Wrapping Up 100 Days, 100 Movies

What began on March 10th as a kind of an insane challenge to myself to post for 100 days straight on my favourite movies has now officially and successfully come to a close. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did - though I have to admit that somewhere around day 60 I started to burn out a little; luckily I got my second wind.

In celebration of having finished the series I'll be taking a brief hiatus, but I'll be back with new content on Monday, June 23rd, catching up on all the movies I've seen since embarking on this project.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Final Selection

99 movies down and only one selection left, this spot reserved for the absolute best movie ever made (by which, of course, I mean my favourite). Drum roll please...



Casablanca (1942)

Director: Michael Curtiz
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid

You must remember this, the enduring tale of love and sacrifice, of wartime politics and subterfuge, noble men and scoundrels, and Rick’s Cafe Americain – the original bar where everyone knew your name. Casablanca is a movie with a little something for everyone, a thoroughly satisfying film for the romantic and the cynic alike.

Whether you’ve seen the film or not, the plot ought to be familiar to you: Casablanca, located in French Morocco, is one of the stops along the way for those wishing to flee the Nazis and take refuge in the US. Rick’s Cafe Americain is the local hot spot, owned by Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and frequented by Captain Louis Renault (Claude Raines) and black market dealer Ugarte (Peter Lorre) amongst scores of others waiting and plotting their escapes from Casablanca. There are three new arrivals in Casablanca: the German Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt), Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and his wife, Isla (Ingrid Bergman). Strasser has come to ensure that Laszlo, a resistance figure and concentration camp escapee, doesn’t make it to America. Laszlo and Isla were meant to get the letters of transit which would allow their escape through Ugarte, who is arrested before he can sell them but not before he can give them to Rick for safe keeping. When Laszlo and Isla come to make the deal, Rick is confronted with his past, having loved and lost Isla in Paris. Now Rick, who until now has been determined not to stick his neck out for anybody, must decide whether it’s worth it to put himself in danger to help Laszlo, and Isla must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice (or not, depending on how you look at it) to ensure that Laszlo gets out of Casablanca.

Casablanca is about a lot of things, but it seems to me that above all else, it’s the story of desperation. The people in Casablanca are all desperate to get out, to get on to the States, and one of the film’s subplots involves a woman who agrees to a liaison with Renault in exchange for his agreeing to help her and her husband to flee. Laszlo is desperate to escape the Nazis and continue his work. Rick and Isla are desperate in their love for each other – but each is also desperate for something else, too. Isla wants to make sure that Laszlo is able to continue his work, for which she admires him so greatly, and Rick, despite his hard shell and his roguish pose, wants to do the right thing.

Isla’s relationships with Rick and Laszlo are, of course, the central focus of the story. Isla loves Rick, but worships Laszlo, whom she had thought was dead when she and Rick met in Paris. In certain respects, Isla is an empty character, an object to be bartered over by the two strong male figures who will determine her fate, but in the hands of the luminous Bergman, the character is given depth and dimension. Henreid, as Laszlo, has a role that ought to be thankless – the spotless hero and cuckold – but he, too, makes more of it than what is present on the page. There is a great scene early on when Laszlo and Isla discuss all the times when they might have gone their separate ways but instead stayed together, that demonstrates why Laszlo is a legitimate rival for Rick, rather than just a device of the plot.

Bogart has the film’s best role (though Raines runs a close second as the shady but ultimately sentimental Renault) as a man who puts on a tough show, but is really a romantic on the inside. He’s quick to tell people that he’s out for number one, that he cares about himself and himself alone, but what he consistently shows is that he cares a great deal about other people and wants to help them. Sure, he doesn’t lift a finger to help Ugarte when Renault decides to round up “the usual suspects” in an effort to track down those two missing letters of transit, but he does help the woman who was willing to prostitute herself to Renault by ensuring that her husband wins big at the roulette table, and he has a history of fighting the good fight, even if he does insist that he only did it for the money. Further, when he’s making plans to sell the cafe, he makes sure that his employees will all be well taken care of. Rick is a really well-rounded character and through the course of the film he truly earns the right to make that great and selfless speech to Isla, the one about three people whose problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in the grand scheme of things.

From a technical point of view, the film is perfectly crafted, unfolding at a brisk pace, without ever taking a wrong turn, without a single moment that is out of place. It’s one of the most quotable movies I’ve ever seen (from “Here’s looking at you, kid” and “We’ll always have Paris” to “We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape,” hardly a scene goes by without at least one priceless line) and its story is compelling, as demonstrated by the number of times it’s been cribbed by other films, television shows and stories. There isn’t a second of this film that I don’t cherish and adore. To me, this is absolutely and without a doubt, the best movie ever made.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim

Sunset Boulevard is not a film that is easily defined. It features elements of noir (the voice-over by writer turned gigolo Joe Gillis is right in line with classic noir voice-overs), elements of straight drama, and elements of self-referential parody. When Joe (William Holden) turns up at the desolate mansion of silent star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), Wilder creates a finely-crafted Gothic atmosphere. From the wind that whistles through the organ like a ghostly player to the abandoned pool and tennis court, the spectre of death seems to loom over the mansion. It begins with death – Joe’s death – when we meet him for the first time floating face down in Norma’s pool. Being a writer, Joe should have known better than to stick around given how many times the words “dead” and “death” crop up in his first conversations with Norma, whom he meets over the body of her dead chimpanzee.

Norma and her house both exist in a kind of paralysis, a form of suspended animation. Internally, both Norma and the house exist in the 1920s, when Valentino danced on the ballroom floor and Norma was the greatest star in the whole world. Time stops for her in the moment that sound is introduced to film, and she remains convinced that silent films are due for a resurrection, that sound is just a passing fad. She’s written an epic screenplay for her expected comeback and hires Joe to stay on at the house and do an editing job. Or so it seems. Really, she’s hiring him into the world’s oldest profession, a fact which Joe finds distasteful but which doesn’t stop him from accepting the gifts Norma insists on giving him. In between Norma’s romantic overtures, the talk is all about the good old days and Norma’s return to the screen, which she believes to be inevitable.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two of the best films to come out of the 1950s – this one and Singin’ In The Rain - preoccupy themselves with Hollywood’s silent era. By the beginning of the decade, the Golden Age of Hollywood was over and the studio system was dying. Never again would the studios have a stable of stars whom they would effectively own and whose careers they would dictate, and never again would there be so many big stars at one time. In light of this, it’s only natural that Hollywood filmmakers would take a look at the last bygone era with a mixture of nostalgia and cynicism, perhaps as a way to prepare for the changes yet to come.

Needless to say, Hollywood is mercilessly criticized in this film. The Great Star has gone mad in the absence of her former fame, the director is now a servant, the writer tells his best story after his death. Hollywood is characterized here as a soul-sucking machine that uses people up and leaves them shells of their former selves. The false realities created by Hollywood have generated a grotesque version of life where people don't live as much as they act out their narratives. Most obviously there’s Norma, who lives as if it is still 1927, in a house filled with photographs of herself – studio photographs, importantly (“How could she breathe in that house full of Norma Desmonds?”) – and “fan letters” written by Max (Erich von Stroheim), her butler, former director, and former husband. But there’s also Betty (Nancy Olson), the woman who captures Joe’s heart as they work together on a screenplay. They take a walk around the lot and she describes growing up at the studio, where both her parents worked. Her neighbourhood street was the lot’s false city block, the nose on her face is a surgical construction, created during a brief flirtation with acting. Even the most sincere characters are tainted by a degree of falseness.

Sunset Boulevard is like a gift for film buffs because it’s so self-referential, so full of little bits of trivia. From the first film Norma shows Joe, to the guests at Norma’s card game, Wilder stacks the film with elements of meta without letting those elements take over the story. Ever the master, Wilder skilfully controls the story, guiding it towards its conclusion. Holden, a Wilder favourite who would also appear for the director in Sabrina and Stalag 17, delivers a wonderfully understated performance, more or less allowing himself to take Swanson’s lead. As Norma, Swanson delivers an iconic performance (perhaps too iconic given that she said “I’ve got nobody floating in my swimming pool” in response to a question regarding the autobiographical nature of the film), alternately comic and terrifying. Her final descent down her staircase is a thing of beauty, breathtaking and chilling as her madness finally takes complete control and she utters her immortal speech:

I promise you I'll never desert you again because after Salome we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark! All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.

