100 Favorite Films

Every so often, I sit down and make a list of my favorite films. Here's the most recent edition - 100 Films in alphabetical order.

À bout de souffle [Breathless] (1960)
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, The Wrath of God] (1972)
El ángel exterminador [Exterminating Angel] (1962)
Animal Crackers (1930) ***
Ansiktet [The Magician] (1958) ***
Apocalypse Now (1979) ***
L'armée des ombres [Army of Shadows] (1969)
L'atalante (1934)
The Awful Truth (1937)
Ball of Fire (1941)
The Band Wagon (1953)
Bande à part (1964)
La belle et la bête [Beauty and the Beast] (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
La bête humaine [The Human Beast] (1938)
The Bishop's Wife (1947)
Bob le flambeur (1956)
Born Yesterday (1950)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Bringing Up Baby (1938) ***
Capitaine Conan (1996)
Casablanca (1942)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Crna macka, beli macor [Black Cat, White Cat] (1998)
"Dekalog" (1989)
Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)
Desire (1936)
La dolce vita (1960)
Double Indemnity (1944) ***
La double vie de Véronique [The Double Life of Veronique] (1991) ***
Down by Law (1986) ***
Du rififi chez les hommes [Rififi] (1955)
8½ (1963) ***
Les enfants du paradis [Children of Paradise] (1945)
El espíritu de la colmena [Spirit of the Beehive] (1973)
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain [Amélie] (2001)
French Kiss (1995)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
The Godfather (1972)
La grande illusion (1937)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Help! (1965)
Der Himmel über Berlin [Wings of Desire] (1987) ***
His Girl Friday (1940)
Holiday (1938)
Intervista (1987)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Jean de Florette (1986) ***
Kagemusha (1980) ***
Key Largo (1948)
The Lady Eve (1941)
The Lady from Shanghai (1947) ***
Life of Brian (1979)
The Maltese Falcon (1941) ***
Manhattan (1979) ***
The Matrix (1999)
Le mépris [Contempt] (1963)
Midnight (1939)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail [Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen] (1975) ***
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
North by Northwest (1959) ***
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) ***
Orphée (1950) ***
Out of the Past (1947) ***
Pépé le Moko (1937)
Paris, Texas (1984) ***
The Philadelphia Story (1940) ***
Pierrot le fou (1965)
Le quai des brumes [Port of Shadows] (1938)
Quai des Orfèvres (1947)
Quick Change (1990)
Ran (1985) ***
The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) ***
Roman Holiday (1953) ***
Sabrina (1954)
Le salaire de la peur [Wages of Fear] (1953)
Le samouraï (1967)
Shichinin no samurai [The Seven Samurai] (1954)
Silk Stockings (1957)
Simple Men (1992) ***
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Det sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal] (1957) ***
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Swing Time (1936)
Tengoku to jigoku [High and Low] (1963)
The Thin Man (1934) ***
Three Days of the Condor (1975) ***
Tierra (1996)
To Have and Have Not (1944) ***
Top Hat (1935) ***
Touchez pas au grisbi [Grisbi] (1954)
Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994)
The Unbelievable Truth (1989)
Vincent, François, Paul... et les autres (1974)
White Christmas (1954) ***
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Yojimbo (1961)

***Films that also appeared on my list of Favorite 50 Films done in 1995 and Favorite 100 Films done in 2004 (1-50 and 51-100).

By Director

Akira Kurosawa (5) - Kagemusha (1980) ***, Ran (1985) ***, Shichinin no samurai [The Seven Samurai] (1954), Tengoku to jigoku [High and Low] (1963) , Yojimbo (1961)

Jean-Luc Godard (4) - À bout de souffle [Breathless] (1960), Bande à part (1964), Le mépris [Contempt] (1963), Pierrot le fou (1965)

Howard Hawks (4) - Ball of Fire (1941), Bringing Up Baby (1938) ***, His Girl Friday (1940), To Have and Have Not (1944) ***

George Cuckor (3) - Born Yesterday (1950), Holiday (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940) ***

Federico Fellini (3) - La dolce vita (1960), 8½ (1963) ***, Intervista (1987)

Krzysztof Kieslowski (3) - "Dekalog" (1989), La double vie de Véronique [The Double Life of Veronique] (1991) ***, Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994)

Jean-Pierre Melville (3) - L'armée des ombres [Army of Shadows] (1969), Bob le flambeur (1956), Le samouraï (1967)

Billy Wilder (3)- Double Indemnity (1944) ***, Sabrina (1954), Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Two Films: Bergman, Carné, Clouzot, Cocteau, Coppola, Curtiz, Hartley, Houston, Jarmusch, Terry Jones, Renoir, Mark Sandrich, Welles, Wyler

By Actors

Cary Grant (7) - The Awful Truth (1937), The Bishop's Wife (1947), Bringing Up Baby (1938) ***, His Girl Friday (1940), Holiday (1938), North by Northwest (1959) ***, The Philadelphia Story (1940) ***

Fred Astaire (5) - The Band Wagon (1953), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Silk Stockings (1957), Swing Time (1936), Top Hat (1935) ***

Humphrey Bogart (5) - Casablanca (1942) Key Largo (1948), The Maltese Falcon (1941) ***, Sabrina (1954), To Have and Have Not (1944) ***

Jean Gabin (5) - La bête humaine [The Human Beast] (1938), La grande illusion (1937), Pépé le Moko (1937), Le quai des brumes [Port of Shadows] (1938), Touchez pas au grisbi [Grisbi] (1954)

William Holden (5) - Born Yesterday (1950), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Sabrina (1954), Sunset Blvd. (1950), The Wild Bunch (1969)

Three Films: Cyd Charise, Kathrine Hepburn, Marcello Mastroianni, Toshiro Mifune, Yves Montand, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck

By Language

Fifty-seven films were in English. Of the 43 films in other languages, 26 were in French.

By Date
1930s: 17
1940s: 17
1950s: 18
1960s: 14
1970s: 11
1980s: 9
1990s: 13
2000s: 2

Fifty-five films were from before I was born.

