Swearing has a long and noble history in films. If we exclude silent movies the first use of swearing in cinema is usually attributed to Gone With The Wind, with a word that was once shocking and now barely registers as swearing. Certainly, some films use swearing poorly but when films get it right it can be wonderfully cathartic, or accurately represent a world where these words are used or just very very funny. Four Weddings and a Funeral has a startling opening scene consisting mainly of Hugh Grant and Charlotte Coleman saying the word “fuck” over and over again as they realise they’re late. Quentin Tarantino’s work is littered with swear words, however, the best use is perhaps not even in one of his films but in the soundtrack. Pulp Fiction starts with a scene in a diner with two people discussing their next holdup target, and whilst there is swearing in that scene it ends with a titanic storm of swearing from Hunny Bunny, whereas the soundtrack starts with that swearing storm, before moving into Misirlou.

“Jeez, he swears a lot, doesn’t he?” Ray, In Bruges

Martin McDonagh has done much in the services of swearing for movies but In Bruges stands out as probably the best. From Ralph Fiennes’s fuck-filled message left at a hotel to Brendan Gleeson going too far – and this is going too far in a gangster film where people are regularly getting shot and are soaked in swearing. It comes down to a conversation between Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes’ characters where Gleeson puts forward the statement that the only change Fiennes’ character is going to make is become “more of a cunt, and have more cunt-fucking kids”. Which is immediately retracted due to bringing someone’s children into their imminent gun battle which is just not on.

“So Just Use The Word M’Kay” Mr Mackey

Matt Stone and Trey Parker are known for swearing and just general controversial behaviour but of course, they have to go one further and put it into song. South Park, Bigger, Longer & Uncut features a number of songs with a tremendous amount of swearing – “It’s Easy M’kay”, “Kyle’s Mom Is a Bitch” and “Uncle Fucker”. Unsurprisingly their parents are not thrilled with all this swearing and perhaps overreact by starting a war with Canada. Not one to rest on their laurels in Team America: World Police they managed to sum up American foreign policy in the song “America, Fuck Yeah!” and the film is an ongoing onslaught of swearing, uncalled-for violence and puppet sex scenes.

“Do You Have To Use So Much Cursing?” The Stranger, The Big Lebowski

Some films have aggressive, insulting swearing; for some, it’s just how they talk. In The Big Lebowski the word “fuck” is used 260 times, but often just as a part of a sentence, not with anger or malice. When The Stranger questions the Dude’s use of swearing his simple response is “what the fuck are you talking about?” He just doesn’t understand. The Wolf of Wall Street has a truly ludicrous amount of swearing but again, much of it is not meant as an insult just simply part of their speech or odd rhetoric.

“Stay Classy, San Diego” Ron Burgundy, Anchorman

American movies have to comply with the MPAA and their idiosyncratic approach to censorship but this limiting factor can lead to great moments. To get a PG-13 rating in America, films can only have one use of the word fuck – used to devastating effect in Anchorman with Ron Burgundy’s news signoff of “Go fuck yourself, San Diego”. The fact that the use of swearing is so limited in the film does increase its impact on an audience likely familiar with Tarantino films, and we get a small sense of what such a sentence uttered on the news would have.

“Sorry I Know You Disapprove Of Swearing” – Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It

A minor note to perhaps the greatest example in television of swearing – The Thick Of It – said to have a swearing consultant who perhaps came up with this fantastic outburst “Feet off the furniture you Oxbridge twat, you’re not in a punt now.”. Then, of course, there is the Shakespearean very aggressive swearing of Succession such as “Fuck you, too, you pusillanimous piece of fucking fool’s gold. Fucking silver-spoon asshole.” And if Succession’s swearing is Shakespearean then Curb Your Enthusiasm’s is a riotous Noel Coward. One of its great scenes is the finale to Season 3 where to show solidarity with a person suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome Larry David leads a restaurant in a expanding chant of swearing culminating in “Fuck you, you car wash cunt”.