No matter how many times I see this film, I’m always stunned by these final moments. It skirts so close to the edge - any closer and it would have veered wildly into the realm of insane comedy. And yet, between them, Wilder and Swanson pull it off.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Director: F.W. Murnau
Starring: George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston

To call Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans simply a film is to do it an injustice. This is poetry in motion, a graceful and haunting gift to anyone who loves the art of filmmaking. Even today, with technology so far advanced from what F.W. Murnau had to work with, it is rare to see a film that moves so fluidly and with such ease. This beautiful, atmospheric film is a must-see for any movie lover.

The plot of the film is straight forward. The characters are the Man (George O’Brien) and his Wife (Janet Gaynor, who won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for this film), and a Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston). The story takes place in the countryside where the Man is a farmer and has fallen under the spell of the Woman, who wants him to kill the Wife so that they can run off together. “Spell” is the only way to accurately describe their relationship. The film begins with the Woman creeping near the couple’s home and whistling to the Man. He stands as if in a trance and follows her out to the woods. The scene that follows him through the woods to his meeting with the Woman is breathtakingly beautiful, one of many examples in the film of Murnau freeing the story from the conventions of contemporaneous filmmaking and letting it move. The Woman plants her idea in the Man’s head. He’s horrified at first but quickly acquiesces. He will kill the Wife so that he and the Woman can be together. He takes the Wife on a boat ride (another beautifully shot scene) and attempts to kill her but can’t bring himself to do it. She flees and he chases her, trying to convince her that it was all a mistake. They spend time together in the city and fall in love once again. This sequence is the most charming of the film, alternating between romance and comedy. Happy once again, they return to the country where tragedy strikes – the circumstances and resolution, I won’t reveal.

This is a very simple story, but it’s the way that the story is presented to us that makes this film brilliant. Murnau creates a mood here, not only through the seeming weightlessness of his camera and the tone set by the cinematography, but also through the inter-titles which, though spare, contribute a great deal to the style of the film. When The Woman suggests that the Man kill his Wife, it isn’t shown to us with a flat title, but rather she suggests that he drown his wife and the words run down the screen like water. Murnau also seems to use all the technology at his disposal in order to let the film glide from one moment to another. In one sequence the Man and the Wife are crossing the street, the shot dissolves to them walking through a woodland and then dissolves back to the street where the Man and Wife are kissing and bringing traffic to a stop. The ways that Murnau finds to engage us in the world on screen and convey the changing relationships of the film are wonderfully innovative from both a technical and an artistic standpoint.

I know people who shun silent films like the plague because they’ve convinced themselves that these films will be hard to follow (I usually find that these same people claim that films shot in black and white make things on screen more difficult to distinguish, a notion I find ridiculous), but that idea really couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a film that is better for not having dialogue because to have the characters speak to each other would spoil the dreamlike quality of the way the narrative unfolds. The dialogue would perhaps ring false, too sentimental, and therefore drag the film down; but freed from dialogue, the film is able to soar above what words would convey and present the emotions at play – desire, jealousy, love, fear, remorse – with an urgency and intensity that remains undiluted. There are many films that are great but flawed. Sunrise is a film that is perfect. A truly unqualified masterpiece.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Director: Guillermo Del Torro
Starring: Ivanna Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu

Guillermo Del Torro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a beautiful work of art, a fantasy tale which blooms in the midst of war and all its horrors. It is a dark story that unflinchingly explores the brutalities of real life and of children’s imaginations, making for a film that is both touching and haunting.

The film takes place in Franco’s Spain and centres on 12-year-old Ofelia (Ivanna Baquero), who moves with her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to the countryside to join the Captain (Sergi Lopez), whom Ofelia is always quick to point out is not her real father. The Captain’s great concerns are himself, his soon-to-be-born son, and the rebels hiding in the mountains – more or less in that order. Unbeknownst to the Captain, two members of his household, the doctor (Alex Angulo) and Mercedes (Maribel Verdu) are collaborating with the rebels, one of whom is Mercedes’ brother.

The film is split into two connected narratives. One concerns the Captain’s quest to find and destroy the rebels, which he is determined to accomplish as viciously as possible, revelling in the pain that he is able to inflict on others. The second narrative is told from Ofelia’s perspective and takes the form of a fairytale. However, this story is no less dark than the other. As disturbing as scenes involving the Captain are, there are equally disturbing scenes involving Ofelia.

The fairytale part of the narrative adopts many of the tropes of the genre. There’s the rule of three (figured here as three tasks), the secret identity of the hero, the evil stepparent, magical helpers and, of course, the omnipresent spectre of danger. Before the coming of the full moon, Ofelia must complete her three tasks in order to return to her “real life” in the kingdom under the ground, where she is a Princess and her father is alive and waiting for her. Each task imparts a lesson meant to aide in the growth of her character. The first, which involves her crawling into a dying tree to rid it of a giant toad living inside, teaches her to be courageous in the face of her fears. The second, in which she is confronted by one of the most terrifying creatures ever imagined - and one who will only come to life if she disobeys the rule imparted to her by the Faun (“Under no circumstances are you to eat anything”) - teaches her when to obey authority. The last, when she’s asked to let the Faun cut her baby brother, teaches her when not to trust authority and instead trust her instinct. This struggle between choice and obedience, and knowing when to fight and when to acquiesce, also figures into the other narrative. Before he’s executed, the doctor tells the Captain that only people like him can go through life without questioning authority. To me, the doctor is the film’s most fascinating character because he’s someone who subverts the Captain’s authority and fights, in his own way, against the system, while also expressing some opposition to the rebellion. If the Captain is killed, another will be sent in his place, he argues. Independent thought is what people like the Captain want to put down, therefore it is through thought, rather than brute force, that they will be defeated.

Part of the reason the story works so very well is that it is open to interpretation. It can be read as a straight fairytale, in which case the ending is happy, or the fairytale elements can be read as a means for Ofelia to escape the brutal realities with which she would otherwise be unable to cope. Both readings are valid, but I tend towards the former. One reason that I lean towards this reading is the fact of Ofelia’s escape from the room in which she is locked and placed under guard towards the end. We can speculate, of course, as to how Ofelia could have realistically escaped (the guards abandoned their posts when the compound came under attack, for example), but the film itself doesn’t offer any realistic explanation. The only explanation it offers is that she used the chalk given to her by the Faun to draw a door on the wall that allows her access to other rooms in the house. And then there’s also the chase through the labyrinth, in which Ofelia temporarily escapes the Vidal when the walls shift themselves around her, hiding her from him. On the flip side, though, there’s the fact that when Vidal does find her, she’s in conversation with the Faun, who is invisible to him.

For all its narrative genius, this is a film that is also stunning on a visual level. The creatures who reside in the magic corners of this world and the labyrinth itself are wonderfully realized, sometimes beautiful and other times ugly. One of my favourite visuals from the film is during Ofelia’s story about the flower that blooms every day to bestow the gift of immortality, but can only be reached by traversing a mountain covered in poisonous thorns. Every day the flower blooms and dies because no one will risk climbing to it, as their focus is on the danger of death. The way the film shifts from the listener (Ofelia’s brother in utero) to the story, and the gloriously melancholy way that the story is dramatized for us, is beautiful. Also beautiful is the way that the story foreshadows the fates of the characters. The moral of the story is that to gain immortality you must focus on life rather than death (after all, if you climbed the mountain the poison wouldn’t affect you because you’d be immortal). Ofelia, when faced with her own death, is focused on life (specifically, that of her brother) and when she meets her end, gains immortality by being welcomed back into the other world. The Captain, by contrast, also faces death but is focused on death itself and loses his opportunity at immortality. “He won’t even know your name,” Mercedes tells him when he begins telling her what to tell the boy about him. The Captain will fade from memory, while Ofelia will live forever. So it is a happy ending, after all.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Director: David Lean
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharrif, Anthony Quinn, Claude Raines

Lawrence of Arabia is a film that shouldn’t work according to any traditional understanding of what makes a movie “work.” It’s long, there’s no girl to diffuse the tensions between the male characters, and the hero is deeply flawed and sexually ambiguous. There’s also the fact that much of its plot centers on issues of Middle Eastern autonomy, and that a great deal of the film is comprised on long, lingering shots of the desert. And yet this is a film that absolutely works, a visually stunning, fascinating (if not historically accurate) portrait of a man who became a myth. A lot of films are tagged as epics, but this one dwarfs them all.

