The best non-English-language movies for each letter of the English alphabet — Romansuave's writeoff challenge
May 26 '05
The Bottom Line For me, the best of the best is Kurosawa's "Ran" followed by Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai."
Once upon a time, I was an advisor in movies, but have written about very few in recent years. I was stimulated by reading some of the lists in Romansuave's perverse writeoff challenge to list the first movie that comes to mind for each letter of the English alphabet. Shaking off the influence of others' lists, I decided to do one of foreign-language films, and to fit it into an epinions category, to reach for the best non-English-language film for each letter of the alphabet. Like all such lists, some of these are more favorites of mine than attempts at a Final Judgment of "the best" not taking into consideration my liking them. The list is heavily tilted to Japanese, which may reflect my family's Japanophilia (unhappy with Taiwan's occupation by marrauding Chinese), but I think that Akira Kurosawa made more great films than any other film-maker, and that he was the Mount Everest of a chain of peaks (that included Ichikawa, Imamura, Kobayashi, Mizoguchi, Ozu, and, arguably, Oshima)
My list
"Alphaville" directed by Jean-Luc Godard with his muse Ana Karina in the mid-1960s is difficult to characterize. Set in a dystopian future, it has few trappings of science fiction. It stars Eddie Constantine as a rough detective of sorts, but ultimately the movie turns out to be a delirious romance.
The first movie that comes to mind for me is the very bloody Brother with "Beat" Kitano as a yakusa who goes to Los Angeles and more or less adopts Omar Epps. Kurosawa's especially melodramatic "The Bad Sleep Well" is a better movie with Akira Kurosawa playing a secret avenger with a public manner even milder than that of Clark Kent. (If a Godard movie had not taken the first slot, I might have gone with "Band of Angels" or "Breathless" here.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee's crossover wuxia love story(/ies). I prefer the young uns (Zhang Yiyi and Chang Chen to the very proper oldsters (Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yunfat). I love the Chow/Zhang fight across the top of the bamboo forest! (A competitor that comes readily to mind is "Cinema Paradiso.")
"Dersu Uzala": Kurosawa makes Siberia look inviting! The title character (played by a crusty Maksim Munzu) is a memorable local guide to a Russian naturalist explorer.
Enjo, Kon Ichikawa's movie, based on Yukio Mishima's famous novel (translated as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion explores a particularly notorious case of vandalism (arson of a national treasure) and the kind of resentment that fueled the 9/11 Saudis. (Chen Kaige's epic "The Emperor and the Assassin" is the second "E" movie that comes to mind.)
Farewell My Concubine is a very operatic movie about the hell of life in China in succeeding regimes for some "Peking Opera" stars (Leslie Cheung, Hie Diey, Gong Li). (I haven't seen Ozu Yasujiro's "Floating Weeds.")
Ghost Dog is an American movie, directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Forrest Whittaker as a Zen hit man. (I've put "Gohatto" under its English-language title, "Taboo.") It has a foreign-movie feel, which I could also say for "Leon, the Professional" (a reminder that Natalie Portman could act, though not for George Lucas...)
House of the Flying Daggers has incredible, beautiful cinematography and very impressive choreography. It is romantic in ways that seem very Japanese to me, and not just in that the male lead has a Japanese name ( also has a Taiwanese mother). I prefer the portrayal of a regime losing the "mandate of Heaven" to Zhang Yimou's previous movie, "Hero" that so pleased the Chinese Communist Party rulers in showing subservience to an earlier dynasty that was on the rise rather than declining as the T'ang dynasty was in the background to "Flying Daggers." The CGI work in the second movie is superior to the first, but not what interests me.
In my household (living with a movie top reviewer whose list of the best movies ever is topped by Sergei Eisenstein's two-part, highly designed "Ivan the Terrible," it is the first "I" movie that is allowed to come to mind, followed by the very depressing Kurosawa movie about trying to grow old with dignity "Ikuru," with Kurosawa regular Shimura Takashi having his biggest role.