Other Films

It's interesting for me to see how my lists have changed over the years. I've discovered or explored more fully different directors (Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker), actors (Gabin, Holden, Stanwyck) and genres (musicals, French film noir and film gris). Films that meant a lot to me at one time just don't resonate as much now. Or, maybe I just haven't seen them in a long time. Here are some films that appeared on my two previous lists.

1995 & 2004
Alice in den Städten [Alice in the Cities] (1974)
Beat the Devil (1953)
The Big Steal (1949)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. [The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly] (1966)
Dom za vesanje [Time of the Gypsies] (1988)
Manon des sources (1986)
Raising Arizona (1987)
'Round Midnight (1986)
Vertigo (1958)
You Can't Take It with You (1938)

1995
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Delicatessen (1991)
Un dimanche à la campagne [A Sunday in the Country] (1984)
Duck Soup (1933)
Europa (1991)
The Fisher King (1991)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Jules et Jim (1962)
The Grifters (1990)
Truly Madly Deeply (1990)

2004
Adam's Rib (1949)
After the Thin Man (1936)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Fanny och Alexander (1982)
Fargo (1996)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Un flic (1972)
Gilda (1946)
The Godfather: Part II (1974)
Lone Star (1996)
Nikita (1990)
No Such Thing (2001)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Sting (1973)
The Third Man (1949)
Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993)
The Usual Suspects (1994)

You can also check out the series of posts I did on The Greatest Films of All Time. Twenty-one of my 100 Favorite Films were in the Top 100.

Recent Screenings: 2008

I haven't done a Recent Screenings post since January 2008, which is too bad, because I've seen some excellent films this year.

Alas, few of them were actually released in 2008, so if you're looking for a Best of 2008 list, you'll have to go elsewhere. Here are some possibilities: Roger Ebert, Anthony Lane and John Waters.

Meanwhile, from films I saw for the first time in 2008, here are twenty I enjoyed the most. My Ten Favorite, in alphabetical order, followed by ten more worth watching.

Black Narcissus (1947) - There's no easy way to describe this haunting and mesmerizing film. I avoided it for several years, because the idea of Deborah Kerr playing an Anglican nun made me yawn just thinking about it. But I was very wrong. The great directing team of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger create a lush, fascinating world and then delve into some powerful questions. Kerr has been chosen to lead four other nuns in an effort to start a convent and infirmary high up on a mountain in the Himalayas within a strange former palace. Cultures, religions, and individual personalities come into conflict. Erotic tensions build up. The wind howls through the isolated and eerie palace. People lose their minds. British colonialism seems ridiculous and powerless in the face of spiritual and cultural forces thousands of years old. Who is observing who? What does spirituality really mean? Powell & Pressburger slowly increase the pressure until it explodes in a disturbing climax - something like beautiful horror.

Death at a Funeral (2007) - One of the funniest films I've seen in years. A classic in black comedy. Drugs, midgets, closet homosexuals, cranky old guys in wheelchairs, scatological humor, and lots of family dysfunction. All at a funeral. Viewers should know by the end of the first scene if this is going to be their cup of tea.

In Bruges (2008) - Brutal, violent, profane, politically incorrect, and darkly humorous. With surprisingly intelligent contours. Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell play hit men sent to the medieval city of Bruges to wait for their next assignment. Gleeson, a tired old pro, calmly takes in the beauty and history of the city. Farrell, who recently botched his first assignment, fumes and rages, a seemingly shallow young man incapable of appreciating the finer things in life. Over time, the men form an interesting bond, as Farrell slowly comes unglued by guilt. The acting is superb all around, with Farrell delivering his best performance ever. Ralph Fiennes almost steals the show, however, as their "complicated" Irish thug boss. I didn't see a lot of new films in 2008, but this may have been my favorite.

Iron Man (2008) - I'm tired of super-hero/comic book movies, but it's impossible not to enjoy Robet Downey Jr.'s performance in Iron Man. A smart, funny, well-paced film that doesn't take itself too seriously - what the Spider Man series had going for it before its abysmal third installment. This one held up well on a second viewing; I have serious reservations, however, about its inevitable sequal.

King Lear (1987) - Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. With Burgess Meredith as "Don Learo," Molly Ringwald as Cordelia, Woody Allen as Mr. Alien, Norman Mailer as "The Great Writer," and controversial theatre director Peter Sellars, who also worked on the "script," as William Shakespeare Junior the Fifth.

It would take a very long post to properly examine this film, not to mention telling the back story of its production, which is one of the most fascinating (and/or disastrous) in cinema history.

Vincent Canby at The New York Times called the movie "tired, familiar and out of date." Time Out says it's "Godard's dullest and least accomplished [movie] for some time." User Comments on IMDB are filled with hatred and rage.

Meanwhile, Kevin Thomas of The Los Angeles Times hails it as "a work of certified genius," and The National Film Archive of India places it on a list of the Greatest Films of All Time.

There are two important things to keep in mind about Godard and his King Lear project:

1) Godard lost interest in making traditional narrative films sometime in the early-to-mid 1960s. As a general rule, it's always better to approach one of his works as a cinematic poem or visual philosophical treatise rather than a "movie." Anyone who comes to this film expecting a story based on Shakespeare's King Lear will be greatly flummoxed, then furious. Kurosawa's Ran this is not.

2) Nobody seems to read or consider the sub-title of this work - King Lear: Fear and Loathing. A Study. An Approach. A Clearing. No Thing. Does that sound like you're about to enter Kenneth Branagh territory? Yet"a study, an approach, a clearing" is a fair explanation of Godard's project.

When you also take a look at the cast list and the names of some of the characters (Woody Allen as Mr. Alien?) one wonders why anyone thinks this is going to be a normal re-telling of Shakespeare's classic. Yet they do. And they get really, really angry when they encounter Jean-Luc Godard tearing apart the Bard and using him to investigate the very meaning of written and visual language.

Not an easy work, granted (though not that difficult either, if you just let it be what is.) But Godard's King Lear was the most thought-provoking and inspirational film I saw in 2008.

