[Update Wed 31/03 A new image from Fearless]
Here it is; a gallery of images chosen by you to stand for so much of what makes Cinema such a rich and exciting medium.
I hope this is just a beginning. New submissions will be added at the top of the gallery and there will be a permanent link in the sidebar to this post. Most of the images can be viewed enlarged if you click on them.
VintageFearless
chosen by Bob Clark
Dust FallTaste of Cherry
chosen by Carson
"An image of aching poetry: the mournful Mr. Badii projects his shadow over billowing dust and rock, an all-too frightening foreshadow of his later decision to bury himself."
Two Boys and a fireMirror
chosen by Carson
Giant FaceInglourious Basterds
chosen by Ronak M Soni
The SleeperWoman of the Dunes
chosen by Bob Clark
Boy and a jar of milkMirror
chosen by Stephen
"Floating silently through a windswept room we rest on this image, seen through a mirror of a boy hidden away in the dark, sipping from a jar of milk. It is stunning."
Ella and AverillHeaven's Gate
chosen by Bob Clark
"This snapshot, from the tail-end of a whirlwind roller-skate dance-hall sequence-- perhaps the movie's signature tour-de-force set-piece-- only sums up a small amount of what I love about the film...With the lovers' silhouetted forms, the rustic printed wallpaper and the sepia tones, we get all the lyricism and nostalgia of a tender, long-ago romance, yet none of the bitter aftertaste of sentimentality. It earns so much of the tragedy that follows."
EscargotsDiary of a Chambermaid
chosen by Bob Clark
"...Thanks to evocative, yet restrained imagery like this, he [Bunuel] is able to express the ugly truth of what happens to an all-too-young girl, while at the same time sparing us the grisly details. Snails on a girl's legs-- it says everything we need to know without showing us too much to bear."
Balthazar before Dying
Au Hasard Balthazar
chosen by Carson
"One of the most wrenching images in all of cinema: a final moment of peace before unfair death."
A Pivotal Meeting
Duelle
chosen by Drew
Janos walks down the street
Werckmeister Harmonies
chosen by Carson
"This shot, from a long tracking shot watching the main character Janos walk down the barren street of his small Hungarian town, probably registered the strongest emotional response of any individual image from all of the films I've seen. Combined with Mihaly Vig's lilting score, it's an eerily sublime moment that anticipates a stellar film. "
Torment, fear and faith
The Passion of Joan of Arc
chosen by Sam Juliano
"In the age of silent cinema Falconetti's stylized facial expressions, accentuated by Dreyer's compelling use of close-ups, are the spiritual (and cinematic) essence of this staggering masterpiece."
Map in the Sand
The Hidden Fortress
chosen by Ronak M Soni
"There's so much ambiguity in such a sharp image"
Llorando
Mulholland Drive
chosen by Ed Howard
"...a very resonant image from my favorite scene in one of my favorite movies."
May the force be against you
Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith
chosen by Bob Clark
"Taken alone, these hands would appear to be reaching out to one another, perhaps belonging to a friend seeking to rescue the other from some terrible fate. From a certain point of view, they are, but more immediately, they belong to friends at war-- Obi-Wan and Anakin, dueling in the midst of the volcanic planet Mustafar, each channeling the Force to attack the other with all their Jedi might"
A Lonely-looking Sky
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
chosen by Adam Zanzie
"This particular image, photographed with the help of Academy Award-nominated cinematography by Jack Couffer, beautifully illlustrates the solitude of Jonathan, who- as an ambitious seagull banished from his unforgiving flock- dares to take on the natural beauty of the world all by himself, beginning with a brisk flight above the calm ocean, and across that lonely-looking sky."
A corridor of candles
La Belle et la Bete
chosen by Coffee Messiah
Sugar Cube
Trois Couleurs Bleu
chosen by Ronak M Soni
"In our sadness, we seek refuge in mundanities, for mundanities are the most prevalent things in our lives. In Trois Couleurs Bleu, the woman has lost her husband, and it is only because of this horrific event that she sees this image of transcendental beauty; a fact as life-affirming as just about anything else in cinema."
