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 ESSENTIAL VIEWING Why these movies matter |
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The Godfather
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Casablanca The movie that changed the way movies are made, watched, and marketed.
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The Battleship
Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925) |
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Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
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Seven Samurai
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The Shawshank Redemption
The metaphor of birds in a cage is the thread that runs through Shawshank.
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Blade Runner
(Ridley Scott, 1982) Everything A.I. wishes it was, and then some. The film from
which all modern sci-fi springs. |
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Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
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2001: A Space Odyssey
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It's a Wonderful Life
(Frank Capra, 1946) |
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Some Like It Hot (Billy
Wilder, 1959) |
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It
is that which isn't said, but rather suggested, that makes The Godfather
films so magnificent. Of course we remember the famous line by Don Corleone
that he'll "make him an offer he can't refuse." But later, when Michael
Corleone takes over - it is just a look, and the look says everything.
When Michael gives the final nod to end his own brother's life - it
is just a look, one look and poor Fredo is history. It is what we know
is coming that is so powerful, so frightening. These are two films about
the evolution of the mob. They are also about, basically, the sins of
the father being visited on the son. Al Pacino is so great in both films
- the slow burn in his eyes as he is about to change - he was the son
that would have been a war hero and gone off to college and led a "normal"
life. But in the end, he is the one to be feared. That Coppola would
end The Godfather, 
Part
II with Michael sitting on a bench totally alone - well, folks,
that is as good as it gets.
The first film shows the inexorable descent into evil of a man who is
more powerfully tied to his family than he knows. The second film has
a different purpose: the interwoven time structure revealing a hidden
pathos - the noble aim of the past becoming the brutal burden of the
future. 
The director, a workhorse for Warner Brothers, churned out two other
films the same year. The writers kept changing the script as they went
along, not even sure how the film would end until the last minute. The
male star, Humphrey Bogart, had spent most of his career in gangster
roles, and hadn't really played a romantic lead before. But somehow
it all came together in a film that epitomizes Hollywood mystique. The
story of the café owner (Bogart) in the Vichy-occupied city of
the title, whose love for an old flame (Ingrid Bergman) forces him to
regain his ideals, Casablanca has romance, adventure, marvelous
wit, a great cast (Claude Rains almost steals the picture) and the 
unforgettable song "As Time Goes By." Time has gone by, but
this movie still rules. 
This is the movie that made it known to one and all that if you try,
you can do anything in a movie. Blasting special effects into the new
millenium 23 years in advance, George Lucas took our breath away and
introduced us to the blockbuster that made all other blockbusters pale
in comparison. This is one cult movie where I'm not even slightly ashamed
to be a loyal follower.
I'll leave the historic and technical platitudes to others and chalk
this one up to pure, personal impact. From the sailors huddling up underneath
the tarp awaiting execution and subsequent revolution aboard the ship,
to the final, magnificent sequence on the Odessa Steps, the images burned
themselves into my brain in a way no other film has. -- Moné
Peterson
This
film about the life of T.E. Lawrence is sprawling, majestic, and gorgeous.
O'Toole is absolutely perfect in the title role, balancing his heroism
with his uncertainty, his strength with his doubt, ultimately making
Lawrence seem less of a character and more of a person. The supporting
cast, including a long list of fabulous actors (Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness,
Anthony Quinn, José Ferrer, and Claude Rains, just to name a
few), live and breathe onscreen, giving us people for whom we genuinely
care over the course of the film. All of this takes place in some of
the most jaw-droppingly beautiful locations ever captured on film. While
it obviously works better on the big screen, Lawrence of Arabia
is tight enough to work even on the small one (widescreen format, of
course!). For me, this is as close as movies get to magic. -- Ed
Owens
Like an athlete who gets into a "zone" where he can do no
wrong, Kurosawa just keeps hitting the mark in this superbly constructed
epic about a handful of unemployed warriors hired to protect a rural
village from a fierce army of bandits. With the majestic Takashi Shimura
as the noble samurai leader, and Toshiro Mifune almost leaping off the
screen in his tragicomic turn as a great pretender - Seven Samurai
explores the deepest regions of love and hate, anger and mourning,
the gulf between classes and the passing of old ways. To top it off,
it features a spectacular final battle which is still unparalleled in
its vigorous mastery of film technique. 
