[Breathless Days, a double bill that paired Godard's New Wave classic - Breathless, a 1959 Cannes competitor that hit North American screens the following year - with Hitchcock's strangely comparable 1960 departure Psycho: "After years of suave, sophisticated, highly polished colour thrillers, Hitchcock abruptly and unexpectedly changed gears with this made-on-the-cheap monochrome masterwork..."]
...I queued up the Godard and the Hitchcock in my Videomatica list, and will be watching them maybe tomorrow. (Amazingly, I've seen neither in their entirety!) Which got me thinking what a swell little Turn-Of-The-Decade Fest I could have in my living room over the next week. So many films on my "I Gotta See That" list land right then; The 400 Blows, Anatomy of a Murder, Eyes Without A Face, Black Orpheus, Pickpocket, Peeping Tom ("compared to the black and white of Alfred Hitchcock's somewhat likeminded shocker Psycho, the vivid Peeping Tom comes across as more immediate and ultimately more frightening..." 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die), Splendor In The Grass.
Or maybe it'll get trumped by a Music Movie Fest. Watched It Might Get Loud tonight, which included a chunk of "Sittin' On Top Of The World," which is featured in the Mississippi Sheiks Tribute Concert DVD I bought at the Folk Music Festival this weekend (Steve Dawson, Jim Byrnes, The Sojourners, Bob Brozman, John Hammond, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Colin James...). IMGL also included hunks of U2 performances, made me want to watch Live At Red Rocks and Rattle & Hum. And "The Weight," which made me want to watch Easy Rider to see where it's used, and The Last Waltz to say goodbye to The Band. And I've got a copy of Calle 54 on my shelf here...
Heck, I could rip that scene from Easy Rider and YouTube it and start my Great Pop Songs In Film Series; Fiona Apple's "Across The Universe" in Pleasantville, Elliott Smith's "Because" from American Beauty or his "Angeles" in Paranoid Park. The utterly memorable use of the over-wrought sentimentality of "Rain And Tears" in Hsiao-hsien Hou's emotionally muted Three Times. Or Penguin Cafe Orchestra: "Nothing Really Blue" from the astonishing final sequence of The Princess & The Warrior, or "Music For A Found Harmonium" in Napoleon Dynamite (!). "Tell It Like It Is" in the overlooked South African drama Forgiveness, "Cold Water" by Damien Rice in The Girl In The Cafe, or an unlikely Nordic pop cover of "How Deep Is Your Love" that provides fitting perplexity at the conclusion of Adam's Apples. "Don't Be Shy" or "Trouble" or "If You Want To Sing Out" from Harold & Maude (can you imagine that movie without Cat Stevens?), or "Indication" or "Rose For Emily" or "She's Not There" or "Time Of The Season" or "The Way I Feel Inside" or "Woman" from Dear Wendy (can you imagine that movie without The Zombies?) or "One" in Magnolia (can you imagine that movie without Aimee Mann? Heck, that movie wouldn't ever have happened without Aimee Mann). "Easy To Be Hard" as it appears in Zodiac, the Fleetwood Mac instrumental "Albatross" used beautifully in Man On Wire. "The Good Life" from Matchstick Men, or "Summer Wind" in Matchstick Men or at the opening of The Pope Of Greenwich Village, which reminded me of "Stayin' Alive" during the opening of Saturday Night Fever. Jazz: Coltrane's "It's Easy To Remember" which appears only slightly anachronistically in Capote, "Jordu" from The Notorious Bettie Page, Nina Simone in Shallow Grave ("My Baby Just Cares For Me") and Bella ("Nearer Blessed Lord"). How about the eerily effective use of Nat King Cole's "I'd Rather Have The Blues" on the car radio during the opening of Kiss Me Deadly -- or other car radio numbers, "If I Didn't Care" in Shawshank Redemption, or the super-sexy "Wonderful World" in Witness, or half a dozen tunes in American Graffitti. "The Only Living Boy In New York" or the song that put the Shins on the map (of New Jersey) in Garden State - "It'll change your life, I swear." Israel Kamakawiwa'ole's gloriously scrambled "Over The Rainbow / Wonderful World" in half a dozen movies, or the Louis Armstrong original in Good Morning Vietnam. The theme from "Lakme" in every film made in the mid-Eighties. Maybe even memorable credit tunes: "Ride Ride" at the end of The Good Girl (Gillian Welch) or Dylan's "He Was A Friend Of Mine" at the end of Brokeback Mountain or Lyle Lovett's too-perfect "Stand By Your Man" as the credits roll for The Crying Game ("Sometimes it's hard to be a woman..."). Did I miss any?
Or, to take along on my photography road trip, Born Into Brothels and Rivers & Tides and The Diving Bell & The Butterfly and The Assassination of Jesse James and Smoke. . . .