Also Read: The Tarantino Crossover That Never Happened – Django & Zorro

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The Empire Strikes Back – The Blockbuster Fan & Sci-Fi Nerd

The first film I can clearly remember stating was my favourite film was The Empire Strikes Back. This was back in secondary school and I was – and still am – a massive Star Wars fan and as is pretty much an accepted fact now – The Empire Strikes Back is the best one. This is probably the choice with the least artifice – I just loved this film and Star Wars. Already the words nerd and geek were firmly attached to me and Star Wars is great starter nerd starter kit. The Empire Strikes Back has spectacle on a scale rarely seen and to this day I still watch the final duel between Vader and Luke and hope it ends differently. I suppose there was an element of finding your group with this selection – firmly putting myself in a club that would rather than talk about light sabres than the offside rule.

Dr. Strangelove – I’m An Intellectual

In sixth form college I began to seek out more and more films and already interested in The Cold War I watched Dr. Strangelove. A brilliant darkly comic film about the ridiculousness of the arms race (and much of politics and war) it is considered a masterpiece of cinema. When I saw this film it was already forty years old and I don’t think I’d seen anything this clever. This was the first Kubrick film I watched and couldn’t believe how good it was and how something so dark in tone could also be so funny. Clearly, there is something being said when you change your favourite film from special effects blockbuster to a black and white film from the 60s satirising Mutually Assured Destruction. I was no longer just someone who enjoyed movies – I watched films, I appreciated cinema, and attaching yourself to Kubrick is a good way to announce that to the world.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid – I Prefer The Old Hollywood

A few years on from Dr. Strangelove I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and loved it. A western but a western like no other, built around the friendship of these two characters and one of the greatest scripts of all-time. It was written by the legendary William Goldman who also wrote The Princess Bride, All The President’s Men, Chaplin and more. It also has one of the greatest final scenes and indeed final shots in all of cinema. It could be seen as a step away from my intellectual choice of Dr. Strangelove but I think I was going for an older version of Hollywood and picking a film that contained two move legends – not just huge stars but tremendous actors. I had a creeping disdain for many of the more successful films of my present and looked back at the sixties when films like this were the most successful ones (this was literally the highest-grossing film in America for 1969).

The Big Lebowski – The Modern Alternative

Effectively shamed into watching this film by outraged friends it soon became one of my favourites and then the favourite. To simply be the best Coen Brothers movie is a tremendous accolade – a collection of their films would serve wonderfully well as a desert island movie library in terms of quality and scope. A case of mistaken identity sends the Dude down a labyrinth of fake millionaires, pornographers and nihilists. The Dude’s porn film dream sequence alone makes this film wildly inventive. This was the first time my favourite film went through a sort of probationary period – I saw it, loved it, but wanted to give it time. People loving The Big Lebowski has become something of a cliche (the tv show Preacher has a character who can’t stop going on about his hatred for the film and this leads to every other character arguing with him) but it is great. Choosing The Big Lebowski was perhaps an attempt to move to a more modern great, the Coen Brothers are still making great films now and could show I wasn’t just stuck in the past.

The Shining – Appreciate Art

And we’re back to Kubrick. For a long while horror was a neglected genre for me, never a fan of slasher horrors films I simply didn’t want to watch more films. It was my love of Kubrick that brought me back to horror with The Shining (and incidentally horror is a great genre of film). It’s easy to get lost in Kubrick’s films – the obsessive details, the layer upon layer of stories being told, the arduous filmmaking process and to marvel at his talent and determination. But irrelevant to all of that The Shining is simply phenomenal. I have never seen another film like it – a central cast of three people who are all brilliant, ingenious and creative uses of music, sound, editing techniques and more, an ability to create such a feeling of unease, which builds to fear, which builds to outright horror. This became my favourite film only very recently, again, I saw it years ago and my appreciation has been slowly building and I watch it around every Halloween. So what does choosing The Shining say about me? I’ve picked a director hailed as a visionary and genius and a film which is celebrated not only for being great art but an intense experience. I am interesting, have sophisticated tastes but not too much of a snob to say something like Jules et Jim, I am clever enough to “get” The Shining – or at least I’m trying to say I’m all of these things.

