Another list!
Take the alphabet and list the foreign films you’ve seen — one per letter, no showing off. Include country of origin. English language foreign films are acceptable. Because I say so. Although I do consider those a bit of a cheat. Also, I tried to stick to the name of the movie as known here — in the US. For instance, y Tu Mama, Tambien, literally translates to “And Your Mother, Too” but no one here really knows this movie by that name. It was tempting to cheat my own game here and use the foreign titles — especially for that dratted letter X, but I stuck with the familiar titles to these movies. The whole list was harder than I thought it would be. I could think of many for some letters, then really strained to come up with just one for others. I mean, some of these I saw, oh, 20+ years ago. I can’t even remember yesterday, so this is really a monumental achievement for a shriveled crone like me.
Moving on.
The list:
A ~ Aleksandr Nevsky (Russia)
B ~ Babette’s Feast (Denmark)
C ~ Camille Claudel (France)
D ~ Dersu Uzala (Russia)
E ~ El Mariachi (Mexico)
F ~ Fitzcarraldo (Germany)
G ~ (The) Gods Must be Crazy (South Africa)
H ~ Hero (Japan)
I ~ Il Postino (Italy)
J ~ Jean de Florette (France)
K ~ Kagemusha (Japan)
L ~ Life is Beautiful (Italy)
M ~ Manon of the Spring (France)
N ~ Nosferatu (Germany)
O ~ Once (Ireland)
P ~ Pan’s Labyrinth (Spain)
Q ~ Queen Margot (France)
R ~ Rashomon (Japan)
S ~ Spirited Away (Japan)
T ~ (The) Tree of the Wooden Clogs (Italy)
U ~ (The) Umbrellas of Cherbourg (France)
V ~ (The) Virgin Spring (Sweden)
W ~ Walkabout (Australia)
X ~ I got nothing here — can I say Xanadu? No? Why not? It’s my list. I made this list thingy up. Can’t I do what I want? No? I’m such a tyrant. Sheesh.
Y ~ y Tu Mama, Tambien (Mexico)
Z ~ Zus and Zo (The Netherlands)
That X is gonna bug me, I tell you. Ah, well. I honestly could not think of one I’d seen.
Feel free to give your own list a whirl!
Heh, if it wasn’t for anime, I doubt I could even get four letters! Sad, but true. I suspect that Sheila would rock this meme’s face, however.
I don’t think I’ve got that many under my belt. I’d certainly have more if I knew the titles of all the Japanese movies we’d watch on TV when I lived in Okinawa. I’ll have to give this some thought.
Wow. This is hard – good work, Tracey! Here are some of mine – I left some blank because I came up blank, which is driving me crazy, because I know I could fill them in if I could think straight!!
A: Andrei Rublev (Russia)
B. Between Heaven and Earth (Uzbekistan)
C. Children of Heaven (Iran)
D. Double Life of Veronique (Poland)
E. Ecstasy (Czechoslovakia)
F. Fireworks Wednesday (Iran)
G. The Gods Must Be Crazy (South Africa) – good one, Tracey!
H. Half Moon (Iran)
I. Idi Amin: Autoportrait (France – I’m pretty sure it’s French)
J.
K.
L. Leila (Iran)
M. M (Germany)
N. Night Porter (Italy)
O. Offside (Iran)
P. Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (Denmark)
Q. Querelle (Germany)
R. The Russian Ark (Russia)
S. Siavash (Iran)
T. The Terrorist (India)
U. Umbrellas of Cherbourg (France)
V.
W. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spain)
X.
Y.
Z.
Bah!!!
Shiela, you probably have screen caps from enough films to finish! You could do the meme pictorally. It’ll be the Sesame Street of Foreign Film Memes.
Onetwothree FOUR FIVE
Six seveneight NINE TEN
Eleven twelve!
I have so many screen grabs on my computer that it now chugs along like an old-fashioned steam engine. I need to do something about that.
Sheila — I have NO doubt that you could finish this given the time. But you get a free pass. It’s actually a time-consuming obsessive endeavor that I wish I hadn’t even started!
I just got really stuck!! And I had, like, 4 possibilities for certain letters and then NADA for others.
“X” is always going to be the problem although if I saw more movies from China I could have filled that one in pronto!
I’m calling “hard” on this one but here’s my brief list, gaps and all:
A ~
B ~
C ~ City of God (Brazil)
D ~ Das Boot (Germany)
E ~ El Mariachi (Mexico)
F ~
G ~ (The) Gods Must be Crazy (South Africa)
H ~ Hero (Japan)
I ~ Il Postino (Italy)
J ~
K ~
L ~ Life is Beautiful (Italy)
N ~ Nosferatu (Germany)
O ~ Once (Ireland) – Great soundtrack.
P ~ Pan’s Labyrinth (Spain) – Just saw this and loved it.
Q ~
R ~ Ran (Japan)
S ~ Seven Samarai (Japan)
W ~
X ~
Y ~
Z~
Now if any of the old Spaghetti Westerns are considered foreign I could fill in more.
All of this love for The Gods Must Be Crazy has made me want to see it again.
My parents took my brother and me to see it in a little movie theatre in Rhode Island when we were kids, and I remember laughing so hard at the rhinoceros stomping out fires (whether you wanted him to or not) that I felt like I was making a scene!