The past several months, in an effort to to familiarize myself with classic cinema and keep me from AMC too much, I've been going through the "AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies" list. A friend of mine gave me the idea, and it's a really good one.
I'm less likely to procrastinate if I have a list. I can mark stuff off as I do them. So I've been able to go through so many classic movies that I somehow managed to put off so far in life.
I've seen about half of everything on it so far. Blade Runner, Easy Rider, and Platoon are the few films I didn't care for, although I understand their significance.
And damn, I couldn't sit still to absorb Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I love Albee plays, but here I found nothing but capable screen performances. It's not that I don't like watching marital discord. One of my favorite movies of all time is American Beauty. That, however, needed different access points for somebody who may not can pick up on undertones of what's going on in a marriage. American Beauty had the business with the daughter, the boyfriend, the neighbor, etc. to expand the theme, so the picture didn't depend purely on us analyzing the passive aggressiveness of the married couple.
BLACK-AND-WHITE SURPRISES
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans was an interesting choice to put on the list. A silent German expressionist film with surprisingly heavy drama for a movie made in the 20s.
Katherine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby never crossed the line into annoyance but stayed firmly enduring and upbeat in the different comedic way she reacted and saw things.
Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was a blast. Youtube "fred astaire swing time" and watch the first three clips. His Bojangles number, which took three days to shoot, was amazing. And he and Rogers shot the long Never Gonna Dance routine 47 TIMES before he was satisfied.
A Night at the Opera and Duck Soup introduced me to the Marx brothers, and the silent one, Harpo, is my favorite. Perhaps because I immediately related him to Teller. I don't know where the Marx brothers rank in the hierarchy of comedic slapstick performers, like Lucille Ball or Charlie Chaplin. But I quietly enjoyed their situation bits and unexpected twists on dialogue and response.
My introduction to Henry Fonda was 12 Angry Men. His unnamed character came off as a father figure, a laser-sharp intellectual. It's a movie that should be required viewing in schools. A blueprint to consensus-building and understand what "beyond all reasonable doubt" means in our courts. I was moved by a timeless theme that is even more important at a time when a country is so divided. How do we all get in a room and talk? 12 Angry Men demonstrates it is, and should be possible. Even if it takes all day in a hot, humid courthouse room with no AC.
SWORDS AND SANDALS
Ben-Hur was number 100 on the list. Spartacus was number 81. I'd switch them. That Stanley Kubrick directed Spartacus was something I didn't know. I was surprised that Spartacus didn't have any trademark Kubrick touches of creativity. Its scope and music and performances were fine for an epic, and that's just what it was. Nothing that differentiated this director did something different from another. Clockwork Orange and The Shining show up with images, sounds, ideas and music that implant in the psyche so much. Perhaps Kubrick, at the beginning of his career, was at the mercy of the studios.
What isn't on the list is The Ten Commandments, or anything by Cecil B. DeMille, and it's strange considering I was under the assumption growing up Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea was one of the most iconic moments in the history of cinema.
SEE THE APARTMENT
The Apartment was outstanding. In my opinion, Jack Lemmon gave one of the greatest performances in one of the greatest screenplays every written. It was dicey material for 1960. I didn't know anything about it except probably a residential building was involved, and I'm glad I didn't. Billy Wilder's claim to fame is for Some Like It Hot, but it's this one you really need to see.
WILD WILD WEST
Unforgiven remains my favorite Western of all time, although I've got Shane, The Searchers, and High Noon coming up. Eastwood's immortal line "Deserve's got nothing to do with it" exemplifies how good and evil operate in this world, especially in a place as untamed and wild as the American west in the 1800s.
I thought The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were fun and light. Nothing really stayed with me though. I think the same of them, since both feature anarchic, crude men we're rooting for running wild in the west. Neither rises to the human levels Unforgiven does. Or the remake of 3:10 to Yuma does, for that matter.
RACIAL OBSERVATIONS
In the Heat of the Night was a movie that laid on racism a little too thick. But it was a very good movie, mainly due to the performances of Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. It's about holding your own, strength-wise, and believes all men are smart and capable of handing any situation according to their experience and intellect. It's hard to believe such a racist area of the country could exist, even in the 60s, but I wasn't there.
Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is easier to watch, because the racism going on is not so blatant. In fact, it's harder to see where it starts, if there's even any at all. It's about anger and hate building up seemingly out of nowhere. It's like everybody's going around thinking "what does he or she really think about me?" Nobody wants to be a loser. It's my favorite by Spike Lee, having so much to observe that he wrote the script in less than two weeks.
***
There's some great movies we all know, and there's nothing much left to say about them. I just saw Titanic several years ago on the big screen for the first time. Toy Story is my childhood. Silence of the Lambs still isn't just a horror movie, if it ever was. Kids deserve to be introduced to Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And Saving Private Ryan is my favorite war movie.
What better way to pass the time this spring 'til Hollywood gets its act together?
