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T.E. Lawrence was what a friend of mine calls a “transethnic,” like the couple of Italian guys you always see playing bagpipes in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. David Lean’s gorgeous film captures this enigmatic man beautifully.
Make no mistake — Ben-Hur is not great art. But it is great fun. Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), a contemporary of Jesus, is a Jewish prince in Roman-ruled Judea newly reunited with his boyhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd). Messala, a Roman, has just returned from the empire’s capital to reign as tribune, a sort of lieutenant governor, of Judea. These old pals now find themselves separated by politics — one is the ruler, the other the ruled.
Gigi was kinda the Pretty Woman of the 50s. I hate to say that, because I hate that stupid movie (a fairy tale about a hooker!), and Gigi is simply a charming delight. But this Lerner and Loewe musical does bear the tiniest superficial resemblance to that other flick, though it ends up offering a much more positive moral.
Instantly one of my favorite films, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a tense, terrifying, absolutely riveting film about the ironies of war and the deadly psychological games enemy soldiers play with each other.
Around the World in 80 Days is a huge, leisurely production, chock full of starry cameos and astounding scenery. There’s not really much of a plot, and the characters are little more than cardboard, but the whole point of this movie is to linger with Fogg and Passepartout as they drink in the beautiful countryside and exotic cities as they float languorously by. This is what Technicolor and 70mm prints were invented for.
With heartbreaking clarity and honesty, 50-year-old Huw (pronounced Hugh) Morgan looks back at his childhood in a Welsh valley, describing in simple terms his witnessing of the loss of a way of life. How Green Was My Valley, directed by John Ford, is his story.
If you love Gone with the Wind, you must see the restored version that’s new to video. The remastered soundtrack is crisp and clear, and Max Steiner’s lavish score sounds wonderful, but it’s the cleaned-up film stock that astounds: Victor Fleming’s 60-year-old movie looks like it was shot this year.
The Life of Emile Zola is a curiously uninvolving biopic — curious because the second half of the film operates at a distance from its professed subject, exchanging his for another man’s story.
It’s well over two hours long, it’s full of inappropriate accents, and it was filmed almost entirely on the ocean. No, it’s not the latest Kevin Costner epic — it’s Mutiny on the Bounty, a thrilling classic that remains surprisingly modern.
As we approach another century’s turn, it’s educational to look back at how society dealt with the last big rollover. Cavalcade follows the fortunes and misfortunes of two Victorian families — the prosperous Marryots and the working-classes Bridgeses — from New Year’s Eve 1899 to New Year’s Eve 1932.
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