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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.
Lonely Bronxite Marty (Ernest Borgnine) is being shown up by his younger brothers and sisters — they’re all married but him, and he’s got all the Italian ladies in the butcher shop where he works telling him, ‘You should be ashamed a youself!’ and ‘Whena you gonna get married, Marty?’
A powerful drama with the flavor of Shakespearean tragedy, On the Waterfront is a timeless story of corruption and those who fight it. Terry Malloy (a mesmerizing Marlon Brando) is a former boxer who works as a goon for union racketeers running the docks in the harbors of New York.
No, sorry, I don’t get it. From Here to Eternity is supposed to be this great, tragic melodrama, but I just don’t see it. As far as I can tell, every dumb guy in this movie has only himself to blame for all the stupid things that happen to him.
It’s got baby gorillas, dogs riding horses, and Jimmy Stewart as a clown. Man, The Greatest Show on Earth is one fun flick.
As if there was any doubt that An American in Paris was nothing but an excuse for some fabulous singing and dancing, the film wraps up with a spectacular 18-minute ballet sequence. It’s got only the vaguest connection to plot or character, but it’s a gorgeous piece of filmmaking.
From the snarky opening scene, I knew I was gonna love All About Eve. Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, this is perhaps the first film with an attitude we today would call modern.
Goodness me, this movie could not have been more prophetic had Nostradamus himself written it. All the King’s Men, based on Robert Penn Warren’s novel, is the story of Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), a nobody from an unnamed state who rises from the mud of the backcountry to become governor. Along the way, there’s a succession of broads and dead bodies, the use of intoxicating substances and the bribing of state troopers. And finally, oh yeah, impeachment.
Olivier’s take on Shakespeare’s story of madness and murder most foul is unmistakably a filmic one — with its monologues recast as internal thoughts heard in hushed voiceovers and use of dizzying camerawork to show Hamlet’s inner turmoil, this could never have worked on stage. The emotional desolation of Elsinore’s inhabitants is conveyed with a roving camera that swoops down on characters plotting or moping in huge, empty halls.
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