about "great" movies of any type, I'll be reading and filing them away to
go rent some time.
Silents
The Navigator (Buster Keaton: his best? Who knows among his riches, but the gags have a richness and precision that is amazing.)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Keaton: late Keaton with pathos added to the humor.)
The Cameraman (Keaton: he had lost control of his studio at this point and was working for MGM, but his belief in the act of filming shines through.)
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau: make sure to see it in the new restored version)
City Girl (Murnau: Sunrise is the movie many claim as the greatest silent film of all. I opt for this later movie.)
Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage: no director ever believed in the power of romantic love as Borzage did, and watching his movies, a viewer may come to agree with him.)
Comedies
Midnight (Mitchell Leisen: the perfect screwball comedy. All the sets had to be built a certain way since Claudette Colbert would only be photographed from her left side.)
Easy Living (Leisen: Jean Arthur as the quintessential working girl. She hated making movies, but had the best comic timing of any 1930's star.)
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch: the Lubitsch Touch at its most beautiful and enigmatic: a gloved hand reaches for a letter and your heart breaks)
To Be or Not to Be (Lubitsch: a comedy only Lubitsch could get away with and Carole Lombard's last role)
A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz: postwar comedy/satire of suburban life. Lora Mae and Porter are the couple to root for.)
All About Eve (Mankiewicz: the peak of the talking picture. It was all downhill from there. If you rent the double disc edition, I am on the second disc as a commentator.)
The Long, Long Trailer (Vincente Minnelli - a comedy about consumerism in bright colors and dark undertones.)
Holiday (George Cukor: Katherine Hepburn Cary Grant at their early best. By contrast watch The Philadelphia Story made two years later when Hepburn allows herself to be tamed after being named box office poison.)
His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks: hooray for Archie Leach and I always wanted to be Rosalind Russell)
Ball of Fire (Hawks: afterwards practice yum yum with your consort)
I Was a Male War Bride (Hawks: Best parts are Grant trying to find a place to sleep and wrestling with trying to fill out some paperwork).
Avanti! (Billy Wilder: a late comedy, both gentle and sharp-elbowed)
Kiss Me, Stupid (Wilder: Dean Martin and Kim Novak at their best and Wilder at his most acerbic. He was forced to change the ending and was still condemned by the church [restored on the dvd]. His career never really recovered).
Melodramas:
Home From the Hill (Minnelli: you can never really go home again)
Some Came Running (Minnelli: Sinatra's best and Shirley MacLaine in the school room is a peak in cinema. Minnelli said that he filmed the final sequence as if it were the inside of a jukebox.)
Fox and his Friends (Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Fassbinder wanted to make Hollywood movies in 1970's West Germany, and damn if he didn't pull it off.)
Musicals:
The Bandwagon (Minnelli: the perfect musical)
It's Always Fair Weather (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly. Less known than their Singin' in the Rain, but a better film.)
Funny Face (Donen: Think Pink!)
Westerns
Man of the West (Anthony Mann: Gary Cooper's last and Mann's ultimate statement on the West)
Seven Men From Now (Budd Boetticher: as pared down as a film can be. The final shoot out is minimalist and sublime).
Rio Bravo (Hawks: an interior Western of grace, humor, and leisure. Beware of girls with flowerpots. Inspiration for Assault on Precinct 13.)
El Dorado (Hawks remakes Rio Bravo, darker now and deadlier.)
Rio Lobo (Hawks' last film and the final part of a the Rio Bravo/El Dorado trilogy. Cinema itself is breaking down - along with star John Wayne. Wayne's true swansong rather than the tedious The Shootist.)
Alfred Hitchcock
Dial M for Murder (The characters are drained of depth that he gives to the image. Godard claimed Hitchcock was the master of movies about couples, and here AH is at his most clinical and precise.)
Rear Window (female empowerment in the guise of Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter. What more can one ask for?)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 version. Doris Day has to keep clearing up the messes James Stewart gets into. The only thing he can think to do is drug her, but she will not be silenced thank goodness.).
Sam Fuller
Pickup on South Street (Yeah, Communists are the bad guys, but watch what Fuller does with the camera and Thelma Ritter is incredible as always.)
House of Bamboo (Film Noir in color and one of the greatest uses of widescreen framing ever.)
White Dog (along with Mankiewicz's No Way Out, the best movie about race, it was effectively banned for years)