A City of Boxes
Citizen Kane
chosen by Stephen
A woman's eyeball about to be slit
Un Chien Andalou
chosen by Just Another Film Buff
"An eye, a slit, a cut, agenda! Possibly the most provocative image in all of cinema, Buñuel and Dali’s literally eye-popping creation is the poster boy for surrealist filmmaking and a statement by the master director announcing that his cinema isn’t going to be just eye-deep"
Fire at the Jedi Temple
Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith
chosen by Bob Clark
"Earlier in the film, Natalie Portman's Padme looks out from the balcony of her penthouse apartment to watch as the Jedi HQ is attacked by Republic (soon to be Imperial) Stormtroopers, fearfully remarking "you can see the smoke from here!". It's the sort of thing practically everyone with a good view of lower Manhattan either said or thought on the morning of September 11, 2001, and by invoking that tragic day with this, perhaps his most loaded and potentially dangerous act of cinematic imagery, Lucas raises up not only the specter of global terrorism, but also sinister hints of political paranoia in the aftermath of legislative follies like the Patriot Act or the war in Iraq."
Princess Yuki
The Hidden Fortress
chosen by Ronak M Soni
"Has there ever been a more effective image of the completely universal conflict between responsibility and personal happiness?"
Opening Shot
Sin City
chosen by Ronak M Soni
"Noir is the expression of male mistrust, a mistrust of the world around you whose cherry on top is the mistrust of women. What better way to illustrate this than a white-coloured woman in a red dress in front of a black city?"
Sabers in the smoke
Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace
chosen by Bob Clark
"Oh, if only this were the first glimpse we saw of the fabled Jedi weapons! So perfectly framed by the battle-droids and circular door, and so evocatively shot through the misty fog of deadly poisoned gas, those glowing blades of neon light cut quick to the audiences' eyes, enough to bring a grin to anyone's face...to those who claim that the magic of "Star Wars" vanished with the Prequels, I can only point to this shot, and all the gleeful play of battle that follows."
A Young Poet and Fluttering Words
The Colour of Pomegranates
chosen by Drew
"A gorgeous, prophetic image of our young poet at perfect peace with an array of fluttering words and ideas encompassing him"
Anakin and Padme marry
Star Wars Episode II : Attack of the Clones
chosen by Bob Clark
"...Lucas tightens his usually epic scope to focus on Skywalker's skeletal mechanical hand being held, tenderly, by his new bride... Like films past, it expresses the old man/machine conflict, but in a much more positive emotional spectrum, as Padme accepts her husband for who he is, prosthetic limbs and all. But it's also a nicely haunting bit of foreshadowing...It's a poignant sci-fi spin on the old motif of Death and the Maiden, as the bride lovingly clasps the same metal hand that will one day strangle out her life without even touching her."
The Death of Juanita de Cordoba
Topaz
chosen by Stephen
"As she falls she seems to collapse into herself. Emptied of life, her dress becomes a pool of blood. On the chessboard floor the Queen is, shockingly, taken by the King."
An overwhelmed point of view
Black Narcissus
chosen by Doniphon
"Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are fascinated by the nature of color in Black Narcissus, especially how it is experienced and interpreted by the individual. This culminates in an extraordinary point of view shot (photographed by the peerless Jack Cardiff), flashing red as the overwhelmed character faints. She wakes blue."
Operating on Darth Vader
Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith
chosen by Bob Clark
"I love the way that they floor-lights around him form the Empire's six-pronged symbol, turning him into a political figure like Patton before Old Glory"
Satsuki inside the Catbus
My Neighbour Totoro
chosen by Stephen
Aha, Nice collection, Stephen. I've never paid much importance to these images when watching these films. But now that you've assembled them with such care, each of them looks so precious.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
Terrific compilation here, and a number of masterpieces on display! You've done a superlative job assembling here! I am thrilled to have one of the caps.
ReplyDeleteThanks, JAFB. My pleasure.
ReplyDeleteIt's odd trying to freeze that movement, trap that emotion, in a single still frame.
Thank you very much Sam!
ReplyDeleteI hope there's more to come. Some great images already.
Ok, I'm sorry, but it didn't originally register with me that you wanted to make an actual gallery. I'll give elaborations about the three for which I didn't.
ReplyDeleteFrom Blue:
The greatest power of Trois Couleurs Bleu is in its detail to the mundanities of life. A woman has lost her husband, but that doesn't mean that her life for some time hence will be a fling in the face of fate; no, it means that she will feel sad -- not angry, not melodramatic, just sad, just pure, unadulterated melancholy --, and that she'll try to distract herself from it, as we all do, with close attention to detail, to even the most mind-wearying of mundanities.
Here, then, we have a moment of transcendental beauty that is seen only because of this great tragedy, this very opposite of beauty; it is as great an affirmation of life as the Rashomon baby.
The map from The Hidden Fortress:
It's a map on a sand. How interesting can it be? As it turns out, more than it has a right to be; I'm still not completely sure why, when I was watching the movie, I stopped and took a snap of this frame.