It's no wonder that many critics hate Godard, because he's basically challenging the very nature of narrative film, and making us think about our relationship to words and images. He's been trying since the early 1970s to create a new kind of cinema, and though he's failed in many ways, one gets the feeling that his attempts will be remembered and finally investigated more fully in the future. (The advent of YouTube, for example, seems to fall in line with ideas Godard was working on in the early 1970s.) And King Lear, in many ways, is his main treatise on the subject.

He also explores the historic relationship of the film industry to capitalism and mobsterism. Burgess Meredith is given the impossible task of playing a godfather version of Lear, and he does an amazing job. I scoffed beforehand at the idea of the Penguin playing Lear, but I was wrong.

In addition to being intellectually fascinating, King Lear is also quite funny in parts. And there are moments of stunning beauty, when Godard reminds us that he is a master at creating some of the most powerful images in cinema.

I certainly wouldn't recommend this film to everyone, but if you're willing to drop all expectations at the door and enter in, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Either that, or you're going to hate the movie, hate Godard and hate me.

Modern Times (1936) and City Lights (1931) - I don't know why it took me so long to see these two classics by Charlie Chaplin. My great loss. In Kabbalah, one is not supposed to enter the orchard until his or her fortieth year. Perhaps I had to wait about that long to fully enter into the orchard of Chaplin.

Modern Times was a great place to start. City Lights was both funny and beautiful.

So much cinema comes from these two Chaplin films.

No Country for Old Men (2007) - So much has been written about Joel and Ethan Coen's Oscar-winning film that I have little to add. Warning for the squeamish - this is a very violent film. If you can get through the disturbing opening scene, you can get through the rest of the movie. And you should, because it's a powerful film, the best work by the Coens in a long time. One piece of advice: Everything will make more sense, especially the ending, if you think of Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh as Death.

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979) - Werner Herzog does Dracula, with Klaus Kinski as the vampyre and Bruno Ganz and Isabelle Adjani as the young couple he haunts. Herzog creates a beautifully creepy atmosphere from the first moments of the film and never sways. Great for Halloween.

Sherlock Jr. (1924) One Week (1920) The General (1927) - Buster Keaton classics. I had actually seen The General, but it was great to re-watch it after so many years. What an amazing film. Yes, it's funny, but I had forgotten how much of an adventure it is, as Keaton winds up behind enemy lines during the American Civil War.

Sherlock Jr. is like an hour-long catalog of cinematic gags and amazing stunts that would later be used throughout film history. Delightful. One Week reminds one that the early days of film coincided with Surrealism in art, and the two were often much closer together at the time than we realize.

WALL·E (2008) - Ebert calls this "the best science-fiction movie in years." The first 45 minutes miraculously combine Chaplin and Keaton with an end-of-the world scenario out of The Omega Man. Though it's an animated film, the "camera work," editing and and directing feel reminiscent of live-action classics. It may be classified as a "family" film, but it offers up one of the best contemporary critiques of our consumer culture. And a bumbling but deeply curious trash-compacting robot reminds us what it means to be human.

Ten Other FIlms I Enjoyed.

Ballada o soldate [Ballad of a Soldier] (1959) - A simple, beautiful and powerful film from the Soviet Union.

Forever Female (1954) - William Holden, Paul Douglas and Ginger Rogers in a literary comedy about the theatre world. Alas, we never see these kinds of movies anymore.

In the Valley of Elah (2007) - Tommy Lee Jones kicked ass in 2007.

Juno (2007) - Funny and quirky enough not to slide into schmaltz.

The Limey (1999) - Intelligent Soderbergh thriller with old Brit Terence Stamp in L.A. trying to find out who killed his daughter.

Muerte de un ciclista [Death of a Cyclist] (1955) - The most famous work by Javier Bardem's uncle. Kind of a Spanish Hitchcock/Clouzot thing.

Nashville (1975) - I'm not a big Altman fan, but this was a masterpiece. Henry Gibson and Lily Tomlin - only a few years removed from TV's Laugh-In - deliver amazing performances.

Rendition (2007) - Excellent political thriller with Jake Gyllenhaal.

The River (1951) and Partie de campagne [A Day in the Country] (1936) - Two Jean Renoir classics. The River is based on a novel by Rumer Godden, who also wrote the novel Black Narcissus.

Sang d'un poète, Le [Blood of a Poet] (1930) - Cocteau's first film. A must-see.

The Greatest Films of All Time: 51-100

You can argue forever about the content of a film, its aesthetic, its style, even its moral posture; but the crucial imperative is to avoid boredom at all costs.

Luis Buñuel

Another installment in my exploration of the world's Greatest Films of All Time. The initial post included an Introduction and Films 1-20. [The other posts in this series include Films 21-50, Films 101-200, and The Directors.]

You can skip the following brief intro if you've already read the other posts.

Briefly, I researched and compiled 30 lists of Greatest Films from various sources around the globe, including critics such as Roger Ebert and Jonathan Rosenbaum; popular magazines like Time and Time Out (UK); films journals such as Sight & Sound, Cahiers du cinema, Kinovedcheskie Zapiski (Russia); and a range of Film Archives from countries like China, India, Ecuador, Israel, Greece, and Finland.

The 30 polls produced a total of 580 films. When films weren't ranked in the polls, I assigned a numeric value depending on the total number of films included (eg. 100 films = 20 points). So, the list I'm presenting is not a ranking of films I personally think are the greatest of all time. It's simply a reflection of results from across 30 polls voted on by hundreds of other people.

My quest was twofold: To see which works were considered the masterpieces of cinema from a variety of international sources, and to see if and how the perception of great films and great directors varied from one region of the world to another.

