems of the European arthouse, bind multiple layers of, for lack of a better word, interpretation. Throughout the body of work, his protagonists are galvanized by a kind of wanderlust, but this condition isn’t exclusively the result of Disaffection or Alienation, but, even in the apparently two-sizes-too-small hearts of his capitalist heroes and heroines, a not-extinguished grain of youthful wonderment. The enduring power of Antonioni to enchant and provoke lies not simply in his images (potent and mesmerizing as they often are) but also in his ambivalence regarding the very attitudes to which his critics often reduce his work.

Off the beaten path of the Big Titles (Blow-Up, L’avventura, The Passenger, etc), those with some experience with Antonioni might also check out: I vinti, a three-part anthology of murder stories, each set in a different country. The first two segments are weak, but the third, set in the UK, looks forward to Blow-Up in many ways, and is among the most potent of his early salvos, compelling in its still-forming Antonioni-ness. The Story of a Love Affair connects the terse, intellectual turmoil of his major period – where he’d still be preoccupied with well-to-do bourgeois Italians – with the lurid melodrama that persisted through the popularity of Neorealism. Zabriskie Point was famously raked over the coals by 1970 critics, but you’d be hard-pressed to name another of his films that’s as funny, free-wheeling, and sexually charged – and the music is terrific.

What to see?

Top Tier:

• The Passenger (1975) aka Professione: reporter [DVD]
• Zabriskie Point (1970) [DVD]
• Blow-Up (1966) [DVD] [Amazon Instant Video]
• Red Desert (1964) [Hulu]  [Blu-ray]
• L’eclisse (1962) [Hulu] [DVD]
• La notte (1961)
• L’avventura (1960) [DVD] [Hulu]
• Il Grido (1957) [DVD] [Amazon Instant Video]
• Story of a Love Affair (1950) [Netflix] [Amazon Instant Video]

Also Essential:

• Identification of a Woman (1982) [Blu-ray] [Hulu]
• The Mystery of Oberwald (1980) [VHS] [Region 2 PAL DVD]
• Le amiche (1955)
• The Lady Without Camelias (1953) [Region 2 PAL DVD] [Region B Blu-ray]
• I vinti (1953) [DVD]

A little like Orson Welles, Anger’s life apart from filmmaking is extraordinary and full, busy with innumerable other interests, laden with revelations and lies, made mysterious by his own self-mythologizing. He is partly responsible for the mirror Los Angeles/Hollywood holds up to admire itself.

His claim to having played the Changeling Prince in MGM’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) has been contradicted but remains a part of his biographical narrative, even as a (likely?) falsehood. Fireworks, his first movie, remains one of the cinema’s greatest debuts; in consensus terms, Scorpio Rising (1964) is his magnum opus. A 2004 video, Mouse Heaven, saw Anger locating his favorite themes (death + pop culture + materialism + nostalgia + Hollywood) in the unlikeliest place: an inventory of Disneyana, with a soundtrack featuring The Proclaimers and James & Bobby Purify.

What to see?

Top Tier:

• Mouse Heaven (2004)
  
• Scorpio Rising (1964)
• Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)
• Puce Moment (1949)
• Fireworks (1947)

Also Essential:

• Lucifer Rising (1972)
  
• Kustom Kar Kommandos (1970)
• Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969)
• Eaux d’artifice (1953)
• Rabbit’s Moon (1950)

Of Interest / Possibly of Interest:

• Missoni (2010)
• The Man We Want to Hang (2002)

Search for Kenneth Anger videos on YouTube. Etc. Caveat emptor, obviously. The following Amazon link is for a DVD set containing the larger part of his work from Fireworks through the 1970s. The best way to see his films, needless to say, is by projecting careworn 16mm prints.

Until his tragic and untimely death in 2012, Theo Angelopoulos had been, for over 40 years, the avatar of Greek (and Balkan) cinema, earning dozens of prizes for his films. For some, he personified the unkind image of Michelangelo Antonioni as ridiculed by Orson Welles, who wrinkled his nose at the Italian master’s penchant for what he saw as mannered, indulgent, artistically negligible long takes; for others, he occupied the upper echelon of transcendent visionaries such as Bresson, Dreyer – and Antonioni. A trademark Angelopoulos master-shot will begin with a close-up or medium; the camera will proceed on tracks, along a course that is sideways, receding, or a combination thereof; the small business of the first few frames slowly gives way to grand, elaborate spectacle, as if the world is a metropolitan opera, both ancient and contemporary, and Angelopoulos is its all-powerful director, holding the eternity of theater and the spiritual condition of Southeast Europe in his hands. His films are often fraught with nostalgia and anxiety, simultaneously mourning a lost (or betrayed, or amnesiac) Europe and identifying the smallest glimmers of hope.

What to see?

Essential Viewing:

• The Weeping Meadow (2004) [DVD] [Netflix]
• Eternity and a Day (1998) [DVD] [Netflix]
• Ulysses’ Gaze (1995)
• The Suspended Step of the Stork (1991)
• Landscape in the Mist (1988) [DVD] [Netflix]
• Voyage to Cythera (1984)
• The Travelling Players (1975)

Of Interest / Possibly of Interest:

• The Dust of Time (2008)
• O melissokomos (1986)