First, the colours. If it had been a colour image, it would have been a bright brown, a completely off-putting one, one not even close to being memorable. But it's in black-and-white, and that makes all the difference. More importantly, it's in low-contrast black-and-white; this is sand in burning heat, and it's a soft colour.
Something that makes no sense, until you look even more closely. See that stick? It's not. If you've watched the movie, you'll know that it's a stick of gold. Which is why it's in such low-contrast. While our memories know that it's gold, our experiencing selves see... well, not quite a stick, but not quite gold either; we see gold turning into a stick. It's a gold on one side of the border, and it's a stick on the other.
What's really amazing for me is how Kurosawa balances effect with logic here; it's an unnatural colour for sand, but we don't mind because our mind automatically renormalises looking at the gold, but what comes out is an accurate description of any treasure-hunting journey in real life. Unreal, and ultimately unprofitative.
But, you might realise, this is all bullshit, because I originally described my love for it as "There's so much ambiguity in such a sharp image", which I still stand by.
From Sin City:
First, an explanation of noir, by Satish Naidu:
"A cynical tone. The femme fatale.
If we choose to assemble fans of the noir genre and, in our eagerness to define it, ask them to submit two attributes each, I suspect the consensus would surround the two mentioned above. What is cynicism but an inability to trust? And what is the femme fatale but an object that physically manifests this cynicism and thus the inability to trust?"
Sin City is, in some ways, the culmination of film noir. I don't mean it's the greatest example, but that it exists completely -- not almost completely -- as a descendant of the genre. Roger Ebert described it "If film noir was not a genre, but a hard man on mean streets with a lost lovely in his heart and a gat in his gut, his nightmares would look like Sin City.". And what better illustration of the genre than a white-coloured woman wearing red in a black city?
Princess Yuki from The Hidden Fortress:
This one needs no explanation. Has there ever been a more effective image of the completely universal conflict between responsibility and personal happiness?
OK. I just saw how long those were. I just wrote them, so I'l come back and edit them tomorrow. If you like, however, your scissors are welcome too. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I forgot to mention: scrolling up and down the page sends my blood racing. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteHaha! Don't worry about it Ronak. There's no rush. I think it's best if you edit them, if you have time. Your elaborations are much appreciated.
ReplyDelete"Oh, and I forgot to mention: scrolling up and down the page sends my blood racing. Beautiful."
Thank you. Some great images, as I'd hoped.
I thought it was funny how many images there were from the Star Wars prequels. Not many would dare to admit that George Lucas still knows how to capture an unforgettable cinematic moment!
ReplyDeleteWell they are all from Bob, Adam (!)
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Star Wars was so well represented put me off adding my own images from the prequels. Not many would dare but that doesn't mean it's not truth.
Thanks again for your contribution.
I still have to write up some commentary for some of my images. I'd certainly like to see the shots you'd pick from the saga, Stephen.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I thought was interesting-- that you chose an image from "Citizen Kane", a movie that, last time I checked, you weren't too keen on!
These are some fantastic stills! Great job assembling. I too found the abundance of Stars Wars images to be humorous. But at the same time it means that so much is underrepresented. If I were someone completely new to the art form, I'd go straight to Star Wars based on this collection. Haha.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to be fun.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea here, and I grinned ear-to-ear when I saw your pick, Stephen. Well-played.
Edited elaborations
ReplyDeleteFrom Blue:
In our sadness, we seek refuge in mundanities, for mundanities are the most prevalent things in our lives. In Trois Couleurs Bleu, the woman has lost her husband, and it is only because of this horrific event that she sees this image of transcendental beauty; a fact as life-affirming as just about anything else in cinema.
From Sin City:
Noir is the expression of male mistrust, a mistrust of the world around you whose cherry on top is the mistrust of women. What better way to illustrate this than a white-coloured woman in a red dress in front of a black city?
The map from The Hidden Fortress:
There's so much ambiguity in such a sharp image.
Princess Yuki from The Hidden Fortress:
Has there ever been a more effective image of the completely universal conflict between responsibility and personal happiness?
Bob, I may well add a couple of Star Wars images.
ReplyDeleteYes, in my Citizen Kane review I did refer to that shot as unparalleled - it's stunning and symbolically rich. The film as a whole is another matter.
Carson,
ReplyDeleteThank you!
"If I were someone completely new to the art form, I'd go straight to Star Wars based on this collection. Haha."
Indeed! But, as someone not new to the art form, I would still go to Star Wars as one of my first ports of call in film.
MovieMan,
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot. Of the three I have chosen here only Totoro is a film that I really like - Topaz is OK.
I'm waiting with bated breath for the MovieMan selections.