Films 51-100

51. The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed 396.5 points - 7 mentions
52. Sunset Blvd. (1950) Billy Wilder 379 - 7
53. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) Robert Bresson 373.5 - 7
54. Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola 371 - 7
55. Ivan Groznyy I and/or II [Ivan the Terrible] (1944) Sergei M. Eisenstein 370 - 7
56. Raging Bull (1980) Martin Scorsese 367.5 - 7
57. Fanny och Alexander (1982) Ingmar Bergman 359.5 - 6
58. North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock 357 - 6
59. Modern Times (1936) Charlie Chaplin 355 - 7
60. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) Orson Welles 350.5 - 6
61. Il Gattopardo [The Leopard] (1963) Luchino Visconti 347.5 - 7
62. Rio Bravo (1959) Howard Hawks 340.5 - 6
63. L'Age d'or (1930) Luis Buñuel 340 - 7
64. The Birth of a Nation (1915) D.W. Griffith 329 - 7
65. Barry Lyndon (1975) Stanley Kubrick 317.5 - 8
66. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Stanley Kubrick 317 - 6
67. Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman 316 - 8
68. Pierrot le fou (1965) Jean Luc Godard 315.5 - 7
69. Viridiana (1961) Luis Buñuel 309.5 - 6
70. Pickpocket (1959) Robert Bresson 303.5 - 7
71. The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming 292 - 7
72. Il Conformista (1970) Bernardo Bertolucci 288.5 - 5
73. Jules et Jim (1962) François Truffaut 279 - 6
74. All About Eve (1950) Joseph Mankiewicz 275 - 6
75. Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock 272.5 - 4
76. Sanshô dayû [Sansho the Bailiff] (1954) Kenji Mizoguchi 267 - 6
77. La Strada (1954) Federico Fellini 264.5 - 4
78. Notorious (1946) Alfred Hitchcock 263.5 - 7
79. The Apartment (1960) Billy Wilder 248.5 - 5
80. Amarcord (1973) Federico Fellini 247.5 - 6
81. L'Année dernière à Marienbad [Last Year at Marienbad] (1961) Alain Resnais 243.5 - 7
82. Gertrud (1964) Carl Dreyer 243 - 6
83. The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah 241 - 5
84. Roma, città aperta [Rome, Open City] (1945) Roberto Rossellini 236 - 6
85. Hiroshima mon amour (1959) Alain Resnais 234 - 4
86. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) Max Ophüls 233.5 - 6
87. (tie) Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau 232 - 7
87. (tie) Madame de… (1953) Max Ophüls 232 - 4
89. (tie) Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder 231 - 6
89. (tie) Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre: The Wrath of God] (1972) Werner Herzog 231 - 5
91. To Be or Not to Be (1942) Ernst Lubitsch 227.5 - 4
92. Ikiru (1952) Akira Kurosawa 227 - 6
93. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone 225.5 - 5
94. Broken Blossoms (1919) D.W. Griffith 219.5 - 6
95. Napoleon (1927) Abel Gance 210 - 5
96. Dekalog (1989) Krzysztof Kieslowski 209 - 6
97. (tie) Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott 197 - 5
97. (tie) Un chien andalou (1929) Luis Buñuel 197 - 5
99. Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg 195.5 - 5
100. (tie) Freaks (1932) Tod Browning 195 - 4
100. (tie) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) John Ford 195 - 4

Dekalog: Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1989 Polish mini-series on the Ten Commandments

Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder seem to have done particularly well in this section of the list, with three films each. In the end, Hitchcock wound up with the most films in the Top 100, a total of five. Wilder, along with Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, had four films in the Top 100. Directors with three films included: Buñuel, Chaplin, Coppola, Dreyer, Godard, Griffith, Kubrick, Kurosawa and Welles.
Whereas the most recent work in Films 1-50 was from 1976 (Taxi Driver) and the average year of production was 1949, Films 51-100 tended to be a little newer. The most recent work was from 1993 (Schindler's List) and there were four films from the 1980s: Raging Bull, Fanny and Alexander, Dekalog and Blade Runner. The average year of production was 1956.

Technically, Kieslowski's Dekalog is not a motion picture but a series of ten one-hour programs shown on Polish television. But it often gets included in polls of great "films." And, according to IMDB, Stanley Kubrick said Dekalog was the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime. So, there. Whatever it is, it's one of the most powerful works I've ever seen.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was Kubrick's 1975 period piece, Barry Lyndon, ranked #65, just ahead of the more well-known Dr. Strangelove. Again, these two Kubrick's films didn't do well outside of the US/UK polls, though Cahiers du cinema did include Barry Lyndon. I've never seen this one by Kubrick and would be curious to hear from others who have.

Another surprise was Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West cracking the Top 100 at #93, even ahead of his own Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo [The Good, the Bad and the Ugly] (1966), which I always thought was more popular - it's currently ranked #5 at IMDB. Three other westerns showed up in Films 51-100: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, ranked #62, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, at #83, and John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, tied at #100. (Ford's The Searchers was the top western at #16.) Of the five westerns in the Top 100, I prefer The Wild Bunch.Peckinpah's western also made it two films for William Holden in the Top 100, along with Sunset Blvd. (#52)

Other actors who showed up in multiple films: John Wayne (The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) Jimmy Stewart (Vertigo, Rear Window and It's a Wonderful Life), Cary Grant (North by Northwest, Notorious), Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca, Notorious), Robert De Niro (Godfather II, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita, 8½) , Jean-Paul Belmondo (À bout de souffle, Pierrot le fou), Jack Lemmon (The Aprtment, Some Like it Hot), and, of course, Peter Lorre (M, Casablanca). Charlie Chaplin also starred in all 3 of his films: The Gold Rush, City Lights and Modern Times.

The actor who showed up the most in the Top 100: Orson Welles. He starred in all three of his own productions (Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and The Magnificent Ambersons), and also gave an unforgettable performance as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (#51). And, of course, there's his little-known but amazing tour de force as Munchkin #27 in The Wizard of Oz.I didn't officially track actors in the list; I'm just eye-balling the film titles - so there may be others who appeared in multiple films. (Ah!, Claude Rains, for example: Notorious, Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia. And Anthony Quinn: Lawrence of Arabia and La Strada.)

Freaks, directed by Tod Browning (Dracula 1931), was an interesting case. It didn't show up on any US/UK lists, and I always considered it a minor cult film, but it was very highly regarded in other areas. The Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique chose it as one of the 20 Greatest Films of All Time, the Fundación Cinemateca Nacional de Venezuela as one of the 24 Greatest of All Time, and the Cinémathèque Française as one of the 33 Greatest. It also ranked highly in the other French poll - #21 (tied) - the Cahiers du cinema Top 100.