From the beginning, we’re made to understand that T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) is an unusual man, troublesome, difficult to manage, but also strangely alluring. Before he’s even done anything, you believe that he can accomplish the impossible because that’s the way that he carries himself. At the request of Mr. Dryden (Claude Raines), a British politician, he’s sent into the desert to assess the situation with Prince Feisal’s (Alec Guinness) army of Bedouins, whom the British army hope to absorb into their own ranks. However, it doesn’t take Lawrence long to come up with his own ideas for the Arabs and talks Feisal into lending him fifty of his men, including Sherif Ali (Omar Sharrif), to travel across the desert and take Aqaba back from the occupying Turks. When the mission proves to be successful, Lawrence is promoted in the British ranks and is allowed to wage guerrilla war on the Turks with his army of composed of various Arab tribes. By this point, Lawrence the man and Lawrence the myth begin to conflict, and he begins to unravel in the face of his findings about himself, and his realization that the Arabs will never be given autonomy, no matter what they accomplish.

The primary theme of the film is identity (“Who are you?” is repeated throughout). Lawrence is British, though he doesn’t feel British, and can never really be Arab, even though he feels that he is. Similarly, while he’s embraced by people on both sides, he’s not fully accepted by either side (towards the end of the film, Feisal and the British General Allenby (Jack Hawkins) agree that it is in the best interest of both sides for Lawrence to be removed from the debate). Ali argues that Lawrence can be whoever – and whatever – he wants to be because Lawrence is a man who seems to transcend any traditional understanding of what is or isn’t possible. For a time, Lawrence believes this, rejecting his British uniform in favour of traditional robes and immersing himself in desert life. “Nothing is written,” he states, meaning that neither fate nor identity is predetermined and that it is possible to be the author of your own story. However, following a brutal attack after he’s captured by Turks, he’s more aware than ever that the divisions he thought he had transcended do in fact still exist. He points to his skin, informing Ali that it can’t be changed and he becomes a shadow of himself, a deflated figure inside his larger than life persona. That he would come to this is perhaps inevitable. When he says “Nothing is written,” it is specifically in reference to his turning around and riding back through the desert to find a man who had fallen behind. Later, the man kills a member of a rival tribe and, to keep the peace, Lawrence must execute him. “It was written,” Auda (Anthony Quinn) states when he learns that the man had already been given up for dead before. He was destined to die, sooner or later, in one way or another and Lawrence can’t change that, just like he can’t change his skin.

At the beginning of the film, we see Lawrence burning himself, which can be seen as a literal attempt to change his skin. “The trick is not minding that it hurts,” he says, giving us our first hint at the film’s other big theme, Lawrence’s love/hate relationship with violence. Lawrence is initially depicted as someone who is sickened by violence. After he’s executed the man he once saved, he throws his pistol away in disgust and seems unable to cope with what he’s done. However, he later confesses to his superiors that his abhorrence of violence stems from the intense pleasure he gets from inflicting it (“There was something about it that I didn’t like… I enjoyed it”). He’s horrified by this aspect of his personality, which essentially takes over following his beating and implied rape by Turkish soldiers, when he leads his army on an attack of a Turkish camp. “Take no prisoners,” he says, even though many of the opposing soldiers are ready to give themselves up. They are, instead, slaughtered by Lawrence’s army to the disgust of Ali and the American reporter Bentley (Arthur Kennedy), and Lawrence himself, who knows that he is now too far gone to be of much use anymore in this campaign.

What director David Lean accomplishes with this film is astounding. Its running time is about three and a half hours, but the pacing is so perfect that it doesn’t feel longer than an average film. And the way that Lean depicts the desert is genius, showing it at various times to be heaven and hell, wide open and suffocatingly constricted, beautiful and ugly. It is hard to effectively describe the scope and breadth of a film like this, which is so massive in what it undertakes that there’s not really anything else to compare it to. This is filmmaking at its most monumental and breathtaking.

100 Days, 100 Movies: E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Robert McNaughton

Maybe it was a simpler time, a time when a science-fiction blockbuster could be about an alien that wasn’t trying to destroy us. Maybe the world wasn't such a scary place and we didn't need to fear the unknown. Whatever the reason, whatever the attitudes which shaped E.T. and made it a hit, we should be grateful for the fact that it exists, because it isn’t just a movie. It’s a story that transcends boundaries of gender and age and genre, a story that comes from – and goes straight to – the heart. It’s a story about outsiders and belonging and, ultimately, finding “home.”

E.T. begins with an alien expedition to earth. When it is completed, and the aliens depart, one is left behind and eventually finds his way to Elliot (Henry Thomas), who hides him and helps him try to find a way to get home. In many ways, it’s a straight-forward family film, featuring plenty of precocious kids (including Drew Barrymore as Gertie, the most precocious of precocious kids), and focusing on friendship and the movement from childhood innocence into more grown-up knowledge. But it’s also more than that.

By now most people are aware that the film is Steven Spielberg’s meditation on his own parents’ divorce, and you can see that in the story and through its two protagonists. Elliot and E.T. are essentially mirrors of each other. E.T. is stranded in a foreign place and seeks home, and Elliot, too, seeks home, albeit in a different sense. The lingering pain of divorce is evident in the early scenes of the film and further alienates Elliot – who as the middle child would already occupy a strange and uncertain place within the family structure – from the rest of his family. Home isn’t just a physical place; it’s a mental/spiritual concept. By helping E.T. find home and reunite with his family, Elliot is also reconciling himself to his own family, and finding a place of his own to call home.

Although it’s a science fiction film, its greatest strength isn’t in its effects (which isn’t to say that its special effects aren’t good), but in its performances, which is amazing since the central performances are by children and a puppet. Thomas, Barrymore and Robert McNaughton all deliver finely wrought performances, a testament no doubt to Spielberg’s ability to direct children. They don’t come across as kids playing an adult’s idea of what kids are; they simply seem like kids, and very relatable ones to members of the audience who are kids. Thomas, especially, is very good as he carries much of the weight of the film and never overplays it. If you can’t muster a tear for the scene where Elliot and ET say goodbye (“I’ll… be… right… here.”), then film just isn’t a medium capable of moving you.

Much was made a few years ago when Spielberg decided to tinker with E.T. like George Lucas did with Star Wars. I’ve never seen the “remastered” version (as with the aforementioned Star Wars, I’m strictly old school when it comes to this film), but my understanding from people who have seen it is that the improvements simply… aren’t. Most seem to agree that efforts to CGI E.T. into looking more “realistic” have only had the opposite effect. As I said, I haven’t see it so I can’t really attest to that, but I can well imagine that that’s true because I generally find that CGI, which is meant to make things look more natural and organic, just makes everything look fake. I can however offer my opinion that Spielberg’s decision to remove the guns from the hands of government agents was a wasted effort, although I believe that his heart was in the right place. I saw E.T. a number of times as a kid and I don’t ever remember fixating on the guns but I do remember having nightmares about the scenes where the house is locked down by the government. I think any kid who can get past that probably isn’t going to be traumatized by the guns. I don’t know how difficult it is now to find the original, unremastered version of E.T., but I think it would be worth the effort of tracking down for anyone who has never seen it. It is, simply, a really great movie.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Singin' In The Rain (1952)

Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Starring: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen

Singin’ In The Rain is not only one of the best musicals ever made (perhaps the best musical), but also one of the best films about Hollywood ever made. With a nostalgic and comedic eye, it looks back on the transition from silent to sound films (and what better way to look at that than through a musical?) at a time when Hollywood was still undergoing another transition – the one from the Golden Age of Bogart, Gable and Garbo to the era of the Method and Brando, Clift and Monroe. It isn’t perfect, to be sure, but damn is it ever entertaining.

It begins with a film premiere where we meet super stars Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen). The studio and complicit movie magazines have created a romance between the two, and while Don can’t stand Lina, she believes the press and thinks that they really are in love. For both stars, these are the final moments free of anxiety because the advent of sound is about to be introduced to film. The reaction within the film community is negative – sound is a novelty that will quickly wear off and people will return to the old standard. But, as history shows, once sound crept in, the silents soon disappeared. Don and Lina make a talkie, and the film has a lot of fun depicting the early days of sound and how those accustomed to shooting silents had to completely reinvent the way they worked in order to adjust. The placement of microphones, especially, turns out to be problematic. The film is previewed and is a disaster, drawing laughter from the audience that is hearing Don and Lina speak for the first time. In order to salvage their film, it’s decided to turn it into a musical. This works perfectly for Don but Lina is still a problem. “She can’t sing, she can’t act, she can’t dance. A triple threat,” says Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor). Luckily, Don knows just the girl to dub her singing voice, an aspiring actress named Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), with whom he also happens to be in love.