Ronak,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much. I will add those as soon as I can. Very well written they are too.
An interesting idea you've taken up and by the looks of it, a chance to add a few more films to an ever growing list!
ReplyDeleteCheers!
Thanks Coffee Messiah.
ReplyDeleteIt's my pleasure.
Ronak, good comments on your pics. I'm going to follow suit right now and offer up some commentary of my own:
ReplyDeleteElla and Averill: IF you were to ask me what my favorite movie was at any given moment, "Heaven's Gate" is one of the ten most likely to find itself at the tip of my tongue. Though Michael Cimino's epic-lengthed opus of the Johnson County War never found an audience with filmgoers or critics while it bombed its way through theaters, it has over the years earned itself a devoted following, of which I proudly hold myself a member. This snapshot, from the tail-end of a whirlwind roller-skate dance-hall sequence-- perhaps the movie's signature tour-de-force set-piece-- only sums up a small amount of what I love about the film, but it's more than enough to stand up in comparison to so many other memorably moments in film history. With the lovers' silhouetted forms, the rustic printed wallpaper and the sepia tones, we get all the lyricism and nostalgia of a tender, long-ago romance, yet none of the bitter aftertaste of sentimentality. It earns so much of the tragedy that follows.
Escargots: When I saw Peter Jackson's abysmal adaptation of "The Lovely Bones" earlier this year, I was appalled to find that he had excised the book's signature event-- the gut-wrenching and unflinching description of Susie Salmon's brutal rape and murder. Though I'll admit I wasn't relishing the thought of watching onscreen something that was unpleasant enough to read about in-text, I couldn't help but feel that Jackson had dropped the ball in a monumental way by ignoring the sexual trauma of Susie's death, effectively censoring the story so not to distract from his generically surreal imagining of her otherworldly afterlife. While I understand the motivation in wanting to tone down the story's content in order to target a wider audience, I couldn't help but feel that he could have articulated Susie's rape in a more subtle fashion. In the end, I thought back to Bunuel's treatment of just such a sexual murder in "Diary of a Chambermaid", where thanks to evocative, yet restrained imagery like this, he's able to express the ugly truth of what happens to an all-too-young girl, while at the same time sparing us the grisly details. Snails on a girl's legs-- it says everything we need to know without showing us too much to bear.
I've just written more than I expected, so I think I'll save the "Star Wars" comments for later...
Bob,
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for the added comments. I hope you don't mind if I edit them down a little as I don't want to lose the focus on the images too much.
I will keep all the bits that relate directly to the image in question.
I look forward to your notes on the Star Wars images.
No problem, Stephen. I'm more or less thinking out loud on the keyboard for these, so any summary sentences you can parse out is fine.
ReplyDelete"Sabers in the Smoke": Oh, if only this were the first glimpse we saw of the fabled Jedi weapons! So perfectly framed by the battle-droids and circular door, and so evocatively shot through the misty fog of deadly poisoned gas, those glowing blades of neon light cut quick to the audiences' eyes, enough to bring a grin to anyone's face, lest they be too jaded by expectant hype or cynical pretension. To whose who claim that the magic of "Star Wars" vanished with the Prequels, I can only point to this shot, and all the gleeful play of battle that follows.
"Anakin and Padme Marry": Hands have always been an important element in Lucas' cinema, from his close-ups of drones working factory machines in "THX 1138" to all the severed and robotic limbs of the original "Star Wars" trilogy. By the time of the Prequels, however, he tuned his eye to more sensitively to use that old symbol of the man/machine conflict to a much more intimate and personal end. The forbidden marriage at the end of "Attack of the Clones" is perhaps the best example of this, as Lucas tightens his usually epic scope to focus on Skywalker's skeletal mechanical hand being held, tenderly, by his new bride. It shows off a much more sensitive side of the director, articulating an antiquated "star cross'd love" in plain sci-fi terms in depicting a cyborg wedding. Like films past, it expresses the old man/machine conflict, but in a much more positive emotional spectrum, as Padme accepts her husband for who he is, prosthetic limbs and all. But it's also a nicely haunting bit of foreshadowing, as thanks to the coloring and the skeletal appearance of Anakin's hand, Padme more or less embraces her own eventual demise. It's a poignant sci-fi spin on the old motif of Death and the Maiden, as the bride lovingly clasps the same metal hand that will one day strangle out her life without even touching her.
Thanks again, Bob.