It's interesting to note how much of a drop off there is in votes received between the #1 film, Citizen Kane, and #100, Freaks and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Kane showed up in all 30 polls and had a total of 1,735 points. The films at #100 each only appeared in four polls and had a total of 195 points. Only 16 films showed up in at least half of the 30 polls. After that, the number of movies considered "greatest" begins to grow exponentially. From that information, I would say that any kind of film canon must exist in a fluid state. Maybe that's why the IMDB Classic Film Board Top 200, which changes every two months, strikes me as a useful poll.

In the end, there were 46 English-language films from the US/UK in the Top 100. Non-English European films accounted for 47 titles (if you include Russia). Among individual European countries, France accounted for the most productions, with 19. Asia only had 7 titles in the Top 100, six of them from Japan.

Films ranked 51-100 that show up in my own list of Favorite 100 Films: Sunset Blvd., Apocalypse Now, North by Northwest, Pierrot le fou, The Wild Bunch, Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre: The Wrath of God], Double Indemnity, and Dekalog.

I would like to hear about your own experiences with the films listed 51-100. Faves, ones you can't stand, etc.

Until the next reel. . . .

Films 101-200

Recent Screenings

I've been away for a while, traveling through the wilds of West Texas. Now I'm trying to catch up on all the films I've seen in the last two months. I'm not sure why I wound up writing about these particular movies and not others, several of which were better. But what are you going to do?

The Science of Sleep (2006) - Written and Directed by Michel Gondry. Starring Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

I have to admit, I wasn't overly impressed with French director Michel Gondry's previous film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a highly regarded favorite among younger cinephiles. I appreciated some of the imagination involved but found it overly clever, emotionally thin, and a bit too Hollywood for my tastes. So I had mixed feelings going into The Science of Sleep. His new work, however, is a very different creature indeed. Gondry lets loose his obviously fertile creativity and delivers one of the most visually stunning and poetic movies I've seen in a long time. Mexican actor Gael García Bernal (Babel, Motorcycle Diaries) plays Stéphane, a struggling cartoonist with a wild imagination who is part French and part Spanish (for once, a Mexican playing a Spaniard!). He returns to the Parisian home of his childhood because his widowed mother has promised him a job as the art director at a calendar company. He comes prepared with the mock-ups of a hilarious and disturbing calendar showing disasters for each month of the year. The job, however, is not what he expected.

Meanwhile, a pair of young French women move in across the hall, one of them an artist named Stéphanie, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. Stéphane and Stéphanie are both somewhat shy, and they begin an interesting friendship based on their mutual creative imaginations. The most touching and enjoyable parts of the film are the scenes in which the two simply hang out together and come up with wild and poetic ideas that Gondry beautifully brings to life on the screen. Stéphanie fashions clouds out of simple material, and Stéphane makes them hang suspended in the air by playing certain notes on the piano. Cellophane water comes out of her kitchen sink.

Gondry goes even further with his amazing visuals in the ongoing and surreal episodes of "Stéphane-TV," in which the young artist hosts a hilarious TV show of his own mental life. Some of the funniest bits in the movie come out during these scenes. There are also several dream sequences, one of which features Stéphane flying over the various neighborhoods of Paris, presented as a series of marvelous pop-up buildings. It's a breathtaking sequence, and, like all of the effects in the film, was done without any computer-generated images. The DVD contains several "making of" extras that detail the extraordinary lengths Gondry went to in order to create his vusals, and they are worth watching, particularly an interview with the woman who designed several doll-like items for the story. Listening to her, and watching the film, one gets the sense that Gondry used the moeny he made from his Hollywood success to allow himself and his creative friends to make the kind of artistic and poetic film most people dream of making one day. Creatively speaking, it's a very inspiring project.

Unfortunately, the emotional and dramatic aspects of the film don't reach nearly the same heights. After a while, Stéphane's emotional immaturity seems more annoying than endearing. And though the film explores his relationships with Stéphanie, his mother, and others, it all feels a bit tacked on, with much less inventiveness or creativity in the writing than in the visuals. Gondry's background was as a director of music videos by Bjork, Massive Attack, and the Chemical Brothers. While this served him well in many ways, I'm not sure it was fertile ground for the emotional development of the people who populate his highly imaginative world. One hopes he can grow in this area and move towards the kind of combined visual and emotional power of Cocteau, whose films The Science of Sleep can vaguely echo at times.

The acting is good throughout, even if the characters all feel a little cartoonish. García Bernal does everything he can with Stéphane, infusing him with real life. And I do enjoy Charlotte Gainsbourg on screen, though I can't really tell you why. Daughter of the lovely English actress-singer Jane Birkin (Blow Up) and the ugliest sexy man in history, the famous French singer (and actor) Serge Gainsbourg, Charlotte isn't beautiful or intense, and certainly can't be called a dynamic presence, yet she offers something very unique and appealing. La Reina said afterwards that Charlotte Gainsbourg always feels like a real person up on the screen, and perhaps that's her secret. She seems like someone you could easily know from everyday life, an interesting, intelligent and friendly young woman. That's actually a rare and valuable commodity in the world of film, and it will be interesting to see what she does in her career, especially being able to move in and out of English and French-language productions.

[NOTE: The day after I wrote this, Charlotte Gainsbourg, who's 36, suffered a brain hemorrhage and had to have emergency surgery. She had been having severe headaches for several weeks after a water skiing accident in the U.S. She's currently recovering in Paris.]

The Science of Sleep is a delightful and promising film. See it on a big screen if at all possible. RECOMMENDED.


Blood Diamond (2006) - Directed by Edward Zwick. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly.