The
film is consistent on multiple levels: prison drama, tale of friendship,
heroic journey, social commentary, religious parable. The friendship
between the two inmates - Andy (Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman)
comforts because it finds commonality in the difference - the only guilty
man in prison with the only innocent one, old and young, black and white
- and posits strength in the commonality. Andy is fortified by Red's
experience, as are we; and Red and we are freed by Andy's faith. All
of it leads to the parable, the redemption, in a single and perfectly
maintained narrative thread of rebirth. Spiritual growth is then a voyage
of commitment and hope, but redemption is not complete until the two
forces reunite, the savior and the saved. Each man takes on a little
of both as the ocean and its vast freedoms beckon and lay open before
them.
It's
a story about freedom, about how we create prisons for ourselves in
our minds. Freedom, as it turns out, is a state of mind. 
Seeing
it again recently, I was struck by how the 1930s style acting and early-30s
"sound-staginess" of the picture doesn't hurt it at all. Nor do the
stop motion special effects, even in an age of hyper-realistic CGI.
King Kong is the perfect cinematic equivalent of the best and
most epic Brothers Grimm fairy tale - it just hits me somewhere deep
in the psyche, where a huge tribal gate like the one on Kong's uncharted
island opens onto a world of primeval terror and unspoken love, where
our mortal striving for greatness leads to irredeemable injustice. Some
moviegoers ran out of theaters in hysterics when it first opened, and
while it is unlikely to elicit quite that reaction today, its 
black-and-white-and-gray
toned atmosphere of the fantastic is still unshakeable. Kong is the
very thing man hopes to capture to prove our greatness, yet by succeeding
we so upset the natural order that death and destruction must follow,
both ours and Kong's. In the end, it is what we have done to Kong that
hurts the most.
Someone once said that, "God is in the details," and nowhere is that
more in evidence than in Scott's third feature film. His dystopian vision
of a future Los Angeles has aged little since its initial release over
twenty years ago, and, in many ways, continues to set the standard for
today's filmmakers. Deckard's (Harrison Ford) journey, and his encounter
with the renegade "replicants," is still moving and effective
on many levels - an unflinching (and often tragic) exploration of just
what it means to be human. -- Ed Owens
Perfection
is a hard thing for anyone to achieve. It can be described as reaching
the point where nothing more can be added and nothing more taken away.
Just as we can appreciate the genius of Albert Einstein, so we fans
of the film bow our heads in appreciation of Orson Welles for having
had the the clarity of vision (and the nerve) to pull off this brilliant,
innovative film. The film's stellar reputation has, ironically, caused
it to be disegarded in recent years, as if its status as a classic means
that it is somehow dismissable. Well, I have news for you. 
One viewing of the film simply doesn't do - it must be watched, dissected,
turned inside out, and only then is it apparent that it hits a ten on
every level: acting, writing, directing, cinematography, subject matter.
And to that I add my favorite exchange from the film (among many): "You
always used money to ..." "...buy things."
Technically,
it redefined "state of the art" for special effects. Culturally, it
created iconic reference points ("Thus Spake Zarathustra," the Monolith,
HAL, the Star Child). Narratively, it took risks that hardly any other
mainstream director has ever done - no dialogue for the first half hour?
Dialogue filled with clichés for the second? An ending that refuses
to explain itself? Its much-derided pace is symphonic. Visually, it
is all about disorientation and the relativity of our seemingly stable
spatial universe.
Early
in the film, after James Stewart fishes Kim Novak out of San Francisco
Bay, we see her as she wakes up in his bed and finds her clothes hung
up around the room to dry. They exchange a meaningful look: he has seen
her unclothed, while she was unconscious and defenseless. Later, he transforms
her in stages back into the image of his lost beloved, and finally she
is stripped of her true self and transmogrified into the object of Stewart's
obsession. I marvel at the content Hitchcock was able to smuggle into
Vertigo. 
You've
got murder, insanity and sexual obsession. And not least, we have Hitchcock
marching Stewart, American cinema's great Everyman, into some remarkably
dark places. The murkily lit corridors in the hotel where he discovers
Novak near the end of the film are an outward expression of the dark pathways
of Stewart's mind. These two characters whom fate has entwined are both
figuratively and literally pushed over the edge by apparitions of the
past and ghosts of the present. And, yes....the fear of heights. 
This is perhaps the least known great movie of all time. Made at the end
of the silent era, it represents in a way the climax of a movement, a
jewel from a time of great excitement about the possibilities of film
- the bursting forth and flowering of Soviet cinema. The premise is simple
enough - a cameramen travels through Moscow filming the people's activity
in one day, from dawn to dusk. But the style is so radical that it's startling.