The musical numbers in this film are about the best collection ever assembled into a film, which is amazing since only two of the songs were actually written for the film and the rest are recycled from MGM’s storehouse. Everyone knows “Singin’ In The Rain,” even those who’ve never seen the movie, which also boasts “Good Morning,” “You Are My Lucky Star,” “Moses,” and the amazing “Make ‘Em Laugh” number where O’Connor gives everything a performer possibly could and leaves the audience feeling exhausted just by having watched him do it. This would be a good film on the strength of the musical numbers alone, but it also features a wonderfully self-referential and self-parodying story.

Singin’ In The Rain is one of the few films about making movies in Hollywood that manages not to take itself too seriously without edging so far into caricature that its moments of meta become too cutesy and winky. When it’s decided that Don and Lina will make their first sound film, studio boss R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) already has the perfect tag-line in mind: “Lamont and Lockwood: they talk!” which plays on the real-life campaign for Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie, which was “Garbo Talks!” Similarly, when the film is previewed and the audience laughs at Don and Lina’s voices, it plays on the reality of what happened to stars who had to transition from silent to sound and found their careers effectively ended with those first words. The film also plays on the personas of actual silent stars, such as Clara Bow, the “It girl,” who appears here as Zelda Zanders, the “Zip girl” (Rita Moreno).

Of all the actors in the film, Jean Hagen was the only one to receive an Oscar nomination, and it’s easy to see how the Academy just couldn’t resist. Hagen gives us a character who is enjoyably ditzy, but who could have been overwhelming irritating. She gets many of the film’s best lines, although Lina the character wouldn’t know that they were the best or why. “Don’t you dare call him Don! I was calling him Don before you were born! I mean…” she says to Kathy. Hagen is great and utterly deserved that nomination. It’s a shame that O’Connor couldn’t get one as well, but I suppose you can’t have everything.

In spite of it’s overall greatness, there are elements of the film that don’t really work. As played by Kelly and Reynolds, Don and Kathy are great individual characters, but I’ve never really seen much chemistry between them as a romantic couple. I have the same problem with Kelly’s other great musical, An American In Paris and I think the problem is that when paired with an ingénue, Kelly simply overshadows her. Compare these romances to the one in Summer Stock, which isn’t an especially good film but finds Kelly playing opposite Judy Garland in a screen relationship that actually works.

The other problem is the “Gotta Dance” number, which is great as a performance but isn’t cohesive with the rest of the film. It’s so uneasily tacked-on that it’s jarring when the film segues into it. It is a beautiful sequence to watch, it just isn’t incorporated into the film very well. All that being said though, these are really just minor weaknesses easily eclipsed by the film’s many strengths.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Chinatown (1974)

Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” We never know exactly what Chinatown means to Jake, nor do we need to. By the time the film reaches its conclusion, we know enough to know that Chinatown stands for all that is corrupt, brutal and unforgiving in the world. Chinatown draws upon the archetypes of detective noir in both its literary and film forms but subverts many of the classic tropes, breaking free to create something distinct in itself. Here we have a hero who isn’t quite at home in his rough and tumble world, a femme fatale who isn’t as “fatale” as she seems, and an ending which leaves a distinctly bad taste in the mouth. It was, and remains, something different, something new, and something wonderful.

Jack Nicholson stars as Jake Gittes, a private detective who deals mostly in catching errant husbands and wives in the act. When one such target - Hollis Mulwray - turns up dead and Jake discovers that the woman who hired him, whom he believed to be Mrs. Mulwray, was a fraud, he’s plunged into a mystery involving hidden identities, family secrets, municipal corruption and a plot to make millions by diverting water out of Los Angeles. Ultimately, Chinatown isn’t just one mystery, but several woven together, connected by a few key players. One such player is the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), with whom Jake quickly becomes enthralled even as it becomes increasingly obvious that there’s a lot she’s not telling him. By the time she gets to her final confession (“My sister! My daughter!”), it’s easy to understand why Jake doesn’t quite believe her and why he can’t be too sure of anything anymore. It’s Chinatown, a place that’s foreign to Jake’s understanding, where up is down, black is white, and dead men have just bought land that’s about to be worth millions.

Chinatown sets itself apart from traditional detective noir in several ways, most notably through the character of Jake himself. Unlike most screen detectives, Jake doesn’t quite seem to fit his role. There’s a distinct sense about him that he finds his job distasteful, that he doesn’t relish digging around in other people’s dirt. In one scene he’s called to account for some scandalous photos he’s taken and given over to the papers. He jumps up defensively in counter-attack, which is in contrast to detectives of the type you’d see played by Bogart or Mitchum, who would let such a remark roll off their backs with the briefest of witty remarks.

Further distancing Jake from the prototypical detective is the way that he fits into the narrative. By nature of the genre, no screen detective is really in control of the story, but most stories stack the balance of power in the favour of the detective so that you know that, ultimately, the guy is smarter, tougher and luckier than everyone else and will come out of it more or less in tact. Not here. Jake is at the mercy of the story, constantly being knocked around and always in danger. And in the end, there’s no relief for him, no satisfaction for a job well done, no knowledge that justice has been done, no girl, only remorse, bitterness and guilt. Few films are as pitiless to their protagonists as this one, which is perhaps why is seems so fitting that the character who cuts Jake up is played by director Roman Polanski.

Like Jake, Evelyn is a character who breaks free of the archetypes of the genre while also being firmly rooted in that genre. Her entry into the narrative is straight out of the classical story, the femme fatale walking into the detective’s office. But Evelyn is a femme fatale in only the broadest terms because she isn’t actually out to trap Jake or anyone else, but rather her desire is to save someone by ensuring that their identity and whereabouts are kept secret. She’s playing Jake to an extent, keeping him close so that he doesn’t get too close to the truth, but I’ve always thought that her intentions towards him were basically sincere. That she likes him and wants a relationship with him, but has to take care of business first. But his inability to believe that, his inability to take his own advice in the film’s opening scene and “let sleeping dogs lie,” will ultimately undo them both.

As the two leads, Nicholson and Dunaway are superb and play wonderfully off of each other, never quite relaxing in each other’s presence, as if always on edge waiting for the other to slip. Appropriately, given the genre, John Huston appears as Evelyn’s father, a quietly menacing man who informs Jake that "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” He looms here larger than life, seeming to occupy the entire screen with his presence. When Evelyn shoots him and it has little effect, it’s hardly surprising. He’s more than just a man, he’s a symbol of all that’s corrupt and wrong with society, he’s the epitome of “Chinatown,” and will carry on long after everyone around him as been destroyed.

This fatalist view of the world dominates the film so that this story which takes place in sunny California (with much of the action taking place in the daytime), seems darker than it literally is. The contrast of the mystery/noir elements to the lightness of the mis en scene further emphasises how disordered is this world that we’re seeing. The final scene takes place at night, the setting fitting the darkness of the tone. But by then, of course, we understand: it’s Chinatown.

100 Days, 100 Movies: All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)

Director: Lewis Millestone
Starring: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim

Very few films really succeed at being anti-war (and, strangely, many of those that do seem to be set during World War I), and this is one of the best examples of a film that depicts the horror of war not through excessive gore but through the humanity of its characters. Anyone who has read the novel All Quiet on the Western Front will be familiar with the power of this story, which isn’t much changed in the transition from page to screen. The final shot of the film, with the now dead soldiers looking back at us superimposed over a field covered with grave markers, is one of the most searing and effective indictments I’ve ever seen of the socio-political machinery that makes war seem not only necessary, but also seductive.

The film begins with teenage Paul (Lew Ayres) in school, where his class is whipped into a patriotic frenzy by their teacher, who takes the boys to enlist in the army. They don’t know what they’re getting themselves into and we see shot after shot of hysterical boys already imagining the role they’ll play in their romanticized vision of war. Once enlisted, Paul becomes friends with Kat Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim), a man who knows how to get around, especially when it comes to black market goods. One by one, Paul watches his friends die needlessly while experiencing the harsh realities of trench life, which includes having inadequate equipment and insufficient food (some of the fiercest fighting in the film is between the soldiers and their mess cook). He becomes disillusioned with the war, but a leave which allows him to go home offers no respite. People congratulate him on doing his duty, telling him that they don’t mind going without because they know that the food they aren’t eating is going to the soldiers at the front. The way that Ayres plays these scenes is brilliant and makes Paul’s eventual death seem less like tragedy and more like relief. He could never have come back to live with these people, who experience a reality so completely divorced from the one that he himself knows.