ReplyDeleteHope you won't mind my temerity at submitting one more:
ReplyDeleteGiant Face, Inglourious Basterds
Explanation:
Few films I've seen have used colour as well as Ingourious Basterds. This is most strongly seen here, a big black-and-white face being burnt out by bright yellow fire; all the softness that is generally entailed by black-and-white is literally being burnt out by the hard colour under it, making it -- along with the content itself -- a profoundly disturbing image.
"May the Force Be Against You": Taken alone, these hands would appear to be reaching out to one another, perhaps belonging to a friend seeking to rescue the other from some terrible fate. From a certain point of view, they are, but more immediately, they belong to friends at war-- Obi-Wan and Anakin, dueling in the midst of the volcanic planet Mustafar, each channeling the Force to attack the other with all their Jedi might. An image underlining all the ironic tragedy of friends-turned-foes-- who knew that George Lucas could be so emo?
ReplyDelete"Fire at the Jedi Temple": Earlier in the film, Natalie Portman's Padme looks out from the balcony of her penthouse apartment to watch as the Jedi HQ is attacked by Republic (soon to be Imperial) Stormtroopers, fearfully remarking "you can see the smoke from here!". It's the sort of thing practically everyone with a good view of Manhattan's lower-east side either said or thought on the morning of September 11, 2001, and by invoking that tragic day with this, perhaps his most loaded and potentially dangerous act of cinematic imagery, Lucas raises up not only the specter of global terrorism, but also sinister hints of political paranoia in the aftermath of legislative follies like the Patriot Act or the war in Iraq. What took Spielberg hours of gauzy shock-and-awe action to express in "War of the Worlds", Lucas sums up with a single shot, containing nothing more than tall towers and a monstrous pillar of black smoke polluting a blue sky on a sunny day.
Correction-- I should say "everyone with a good view of lower Manhattan".
ReplyDeleteRonak,
ReplyDeleteNo problem. The more the better (within reason of course!).
Thanks.
Bob,
ReplyDeleteThanks for these notes. I'll put them in today.
Stephen, it appears that the caps have disappeared in this majestic post, though it could only be on my PC here. They have been replaced by boxes with an "X" in the upper left hand corner. You might want to check this out.
ReplyDeleteThank you for letting me know, Sam (and, again, for your kind comments).
ReplyDeleteEverything seems in order on my end. I will ask one or two other people if they have the same issue and then see if it can be resolved.
Looks fine to me. May be Sam has a connectivity problem? Just guessing...
ReplyDeleteOk, thanks, JAFB.
ReplyDeleteI've just realised that some images do disappear but if you refresh the page they come back.
By the way your comment has not appeared here (It said 32 instead of 31 so I read it at my email address)! Strange...
Now I see your comment!
ReplyDeleteJust noticed something about the "Fearless" image-- I think that's actually a bottle of champagne, not wine. That would make the image even more ironic and tragic-- amidst so much death and cause for mourning, here rolls a stray symbol of celebration, always corked open for parties. It makes sense, considering the journey Jeff Bridge's character will embark upon-- while everyone around him sleepwalks from one funereal moment to the next, he lives every day of his life like it's New Year's Eve.
ReplyDeleteAha. You're right. It would make the image richer.
ReplyDeleteI'll change it.
Hey, Stephen. I joined in on this idea, and mentioned your site at http://filmicability.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-visited-ed-howards-only-cinema-other.html.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested to hear your feedback. I love the choices here, especially FEARLESS, HEAVEN'S GATE (geez, I love that set), THE PASSION OF JOAN D'ARC, BLUE (I picked two different moments for the last two titles), THE COLOR OF POMEGRANITES, and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (I never realized those flames were so artfully placed). I need to get around to seeing some titles, like MIRROR and DUELLE, while other images from movies I've seen seem even more fresh out of context (particularly SIN CITY and THE HIDDEN FORTRESS). Hope you like some of my choices I'll be putting up of the next few days.
Thanks for the kind comments Dean.
ReplyDeleteHEAVEN'S GATE and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, for me, are great to look at but rather leave me cold on the emotional, storytelling front.
I will be visiting your site very soon.
Here's my take, I took on Grace.
ReplyDeletehttp://thingthatdontsuck.blogspot.com/2010/08/image-meme.html
Thanks, Bryce.
ReplyDeleteHere is my share:
ReplyDeletehttp://notesoncinematograph.blogspot.com/2010/08/hushhush-sweet-charlotte.html
Thanks, Ehsan.
ReplyDeleteMy theme was Cinema within Cinema, here's my contribution:
ReplyDeletehttp://colonelmortimer.blogspot.com/2010/08/cinema-within-cinema.html
Thanks. Seeing the different takes on this idea is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteinteresting pictures
ReplyDeleteThanks Anonymous.
ReplyDelete