What's the Best Film Title of All Time?
Friday, May 2, 2014 at 10:23AM I posed this question on Twitter the other day and got some interesting responses. The question popped to mind because The Film Society is hosting a Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective this month and I've always worshipped the title The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). It's just unbeatably evocative and memorable. Hollywood prefers more generic titles of course; recently John Carter of Mars, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, How To Catch a Monster, and Can A Song Save Your Life were abbreviated and drained of all specificity and interest.
Here were some responses I received to challenge those "bitter tears" from awesome people like Shane, Clara, and Conor ...
I have to admit they're true contenders. Maybe you'd like to add a film title to this honored list?
Reader Comments (81)
Oh my God, how could we forget?!?!?
Snakes. On. A. Plane.!!!!!!!!!!!!
That Obscure Object of Desire.
Volvagia, I don't know that movie, but yes it tried to play with gay characters with the same freedom and fun Almodóvar does, but instead it didn't go beyond the stereotypes. The title itself is a tribute/imitaton of titles like ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?
(Now I feel bad because I've just realized one of the directors died not long ago)
The Earrings of Madame De...
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
The Cook, The Thief, His wife and her Lover
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex * But were Afraid to Ask
special mention:
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (just for the ludicrousness of it) though I much rather the porn title Fresh Ass: Based on the Novel Tush by Ass-Fire
I like 'Seance on a Wet Afternoon' a lot.
Anything Almodóvar, as has been well covered, and I am a HUGE fan of Italian horror titles from the '70s:
-Your Vice Is a Locked Door and Only I Have the Key
-Twitch of the Death Nerve
-Perfume of the Lady in Black
-The Killer Must Kill Again
-Four Flies on Grey Velvet
-Don't Torture a Duckling
Though my all-time favorite movie title is actually Brazilian:
-This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse
There Will Be Blood.. Just love that title!
Some French movies have interesting names:
Un Chien dans un jeu de quilles (A Dog in a bowling game)
Un Éléphant, ça trompe énormément! (An elephant really cheats)
but those two are mostly puns... The dog thing is a French idiom, meaning something that doesn't fit with the rest, and the elephant thing is a pun because the word 'trompe' means 'to cheat' or 'to mislead' but also means a 'trunk" as in an elephant trunk....
Film titles that have always made me curious: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Jesus of Montreal, and Cannibal Holocaust.
Of recent films, Rust and Bone and Beasts of the Southern Wild.
One that encapsulates the film wonderfully: Certified Copy.
But I also loved the suggestions above of Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
There Will Be Blood, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Martha Marcy May Marlene are classics. I would add The Perks of Being a Wallflower if it hadn't been a book first but I've always loved that title.
And also, How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
Forgot my favorite of this year, which I was admiring just last weekend: Blue Ruin. What beautiful assonance.
Totally agree with "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover"; and
"Let's Scare Jessica to Death"
"Vengeance is Mine"
"As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty"
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
"8 1/2"
"Blade Runner" is actually a very good title.
and
"La Dolce Vita", "Au Hasard Balthzar" (because just like Wanda in A Fish Called Wanda, I love and get turn on by all the foreign titles.
Geez, even if we just concentrated on twenty-first century film tiltes, how about House of Sand and Fog, The Lives of Others, Inception, Requiem for a Dream, No Country for Old Men, Lost in Translation, Memento, The Departed, Anerican Splendor -- I could go on.
I forgot 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Even before I knew it was ABOUT abortion, I knew abortion was something that was gonna come up because that's a very specific time frame for a conflict. Especially for a Romanian movie set in the late 1980s
Definitely History Is Made at Night and I Walked With a Zombie, as mentioned above.
Psycho
I Spit on Your Grave
Take the Money and Run
Lovers and Other Strangers
I'm Not There
Velvet Goldmine
The Naked Kiss
The Bride Wore Black
Elevator to the Gallows
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (78)
Return of the Killer Tomatoes (88) (with a very fetching George Clooney (second billed))
Killer Tomatoes Strike Back (91)
Killer Tomatoes eat France (92)
The Bride wore black
Things you can tell just by looking at her
Sweet Hereafter
Two english girls and the continent
Burning Heat
My blueberry nights
Things We lost in the fire
Love With the Proper Stranger. Natalie and Steve.
Douglas Sirk's entire filmography could qualify, but my favorites are 'Imitation of Life' and 'All That Heaven Allows'.
My other suggestions are 'I'll Cry Tomorrow' and 'I Want to Live!'
Stop Making Sense
Elevator to the Gallows
City of Lost Children
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
A Short Film about Killing
North by Northwest
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Blacula (72)
(and the sequel)
Scream, Blacula, Scream (73)
(and the het porn version)
Lust of Blacula (87)
(and the gay porn masterpiece)
Gayracula (83)
I'll go with the generic ones, but they are also beautiful titles
The Silence of The Lambs (my favorite)
The Three Faces of Eve
A Woman Under the Influence
Midnight in Paris
Lost in Translation
And how could I forget these amazing Indonesian films,
What They Don't Talk About When They Talk About Love
They Called, I'm Monkey!
Sunday Morning in Victoria Park
and I swear to you, here they even have a movie titled just "?" Question mark like that
@Henry: You so crazy.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being is by far my favorite movie title. So much poetry is only a handful of words….very impressive
I didn't know we could suggest porn titles...
If so; PORNOCHIO, not a great title per se, but pretty funny.
... and every time he lies, it's not his nose that grows!... Classic.
The Amorous Bus Driver (one title of a compilation of five short films, all under the umbrella title Anatomy of Love)
Attack of the 50-Foot Woman
Louisiana Hussy
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (easily)
you are all lovely & amazing. so many great titles mentioned
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Night Must Fall, A Place in the Sun, The Big Country, The Night of the Iguana, Random Harvest, Tender Is the Night, All This and Heaven Too, Zero Dark Thirty.
And my favorite--The Towering Inferno. Perfect.
A few of mine have been mentioned, or are book titles, but are just so evocative!
Away From Her
Talk to Her
The Cook, The Thief, His wife and her Lover
The Human Stain
Dial M for Murder
Look Both Ways
What Lies Beneath
I love the titles of these three horror mexican films:
Hasta el viento tiene miedo (even the wind is afraid)
Mas negro que la noche (darker than the night)
Veneno para las hadas ( poison for the faeries)