There’s only one place where I find copious name-dropping acceptable, and it’s in the pages of a book. I love reading a book to also find out it’s also going to give me lists of people/other books/artworks/films/recipes to dive into and research. PLUS books are g great lo-fi entertainment – wow, the words are so 1D! It’s the bookish little grad student in me, yearning for some kind of curriculum years after school has passed. (Editor’s note: I ain’t ever going back to school. But yes, I am this nerdy.)

I recently finished reading volume 1 of Susan Sontag’s personal journals (1947-1963) and discovered that her daily diary was full of lists of philosophers, books and best yet – MOVIES. So I decided to do the nerdiest thing possible and list them all out here. So here it is, every film mentioned by Susan Sontag in a 16 year span…


Ironically enough, the first two films mentioned in her journals were peep-show kind of flicks she noticed were playing in Chicago when she visited:
Love in a Nudist Colony
The Naked Truth – Uncut

Le Diable Au Corps (1947, Claude Autant-Lara)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Robert Wiene)

The Last Laugh (1924, F.W. Murnau)

For Whom The Bell Tolls (1942, Sam Wood)

Penny Serenade (1941, George Stevens)

Wuthering Heights (1939, William Wyler)

Blossoms in the Dust (1941, Mervyn LeRoy)

Stella Dallas — (1937, King Vidor) Sontag gets Joan Crawford mixed up with Barbara Stanwyck in her notes on this film

An Affair to Remember (1957, Leo McCarey) (she called it awful!)

A Kid for 2 Farthings (1955, Carol Reed) (liked this one more)

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, Terrence Fisher)

Three Forbidden Stories (1952, Augusto Genina)

The River’s Edge (1957, Allan Dwan)

Les Maitres Fous (1955, Jean Rouch)La Nuit de forains AKA Det regnar på vår kärlek (1946, Ingmar Bergman)

Battleship Potempkin (1925, Eisenstein)

Les enfants du paradis (1945, Marcel Carne)

Monkey Business (1931, Norman McLeod)

L’Alibi (1937, Pierre Chenal)

Modern Times (1936, Charles Chaplin)

Grand Hotel (1932, Edmund Goulding)

Witness for the Prosecution (1957, Billy Wilder)

Foolish Wives (1922, Erich Von Stroheim)

Kanal (1957, Andrzej Wajda)

Summer with Monika (1952, Ingmar Bergman)

Notti Bianchi (1957, Luchino Visconti)

Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)

Broken Blossoms (1919, D.W. Griffith)

Sept peches capitaux et l’ecriture sainte (1910, Louis Feuillade)

West of the Law (1926, Ben Wilson)

Cradle of Courage (1920, Lambert Hillyer)

Hands Up! (1926, Clarence C. Badger)

The Misfits (1961, John Huston)

Morocco (1930, Josef von Sternberg)

The Public Enemy (1931, William Wellman)

Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, Ingmar Bergman)

The Last Ten Days (1955, Georg Pabst)

Riders of the Purple Sage (1926, Lynn Reynolds)

The Grand Maneuver (1956, Rene Clair)

The Big Sleep (1946, Howard Hawks)

Casque d’or (1952, Jacques Becker)

Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

Crazy for Love (1952, Jean Boyer, stars Brigitte Bardot)

Wild Love (1955, Mauro Bolognini)

Fragment of an Empire (1929, Fridrikh Ermler)

Henry V (1944, Laurence Olivier)

The Ghost Goes West (1935, Rene Clair)

I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932, Mervyn Le Roy)

The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)

Broadway Express

(Michael Blackwood short -18 mins)Black and White Burlesque (1960, Richard Preston short – 3 min)

Ask Me, Don’t Tell Me (1960, David Myers short – 22 min)

End of the Line (1959, Terrence Macartney-Filgate – 30 min)

The End of Summer (?, Hirshorn – 12 minutes) – Can’t find any info for this one!

Die 3 Groschen-Oper (1931, Georg Pabst)

Unfaithfully Yours (1948, Preston Sturges)

Storm Over Asia (1928, Vsevolod Pudovkin)

L’avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)

Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1959, Roger Vadim)

Mere Jeanne Des Anges (1961, Jerzy Kawalerowicz)

The Life of Oharu (1952, Kenji Mizoguchi)