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Socialism, Subtext, Scores and Ants: The genius dialogue of Whit Stillman
  • CRFilmsCRFilms

    If you like great dialogue and thought Kevin Smith was too low brow for you, the only other person doing great dialogue in the early 90s was Whit Stillman. I had no idea what they were talking about and I loved every minute.

    From Metropolitan:

    From Barcelona:

    Subtext and Ants....truer words have never been spoken. ^_^ Metropolitan is available on Netflix Instant and Amazon Prime Instant, if you have that in your area, definitively check it out.

  • 7 Replies sorted by
  • spacewigspacewig

    If you appreciate great dialogue you might like some movies penned by Paddy Chayefsy (Network, the Hospital) and Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell of Success, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

  • CRFilmsCRFilms

    @spacewig Seen Network, not the rest, I'll check em out. But I'd expect classic older movies to have better dialogue. Stillman is one of the better modern day writers. Aside from Tarantino and Smith, most other movie dialogue is just flat and serves the plot.

  • brianlucebrianluce

    No offense but this certainly isn't my idea of great or even good movie dialog. These clips aren't film scenes, they're radio scenes. With few exceptions, film dialog shouldn't call attention to itself, it should be like the scoring, the acting, the editing, the lighting, the everything, it should all be seamless and serve the story.

  • jrdjrd

    Am not a Stillman fan, but his dialogue is based in the "screw-ball" comedies of the 1930s. The best of these, in my view, were written and directed by Preston Sturges. For some amazing dialogue, but with a velocity and integration not found in Whit Stillman or Kevin Smith, check out "The Lady Eve". Even for today, this film is radical.

  • jeffharrigerjeffharriger

    I remember renting "Metropolitan", having read about it a fair amount in the Movieline magazines I stole from my middle school (!!) library. I really loved it, even at 13, and it remains one of my favorite movies and one of the first "independent" pictures I sort of recognized as such. Sort of like he was my Preston Sturges before Preston Sturges (and early Capra etc).

    If I'm going to recommend a Sturges, by the way, I'd leave off "Lady Eve" and go for "Unfaithfully Yours", "Hail The Conquering Hero", or "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (big Eddie Bracken fan), but they're all pretty great.

    I'll also point out that, while I sure don't take offense, I think brianluce's philosophy, or rules, are horseshit, and Stanley Kubrick agreed, saying that in "Barcelona" he was seeing something brand new in cinema, dialogue AS plot, etc. I agree. (I always thought Whit sort of pre-figured Wes Anderson but without the Powell/Pressburger visual detail and what-not. I love all these guys I'm talking about. Love fest.)

  • jrdjrd

    @jeffharriger

    We'll have to differ on Preston Sturges favorites, but where did Kubrick claim that Barcelona was something new in cinema? He apparently did like one of the performers, who he later cast in Eyes Wide Shut, but beyond that?

  • jeffharrigerjeffharriger

    Every Sturges is to be admired. Anyway, here's Whit's words:

    “Stanley Kubrick talked about (these) movies all the time. He adored Barcelona, he’s very interested in John Thomas’s photography, and he said about it that this is a new kind of cinema, this is dialogue advancing story in an interesting way. He had called up Thomas Gibson who had an important but not big part in Barcelona, and Thomas was sort of surprised to get cast in a Stanley Kubrick film without any audition or anything. Stanley Kubrick had just liked him in Barcelona and called him up and got him to do it. I met Nicole Kidman later at the premiere of Eyes Wide Shut and she said, yeah, it’s true, Stanley would talk about Barcelona all the time. He said it’s different kind of dialogue, it’s dialogue advancing story. So that’s our apology. We get beaten over the head by a lot of people saying there’s too much talk, and maybe there is. But at least a great filmmaker had another version.”

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