Vertov used the occasion to demonstrate every resource at the director's
command - the picture becomes not only a record of a day in the life of
a city, but an essay on the art of filmmaking itself. Vertov was in love
with the moving camera. Here the camera is placed in the streetcars and
autos - the picture has a constant feeling of rushing forward that is
exhilirating. And every trick in the book gets pulled out - split-screen,
multiple superimposition, different camera speeds, dissolves, stop-action,
animation, and more - 
as
if the technique of film in the silent era was exploding in one final
show of fireworks, a culmination of all that had been achieved before.
The amazing thing is that it's all so entertaining. There isn't a moment
in which the eye is not captivated by the pleasure of movement, the virtuosity
of the image's manipulation. Most modern films can't even hold a candle
to it. 
Epic, sweeping and unbelievably, shatteringly romantic. Vivien Leigh
and Clark Gable are the couple by which to compare all previous and
future romances on screen. Their chemistry is palpable. The English
actress Leigh was a very fortunate choice for Scarlett - she makes that
spoiled and passionate character come alive. Clark Gable is clearly
the most handsome, dynamic actor to ever be filmed. He's the epitmoe
of beautiful, manly actors - there was never anyone like him before,
and there will never be anyone like him since, and his Rhett
Butler will always be nothing short of legendary. 
The first time I saw this film I had to immediately rewind the tape
and watch it all over again. A tale of a heist gone wrong, with plenty
of twists and turns to keep you guessing, it is one of the most original
pieces of story-telling in recent years, with great performances to
boot. I can watch it over and over again and always catch something
new. 
"I
think I could change myself to be you. I mean, inside me." Admiration
and infatuation become contempt and bitterness through betrayal. The
intense emotional interplay between Sister Alma and Elizabeth Vogler
(Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann) is the study of an unintended struggle
between souls. Through conversation and dreams, the identities of two
women weave in and out of each other, leaving each far more affected
than a simple nursing vacation in the country would have led them to
believe. If that were all there was to this film, it would be great,
but there's far more. Persona was the first "self-aware" film
I ever saw; that is, a film that explicitly reminds the viewer he or
she is watching a film. It isn't done in the hip, pretentious fashion
of postmodern 90s films, though. Instead, the camera is an active participant.
The opening non- narrative sequence of images seems to be a trip through
Bergman's mind, until the camera stops to tell us the story of the two
women. Mid-film, the film snaps and burns away, momentarily caught off-guard
by the emotional load, then finds its way back through Bergman's imagination,
and refocuses on the 
story again. Even as the narrative plays out, the haunting images come
from the subconscious of a dreaming filmmaker.
It is a film any number of Americans learns by heart, both for its clichés
and its ever fresh reaffirmations of the human spirit. With its awkward
angel and anxious undercurrents, the film manages to be both spiritually
Christian and refreshingly secular, reveling in the fundamental goodness
the fundamentally good can bring out in all men and arguing for faith
in the faith of mankind. George Bailey (James Stewart) is the everyman
every man dreams of being - the guy whose sacrifices make the world
a better place - the guy whose unspoken frustrations are appreciated
and honored by everyone he touches and everyone they touch in ways beyond
his knowing. Right triumphs over wrong, love over hate, kindness over
wealth, and forgiveness comes without question. Corny perhaps, but even
the cynical must concede the joyous jolt inside of them when that final
bell jingles and they know that Clarence has gotten his well-earned
wings. -- Shari L. Rosenblum
This comedy begins, oddly enough, with a mob massacre, witnessed by
two down and out musicians in prohibition-era Chicago. While this certainly
provides our heroes with the narrative motivation to flee, it also serves
as an example of the film's edgier take on the screwball genre. Jack
Lemmon and Tony Curtis are spot on, both as the musicians and as the
"girls" they become in order to escape the mob. Marilyn Monroe is perfectly
cast as the inimitable Sugar, and Wilder directs it all with nary a
single misstep. Delirious mayhem in its purest form. 
The
aristocrats in Renoir's greatest film conceal their infidelities behind
a mask of civilized urbanity, while the servants enact in cruder, yet
more honest form, the underlying hostility. The Rules of the Game
is many things at once - a comedy of manners, a gentle lament for a culture
soon to be shattered by war, and a penetrating satire of the human capacity
to fool ourselves. Set during a house party in a country chateau, the
many characters and subplots gradually dissolve into delicious anarchy.
Formally the film was a huge step forward in cinematic technique - the
director's brilliantly complex use of movement within the frame, the way
the camera explores the scene like a character, the fluid, even mischievous
editing rhythm, 
almost
singlehandedly carried cinematic method out of the classic age and into
the modern. I watch this film once a year just to remind myself that there
is such a thing as genius.