An intelligent and interesting action-thriller set in Sierra Leone during the civil war of the 1990s and involving various aspects of the diamond industry, from the multi-national corporations at the top to the poor Africans at the bottom who basically work as slaves to find the precious stones. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a South African smuggler-adventurer who's a harder, edgier, 21st century version of Bogart's "I'm only concerned about myself" figure in Casablanca or To Have and Have Not. Djimon Hounsou, in a wonderful piece of acting, plays Solomon Vandy, one of the Africans caught up in the Civil War and forced into slave labor, who happens to come across an amazing and rare blood diamond and buries it away deep in the jungle. Jennifer Connelly plays Maddy, an American investigative journalist who's trying to bring to light many of the nefarious aspects of the diamond industry and its links to the brutal civil war. Blood Diamond reminded me of The Constant Gardener in the way it analyzes the increasingly blurring roles of governments, corporations, media, relief agencies and others in a mostly EuroAmerican industry exploiting people in Africa. Only Blood Diamond is more of an action film than the other, which was fine with me. It goes on a little too long, perhaps, and feels a little overly earnest at times, but I appreciated the complex story and the development of the relationship between the white South African played by DiCaprio and the black African played by Hounsou. DiCaprio delivers an excellent performance, and I've pretty much completely reversed my initial bad impression of him as an actor. I was genuinely moved by his performance at the end of the film. Exciting action and socio-political themes. Wish that would become a popular genre. RECOMMENDED.


Hot Fuzz (2007) - This is a fairly intelligent stupid film. A hardcore, overachieving London cop named Nicholas Angel is transferred to a sleepy English village because he's making his superiors look bad. He gets paired with PC Danny Butterman, a lazy dullard who spends most of his time watching cop films like Bad Boys II and Point Break. Life is so dull that Angel is reduced to busting underage teens at the pub (nearly half the clientele) and tracking down an escaped swan. But all is not what it seems in this perfect little village as a series of "accidents" begins to arouse his suspicion. Hot Fuzz spoofs and pays high homage to the buddy cop films that Butterman loves so much. The film gets fairly silly and the ending is outrageously over the top, but bored and alone on a Friday night, I found it pretty enjoyable.


Alvarez Kelly (1966) - Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Starring William Holden and Richard Widmark.

William Holden owned the 1950s. Between Sunset Blvd. in 1949 and Bridge on the River Kwai in 1958, he had an incredible run of big hits and movies that are now considered classics. In 1956, he passed longtime box-office champ John Wayne to become the top-earning star in the world. (Wayne sent him a telegram on the occasion that said: "Sneak!") Then, in the 1960s, Holden lost his Hollywood mojo. His films weren't making much money and several of them were panned by the critics. It wasn't until The Wild Bunch in 1969 that he starred in another well-received film. The funny thing is, a lot of the movies from that lost era - The 7th Dawn, Paris When It Sizzles, The Key, The Horse Soldiers, and The World of Suzie Wong - have held up well over time, mostly because Holden had a knack for picking interesting, solidly-written scripts, even if the projects didn't go over well in their own day. Indeed, The Counterfeit Traitor, from 1962, is one of the most emotionally compelling spy films ever made, and one of Holden's greatest roles, period.

Alas, Alvarez Kelly isn't really one of those unheralded gems. Why? Because the script wasn't up to the same level. And Holden knew it. When he first met with director Edward Dmytryk, long before production ever began, Holden expressed concern over the script, and Dmytryk agreed with him. Despite several rewrites, it never quite worked. At one point during the filming, Holden, who was hungover and struggling with an unruly horse, tried to shove his script up the horse's ass, yelling, "That's where it belongs!" In retrospect, the screenplay isn't all bad. More than anything, it's too convoluted for its own good. Holden plays Alvarez Kelly, an Irish-Mexican rancher (there really were such things, as many Irishmen left the States to fight on the Mexican side of the Mexican-American War in 1848) who drives a large herd of cattle up into the U.S. to sell to the Union army. Towards the end of the Civil War, food has become increasingly precious to both sides. Richard Widmark, wearing a patch over one eye, plays the leader of a kind of Confederate Special Forces group called the Commanches. The South in particular was struggling to feed its troops, and Widmark kidnaps Holden and tries to force him to help the Commanches steal the large herd. Holden refuses, and the running battle of wills between the two men serves as the main undercurrent of the film. Frustrated, Widmark shoots off one of Holden's fingers and says he will shoot off the rest if he doesn't help. Finally Holden agrees, but he seeks revenge in part by becoming friendly with Widmark's lover, who is exhausted by the war and believes that Widmark will never marry her.

Holden and Widmark play roles we've seen them in before, but they have a good chemistry, and the tension between the two strong-willed men is developed well. The two actors actually became good friends during the filming, and it shows on the screen. Some of the subplots are unnecessary; others, such as the relationship between Holden and Widmark's lover, could've been developed more. The writers simply tried to do too much, I think, and could never really pull it all together. Still, I tend to like large, complex plots, and the idea of food being so crucial in the Civil War is an interesting one. There are some moderately good action sequences, especially towards the end. The title music at the beginning may rank as some of the worst in film history, but if you can get beyond the opening credits, it's not a bad film. Just not as good as some of the others Holden made at the time. His other Civil War film from that period, The Horse Soldiers, is superior, with he and John Wayne in their one appearance together, directed by John Ford. And don't miss The Counterfeit Traitor.


One Touch of Venus (1948) - Directed by William A. Seiter. Starring Ava Gardner, Robert Walker, Eve Arden and Dick Haymes.

My God, Ava Gardner was beautiful. And what an amazing screen presence. Sexy, intelligent, and fun, she managed to seem both down-to-earth and sophisticated at the same time. Oh, yeah, and she could act. I already knew all of this in theory, but watching this silly comedy made me realize what a real star she was. Without her, this film would've been unwatchable. The movie seemed promising at first glance, with a Kurt Weill score, lyrics by S.J. Perelman (who wrote some of the early Marx Brothers films) and the humorous poet Ogden Nash, and a screenplay by Frank Tashlin, who has a strong cult-following among some cinephiles, though I've yet to figure out why. But Lubitsch this ain't. The script rarely rises beyond a fairly low level of intelligence and Hollywood sap. The story isn't bad: An ancient and mysterious statue of Venus comes to life after being kissed by a clerk in a large department store, causing all kinds of trouble. Robert Walker, who was so great in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, overacts in this comic role and becomes increasingly annoying as the movie goes on. Most of the secondary actors are dull and/or stuck with dull dialog. The only other good part of the film is Eve Arden, playing the cynical and sharp-witted secretary to the owner of the department store. She gets the only intelligent lines in the movie and delivers them with zest. Luckily, the movie is short and moves along at a pretty good pace. Too bad. In other hands, this could've a charming little film. As it stands, it's only worth it for marveling at Ava Gardner, who, granted, was well-chosen to play Venus, the Goddess of Love. Skip this and watch Mogambo instead, with her and Clark Gable sparring in the jungle (with Grace Kelly thrown in for good measure) under John Ford's direction. Ava was nominated for an Academy Award for that one.


