This is episode four of a 1001-part series.

What the book says: “It was Roman Polanski’s genius that made the film not merely an intelligent and intricate narrative but a great, disturbing vision.”

We were joined for the evening again by our cineaste friend Sean, with whom we started the evening with a spirited discussion of the question of whether Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski) is a film noir or not. It’s a debate that has been raging since the film was released, which I think a testament to the extent of Polanski’s achievement with this movie. The appelations neo-noir, quasi-noir, neo-neo-noir and possibly others have been tossed around. But these are just labels, and despite it’s grand stylistic achievement and hertitage, this is a film which defies simplistic labels.

Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway are perfect as the hard-boiled gumshoe and the femme fatale, and the gradually deepening and darkening plot draws the viewer in, often half-confused and half-intrigued by the twisted plot, towards the tragic conclusion. Murder, incest, corporate greed and public corruption combine terrifically and disturbingly.

Favourite scene: The switchblade-in-the-nose scene is classic Polanski.

Fun fact: The guy with the switchblade is Polanski.

Favourite quote: “She’s my sister! She’s my daughter! She’s my …”

Verdict: A long-time favourite movie by a long-time favourite director. A colossal film, love the hats. Four stars, 997 movies to go.

In honour of Australia Day, we chose an Australian classic – Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) – as this week’s movie in the 1001 movie project.

What the book says: “A ghost story without the ghosts, a puzzle without a solution, and a story of sexual repression without the sex.”

This is a movie what has long been embedded in the Australian psyche, a critically-acclaimed masterpiece which simultaneously launched the careers of Peter Weir and Russell Boyd, and brought about a renaissance in Australian movie-making. The story is simple: on St Valentine’s Day, 1900, a group of girls from an exclusive finishing school near Melbourne head out for a picnic. At the end of the day, three of the girls and a teacher have vanished without trace. The mystery of their disappearance is not solved when one of the girls is found, miraculously still alive, a week later, nor do we know much more at the end of the film. That lack of closure can make this a maddening film to watch if you’ve been raised on formulaic Hollywood movies, but it’s unquestionably a sign of the brilliance of Weir’s vision, and something he set out to achieve from the outset.

“We worked very hard,” Weir told an interviewer for Sight & Sound, “at creating an hallucinatory, mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions.” — from Roger Ebert’s review of the film.

The cinematography includes numerous long, languid shots of the landscape – the bush and the rock become central characters in themselves, ably supported by the wildlife and the incessant background drone of insects. The girls speak less and less as they climb the rock, remove their shoes and stockings, seemingly drawn into the rock’s embrace. It’s implicitly sexual, and complemented by the simmering sexual attraction between the girls (and, we thought, the two young men as well) and the haunting musical score (Romanian pan-pipe artist Zamfir’s finest hour, I dare say).

Like many Australians, I had thought the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock was based on a true story, something that author Joan Lindsay hinted at. While the story may be fictional, there is a great deal that is true about the underlying ideas – of strangers in a strange land, of the hypnotic power of the Australian bush, of the nature of sexuality and repression and spirit.

Favourite scene: This is not a movie to pull scenes out of at random. The whole movie is stunning.

Favourite quote: “What we see and what we seem are but a dream. A dream within a dream” (Miranda).

Verdict: There are some moments at which this film seems as naïve as its characters, but taken as a whole it is well deserving of its iconic status. Four stars, 998 movies to go.

Week two of our ambitious movie-watching project. We decided to stay in the same temporal space (1977) but a very different movie to last week.

What the book says: “A terrific sci-fi mystery in which an Everyman’s search for meaning climaxes thrillingly in first contact with extraterrestrials.â€

I remember seeing this movie at the cinema when it was first released. I went with my dad, at the King’s cinema in Carp Street, Bega. As far as I can recall, this was the only movie we ever went to see together, so it’s kind of a special memory. The special effects in this film are as dazzling today as they were when it was first released, and it’s impossible for me to watch this film without experiencing the same sense of wonder and delight that I did a quarter century ago. This movie made me wonder for the first time whether we were alone in the universe. (Living in a small town at the arse end of the planet, I hoped we weren’t. I still do.)

Watching the movie with a more mature and more critically-attuned eye, the classic Spielbergian elements are all there: the search for meaning in emptiness. The suspicious attitude toward the authorities. The fragile relationships between Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) and his wife, his sons and his mental health.

Favourite scene: Brent says “mashed potato†but I’m torn between the first encounter, with Neary in his truck, and the scene in which, having gone completely berko, he starts throwing potted plants and bricks into his kitchen window, and Mrs Neary takes the kids to her sister’s house for protection. The long shot at the end of that scene, with Roy in his pyjamas and dressing gown, the neighbours standing mute all around, as he climbs in through the kitchen window, is a classic.

Favourite quote: Claude Lacombe (played by the great François Truffaut, of whom we’ll be seeing a bit in the next few years) explains “Major Walsh, it is an event sociologique!â€

I liked this film the first time I saw it and I still like it today. My dad, for the record, hated it. He thought it was silly and too long. I realised I should have taken him to see Star Wars instead. Dad would have loved Star Wars, but I don’t think he ever saw it. He died in 1979. Three stars, 999 movies to go.

Okie-dokie. Yesterday I set myself the rather ambitious goal of watching every movie listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, one each week for twenty years, or until my eyeballs fall out. We have begun.

Deciding where to begin was an early obstacle. The movies are listed in the book chronologically, from Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) to Kill Bill: Vol 1 (2003). Obviously I would have to chart a more oblique course which would provide me and my cotravellers with some variety. On a whim, I decided we should begin with 1977, the year of my own cinematic coming-of-age (Star Wars). We could have watched Star Wars (it seems appropriate that I see every film in the list, not just the ones I’ve not seen) but it’s only been a few weeks since I watched that film.

Having come home with an armful of newly-purchased DVDs yesterday, and having settled on 1977 as a starting point, we finally had to choose between Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Sean, our dinner guest, expressed a preference which settled the question, and I’m grateful to him for that.

This is a wonderful movie, funny and clever, with numerous postmodern flourishes which had the four of us tittering with delight. A semiautobiographical tale, apparently, with Allen playing his nervous New York character and Diane Keaton absolutely stunning and entrancing as the eponymous Annie Hall.

Favourite scene: early in the movie when Allen is getting fidgety and nervous while waiting in a movie queue (they’re off to see a Bergman film) in front of a couple who are loudly discussing the work of Fredrico Fellini and Marshall McLuhan. Alternating between kvetching to Keaton and speaking direct to camera, he eventually gets into an argument with the guy behind, who claims to be an expert on the subject (he teaches a course somewhere). Allen grabs the real Marshall McLuhan from behind a nearby signboard, who tells the man his theories are wrong. “If only life were more like this,” Allen says.

Favourite line: “Sex with you is a Kafkaesque experience.”

All in all, a brilliant movie and a great start to our project. Four stars, 1000 movies to go.