Paul returns to his former classroom and is asked to address the students, but instead of loading them up with romantic tales, he says: “You still think it’s beautiful to die for your country. The first bombardment taught us better. When it comes to dying for country, it’s better not to die at all.” He’s asked to leave and returns to the front where he finally feels at home among his comrades, relaxed in a way that he could never achieve when he was with his family. More friends die, including Kat and then Paul himself, who in his final moments reaches out of his trench in an attempt to catch a butterfly in his hand.

Much of the film is spent examining the political schema from which the war resulted as it is seen by soldiers at the front. When one explains that wars begin when one country offends another, a comrade breaks in, saying, “How could one country offend another? You mean there’s a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?” They understand that they’re fighting for Germany because it’s their homeland, but they don’t understand why Germany is fighting and what the country will gain from the war. But Kat gets it. “At the next war let all the Kaisers, presidents and generals and diplomats go into a big field and fight it out first among themselves. That will satisfy us and keep us home.” This isn’t a war between countries, it’s a war between leaders who will sit far removed from the frontlines while the lifeblood of their nations is needlessly shed. The heart of the film is this examination of the nature of class in regards to war, with the upper classes getting into a dispute and sacrificing the lower classes to settle it; but it’s soul is in the relationships between the soldiers.

What is most amazing about this film is the way that it is still so affecting. It was made in late 1929 and early 1930 and given all the technological advances of the ensuing decades, it should look dated by now but it doesn’t. The battle scenes remain intense and realistic, with the camera in some cases filming from the point of view of the ground or the trench. These shots are terrifying, instilling in us a sense of confusion and fear that puts us right there. In addition to these very intimate shots, director Lewis Millestone also employs a variety of long shots and tracking shots which are wonderfully crafted.

All Quiet On The Western Front may be the best war film ever made because it so completely succeeds at what it sets out to do. The title card at the beginning informs us that this is not “an adventure” and it isn’t, though it easily could have been. Instead it provides us with a grim, harrowing look at the desperation, disillusionment and pointlessness of war. You will never watch any other war film the same way after seeing this one.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Killing of Sister George (1968)

Director: Robert Aldrich
Starring: Beryl Reid, Susannah York, Coral Browne

The Killing of Sister George is one of the most bitter films you’ll ever see. It’s also endlessly entertaining even after multiple viewings, and prescient with regards to the place of women in the world of television and film. There can be no happy ending in this story about “a fat, boring old actress” who is being put out to pasture (in more ways than one) by the television show she helped make a hit. There can only be the desperate acquiescence to which June “Sister George” Buckridge eventually succumbs.

June Buckridge (brilliantly brought to life by Beryl Reid), known to all as George after the character she plays on a British soap, is one of the most fascinating characters you’ll ever encounter. She a drunk, she’s paranoid (quite rightly) about getting older in a medium that embraces youth, and she’s a lesbian. Her relationship with Childie (Susannah York) is interesting because it’s the type of relationship that you don’t often see portrayed. For one thing, there’s a large age difference between the two – which isn’t unusual for films which deal with a relationship between a man and a woman, but how often do you see an older woman/younger woman affair played out on-screen? – and Childie, despite having a job, is more or less kept by George. For another thing, the relationship is sado-masochistic, which you hardly ever see played out in films regardless of the sex and orientation of the characters involved. What’s amazing is the way that the film portrays the relationship in a multi-dimensional way. It never comes across as George taking advantage of and abusing the younger woman; instead both are portrayed as active and consenting participants. There is a scene at the beginning when Childie is made to demonstrate her submission by eating the butt of George’s cigar, but instead of playing along like she’s supposed to, Childie pretends to get joy out of the act. “You’re ruining it,” George tells her and begins to storm off. Childie is confused, asking if she doesn’t want to continue this in the bedroom – there’s clearly a give and take to this that both get pleasure from and it’s rare to see this kind of relationship explored in a way that isn’t judgmental and condemning. There’s a real sense of affection between the two – especially in a scene where George tells Childie a story about being infatuated with her before they’d gotten together – that makes the relationship all the more compelling. Despite George’s temper tantrums (and there are several), these are two people who also have a lot of fun together and that comes across to the audience.

George’s relationship with Childie hits an impasse with the introduction of Mercy Croft (Carol Browne), a network executive who also has quite an impact on George’s career. Sister George was once the most popular character on the show, but her place has recently been usurped. George the actress can sense that she’s about to be written out and when her character is given the flu, her behaviour becomes increasingly paranoid and she becomes more difficult to deal with. She’s convinced that Croft is out to get her, especially after finding out that she’s been meeting with Childie to discuss her poetry. When the flu turns out to be passing, George is ecstatic, only to learn from Croft that within a week the character will be felled in a car accident. “It so happens that your death will coincide with road safety week, a cause which we know is very close to your heart,” she informs the actress. Given Croft’s attitude towards George, and the eye she sets on Childie, it’s difficult to imagine that setting George up then knocking her down so brutally occurred as accidentally as she claims. Mercy Croft is, if anything, one of the most ironically named characters ever.

Contrary to convention (but, of course, this film is contrary to nearly every film convention), Croft, the villain, wins. Not only does she take Childie away from George and get George written out of the show, she inflicts on George perhaps her greatest humiliation through the offer of a new show… about a cow, whom George will provide the voice for. George refuses but in the film’s final moments, surrenders herself to the prospect as she sits on her empty, former set yelling “Moo!” The story makes no bones about the way actresses are treated once they’ve reached a certain age. Upon hearing of the show’s intention of writing George out, Childie states that she’s the most popular character. “Well, not quite,” Croft replies. George may have contributed to the show’s rise in popularity, and she may have given it the best years of her career, but she’s reached an age where she’s expendable and her prospects after the show are bleak.

The Killing of Sister George has a great deal going for it, including it’s compelling story and the astounding performance at it’s center. It is also a bitingly clever film and incredibly quotable (“Not all women are raving bloody lesbians” Childie proclaims. “That is a misfortune I am perfectly aware of,” George replies). Rated X when it was first released due to a sex scene between Croft and Childie which seems tame by today’s standards, the film went largely unseen when it was first released. It can be somewhat difficult to track down a copy even today, but it is completely worth it. Never before and never again will there be a movie quite like this one.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Awful Truth (1937)

Director: Leo McCarey
Starring: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy

The Awful Truth is one of several films which find Cary Grant as a divorced man trying to get back his ex-wife – two other notables being His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story - and arguably the best. In Irene Dunne, Grant finds his perfect match, a woman just as classy, just as witty, and just as capable of being silly. Together they create one of the best screen pairings in what is perhaps the best romantic comedy ever made.

Jerry (Grant) and Lucy (Dunne) Warriner are a happily married couple until suspicions of infidelity tear them apart. Lucy finds out that Jerry hasn’t been in Florida like he said he was, and Jerry is suspicious of Lucy’s claims that she and her singing coach, Armand Duvalle (Alexander D’Arcy), had car trouble and had to stop at an inn for a completely platonic evening. Jerry thinks the story unbelievable. “You’ve come back and caught me in the truth, and there’s nothing less logical than the truth,” Lucy replies breezily. They file for divorce, fight over custody of their dog Smith (played by Asta who also appears with Grant in Bringing Up Baby and in all the films of The Thin Man series), and wait for the end of their marriage to be finalized.

While they’re waiting, Lucy meets Dan (Ralph Bellamy), a businessman from Oklahoma with whom she has a quick courtship and becomes engaged. Jerry causes as much trouble in the relationship as he can but by the time it’s broken up, he has moved on to another woman. Now it’s Lucy’s turn to break up his next potential marriage. All this leads to an evening spent in a cabin, an adjoining door that won’t stay shut, and a final admission of love and a reconciliation – “Maybe things could be the same again… only a little different, huh?” Lucy asks. This is all formula, of course; we all know that Jerry and Lucy will be back together by the end – it’s what happens in between that makes this film priceless.

Firstly, you have the contrast between the witty, urbane Grant and the sincere, corn-fed Bellamy. After being run-around by Jerry, Dan probably looks like a catch to Lucy (“How can you be glad to know me?” Jerry asks Dan, “I know how I’d feel if I was sitting with a girl and her husband walked in.” “I’ll bet you do,” Lucy retorts), but ultimately she and Jerry are cut from the same cloth and the relationship with Dan is doomed from the beginning. She likes Dan, to be sure, but there are things about him that give her pause. For instance, a poem he writes for her:

For you, my little prairie flower
I’m thinking of you every hour
It would make my life divine
If you would change your name to mine.