It’s important to say I genuinely love all of these films and my analysis of why they’re my favourite is that they were always a contender and perhaps the deciding factor in my “official” favourite was also about an image of myself. What is your favourite film and what does it say about you?

Also Read: Great Dance Moments In Non-Musical Films

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The Typical Coen Brothers Film…

To be blunt there is no typical Coen Brothers film, they move from knockabout comedy to incredibly tense thrillers – genre seems to mean nothing to them and is certainly no predictor of quality – they’re as comfortable making stoner comedies as gangster films. It is genuinely astounding that it is the same people who made O’ Brother Where Art Thou? as No Country For Old Men. Other directors also play with genre – Quentin Tarantino for example – but whether it’s a revenge thriller or western they are still distinctly a Tarantino film. The Coen Brothers go beyond that and I would argue that without any prior knowledge no one would suspect Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing were made by the same people. Looking at their work I split their films into three categories.

The Violent

These films are tense. No Country For Old Men is a lesson in tension, what should have been an idle bit of chit chat in a petrol station became perhaps the standout scene of this Oscar-winning film. And what was causing the tension? The outcome of a coin toss. No violence, no guns, and only the barest suggestion of threat and you can’t take your eyes off the screen. That said, they are a dab hand with actual violence as well with deftly choreographed scenes of fighting in No Country For Old Men, True Grit and Miller’s Crossing.

The Funny

Not only are the Coen Brothers very funny they can do different types of humour. One of the funniest scenes of recent years is the now legendary back and forth in Hail Caesar! of a director trying to coach an actor into saying a line the right way – so much is put into just the two characters repeating that line at each other. They also create fictional porn films where the Dude goes bowling with a Valkyrie in what might be best the dream sequence ever filmed. It is safe to say they have comedic range.

The Tragic

When they want to the Coen Brothers can make you sad. A Serious Man is one of the most tragic films I have ever seen as you watch everything good in a man’s life being drained away and how he struggles to still do the right thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to watch Inside Llewyn Davis again as you see an extremely talented person just knocked around by life, his fortunes so low he has no winter coat for the freezing cold New York.

The Perfect Coen Brothers Film

They have at least one film that brings these three things together perfectly and that is Fargo. The film that won Frances McDormand her first Oscar, cemented a stereotype of North Dakota and inexorably linked Steve Buscemi to the idea of being ground up in a wood chipper. The film is funny, tragic and violent and does it all in less than 100 minutes. The story of Jerry Lundegaard hiring perhaps not the best criminals to fake kidnap his wife so he get the ransom from her extremely wealthy father is riveting from the first scene.

The tension that the viewer has for Marge Gunderson, the heavily pregnant cop who is drawn into the crime is immense and grows over time, what will happen in the inevitable showdown between cop and criminal? The criminals are perhaps more violent and conspicuous than Jerry hoped for, leaving a trail of bodies behind them, ending of course with one of them killing his partner in a famously gruesome way. As for tragedy – Jerry Lundegaard may be the most pathetic figure in cinema history with failure and idiocy dogging his every move and his inaction and incompetence only growing as his plan spirals out of control. Then there is the bizarre meeting between Marge and an old school acquaintance, of no relevance whatsoever to the plot, but with brilliant performances from both actors.

As for comedy…well it’s certainly very dark comedy, a lot coming from the very pleasant and smalltown people who find themselves as everyday characters surrounded by murder and violence. That said, Marge, who is as pleasant and smalltown as any of them is also shown to be extremely determined and capable so maybe don’t underestimate them.

The Coen Brothers – what’s next?

Of course, their real genius is that usually their films contain all three of things in varying amounts. According to IMDb their next film is Macbeth and really I don’t know what to expect – a bloodsoaked rampage, a comedy of errors or the saddest portrayal of the Scottish Play ever made.

Also Read: The Anatomy of a Christopher Nolan Film

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