Lemming (2005) - Written and Directed by Dominick Moll. Starring Laurent Lucas, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Charlotte Rampling.

Billed as a kind of Hitchcockian French film, Lemming also moves towards David Lynch country, though played straight. Laurent Lucas and Charlotte Gainsbourg star as Alain and Bénédicte Getty, a perfect young yuppie couple in some vague French suburb that looks American. Alain works at a high-tech engineering firm. One evening his boss comes to dinner with his erratic and mysterious wife Alice, played by Charlotte Rampling. The dinner does not go well, to say the least. Alice is way out there. She begins showing up at the office late at night when Alain is there alone, or at the house during the day when Bénédicte is by herself. Meanwhile, the perfect young couple discover a rodent in their kitchen plumbing - a lemming, which only lives in Sweden. How did it get there? What does it mean? There is a startling suicide. There is an accident that leaves Alain with a concussion and experiencing what seem to be disturbing and realistic hallucinations. Bénédicte starts having an affair with Alain's boss. One character seems possessed by the spirit of the suicide victim. Or is it all just Alain hallucinating? The director never makes it clear, and by the time the film was over, I really didn't care enough to try and figure it all out. There are a couple of freaky and suspenseful moments, and Lynch fans may enjoy watching a European flail at the Lynchian universe. I enjoyed watching Charlotte Gainsbourg. Then I yawned and went to bed.

Recent Screenings

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does,

straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.
Ingmar Bergman

I've fallen behind on my Recent Screenings. Seems like I've been too busy lately to do much more on the blog than toss out a YouTube video or an obituary notice. In case you missed it, though, I did add a rotating list of the last 10 films I've seen, under the heading Recent Screenings in the right-hand column. There have been a couple of great films in the last month, several good ones, and a few I could've skipped. I was going to offer a brief rundown of some of the more interesting ones, but I made the mistake of starting with Sunset Blvd. I enjoyed the film so much upon re-watching it, and had so much fun trying to write about it, that I never managed to get to the others. I'll try again when I have more time and I'm not unpacking.

Sunset Blvd. (1950) - Directed by Billy Wilder, written by Wilder and Charles Brackett. Starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson.

One could write an entire book about Sunset Blvd., and, in fact, someone has: Close-up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream (St. Martin's 2003), by Sam Staggs. I feel like I can't even came close to doing it justice. There are so many elements about the film and the filmmaking that one could discuss.

The plot of Sunset Blvd. is fairly straightforward. Joe Gillis is a struggling screenwriter who had one early hit but now can't sell anything. Circumstances haven't gotten so bad that his car is about to repossessed, which would effectively finish him off in Hollywood. By accident, or fate, his car has a blowout in the driveway of an abandoned mansion on Sunset Boulevard. Except the mansion isn't abandoned after all, but inhabited by a former silent movie star named Norma Desmond and her devoted and somewhat mysterious butler. Desmond, planning a supposed comeback, has written a long screenplay based on Salome, and she offers Gillis the job of refining it. Thinking he can make some quick money, he accepts the task and winds up staying in the eerie mansion, where he gets sucked deeper and deeper into the dusty, psychotic but alluring world of Desmond, her wealth, and her increasingly unhinged mind. When Gillis begins sneaking out at night to work on a screenplay with a young woman from Paramount, Desmond's jealousy erupts and the whirlpool turns faster and faster until it pulls everyone towards the bottom.

The famous opening sequence features William Holden, as Joe Gillis, delivering a voice-over narration while floating dead in a swimming pool. Right away, you know this isn't going to be your typical film. Ironically, this wasn't the original beginning of the movie. The first version, which featured several corpses conversing in a morgue, provoked unintentional laughter from the audience at a sneak preview in Evanston, Illinois. Director Billy Wilder was stunned. Years later, he admitted that it had been one of the worst moments of his life. The release of the film had to be delayed for six months while he worked on a new beginning. It was worth it, though, as the swimming pool sequence became one of the most iconic in the history of cinema. Interestingly, Franz Waxman, who composed the excellent score for the film, didn't change his music at all for Wilder's new opening. The power, I suppose, of creative serendipity.

One of the greatest achievements of Sunset Blvd. is the seemingly impossible balance it strikes between film noir, drama, mystery, love story and some of the most exquisite black humor ever produced. Oh, and it's also the best film ever made about Hollywood. But the slightest wrong turn here or there and one feels like the entire work could unravel. I think some of the appeal of Sunset Blvd. comes from the tension that builds up as we wait for Wilder to slip and fall from his cinematic highwire. But he never does. It's one of the most spectacular daredevil acts by a director in film history.

Billy Wilder

This daredevil aspect is also exemplified in Wilder's choice of subject matter and in his casting decisions. An Austrian-born Jew, Wilder came to Hollywood as a screenwriter in 1933. His career immediately took off and by the time he began Sunset Blvd., he had notched six Oscar nominations for writing and two for directing, winning one each for Lost Weekend in 1946. But he was still something of an outsider, and to make a film about Hollywood's dark side after so much success there might have seemed like he was biting the hand that fed him extremely well. In fact, Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, was so incensed by Sunset Blvd. that he screamed at Wilder after the premiere that he should be tarred and feathered for showing Hollywood in such a bad light. [The highly cultured and intelligent Wilder could only manage a two-word reply involving sexual intercourse.] If the film had turned out badly, or if the tone had been any sharper, or the writing had been the least bit self-serving, Wilder's career could've been seriously damaged, Hollywood not being the most forgiving place on earth. But it's a testament to the brilliance of Sunset Blvd. that it remains the film about Hollywood against which all other attempts are judged.