Dan doesn’t make Jerry jealous so much as he amuses him. Jerry knows that Lucy could never be happy in the long term with Dan, living in Oklahoma, and in breaking up the relationship, he sees himself as saving her from herself. Lucy’s Aunt Patsy (Cecil Cunningham) ultimately agrees, even though she’s the one who arranged the meeting between Lucy and Dan. “I feel like I’ve just been given a crash course in women,” Dan tells Lucy after finding Jerry and Armand in her bedroom. “Here’s your diploma,” Patsy replies, handing him a letter Lucy had written to call off the engagement.

The film has a very sharp wit, but it also comes stocked with a great supply of physical comedy. There is a scene where Dan and Lucy run into Jerry and a date at a restaurant. Dan asks Lucy to dance and then engages in the most bizarre, hilarious and surreal interpretation of dancing ever known to man. There is also a scene where Jerry thinks he’s about to find Lucy in a compromising position with Armand and, after first engaging in karate with Armand’s butler, Jerry bursts into the room to find Lucy giving a recital. He sits at the back and falls off his chair, while Lucy attempts to continue singing through her laughter.

What makes this film really work though is the fact that it just looks like the actors had fun making it.In the restaurant scene, Jerry’s date gets up to sing a song which involves a fan underneath the stage blowing up her skirt while she tries to maintain her modesty. Dan, Jerry and Lucy all watch with a mixture of horror, embarrassment and amusement. “I just met her,” Jerry says, turning to Lucy. Later, Lucy will embarrass and amuse Jerry with the same routine when she crashes a dinner party thrown by Jerry’s potential in-laws. The give-and-take of Grant and Dunne’s onscreen partnership is very enjoyable to watch.

There is absolutely nothing about this film that I don’t love, although there is one element that has always given me pause. A great deal is made of the idea that Lucy has been unfaithful with Armand to the extent that Jerry continues trying to catch them together even after he and Lucy have decided to divorce. But no one makes a big deal about Jerry’s whereabouts when he was supposed to be in Florida. Even Lucy seems to have let it go after having found out about it. But I suppose that’s just the nature of the double standard. At any rate, this is a great movie, the perfect movie to watch if you’ve had a bad day, and one that can be watched over and over again without losing an ounce of zing.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)

Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Meribel Verdu

Y Tu Mama Tambien plays on a number of levels. On one level it’s a teenage sex comedy (sometimes drama). It’s also a road movie. It is also, and perhaps most importantly, a subtle exploration of a nation divided against itself by the politics of poverty. This is a film that is at times funny, at times sexy, but ultimately bittersweet in the way that it explores the ways and means that people come together and, eventually, come apart.

The film is well known for its nudity and sex scenes. It begins with Tenoch (Diego Luna) and his girlfriend engaging in an energetic tryst during which they discuss all the people of various nationalities that they won’t be unfaithful with while she’s on a trip out of the country. Soon after, there’s a scene between Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his girlfriend, who is also going on the trip, that is similar in tone and energy. With their girlfriends gone, the boys settle into typical teenage ennui, living lives where nothing really happens. They attend a wedding where they set their sights on Luisa (Meribel Verdu), an older and married woman. They try to interest her in a trip to a secret beach, but she politely declines. Later, when she learns of her husband’s latest affair, she decides to take the boys up on their idea, and the three embark in search of Boca del Cielo.

Like most road movies, the film isn’t as concerned with the destination as it is in what happens to the characters as they get there. Tenoch and Julio reveal their “code” to Luisa and tell her about their sex lives. She’s less than impressed and tells them that she feels bad for their girlfriends, who have to endure them. At one of the stops along the way, she invites Tenoch into her room. He seems surprised, but she points out that this was the whole purpose of her being invited on the trip in the first place. The next day when things become tense between Tenoch and Julio, Luisa warns Tenoch not to get full of himself – it could have just as easily been Julio in her room. She proves it, then, by having sex with Julio. The situation with Luisa is always threatening to erupt and secrets are revealed in anger which leads to more strife. Tenoch and Julio learn that each has been sleeping with the other’s girlfriend and their friendship begins to disintegrate.

Beneath the ever-heightening sexual tension is a tension of another kind. The film is quick to establish a difference in social ranking between Tenoch (who is upper class, the son of a statesman) and Julio, which it explores further as the film goes on. It also explores the divide between the rich, touristy version of Mexico and the poorer side of Mexico that the threesome encounter at various stops along the film. These moments are brief, commented on by the narrator but, tellingly, hardly even noticed by the three protagonists. At the beginning of the film Tenoch and Julio’s life is marked by their boredom and when they decide to make the trip, they have to track down Julio’s sister to borrow her car. She’s participating in a rally which appears to be rather large. Tenoch and Julio have nothing to say about it, nor its purpose, and it fades from their minds as soon as they get the car. Their wilful ignorance of the political situation that surrounds them is an interesting commentary on a general lack of political awareness in the rising generations. They are aware, vaguely, of the problems but don’t see themselves as part of the solution. Their lives are complete and separate from what’s going on in their own backyards.

The performances in the film are very good. Luna and Bernal both find the right mixture of cockiness and underlying uncertainty to make their roles wholly believable. The standout, however, is Verdu as the woman determined to teach these boys something about life. There is a wonderful scene in which Luisa calls her husband, informs him that she’s aware of his affair and has left for good, then tearfully reminds him to take care of himself now that she won’t be there to do it for him. It’s a brief but powerful scene, one of many in which the character becomes fully human and not simply a device of the plot. All three characters are, in fact, very real and it is a credit to the performers and the filmmakers that the characters are not muted by all the sex in the film, but rather become more clearly defined through those scenes. Y Tu Mama Tambien is a film that is memorable not because of how much flesh it shows, but because of how deeply it goes beneath the superficial level of skin to the souls of its characters.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Paths of Glory (1957)

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Adolphe Menjou

Paths of Glory is an angry, powerful condemnation of the way war is fought away from the battlefield. It doesn’t argue against the necessity of war as much as the mentality of war, where one man’s heroism can be determined by the sacrifice of others, and morale can be built through the execution of one’s fellow soldiers. The story centers on three such soldiers, chosen more or less at random, to be executed for cowardice to teach everyone else a lesson, and one man’s doomed crusade to save them. In a simple, straight-forward way, director Stanley Kubrick captures the insane, heartless quality of war in a way that you’ll never forget.

The film begins with General Mireau (George Macready) being assigned the impossible task of taking a well-defended hill. His superior, General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) believes that the success of the mission would raise the army’s morale in general, but Mireau knows that it is a suicide mission destined for failure. However, when Broulard suggests that a promotion would be in order were the task a success, Mireau jumps on board and goes to the trenches to give the order to Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas). Dax attempts to talk Mireau out of it, using the same arguments that Mireau employed with Broulard, but to no avail. The attack goes forward and is, of course, a failure. When the men attempt to retreat to their trenches, Mireau orders his artillery to fire on them. This monumental disaster cannot be allowed to go unpunished and Mireau decides to execute one member of each of the three companies for cowardice (a reasonable figure considering he originally wanted to execute 100). One man is picked because his senior officer has a personal vendetta against him, another is picked for being a social “undesirable,” a third is picked after having drawn lots. Somehow, this is meant to be justice.

The trial, in which Dax attempts in vain to defend the three soldiers, is a mockery. The basic argument of the military is that if the men weren’t cowards, they would be dead. The fact that they’re alive proves that they weren’t brave enough to leave their trenches. Dax defends them as best he can, given that he isn’t allowed to bring in any evidence to support the soldiers claims that they aren’t cowards, but it’s ultimately pointless. The court has decided that the three will be murdered and that’s all there is to it. “Gentlemen of the court, there are times that I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race and this is one such occasion,” Dax says angrily at the end of the trial. But even worse is yet to come. While the three are awaiting execution, two get into a fight in which one sustains a head injury that leaves him incapacitated and on the verge of death. He’s carried out on a stretcher and tied to the execution post, his death all the more pointless for the fact that he is, essentially, already dead.

But they aren’t the only casualties. The questions that Dax has raised – especially those regarding Mireau’s orders to shoot on his own men – cannot be ignored and now it’s Mireau’s turn to play scapegoat for Broulard. Broulard informs Mireau that he’ll be investigated and then congratulates Dax on what he sees as a masterful move to usurp Mireau’s position, completely misreading Dax’s character. When he realizes his mistake, he’s disappointed, branding Dax an idealist rather than a strategist. “I pity you as I would the village idiot. We’re fighting a war, Dax, a war that we’ve got to win. Those men didn’t fight, so they were shot. You bring charges against General Mireau, so I insist that he answer them. Wherein have I done wrong?” “Because you don’t know the answer to that question, I pity you,” Dax replies.