"Ju Dou" (1990) one of Zhang Yimou's early movies with Gong Li suffering in the Chinese countryside.
Kagemusha is a fascinating, visually stunning movie about keeping up appearances. The impostor sitting immobile on top of a mountain as some of his guards are killed defending himself is the scene from a movie (from all the movies I've ever seen) that I remember best. The image of the horrified Nakadai Tatsuya (who also starred in Kurosawa's ultimate masterpiece "Ran") beside himself at the end also is indelibly stuck in my brain.
"Lola and Billy the Kid" is a German movie about Turkish immigrants with very confused reactions to homosexual and transvestite Turks.
The obvious first classic movie for the letter "M" is the movie "M" directed by Fritz Lang, involving the chase (more by the underworld of organized crime) of a child murderer (memorably played by Peter Lorre, popping his already "bug eyes").
"No Man's Land," the very black humor portrayal of the civil war accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia places a Serb fighting to maintain the Union with a rebel, where they are "rescued" by a United Nations detachment, a rescue that does them no good.
"Ohayō" ( Good Morning), probably the most lighthearted, comic movie from the great master of Japanese chamber drams, Ozu Yasujiro, in some ways prefigures the Taiwanese masterpiece "Yi Yi."
Painted Faces (Qi qiao fu) is a very moving account of the very tough childhood of some Hong Kong boys sold or given to local Peking Opera trainers. As they grow up, the popularity of Peking Opera fades and they make a transition into Hong Kong action movies, and two of the seven become stars Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. (And Sammo Hung plays the brutal trainer, Master Yu.) (Steve says that I have to mention Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," but he already had his chance!)
"Qiu Ju da guan si" ( Qiu Ju Goes to Court) is another early Zhang Yimou movie with Li Gong seeking justice, but more comedy than tragedy.
A list of best foreign films should be dominated by Akira Kurosawa, the master of masters. It seems that he was building up to an epic version of "King Lear" and Ran is an emotionally rich, visually stunning summation of his artistry. Also in the R's is the movie that made Kurosawa (and Toshiro Mifune, in one of his bandit roles) known in the west "Rashomon."
"S" is for samurai. Having once sat through the entire "Samurai trilogy" in one night, it is the first one I think of, but there are such other masterpieces as Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and Kobayashi Masaki's
"Samurai Rebellion." Toshiro Mifune stars in all three (or is it five?). Plus Alain Delon as a French hit-man (also see "Ghost Dog" above") in Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Samourai."
Mifune is also Kurosawa's version of Macbeth in "Throne of Blood." The best "T' movie is probably Ozu Yasujiro's Tokyo Story, but the first one that came to my mind is Taboo, a very perverse drama about a beautiful youthful samurai desired by many other samurais, most of whom he kills. What stays in my mind is the violence done a cherry tree in bloom(!) It is an example of the Japanese romance with death. And this is a heavily Japanese list, any readers will have noticed.
I'm surprised that in making his list Steve did not remember that we saw "Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl", directed by and starring Joan Chen as an urban girl sent off for labor "re-education" in a remote culturally Tibetan part of Sichuan province during the Cultural Revolution. She voluntarily follows a Tibetan and learns about love and herding horses. Easily better than the Brazilian slave movie "Xica"!
Yi Yi, directed by Edward Yang has an adorable child (Yang Yang—the movie is filled with reduplicated names; his sister is Ting-Ting) who is a shutter-bug in the apartment building in Taipei where his troubled family lives. The movie runs for three hours, but did not seem long to me.
"Z" is the first movie that comes to mind for the letter "Z." It is a political thriller directed by Costas-Garvas, starring Yves Montand, set in the Greece of the military junta. (I couldn't make a case that Lau Wai Keung's Zhong hua ying xiong [A Man Called Hero] is competitive.)
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