Wilder also took a tremendous gamble with his casting decisions. By 1950, the silent movie star Gloria Swanson had virtually disappeared from Hollywood, moving to the stage not long after the advent of talking pictures. Erich von Stroheim, one of the great directors of the silent period, had been reduced to acting in mostly bit roles after the colossal failure of his 1929 film, Queen Kelly. One of the great stories within the story of Sunset Blvd. is that Gloria Swanson was the main actress and co-producer of Queen Kelly. She and von Stroheim fought bitterly over the film until she eventually fired him and brought in someone to else to finish the production. He, in turn, owned rights to parts of the film, which he wouldn't allow to be released in the United States. The two had not spoken for 21 years before filming Sunset Blvd. When Norma Desmond (Swanson) watches herself on screen in one of her famous silent movies, with her butler (von Stroheim) running the projector, it is, in fact, a scene from Queen Kelly that we are shown. And though it's hard to imagine anyone else playing Norma Desmond, Swanson was actually Wilder's fourth choice after being turned down by Mae West, Mary Pickford and Pola Negri.

William Holden & Gloria Swanson

Finally, there is the case of William Holden. Though he made something of a splash in his 1939 debut, Golden Boy, Holden's career in the 1940s had basically gone nowhere as he got stuck in one mediocre film after another. He wasn't exactly a hot property when production began on Sunset Blvd. In retrospect, it seems like the role of Joe Gillis, a one-hit wonder whose career fizzles out, was written especially for William Holden at that point in his life. But Holden, like Swanson, wasn't Wilder's first choice either. Montgomery Clift was originally signed to play Gillis, but he backed out of the contract two weeks before filming began. Wilder then offered the role to Fred MacMurray, who turned it down. Marlon Brando was briefly considered, and the producers approached MGM about using Gene Kelly, but the studio refused to loan him out to Paramount. Someone mentioned the idea of Holden, but Wilder had seen some of his films and wasn't impressed. He agreed, though, to have lunch with the actor. As it turned out, Wilder realized that Holden was much more intelligent, sensitive, and charismatic than he had seemed in his movies up until then, and that he had never really been given a chance to shine. In the end, the two became lifelong friends and wound up making three other films together, including Stalag 17 (1953), for which Holden won Best Actor; Sabrina (1954); and Fedora (1978), a disappointing quasi-sequel to Sunset Blvd. So, Wilder not only took a chance on the controversial subject matter of his film, but he did so with a group of actors who in Hollywood terms in 1950 were pretty much has-beens, disappointments, and unknowns (Nancy Olson). And his two main stars, who had to carry the movie, were his fourth and fifth choices. His gamble on the cast paid off in spades, however, as the four principal actors in Sunset Blvd. were all nominated for Academy Awards: Holden for Best Actor, Swanson for Best Actress, von Stroheim for Best Supporting Actor, and Nancy Olson for Best Supporting Actress.

One more aspect of the film that seems risky now is Wilder's extensive use of voice-over. Seeing this classic for the second time, I was struck by how much of the story is told to us by Joe Gillis. It's a happy accident for Wilder that he wound up with William Holden in the role. Roger Ebert once said that Holden had one of the best screen voices of all time, and I concur. It's one of his underrated qualities as an actor. If you think the voice-over in Sunset Blvd. wasn't risky, imagine, if you can do so without cringing or laughing, Marlon Brando going on and on about Norma Desmond in that nasal accent of his. Or consider the different feel the film would've had if Gene Kelly had done the narration. Could he have maintained that incredibly fine balance between drama, noir and black comedy? Fred MacMurray does an excellent job with his voice-over in Wilder's Double Indemnity, but that film had a much different tone than Sunset Blvd. I think his higher-pitched, quasi-tough guy voice would've become grating after a while. And finally, though I like Montgomery Clift as an actor, I'm not sure he had the necessary weight or gravitas for Joe Gillis' extensive narration, or for the role in general for that matter. Holden, who always had a hint of sadness in his eyes and in his voice, no matter how cheerful or funny he was in his films, talks to us for almost two hours, and yet we never grow tired of listening to him tell us this strange, sad and darkly humorous tale.

Wilder was riding high when he made Sunset Blvd, and it's to his great credit that he was willing to take so many chances on his next film. A lesser director might have easily gone for the safe project. But you can't make great art without taking great risks. And in the end, Sunset Blvd. will probably go down Wilder's legacy film.

So what holds the movie together so well? I think Wilder's intelligence and great skill as a director are crucial. To weave together disparate genres so well, to have seen something in Holden, to have chosen Swanson and von Stroheim, despite their bitter past, all testify to his greatness as an artist and filmmaker. But the writing may be the key. Billy Wilder is rightly remembered as one of our greatest directors, but he was also one of the finest screenwriters to ever work in Hollywood. He received a total of eight Academy Award nominations for Best Director, winning twice. But he received an astounding 11 nominations for Best Screenplay, and he took an Oscar home for his work on Sunset Blvd. and two other films.

Billy Wilder's grave at Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles

If you read through some of the movie's Memorable Quotes on IMDB, you'll see how many are famous and, more importantly, how many are so damn good. It's one of those rare films that feels like it must have come from a great novel, even though it was written for the screen. When Gillis first spies Norma Desmond in the window of her sprawling, seemingly deserted mansion, he says it reminds him of Mrs. Haversham in Dickens' Great Expectations. And the movie itself has a bit of Dickensian feel in a modernized form. The kind of details that Gillis notices when he enters the house - the monkey's paw slipping out from under the cover, the wind blowing through the old pipe organ, the pictures everywhere of the young Norma Desmond - are the details one normally encounters in a book. Using such extensive voice-over allows Wilder and his co-writer, Charles Brackett, to give the film a more literary feel, a story-telling quality. It only works, however, because of the great cinematography and editing, the set design, and the wonderful pace that Wilder sets. Few films could feature so much narration and get away with it.

If you've never seen Sunset Blvd., I highly, highly recommend it. If you've already seen it, watch it again! It's so good, it gets better with each viewing. It's truly one of the greatest works of cinema ever produced in this country.