The army depicted here is basically an extension of the social/class hierarchy existing outside of the service. Officers like Mireau and Broulard would be members of the upper classes (we see evidence of this with Broulard, whom Dax confronts at a ball), while ordinary soldiers like the three who were executed would have come from the lower social classes. The way that the ordinary soldiers are treated as being not only undesirable in a social sense, but also disposable, at the mercy of what their being allowed to live will gain for their superiors, is what so disgusts Dax, who is caught somewhere in the middle. He’s not a regular soldier, though he does participate in the charge towards the hill, but he lacks the mentality to fit in with fellow officers who see nothing but their own potential for glory, while losing sight of the humanity that surrounds them.

The final scene of the film further emphasises the way that war drains humanity from the people who participate in it. The soldiers have gathered together in bar, where the owner brings out a captured German woman to entertain them. She begins to sing, obviously scared and confused, while the soldiers howl and catcall to her. She’s not a human being, but an enemy, at least until they begin to recognize the song and their howling segues into humming, their lustful looks into looks of sadness. A common thread has been touched between these French soldiers and this German girl, all of whom are victims of something beyond their control. Dax, watching from outside, allows his men to have their moment before giving the order to return to the front. It’s a simple scene, but deeply effective, perhaps even more so than any of the scenes that came before it, including the battle scenes and the executions, and it perfectly captures the essence of the film as a whole.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, John Cazale, Diane Keaton

I go back and forth over whether The Godfather: Part II is the better of the first two instalments of the trilogy. On one hand, the sequel obviously benefits from having the original as a starting point with much of the set-up already done. But on the other, I think that Part II contains the key elements to the trilogy as a whole. Add to that the fact that the world we enter with Part II is darker, more complex and ultimately more ambiguous than its predecessor, and you’ve got a tough choice to make indeed.

The film tells two parallel stories. One follows Vito (played as an adult by Robert De Niro) who begins life in the village of Corleone in Sicily and sees the members of his family picked off one-by-one by the local Mafioso. He escapes to America, takes the name Corleone and eventually usurps power from the local Don to begin his own consolidation of power. The other story follows Michael (Al Pacino), already in control of his empire and struggling to maintain it against conspiracy within his organization, a Senate committee out to bust him, and his own familial troubles. Family is the crucial element of the film. Vito’s rise to power is shown as a way to safeguard his American family and give them a better life, as well as a way to ensure that he can return to Sicily and avenge the family he lost there. The Don he eliminates holds his territory with an iron fist. When he’s assassinated by Vito, it isn’t framed as a bad act, but as something which will ultimately enable Vito to take care of his family. For Vito, business is a way of maintaining the family. For Michael, on the other hand, family is something that must be sacrificed for the sake of business.

The Godfather: Part II is essentially the story of Michael’s isolation as he drifts further and further away from what Vito established. One brother (Sonny) is already dead at the beginning of the film, sister Connie (Talia Shire) is a mild irritation, someone he has to deal with but whose presence has little effect on his life, and adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), once in the thick of things as the family’s consiglieri is being pushed further and further out of the family business for his own protection, as Michael tries to assure him. His marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) is already falling apart as she grows increasingly impatient with his empty promises to make the family legitimate. Eventually he will push her away completely and, as in The Godfather, shut the door on her, this time definitively. And then there’s Fredo (John Cazale)…

The key to understanding the trilogy as a whole and Michael as a character lies in the death of Fredo, whom Michael orders to be killed. The first film is leading up to this moment, the moment when Michael is so far gone, so completely enveloped in the “business,” that he can order Fredo to be murdered as if that is “just business” and not personal. Everything in the third film leads away from it and much of that film concerns Michael’s guilt over his act (“My mother’s son,” he laments in Part III). How did Michael get to this point? How did the “good” son of The Godfather, the one least expected to get into the business, end up being the most ruthless of them all? It is perhaps his lack of previous contact with this world that made him so susceptible to it, like someone whose immune system is compromised by sudden exposure to a disease never before encountered.

Fredo is the soul of the film and when he kills Fredo, Michael kills his soul, committing an act he will never be able to fully justify or find redemption for. As Fredo, John Cazale renders a heartbreaking performance. “I’m your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over… I’m smart. Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!” he says to Michael, who responds dispassionately. It’s an emotionally charged role, that of the older brother trying to step out of the shadow of the younger, the brother who is aware that no one believes he is capable of running the show, the one who is forever stuck at the figurative kid’s table. Cazale’s film career was brief, but he left a filmography that any actor would be jealous of, having appeared in The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter in addition to the first two Godfather films. Pacino, Keaton, Duvall and De Niro are all great, but it’s Cazale who really stands out among the crowd as a man desperate to show that he’s as good as his brother while also being so slavishly eager to please the same.

The story presented here is much bigger than that of The Godfather and I know that some become impatient with it, feeling that it digresses too much, that it isn’t as tightly focused as the first. I also know that some prefer Part II because it’s more epic in scope and much darker, showing a Don who is more realistically cold-blooded. But anyway you look at it, this remains an excellent film, its story a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Fargo (1996)

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare

At some point in their lives, the Coen brothers must have know a really cool cop. How else to explain that they managed to depict two of the very best police officers ever captured on screen – here with Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) and in No Country For Old Men with Ed Tom Bell. In this twisted tale of kidnapping, greed and murder, where everything that can go wrong does, Marge is the only character who isn’t severely out of her depth. By mixing the brutality of the crime with the pleasant ordinariness of Marge’s everyday life, the Coens created a film that defies any easy classification. It’s clearly a drama. And it’s clearly a comedy. It is most certainly a masterpiece.

The film begins by telling us that this is a true story, which is and isn’t true. It’s actually bits and pieces of several true stories combined into one narrative. “If an audience believes that something’s based on a real event, it gives you permission to do things they might otherwise not accept,” Joel Coen has said by way of explaining the “true story” foreword. And it’s true because when you watch it, you can’t help but think that some of the things that go on in the film are so outrageous that they have to be true. The infamous wood chipper scene, for example, is based on the actual murder of a woman from Connecticut. So, knowing that truth is stranger than fiction, it’s easy to believe that car dealer Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) could come up with a plot to rid himself of his debts by having his wife kidnapped so that her wealthy father will pay the ransom. It’s also believable that the father-in-law will push Jerry aside to take matters into his own hands, that the two hired kidnappers (Steve Buschemi as Carl and Peter Stormare as Gaear) will prove to be less than reliable (not to mention compatible), and that the story will end in tragedy for all.

In and of itself, the basic plot of a kidnapping gone awry would be enough for a compelling story, but Fargo goes beyond simply being “good” and becomes “great” through the addition of pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson, a character who possesses something which remarkably few film characters are allowed (or, at least, allowed to use): a brain. Her ability to observe and correctly assess situations in order to make the best decision sets her apart from the other characters, many of whom make snap decisions while in a panic – Jerry, Carl – or who simply fail to properly think things through – again, Jerry, and Marge’s deputy Lou, who provides the set-up for Marge’s best line, “I don’t agree with you 100 per cent on your police work, there, Lou.” Aside from her intelligence, Marge also provides a welcome counterbalance to the Lundegaards’ tragedy through events which take place in her own life apart from the investigation. The scenes between Marge and her husband (John Carroll Church), and Marge and her high school classmate Mike (Steve Park), have nothing to do with the murder plot, but tell us volumes about Marge herself and make her all the more easy to identify with.

The Coens walk a fine line, balancing the elements of comedy and drama in this story and often pitting the two against each other in the same scene. In the scene where Marge meets with Mike, for example, there’s an awkwardness between them which is funny, but there’s also something a little off, a little sad about Mike, whom Marge handles with as much delicacy as possible. In the kidnapping scene itself there is the faint hint of slapstick as Mrs. Lundegaard comes running out of her hiding spot in the bathtub, gets caught in the shower curtain and takes a tumble, but the scene is pulled back into its darker undertones by the presence of Gaear. And any scene involving Jerry features a healthy dose of both the comedic and the dramatic.

