Autumn Movie Mini-List
Jason Shwartzman in Rushmore
What John Keats called the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” is a gift to film. Summertime films feast on that season’s sense of chance and hedonistic opportunity, but by autumn that ripeness is starting to turn. For a brief, resplendent moment, colour is everywhere, but then the leaves fall, the nights darken, and a mantle of melancholy settles over the earth in anticipation of the descent into winter.
Autumn in cinema is lovers kicking up leaves in parks (When Harry Met Sally…, 1989; Autumn in New York, 2000); repressed emotions bubbling out from under in New England small towns. It’s horror movies set at Halloween, or warming Thanksgiving comedies. There are films about harvest time, from City Girl (1929) and Earth (1930) to Days of Heaven (1978) and Tess (1979), and relationship dramas from the likes of Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen that thrive on the season’s downcast ambience. Woody’s New York is so often an autumnal New York – never more so than in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), September (1987) and Another Woman (1988), his mini cycle of autumn films in the late 1980s.
So don your favourite tweed and allow yourself to be bewitched by these suggested films. A list of 10 omits so much, but what follows are some of the cinematic autumn’s brightest moments:
1. THE STRANGER
“Gets dark earlier these days,” storekeeper Mr Potter remarks across a draughts board, killing time while he waits for wily investigator Mr Wilson to take his turn. And, sure enough, the leaves are falling from the trees in the small Connecticut town of Harper, leaving denuded branches for the stark winter ahead.
Welles’s third film proved he could do a straightforward thriller, but one that leaves no doubt of whose imagination is behind the camera. It’s a picture of homely Americana to rank with Shadow of a Doubt (1943) or It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), but confronts a flipside of horror in its incorporation of footage of the Nazi concentration camps from the still-recent war.
2. ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS
Here we are in small-town Connecticut again, though this time the malignant forces come from within. Douglas Sirk’s heartbreaking 1955 melodrama casts Jane Wyman as middle-class widow Cary Scott, whose romance with her rugged gardener (Rock Hudson) causes a scandal among the local gossips at the country club. But before we feel that dual chill of conformity and Christmas, Sirk luxuriates in one of the most resplendent autumns on screen. The wide streets and front gardens of the fictional town of Stonington are lined with trees whose leaves have turned all shades of brown and orange.
3. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY
Three films into our list and it’s clear where the leaves fall most beautifully in the cinema: New England. A macabre comedy about a body that refuses to stay buried, the humour is jet black and plays out against the fleeting, gilded beauty of the fiery trees and majestic landscape. A rustic Hitchcock romp.
4. AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON
The scene changes from New England to Tokyo during its postwar industrial boom, and to a director who was something of a poet of the changing seasons: Yasujiro Ozu. The director’s last film, this 1962 meditation on loneliness, even within families, aches with the melancholy that certain autumn afternoons can bring. An Autumn Afternoon is mostly an interior film, set within those houses, offices and bars that become so familiar to anyone who spends enough time watching Ozu’s work. But from the opening credits, featuring etchings of bare trees, to the muted, brown-dominated colour scheme, an air of autumnal finality is present throughout the film.
5. CONTE D'AUTOMNE (AN AUTUMN TALE)
Not to be confused with An Autumn's Tale starring Chow Yun-fat, (another amazing fall film), An Autumn Tale is the final — and best — of Éric Rohmer’s 1990s series Tales of the Four Seasons. Set around a vineyard in the Rhône Valley, it’s the story of a middle-aged winemaker, Magali, who’s persuaded by a friend to place a lonely hearts ad in the local newspaper. In typical Rohmer style, the film is an enjoyable comedy of manners that seems both highly original, and, at the same time, pleasantly familiar. Very engaging, very smart, very talky, very French, and most of all, very wise.
6. SLEEPY HOLLOW
An aesthetic masterpiece. “Inspired by” Washington Irving’s tale, the film is comfortably familiar and cosily shot. Love story, horror show, murder mystery, all mixed with Burton’s sense of comedy, Sleepy Hollow pleases the eye and the spirit.
7. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Though Harper Lee’s novel and Horton Foote’s screenplay may properly belong to the summer heat of the Deep South, the hovering spectre of Boo Radley creates a solidly spooky mystery. Summer turns to autumn and next we experience Scout (the amazing Mary Badham) taking a terrifying walk through the woods on Halloween. Who can forget that iconic ham costume? Beautiful tone throughout keeps this film on the list, although the colours of fall must remain in our imaginations.
8. RUSHMORE
With The Catcher in the Rye still not filmed, it is down to Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fisher and Rushmore to offer the best antidote to the longueurs of “back to school” syndrome. Rushmore transforms tony prep schools into cool sites of whimsy and romance, and better yet, it also rehabilitates the beret. It’s still a bittersweet treat to watch Schwartzman and a deadpan Bill Murray vie for the affections of teacher Olivia Williams. This eternally quirky outing announced the arrival of a major directorial talent in Wes Anderson.
9. THE VILLAGE
A Sleepy Hollow-like folk tale that is light on character development and heavy on symbolism and suggestion, mood and of unseen, inchoate menace. The Village poses a thoughtful parable about bliss and ignorance, where the beautiful Pennsylvania landscape is the most important element to the story.
10. LOVE STORY
Ridiculed by cynics and adored by romantics for decades, Love Story is achingly attractive. The secret to the film's ultimate effectiveness is in it's simplicity. Director Arthur Hiller wisely films Eric Segal's screenplay in a concise and straightforward manner, allowing audiences to become enamoured with the characters and involved with their plight. The film even manages to make subtle commentary on class struggles, personal identity, and even the changing attitudes of religion, all of which while never appearing preachy or obvious under Hiller's unpretentious direction.