If nothing else, Fargo is a perfect example of how big a role casting plays in the success of a movie. Frances McDormand as the sincere and steady Marge, William H. Macy as the nervous Jerry whose self-doubt creeps just beneath all his words, Steve Buscemi as the excitable Carl, and Peter Stormare as the quietly menacing and cavalierly cruel Gaear – all of these actors are irreplaceable in their roles, so completely do they encapsulate these characters. However, not content to let it rest on great performances – or great writing – the Coens also bring considerable technical skill to it. My favourite shot in the film is of Jerry walking to his car across a deserted, snow-covered parking lot. The vastness of the white, empty space around him seems to perfectly encapsulate his state of mind as he finds himself pushed further and further away from his dream of finally making something of himself.

When all is said and done, the film ends not with the resolution to the investigation, but beyond that on a quiet note between Marge and her husband. He’s just learned that his painting will be featured on a stamp, downplaying the achievement in the face of Marge’s support. “It’s just a three cent stamp… People don’t much use the three cent,” he insists. “Of course they do. Whenever they raise postage people need the little stamps,” Marge replies. It’s Marge’s ability to come home from her own major triumph but still be able to recognize and celebrate that of her husband that makes her so very endearing, and it’s the film’s ability to take us to the darkest of places but still end on this quiet, charming note, that makes it so very watchable.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The General (1927)

Director: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Starring: Buster Keaton

Genius. It’s the only word grand enough to describe Buster Keaton, but still manages to come up just a little short. What’s amazing about him in films is that even though you can see that a great deal of work is going into the set-up, he still manages to make the execution look effortless. The scope of his vision, the intricacy with which he constructs his story and the perfection with which it plays out, is simply staggering. Never before and never since has there been anyone like him. He was a man apart and, like him, his masterpiece The General stands apart from all other films.

I know a number of people who reject silent films outright due to the vague notion that pre-sound films are somehow inherently “boring” and such assertions always make me want to sit them down and show them The General. This is an exhilarating film not only because it features some great stunts and terrific moments of comedy, but also because it is plotted to perfection, telling its story in a brisk, symmetrical way in which every scene builds upon what came before so that your excitement is at peak level by the time the film reaches its climax.

Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a Southern engineer who has been rejected from service in the Confederate army because he’s more useful to the South as an engineer. Of course, no one bothers to explain the reasoning behind his rejection to him so he can’t explain himself when everyone, including his beloved Annabelle (Marion Mack) assumes that he isn’t in uniform because he’s a coward. When his engine, The General, is hijacked by Union soldiers, Johnnie takes chase, first running after it, then employing a push cart, then getting hold of another train (but accidentally failing to bring along the car carrying the Confederate soldiers who want to help get The General back). Along the way from Confederate to Union territory, various schemes are employed by the Union soldiers to foil their capture, and by Johnnie to keep the Union soldiers from getting away. One of the best sequences involves Johnnie setting up a canon to fire at the other train, only to have circumstances first knock it out of position so that its aiming directly at Johnnie, and then have it so slow to detonate that it doesn’t fire until Johnnie is going around a bend so that the cannon ball clips the back of the Union soldiers' train, causing them to panic, convinced that a band of Confederate soldiers is chasing them rather than just an engineer who wants his train back.

The thing that stands out most about the film is the stunt work performed by Keaton. From the scene at the beginning when he sits on the side rod of the train and is gently moved up and down by the motion as he moves out of frame, to various scenes of him crawling around the moving train (especially the sequence where he climbs down the front to knock planks off the track in front of him), he performs some astonishingly dangerous feats. If made today, you would know that what you were watching wouldn’t be “real” and it would just seem like another cool effect, but Keaton really is doing these things and could easily have been killed. That he pulls all these stunts off with such comedic grace and perfection is a testament to his abilities as a performer. He makes it look so easy even though, obviously, it is not.

What elevates this film, and Keaton in general, to the level of genius is the scale of ambition. This isn’t a film that is content to simply connect a series of comedic and physical set-ups, but instead gives an equal amount of time to developing the story and then executes it in a way that is technically very strong. The chase sequences are constructed symmetrically, so that what we see the Union soldiers doing as they escape back to their territory, we see Johnnie and Annabelle repeating as they flee from Union territory back to their own. And while all these train hijinks are taking place, we see the movements of the Union and Confederate armies in the background, alternately advancing and retreating.

The timing of this film, both in terms of plot movement and comedy, is perfect. By virtue of the fact that they’re both geniuses of the same era of filmmaking, Keaton and Chaplin are often compared, which is like comparing apples to oranges. Both are deft physical comedians, but they have such different styles and get their laughs in such different ways. Chaplin is the clown, Keaton is the everyman; Chaplin mugs, Keaton shrugs. Both are great, but they’re so very different. The comedy we get from Keaton here is both simple (as in the scene at the beginning where he walks to Annabelle’s house with two young boys behind him, unaware that Annabelle is also walking behind him until he gets up to the door and knocks) and more intricate (as in the sequence towards the end where a Union soldier picks off the Confederates around a cannon one by one, much to Johnnie’s confusion and then, just when it seems as though it’s Johnnie’s turn, the Union soldier is accidentally killed when the blade of Johnnie’s sword goes flying off its hilt).

The General is a terrific film on both technical and performance levels. It’s funny, it’s exciting, and it unfolds at a quick pace. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to make their first foray into silent films because it’s so very accessible, so fast and full of action that you don’t really even notice that it’s free of dialogue. It is every inch a masterpiece.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Star Wars (1977)

Director: George Lucas
Starring: Mark Hamill, Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher

Very few things bring out the geek in me quite like the first few notes of the Star Wars theme, and no subsequent episode in the series will ever really replace “A New Hope” in my heart. I will admit right off the top to being a Star Wars purist: I think the first trilogy was better, and I think the films were perfect in their original forms and no amount of tinkering by George Lucas is ever going to convince me otherwise. For sheer entertainment value, very few things come close to matching this film.

Star Wars plays with a lot of familiar tropes of mythology/fantasy including hidden identity, good versus evil, mysticism, and of course that one person (predominantly male) who holds the key to defeating dark forces. The bare bones of this story are about as old as storytelling itself, but as a film it rises above its formula due in large part to how fully realized this world is. When you watch Star Wars, you get the sense of a realm that has been lovingly crafted by the creator and generously shared with the rest of us. The scope of the film required not just a vision of one specific place, but of an entire universe of different, diverse places, from the sandy dunes of Tatooine to the cold fortress that is the Death Star.

From the outset, with it’s famous and much parodied scrolling prologue, Lucas places the story firmly in the realm of traditional mythology, where “A long time ago in a galaxy far away” replaces the familiar “Once upon a time.” By setting it “a long time ago” and starting with Episode IV, it’s made to seem like a textual fragment from an ancient civilization, which is part of it’s charm. If it was just a regular science fiction adventure, it’s place in popular culture wouldn’t be nearly as firm. This is a story that wants to achieve more than that and it’s intention is clearly stated in these first moments, right before it drops us into the thick of things.

The plot and its characters hardly need introduction. The characters – although they receive a great deal of shading in the subsequent films (especially The Empire Strikes Back) – appear here largely one-note, subservient to the formula. Luke (Mark Hamill) is a young man seeking adventure, who doubts himself but finds inner-strength. Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness) is the wise mentor who will sacrifice himself to save the hero and thereby teach him self-reliance. Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is the spunky heroine, a female presence to diffuse all the male bonding that’s taking place. Han Solo (Harrison Ford), like an intergalactic Rick Blaine, is a roguish anti-hero who is in it for himself and won’t stick his neck out for anyone. And, of course, there’s Darth Vader (voiced to perfection by James Earl Jones), a conglomeration of all the evil in the universe. On their own, these characters might not stand up to scrutiny but taken together they work as each one is designed to bring out something different in the others. For example, Obi-Wan’s teacher/student relationship with Luke brings out Luke’s humble side, while Han and Luke bring out the swagger and boastfulness in each other, and Leia brings out Luke’s heroic side. They only work for each other, not against, in terms of the characters being fleshed out.

There are a wealth of memorable moments in the film, with arguably the most memorable being when Luke uses the force to destroy the Death Star and win a victory for the Rebel Alliance. At this point, I can’t see it without thinking of the conversation in Kevin Smith’s Clerks about the innocent contractors who were at work on the Death Star when it blew up, but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment I get when I watch it. In fact, nothing about the way the series has seeped into popular culture – as reference or parody – detracts from the pure enjoyment of watching this film, which speaks volumes about how well-crafted it was to begin with. The Empire Strikes Back is the better film, and The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith made more money, but it’s this first instalment that’s really special.